Jacques Tati’s Playtime: Life Is Better Than Beautiful. It’s Funny.

Posted on January 22, 2013 by sheila

So much has been written on Jacques Tati’s wondrous Playtime (1967) that it can be daunting to throw myself into the fray. But here we go.

The movie is a unique experience, completely itself, and if you try to compare it to another movie or even genre, there will always be some point when the comparison falls apart. The closest you can get is to say that it is reminiscent of the best of Chaplin or Keaton, based as it is on pantomime and visual gags. There are other points of comparison there, the use of space, the innovative use of intricate sets, the filling of the frame with all kinds of mayhem, but Playtime has its own unique spirit.

I have read some critical commentary about Playtime, saying that it is about urban alienation. Come again? If urban alienation is portrayed in Playtime (and it is), it is portrayed in a way that is distinctly absurdist, turning the mundane into the surreal. It does not bemoan the fate of modern man, it does not say, “Oh, look at how we are all cogs in a giant wheel, and isn’t it so sad?” It says, “Look at how we behave. Look at how insane it is. We need to notice how insane it is, because it’s hilarious.” Tati, who had made his name with other films, had a vision of the universe that was comedic. He had made comedies that had done very well for him, but with Playtime he upped his game and went after a much bigger commentary. That was his goal. It was the most expensive French movie ever made (Tati completely built the city portrayed in the film, which is supposed to be Paris – he built the skyscrapers, the roads, the office buildings), and it bankrupted Tati.

It did not do well at the box office, and was a disaster for the director. Its reputation has grown, obviously, and it is now seen as a masterpiece. Tati wanted to present his vision of the universe, his vision of humanity, how it operated, how it looked to him, how he saw things. Apparently he said that he wanted to encourage his audience to look around them at all times, because there will always be something funny going on.

That’s how I see Playtime. I do not see it as a treatise on modern man’s isolation. Otherwise I wouldn’t have laughed so hard watching it. It is not, say, The Apartment, which shows in a much more brutal way what corporate America does to the people working in it, the dizzying array of identical desks stretching far into the background.

There are images in Playtime that are reminiscent of that, but the mood is different. It’s less an expose than a visual commentary. There’s one gag during the section when M. Hulot is tracking down someone in an office, a short officious man in a blue suit who seems to have taps on the bottom of his shoes, clacking along the tile, so you know he’s coming even when you can’t see him. Hulot needs to speak to this man. He chases him through a maze of cubes and contained offices. At one point, the camera looks down on the action. You have to follow Tati’s unspoken instructions: Look closely at this crowded frame. There’s a lot of funny shit going on here. We see Blue Suit over in an office to the left. A man in an office to the right calls over to Blue Suit’s office. A green light comes on to show that the phone is ringing. We hear the man’s request to Blue Suit, he needs a report of some kind, he needs the numbers. Blue Suit leaves his office over to the left, click-clacks his way over to the outside of the office of the man who called, pulls out a drawer in the outer wall, looks through the files there, pulls out a folder, click-clacks his way back to his office over on the left, picks up the phone and calls the man back (the man whose office he was just standing outside of), and gives him the numbers requested. The man says, “Thank you” and hangs up the phone. The gag here is that the folder that holds the numbers requested by the man is in a drawer literally three feet away from said man, but instead of just stepping outside his office to get the numbers himself, he has to call Blue Suit. Or, why does Blue Suit return all the way back to his office to call the guy when he could have just knocked on the guy’s door, which was right there? That one moment is a perfect representation on the insanity and inefficiency of bureaucracy. Anyone who has worked in an office, anyone who has ever said about some byzantine office protocol, “Why on earth do we do it THIS way – it would be so much easier if we just did it THIS way …” will recognize that moment.

Another problem with Playtime is that describing the gags ruins them. Description does not do them justice. It’s like trying to describe the dance with the dinner rolls in Gold Rush. At some point, you just have to say, “You just have to see it to understand how perfect it is, how funny it is.”

There is no lead character here, and no closeups. Everything is done in medium or long shot. Tati is a master of crowding the frame. At times, it’s overwhelming because you don’t know where to look. My eye kept scanning the frame and no matter where I looked, something hilarious was happening. It’s a masterpiece of group pantomime and I would love to know the process with the actors: how did he coordinate all of that action? There are scenes that are minimalist moments of hilarity: one long gag about leather chairs that exhale with air when you sit on them.

And then there are huge group scenes like the disastrous restaurant opening which have to be seen to be believed. There are 100-plus people in that restaurant: waiters, musicians, bartenders, and guests, and everyone is having their own private drama, and they are all in the frame at the same time. There’s never been anything else like it. It reminds me of those crazy cartoons in Mad magazine, crammed full of figures and chaos, with so much going on that you just sit and soak it all in, your eye scanning this way and that. Your eye is the camera in that situation. Without closeups, you are not told where to look. Your eye has to zoom in on what strikes your fancy. It’s up to you. Playtime is made for multiple viewings.

There is no plot, although there are storylines running throughout. A group of American women on a tour ooh and ahh at the sights out of the tour bus window. Of course, all they see are the Tati-built skyscrapers, but when glass doors are opened, you see reflections in the doors of the Eiffel Tower or Montmartre. M. Hulot, Tati’s alter ego, star of his other movies, wanders through the action clumsily. He befriends (sort of) one of the American women. He shows up in every scene. He is looking for the Blue Suit man. There is an Expo of new technology, and the American women stroll through, oohing and ahhing. One of the American women, Barbara, always lags behind the group. She wants to take pictures of the little woman selling flowers but people keep strolling into the frame, ruining her shot. A perfect metaphor for life, certainly, and part of Tati’s point overall: There may be beautiful poetic pictures in life, but good luck with trying to capture it. Besides, the mayhem surrounding the beautiful picture (the shlubby guy who stands to the side staring at you, the swaggering teenagers in letter jackets who ruin your shot, the American soldier who strolls along and decides to take YOUR picture) is usually more interesting. Life is not perfect or static. Things are always changing. There may be beauty in this world, but it will not stand still for you.

Glass doors and walls are a running gag. There is an apartment complex with giant floor to ceiling glass walls, right on the street, and we see the lives of the inhabitants of these apartments playing out in real time, all in the same frame (again: a masterpiece of coordination). One guy undresses and it appears that the woman in the next apartment is ogling the striptease when all she is doing is watching the television in the wall. It is the dovetail of disparate distinct experiences, seen at the same time, that provides the comedy, and this is something ephemeral and hard-to-pin-down that I know from my own life. Life is always going on, behind closed doors, behind glass walls, and sometimes you get glimpses, and if you’re in the right mood it will all seem funny, like humanity is a glorious blundering joke.

My friend Allison and I were walking down a street in Ranelagh, outside Dublin. It was mid-morning, we had gone to get coffee. We strolled by a shop and the door was open and we both glanced in the open door at the same time, and we both saw the same thing. The shop was tiny, a very small room, and in that room, a man was struggling with a giant blow-up snowman that was in the process of deflating. Allison and I both saw the same thing, and didn’t react in the moment. We kept walking. Neither of us mentioned what we saw, at least not right away. Finally, Allison said, quietly, “That was pretty funny, wasn’t it.” Once she broke the silence, of course we couldn’t stop talking about it, and we have been laughing about Frosty Deflating in a Small Room ever since. “Frosty’s goin’ DOWN,” Allison said. There was a tragic quality to the image: the snowman looked so sad as it deflated in that small room, and the Irish shop owner was just flat-faced, going about his business, taking Frosty down. But the glimpse we saw, outside of its obvious context (Frosty had clearly been out on the sidewalk as some sort of advertisement, and now the advertisement was over, so Frosty had to be deflated), was so full of comedic potential. It looked like the shop owner was in some sort of Grand Battle with the blow-up snowman.

I thought of the Deflating Frosty a couple of times as I watched Playtime and struggled with myself to find comparisons in my own life. “This is making me think of something … what is it … ” I have many more examples, and I’m sure you do, too – moments when an image is so weird, so bizarre, that it launches thoughts in your head, as well as make you laugh. But it’s such a transitory thing, comedic moments like that, and if you’re not in the right frame of mind (i.e.: cranky, irritated, annoyed), you will not even notice the moment. Or if you do, it will come across in a very different manner: You will think, irritated, “Jesus, why didn’t the shop owner deflate Frosty on the street where he would have more room? How stupid can you be?” There are people who actually walk around with that attitude every single day. I wonder if these are the same people who would see Playtime and say, “This is clearly about the sadness of modern man’s isolation and alienation.” I don’t know. All I know is, if I look into a shop and see a giant deflating Snowman and don’t find it hilarious, life would be a very poor thing indeed.

The restaurant scene comes 3/4s of the way through the film. The restaurant is opening even though they clearly are not ready. The first guests arrive and the workmen have to hurriedly roll up the paper covering the floors. The paint is not dried on the wall. The poor maitre d’ who does his level best to remain calm and ingratiating strolls across the newly-laid dance floor and one of the tiles sticks to his shoe and has to be chiseled off by workmen huddled in the kitchen. The chairs at the tables all have little spiky crowns at the top (the logo of the restaurant) and they tear the waiter’s clothing to shreds, and also leave marks on the backs of the patrons. Later, we see them gyrating on the dance floor and they all have crowns indented on the backs of their clothes. People stroll by, drunk, with a crown pressed into their back. The lighting tracks along the floor turn on and off, at random, and waiters trip and fall because they can’t see where they’re going. An elegant woman struts along one of the aisles between the tables and suddenly her foot sticks to the floor. Everyone watches this happen, and seem agog with horror, and she remains frozen, until she yanks her foot free, and then undulates on her way as though nothing happened. The bartender complains that the banners that hang from the ceiling from over the bar make it so he can’t freakin’ SEE his own customers. He demonstrates, by turning to the side, and sliding his head through two of the banners. (I was howling.) Drunk men fall off the stools in the bar, in glorious pratfalls that stop the action around them, although only momentarily. Everyone is aware that nothing is working in this restaurant, and at first there is some annoyance on the part of the patrons (“where is my food?” “why is my foot sticking to the floor?” “this is the wrong coat-check ticket.”), but eventually everyone just succumbs to the absurdity of the situation and a raging party breaks out. People gyrate on the sticky dance floor. One of the walls collapses in a corner, and a brash loud-talking American decides that he will create an alternate restaurant in the shattered remains of the corner, and only people with the crown-logo marked on their backs will be allowed in. The hip band quits in disgust, and Barbara, the American who always lags behind, sits at the piano and plays beautifully. People dance, slowly, and M. Hulot brings Barbara a glass of champagne (although naturally he wipes out as he steps up onto the stage, but when he stands, the glass of champagne is still full). When the scene begins, the patrons entering the restaurant are all decked in furs and gowns. It is clearly supposed to be an elite establishment and anyone not dressed to par is turned away. But by the end, drunks are wandering in off the street, people in loud checked shirts line belly up to the bar, and the maitre d’ has lost control entirely.

It is a masterpiece sequence that goes on FOREVER and again has to be seen to be believed. At all times, the frame is jam-packed with action. No matter which way you look something funny is happening, in the foreground or background, or peeking in off the periphery. It’s unbelievable. How did they organize it? It LOOKS like chaos, but this is film, so obviously it is controlled chaos, it is choreographed, planned. You cannot create something that looks THAT out of control without being totally in control. The miracle is that it worked.

There is nothing too mundane to escape Tati’s eye. A green drugstore light buzzes with neon annoyance, and later, when the mechanics try to fix it, only the “O” in “DRUGSTORE” remains lit, and it happens to be just above the head of a distracted priest.

Men struggle with a pane of glass on a second-floor, and pedestrians below watch the pantomime. There’s an ongoing gag with a pane of glass in What’s Up Doc that is a nod to this moment in Playtime. Men struggling with their environment, men not questioning what they are doing (“we must move this pane of glass across the street”), and events conspire against their success. We all struggle against such events. We all look absurd in the process. Nobody escapes this world without looking ridiculous. You can dress up in your nice fur and your shiny stilettoes, but that will not stop the world from placing a sticky unfinished floor in your path. Good luck with maintaining your dignity. Good luck with maintaining your facade. The fun of Playtime, expressed perfectly in the restaurant sequence, is that it shows that the facades we believe in, the facades we put so much store in, are really boundaries that keep us from being our true wacko selves. And yet we continue to dress up and go out to a fancy dinner, and we keep expecting that the world will conform to our ideas of it. The world never cooperates. And it’s best to just go with it rather than resist. If you were the type of person to storm out of that restaurant in a huff, and write a complaining note later on, then you would have missed the fun of what happens when everything goes wrong, what happens when you let go of your idea of how things Should Be, and succumb to the insane reality of How Things Are.

Another story from Ireland: I was in Ireland with my sisters. We started out the night at a bar in Donnybrook. We met a bunch of guys. They were very nice and wanted to show us the real nightlife of Dublin, the after-hours places. (Dublin closes up early.) So we all piled into our rent-a-car and drove into Dublin. They took us to a disco. There were silver disco balls, a packed dance floor, and gyrating Irish people. We all took to the dance floor and had a blast dancing with our new friends. Then, suddenly, all the lights went out and the music stopped. A blown fuse. It was pitch-black. Mayhem erupted. The Irish guys who had taken us there were mortified, and kept saying stuff to us like, “This never happens … of course it would happen on the night we want to show you this place.” The crowd inside was told to exit onto the street. Our coats and bags were still in coat-check. They wouldn’t let us pick them up. It was December. It was freezing. The entire disco stood on the sidewalk, as fire trucks and policemen raced to the scene to investigate. People had brought their beers out with them. My sisters and I got separated from one another. Every. Single. Moment of that time on the sidewalk was hysterical. The overall mood was rowdy and hilarious. It was a group comedic event. I would overhear statements as I walked around looking for my sisters (one guy: “My wife just had triplets. She doesn’t want to be seein’ me for a while.”), or my sisters would say to a group of guys, “Have you seen my sister?” and some random person would answer, “Yeah, I saw her over there.” These people were all strangers to us, but everyone knew who we were by that point. Suddenly, someone started singing “American Pie”. The entire crowd joined in. We, as a group, huddled freezing on the sidewalk, sang the entirety of that song at the tops of our lungs. Beauty equaled comedy that night. Every single person there treated the annoyance of the lights going out and having to stand on the sidewalk as an opportunity for hilarity. No one threw a hissy fit. No one complained, no one said anything like, “This is OUTRAGEOUS that we can’t get back inside.” Not one person. The plan: to go dancing in Dublin – was thwarted. But what actually happened was far superior and far more memorable.

I thought of that night in Ireland as I watched that restaurant sequence. Everything going wrong allows humanity to burst forth in its capacity for fun, creativity, and flexibility. How we react to things going wrong doesn’t just say something about who we are, it says everything.

Perhaps you have to be a certain kind of person to perceive the comedy in human life. There is some truth to the theory that most comedians work from a place of pain and sadness, but when we are talking about a comedic outlook we are talking about something different. I am drawn to those who see life as ultimately a funny affair. They seem to hold the secret to life. Perhaps it requires optimism, optimism that is not the pat and too-easy “everything happens for a reason” brand. A comedic outlook on life requires the type of optimism that means you really are open to what is happening around you, and more than open, you see it all as ripe for comedic potential. You look, you see, you make connections, you say, “God, look at that. Isn’t that hysterical?” Such observations and connections can help affirm that life is, perhaps, not always good, but it is certainly always interesting.

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The 2nd Annual Bowie/Presley Birthday Bash

Posted on January 21, 2013 by sheila

Held at La Poisson Rouge on Bleecker.

All I can say is: Next year I will dress up. These people in the audience were not messing around. There were people with faces painted with lightning bolts, rockabilly girls wearing giant hats and skintight polka-dot dresses, people wearing gold suits. There was a moment when I thought: Wow. I actually am not cool enough to be here. But I let that go. The show started at 11 p.m. On a giant screen behind the stage, footage played: of David Bowie’s videos, David Bowie in the studio, Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan Show (so surreal to see Charles Laughton’s doughy face introducing Elvis silently, overlooking this hip New York night crowd). The show started so late that I didn’t stay for the whole thing, but I did see the Screaming Rebel Angles (an awesome rockabilly band) and Michael T. and the Vanities (clearly Bowie-influenced, although Michael T. is his own thing, with a giant screaming following of fans). It was so fun. We had had to stand in line outside for about half an hour, and it was freezing. I started talking to the guy behind me, who was very nice, and we were pals for the night. He was wearing a gold tuxedo jacket. He is 52 years old. His first concert ever was David Bowie at Carnegie Hall in 1974 (I think that was the date). We discussed David Bowie and Elvis Presley. “So who are you here for?” he asked me, which was so funny. He said he grew up watching Elvis movies. “I love Viva Las Vegas. He’s so great in it,” he said. I said, “And think about it, you could never re-make it. Because who could replace him?” He started laughing. We talked about Bowie, we talked about Elvis, we had fun. The bands played their own stuff, but they also played Bowie and Presley songs. In between the bands, there were burlesque acts. Bettina May came on in a glittering pin-stripe outfit and did a striptease to Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison”. It was so joyous and fun, the crowd screaming as she disrobed. The other burlesque act was maybe my favorite part of the night. It’s a guy named Brewster. He came on dressed as an old-fashioned pilot, with aviator goggles and a leather jacket and khaki pants. He acted almost shy and surprised throughout his act, like: “Oh my God, look at me, I’m naked … is it okay?” which was hilarious. He had a small glittering propeller on his underwear, which actually turned, when he pushed some switch somewhere. The audience went crazy. It was so funny. I loved him.

The Screaming Rebel Angels not only played Presley tunes, and their own stuff, but other rockabilly classics like “Hoy Hoy”. The best part is: these numbers still jam, these numbers still make people move. Everyone was dancing like crazy. This was a young crowd, too. Mostly 20-somethings. But it wasn’t a “cool” crowd, nobody was “over” it. Everyone was there ready to party and move and dance. What a great atmosphere.

David Bowie and Elvis Presley, born on the same day. Two of the biggest RCA artists of their time. On the planet at the same time. Bowie used himself in an interesting way, gender-wise, the same way Elvis did, although Elvis might not have seen it that way. We have an idea of male-ness in our culture: Here is what a Man Is. Here is what a Real Man acts like. This goes on today, it went on then, and both Elvis and Bowie pushed the boundaries of that. They are clearly men, but they did not limit their expression to what was deemed acceptable for their gender. Both artists are still unbalancing today because of that. When a culture is repressive towards women, the men suffer too. If female-ness is seen as “lesser”, then that’s when you start to hear a lot of pontificating about what Real Men should be like. Because nobody wants to be feminine, and so men start to puff themselves up and start to hate the soft-ness in themselves. It’s quite deep. Femininity and female-ness is seen as “other”, desirable in certain contexts, but those contexts must be male-controlled. When men like Bowie and Presley blend those boundaries, and use themselves in a way that normally women use themselves (objectifying themselves, oozing with sensuality that is more receptive in nature), we all profit. It allows more freedom in the culture. It opens up spaces for people that were not there before. That’s huge.

It was so awesome to be at a “birthday bash”, of all ages, where these things are valued, where the past is honored and celebrated, where we can all come together and say, “We love these people. We do not forget.” No generation invents the wheel. Each one builds on what came before. Bowie’s performance-art career is a logical next-step to what Elvis was opening up, when he first jiggled like a burlesque performer on The Dorsey Show in 1956. And all of us in that club last night have benefited hugely from both of these phenomenal artists.

And, even more important, their songs still groove. They are both timeless.

I loved the Vegas-y and yet underground quality of the show. Again, this is ground that was opened up by Elvis, by Bowie, pouring it into the mainstream in a way that it had not been before. And here we are in 2013, dancing around at 1 in the morning to “Hound Dog” and screaming out all the lyrics to “Major Tom”.

Life is sweet.

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On Fellini’s Amarcord

Posted on January 20, 2013 by sheila

… in honor of Federico Fellini’s birthday, which is today.

Sometimes from this tumult an image of perfect beauty will emerge, as when in the midst of a rare snowfall, the count’s peacock escapes and spreads its dazzling tail feathers in the blizzard. Such an image is so inexplicable and irreproducible that all the heart can do is ache with gratitude, and all the young man can know is that he will live forever, love all the women, drink all the wine, make all the movies and become Fellini.

— Roger Ebert on Fellini’s “Amarcord”

Evelyn Waugh wrote, “My theme is memory, that winged host.” Fellini’s theme is memory, too, and Amarcord (“I Remember”), episodic, cumulative, mysterious and hilarious, shows the year in the life of a small seaside Italian town, during the rise of Mussolini. You might think that fascism would be a tragedy, and we know in real life that it was, for millions of people. But in Fellini’s memory it is all rather silly, adolescent, ridiculous. People marching around in uniforms, trying to control the eccentricities of the Italian character. Good luck with that. Fellini’s response is a big juicy raspberry in the face. Each episode here is self-contained: There is the “Grand Hotel sequence”, the “Bonfire sequence”, the “Man Up a Tree” sequence, but through the self-contained episodes, we sink into the life of these people. If people are villainous, then they are so in an absurd manner, easily made fun of, easily dismantled.

Childhood can be resilient and the symbols we create as children, in order to survive and make sense of the world, last a lifetime. What we remember is often sensoral, fragments: smells or snatches of music, the way someone’s teeth looked, or the shine of light on someone’s hair. It is the details that stick, that persist. There is the Teacher with the Big Boobs who Looks Like a Lion. There is the Headmaster with a red beard, who looks like Ron Moody as Fagin, and glares imperiously at his students as they all wreak havoc in his classroom. There is Confession, where you chat with a priest about your problems, wipe the slate clean. Until next week. The cycle continues. Nothing is forever. Nothing is too serious. Don’t worry. Everything will be all right. Even when it isn’t.

Amarcord is what things look like when you “look back”. (Or, it’s what things look like when Federico Fellini looks back, and we all would be so lucky if memory was as joyful as this.) The connecting threads are only in the fact that such episodes make up a life, and not only that, but make up Art. Fellini is an artist, and here he says, “This is what it was like for me as a kid. Here is how I remember it.”

Spring is heralded by the air-borne “puffballs”, and the entire town shows up to build a bonfire and burn a ceremonious witch made of rags.

An inmate from a local insane asylum stands in a tree shouting “I WANT A WOMAN” for 6 hours. A dwarf nurse has to climb up a ladder to bring him down.

The Grand Hotel, like a giant marble wedding cake, is now vacant, but once filled with guests and music and dancing. The townspeople can still remember what it was like, in its glory days.

A sheikh’s harem is locked in a room at the majestic Grand Hotel, and throw down knotted sheets for an admirer below. He plays a pipe for them in their chamber, and they rise up out of bed collectively, like snakes coming up out of a basket. Did this really happen? It doesn’t matter. It’s a story people like to tell.

An ocean liner comes to town and the entire population of the village take out rowboats and fishing boats to watch its magnificent approach.

A tart named Volpina happily services the entire town. That’s what she’s there for.

Il Duce rolls into the village and a giant replica of his head made of flowers is placed in the town square. A young smitten boy imagines the flower Il Duce officiating at his wedding to his unrequited crush.

A priest hears confessions and seems particularly interested in whether or not the teenage boys touch themselves. They say, “Yes, a little bit”, in order to get absolved and go out to sin again.

A woman called Gradisca, dressed all in red, works in a beauty shop but really lives in a movie in her own mind (a Fellini movie, really), searching for her Gary Cooper. The townspeople do not ridicule her for her dreams, but instead, participate, treating her like a movie star in their midst, a symbol of their best and most cherished hopes.

The patriarch of the family is pulled out of his bed in the middle of the night and pulled into the police station and tortured. He is a suspected Communist. His wife sponges him off at home later, weeping.

Schoolboys misbehave in entertaining ways, tormenting their poor hard-working teachers. They mispronounce their Greek on purpose. They sneak out of class. They make raspberry noises. They accuse the fat boy in class of farting. They rig up a long paper tube so that urine can flow from the back of the class to a puddle in the front. They put frogs down a girl’s back. The teachers are all rather silly, but they try, desperately, to keep control of the situation. It is a losing proposition.

A thick fog transforms the Mediterranean village into something ominous and unknown, out of a fairy tale. A truck drives by in the fog, with people loaded up in the back. Where are they going? A child in a hood comes across a white bull.

A snowfall comes, and a giant maze of hardened snow is carved out in the village square. A peacock escapes and stands in the snow, unfurling its beautiful tail. What is the meaning? See Ebert’s thoughts above. Perhaps the meaning is that beauty is its own reward. But you have to make sure that you are paying attention, and looking out for it. Otherwise you might miss it.

It is a village of friendly eccentrics. Fascism is imposed from above and despite the fact that schoolchildren are made to perform drills with rifles, the individuality is not erased. It couldn’t be, not with this cast of wackos.

A group of boys dance with imaginary partners in the middle of the fog, lost in dreams of love, romance, and being grown up.

A local professor shows up on occasion, talking to the camera, giving us a history lesson about the area. Sometimes he whispers, so as not to attract attention. People offscreen make fart noises at him as he pontificates about the Roman ruins. He endures the abuse with a tired roll of the eyes. He’s used to it.

It is a village drenched in sexual possibility. Of course, it is (mainly) from the point of view of an adolescent boy, so this makes sense. Women’s breasts and buttocks undulate across the screen, and the local tobacco shop owner has a rack you would go to war to protect. Our young hero is nearly smothered by that rack in a slapstick sex scene, with what looks like a de Chirico print looking over the action.

Some people, through their own charisma and self-belief which surrounds them like a halo of light, act as repositories for the dreams of the rest of us. Movie stars can do this, and so can Gradisca.

Gradisca represents hope, beauty, love, romance, and magic. She knows it. Her name isn’t even Gradisca, which means “Whatever you desire”. Her real name is Ninola, but “Gradisca” is what she is called, and it suits her. She embodies it. Men ogle at her, and she winks and smiles, making their day, and making her own, because you cannot be Whatever You Desire without the participation of an audience. She is surrounded by an armor of self-belief, but that armor is penetrable, it lets in the light, it lets in the air.

The same springtime puffballs come at the end of the film, but they float over a melancholy slipshod country wedding, where the magical Gradisca sits at a long table in a field, in her wedding dress, crying and pretending to be happy.

Where will those who idolized her, who were drawn to her like moths to the flame, turn to now? Who will represent their best and most cherished hopes for them? It certainly won’t be Il Duce, although you can see the attempts made to replace the individual dreams with the dreams of the fascist collective.

One teacher spikes her thermos of coffee beneath her desk, and lectures on to her bored amused class in a quavering voice about Giotto, who, she informs them, “invented perspective.” She makes the class sing-song along with her, “PER … SPEC … TIVE.” The class obliges, chanting with their dotty teacher, “PER … SPEC … TIVE …” Memory, as something experiential, does not provide “perspective”, more often than not. Perhaps perspective is overrated. Perhaps no matter how much distance you achieve, you cannot see the whole picture. And why would you want to? The truth comes in the remembered fragments, even of things that didn’t happen, stories passed down through generations. Perhaps “perspective” is just a word you chant in a classroom to make your drunk teacher smile.

Per – spec – tive is in the eye of the beholder.

The ending of Amarcord is absurd and bittersweet, with an accordion-player serenading the guests from a nearby empty field, and Gradisca being led weeping to her wedding car, by her new husband, ablaze in his Fascist military duds.

Because, you see, she believed her dreams, too. They weren’t just dreams to her. They were a reason for living, I suppose. They surrounded her in magic and possibility. Dreams are not flimsy. They are the “substance of things hoped for”.

Posted in Directors, Movies, On This Day | Tagged , , , , | 11 Comments

The Books: On the Pleasure of Hating, ‘On Reason and Imagination’, by William Hazlitt

Posted on January 19, 2013 by sheila

On the essays shelf:

On the Pleasure of Hating, by William Hazlitt

Once you begin to get accustomed to Hazlitt’s style, you begin to see themes running through his work that pop up time and time again. Growing up in a culture of Unitarian dissent, he believed that man was capable of great things, if his energy and passion were activated. Energy and passion are usually a good thing, in Hazlitt’s lexicon. While he was born into the Age of Reason, he also came to maturity in the Romantic period, which valued emotion and subjective experience (sometimes to the exclusion of all else). Hazlitt was too much of a rationalist to follow in the steps of, say, Byron, but he did distrust those who distrusted emotional displays. He distrusts those who prize Rationality above all else. He sees something sinister in that (and I do, too), an unwillingness to engage not only with life, but with your fellow man. It is not rationalism that will explain why something is right or wrong: it is emotional, gut-level: human beings know murder is wrong, we don’t need someone to tell us Why. Whether or not we act correctly is up to us, but the human conscience is not based just in rationalism, but in emotion and “imagination”. In this essay, one of his great dialectical treatises, he pits Reason and Imagination against each other. He shows how those who prize Reason and dismiss Imagination are tyrants in the making, they lack empathy (and, in some cases, CHOOSE to have no empathy, which is the essence of Immorality – in Hazlitt’s opinion and in mine). Hazlitt was a dialectical thinker. He saw things in opposition to one another, but also as providing balance. Too much Imagination with no Reason leads to madness. Too much Reason with no Imagination leads to moral bankruptcy.

The essay contains a blistering critique of the institution of slavery. We don’t need to be told that slavery is wrong if we have empathy (and remember: he was writing this in the first years of the 19th century when slavery was still alive and well). If we can “imagine” what it would be like to be locked up in the hold of a ship for months at a time, then we know that slavery is wrong, because our GUT tells us it is wrong. You don’t need a pie chart to show why it is wrong. But there will always be those who distrust people who stand up in the face of injustice and scream “THIS IS WRONG.” It is thought that you need to have less passion to get things done, to see things clearly, but that is obviously not always the case. We can see some of that today in our polarized political world where people REFUSE to “imagine” what it would be like to be on the other side (and still be a good and moral person. Make no mistake: when you start demonizing the other side as less than human, you are on that “slippery slope” that the Idiots keep warning us about. That is the beginning. It is easy to tyrannize others when you have built your case that they deserve no mercy or empathy because they are less than human.) Hazlitt is so disgusted by slavery, not because he uses his Reason, and builds his case for why it is wrong, backed up with Bible passages and philosophical quotes. He is disgusted by slavery because he can put himself into the black man’s shoes and feel the horror that the black man must feel. He can imagine what it would be like to be such a man. (This is Stanislavsky’s “Magic If”, which – if all human beings could practice it – could change the world. Through the “Magic If” we can enter into ANYONE’S experience, through our Imagination.)

Hazlitt seems to propose that it is through our imagination that we know, in our guts, what is right and wrong, and in that he is a true Romantic. He has contempt for those who remain cool, rational, and philosophical in the face of an evil like slavery. He calls such people out for what they are.

This is an important essay and has a lot to do with how we live today, how we speak to one another today, how we judge one another today. For example, I remember when the Abu Ghraib story broke. I got into arguments with some of my more right-leaning friends (and I lean right, except when I lean left, that is), when I said, “What happened there is DISGUSTING.” They came back at me with what I saw as sophistry, philosophical “rational” justifications for what had happened (and they condescended to me, as though I hadn’t fully thought about the issues – which is part of Hazlitt’s critique: WHAT’S THERE TO THINK ABOUT??), but I saw their comments for the kneejerk partisan-based defense of “their side” that it was. To quote Hazlitt in his essay below:

Those evils that inflame the imagination and make the heart sick, ought not to leave the head cool.

There’s a lawsuit going down now in a church that interests me, because a friend was involved in it briefly. Horrifying abuse has gone on for years and the church covered it up. The pastors protected their own. They’re the type of Christians who distrust secular authorities anyway. The arguments come fast and furious, and the mainstream media has picked up the story now (thanks to the tireless efforts of Christian bloggers who have continued to highlight the injustice – like the two writers who helm the site I link to above), so the prospect (for the slimy pastors) does not look good. But the Christians who come racing to the defense are interesting to me. The Christians who denounce the accusers in the lawsuit and denounce the websites who dare to criticize the actions of this particular church ask, “What about forgiveness? Cannot we forgive the defendants? Are we not Christians?” But there is a deeper concern for these charlatan defenders (although few of them say it out loud): They are so NERVOUS about Christians “looking bad” to the wider secular culture (Uhm, too late) that they don’t want any of this to come to light, and so “let’s focus on forgiveness”, “let’s handle it in-house”, “let’s handle it Biblically” etc. They cannot see that they have failed to do the #1 thing any moral society should do: Protect the most innocent among them. Forgiveness without justice is meaningless, at least when it comes to a heinous crime such as child abuse. The Christians clamoring to the defense are mainly nervous that the truth coming out will make THEM look bad. And sorry, folks, but that is evil. I make the equivalency with those who raced to somehow justify the horrors of the Abu Gharib situation because they were afraid that it would make America look bad. Well, too late, guys. I love America, but I don’t love it “right or wrong”. I have enough of a moral compass to say, “This was not our finest hour.” Really look in your heart and see where your defense of evil is coming from. The whole lawsuit situation (that link above is just the tip of the iceberg) is playing out in exactly that manner. If you cannot say that child abuse and child molestation is wrong … then seriously. There is no hope for you. (This goes for the Paterno fanboys as well. You are completely lost to any morality if you cannot look at that situation and call it Evil Incarnate.)

The same goes for Abu Ghraib. Nobody could ever accuse me of being anti-military (and the fact that I have to say that shows you how flimsy the arguments on the Right side were), but if you cannot look at Abu Ghraib and say “That was wrong” then there is no hope for you. (This is not to say that those MPs and guards were not in a terrible position. They were. You have only to read about that assignment to despair for anyone keeping their head and morality about them.) But look out for those, on the right and left, who always say, “But look at the other side!!” Of course it is good to “look at the other side”, in a philosophical sense, to try to understand, to try to enter into the experience of those who may disagree with you, but those who compulsively tell you to “look at the other side” are not thinking that way: they are trying to show that the “other side” (meaning: politically) is just as bad as “their side”, and so “nobody wins” and so “the sum is zero” and so “we can’t judge anyone” and “everyone is wrong so why point fingers”. But listen: no amount of wordsmithing can make the scales balance in certain situations, slavery being one of them, as Hazlitt points out below. Any economic defense, any Biblical defense, is horseshit when you sit for a second, and imagine being an African ripped away from his family and kept in the hold of a ship in chains. Don’t even try to talk about “the other side” in such a situation. (This is my main issue with the Left, if I could boil it down: they always want a Zero Sum. “Yes, this bad thing happened, and Bad Men did this Bad Thing to us, but it’s because of this other Bad Thing that WE did, so the sum is Zero, so we suck, and so let’s just sit around talking about How We Suck.” The Right does this too: “But look at how mean the Left can be!” This is why I don’t listen to anyone anymore, basically. I hole myself up with Hazlitt, and ignore ALL of those chattering partisan fools!)

Here’s Hazlitt. This is a great and humanist essay. When it comes to clear evil, distrust those who respond to it reasonably. They are up to no good. They are hiding something.

On the Pleasure of Hating, ‘On Reason and Imagination’, by William Hazlitt

Passion, in short, is the essence, the chief ingredient in moral truth; and the warmth of passion is sure to kindle the light of imagination on the objects around it. The ‘words that glow’ are almost inseparable from the ‘thoughts that burn’. Hence logical reason and practical truth are disparates. It is easy to raise an outcry against violent invectives, to talk loud against extravagance and enthusiasm, to pick a quarrel with every thing but the most calm, candid, and qualified statement of facts: but there are enormities to which no words can do adequate justice. Are we then, in order to form a complete idea of truth, to omit every circumstance of aggravation, or to suppress every feeling of impatience that arises out of the details, lest we should be accused of giving way to the influence of prejudice and passion? This would be to falsify the impression altogether, to misconstrue reason, and fly in the face of nature. Suppose, for instance, that in the discussions on the Slave-Trade, a description to the life was given of the horrors of the Middle Passage (as it was termed), that you saw the manner in which thousands of wretches, year after year, were stowed together in the hold of a slave-ship, without air, without light, without food, without hope, so that what they suffered in reality was brought home to you in imagination, till you felt in sickness of heart as one of them, could it be said that this was a prejudging of the case, that your knowing the extent of the evil disqualified you from pronouncing sentence upon it, and that your disgust and abhorrence were the effects of a heated imagination? No. Those evils that inflame the imagination and make the heart sick, ought not to leave the head cool. This is the very test and measure of the degree of the enormity, that it involuntarily staggers and appals the mind. If it were a common iniquity, if it were slight and partial, or necessary, it would not have this effect; but it very properly carries away the feelings, and (if you will) overpowers the judgment, because it is a mass of evil so monstrous and unwarranted as not to be endured, even in thought. A man on the rack does not suffer the less, because the extremity of anguish takes away his command of feeling and attention to appearances. A pang inflicted on humanity is not the less real, because it stirs up sympathy in the breast of humanity. Would you tame down the glowing language of justifiable passion into that of cold indifference, of self-complacent, sceptical reasoning, and thus take out the sting of indignation from the mind of the spectator? Not, surely, till you have removed the nuisance by the levers that strong feeling alone can set at work, and have thus taken away the pang of suffering that caused it! Or say that the question were proposed to you, whether, on some occasion, you should have thrust your hand into the flames, and were coolly told that you were not at all to consider the pain and anguish it might give you, nor suffer yourself to be led away by any such idle appeals to natural sensibility, but to refer the decision to some abstract, technical ground of propriety, would you not laugh in your adviser’s face? Oh! no; where our own interests are concerned, or where we are sincere in our profession of regard, the pretended distinction between sound judgment and lively imagination is quickly done away with. But I would not wish a better or more philosophical standard of morality, than that we should think and feel towards others as we should, if it were our own case. If we look for a higher standard than this, we shall not find it, but shall lose the substance for the shadow! Again, suppose an extreme or individual instance is brought forward in any general question, as that of the cargo of sick slaves that were thrown overboard as so much live lumber by the captain of a Guinea vessel, in the year 1775, which was one of the things that first drew the attention of the public to this nefarious traffic (See Memoirs of Granville Sharp, by Prince Hoare, Esq.), or the practice of suspending contumacious negroes in cages to have their eyes pecked out, and to be devoured alive by birds of prey — Does this form no rule, because the mischief is solitary or excessive? The rule is absolute; for we feel that nothing of the kind could take place, or be tolerated for an instant, in any system that was not rotten at the core. If such things are ever done in any circumstances with impunity, we know what must be done every day under the same sanction. It shows that there is an utter deadness to every principle of justice or feeling of humanity; and where this is the case, we may take out our tables of abstraction, and set down what is to follow through every gradation of petty, galling vexation, and wanton, unrelenting cruelty. A state of things, where a single instance of the kind can probably happen without exciting general consternation, ought not to exist for half an hour. The parent, hydra-headed injustice ought to be crushed at once with all its viper brood. Practices, the mention of which makes the flesh creep, and that affront the light of day, ought to be put down the instant they are known, without inquirty and without repeal.

There was an example of eloquent moral reasoning connected with this subject, given in the work just referred to, which was not the less solid and profound, because it was produced by a burst of strong personal and momentary feeling. It is what follows: — “The name of a person having mention mentioned in the presence of Naimbanna (a young African chieftain), who was understood by him to have publicly asserted something very degrading to the general character of Africans, he broke out into violent and vindictive language. He was immediately reminded of the Christian duty of forgiving his enemies; upon which he answered nearly in the following words: — “If a man should rob me of my money, I can forgive him; if a man should shoot me, or try to stab me, I can forgive him; if a man should sell me and all my family to a slave-ship, so that we should pass all the rest of our days in slavery in the West Indies, I can forgive him; but” (added he, rising from his seat with much emotion) “if a man takes away the character of the people of my country, I never can forgive him.” Being asked why he would not extend his forgiveness to those who took away the character of the people of his country, he answered: “If a man should try to kill me, or should sell me and my family for slaves, he would do an injury to as many as he might kill or sell; but if any one takes away the character of Black people, that man injures Black people all over the world; and when he has once taken away their character, there is nothing which he may not do to Black people ever after. That man, for instance, will beat Black men, and say, Oh, it is only a Black man, why should I not beat him? That man will make slaves of Black people; for, when he has taken away their character, he will say, Oh, they are only Black people, why should I not make them slaves? That man will take away all the people of Africa if he can catch them; and if you ask him, But why do you take away all these people? he will say, Oh! they are only Black people – they are not like White people – why should I not take them? That is the reason why I cannot forgive the man who takes away the character of the people of my country.”‘ – Memoirs of Granville Sharp.

I conceive more real light and vital heat is thrown into the argument by this struggle of natural feeling to relieve itself from the weight of a false and injurious imputation, than would be added to it by twenty volumes of tables and calculations of the pros and cons of right and wrong, of utlity and inutility, in Mr Bentham’s hand-writing. In allusion to this celebrated person’s theory of morals, I will here go a step farther, and deny that the dry calculation of consequences is the sole and unqualified test of right and wrong; for we are to take into the account (as well) the reaction of these consequences upon the mind of the individual and the community. In morals, the cultivation of a moral sense is not the last thing to be attended to – nay, it is the first. Almost the only unsophisticated or spirited remark that we meet with in Paley’s Moral Philosophy, is one which is also to be found in Tucker’s Light of Nature — namely, that in dispensing charity to common beggars we are not to consider so much the good it may do the object of it, as the harm it will do the person who refuses it. A sense of compassion is involuntarily excited by the immediate appearance of distress, and a violence and injury is done to the kindly feelings by withholding the obvious relief, the trifling pittance in our power. This is a remark, I think, worthy of the ingenious and amiable author from which Paley borrowed it. So with respect to the atrocities committed in the Slave-Trade, it could not be set up as doubtful plea in their favour, that the actual and intolerable sufferings inflicted on the individuals were compensated by certain advantages in a commercial and political point of view — in a moral sense they cannot be compensated. They hurt the public mind: they harden and sear the natural feelings. The evil is monstrous and palpable; the pretended good is remote and contingent.

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Diary Friday: “I glanced over at the two theatre majors and the guy grinned reassuringly at me.”

Posted on January 18, 2013 by sheila


Me, Joanna, Brett, and Chuck E. Cheese, the place Brett chose to host his 21st birthday party. I’m 16.

Tomorrow is my friend Brett’s birthday. Brett died in February of 2011, suddenly. It was a horrible horrible thing. I have known him and loved him since I was 16 years old. We had drifted apart in his last years, but nothing will ever take away the fact that we were friends for over 20 years, and he was one of the ones responsible for helping give me confidence and belief in my abilities when I was an ambitious and shy 16 year old girl, cast in the university production of Picnic. Everyone else was college-age and older in that production. I was a high school student, and awkward, and very afraid of seeming immature. I was not a worldly-wise 16-year-old. I was still a child, really. You can imagine how this could have gone: either: college kids basically being polite to the child in their midst, but ultimately leaving her out of things – OR, even worse – setting out to corrupt me, a la Emilio Estevez getting Drew Barrymore drunk when she was a child. Neither happened. They embraced me, treated me as an equal, protected my innocence too (how did they do that??) and I made lifelong friends in the process. Brett, Liz, Joe, Brooke, Joanne. Linda, David … all of these people, still here. Theatre is a big cozy comfy world, in the best scenarios: where misfits can come together, work together on a project, have deep meaningful and hilarious experiences, and grow close through the collaboration. Picnic changed my life. Brett changed my life.

He was, hands down, the funniest person I have ever known. He made me laugh so hard one foggy day driving around Rhode Island that I actually pissed my pants in the back seat of his car. He was so creative: he would make these hand-drawn cards, some of which I still have, back in the days when we had to write letters if we wanted to keep in touch. I loved going to the movies with him. If he was into something, he was IN-TO IT. He loved Halloween (it was his favorite holiday) and he would host parties where you would have to show up as actual dead people. He would rig witch’s hats to fly up and down on invisible wires. His mind was flexible and imaginative: if there was comedic potential in a moment, he would leap upon it and exploit it until the crowd would beg for mercy (or … piss your pants in the back seat of his Fiat). He was sometimes chaotic (he refused to pay any parking tickets he got while he lived in New York with a car, claiming he was “beating the system”, until The System put a damn boot on that Fiat one bleak day), and his sense of appreciation for things knew no bounds. He was incredible with children. They flocked around him, and no wonder. He met them on their level, and he was the funnest person EVER. He was obsessed with Charles Dickens, and every year would do a one-man Christmas Carol, which was written up in local papers. We all drove up to Connecticut once to see it, and it was unbelievable.


Brett congratulating me on the day I graduated college


David and Brett at Liz and Joey’s wedding


Flanked by Brett and Liz, college graduation


Me and Brett, a Christmas party I threw at my apartment about 12 years ago, something like that


My brother and Brett


Brett, my father, and my grandmother


A road trip to Manchester to see Liz in “Noises Off”. That is, left to right, Steven, Mitchell, my boyfriend Antonio (with the camera), me (vamping it up), and Brett, in front. Great weekend.


From the same road trip above. We had a lot of time on our hands, clearly.


Brett, Liz, and my sister Jean in the audience at Circle in the Square Downtown to see my thesis performance


And finally this. This I treasure. Brett with my parents.

He came from a great family. Warm, kind people. He had many passions. He loved science. One day, we were talking about the Doppler Effect for some reason, and to explain some of the finer points, he actually acted it out for me on the Manhattan sidewalk. I was crying with laughter (his acting out of the Doppler Effect is one of my favorite memories of him), but it was actually a really good representation of the scientific principles! He could do more with a glance, a pause, a brief look, than other people could do with a whole monologue.

We all still talk about him. His name comes up all the time. The memories are thick and furious and beloved. Many of us remember him as the One Who Made Us Laugh the Hardest. The kind of laughter you feel you will never recover from. He was a good person and cared about his friends. He taught roller blading in Central Park. He loved ghost stories. He could tell you anything, anything, about Edgar Allan Poe. He could analyze a moment in Waiting for Guffman that lasted .2 seconds long, and explain why the moment was Shakespearean in scope. He understood appreciation. He understood enthusiasm. One summer night, at his instigation, we found a big boulder in Central Park where we could peek over the set at the Delacorte and watch (mostly) one of the productions. Granted, we saw the backstage area, and saw the actors only from behind, and their voices were far away, but we could see them and follow the action. It was one of those things that Brett would suggest: “Let’s go to this rock I know in Central Park – we’ll at least be able to hear Christopher Walken from there!” Okay, Brett, let’s do it!

I miss him. There is so much I still would love to say to him. I had always hoped (and, frankly, assumed) that we would get close again. I assumed our drifting apart was a phase. (He had drifted away from many of us in his last 3 years or so.) Unfortunately, I will never get that chance now. But I love him, and I will always love him: for who he was then, and for the many years of friendship that followed. He was the best. Truly the best.

For today’s Diary Friday, here is something I posted shortly after Brett passed. It is the diary entries leading up to my being cast in a university production of Picnic my senior year in high school. Here is where I “first met Brett”. He made a HUGE impression on me. Immediately.


Me as Millie in PICNIC

I got the part of Millie. To say this was a big deal is an understatement. It changed the course of my life. Millie is the linchpin to the entire thing, she’s William Inge’s alter ego, and I was surrounded by theatre majors (all of them excellent actors – it was a terrific theatre department) – and in one fell swoop I upped my game. It was a huge feather in my cap. But it wasn’t just the acting part of things that was so important, it was the people I met. These people, all college kids, and a tight group of friends, embraced me wholeheartedly. The rehearsal process was intense. It was a whole new way of working. The director was a Meisner guy, so that was my real introduction to that process. He was an in-depth process-oriented director, and I learned things from him that I still use today. I was so right for the part of Millie, though, that he didn’t mess with me too much.


Me, Brett, Joanne, and Eric in PICNIC

I was a pretty shy kid, and VERY insecure. I was constantly afraid of being humiliated or “found out”. It kept me on the straight and narrow. But I was suddenly thrust into this whole new world, where I had to be brave all the time. It changed my life. I would never ever be so nervous again.


The cast of PICNIC

Everyone I met in that cast – Liz, Joe, Linda, Brett, Joanne, Joanna, Eric, Jennifer, everyone – was so awesome to me. They were at different life stages, but they embraced me. NOW the age difference between us (3 or 4 years) is nothing – but when you’re 16, a 4-year age difference can be a lifetime. But they greeted me as an equal, they LOVED me. And I loved them back.

Brett was playing the part of Alan (Madge’s emasculated good-boy boyfriend), and this diary entry is the story of the week or so of my audition, my callbacks, and the news that I got the part. I was also starting to date someone for the first time (the “TS” in the entries, so there is a level of schizophrenia going on. Excited about auditioning, excited about TS, wild swings back and forth.)

Thank you, Brett, for being so nice to me right from the bat. For welcoming me with a smile. For being excited for me. He totally got what it meant for me to be walking into the audition room. And thank you for winking at me.

I can see that wink now.

SEPTEMBER 22

Tomorrow I am going to audition for a URI play – open auditions – for Picnic – (I believe there’s a 16 year old girl in it). TS wangled me into it. OH I HOPE HE’S THERE!

I know I know I can’t go alone. I feel ill.

SEPTEMBER 23

Diary, I feel physically ill. [The continuing theme.] I haven’t gone yet. I can’t stand how paralyzed and totally SICK I feel. Last night I was feeling so weird that I called Mrs. McNeil [the drama teacher at the high school] to ask her if I should do it. She wasn’t at home (a babysitter answered) but Mrs. McNeil called back right at 8:30 – when the sitter said they’d get back. So I told her about auditions and she said, “Yes. Do it, Sheila. You have absolutely nothing to lose. I mean – just for the experience. And since you’ll be going there next year as a drama major – why not make yourself known now?”

There is a “homely 16 year old girl” in it. Mrs. McNeil said, “Aha! So you’re walking in there with an advantage. Not every college student can look 16 – but you are!”

I am so sickly nervous. I want TS to be there. I don’t know if I can do this alone. TS probably went yesterday – but he said he’d come on Sunday to give me “immoral support”.

Mrs. McNeil told me to call her the minute I got back. She said, “I can’t wait till Monday to hear about it.”

Oh help me – listen to the ad in the paper:

“The production, directed by Kimber Wheelock, will be done in the Robert E. Will Theatre, November 29 through December 8. It is the theatre department’s entry in this year’s American College Theatre Festival, and therefore may be invited to the regional festival at UNH in February and the national festival at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC in April. Auditions will consist of reading from the script and are open to all.”

Good Lord. I want to audition with someone. God – do professionals ever get used to feeling this way?

Later:

I am bouncing off the walls! I am a pinball! Someone calm me down! I don’t know if I can make a living at this – I mean, feeling this way all the time – My adrenaline! I’m — I’m gone! I’m going nuts!

What a morning.

Wowee.

I didn’t sleep at all last night. I just lay in bed honestly worrying myself sick. [In looking back, I would say that what I was experiencing was NOT really worry or anxiety. It was ambition.] I had to go to the bathroom about every minute. And last night, real late – the last M*A*S*H* was on – Oh my God. Maybe I was in for a good cry. It is beyond my comprehension how the MASH people did it. Everyone – the actors, the writers – I went up to my room and CRIED AND CRIED. I didn’t sleep at all. I just lay there feeling sick and worried. I kept thinking, “Nervousness can be good” but all I felt like was throwing up. I’m serious.

I got up on my own accord at like 8:00 (auditions at 11:00). I just was pacing. I wanted to get hold of a script but where? [I hadn’t read the play, obviously, so I was walking in there blind.] I had no idea what the auditions would be like. I saw myself as they would see me – a bumbling high school kid, humiliated and ridiculed.

At about 10:00, I really didn’t want to go. But I had to. Mrs. McNeil would want to hear about it and I just couldn’t say, “I chickened out.” So I called TS. This time I got him out of the shower. GREAT. Again, he answered with this grunt. I said, “Hi – it’s Sheila.” I asked him, “Did you go to the auditions yesterday?” And he said, “Auditions? What the hell are you talking about, Sheila?” I KNEW somewhere in the back of my mind that he was kidding, but I still got all flustered, and stuttering. Finally I said, “You know what I’m talking about.” Turns out that he didn’t go yesterday, so he was getting ready to go today. I felt so relieved. Thank God! I would have gone even if he didn’t. But it made me feel so much better that there would be a familiar face there.

So then off I started. I walked there . I needed to do something with my coursing adrenaline. I felt like screaming, I felt roller-coaster sickness when I thought of auditioning.

It was a gorgeous perfect breezy day. We’ve really had beautiful Garden of Eden days lately. And everything is so green and yellow and blue. It was perfect exhilarating weather – just right for my mood.

And – just as I was walking down the road, I heard this, “Sheila! Sheila!” Mrs. McNeil was just driving by so she pulled over. Rebecca – her too-cute-to-be-true daughter was in the back seat. Mrs. McNeil said, “I was just thinking about you!” So we talked – she wished me luck and off I went. I kept pounding it into my head, “This is a good experience. This is a good experience.” But I was scared out of my MIND.

I finally got to the Fine Arts Center. All these Drama majors were milling around. They all knew each other. They all knew the play. I felt so country bumpkinish and disgustingly juvenile. In fact, I sort of hid in the bathroom. I was so scared and shy, and I had no idea what I was doing. I almost left. I really did. My teeth were chattering, I was all over goosebumps. I sat on this bench for about 15 minutes thinking, “Where is TS?”

The way the lobby is set up – there are benches around these huge square columns so I was sitting on an isolated side where no one could see me. I came so close to getting up and leaving when I heard on the other side, this guy saying, “Are you auditioning?” And I heard TS’ voice, “Yes.” I was practically crying I was so scared and afraid to move that I’d humiliate myself. So TS found me huddled alone, and he sort of told me what to do. There was this other guy on the other side with forms we had to fill out. So TS and I sat together and filled them out. Easy stuff, but I felt so idiotic writing: “Monday thru Friday – 8:00 to 2:00.” in the slot where it said “Conflicts”. Oh well. I can’t help it that I’m still in high school.

He also gave me a script to study. So we had a 15 minute wait, so TS and I just sat together quietly, reading. There was really only one part I could go for. That was the 16 year old girl Millie. I LOVE her. She’s shy with boys, but covers it up by being really aggressive. God, she’s so cute. The whole time I was reading I could hear myself saying her lines. I guess I looked pretty corpse-ish cause TS said, “You look like you’re on Death Row!” I read all the Millie scenes about 3 times – then TS and I just sat there whispering about the play.

The way they ran the auditions is that the director (Kimber Wheelock – dear Lord!) and two Drama majors would help with the auditions by reading opposite the auditioners. What I liked was that they auditioned us one by one so that I wouldn’t have to be intimidated by anyone else, and I could interpret it in my own way. But it was nerve-wracking anyway.

So this really nice lady who acted really informal and nice came out and took the forms off the pile one by one and brought the person in.

I went after TS. When he came out, she called, “Sheila O’Malley” and I stood up. TS said, “Do you want me to wait for you?” and me – the stupid idiotic girl – said, “Oh yes – would you?” Boy do I deserve a kick in the head. [Even back then, I was paranoid about being “too much” for whatever guy I was with. ]

The lady [hmmm … have no idea who this “lady” was. She was probably a theatre student which meant she was, oh, 20 years old … but to me, she was EONS older than I was!!] knew I was in high school so as we walked in the room she asked me if I knew Kimber, told me just to relax. God, everyone was so nice to me.

I was mostly just worried that everyone would be like: “Oh. You’re in — high school” in a derogatory way, and just dismiss me, not give me a chance.

The audition room was one of the acting class rooms. I’ve been in them before. They’re huge – but no architecture at all. It almost looks like a gym – or just a box with tape on the floor. [I didn’t know the lingo yet. Rooms like that are actually called “black boxes”.] Really bleak. And there was Kimber behind a desk, smoking on his pipe. And there was a guy and a girl sitting there. [This “guy and a girl” turned out to be Brett and Liz.] I had seen the girl in a play before.

The minute I got into the room, I wasn’t nervous anymore. In the middle of the room were 2 chairs facing each other. Kimber told me to sit in one. I did. I was ON DISPLAY!

He read over my form and said, “So. You’re still in high school?” I didn’t feel at all stupid saying, “Yes.”

I glanced over at the two theatre majors and the guy grinned reassuringly at me. They were both probably 20 or so. Kimber told the girl to go up and read with me.

It was a great scene. I’m dressed up for the picnic and nervous about my first date and I’m talking to my older sister Madge. The minute I started reading, I knew I was in control. I know how to act. In fact, I think I did pretty damn well considering how sick I felt before. Then we had to read another scene that the guy was in too. He played the paper boy – and he was calling me names like “Goon face” and making fun of me – and I had to scream: “YOU ORNERY BASTARD.” Well, I did scream. I hope I didn’t make a fool of myself. I felt my whole face get hot when I screamed. I don’t know. What a wonderful part Millie is anyway.

After that Kimber just said, “Thank you, Sheila.” And the lady escorted me out. As I walked out, I glanced over at the guy and the girl. The girl was whispering with Kimber, and the guy was smiling at me, this huge nice smile. Then he winked at me. As I came out into the lobby, the lady told me that the cast list would be posted on Tuesday. TUESDAY! TWO DAYS! I’m dying already.

Oh God. I felt good about myself. Everyone was just nice. Nevertheless I mean it when I say I have no fingernails left.

Then TS and I left together. I still felt all rattled and frenzied. To beat off some of it, we just wandered around the sunny campus talking about our auditions, how we thought we did and all that stuff. We went over to the Union to see if the book store was open. It wasn’t. So then we decided to walk back to my house and he could call his mom from there. Boy, have I walked a lot today.

We just talked. He kept saying, “Are you still quaking?”

I still have to tell about our Friday night date, and also about what happened at mass tonight, but it’s late and I have school tomorrow. I still can’t eat a thing.

SEPTEMBER 24

All right. Sit down.

I either got a part, or I made callbacks.

Can you believe this.

I don’t know WHICH though because I went out with Kate today after school and when I came home Siobhan [who was 7 years old at this point] had taken this message which I am going to keep FOREVER. I love her as much as life, you know. And listen to how CUTE she is. Her writing is in pencil, and it is huge and uneven:

“do a play at the same place on Thursday night at 7:30 URI Love Siobhan”

I can’t stand it.

I don’t know what it means, though. [hahahahahahahaha]

I’m gonna go tomorrow to see if there’s a cast list or a callback list. But can you imagine? If I even just made callbacks – I was good enough to be called back! This way at least I’ll know if I don’t make it that it wasn’t only because I’m in high school.

Oh My God

If I get into this my life will never ever be the same again.

Am I good? Someone tell me. Am I any good? I mean, this is getting to be big time.

What if I get a fuckin’ part in this thing?
What if I have gotten into this play?
I will die.

This weekend has been a rough one to get through, but I did it. And on my own steam. I feel very vulnerable right now. For some reason, all my defenses are down. I think it’s because of who I am. This weekend was not a weekend. It was crazy. I got no sleep. I ate nothing. And I went and acted – which further lowered my shields. Because no matter how much I want to be irrevocably me – and be free and unselfconscious – I have my walls up. But not now for some reason. I better be careful. Acting does lower my defenses. Sometimes I feel so scared in school because nobody would protect my vulnerability there.

SEPTMEBER 26

Diary — I made callbacks. There are about 12 girls called back — on the notice, it’s under a column titled: Women. [hahahaha That was a big deal – to be grouped under that headline, as opposed to “Girls”] There are 12 20-year-old Drama majors! I’m good enough to be called back!

Oh. But today was horrendous. First of all – Oh GOD – TS wasn’t called back. I know it has nothing to do with me, and I’m so disappointed for him. I haven’t talked to him yet. I know he knows cause on the notice on this bulletin board in the Centre we had to initial next to our names, so I know that when TS went he saw my name and my “SOM”.

Today’s Wednesday. TS and I were gonna go out. He hasn’t called. I wish I could talk to him. I WON’T apologize for making callbacks but STILL – he made me go, he’s a Drama major [this is hilarious – Once I got to college, I would never say the words “Drama major” – if anything it was “Theatre major” – which sounds much better, more professional … Drama major???]

There was one thing that happened on Friday that’s really confused me. [TS and I were dating. It was relatively new at this point. I was still freaking out about it. I never stopped freaking out, actually – but that’s what’s going on here. We would go out to movies once a week. He was 19. Out of high school.] We walked home in the dark – talked about our usual things – comedians, movies, drama. [Oh for God’s sake. How about “theatre”?? That’s a MUCH better word.] We talked a lot about Clint Eastwood. Then we got to Barber Lane – a small hill – totally surrounded by trees – and the darkness was almost liquidy there. It had substance it was so thick. I mean, I could feel that TS was there but I couldn’t see him. It was pitch black. As we turned down onto it, I heard TS sort of laugh, as a joke, ‘Hey — Sheila — what are you doin’ to me?” Oh, you’d have had to hear him. It was just strange. I was laughing at how dark it was, and then – suddenly – TS grabbed me tightly around the waist, pretending to be scared, going, “Lions and tigers and bears …”

I mean, it was like really dark. Suddenly, he had his arm around my waist – and he made it as a joke – you know – “Lions and tigers” – but I didn’t know what to do or what I was supposed to do. I mean, I could hardly see him. So practically immediately, TS let me go, and we walked to my house talking in a perfectly normal way. I was still like: WHAT JUST HAPPENED? [I love how important everything is.]

When we got to my house, all the lights were off, including in my parents’ room. I didn’t think of it until later but I should have at least invited him in.

So we were standing at the end of the driveway, and that’s when he suggested, “So … you want to go to Shadow of a Doubt next Wednesday?” [I love that we would go see these noir classics] I said yes.

He hasn’t called me. [This is really the main point here.]

Tomorrow are the final auditions. I have to go to those alone. Oh, I want to talk to TS. I wish we had gone out today. What a ROTTEN day. Now I’ll never go back to sleep. I have no damn stability in my life now. Too many crazy breathless things are happening: this play, TS, school, auditions –

I feel sick sick sick sick sick SICK

I feel so sick. [You got that?]

SEPTEMBER 27

Just came back from callbacks. Cast list up tomorrow.

[The following is written in miniscule letters.] I don’t even want to open my mouth. I just have to wait and see what happens.

[Back to regular lettering] It’s late now, but I’m still staring around me with bug eyes. [Wow. What an attractive image.]

Today was – my face was perpetually upside down. TS didn’t call.

What an awful week. [Really? Because it sounds like an excellent week to me.]

After I got off work, I had an hour and 15 minutes to wait – so I was going crazy. I wandered around. I bought a soda. I thought of calling J or something – but I decided: “No. I am, for once, going to do this with only me to supply the strength.” [GOOD FOR YOU!]

It was new for me. TS wasn’t there to help me. No one but me. As I walked alone up the Centre stairs, I was thinking, “Anyone who thinks I’m not strong doesn’t know me.” I didn’t feel strong – but I knew that I could do it on my own.

I was totally dying. Dying.

I was so so nervous. Nervous isn’t even the stupid word.

I want to tell details, but I also don’t want to. If I don’t get the part, I don’t want to talk about it again. Only ONE other girl was there for Millie, and I read for Millie more than she did. But I still don’t know.

When I become a Drama major [sigh], I hope I don’t turn into like some of those people I saw there. So fakey. So showoffy. I just sat in a corner, read my script, and glared at them. [hahahahahaha] The four guys who were reading were WICKED cool. I really liked THEM.

I think I did okay. Well. I DO.

There’s so much more to say – but I can’t talk details.

SEPTEMBER 28

I’m in I’m in I’m IN!

OCTOBER 1

What a weird weird awful wonderful day.

First of all, on Wednesday, I have a personal meeting with Kimber [the director of Picnic] cause he wants to get to know people he hasn’t had before as students. Oh dear Lord. Another thing to worry about!

Today in school they announced over the loudspeaker: “Congratulations to Sheila O’Malley, who was chosen for a role in the university production of Picnic to be put on in December.”

I’m sort of a little celebrity. Whenever Stephanie sees me, she sing songs, “Sheila’s a professional actress!” And Brian Records called down the stairs to me, “Sheila! Sheila!” I stopped and he came down to me saying, “I’m so proud!”

People are GREAT. I still can’t believe my life.

Look at my life! I have too much to think about, but I can’t throw any away, cause they’re all good things. But it’s OVERLOAD.

Oh Diary Diary Diary.

OCTOBER 2

Too much is happening right now. I have to calm down. The next few months are going to be absolute chaos.

I have to remain CALM.

OCTOBER 3

So anyways, I also had my meeting with Kimber. I was not at all getting psyched for it. Because today is Wednesday – stupid Film Noir night – every dumb Wednesday I just sit around sinking lower and lower and every time the damn phone rings, I just hold my stupid breath. I hate Wednesdays. [I love that I associated my high school sweetheart with Film Noir. It is fitting.]

So my meeting was at 4. I came home on the bus for about the 2nd time all year. Mum drove me up.

I walked up to the front doors. This building is a dramatic looking building – all cement, and this long walk up where you can see yourself approaching in the dark glass doors. Also, you can only see silhouettes inside. So up I strolled, trying to look like I knew what the hell I was doing. I came into the lobby, and there was Brett (the guy in the audition who smiled at me). He’s so CUTE. He struck me as so wicked nice, cause at callbacks, I was just sitting alone and he looked at me, smiled, and said, “And your name is?” I smiled and said, “Sheila. Hi.” He held his hand out to me. “I’m Brett. Hi.” It was so friendly, it really put me at ease. At the first audition, I came into the room – he and the girl were sitting there with Kimber – I glanced at them. He gave me this reassuring smile. As I was leaving, I was sighing in relief – that yes, I had lived – I glanced at him – He winked.

Diary, I CAN’T WAIT to get to know all these people! It’s so exciting! I cannot WAIT.

So anyways, he was standing there with the one other girl who had been out for Millie. You know, it’s funny – but at callbacks, I was just sitting there observing everybody and I didn’t know that she was trying out for Millie too, but I was looking at her, thinking, “Oh, I hope I don’t turn into someone like you.” I mean, she was funny, but she seemed “on” all the time. I think it’s great when first impressions are wrong. Because mine was. NEVER rely on first impressions. It’s a huge mistake, and it felt GOOD to be proved wrong.

Anyway, I came into the lobby, they both looked at me, and immediately both shouted, “Congratulations!”

Brett (who is adorable) hailed me, “Sheila! Congratulations!” I felt so happy, so welcome. Not alienated or too young at all. I walked over to them – Brett held his hand out to me – “Hello. I’m Brett – and you’re Sheila.” He paused to remember my last name. I said, “O’Malley.” The girl giggled, “Don’t you mean O’Millie?” She was COOL – I mean, yes – she is “on” – but she is also NICE. She held her hand out to me and said, “I’m Dina. I was out for Millie too, but you were the right choice – you’re much better than me.” [The generosity there is really quite stunning, and I mean that so sincerely.]

Brett hugged her mockingly and she said, “Hey, I’m being honest! Besides, I’m not the sort of person who goes –” and she started stamping around grumbling, “I DIDN’T GET THE PART! AHHHHH.” Brett grinned at me. “The minute you turn around, she’s gonna take out a hatchet.”

When I went back on Friday to find out if I got in, there was a dance class warming up in the lobby. I guess they were both there, but I didn’t see them. Brett told me that they watched me walk calmly by – and then 5 minutes later – watched me zoom back out at the speed of light. Brett said they had all been so excited for me, and excited to see my reaction, and they had wanted to talk to me when I came back from looking at the cast list – “But you were GONE. You ZIPPPPPED by!” I said, “So who are you in the play?” And he smiled at me – really cool and real smile, and said, “I’m your friend. Your buddy!” I said, “Oh! You’re Alan!” Wicked cool! Then I said, “Oh! I have a crush on you!” Brett said, seriously, “I’m flattered.” We all burst out laughing. He asked me, “So you’re a senior in high school?” I nodded. They were … nobody JUDGED me.

I can NOT wait to work with these wonderful people!

Brett said, “So you’re here to talk to Kimber?” I said, “Yes. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.” And Brett grinned at me – and said, “Then we will escort you to Kimber!” So they did. They brought me into the audition room where Kimber was waiting with this big fanfare. Brett yelled, “SHEILA O’MALLEY!” And he and Dina started applauding.

I also can’t wait to work with Kimber. After one meeting with him – I feel like I can improve so much. I learned incredible things I’ve never even thought of before. Like: don’t learn the lines. Just learn the words. Learn them in a complete monotone. Don’t interpret yet – because interpretation depends on the interpretation from other actors. Acting comes from reacting to other actors. So if you start interpreting the lines in a certain way on your own, you’re sort of depending on the other actor to give you a CERTAIN interpretation. And that’s bad. Then you can’t act and react in the moment. Kimber said that it’s harder to get out a good interpretation if you interpret on your own, alone – That thought had never entered my mind.

It’s all so great.

AMBITION!

Posted in Diary Friday | Tagged | 7 Comments

Happy Birthday, Andy Kaufman

Posted on January 18, 2013 by sheila

How could you describe Andy Kaufman to a generation that did not grow up seeing him on talk shows, late-night shows, and his own TV specials? How on earth could you say what it was that he did? He was a comedian. Sure … yeah … but that doesn’t quite …. cover it. What other comedian would come out during one of his appearances on Saturday Night Live, in a lounging jacket, with a little record player nearby, put the needle on the record, listen for a moment, then lift the needle stopping the music, and then go into a long snooty un-funny monologue about what he wanted to do next, and that was read The Great Gatsby to the audience and then … without ever breaking, without ever winking at the audience like “I know, this is so annoying, but isn’t it funny? We’re all just kidding here” … read the first four or five pages of the book (FOUR OR FIVE PAGES!!), as the audience got increasingly annoyed to the point that they actually started BOOING him? Finally, Lorne Michaels snuck on, whispered to Andy, “Yeah, there’s no more time, we really have to move on”, and Andy Kaufman leaves the stage, to boos and catcalls. Was it real? What the hell was real? Of course it was real. We all could SEE it happening. The patience of a bit like that, the disinterest in terms of being ingratiating or even liked, the willingness to ANNOY people – or, not only the willingness: annoying people seemed to be the whole POINT … is still startling today. His stuff does not “date”, at all. It still feels a little bit scary. Kaufman’s bits can be taxing. Even I get annoyed watching The Great Gatsby sketch. It feels like a giant experiment: How much will they take? There’s some contempt for the audience, yes, but there always is in comedians, as much as they want to make us laugh. Comedians can be very angry people (I’ve known a bunch of them, and dated a few). Perhaps the naturally submissive quality their chosen career puts them in (“I have to come out here and do my damnedest to make people happy … I must SERVE THEM”) makes them angry. Negotiating that relationship between audience and performer is one of the most interesting parts about the comedian racket, and Andy Kaufman pushed it. He pushed it as HARD as he could. There was literally nobody else like him, before or since.

It was his birthday yesterday. Coincidentally, I have been watching the 1977-78 SNL season this past week, and Kaufman appears a couple of times (the Gatsby sketch is one of his bits).

Every human being is unique, of course, we’re all beautiful creatures of God or whatever, but when I watch Andy Kaufman, I think, “Well. Some of us are just MORE unique than everybody else.”

When Andy Kaufman was in a bit, he did not come out. He never lets the audience off the hook. He thinks we should be ON the hook. Always. If that generated hostility or resistance in the audience, then that was an even better reaction than laughter. It meant people out there were listening and alive. Let’s see if they’ll take me reading five pages of The Great Gatsby, straight-faced, no joke to it, and see what they’ll do.

There are so many more examples of Kaufman’s bits, and how far he took them, most of them notorious. There’s a reason why people still think and hope that his death may have been just another bit, and that he is still out there somewhere. Because you were never sure he was on the level. He never broke. Ever.

Please go read my friend Trav SD’s post about Kaufman. Trav is a vaudeville and variety expert (he’s written a book on the topic), and he looks at Kaufman through the lens of variety.

Jim Carrey’s performance is accurate in many respects, but I think he made a glaring mistake in privileging Kaufman’s famous spaciness over a much more important quality that I take to be the elephant in the room. That is Kaufman’s anger and hostility. I know it’s there because I detect it behind his performances, but even if you can’t see it there, just apply logic. The man is fucking with people. He is fucking with producers, hosts, co-stars, sponsors, and the audience! He wants to provoke something and it’s something more than laughter. You people are dead out there and you need a slap in the face.

There is, of course, an Elvis connection. Andy Kaufman was “doing” Elvis before Elvis even passed away. His appearance on The Tonight Show (below) was on March 3, 1977. Elvis was still alive. Even down to the “Gatorade” comments, and the “my records were all about the same size” … anyone familiar with Elvis’ live-show banter will recognize every single line Kaufman says here. This in an age before easily-searchable Youtube clips, and the entirety of Elvis’ career at our fingertips via iTunes. Kaufman had been studying Elvis for years.

Well, we know that, because when he was 20 years old, he wrote what is now a famous letter to Elvis.

I mean, I’ve gone through a heckova lot these past few years, turning people on to you, dragging friends and parties to your movies. I don’t even drink, smoke, or curse anymore.

Not too many comedians force you to think things like, “What am I feeling right now?” “Is this real, and if so, how do I feel about it?” “I need patience to get through this.” “Let me just breathe through my annoyance and stick with him.” “Is this real? Is this real?”

I cherish the guy for that, among other things.

I cherish that which is not explainable or easily digestible. We need more of that, not less.

Posted in Actors, On This Day | Tagged | 22 Comments

Speaking of Churchill’s “Black Dog”…

Posted on January 17, 2013 by sheila

… which I always seem to be doing these days, no surprise there, here is a terrific review by James Wolcott in London Review of Books of the collected letters of William Styron. I have written before about Styron’s searing “depression memoir”, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness (here, here, and probably elsewhere.) I have read all of Styron’s novels, and agree with Wolcott’s assessments of their strengths and weaknesses (“My own problem with Styron’s ennobled potboilers was not his subject matter, point of view, historical accuracy, pale-male effrontery or any other heavy carbs, but the sheer awful self-conscious succulence of the prose, a fruit orchard in every scene-painting description.” or – even better: “grandiloquent gunk”). I found the novels interesting (Styron always took on big topics, that pissed nearly everybody off, repeatedly), but Darkness Visible (the prose anyway, never mind the subject matter and the fact that it’s a madness memoir) is far superior to the novels. Nothing else he wrote sounds like that slim searing and truthful book.

Please read Wolcott’s piece! I love to read the letters of famous people. I look forward to reading Styron’s letters.

Posted in writers | Tagged | 4 Comments

The Books: On the Pleasure of Hating, ‘What is the People?’, by William Hazlitt

Posted on January 17, 2013 by sheila

On the essays shelf:

On the Pleasure of Hating, by William Hazlitt

Originally published in 1817, ‘What is the People?’ shows William Hazlitt’s radical background, and dissenting point of view. He grew up Unitarian (his father was a minister, and it had been hoped William would follow in his footsteps), and the Unitarians had a long history of dissent. If William got anything from his schooling at a Unitarian seminary, it was this respect for dissent, and this belief in the individual goodness of man and his liberty. Born in 1778, born into dangerous tumultuous times, Hazlitt never “played well with others”. He was a political animal as well as an artistic one, and his essays are quite consistent in their philosophy and point of view. There are many reasons why was ignored posthumously and allowed to sink into obscurity (that has changed, however). The critical minds of the early 20th century dismissed him for his tastes (Milton was out of favor by then, and Hazlitt thought Milton was second only to Shakespeare). T.S. Eliot, very influential in his writings on other writers, was particularly scathing about Hazlitt. So Hazlitt sank. Hazlitt has been rising again. It is still difficult to find his work in print although a lot of his essays can be found online.

Hazlitt was not a believer, but he had respect for the tradition of belief (it had given him so much: his schooling, which was excellent). He grew up in a time of revolution and reason, when man took center stage, when it seemed all things were possible. He was not quite so cynical as Edmund Burke was about man’s ability to be good. After all, he was very influenced by Rousseau. But he had a lot to say about power, and monarchy (here is just one example).

In “What is the People?”, you can see the influence of the French Revolution on him. Edmund Burke, famously, tore the French Revolution a new one. Yes, look to the future, by all means, but pulling down the past and its traditions can only lead to ruin (which was, indeed, the case in France, whose revolution led to Napoleon, a man whom Hazlitt idolized). Hazlitt seems to be saying, at least in the final sections, that the majority (meaning, the people) will always work together towards that which is good. (I disagree entirely.) It is monarchy (divine or legitimate) that he distrusts. (I agree with him.) This is a great essay about the nature of power (so many of Hazlitt’s essays are). When one has power, it is not natural for one to say, “Okay, that’s it. I have enough power now.” The nature of power is to make one hungry for more. Therefore, anyone in power must be watched like a hawk, must be held back by checks and balances, must never ever be trusted to look out for the people’s interests. I’m with him there. His belief in the inherent goodness of the people sounds almost Marxist (in the classic sense, not in the ignorant boneheaded sense of today’s usage): If the people were in charge, we all know that they would not be tempted by power, because Man is Good, and when a bunch of men get together, filled with virtue and honor, we all know that they will want what is best. This was a common belief of the time (the Russian Revolution and the Great Terror was a century away), and had obviously been played out in the American Revolution (which Edmund Burke had famously defended). The men of the American Revolution were the elites of their own community, that cannot be denied. But neither was any of their power “inherited”. Heredity had nothing to do with who rose to the top. Meritocracy alone decided that. This changed the world. And, unlike the French Revolution, it did not proceed to feed on itself and eat its young.

Remember, that George III, when he heard that George Washington was planning to retire as Commander in Chief, said: “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

A man walking away from power? When he already had it in his hands?

So Hazlitt’s broadside here about “the people” is really a broadside against monarchs and Lords, and those who inherit their power. Because they will always be separate from the people, and – even more deadly: they will not understand that the greater the power you have, the more it needs to be LIMITED, hemmed in, checked, balanced. Revolutionary thoughts indeed.

On the Pleasure of Hating, ‘What is the People?’, by William Hazlitt

The power of an arbitrary King or an aspiring Minster does not increase with the liberty of the subject, but must be circumscribed by it. It is aggrandized by perpetual, systematic, insidious, or violent encroachments on popular freedom and natural right, as the sea gains upon the land by swallowing it up. — What then can we expect from the mild paternal sway of absolute power, and its sleek minions? What the world has always received at its hands, an abuse of power as vexatious, cowardly, and unrelenting, as the power itself was unprincipled, preposterous, and unjust. They who get wealth and power from the people, who drive them like cattle to slaughter or to market, ‘and levy cruel wars, wasting the earth,’ they who wallow in luxury, while the people are ‘steeped in poverty to the very lips’, and bowed to the earth with unremitting labour, can have but little sympathy with those whose loss of liberty and property is their gain. What is it that the wealth of thousands is composed of? The tears, the sweat, and blood of millions. What is it that constitutes the glory of the Sovereigns of the earth? To have millions of men their slaves. Wherever the Government does not emanate (as in our own excellent Constitution) from the people, the principle of the Government, the esprit de corps, the point of honour, in all those connected with it, and raised by it to privileges above the law and above humanity, will be hatred to the people. Kings who would be thought to reign in contempt of the people, will show their contempt of them in every act of their lives. Parliaments, not chosen by the people, will only be the instruments of Kings, who do not reign in the hearts of the people, ‘to betray the cause of the people’. Ministers, not responsible to the people, will squeeze the last shilling out of them. Charity begins at home, is a maxim as true of Governments as of individuals. When the English Parliament insisted on nits right of taxing the Americans without their consent, it was not from an apprehension that the Americans would, by being left to themselves, lay such heavy duties on their own produce and manufactures, as would afflict the generosity of the mother country, and put the mild paternal sentiments of Lord North to the blush. If any future King of England should keep a wistful eye on the map of that country, it would rather be to hang it up as a trophy of legitimacy, and to ‘punish the last successful example of a democratic rebellion,’ than from any yearnings of fatherly goodwill to the American people, or from finding his ‘large heart’ and capacity for good government, ‘confined in too narrow room’ in the united kingdoms of Great Britain, Ireland, and Hanover. If Ferdinand VII refuses the South American patriots leave to plant the olive or the vine, throughout that vast continent, it is his pride, not his humanity, that steels his royal resolution.*

In 1781, the Controller-general of France, under Louis XVI, Monsieur Joly de Fleury, defined the people of France to be un peuple serf, corveable et baillable, a merci et misericorde.** When Louis XVIII as the Count de Lille, protested against his brother’s accepting the Constitution of 1792 (he has since become an accepter of Constitutions himself, if not an observer of them), as compromising the rights and privileges of the noblesse and clergy as well as of the crown, he was right in considering the Bastille, or “King’s castle’, with the picturesque episode of the Man in the Iron Mask, the fifteen thousand letters de cachet,*** issued in the mild reign of Louis XV, corvees,**** tithes, game-laws, holy water, the right of pillaging, imprisoning, massacring, persecuting, harassing, insulting, and ingeniously tormenting the minds and bodies of the whole French people at every moment of their lives, on every possible pretence, and without any check or control but their own mild paternal sentiments towards them, as among the menus plaisists, ***** the chief points of etiquette, the immemorial privileges, and favourite amusements of Kings, Priests and Nobles, from the beginning to the end of time, without which the bare title of King, Priest, or Noble, would not have been worth a goat.

*The Government of Ovando, a Spanish Grandee and Knight of Alcantara, who had been sent over to Mexico soon after its conquest, exceeded in treachery, cruelty, wanton bloodshed, and deliberate extortion, that of all those who had preceded him; and the complaints became so loud, that Queen Isabel on her death-bed requested that he might be recalled; but Ferdinand found that Ovando had sent home much gold, and he retained him in his situation. — See Capt. Burney’s History of the Buccaneers.

** A servile people, liable to forced labour and exploitation, at the mercy of others.

*** Documents permitting members of the French nobility or ministry to imprison or deport a person without trial.

**** Rent paid in labour

***** Small pleasures

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Melancholy Manifest

Posted on January 16, 2013 by sheila

I first saw this film at the NYFF in 2011, and have seen it 5 or 6 times since. It won’t let me go, and some of its images have actually been incorporated into my own psyche. I have felt the grey yarn clinging to my legs, holding me back. I have felt that there was something “out there” working ON me, affecting me, like a hidden planet. And the beauty of succumbing to it, like lying naked at night underneath the moon. Madness, yes, but those who know the pull will understand that image intuitively. Melancholy manifest. That is not what it looks like, perhaps, to the naked eye, but that is what it feels like. (I suppose this post is related.) My own review here.


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The Books: On the Pleasure of Hating, ‘On the Spirit of Monarchy’, by William Hazlitt

Posted on January 16, 2013 by sheila

On the essays shelf:

On the Pleasure of Hating, by William Hazlitt

I went into William Hazlitt’s biography and background here. Growing up, as he did, in an age of world-wide revolution, he was interested in the concepts of power, tyranny, and rule. Where does power actually come from? As a British subject, he lived in a constitutional monarchy. At least the king was halted (supposedly) by things like the Bill of Rights, as well as Parliament and the Houses. Hazlitt does throw a bone in England’s direction here in the essay, but his tone is almost sarcastic:

A constitutional king, on the other hand, is a servant of the public, a representative of the people’s wants and wishes, dispensing justice and mercy according to law. Such a monarch is the King of England! Such was his late, and such is his present Majesty George IVth! [Phew!]–

Hazlitt was a big supporter of Napoleon (who also is mentioned in this essay, as a man who rose to the heights that he did through merit not heredity), and Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo was a devastating blow to Hazlitt and others like him. He had watched from across the Channel as the French Revolution descended into tyranny and horror. He had had no love for the French king and the French court (what Englishman did at that time?), and thought the absolute monarch was an abomination. He had hoped that Napoleon would counteract the travesty of power and tyranny that France had become.

Hazlitt has no love for kings. He has contempt for the worship of them. (This essay could also be seen, in our current day, as a critique of the celebrity-worship cycle: we love them and we also love to see them fall. Not our finest hour.) Hazlitt, as a thinking man, a man in the Age of Reason, could not stand the idea that what we were worshipping was perhaps unworthy of said worship. We worship the role, not the man. The man himself could be moronic, slightly retarded, or crazed with evil power lust. Didn’t matter. Heredity put him on the throne, and therefore we bow to him.

If you think about it, critically, there is nothing more evil than that.

Power corrupts absolutely, and all that. Hazlitt makes the very excellent point that those who are brought up in pomp and circumstance, knowing they are destined for the throne, are not inclined to sympathize/empathize with their subjects. More likely, they will look upon them as a “lower” breed of humanity. Much wickedness results from this impasse. (And still does. I am thinking of a certain comment from a certain current-day politician, describing the near-majority of his countrymen as moochers and lazy-bum-asses standing around with their pathetic hands out. Total lack of the cerebral/emotional ability to enter into the difficulties of people’s lives that are not padded by million dollar bills.) Hazlitt sees that problem, he calls it out, he names it. He scorns the over-identification of the subject with the master. He suggests that it is a glorified mirror we are all looking for. We want a king to be glorious and splendid, because it makes us feel good about ourselves, and we can lose ourselves in beautiful fantasies, ie: “If things were only slightly different, that could be me.”

Hazlitt’s main beef appears to be with the artifice of the whole thing, the insistence that the public buy the surface as a stand-in for a substantial interior. Well, if there IS no substance, then at least we have sceptres and capes and robes, and isn’t that enough? Hazlitt is right to call that out as wicked and contemptible. And even with the bone he throws to the constitutional monarch, his individuality is clear, his fierce independence and his refusal to “buy into” the myths being presented to him.

He makes the analogy of a little girl playing with a doll. If you tear the doll apart to show her it’s just a piece of wood with some flaxen stuff on it for hair, she will not only be devastated, but think you are rather stupid, because: she KNOWS the doll isn’t real, she already KNOWS that, but she likes to fantasize about the doll, and she likes to make the doll live out her own fantasy life, and why do you want to get in the way of that?

A sympathetic portrayal of childhood, but who wants to be compared to a little girl playing with a doll when you are bowing to a king? You can see why Hazlitt ruffled feathers.

Here is an excerpt. It’s a long essay, first published in The Liberal in 1823. Well worth seeking out the whole thing (most of these are online in their entirety.)

He discusses the ancient worship of animals, which he describes as horseshit in nature. His contempt for religion is certainly in evidence: people know they are participating in a lie, but it is not proper to say that or admit it. If you do, you could be burned as a heretic, you will be scorned, dismissed, shunned. He describes the worship of a King in the same manner as the worship of animals.

Hazlitt didn’t just take the gloves off. I don’t think he ever wore gloves in the first place.

On the Pleasure of Hating, ‘On the Spirit of Monarchy’, by William Hazlitt

The game was carried on through all the first ages of the world, and is till kept up in many parts of it; and it is impossible to describe the wars, massacres, horrors, miseries, and crimes, to which it gave colour, sanctity, and sway. The idea of a God, beneficent and just, the invisible maker of all things, was abhorrent to their gross material notions. No, they must have Gods of their own making that they could see and handle, that they knew to be nothing in themselves but senseless images, and these they daubed over with the gaudy emblems of their own pride and passions, and these they lauded to the skies, and grew fierce, obscene, frantic before them, as the representatives of their sordid ignorance and barbaric vices. TRUTH, GOOD, were idle names to them, without a meaning. They must have a lie, a palpable pernicious lie, to pamper their crude unhallowed conceptions with, and to exercise the untamable fierceness of their wills. The Jews were the only people of antiquity who were withheld form running headlong into this abomination; yet so strong was the propensity in them (from inherent frailty as well as neighbouring example) that it could only be curbed and kept back by the hands of Omnipotence.3 At length, reason prevailed over imagination so far, that these brute idols and their alters were overturned: it was thought too much to set up stocks and stones, Golden Calves and Brazen Serpents as bona fide Gods and Goddesses, which men were to fall down and worship at their peril — and Pope long after summed up the merits of the whole mythologic tribe in a handsome distich —

“Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust,
Whose attributes were rage, revenge, or lust.”

It was thought a bold stride to divert the course of our imaginations the overflowings of our enthusiasms, our love of the mighty and the marvelous, from the dead to the living subject, and there we stick. We have got living idols, instead of dead ones; and we fancy that they are real, and put faith in them accordingly. Oh Reason! When will thy long minority expire? It is not now the fashion to make gods of wood and stone and brass, but we make kings of common men, and are proud of our own handywork. We take a child from his birth and we agree, when he grows up to be a man, to heap the highest honours of the state upon him and to pay the most devoted homage to his will. Is there anything in the person, “any mark, any likelihood,” to warrant this sovereign awe and dread? No: he may be little better than an idiot, little short of a madman, and yet he is no less qualified for king.4 If he can contrive to pass the College of Physicians, the Heralds’ College dub him divine. Can we make any given individual taller or stronger or wiser than other men, or different in any respect from what nature intended him to be? No; but we can make a king of him. We cannot add a cubit to the stature, or instill a virtue into the minds of monarchs — but we can put a sceptre into their hands, a crown upon their heads, we can set them on an eminence, we can surround them with circumstance, we can aggrandize them with power, we can pamper their appetites we can pander to their wills. We can do everything to exalt them in external rank and station — nothing to lift them one step higher in the scale of moral or intellectual excellence. Education does not give capacity or temper; and the education of kings is not especially directed to useful knowledge or liberal sentiment. What then is the state of the case? The highest respect of the community and of every individual in it is paid and is due of right there, where perhaps not an idea can take root, or a single fixture be engrafted. Is not this to erect a standard of esteem directly opposite of that of mind and morals. The lawful monarch may be the best or the worst man in his dominions, he may be the wisest or the weakest, the wittiest of the stupidest: still he is equally entitled to our homage as king, for it is the place and power we bow to, and not the man. He may be a sublimation of all the vices and diseases of the human heart; yet we are not to say so, we dare not even think so. “Fear God and Honour the King, ” is equally a maxim at all times and seasons. The personal character of the king has nothing to do with the question. Thus the extrinsic is set up over the intrinsic by authority: wealth and interest lend their countenance to gilded vice and infamy on principle, and outward show and advantages become the symbols and standard of respect in despite of useful qualities or well-directed efforts through all ranks and gradations of society. “From the crown of the head to the sole of foot there is no soundness left.” The whole style of moral thinking, feeling, acting, is in a false tone — is hollow, spurious, meretricious. Virtue, says Montesquieu, is the principle of republics; honour, of a monarchy. But it is “honour dishonourable, sin-bred” — it is the honour of trucking a principle for a place, of exchanging our honest convictions for a ribbon or a garter. The business of life is a scramble for unmerited precedence. Is not the highest respect entailed, the highest station filled without any possible proofs or pretension to public spirit or public principle? Shall not the next places to it be secured by the sacrifice of them? It is the order of the day, the understood etiquette of courts and kingdoms. For the servants of the crown to presume on merit, when the crown itself is held as an heir-loom by prescription, is a kind of lese majeste, an indirect attainder of the title to the succession. Are not all eyes turned onto the sun of court-favour? Who would not then reflect its smile by the performance of any acts which can avail the in the eye of the great, and by the surrender of any virtue, which attracts neither notice nor applause? The stream of corruption begins at the fountain-head of court-influence. The sympathy of mankind is that on which all strong feeling and opinion floats; and this sets in full every absolute monarchy to the side of tinsel show and iron-handed power, in contempt and defiance of right and wrong. The right and the wrong are of little consequence, compared to the in and the out. The distinction between Whig and Tory is merely nominal: neither have their country one bit at heart. Pshaw! We had forgot — Our British monarchy is a mixed, and the only perfect form of government; and therefore what is here said cannot properly apply to it. But MIGHT BEFORE RIGHT is the motto blazoned on the front of unimpaired and undivided Sovereignty! —

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