Mad as Hell about Network

Okay, tonight's TCM scoop was 1976's Network, starring William Holden, Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway, and Robert Duvall.

What a great movie. Oh, I could go through the predictable rigmarole about how what was far-out satire in the 1970s was actually a prescient foreshadowing of the three ring circus that is our modern News Infotainment industry, but it was more than that. It was a remarkably mature examination of the weird soul melding that has transpired between the individual and the zeitgeist, as transmitted by television. Watching this movie made me ache for a return to the times when not every film had to be produced to be a date movie or a stylistic masturbatory fantasy of a fifth generation film geek. The storytelling was on par with a fine novel; the characters well defined and archetypal rather than stereotypical; the language intelligent and flirting with true profundity. (The characters actually used some of them there big words now and then to express their ideas!) It was a tale about the very bright people behind the dumbing down of our collective character.

Fincher's "I'm mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore!" routine as the raving madman-cum-media star Howard Beale is of course an Academy Award winning legendary performance, and I don't need to throw any additional garlands on it. I will say Dunaway's character, a beautiful but soulless TV exec , was not just wonderfully executed but brilliantly written. As Holden's world weary ex-news executive pointed out, Dunaway's character was television: a seductive , dynamic, irresistible love who turns out to be all surface; a soulless unfeeling ratings machine, and ultimately a lousy lay to boot. Few women in movies have really done it for me quite like Dunaway in her prime. She is absolutely riveting.

Duvall is very believable as the Corporate slime ball, but for my money, Ned Beatty in a very small role as the biggest of the Corporate Big-wigs steals the show. He lays out the way the world really is to a dumbstruck Beale, breaking it all down to not a world of nations and laws, but a world of global titans above all world affairs , whose very life-blood is the ebb and flow of world currency. "I have seen the face of God," Beale murmurs in the wake of Beatty's holy tirade.

I guess the closest we have these days to this high level of film making is the occasional Coen brothers movie, when they are not trying to be too cute. If I think about this too much I have a Beale moment myself, "I am mad as hell, and I am not going to watch Seth Rogan anymore!"

Okay...I need to break the ice on 2010 as regards this blog..I've not had much cooking other than usual survival stuff; but I have been watching quite a few old movies I have been catching with my DVR off of TCM lately...

I watched Hammer's The Hound of The Baskervilles with Peter Cushing as Holmes and Christopher Lee as Sir Henry Baskervilles earlier this evening and found it an entertaining, if not terribly engrossing movie. I remember watching and enjoying it back in the day as well. I am by no means a huge Holmes fan, in fact I think the only story I ever read was The Red Headed League. I watched a few of those BBC productions with the actor Jeremy Britt and thought his was pretty much the best portrayal of the famous sleuth that I had seen. When I heard about the latest actor to don the deerstalker(although I am sure he didn't-that is far too old school) being Robert Downey Jr., I had to groan. I have nothing against him per se, but the match just doesn't sound that great to me. Several people whose judgement I trust have given the movie a thumbs up, and I will probably watch it when it comes out on DVD. My wife asked me who I would have cast instead, and after some thought I came up with Hugh Laurie. I think he has that intensity and cleverness about him along with the sly wit.

Last night I watched The Uninvited with Ray Milland, concerning a lonely windswept mansion on the English seacoast, and the mystery behind a pair of female ghosts who haunt the place and are battling over the life of a beautiful young woman. A good story that kept my interest to the end.

Other TCM viewings of late: In a Lonely Place with Humphrey Bogart; Public Enemy, Angels With Dirty Faces, and White Heat all starring James Cagney (White Heat being the stand-out though all are excellent).

Blood on Satan's Claw is a great British production concerning a coven of witches attempting to flesh out their returning Dark Lord by growing patches of his skin on different people and then reaping it by way of sacrificing the afflicted victims. Quite creepy with a great old Judge who mercilessly snuffs out the evildoers-a character who would probably be a corrupt villain if the movie were made today. Also a small but great role of the Squire, played by the delightful old actor who portrayed Mr. Tibbs on Are You Being Served. Full of creaking rooks, fog and mossy stones, the atmosphere is perfect. It also boasts a brief but creepy glimpse of the gibbering devil, not yet fully made whole, that was quite effective.

That's all for now-the ice has been broken-stay tuned for more news of absurd goodness!

Blame it on Santa

Could it be that the collapse of faith that our country has experienced over the last fifty or so years was "all because of Santa Claus?"

A case could be made...

Ah, the baby boom generation...Never has a generation been given so much; or destroyed so much...

The gauzy, sweet world in which the children of the Greatest Generation were brought up was meant to be a correction to the childhood-stealing grim realities that their parents experienced coming up; a world of global economic depression and war. Picture perfect families in picture perfect homes experiencing picture perfect holidays was the goal in this new time of plenty. Santa, being the beloved old icon of goodness that he is, had a field day during this era of Ike, Uncle Walt and Uncle Miltie.

One of the first traumas that the children of this prosperity encountered was when it was discovered that their beloved Santa was not "real." The idea that all their striving for the approbation of this jolly old elf was for naught was the first chip in the "perfect" veneer of the crafted world made for them, and in true child fashion, they kept picking and picking at the veneer as they developed until the dirty "truth" was exposed beneath the whitewash of "lies" that their parents had so carefully wrought.

School, government, families, church, every bastion of order and faith was first doubted, then exposed, then decried, then abandoned to some degree or another.

And the soulless miserable "truth" was left for generations to come...Hallelujah...

Somewhere along the way we lost the distinction between "true" and "factual". As science became our new faith we lost the fine art of symbolism, of myth, of understanding through story and image concepts too large and unwieldy to be perceived in mathematical formulae.

Perhaps none of our religious myths are factual, but many are true. There is no way to verify many facts in such an ethereal field, but we do know that we are here, products of some great mysterious power, little pin pricks of mortal energy in a vast and roiling complex of ever transmogrifying power, given five faulty and failing tools with which to try to perceive and make sense of it all. The X factor here is that we can share our findings, not just with our fellow mortals toiling through the void, but with all of the ones who came before us who bothered to pass on what they knew, and with those whom we hope will follow after us. The thing that works best for us it seems, is when we have a "why" in which to put our faith in to help to muddle through the "what" of reality. The trick is in our perception: if you believe too factually in the myth you become a jihadist zealot. To make it work for you takes a bit of a poetic approach. Why did Christ speak in parables, or stories, rather than just espousing dogma?

Part of the problem for modern folks is we are too in on the sausage making. We know how movie magic is done, so movies, as swell as they can make 'em look these days, seem to leave us flat all the same. It is hard to imagine the days when people ran screaming from the image of a train moving at them on a movie screen, or wondering if "they" really trained a giant ape to perform King Kong. Even the most casual fan can bore you to tears with the facts about green-screen technology employed in film today. Yes, we know that The Wizard of Oz is fake; a bunch of Hollywood hoofers, midgets and drug addicted starlets all made up and dusted with pixie dust to create an illusion. But does that mean that the movies' values, the beliefs in friendship, honor, loyalty, courage, etc. etc. are false, too? This is babies and bathwater territory.

I tell my kids about Santa because he is fun. He is a symbol of societal justice for children: the good shall be rewarded, the assholes punished. That is a healthy thing. I don't make a big deal about how "real" he is. They have fun with the dream of Santa and who am I to rain on that parade? If I see things are getting out of hand, I will try to correct the course while still keeping the "truth" about why we have Santa around, what purpose he fulfills. The same with all the other bigger questions to come: there is a collective wealth of wisdom and power in our institutions, only a fool would toss them all away because they utilize illusion to illustrate their values. The biggest gift I can think of to give my kids is the power of discernment when dealing with the shitstorm of information that they are going to be subjected to while moving through this world; a lot is junk, some of it is gold.

Which is just, in reality, a very pretty, shiny, rock...

Merry Christmas to all!

Here's Looking For An Explanation

While recently scanning the American Film Institute's list of top movie quotes of all times, I was not surprised to see the famous Bogart quote from Casablanca at the top of the list:

"Here's looking at you, kid."

Surely, just on quotability and ubiquity it deserves its' place on the list.

But I have always wondered: just what the hell does it mean, exactly?

We can of course infer affection and some kind of flattery in this quote, but "Here's looking at you, kid?" Does it mean, "Here's to your beauty?" like a toast of some kind? Or just literally "Here is looking at you," like, I am here looking at you...Huh?

How did the writer even come up with such an obscure thing to say?

You hear something so much sometimes it takes on meaning and you never stop for a minute to think about it.

Surely a classy lady like Ingrid Bergman always smelled great. Why not: "Here's sniffing at you, kid?" Nah, that doesn't make sense either...

Okay, maybe I am making too much of it, but by golly, if it is the greatest quote ever, shouldn't it at least make some kind of sense.

If not, I vote for "Zug-zug" from Ringo Starr's Caveman...

The Wisdom of Oz

1939...Europe steps into the abyss. Fascism in Germany has pushed its' expansionist intentions too far with the invasion of Poland, igniting a World War that will consume tens of millions of human lives before ending in the shroud of two nuclear attacks six years later. The Soviets are willing to play ball with Hitler at first; Stalin has his eye on expanding too, and the non-aggression pact with Hitler seemed like the best means to achieve this end...So too Imperial Japan..Fascist Italy. As Communist , Fascist, and Imperial forces around the world moved their machines into position to dominate the world, a Depression-weary and weakened US is torn in debate as to how to react to the apocalyptic scenarios raging on all sides. One American product that was produced out of this troubled time was to become one of the most beloved fantasy movies of all time, The Wizard of Oz.

One of the bad raps that fantasy has always been given is the term escapist. Well, surely if there was ever a time when folks needed a nice reprieve from reality, it was in 1939. And, too be sure, the wonderful songs and vibrant technicolor visions that Oz offered did transport its' viewers to a happier, funner place. But not a place not fraught with its own dangers, its own forces of darkness bent on possession and destruction of free peoples.

Really good fantasy works on a mythic level. It not only tells a good story, but it gives you a boon of some kind as well. It equips us with what we need in order to stay rooted in humanity and yet spiritually enlightened. The things that the main characters were searching for were the very things that American viewers were going to need to tap into: the Scarecrow wanted brains; the Tin Man wanted a heart, and The Cowardly Lion needed courage. All Dorothy wanted was to return to her home. In the war years that followed, it was the ingenuity, the humanity, the fearlessness, and the desire for peace that not only brought America through the greatest war the world has ever known, but brought it to world prominence when the dust settled.

Now, I am not asserting that it was because of Oz that America won the war. But I believe that the assertion that these things that the characters felt they desperately needed in order to cope were in their possession all along and were to found by searching within not without was a wonderfully empowering message to pluck up an anxious populace. And of course, the mantra of "there's no place like home" was enough to keep desperate soldiers in far-flung hell holes of war motivated to survive; to return to their mother lands.

2001...A still reeling from the 9/11 attacks America goes to the much anticipated first installment of The Lord of the Rings, "The Fellowship of the Ring." In a quiet scene between Frodo Baggins, a poetic, peace-loving hobbit and his friend and advisor wizard Gandalf the Grey, Frodo expresses his wishes that fate had not brought him to this frightening and dangerous place: deep in the bowels of an orc- infested mountain, an early step on a long, perilous, uncertain quest to take on a great evil. Gandalf responds in a way that spoke to all of us who felt like Frodo, wishing what happened had never happened. "So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." That beam of light came to us in a very dark time, and helped equip us for a new world, a new war, a new way of life.

2010...Shapes up to be a very uncertain time both domestically and abroad. Things have moved so quickly in the last year that it is difficult to foresee where we may be this time next year. Let's hope for some wisdom. Some heart. Some courage. And let's hope that our homes stay safe and strong. And let's hope for some good fantasy to help us steer into better times...

Speer's Destiny

I finished Spandau: The Secret Diaries the other day so I thought I'd throw a few thoughts on the book out there as I said I would in a prior post.

The book is a year by year diary of Albert Speer's 20 year stay in Berlin's Spandau Prison as sentenced by the Allied judges at the Nuremberg trials following the collapse of the Third Reich. It was truly a secret diary, as such personal writings were strictly forbidden by prison rules. Speer wrote on toilet paper, scraps from old calendars, whatever he could find and hide on his person (tucked in a place he knew no guard would want to search). He wrote to record his thoughts; to grapple with his guilt; to report on his experiences; and to try to keep a life-line to his non-prison self and his sanity. Many interesting memories and reflections about his experiences in Hitler's "court" come to him along the way, but to me the most interesting thing was the relationships that developed between the seven prisoners, all former Nazi bigwigs,
who went from planning on how to conquer and divide the world to struggling to come together to paint the prison halls or weed the gardens.

The other prisoners all regarded Speer as an outsider among outsiders for his open repentance for the Reich's crimes and excesses, and although there was some camaraderie that grew through hardship, for the most part Speer bore his punishment on his own . He developed an amusing relationship to Rudolf Hess, Hitler's one-time Deputy , who had been imprisoned since his ill-fated solo plane trip to Britain on a quest to forge a peace between the countries. Hess was clearly suffering from some forms of prison psychosis, but he also tried to "play" crazy , with frequent losses of memory and phantom gastric pains that prevented him from doing much work. He was thorny and wily, but there was a strange bond of respect that Speer and Hess had for each other that made them, particularly on Speer's part, protective and supporting of one another.

There were constant attempts by Speer's family, lawyers, and well-wishers to get him an early release. After many such dashing of hopes Speer became resigned that his lot was probably to die at Spandau. Late in his sentence he mused that the 20 year sentence, which struck him at the time as a great relief, was in some ways not as merciful as a death sentence would have been. Not for any abuse or mishandling in prison; but simply the complete eradication of the natural bonds with an aging family and world.

Still and all he got to enjoy aspects of his monastic life. He transformed a scrubby field into a wonderful garden with flowers, fruit trees and terraced walls. He walked constant rounds, imagining he was on a worldwide walking tour, using many of the books about different countries that he read as a touchstone for his imagination. He read many books about his various fascinations: architecture, art, history. He kept in touch with world events through available, albeit censored newspapers, and felt himself more and more disconnected from the world that ground on outside the prison walls.

He grappled with his own place in history; he, who started with dreams of being remembered for the buildings he made, was instead remembered as a war criminal with almost no surviving creations left standing. His biggest contribution to architecture, he noted with dark irony , was an illusion: the "cathedral of light", an effect he created at the Nuremberg party rally by shining the beams of numerous powerful searchlights into the sky creating the illusion of a gigantic hall that the party members held their rites within. I have included in this post a picture of a mock-up of the interior of the Great Hall that he had designed for Hitler's triumphal Berlin that was never to be. I noticed a weird illusion of Hitler's face within the design, see if you can see it.

At the end of the Diaries Speer is whisked off with his wife out of Spandau and to a new phase of his life. The literary contributions that he made in that last phase actually became his true legacy.

I couldn't help but feel that as horrible is that lost 20 years may have been for him, he certainly fared better in this prison where he read, gardened , walked, listened to symphonies and smoked his pipe, than he would have in, say, Huntsville prison. His experience is more what Jerry and George were probably thinking about on Seinfeld when they mused: "Prison...(wistfully)Someday..."

Close Encounters of the Third Reich

Lately I have been reading a couple of books by Albert Speer, Hitler's favorite architect and later Armaments Minister during WWII.

The first book I read was Inside the Third Reich, Speer's memoirs of his youth and his involvement in Hitler's inner circle until the end of the war and his imprisonment for war crimes in its aftermath.

I remember seeing a mini-series on TV in 1982 based on this book starring Rutger Hauer as Speer and Derek Jacobi as Hitler. It was a very well done drama, with many scenes that I have remembered for all of these years. Jacobi was a favorite of ours at the time due to his brilliant turn as the lead in Masterpiece Theater's I, Claudius. He did a pretty good job capturing Hitler's ability to weave many brilliant people into his own fevered dreams, but he has a distinctly Anglo aura about him that he was unable to disguise convincingly. Alec Guinness had a similar problem when he portrayed the Fuhrer in Hitler: The Last Ten Days. It always bothered me when Germans were portrayed with icy upper crust British accents. Of course, the best portrayal of Hitler on film thus far has to be Bruno Ganz in Downfall, who has the advantage of actually being German and performing auf Deutsch. He was very convincing as the erstwhile world conqueror, diminished to little more than a cornered rat , trapped in his bunker awaiting the End.

Both in the mini-series and the book, as fascinating as Speer himself is, the star of the show is , of course,Hitler; and as someone who once claimed to be the closest thing that the dictator ever had to a friend, Speer was uniquely positioned to give us a very up close and personal account of the man who took the world to the brink of Apocalypse.

The enigma of Hitler to us from the perspective of time and culture is the mystery of his appeal; not just to rabble rousers and beer hall brawlers, but to intellectuals, artists, scientists, professionals, grandmas, school kids and everyone else. The cliched question is still the prime mystery: How did the culture that produced Beethoven and Goethe embrace Nazism?

Speer is a good example of someone from the privileged class with a bright future who got caught up in Hitler's dream. From his memoirs one could gather that Hitler was given the keys to the kingdom because of two things he offered the German people at a very uncertain time in their history: Hope and Change.

Obviously you could make some pretty heavy duty analogies about now. It is no secret that cultures are at their most vulnerable at times of excessive ease and times of excessive strain. In times of ease the fat life becomes something expected and taken for granted. Things get soft and lackadaisical and right and wrong gets blurred. At times of strain, panic and despair lead to a search for strength and easy solutions. Hitler was a strong man, a father figure for a country that had been orphaned by its old order and left in disarray. He spoke boldly in terms so black and white and certain that all other politicians seemed like dithering bureaucrats more intent on pushing papers than pulling Germany out of the hole it was in. The mystery of his mass hypnotic appeal so often cited is I think a macrocosmic effect that can be experienced by anyone when put into a random group, co-workers on a project; jurors debating a case; even people stuck in a long bank line. An Alpha asserts himself, the group pulls into a societal order of deputies, conspirators, etc., and it is not until the group dissipates again that the whole experience can be looked back on for what it was.

Speer was an architect with a sharp mind and good connections. He was what Hitler had always wanted to be before he was a politician. He picked Speer to design the Future Reich of his dreams, with Grand Domes and Arches of Triumph, great temples to the Party and monuments to attest to the power of National Socialism. But he was what Dylan so poetically referred to as a "Dream Twister." Speer was pulled into Hitler's dream, thinking that his own dreams were being fulfilled. Speer made an interesting observation, saying that Hitler was like a malignant King Midas: instead of everything he touches turning into gold, he turns everything he touches into piles of corpses.

His portrait of Hitler was one of a man at times crude, at times inspiring, more often than not boring, and something of a dilettante regarding many subjects. He kept a distance from everyone in his role as Fuhrer, even Eva Braun , his secret consort.

It was not until the dream ended in catastrophe for Germany that Hitler's true face was seen by those around him; the losing Reich was not worthy of survival; it had to be razed and wiped off the face of the earth, having proved itself as being unworthy and unable to fulfill his desires for world domination and the eradication of Jewry. He was determined to not just commit suicide, but to take all of Germany with him, and Speer was fundamental in disregarding his leader's scorched earth policy, thus saving his country from a much greater destruction than the nightmare it faced in the dissolution of the Reich.

After Hitler's death and Germany's surrender, Speer was put on trial at Nuremberg, along with other surviving Nazi leaders. He fared better than many: 20 years in prison for his part in using slave labor in armaments factories.

The book I am currently reading is The Spandau Diaries about that 20 year imprisonment. I will report on it when I finish shortly.

Speer has many critics who accuse him of being self serving , trying to make himself more sympathetic in his memoirs, and less attached to the Final Solution aspect of Hitler's designs. They even say that his plea of guilty at the Nuremberg trials and denunciation of Hitler's policies were a mere ploy to save him from the hangman's noose, which it did. Several books have been written refuting different aspects of Speer's version of events. I am sure there is some truth to many of these accusations. All autobiographies must be read with a healthy dose of scepticism, after all, the author cannot be dispassionate about his subject. But all the same Speer is an interesting character, with an artistic and earnest eye for detail and examination. One gets the feeling that he truly grapples with trying to make sense of the maelstrom that surrounded him. His precise and probing mind is the crucible in which all the elements of what happened to him personally, and what happened to his country, and to our world are thrown, and Inside the Third Reich is an intriguing result.