skip to main |
skip to sidebar
That's Typing Tuesday, in which I share unpolished, unpublished writings from my vast store of unpolished, unpublished writings. On Tuesdays.
I don't know what physicists think about, but I do know that sometimes when I'm out walking the dog it occurs to me that somewhere in the multiverse, the dog is walking me.
That's Typing Tuesday, in which I occasionally share unpolished, unpublished writings from my vast store of unpolished, unpublished writings. On Tuesdays.
Obviously I haven't seen Baz Luhrmann's take on The Great Gatsby yet—it's not due in theaters for another year. But generally speaking, I'll say this: making a movie of The Great Gatsby is like going to a museum, taking all the pictures off the wall and studying the hooks. The dialogue and surface level action is meaningless—simply contrivances upon which Fitzgerald hung his gorgeous prose and startling insights.
I hope Baz Luhrmann can lick the problem of bringing Gatsby to life, but if he can, he'll be the first, for Gatsby is already alive, and anyone trying to adapt it to another medium necessarily has to kill it first.
To quote Liz Lemon, What the what, Monkey? Didn't I read this very post last year? Is this blog to become nothing but an endless series of reposts?
Well, no, it only seems that way. But 'tis the season to be busy and (to quote Bob Dylan) Johnny's been in the basement mixing up the medicine. I'll get back to the serious business of writing the history of silent movies one blog entry at a time after the holidays. If not before.
In the meantime ...
Me, I love Christmas movies—It's A Wonderful Life, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Scrooge (both the 1951 and 1970 versions), Miracle On 34th Street (1947 only), How The Grinch Stole Christmas. And I could watch little Ralphie Parker's quest for an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle (with a compass in the stock!) twenty-four hours a day if only some cable channel would think of it.
But a lot of people don't like Christmas or its movies, and that's okay with me. Here are some alternatives which will allow you to acknowledge the season without succumbing to it:
The Thin Man (1934)
Nick and Nora celebrate the holidays in the company of gangsters, thieves and murderers. It was either that or another Christmas at the in-laws'.
"I'm a hero. I was shot twice in the Tribune."
"I read where you were shot 5 times in the tabloids."
"It's not true. He didn't come anywhere near my tabloids."
Holiday (1938)
Most people think of this as a New Year's Eve movie, and rightly so, but if you do the math, the entire first act takes place on Christmas day. And what a Christmas it is—no tree, no egg nog, no mistletoe, no nothing. No presents, either, unless you care to unwrap a tousle-haired Cary Grant. A romantic comedy as wistful as the season itself, Holiday is my favorite Katharine Hepburn movie.
"When I find myself in a position like this, I ask myself what would General Motors do? And then I do the opposite."
Stalag 17 (1953)
Christmas 1944: Grown men in longjohns dancing with other grown men in longjohns while William Holden searches for the Nazi spy hiding out among American prisoners of war. Sounds like the one miserable semester I spent as a student at an all-boys school.
"All right then, gentlemen, we are all friends again. And with Christmas coming on I have a special treat for you—I'll have you all deloused for the holidays."
An Affair To Remember (1957)
Cary Grant is afraid Deborah Kerr is mad at him, but it turns out she's only paralyzed. Whew!
"My mother told me never to enter a man's room in months ending in 'R.'"
The Apartment (1960)
Suicide, adultery, the boss from hell—what man wouldn't gladly suffer it all to spend Christmas in bed with the young Shirley MacLaine. One of the greatest movies of all time, a not-to-be-missed comedy/drama from director Billy Wilder.
"T'was the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring ... nothin' ... no action ... Dullsville!"
The Lion In Winter (1968)
Kings and castles notwithstanding, this is what Christmas is like for millions of people—bickering, recrimination and endless disappointment. Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn at their snarling best.
"What would you have me do? Give out? Give up? Give in?"
"Give me a little peace."
"A little? Why so modest? How about eternal peace? Now there's a thought."
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)
Sure, it stars George Lazenby as James Bond, but it also boasts Diana Rigg, the best Bond girl ever. Holiday connection? Telly Savalas doles out the all-time worst Christmas present—a bio-weapon designed to destroy the world's food supply. What, Best Buy was all out of Wii Bowling?
"This never happened to the other fellow!"
Life Of Brian (1979)
We came oh so close to celebrating Brianmas every 25th of December, until the three wise men realized Jesus was one manger over.
"He's not the Messiah. He's a very naughty boy!"
Trading Places (1983)
Ah, Dan Aykroyd as a drunk, pistol-packing Santa Claus. And he's only, like, the fifth funniest guy in the movie. I don't know about you, but I get hungry for salmon and dirt-matted Santa beard every time I see this movie. Yummy.
"I'll bet you thought I'd forgotten your Christmas bonus. There you are."
"Five dollars. Maybe I'll go to the movies—by myself."
Die Hard (1988)
Man, that's some Christmas party—Bruce Willis shoots a dozen men, drops another out a 40th floor window and blows up a building. Good thing he's a cop!
"Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho."
L.A. Confidential (1997)
Ironically, the "Bloody Christmas" incident that sets this labyrinthine mystery in motion is the least bloody scene in the entire movie. My pick as the best picture of 1997.
"You're like Santa Claus with that list, Bud, except everyone on it's been naughty."
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Tom Cruise's colossal ego threatens his marriage to Nicole Kidman. Thank God it's only a movie! Stanley Kubrick's last film, Eyes Wide Shut begins at a Christmas party, ends at an orgy. Hmpf. My parties just end in a hangover.
"If you men only knew ..."
The Matador (2005)
What do you do when a hitman shows up at your door on Christmas Eve? Why, invite him in for pie and whiskey, of course! Starring Pierce Brosnan, Greg Kinnear and Hope Davis, The Matador was one of the most sadly-underrated comedies of the last decade.
"Come on! It'll be a good time!"
"Oh, so now killing people is a good time?"
"Can be."
Stumbled across this on Sittin' On A Backyard Fence, Jill Kittenbiscuits' blog.
There are other equally nutty takes on Citizen Kane. I recommend you pay Kittenbiscuits a visit.
Katie-Bar-The-Door and I are back in town, and with half-a-dozen blog-a-thons now in my rearview mirror, I'll be getting back to my regular blogging schedule shortly with a series of reviews of the films of 1918, starting with D.W. Griffith's little-seen World War I movie, Hearts of the World.
I'll also be going back and responding to comments you left last week, so don't despair—the Monkey still loves you.
Speaking of love, while Katie and I were on the road, we caught the Cirque du Soleil's performance of Love at the Mirage in Las Vegas. Being a fan of both the Beatles—I probably know more about them than I do about the movies—and the Cirque du Soleil, I was pretty pumped to see the show. My review is the same as Katie's: best soundtrack ever, worst Cirque du Soleil, if by Cirque du Soleil, you think of acrobats, jugglers, trapeze artists, contortionists, death-defying stunts and Zen-like beauty—basically, Ed Sullivan on acid, for those of you who are old enough to understand the reference.
Not that I would discourage a Beatles fan from seeing the show.
But at one point, the performers covered the audience with white canvas, a nod, I assumed, to John and Yoko's penchant for making public pronouncements in the late 1960s from the inside of a laundry bag. Lennon's explanation had something to do with the notion that if you couldn't judge a person based on superficial qualities such as looks, race or gender, you'd wind up focusing on their words, which for an artist is a synonym for substance.
And it occurred to me as we were inside this bag at the Cirque du Soleil that through the internet, we have achieved something like Lennon's ideal, the freedom to speak our minds anonymously. Because I doubt our parents actually named any of us Monkey or Muleboy or Thingy or Plain Chicken. Of course, the result is, ironically, a mixed bag—with anonymity comes freedom, but also a lack of accountability, magnifying both what is best and worst about us as human beings.
But you already knew that.
What you may not have known is that while we were out of town, Alfred Hitchcock narrowly defeated Akira Kurosawa for the title of greatest director of all time. At least on this blog. Congratulations, Hitch. I'm sure this makes up for the sting of never winning an Oscar.
And speaking of Hitchcock, Monty over at All Good Things has been hosting a best Hitchcock film tournament. The finals for the 1950s (minus North By Northwest) Bracket is set—Rear Window versus The Man Who Knew Too Much. You can click here to vote.
I imagine the 1959-to-the-end-of-Hitchcock's-career Bracket will start this weekend. You got to figure, what, North By Northwest versus Psycho for the chance to join the final four in that one, right?
... and One Shock of Recognition Runs the Whole Circle 'Round"—Herman Melville or Art Linkletter or possibly even Hunter S. Thompson, but certainly not me.
Not that anyone has ever mistaken me for a genius—least of all me (I myself subscribe to Henri-Frédéric Amiel's definition which is that talent does easily what most people find difficult, while genius does easily what talent can't do at all)—but that process of an idea passing on from hand to hand is a pretty apt description of the internet, and is one of the happiest reasons for blogging.
In this case, once upon a time, Danny Peary wrote a book called Alternate Oscars ...
... which I bought and took to heart and started my own alternate Oscar list, which I e-mailed to mister muleboy who in turn announced at The Mouth O' The Mule that I would be starting a movie blog of my own ...
... which would lead me to eventually post about Mary Pickford's performance in My Best Girl which would inspire a comment from the host of Carole & Co. pointing out that Carole Lombard had had a bit part in Pickford's movie ...
... which led to a post about Lombard ...
... which led Carole & Co. to send an e-mail asking me to participate in Carole-tennial+3, which led to my inclusion of this photo of Carole in my post for the blogathon ...
... which indirectly inspired this sketch by Alex Ashman, an illustrator/animator and longtime follower of the Mythical Monkey living in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Now if The Mouth O' The Mule or Carole & Co. or, for that matter, Danny Peary picks up on Alex's portrait of Carole Lombard and re-posts it, the shock of recognition will have run the circle 'round ...
Postscript: And now we've come full circle ...
"That's Typing" Tuesday, in which I share unpolished, unpublished writings from my vast store of unpolished, unpublished writings. On Tuesdays.
From today's comic strip, Pickles:
"That's Typing" Tuesday, in which I share unpolished, unpublished writings from my vast store of unpolished, unpublished writings. On Tuesdays.
My post about Anita Loos yesterday inspired this additional thought: that during the silent era, Hollywood was a wide-open town as far as opportunities for women were concerned. Not just limited to the latest pretty face, women had a chance to direct, produce and especially write—hell, Mary Pickford owned her own studio and distribution company.
Indeed, I've read that more than half the screenwriters in Hollywood during the silent era were women—certainly the good ones were: in addition to Anita Loos, there was Frances Marion (who'd later win two Oscars), Jeanie Macpherson (who wrote all the good movies Cecil B. DeMille ever made) and June Mathis (who made Rudolph Valentino a star and later adapted Ben-Hur for the screen).
When the sound era forced studios to build thousands of new theaters and then the Great Depression soon after decimated the marketplace, Hollywood's moguls were forced to borrow millions of dollars to keep their studios afloat. Much like today, these money men were more interested in seeing a return on their investment than they were in art, experimentation or newfangled ideas (even the ones that worked). Powerful women made them nervous and women in the workplace, generally, smacked of unorthodox business practices, so women were out—no more Lois Weber's, no more Alice Guy's.
Because let's face it: nobody fears the future quite like a man with money.
And Kathryn Bigelow's Oscar (The Hurt Locker) notwithstanding, Hollywood's women have never really recovered, at least not in terms of the percentages working in high places. Something to think about the next time you congratulate yourself for being smarter than your grandparents.
"That's Typing" Tuesday, in which I share unpolished, unpublished writings from my vast store of unpolished, unpublished writings. On Tuesdays.
I don't know how you first became acquainted with Buster Keaton, arguably the greatest film comedian of all time, but my introduction came from the unlikeliest of sources, a book about the Beatles. In The Beatles in Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night: A Complete Pictorial Record of the Movie, editor J. Philip di Franco interviewed director Richard Lester and asked him the following question:
"How and why do you cut, cross cut, jump cut or shoot a particular scene this way or that. What theory do you use to make films?"
To which Lester responded, quite candidly:
"Well, I think all those things are valid, but you lose the kind of cutting that normally exists. The focus puller has lost focus because he has gone the wrong way with the handle, or the opening and the end of the shot are excellent, and the middle is blurred so you lose it, and you have to piece it where you couldn't see who is in it.
"That is the first kind of editing for me. If you want to go into it, I will show you shot by shot, list by list, of where you are saving a catastrophe by editing. For example, in A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, Buster Keaton was picked for a role in which he does what he usually does, which is be physical. He arrived dying, in the last stages of an incurable disease and we find that he can walk, but certainly not run. Therefore we have to find a double for Buster Keaton. When you have a shot where he is supposed to be coming along, he does a bit of action, bumps into a tree and falls down, you end up using eight cuts because Buster can't run that distance. So you have to have a shot to establish that it is Buster, then the long shot for the double, then another shot to remind everybody that is Buster, then another long shot, etc. ..., a close-up for him when he says his lines. All that is totally wrong in terms of one's principles, one's hopes, one's feelings toward the scene, but that is what you do. That is number two. I am afraid that I must stick everything that you said down at the end at number three."
Now when I first read that, when I was, I'm guessing, seventeen, I didn't know Buster Keaton from Diane Keaton (or for that matter, Buster Olney, the ESPN sports analyst who was to become a buddy of mine in college—Katherine says "hey," Buster), and it was a long time before I finally saw a Buster Keaton movie, but that story always stuck with me.
Strange knowing the unbearably sad ending of the story before I ever knew its beginning, but there you have it.
Anyway, for reasons I don't understand, I found myself regaling Katie-Bar-The-Door with that yarn this morning, and then I realized that thanks to the efforts of my little brother, who rescued the Beatles book from the trash pile at my mother's house during one move or another, I could share it with you, verbatim.
Now you have a glimpse into what it must be like to be married to a film buff with a pack rat's memory and a penchant for obscure anecdotes. Lucky you.
"That's Typing" Tuesday, in which I share unpolished, unpublished writings from my vast store of unpolished, unpublished writings. Usually, although not always, on Tuesdays.
When I was a kid, sportswriters used to say that a football team that had three quarterbacks was a football team that didn't have a quarterback. And I have to say, a movie available in five different version is a movie begging for a sixth.
Nevertheless. Raymond Chandler wrote in his introduction to a collection of short stories, Trouble Is My Business: "There are things in my stories which I might like to change or leave out altogether. To do this may look simple, but if you try, you find you cannot do it at all. You will only destroy what is good without having any noticeable effect on what is bad. You cannot recapture the mood, the state of innocence, much less the animal gusto you had when you had very little else."
While a director (or any other artist) might have a right to revisit the work of his youth, at some point the effort becomes counterproductive, not only diminishing the quality of the original work, but also robbing him or her of the energy to create something new. I mean, I can't help wondering what movies Francis Ford Coppola and Ridley Scott could have made and never will while they re-worked Apocalypse Now and Blade Runner.
To quote Woody Allen paraphrasing Balzac, "There goes another novel."
Postscript: By the way, I used to wonder the same thing about George Lucas as he fiddled with the original Star Wars trilogy, speculating idly what movies he could have been making had he not been revisiting old ones. Unfortunately, the answer turned out to be The Phantom Menace ...
"That's Typing" Tuesday, in which I share unpolished, unpublished writings from my vast store of unpolished, unpublished writings. On Tuesdays.
I don't know what you were up to yesterday—me, I was watching my 401(k) go down the tubes. Again. That's twice in the last three years.
Last time (way back in 2008, if you can remember that far), things got so bad, we were about a week away from trading beaver pelts for food. This time? Well, let's just say if we have to resort to cannibalism, Katie-Bar-The-Door could last a pretty good while on my carcass.
But that won't do me much good.
They used to say Social Security was the "third rail" of American politics. Now it's compromise, the dirtiest word you can still say on daytime television, as long as you never admit to engaging in it. But while I can appreciate idealism and adherence to principle as much as the next guy, in this case, compromise is the principle at stake—else we're all just frogs swimming across the river with a scorpion on our backs.
Anyway, in honor of the latest economic meltdown, here's D.W. Griffith's 1909 short A Corner In Wheat, a National Film Registry selection that stands for the proposition that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
"That's Typing" Tuesday, in which I share unpolished, unpublished writings from my vast store of unpolished, unpublished writings. On Tuesdays.
From a series of e-mails exchanged between my older brother and myself.
older brother: Saw the write up on your blog about carole lombard. Mom's aunt Mary was her "hands model" during the 40's. At least according to mom, aunt Mary was. But in keeping with the fisher's luck, carole Lombard was killed in a plane crash and thus ended mary's career. I have no idea if this true but it's a family legend and makes a good story.
Mythical Monkey: that is a great story -- in fact, I need a post in the morning for my "That's Typing Tuesday" series. what was Aunt Mary's last name. do you remember?
older brother: i don't. our grandmother's maiden name was "shelton", right? this would have been her sister i think. i would ask someone, but [you] are the only person i know that may remember such things. it's sad that i know so little--never really cared until i got older.
Mythical Monkey: sometimes i think i'd like to know more family history, and other times i think everytime i learn something new about the past, i wish i hadn't learned it.
That's Typing Tuesday, in which I share unpolished, unpublished writings from my vast store of unpolished, unpublished writings. On Tuesdays.
That's Typing Tuesday, in which I occasionally share unpolished, unpublished writings from my vast store of unpolished, unpublished writings. On Tuesdays.
Me, I love Christmas movies—It's A Wonderful Life, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Scrooge (both the 1951 and 1970 versions), Miracle On 34th Street (1947 only), How The Grinch Stole Christmas. And I could watch little Ralphie Parker's quest for an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle (with a compass in the stock!) twenty-four hours a day if only some cable channel would think of it.
Katie-Bar-The-Door and I are back in town, and with half-a-dozen blog-a-thons now in my rearview mirror, I'll be getting back to my regular blogging schedule shortly with a series of reviews of the films of 1918, starting with D.W. Griffith's little-seen World War I movie, Hearts of the World.
And it occurred to me as we were inside this bag at the Cirque du Soleil that through the internet, we have achieved something like Lennon's ideal, the freedom to speak our minds anonymously. Because I doubt our parents actually named any of us Monkey or Muleboy or Thingy or Plain Chicken. Of course, the result is, ironically, a mixed bag—with anonymity comes freedom, but also a lack of accountability, magnifying both what is best and worst about us as human beings.
I imagine the 1959-to-the-end-of-Hitchcock's-career Bracket will start this weekend. You got to figure, what, North By Northwest versus Psycho for the chance to join the final four in that one, right?
Not that anyone has ever mistaken me for a genius—least of all me (I myself subscribe to Henri-Frédéric Amiel's definition which is that talent does easily what most people find difficult, while genius does easily what talent can't do at all)—but that process of an idea passing on from hand to hand is a pretty apt description of the internet, and is one of the happiest reasons for blogging.
... which I bought and took to heart and started my own alternate Oscar list, which I e-mailed to mister muleboy who in turn announced at The Mouth O' The Mule that I would be starting a movie blog of my own ...
... which would lead me to eventually post about Mary Pickford's performance in My Best Girl which would inspire a comment from the host of Carole & Co. pointing out that Carole Lombard had had a bit part in Pickford's movie ...
... which led to a post about Lombard ...
... which led Carole & Co. to send an e-mail asking me to participate in Carole-tennial+3, which led to my inclusion of this photo of Carole in my post for the blogathon ...
... which indirectly inspired this sketch by Alex Ashman, an illustrator/animator and longtime follower of the Mythical Monkey living in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Now if The Mouth O' The Mule or Carole & Co. or, for that matter, Danny Peary picks up on Alex's portrait of Carole Lombard and re-posts it, the shock of recognition will have run the circle 'round ...
My post about Anita Loos yesterday inspired this additional thought: that during the silent era, Hollywood was a wide-open town as far as opportunities for women were concerned. Not just limited to the latest pretty face, women had a chance to direct, produce and especially write—hell, Mary Pickford owned her own studio and distribution company.
Indeed, I've read that more than half the screenwriters in Hollywood during the silent era were women—certainly the good ones were: in addition to Anita Loos, there was Frances Marion (who'd later win two Oscars), Jeanie Macpherson (who wrote all the good movies Cecil B. DeMille ever made) and June Mathis (who made Rudolph Valentino a star and later adapted Ben-Hur for the screen).
When the sound era forced studios to build thousands of new theaters and then the Great Depression soon after decimated the marketplace, Hollywood's moguls were forced to borrow millions of dollars to keep their studios afloat. Much like today, these money men were more interested in seeing a return on their investment than they were in art, experimentation or newfangled ideas (even the ones that worked). Powerful women made them nervous and women in the workplace, generally, smacked of unorthodox business practices, so women were out—no more Lois Weber's, no more Alice Guy's.
And Kathryn Bigelow's Oscar (The Hurt Locker) notwithstanding, Hollywood's women have never really recovered, at least not in terms of the percentages working in high places. Something to think about the next time you congratulate yourself for being smarter than your grandparents.
I don't know how you first became acquainted with Buster Keaton, arguably the greatest film comedian of all time, but my introduction came from the unlikeliest of sources, a book about the Beatles. In The Beatles in Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night: A Complete Pictorial Record of the Movie, editor J. Philip di Franco interviewed director Richard Lester and asked him the following question:
"How and why do you cut, cross cut, jump cut or shoot a particular scene this way or that. What theory do you use to make films?"
"That is the first kind of editing for me. If you want to go into it, I will show you shot by shot, list by list, of where you are saving a catastrophe by editing. For example, in A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, Buster Keaton was picked for a role in which he does what he usually does, which is be physical. He arrived dying, in the last stages of an incurable disease and we find that he can walk, but certainly not run. Therefore we have to find a double for Buster Keaton. When you have a shot where he is supposed to be coming along, he does a bit of action, bumps into a tree and falls down, you end up using eight cuts because Buster can't run that distance. So you have to have a shot to establish that it is Buster, then the long shot for the double, then another shot to remind everybody that is Buster, then another long shot, etc. ..., a close-up for him when he says his lines. All that is totally wrong in terms of one's principles, one's hopes, one's feelings toward the scene, but that is what you do. That is number two. I am afraid that I must stick everything that you said down at the end at number three."
Now when I first read that, when I was, I'm guessing, seventeen, I didn't know Buster Keaton from Diane Keaton (or for that matter, Buster Olney, the ESPN sports analyst who was to become a buddy of mine in college—Katherine says "hey," Buster), and it was a long time before I finally saw a Buster Keaton movie, but that story always stuck with me.
Anyway, for reasons I don't understand, I found myself regaling Katie-Bar-The-Door with that yarn this morning, and then I realized that thanks to the efforts of my little brother, who rescued the Beatles book from the trash pile at my mother's house during one move or another, I could share it with you, verbatim.
When I was a kid, sportswriters used to say that a football team that had three quarterbacks was a football team that didn't have a quarterback. And I have to say, a movie available in five different version is a movie begging for a sixth.
To quote Woody Allen paraphrasing Balzac, "There goes another novel."
"That's Typing" Tuesday, in which I share unpolished, unpublished writings from my vast store of unpolished, unpublished writings. On Tuesdays.
"That's Typing" Tuesday, in which I share unpolished, unpublished writings from my vast store of unpolished, unpublished writings. On Tuesdays.
Posts
