Tag: Movies

Sadly Accurate Predictions – from Sarah Palin to Donald Trump

NOTE:  I wrote this in 2004, in the era of Sarah Palin.  Sadly, I was far more correct than I’d realized – just a little early.  So take a look.  We need to change the ending of our story.

Of course by now we’ve all seen this.

I wrote much of what appears below without knowing just how to begin it – and those wacky Republicans solved my problem.  The response to this boilerplate Obama statement was to issue a vicious attack accusing him of sexism because of Palin’s convention speech “lipstick/hockey mom/pitbull” quote.  This despite the fact that the metaphor has often been used by Republicans including Dick Cheney – to say nothing of John McCain – look here:

The McCain campaign, not only in its choice of Sarah Palin but in how they use her, is leaning on very scary  tactics that are similar to the successful exploitation of voters illustrated by some of the most memorable characters in American political films.  Watch this trailer for Tim Robbins’ Bob Roberts; see if it isn’t more familiar than you wish:

Creepy, isn’t it?  A demagogue making his way to the top by lying about his opponent and manipulating the alienation of the American people for his own ends.  That could never happen in real life, right?

Much, much earlier in film history, the beloved Andy Griffith played one of the scariest public personalities ever in A Face in the Crowd — written by Budd Schulberg and directed by On the Waterfront‘s Elia Kazan.  He’s not a politician but watch the trailer and see if it doesn’t seem familiar.  You have to watch until the end to get the full impact.

It’s so depressing — and enraging — to watch this campaign peddling pseudo-folksiness to win over its public.  It’s time for that to stop working in our country.  Stakes are too high to permit us (or the press) to fall for the most approachable (and least honest) over the most excellent.

A couple more:
Barry Levinson‘s brilliant Wag the Dog

And, finally, remember Robert Penn Warren’s remarkable novel, clearly based on Louisiana’s Huey Long – All the King’s Men?  It portrays a politician on his path to becoming a dangerous demagogue.  Yeah, I know it’s melodramatic but does it feel at all familiar?

Clearly we should consider these archetypal characters as cautionary tales; instructive representations of our future if we allow this kind of campaigning to prevail.  Movies are our largest export (unless video games have taken over while I wasn’t looking)  and often reflect, if not our truths, at least our ghosts, shadows and neuroses.  It gave us The Body Snatchers in the 50’s, Easy Rider in the 60’s and Working Girl and Wall Street in the 80’s.  It’s easy to be seductive, to manipulate language and truth; easy to pretend to be one of the people in order to win them. The vicious, craven strategies of this campaign – and Sarah Palin herself – are  perfect examples; John McCain, whom I used to admire, has allowed, no encouraged, this shameful campaigning in his name and surrendered all the positions of principal that he once held.  If we don’t want (another) Bob Roberts (He does remind me of GWBush) or a cynical populist pretender or a MS Wilie Stark as our government, it’s up to use to exercise vigilance and fierce commitment to fight off these transparent manipulations and to ensure that it does not happen.

Big Birthday Memory #11: Remembrance of Things Past – Tom Jones and So Much More

Albert Finney and Susannah York as Tom and his love Sophie

NOTE: As I approach my 70th birthday, I’ll reprise a milestone post here each day until the end of May. Today – from September 17, 2007.

Not to be too obscure here but think about this: Marcel Proust’s REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PASTwas inspired by the scent of one cookie (a fancy one called a Madeline.) Sense memory is a powerful thing.

I saw Tom Jones 44 years ago, with my high school “film club.” The club was just 6 seniors and our creative writing teacher. Our mill town high school wasn’t a culture haven but this young teacher was. He handwrote Irwin Shaw short stories onto “ditto sheets” because there was no budget for the books, started a literary magazine (I was the editor, naturally) took us to Shakespeare performances and — started the film club. At first we rented films (screened on a projector in his classroom) and then moved on to evening journeys “downtown” to local art houses. We saw LA STRADA and THE SEVENTH SEAL, SUNDAYS AND CYBELE and SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER — and TOM JONES. The films were so intelligent, so clearly different from the “movies” we saw on our own; the theaters served espresso andeveryone was smoking. How sophisticated we felt!

This morning as I watched this nearly half-century old film – still funny and charming even though the playful sexual innuendo recalls a more tender time, that 18-year-old girl I’d been came back – all of her. I didn’t know whether to be sad — miss all that I was then – all that’s changed — lost — or just plain passed – or to be grateful for the remarkable kaleidoscope of experiences that my life has been. From the adventure of a 36 year old marriage to the joy of raising two of the most spectacular young men on the planet to presences at royal weddings and presidential inaugurations, travel all over the world and great music experiences to a gentle childhood with talents acknowledged and appreciated to memorable private moments at weddings, bar mitzvahs, graduations and other celebrations with family and friends, a lot has contributed to the wiser woman I am today. I know there’s no way to live the life I’ve lived – or any other – without losing some of the shiny stuff of youth but even so it’s a shock when awareness of those losses lands on you in the middle of an unambiguously optimistic movie 44 years old.

Here’s what I think: there isn’t a person on the planet (despite Edith Piaf) who has no regrets. Recalling days that seem idyllic is a privilege – many haven’t got many to recall. Sadness about the joys of the past emerges only from an accumulated reservoir of happiness that is a blessing in itself. As Auntie Mame used to say“Life is a banquet, and most poor sons of bitches are starving to death.” My sisters and I swore we would live by that.

I’ve tried – and I’m still trying. That’s why this blog is called Don’t Gel Too Soon. Wherever that 18 year old film fiend has gone, parts of her are still part of me – informing and enlivening the person I’ve become. The real challenge in this portion of my life is to hang onto the enthusiasm and curiosity of those years – never freezing in place. The last line in Tom Jones, one of my favorite anywhere, was written by John Dryden – way before movies or even radio. It still works though, and I offer its wisdom for us all. “Happy the man, and happy he alone, he who can call today his own; he who, secure within, can say, tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.”

Big Birthday Memory #8: In Honor of Indiana and Donald Trump (Pigs, Lipstick, Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin And The Movies: “Bob Roberts”, “A Face In The Crowd” And Willie Stark)

NOTE: As I approach my 70th birthday, I’ll reprise a milestone post here each day until the end of May. Today – from September 10, 2008.  This post appears now because it’s about demagogues and politics and the Indiana primary is today.

Of course by now we’ve all seen this.

I wrote much of what appears below without knowing just how to begin it – and those wacky Republicans solved my problem.  The response to this boilerplate Obama statement was to issue a vicious attack accusing him of sexism because of Palin’s convention speech “lipstick/hockey mom/pitbull” quote.  This despite the fact that the metaphor has often been used by Republicans including Dick Cheney – to say nothing of John McCain – look here:

The McCain campaign, not only in its choice of Sarah Palin but in how they use her, is leaning on very scary  tactics that are similar to the successful exploitation of voters illustrated by some of the most memorable characters in American political films.  Watch this trailer for Tim Robbins’ Bob Roberts; see if it isn’t more familiar than you wish:

Creepy, isn’t it?  A demagogue making his way to the top by lying about his opponent and manipulating the alienation of the American people for his own ends.  That could never happen in real life, right?

Much, much earlier in film history, the beloved Andy Griffithplayed one of the scariest public personalities ever in A Face in the Crowd — written by Budd Schulberg and directed by On the Waterfront‘s Elia Kazan.  He’s not a politician but watch the trailer and see if it doesn’t seem familiar.  You have to watch until the end to get the full impact.

It’s so depressing — and enraging — to watch this campaign peddling pseudo-folksiness to win over its public.  It’s time for that to stop working in our country.  Stakes are too high to permit us (or the press) to fall for the most  approachable (and least honest) over the most excellent.

Finally, remember Robert Penn Warren’s remarkable novel, clearly based on Louisiana’s Huey Long – All the King’s Men?  It portrays a politician on his path to becoming a dangerous demagogue.  Yeah, I know it’s melodramatic but does it feel at all familiar?

Clearly we should consider these archetypal characters as cautionary tales; instructive representations of our future if we allow this kind of campaigning to prevail.  Movies are our largest export (unless video games have taken over while I wasn’t looking)  and often reflect, if not our truths, at least our ghosts, shadows and neuroses.  It gave us The Body Snatchers in the 50’s, Easy Rider in the 60’s and Working Girl and Wall Street in the 80’s.  It’s easy to be seductive, to manipulate language and truth; easy to pretend to be one of the people in order to win them. The vicious, craven strategies of this campaign – and Sarah Palin herself – are  perfect examples; John McCain, whom I used to admire, has allowed, no encouraged, this shameful campaigning in his name and surrendered all the positions of principal that he once held.  If we don’t want (another) Bob Roberts (He does remind me of GWBush) or a cynical populist pretender or a MS Wilie Stark as our government, it’s up to use to exercise vigilance and fierce commitment to fight off these transparent manipulations and to ensure that it does not happen.

Sons and Brothers — and Star Wars

Star_Wars sized

“I was raised to do one thing but I’ve got nothing to fight for.” —  Finn – a Storm Trooper*

My sons are 40 and 36 and they’re going to Star Wars opening night together.  It took some avid site refreshing and one wildly committed wife as deputy but they have tickets.  I love knowing that they like each other enough to share this. The first films hijacked our family – much to our delight.

There was lots of stuff, of course.  We had action figures and Death Star Space Stations, Landspeeders, Tie Fighters,  Millennium Falcons, Light Sabers, Lego versions  and about a billion little weapons all over the floor of their room.  All the time.  It was wonderful watching the two of them and their friends imagining all sorts of adventures as the toys carried them into battles between good and evil.

Once when he was around ten, I asked my older son, what he really wanted to do when he was older.  He replied, with growing agitation, “I want….  I want…. I want to fight The Empire!  

And there it is.  Deep inside the battles and light shows and Yoda-isms is the simple truth that informs most wonderful stories: a battle fought for honor, justice, family, love, or even peace.

Is it any wonder why that nearly 40 years later, the fever has reemerged, the joy and anticipation like new?

It is with gratitude that one watches a child find joy in a story or a song, from Little Bear to Harry Potter.  But Star Wars — well, that’s not just a wonderful tale, it’s the gift of a dream – something to fight for connected to the best parts of each of us, of hope, and courage and love.  I’m grateful that it exists and that my grown kids still love it and I’m really really grateful that the person each wants to revisit that world with is his very own brother.

*A trained warrior desperate to escape his past, Finn is plunged into adventure as his conscience drives him down a heroic, but dangerous, path.”  From the Official Star Wars Databank  

 

“Truth” and “Spotlight” and the News

Cate Blanchett as Producer Mary Mapes, Robert Redford as Dan Rather
Cate Blanchett as Producer Mary Mapes, Robert Redford as Dan Rather
Spotlight_(film)_poster
Rachel McAdams, Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Lev Schreiver, and Brian D’arcy James as the Pulitzer Prize winning Boston Globe team

The ultimate goal of every great reporter is to find a terrific story that nobody else has, and report it.  Right now, released almost simultaneously, are not one,  but two movies about journalism and how it works.  In one, eagerness to tell the tale combined with politics to destroy the story, and several stellar careers.  In the other, universal caution and the power of the establishment combined in efforts to do the same.  Based on true stories, Truth and Spotlight portray, with fierce and sometimes heartbreaking commitment, the professional, ethical and political challenges every good reporter faces.

Each features a wonderful cast:  in Spotlight, Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, and Stanley Tucci; in Truth, Cate Blanchett, Robert Redford, Topher Grace, Dennis Quaid, Elizabeth Moss, Bruce Greenwood and Stacy Keach.  They’re all great.

Both stories beautifully illustrate the adventure, pain, excitement, drudgery and teamwork required in the service of a seriously reported story.  Although Spotlight is a far better film, the familiar TV-ness of Truth, as Dan Rather and his 60 Minutes production team, pursue the “George W. Bush Went AWOL from the National Guard” story made it particularly heartbreaking for me.  I emerged agitated and halfway out of breath.

It’s was just so sad to witness great work sidelined not by corporate politics or even overt censorship but by small decisions made in service of a great story and a tight deadline.   All good journalists understand the importance of this: “If you don’t have time to check one more way, or listen to the person who still has reservations, the story shouldn’t air; if it’s about the President of the United States, even airtight isn’t good enough.”  Eager to get on the air and armed with several good pieces of evidence, Mapes insisted the story was ready though – and so it aired.

In this case, although the story was never proven to be false, challenges to errors or lack of clarity in several small details (which were indeed careless or at least a product of selective listening) provided enough ammunition to cost both Rather and Mapes their jobs.  In each case the removal was deeply humiliating.   Knowing what was coming, it was agony to witness, especially when the entire editorial process was so familiar and the problem elements stood out so clearly.

Spotlight, again drawn from a true story, followed reporters uncovering the child sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, revealed by the Boston Globe’s investigative unit the “Spotlight” team at the Boston Globe.  In this case, the adversary wasn’t the White House and all the weapons at its disposal,  Rather, it was one of the few institutions with more power: the Catholic Church and its hold over Boston and the Globe, whose readers were 56% Catholic as were much of the editorial staff.

Piece by piece, through roadblocks and threats, the team pulled the story of the abusive priests together, with victims on the record, only to be confronted by their new editor, who wasn’t satisfied that this information alone would bring change:

Show me that the church manipulated the system so that these guys wouldn’t have to face charges. Show me they put those same priests back into parishes time and time again. Show me this was systemic, that came from the top down.”

So they did.  And their story rocked the Church worldwide.  Literally.

To arrive there though, team members had to deal not only with the pain of the victims and horror of the story but also with their own relationships with the Church.  That wasn’t just deep connection or lapsed faith, but also an emotional and spiritual system internalized by these longtime-Boston journalists as they grew up their very Catholic hometown.

In this case though, a combination of fierce commitment and great editorial guidance allowed them to resolve any questions that might arise before their initial story ran.  They ended up writing hundreds.  And won the Pulitzer Prize.

So.  Two news movies.  Both worth the time and money it will take to see them. Together they bring us perfect lessons: this is what happens when newsgathering doesn’t live up to the tough standards required of the profession, and these are the remarkable things that can happen when it does.

 

 

Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Cancer, Courage and Rage

Cancer has taken so many people I’ve loved and admired. This new interview with two hugely admired and much-loved celebrities reminded me of how deeply it affects us all .  We know, in our heads, that the presence of beauty, courage, fame and an amazing marriage and family can’t keep the monster at bay.  Neither can being the most respected broadcast journalist of the past 30 years; Tom Brokaw had cancer too.  So did my husband, by the way.  Thankfully, they are still with us.  But it’s a roll of the dice, not fame or fortune, or even education, that’s made it so.

So why are we not all enraged?  Why do we refuse to keep this plague at (or at least near) the top of our agenda?  We face so much right now: attacks on women, racial tension, income inequality, climate change, declining education systems and infrastructure – fill in your own particular blank.  But no matter how we feel about any of these issues, we all grieve for those we’ve lost to cancer; we all long for their presence in our lives and know that it is just a lack of knowledge that took them from us.

No family is untouched; the lucky ones face it among older members but so many lose loved ones — family and friends, well before they’ve seen their children grow up, or get married or find their way in the world and before they’ve exhausted the gifts that brought so much to all of us.  I’ve been thinking about them a great deal recently, and have felt, for some time, a need to honor them once again here.  Many died before there was an Internet but I’ve added links where I could.

We were young journalists together:

Margot Adler

Mary Halleron

Mark Harrington

Joan Shorenstein

Teachers, mentors, friends:

Ed Bradley

Ed Hornick

Eden Lipson

Maggie Morton

Susan Neibur 

The Dearest:

Laurie Becklund

Bob Squier

 

 

 

Jules et Jim: That Was MY Song!

Jules and Jim.  One the best movies ever. Really. Ever. Certified.  Directed by Francois Truffaut and released in 1962, it appears on  several best films lists and was, it is written, the biggest success of the influential French New Wave.  The story of two men and one woman, all of whom love one another, and Paris, and World War I, and friendship, it is wry and romantic and original and wonderful.

And that song!  Listen to it just above here, and watch Jeanne Moreau, Oskar Werner and Henri Serre as Moreau sings Cyrus Bassiak’s Le Tourbillion.  The song did not deserve to be amputated and appropriated.  It, and the emblematic film, have always stood for a time, a dream, a view of war and life, friends and love — and Paris.

Then TurboTax, a pox upon them, came along and stole it.  Probably not technically; I’m sure they paid for permission to stick it into a dumb commercial about tax deductions and weddings.  I am NOT posting or linking to it here.  One less place you have to see it.

Of course there’s nothing to be done.  There never is.  There are scholarly  books about it.  And we know it works, or they wouldn’t do it, right?  But oh what a violation.

Many commercials have used popular songs to strengthen the marketing message conveyed. When a commercial uses a popular song well, the music is aligned with the visual imagery and words. It creates a synchronized message that brands hope will induce purchase of their products.  by David Mitchel, Vice President of Marketing at Norton Mitchel Marketing on Duetsblog

This is not my first musical outrage.  I refused for years to buy Nikes for my sons because they were using Revolution in their 1987 commercial.  (Only later did I learn how mean that really was; they had so wanted those shoes…)  and that the Beatles, who had sold the song rights to Michael Jackson, had sued Nike [who had legitimate rights] to get the thing off the air.)  The lawsuit finally wore everyone out and the ad stopped running but it had aired for a long time. Here’s the commercial:

Of course by now every song we’ve ever loved has been exploited — er, I mean licensed — to sell something.  I can remember doing a story when the trend revived in the late 80’s and interviewing plenty of high-profile musicians who were devastated that their songs had been appropriated and others who were happy for the money.  Some no longer owned their catalogues and had no control over how their music was used.

I get it.  It’s part of capitalism and all that. It’s just that, once in a while, it feels like they go too far (if that’s possible) and use something that meant too much, at least to me.

Birdman Lays an Egg

birdmanNora Ephron was our neighbor when we lived in New York.   Once, when I complained about PLENTY, a play I had seen and hated, and its  “such good reviews” she responded, “you need to learn to read between the lines; some things get ‘good’ reviews just because reviewers think they are supposed to like them.”

As usual, she was right. It’s ironic that BIRDMAN, which got so many good reviews, (and has an excellent cast) includes a scathing diatribe, possibly the best speech in the film, from a reviewer.  This showy, weird, kind of pathetic film deserves no less.

I never read reviews until after a I see a film because they reveal too many plot points and great lines, but in this case it wouldn’t have mattered; the praise is pretty universal.  But I’m a pretty open audience and it touched neither me nor my companion.  Unless you are feeling intellectually fashionable or like burning ticket and popcorn money, see something else.