Well whaddaya know —
— an editorial in the New York Times I agree with.
Oscar Dead Pool
Oscar prediction has become far too easy — at least around my house anyway. I just ask Mrs. James
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, who hardly ever sees any of the movies and is always 100% accurate in her predictions. (Her technique: “I just pick the one that seems most obvious.”)
(My prediction for this year: Alvin and the Chipmunks in a walk.)
So the only real excitement in the Oscar-cast comes from guessing who will be the last celebrity mentioned on the Celebrity Death Roll three-quarters of the way through the show.
Here, we have three top-rank, obvious choices. Ingmar Bergman is the greatest director of all time, but Deborah Kerr is a genuine old-time movie star, and an American to boot. Will Antonioni take away some of Bergman’s heat by being another world-class foreign-film director, who died on the same day as Bergman?
Will Jane Wyman prove a spoiler to Kerr, since she was, after all, once married to Ronald Reagan? If so, what if they cancel each other out, allowing Anna Nicole Smith to squeak past?
Or will Jack Valenti wield his extraordinary influence, even from beyond the grave, and take all?
Will Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer be mentioned? Plenty of movies (mostly bad) were made from their novels. If so, which will be mentioned first? If they’re mentioned, does thatmean they have to include Ira Levin, or for that matter Sidney Sheldon?
Will Merv Griffin make the list, and what about Toms Snyder and Poston? Or will they lump Tom Poston together with Charles Nelson Reilly and Kitty Carlisle Hart in a kind of “game show trifecta” moment?
I assume that Brad Delp (singer for Boston) and Eric von Schmidt (folk singer) won’t be mentioned, but what about Luciano Pavorotti? He made a movie once.
Or will the Academy, in a bow to the younger set, include the lolrus?
As for me, my money is on Dick Wilson, who, through his indelible portrayal of a haunted grocery-store manager with a unique fetish, taught a generation of Americans about the importance of squeezable toilet paper.
Cute kids update
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SAM (6): I was wearing my Fancy-Schmancy Ultra Limited Edition Secret Stash In-house Promo Venture Bros shirt today, which attracted Sam’s interest.
SAM: Who’s that?
DAD: This? This is — [dramatic voice] — The Monarch!
(no response)
DAD: He’s a bad guy.
SAM: I can see that!
Meanwhile, KIT (4), has taken it upon herself to put together a new lineup of The Beatles:
To those who believe that Ringo is irreplaceable, here is your answer: Ringo is replaceable, if he is replaced with BATMAN FROM THE FUTURE and A SHARK ON A POSTAL DELIVERY TRUCK.
Bush on the Plame affair:
“And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of. … I don’t know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I’d like to know it, and we’ll take the appropriate action.”
And yet, gosh, it turns out: Bush Authorized Plamegate Leak
Bush on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto:
“The United States strongly condemns this cowardly act by murderous extremists who are trying to undermine Pakistan’s democracy. Those who committed this crime must be brought to justice.”
And we have learned by now that the only possible way to discern truth from the mouth of Bush is to take what he says and state it in the exact opposite.
(So the above quote could be translated as: “I strongly applaud this brave act by life-loving centrists who are trying to sustain Pakistan’s brutal dictatorship. Those who committed this great deed must be made exempt from the rule of law.”)
Only possible conclusion: Bush ordered the assassination of Bhutto.
(Well, at least he got the “murderous extremists” part right — that’s the most succinct description of his administration I’ve read yet.)
In a Lonely Place
Bogart with a beautiful woman, Barton with a mosquito — sounds about right.
What says Christmas better than a dark, sweaty noir about a has-been Hollywood screenwriter who may or may not be a vicious killer?
I don’t know what forces prevented me from watching Nicholas Ray’s 1950 masterpiece of paranoia, heartache and broken dreams, but I’m glad I finally got around to it. And about two-thirds of the way through, it struck me that In a Lonely Place would make a smashing double feature with the Coen Bros’ Barton Fink.
The parallels between the two movies are too many to be mere coincidence. In some cases, the Coens have kept elements of Ray’s movie intact, in other cases they’ve ingeniously inverted them.
Both Dix and Barton consider themselves superior beings in the Dostoyevskian sense, and their sense of superiority gets each of them into drunken brawls. Dix fights with six or seven different guys over the course of Lonely, while Barton confines his brawling to one USO dance. Both Dix and Barton have drunken has-been friends: Dix has his “thespian” pal Charlie Waterman, the kind of actor who goes around intoning Shakespeare in plummy tones while wearing a top coat and carrying a cane, Barton has the Faulkneresque W.P. Mayhew.
And both land in trouble with the police. In Lonely, Dix is too depressed to read the novel he’s supposed to adapt, so he asks a hat-check girl who’s read it to come over to his house and tell him the story. Similarly, Barton Fink, desperate for inspiration, calls Mayhew’s secretary, lover and de facto ghostwriter Audrey Taylor to come over to his place to help him prepare for his pitch meeting. In each case, the poor woman winds up dead, the victim of a brutal murder — Lonely makes its killing the inciting incident while Barton, in true Coen form, makes its murder the end-of-second-act twist. And, in each case, it’s not necessarily clear that the screenwriter is entirely innocent of the murder.
In each movie, the murder of the woman is, largely, beside the point of the story. In Lonely it’s a jumping-off point for the filmmakers to examine the precepts, dreams and flaws of Hollywood; Barton does all that and then goes someplace much stranger. It both expands upon the themes of Lonely, pulling in World War II and the Holocaust, but also makes the story more intimate, burrowing inside Barton’s head, so to speak. In each case, the screenwriters’ struggles with their unworkable screenplays are given much more weight than any murder investigation.
In a final inversion, the producers in the two movies have wildly different reactions to the screenwriters’ final efforts. I’d say more but it would be telling.
Lonely is also, of course, a love story, which, I’dhave to say, Barton is not. It’s a very unhappy love story, which I suppose any movie about a screenwriter in Hollywood would have to be. Dix meets and falls in love with Laurel, the woman who lives across the courtyard from him, partly because she provides an alibi for his whereabouts during the murder. Later, we find that she provided the alibi as an excuse to get to know Dix. This, for me, immediately threw suspicion on Laurel as the killer: no intelligent actress in Hollywood would think she could advance her career by making a pass at a screenwriter.
For more on Barton Fink, I direct you to this analysis. (I can’t believe I didn’t get the fire/water symbolism — it’s not like it’s not referenced in practically every scene.)
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A Cricpmist Story
My son Sam (6) has a gesture that’s difficult to describe. It’s a head-shake, a guffaw and an eye-roll that indicate “okay Dad, whatever you say.” He uses it when I’ve spoken something that sounds completely outlandish to him, but he can’t figure out why I’ve told him such a fish story. For the sake of moving forward, I’m going to call this gesture The Sheesh.
For instance, this gem from the other day:
DAD: Today is the Winter Solstice, it’s the shortest day of the year, and the longest night. Did you notice how early the sun went down today? It’s because it’s the Winter Solstice. Today the sun went down earlier than yesterday, by just a couple of minutes, and tomorrow it will go down a little later, by just a couple of minutes. And those minutes will build up and up until we get to the Summer Solstice, which is the day that has the most daytime and the least night-time.
SAM: Is there a Spring Solstice?
DAD: No, but there’s a Vernal Equinox and an Autumn Equinox, and those are the two days in the year when the daytime and the nighttime are exactly the same length.
SAM: (The Sheesh)
(Sam brings home a document he’s written at school. Dad reads it. It contains the word “CRICPMIST.”)
DAD: What’s this word?
SAM: Christmas!
DAD: Ah. And the second “c,” that’s like a French “c,” I get it.
SAM: Right, and there’s a “p” in it. Like a “crisp mist.”
DAD: Right. Right. I like it. Like a crisp mist, that’s great.
SAM: Isn’t that how you spell it?
DAD: Er, well let’s work through this for a second. (pause) Has anyone ever told you about the story of Jesus?
(Sam looks confused)
DAD: Okay, that’s fine. Here’s the deal: about 2000 years ago, this baby was born, named Jesus. And the idea was that this Jesus kid was the Only Son of God. And this Only Son of God thing, people called it “The Christ.”
(Dad writes down the word “Christ” on the back of an envelope)
DAD: And later, churches, you know when people go to church and they pray and sing songs and stuff, that’s called a “mass.”
(Dad writes down the word “mass” next to the word “Christ.”)
DAD: So people who thought that this Jesus kid was the Only Son of God, they would have a special celebration on this day called “Christ Mass,” and eventually that just got shortened to “Christmas.” I’ll tell you though, I would feel a whole heck of a lot better celebrating a crisp mist than I would celebrating the birth of the Only Son of God. That sounds like my idea of a real holiday.
SAM: So, seriously, what does God look like?
DAD: What does God look like? Well dude, I’ve heard a lot of different ideas about what God looks like, and I honestly haven’t heard any better ideas than “God looks like Mace Windu.”
SAM: Yeah, but really, what does he really look like.
DAD: Well dude, nobody knows what God looks like. The important thing you have to know is that no matter what anybody says, nobody anywhere has any idea what God looks like. If someone says they know, they’re lying to you. Now then, since the idea is that God created the entire universe, one could say that God looks like everything, and maybe looks like nothing.
SAM: But what does that mean “God looks like everything?” You mean God looks like a plug, and a pen, and a radiator?
DAD: That’s exactly what it means,dude, it means that God looks like a plug and a pen and a radiator. But don’t forget, you’re leaving out a lot of stuff, like trees and the sky and the ocean and fish and stuff. In fact, there’s a story in the Bible where God shows himself to a guy, and you know what he looks like?
SAM: What.
DAD: A bush.
SAM: (laughing out loud) “A bush!”
DAD: It’s true!
SAM: So, like, I could tell a story about God talking to me and God could look like a lamp.
DAD: You could absolutely tell a story about God talking to you and God could look like a lamp.
SAM: (does The Sheesh.)
_____
In any case, Merry Cricpmist from What Does The Protagonist Want.