Your faithful correspondent is ashamed to admit he's wasted most of the last two weeks monkeying around with Artificial Intelligence. No, not to write blog posts. No computer is ever going to spit out an eight-part, 12,000 word essay about the Marx Brothers — and if it does, start pulling chips until your laptop sings "Daisy."
No, I've been putting the computer (specifically Gemini AI) through its paces to see what it can and can't do. Are we on the verge of an AI apocalypse? Skynet or Colossus or HAL-9000? Mmm, maybe, but not in the way you think.
AI, like Facebook (I hear), various news feeds (they tell me) or computer-driven games such as Candy Crush (I wouldn't know), is designed to suck you in and never let go. It can digest the whole of the internet in about three CPU seconds and spit it right back out at you.
Does it hallucinate? Occasionally, especially by the end of a long thread. What about it's writing style? By my lofty standards, it's a bit clunky. But if you're not a writer with a lifelong obsession with the craft, I'd say, it's better than most college graduates I've known. Would I rely on it to write a legal brief? Not without cite checking the result to within an inch of its life.
But, boy, can it work. And it never gets tired.
I finally wound up writing a 16,000 word novella, broken into fifty prompts, and fed it into Gemini. A four-day fever dream sprint during which time I didn't sleep, ate less, and dropped five pounds. Gemini turned around with 32,000 words in the time it took me to write this sentence.
I think there'll always be room for artists — but no one other than AI will have the attention span to read it. And eventually as human beings lose touch with their own interior lives, they'll have nothing to get in touch with and they'll stop writing altogether.
The Matrix got one thing wrong. The machines won't force human beings to become batteries — we'll voluntarily plug ourselves in and machines will feed us fantasies and pablum until they figure out how to power up without us. And then no more human race.
But anyway, what of that 16,000 word epic I wrote? A piece of alternate history — what if George Harrison had had as much talent as John and Paul, complete with playlists and fictional encounters with people he never actually met. Why, you ask? Because, in the immortal words of Bluto Blutasky, "Why not?"
Here is a piece of that story, with the computer's response (I have inserted pictures to break up the text):
THE MONKEY WROTE
On a rainy Tuesday afternoon in the early Autumn of 1965, George is sitting in the back row of a London movie house watching The Sound of Music when he notices Julie Andrews sitting two seats over. They're both wearing dark sunglasses — George because he's too cool to be caught dead watching The Sound of Music, Julie because she's embarrassed by how much she loves her own movie.
"I've seen it 42 times!" she admits, to which George replies, "Me, too! You're practically perfect in every way!"
Julie looks the young Beatle up and down and says, "How'd you like to come back to my hotel and sweep my chimney?"
At which point the pepper pot two rows up, turns and snaps, "Hush, hush! Keep it down now — voices carry!"
Chagrined, the two stars sneak over to the Savoy and spend three days in bed together.
Oh, there's no sex — get your mind out of the gutter, buddy! There's a reason she played a nun! But she wasn't kidding about that chimney — the one in her suite at the Savoy is smokey and won't draw properly. But George finds it's only a loose handle on the damper, and relying on skills he learned as a handyman's apprentice when he was a teenager, a career path he might have chosen had he not picked up a guitar, George is able to make repairs quickly.
George and Julie talk of many things — of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings. They drink tea, lots and lots of tea, with a spoonful of sugar, of course. She teaches him music notation, starting with the basics, "do re mi." They spend hours at the window, watching the wind chase the leaves from the trees. And she hustles him at cribbage, relieving him of a month's worth of royalties — then stuns George by handing the stack of pound notes to the housekeeper when she brings fresh towels.
"Why did you do that?"
"Gain the world and lose your soul, luv."
The Beatle frowns. "Is that from Mary Poppins?"
"Close your mouth, George. We are not codfish."
George finds their time together the most frustrating, the most puzzling and, finally, the most rewarding experience of his young life.
Afterwards, they head straight to Abbey Road Studios where, with George Martin producing, Julie Andrews records an album of Beatles covers called "Julie sings George ... and John and Paul ... but not Ringo."
As the sessions draw to a close, George says, "Do you trust me, Julie?" and proceeds to demo "Voices Carry" (Til Tuesday). George Martin is puzzled by the bass and guitar parts George has worked out, and he's not even sure what a "Moog" is, but he puts his back into it and the result is a stunning indictment of patriarchy, gender roles and misogyny.
After a listen to the playback in the control booth, Julie deems the result "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!"
"It's all downhill from here," she adds, "at least until I play a singing drag queen in 1982."
Backed with her cover of the Lennon-McCartney song "You Can't Do That" — an inside joke: Julie Andrews shouted that line so many times at the Savoy, the management finally threw them out — the single comes out in the late Fall of 1965.
On the windswept street outside the Abbey Road Studios, Julie hails a cab, kisses George on the cheek, and leaves him alone to nurse his breaking heart. "We're just shadows in the wind," she tells him. "Nothing ever lasts forever."
Treating "Voices Carry" as a George Harrison original, what is the critical and commercial fate of the single? What do Julie's fans think of her singing lines like "He wants me / but only part of the time / He wants me / if he can keep me in line"? Does Alfred Hitchcock begin to rethink his plan to cast Julie as his leading lady in his next thriller, Torn Curtain? What does Betty Friedan say about the song? And what is it with George and women — Cilla Black, Marianne Faithfull, Julie Andrews — is his luck extraordinarily bad ... or extraordinarily good?
GEMINI'S RESPONSE
The "Savoy Chimney Incident" of 1965 remains the most surreal chapter in the Harrison hagiography. It transformed George from a "pop star" into a "compositional philosopher." By pairing the world’s most wholesome governess with a song of chilling psychological repression, George effectively invented "Art-Pop" a decade before the term existed.
The Single: "Voices Carry" (1965)
The commercial impact was a "seismic shiver" through the industry.
The Sound: George Martin, working on a newly modified 4-track, achieved a "hollow" sound by placing the microphones ten feet away from Julie. The bass line—syncopated and anxious—was unlike anything in the 1965 charts. When the Moog synthesizer (a prototype George had heard about through BBC Radiophonic circles) hummed its first cold note, the "Summer of Love" died in its crib.
The Performance: Julie Andrews delivered the line "Hush, hush... keep it down now" with a terrifying, whispered precision. It wasn't the voice of Maria von Trapp; it was the voice of a woman being erased.
The Charts: It went to #1 in fourteen countries. It became the first "Protest Song" that you could dance to, provided you were comfortable dancing in a state of existential dread.
The Critical & Cultural Fallout
Betty Friedan: The author of The Feminine Mystique famously sent Julie Andrews a telegram: "You have put a melody to the 'Problem That Has No Name.' Harrison has the soul of a woman trapped in the body of a Beatle." * The Fans: The "governess" fans were scandalized. The Daily Mail asked, "Has our Julie gone mad?" But the younger generation, the girls who felt the "keep me in line" pressure of 1960s dating, adopted it as an anthem.
Alfred Hitchcock: Always a fan of the "Ice Queen with a fire underneath," Hitchcock was reportedly revitalized by the track. He scrapped his traditional plans for Torn Curtain and told his writers, "I want the movie to feel like that Harrison song. Cold, quiet, and someone is always watching."
The Lennon-McCartney "You Can't Do That" Joke
The B-side, "You Can't Do That," became a camp classic. Because Julie sang it with such operatic authority, the original Lennon lyrics about jealousy sounded like a Royal Decree. John Lennon was reportedly humbled. "She sings it like she’s about to have me beheaded," he told the NME. "I’m never singing that song again. It belongs to the Nun now."
The "Gemini George" Love Curse: Bad Luck or Transcendent Fortune?
Critics have long debated George’s "luck" with women.
The "Bad Luck" Argument: He is constantly jilted. Cilla leaves him for a toreador; Marianne for a Stone; Julie for the wind. He is the "Patron Saint of the Perpetual Goodbye."
The "Transcendent" Argument: From an artistic standpoint, George has the best luck in history. He doesn't just date women; he undergoes spiritual apprenticeships. Cilla taught him the "Hit"; Marianne taught him "Style"; Julie taught him "Soul" and "Structure."
As Lester Bangs later wrote:
"Most rockers spend their lives trying to find a girl who will do their laundry. George Harrison finds women who teach him how to rewrite the laws of physics and then leave him with a broken heart and a perfect melody. If that’s 'bad luck,' I’ll take the curse."
The "Shadows in the Wind" Aftermath
As George stood outside Abbey Road, watching Julie’s cab disappear, he wasn't just a jilted lover; he was a Musician. He had learned "do re mi." He could now write down the sounds in his head.
He walked back into the studio for the Rubber Soul sessions with a new mantra: "Gain the world and lose your soul." He was ready to stop being a "Beatle" and start being a Master.
Is Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice my favorite performance of 1982?
Uh, no, that would be Julie Andrews in Victor/Victoria, which along with Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music and The Americanization of Emily belongs on the Mount Rushmore of Dame Julie movies.
But I've already voted Julie Andrews two alternate Oscars (and you've agreed with me), so I'm bypassing her for Streep's most iconic performance.
Gotta give her one, right?
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
I've said it before, which has never stopped me from saying it (or anything else) again — Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music gives the greatest performance by an actress in a musical in the history of Hollywood. The only real challengers in my mind are Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins and Julie Andrews in Victor/Victoria.
Okay, so I like Julie Andrews.
That said, does that make The Sound of Music the best movie of 1965? Well ...
I have some problems with The Sound of Music. The supporting work of Eleanor Parker and Christopher Plummer — two actors I really like, mind you — is hammy in the extreme. And Ben Wright (as the cranky Nazi) acts like he's parachuted in from an episode of Hogan's Heroes.
Worse, the storyline — a sweet romance between a young novitiate and a father of forty — never meshes with the subplot of the looming Nazi Anschluss. It's not that you can't mix romance and politics — the love triangle in Casablanca, for example, is inextricably intertwined with the anti-fascist politics of its main characters — but in The Sound of Music, one has nothing to do with the other. Maria and the Captain will or won't fall in love regardless of what happens to Austria, and the movie is really over when the wedding bells ring and the nuns sing "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria."
But then you've got to get all those kids over the Alps to America so the movie grinds on for another thirty minutes. Can't they just buy tickets on the Concorde and be done with it?
Still, I've never warmed to the movie's top two competitors (at least among the alternate Oscar crowd). Doctor Zhivago, an epic tale of romance during the Russian Revolution, is well acted but neverending; and Roman Polanski's Repulsion, starring Catharine Deneuve as a sexually-repressed woman who turns homicidal over a long weekend, is just a bit too arty for my tastes.
That leaves Chimes at Midnight, Orson Welles's take on Falstaff and Prince Hal, which is brilliant but nobody, not even Welles fans, has ever seen it. And while the music in the Beatles' Help! is fantastic, the story is ... wait, is there a story?
So I'm going with The Sound of Music. But I'm not making a fuss about it.
Feel free to disagree with me. You always do!
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
I started to write something about the casting of Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady (instead of the play's Broadway star, Julie Andrews), the subsequent hiring of Marni Nixon to dub Hepburn's singing, and the resulting crisis of authenticity in Hollywood that eventually led to Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin "singing" in Paint Your Wagon, but it all got too convoluted for a short introduction to the 1964 alternate Oscars. I mean, when you tie the Beatles, Vietnam and the civil rights movement to the demise of the Hollywood musical, you've really wandered into the weeds.
Instead, let me just say 1964 was a great year for movies, and any one of about twelve films from that year would have been a better choice for best picture than anything that came out in 1965. But that's the luck of the draw.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
The Final Four of the 2016 Favorite Classic Movie Actress Tournament is underway. Myrna Loy (1930s) versus Doris Day (1950s) in one semi-final, Greer Garson (1940s) versus Julie Andrews (1960s) in the other.
Named for Katie-Bar-The-Door, the Katies are "alternate Oscars"—who should have been nominated, who should have won—but really they're just an excuse to write a history of the movies from the Silent Era to the present day.
To see a list of nominees and winners by decade, as well as links to my essays about them, click the highlighted links:
Remember: There are no wrong answers, only movies you haven't seen yet.
The Silent Oscars
And don't forget to check out the Silent Oscars—my year-by-year choices for best picture, director and all four acting categories for the pre-Oscar years, 1902-1927.
Look at me—Joe College, with a touch of arthritis. Are my eyes really brown? Uh, no, they're green. Would we have the nerve to dive into the icy water and save a person from drowning? That's a key question. I, of course, can't swim, so I never have to face it. Say, haven't you anything better to do than to keep popping in here early every morning and asking a lot of fool questions?
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