Sole Survivor: 1970 TV Movie Is Quite Good

Posted on 15 Sep 2016 by Frank Moraes

For a long (and in retrospect, lovely) time, my only mention on the internet was in the “Thanks” section of the Star Trek TNG List of Lists. I have no recollection why I was in it. My first wife was a big Star Trek fan. And I always try to get into whatever my wives are interested in. So I wasn’t completely immune to the excitement of last week’s 50th anniversary of the show. So I posted something on Facebook about how our future wouldn’t be that way and told people they should watch Sole Survivor, which stars William Shatner.

Sole Survivor is a made-for-television film from 1970. Shatner plays a fairly small role, even if he does get second billing. It is basically an hour and a half episode of The Twilight Zone, but in color. It tells the story of a flight crew on a bombing mission to Southern Europe during World War II. On their way back to Benghazi, their navigator freaks out and parachutes from the plane. As a result, the plane gets lost and the crew crash lands in the desert (thinking it the Mediterranean in the night). They all quickly die and hang out there as ghosts for 17 years when the cowardly navigator (now a general) returns.

Lady Be Good

The story is loosely (Very loosely; I mean: ghosts?!) on the US Air Force bomber Lady Be Good. It was thought to have crashed in the Mediterranean Sea in 1943. But in 1958, it was discovered over 400 miles inside Libya. Apparently, because of the wind and the sand, the desert looks very much like the ocean from the air at night. In 1960, five of the nine crewmen’s bodies were discovered. They were located 80 miles north of the crash site (indicating that they had walked about 60 miles after landing). This group managed to stay alive for eight days with just a single single canteen of water. Three of the others continued further north. Harold Ripslinger managed to walk a total of 200 miles from the crash site. The bombardier, John Woravka, apparently died on impact because of a parachute malfunction.

Sole Survivor Plot

Such a tragic, but ultimately heroic, story is obviously good fodder for a screenplay. It was the first produced screenplay by television veteran, Guerdon Trueblood — and quite a debut! I didn’t plan to watch it. I posted it on Facebook, so I had to load the film on YouTube. But since it was open in a tab, I decided to watch a bit to get the feel of it. And I was drawn in. The five dead crewmen are remarkably well differentiated, even if they are all stereotypes. And to deal with all the boredom of 17 years in the desert, they play baseball three times per day. And this is paid off beautifully in the open-ended and poignant ending.

A Deeper Film Than Most

The other half of the film, which involves living humans, is not as interesting. But it does deal with the issue of cowardice in a far more nuanced way than I can imagine it being dealt with today on network television. There were two aspects of it that are worth mentioning. The first is that there are acts of cowardice, not cowards. One act doesn’t define a life. I rather like that. At the same time, it shows that cowardice can become a way of life — the banality of cowardice, if you will. The second aspect was more vague, but it had to do with taking responsibility (if only to yourself) when you harm others.

Sole Survivor is hardly a great film. But it works and it is engaging. Almost the entire film has a single location. It shows what you can do with a simple set, fine actors, and a solid script. And the version available on YouTube looks fantastic. It’s worth checking out, but not going out of your way for. I think there is a clear enough reason why it has never been released on DVD.

Sole Survivor image taken from IMDb, licensed under Fair Use.

Joe Don Baker Is a Terrible Actor: Charley Varrick Edition

Posted on 10 Sep 2016 by Frank Moraes

Joe Don Baker is one of the worst actors who ever lived. But let’s hold that thought.

For Labor Day, I treated myself to a video. I made my way over the last remaining video store in town and picked up Charley Varrick. It’s interesting that this video store is the one that all these years was the only one that stocked classic, cult, and psychotronic films. Funny that! But anyway, I remember first seeing it in 1995 on late night television and being very excited that it contained the line A Pair of Pliers and a Blowtorch. I’m pretty sure it is where Quentin Tarantino got the line for Pulp Fiction.

So I was excited to see it again. And it is a fine film. Yes, there are problems. It was made in 1973, and the sexism is striking. The soundtrack makes the film sound like a generic cop show from two years later. It also tries too hard to humanize the main character by having him twice kiss his dead wife and then look at her picture mournfully. Just the same, Walter Matthau does a great job of projecting his loss right up to the point where there is the semi-obligatory moment at the end of second act where he has sex with the executive secretary and girlfriend of the bad guy.

Joe Don Baker Harms Charley Varrick

But what most hurts Charley Varrick is Joe Don Baker. Throughout the film, he smokes a pipe. This is an old director’s trick. “The guy can’t act?! Well give him a prop to play with!” Baker plays the “tough” guy. He finds things amusing, except when he doesn’t. He “don’t sleep with whores”; but he does apparently beat up women so they will sleep with him. Like I said: the film is sexist — often in a very creepy way. But Baker’s performance from scene to scene could easily be for totally different movies.

There is a key moment in the film where Joe Don Baker is torturing Andrew Robinson. It’s really amazing because it’s just the two of them. Robinson is a fine actor. He’s fully engaged with the role. And there’s Joe Don Baker who floats through the scene, because — What the hell?! — there’s blood and stunts. Who’s going to notice? And Baker has no clue who his character is anyway. And given his other work, it’s hard to believe Baker would be able to do anything with a well-formed character anyway.

There Is a Character There

Don’t get me wrong: I understand what the screenwriters were going for. The character needs to be cocky to set up the end. But it it isn’t difficult to establish cockiness. And Joe Don Baker doesn’t establish cockiness so much as emptiness. There is nothing under the surface. Normally, I blame directors for bad cinematic acting. But in this case, I suspect that Baker was just part of the deal. (I don’t know if Baker was on-board before Walking Tall became a hit.) Almost no directors can simply fire a “star.” And I suspect that the great Don Siegel had lots on his mind.

Still, Joe Don Baker does almost ruin the film. I really want to re-cut Charley Varrick. I suspect that you could cut most of his character’s scenes out of the film. After all, early on, it is established that he is a Badass™. There’s no need to establish him as a man of principle or a man that any woman outside a mental ward would find attractive. Just establish that he’s a force to be reckoned with by having him punch the black guy, then have him on the trail of Varrick, and then (Thank you, Jesus!) show him blown up.

I think ultimately, that’s all we can ask of any action film: that it show Joe Don Baker being blown up.

Image of Charley Varrick poster licensed under Fair Use, via Wikipedia.

Film and Book Dean Spanley

Posted on 01 Sep 2016 by Frank Moraes

Film and Book Comparison

As I’ve mentioned many times, the 2008 film Dean Spanley is one of my very favorites. A big part of this is that it is mostly the story of a father and son. I tend to be an easy mark for such stories. Indeed, I tend to like any stories about men who interact in a genuine way instead of the stereotyped “punching each other on the shoulder” way. Thus, when I first approached Lord Dunsany’s novella My Talks with Dean Spanley, I was disappointed. There is no father and son. And the male relationships are more the kinds of stereotypes that I dislike.

Don’t take this to mean that My Talks with Dean Spanley is bad. In its way, it’s just as good as the film. But it is direct. And the whole story is told through a haze of alcohol intoxication. This makes for a very amusing read. The book is about a dean in the Church of England who seems to have memories of being a dog in a past life. In the film, this is also true; but it acts mostly in the service of bringing the narrator and his father together.

My Talks With Dean Spanley Summary

The novella is written in the first person. It starts, “Were I to tell how I came to know that Dean Spanley had a secret, I should have to start this tale at a point many weeks earlier.” This departs completely from the film, where the dean’s secret comes about by chance, well into the narrative. In the book, the narrator tells us that he is a scientist and that he wants to publish a study of reincarnation for his western comrades so that they can better understand it. He does this using the well-known scientific tool of getting his subject drunk.

This does work. When drunk enough, Dean Spanley speaks forthrightly about his life as a dog. And based upon the technology that he remembers, the narrator is even able to roughly date this past life. But very quickly, the dean becomes disinclined to drink enough when dining with the narrator. Luckily, the narrator befriends a man named Wrather, who is quite the drinker and is fond of giving advice from his father, “Never trust a teetotaler or a man that wears elastic-sided boots.” The narrator feels that if Wrather joins their dinners, he can get the dean to the proper level of intoxication.

Drunker, Drunker

This too works. But Wrather eventually screws up by offending the dean and bringing him back to reality. So then the dean must be convinced to dine again with Wrather under the pretense that he needs to be around other men who know how to drink responsibly. Eventually even this fails. Finally, a grand dinner is given with the Maharajah of Haikwar. It is a stunning success. Dean Spanley reveals all, including the details of the secret dog religious belief that once man teaches dog the secret of fire, man and dog will be equals. There’s just one problem.

None of the narrator, Wrather, nor the Maharajah can remember what the dean said. They were all too drunk! And the dean is soon after promoted to bishop and so will have little to do with the likes of the narrator and Wrather.

In the film, the biggest obstacles are getting the Tokay. This is not an issue at all in the book. Instead, it is all about getting Dean Spanley past his reticence to get really drunk. As a result, there’s the wonderful catch-22 denouement. It also serves to make the narrator and Wrather end up as close friends, unlike in the movie where it is implied that the dean and Wrather may go on their own adventure together (as they did in their past lives).

Satirical Targets

Lord Dunsany’s satire takes aim at any number of life’s foibles. He makes fun of everyone: clergy and scientists; drunks and teetotaler; dogs and cats. This last bit is particularly interesting, given that Dunsany was president of a local RSPCA. But he is savage to dogs, although in a way that is indicative of one who has spent a lot of time with them. Dogs are disgusting, and this is presented in much detail.

There is also a remarkable moment in the novella at the end of Chapter 8. Dean Spanley mentions coming upon another dog that had been trapped in a tunnel it had dug. The narrator asks, “And what did you do for him?” The dean replies, “He was nobody I knew.” In the middle of such an amusing story, this moment is shocking. But it isn’t just the reader. Wrather is livid. He says, “If one thinks one’s a dog, one should think one is a decent kind of a dog.” No Lassie was our dean.

The Book Stands Alone

Most people who read My Talks with Dean Spanley after seeing the movie are disappointed. That’s understandable. Normally books are far more detailed than movies. In this case, screenwriter Alan Sharp built a mansion out of Lord Dunsany’s cottage. But that cottage is a fine one. And I guarantee, you will laugh much more in it than in Sharp’s glorious mansion.

Just How Expensive Is the Tokay in Dean Spanley

A big part of the film Dean Spanley is the difficulty that Henslowe Fisk has in acquiring Tokay — and just how expensive it is. When he finds his first bottle, he asks how much it is, and Wrather says to him, as though doing a favor, “Five guineas for you.” Fisk is shocked, “Five guineas?! That’s a bit bloody steep!” Wrather cheekily responds, “These little things were sent to try us, as the man said of the Pygmy judge.”

But Fisk, having no choice pays the five guineas. Now, as an American, I don’t know much about British currency. So I had no idea what they were talking about. What is a guinea? Is it like a pound? And just how much does five guineas represent.

How Much Would I Pay?

The more I thought about it, the more I approached the problem internally. How much money would make me react that way? I figured it couldn’t be as little as a couple hundred dollars. That’s a lot of money for a bottle of wine. But he’s got to understand that this isn’t going to be cheap. He’s only talking to Wrather because literally no one else has it for sale at any cost. So if I were in his situation, I would gladly pay several hundred bucks.

On the other hand, if it were $10,000, it would be a deal-breaker. At that price, I would simply go to the Dean and tell him I had heard from my source and that he wasn’t able to get me the Tokay. Given that the Dean was only going because of the Tokay, I’m sure he would respond with something like, “It is all for the best because I just found out I need to have dinner that night with the Bishop.” And that would be that.

As a result, I figured it had to be in the range of $1,000. Maybe it was just a bit less, or twice as much, but it had to be in that range. That is the amount of money I would pay to both do something I really wanted to and to save face. Given that Fisk and I are both roughly as rich as each other (at least until his father dies), I figure this would apply to Fisk as well as it does to me.

What Is a Guinea?

British currency — like most of its units of measure — is a mess. As All About Romance has noted, “The monetary system of Great Britain can be very confusing to the average American reader, especially since the system until fairly recently, was not a decimal one.” For an example, I wrote an article called Numeracy in Shakespeare in Love. I noted there that there were 240 Pennies in a Pound. Who but the British would come up with a system like that?

Well, a Guinea is worth one Pound and one Shilling. There were 20 Shillings in a Pound, so a Guinea is worth 1.05 Pounds. In other words, it really is a useless unit of measure. But there you have it. I’m only throwing it in for completeness, but for most purposes, a Guinea’s as good as a pound.

The Guinea Over Time

Concertina has a great webpage to help us answer this question, Calculate Modern Values of Historic Concertina Prices. It allows you to enter a year from 1830 through 2000 with an amount in Pounds, Shillings, and Pence. Then it spits back its year 2000 value in Pounds and decimal Pence.

Before we can use the calculator, however, we have to date the film. The book was published in 1936. But that doesn’t help us all that much. For one thing, the movie and book are quite different. And the Second Boer War plays a major role in the movie. It ended in 1902. Given that Jeremy Northam (who played Fisk) was only 47 at the time of the film, he would have been 13 at the end of the war and so his younger brother would not have been in it.

Overall, the feel of the film is that it exists in that time between the Boer War and World War I. For one thing, cars are brand new. The one in the film has a single headlight, and looks more typical of cars around 1910. This is certainly not the 1930s. But since the younger brother’s death seems to be something in the distant past, I will place it right before World War I: 1914.

5 Guineas in 1914

Assuming this, the calculator finds 5 1914 Guineas to be worth £1,385.11. That’s in the year 2000. According to Macro Trends, the exchange rate at that time was 1.65. In the year 2008 (when the film was made), the exchange rate was 1.98. So we can set the value to £1,662.13.

That gives us rather a larger number in dollars: $3,291.02. But it’s important to note that the exchange rate jumps around quite a lot. The rate is 1.31 right now, which brings the number to $1,814.49.

Conclusion

Although my gut feeling seems to have been a bit on the low side — about half what the Tokay actually cost, it was definitely in the ball park. It shows how well you can do with these kinds of calculations. And I, at least, think it’s pretty fun to play around with this kind of thing.

If you haven’t seen Dean Spanley, you really owe it to yourself to see it. It is filmmaking at its finest. It isn’t psychotronic at all. It’s just a good film, made for adults. If your parents are still alive, it’s a nice one to share with them.

Image of My Talks with Dean Spanley cropped from one at Amazon. Licensed under Fair Use.

The Only Part of Doctor Faustus Anyone Knows

Posted on 24 Aug 2016 by Frank Moraes

Christopher Marlowe - Doctor Faustus Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies!
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
I will be Paris, and for love of thee,
Instead of Troy, shall Wertenberg be sacked;
And I will combat with weak Menelaus,
And wear thy colors on my plumed crest;
Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,
And then return to Helen for a kiss.
Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars;
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter
When he appeared to hapless Semele;
More lovely than the monarch of the sky
In wanton Arethusa’s azured arms;
And none but thou shalt be my paramour!

—Christopher Marlowe
Doctor Faustus

Film Reviews and All That Jazz

Posted on 21 Aug 2016 by Frank Moraes

I watched All That Jazz last night. I saw it in the theater in 1980. And I’ve seen in on video since then. I quite liked it when I first saw it, and my appreciation of it has only grown. But my memory of the time is that the film reviews weren’t that great.

The film reviews generally applauded much of the film — including the dance numbers. After all, it was a Bob Fosse film, and movie “critics” might not know much, but they do know enough to not knock Fosse on that score. But when it comes to films like All That Jazz, you can depend upon these hacks to be more interested in what they bring into the film than what’s up there on the screen.

Of course, now the film is a classic. It tends to happen. Over time, people are better able to see a film on its own terms. And even at the time, it was loved by more sophisticated film goers than the ombudsmen who call themselves critics. It shared the Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or with another great film, Kagemusha. And it did garner a lot of Academy Award nominations, but largely lost out to the tiresome Kramer vs Kramer.

I was curious to check out what film reviews said back then.

Film Reviews Then and Now

Wikipedia has an annoying tendency to include a lot of recent film reviews in its “Critical Reception” section. The new film reviews should be classified under “Critical Reputation.” Still, there is some information on the old reviews. The reception among “critics” at the time is pretty well summed up by this quote from Variety, “All That Jazz is a self-important, egomaniacal, wonderfully choreographed, often compelling film.”

But I was surprised to see that many of the more recent film reviews haven’t changed much. Leonard Maltin gave the film 2.5 starts out of 4 — an indication he doesn’t even think it’s good? He called it “self-indulgent” and “negative” and “buried in pretensions.” What?! All works of art are self-indulgent. Do they all have to be “positive”? And “buried in pretensions” is meaningless.

Did You Even Watch the Film?

However, for a perfect example of just how bad film reviews are, you can’t go wrong with with Time Out London. Back in 2008, they published a very brief review. Here is the last third of it:

Fellini-esque moments add little but pretension; and scenes of a real open-heart operation, alternating with footage of a symbolic Angel of Death in veil and white gloves, fail even in terms of the surreal.

I hate when people throw around Fellini to explain any kind of film structure that isn’t traditional. It isn’t accurate, although Fellini (along with countless other directors) clearly did influence Fosse. But it’s also unfair to Fellini. He was a lot more than 8½ and Amarcord. But leave that aside.

The end of the sentence is factually wrong: “scenes of a real open-heart operation, alternating with footage of a symbolic Angel of Death in veil and white gloves, fail even in terms of the surreal.” Such a sequence might well fail to be surreal. Of course, no such sequence is in the film. The surgery footage is intercut with the film producers discussing Joe Gideon’s possible death with their insurance company. The conclusion is that if Gideon dies, they will make a half million dollars. I don’t have a simple word for what Fosse was going for — “irony” is close — but “surreal” is not it.

Why Film Reviews Suck

The best film reviews generally reflect a single engaged viewing. Too many involve a distracted viewing. But film reviews like this are so front-loaded with opinions as to be journalistic malpractice. Whoever wrote the review (it has no byline) probably saw the film at some point — maybe when it was first out, 28 years before the review was written. It’s not fair to the film. And it’s not fair to the reader. But that’s what film reviews are all about.

All That Jazz and Death

Posted on 19 Aug 2016 by Frank Moraes

Thank you! Thank you! Wonderful! Wonderful!

Folks! What can I tell you about my next guest? This cat allowed himself to be adored, but not loved. And his success in show business was matched by failure in his personal relationship bag. Now, that’s where he really bombed. And he came to believe that work, show business, love, his whole life, even himself and all that jazz, was bullshit. He became numero uno game player — to the point where he didn’t know where the games ended, and the reality began. Like, for this cat, the only reality — is death, man.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me lay on you a so-so entertainer, not much of a humanitarian, and this cat was never nobody’s friend. In his final appearance on the great stage of life — Uh, you can applaud if you want to. — Mr Joe Gideon!

—O’Connor Flood
In All That Jazz

Image of All That Jazz taken from Amazon. Licensed under Fair Use.

How Seeing Disgraced Made Me See Theater Differently

Posted on 14 Aug 2016 by James Fillmore

I had a profound experience recently, watching the play Disgraced.

As a young man, I saw a lot of theater. It was mostly in school, but there were other times. As a result, I was trained to consider theater more “artistic” than film or television. And for the most part, it bored me stupid. It seemed more pretentious than anything. People at Shakespeare plays tittering to demonstrate they were educated enough to “get the jokes.”

I’ve always liked reading plays, though. I love Ibsen, Shaw, Wilson, Wilde, Williams, and yes, Shakespeare. And eventually I discovered Gore Vidal, who explained how many movies I admired were just filmed plays. I read Vidal’s play “The Best Man,” liked it. Saw the movie, liked it. So the ice was cracking — though I would have sworn to anyone it wasn’t!

A few years back the SO invited me to a play, “Two Pianos, Four Hands.” It’s about two old friends recalling their background as classically-trained pianists; they reminisce over their love of music and how stressful their classical training was. Possibly because the SO has shared similar stories, I found myself really enjoying the humor, the emotional moments, the music. (It’s a two-actor show, and you do need serious piano chops to perform in it.)

I was surprised. But I still thought of theater as either pretentious or Cats and refused to budge.

Disgraced

Two weeks ago, we were offered free tickets to a local production of Ayad Akhtar’s play, Disgraced. Well, I rarely turn down anything free. And it opened my eyes to a different side of why theater can be great.

The play is about a successful second-generation Pakistani-American lawyer. His Anglo wife is a budding artist, his friends from the law firm are Jewish and African-American, they live in Manhattan, they’ve got it all.

Until one day the lawyer’s nephew asks him for help. He knows an imam who has, almost certainly, been railroaded on phony terrorism charges by the FBI. The lawyer uncle doesn’t want any part of it. He’s an apostate; he’s angry about how Muslims are treated yet loathes the fundamentalist Islam he grew up in. Still, his nephew is sweet, his wife wants him to try, so he’ll see what he can do.

And then all hell breaks loose.

What progresses is one of the quickest transitions from “casual entertainment” to “intense drama” I’ve ever seen. And the entire play is just 90 minutes long. But it’s set up masterfully. When the tensions explode, you recall the hints of them before. Longterm relationships can sometimes be based on mutual affection overriding simmering resentments — it might only take a second for those resentments to boil over.

The Significant Other and the Holding of Hands

Now, the odd thing here isn’t that I enjoyed it. The work was personal and political, and the actors (particularly the lawyer) were magnificent. Of course I’d like it! What stunned me is how much the SO liked it.

The SO can handle drama in documentaries, no matter how dark or dense. But television or movies? No way! If a fictional show or film has too much tension, whether physical or emotional (and Disgraced has both), the SO hates it. A documentary shows you what happened, and history can sometimes be ugly. We shouldn’t turn away from ugly history — acknowledging it is how we get better. Yet the SO dislikes tense fiction, even in service of admirable reform goals; entertainment should not be stressful.

Afterward, I asked, “So you liked the play? I found it enormously tense!”

The reply: “It was. But after all the characters were horrible to each other, the actors came out for a curtain call and held hands.”

Rethinking Theater

And that made me think of a different way that theater is great. It’s not more artistic than film or television. But it’s more stylized, less “real.” You’re aware of set design, unnatural blocking, the possibility of catastrophe. It’s less faux-realistic than film and television; and sometimes that is a good thing — a very good thing.

Film and television have contributed to each other over the years — sometimes constructively, often less so. One example: television learned from film how images seen on a screen seem truer than reality. A cleverly-constructed political spot is more convincing than a live stump speech.

TV commercials (probably inspired by film cartoons and experimental cinema) demonstrated that quick images are often more effective than long stories. Now films rarely have coherent stories, they largely bounce from set-piece to set-piece with a logic that’s more visceral than meaningful.

How do you go about making the audience forget they are sitting in a chair, eating popcorn, and instead think they are watching something really happen? It’s an art film and television (and now internet visual media) have innovated over decades, and no doubt will continue.

And don’t get me wrong — I love it! I admire the craft and passion that goes into it. These days, I seem to be drawn to films that work less hard to put you inside the narrative with, for example, ever more complex special effects. I’m drawn to films with more compelling stories. Or ones that intentionally make you question the story’s logic or are bluntly self-aware.

This is essentially what theater always did, by its very nature.

A Change Has Come

I’m not going to convert. Films and televisions shows I get on DVD from the library are free. Theater costs money, and I am broke. But if I avoided theater as a young man because it seemed pretentious to me, now I’m learning that any art form can be pretentious. And some theater is more heartfelt and less pretentious than television or movies.

Basically, I’m being anti-McLuhan. Screw the medium. I prefer the message.

Image of Disgraced taken from poster, licensed under Fair Use.

The X-Files And Conspiracy Irresponsibility

Posted on 28 Jul 2016 by James Fillmore

The sci-fi geeks among you are probably aware that The X-Files returned recently, for a limited-miniseries run on Fox. I loathe the current sequel trend, but not on general principle. It’s because the sequels tend to be enormously lazy cash grabs. It’s perfectly fine to redo or add to existing material, if you have something worth adding. (The first few seasons of Sherlock are true to the original in spirit, and well-liked by Holmes nerds even though the stories differ wildly from Doyle’s originals.)

Like many people, I enjoyed The X-Files when it first aired in 1993. Its leads, as FBI agents investigating UFOs, Bigfoot, and such, played their encounters with monsters so dryly they seemed more like accountants than law enforcement. Or: DMV meets Dracula. While the show’s hints of an overarching, the sinister plot to cover up “The Truth” about UFOs was fun, suggesting that kooks everywhere were right all along. Although this had been stolen from, and done better in, Close Encounters, it was enjoyable transposed into scary-show format.

X-Files Loses Its Spark

Also like many people, I drifted away as the Sinister Plot became more labyrinthine. It lost its air of spooky silliness and drifted into a tedious mix of pretension and sloppiness. The show’s creator, Chris Carter, seemed not to realize he was pulling together bits from earlier popular successes (Twilight Zone, Close Encounters) and believed viewers tuned in for his “vision.”

“If the conspiracy is really as powerful as Mulder thinks it is, only collective action can change it. Only some version of democracy can stand up against it.” —James Surowiecki

The Sinister Plot got away from poking (not entirely harmless) fun at UFO and Bigfoot conspiracy buffs (at times, the show’s depiction of such could be downright mean-spirited). And it moved into much more irresponsible territory. In addition to covering up Roswell, and lying about abductions, the Bad Guys also assassinated JFK. And Dr King. Seriously. That’s really reprehensible.

(The episode where this is revealed mentions actual historical facts about Hoover’s attempts to smear King, and how hard-right elements considered him a communist threat. Maybe in Carter’s mind this information justified working such a tragedy into his monster serial. If so, Carter’s mind is unhinged.)

Giving X-Files Another Try

But, I have high admiration for Gillian Anderson as a performer, and some nostalgia over seeing her recreate the role which started her fine career. Plus, I like miniseries. American TV shows tend to have seasons which are way too long (cable has begun figuring this out.) So, I thought I’d give it a try.

Oh, boy.

Our FBI agents and now retired from the UFO biz. They had a kid who’d been genetically altered with alien DNA, whom they had to give up and never see again for the kid’s own safety or something. They are contacted by a Glenn Beck type, who wants their input on a big story he’s planning to break. They’re hesitant, being good liberals, but the Beck fellow knows his UFO lore, so maybe he’s not entirely an opportunistic TV liar.

Turns out Beck has an honest-to-God alien spaceship (or working copy, anyway), stashed in a hangar. Why? Oh, herein lies a tale. Brace yourselves. This is Scientology, Story of Xenu-worthy stuff.

When we started exploding A-bombs, it attracted the notice of space aliens, who came to save us from destroying ourselves. But the Big Mean Earth Bad Guys kept shooting down alien ships and learning from their technology. They built replicas of those ships to abduct people and perform genetic experiments involving, again, alien DNA. Also, stories of alien abduction helped distract the public from these Mean Bad Guys’ master scheme, which involves environmental devastation, obesity, consumerism run amok, sparking wars, and blowing up skyscrapers. This is all to justify the buildup of a surveillance/police state which will finally be unleashed after the next manufactured catastrophe to take over the world. Starting with America. Bwahahaha!

Where to start with this? Wouldn’t any aliens who mastered FTL travel to stop us from using atomic warfare realize we were pretty violent primates and, I dunno, keep their ships from being shot down? But the illogic isn’t worth going into.

The Same Old Thing — But Newer

What I do find bizarre is how this equates both right-wing fantasies (the Beck type moans about gun confiscation), left-wing reality talking points (global warming, the military/industrial/security complex), and conspiracy stuff (JFK again, UFOs, the World Trade Center), mashing them into a giant pile of equal Woes Upon Ours.

And I guarantee you, as usual, our FBI heroes will never be able to solve. One more layer upon one more layer to uncover… The Beck character is shut down. The Great Truth can never be revealed. “They” won’t allow it.

What the hell does Chris Carter think he’s doing with The X-Files? Making some profound statement about our troubled times? I suspect he’s a reasonably left-leaning guy with a very large bank account from his overpaid cinematic work, who thinks he’s providing “fun entertainment” with “a little meaning to it.” I suspect this because this is what Hollywood types with slightly leftist sympathies who enjoy their comfortable lifestyles very often say they think. You know, the new Star Wars has an anti-Mean War message! In there somewhere. Amidst all the explosions.

Collective Action and Conspiracy

As to the annoying persistence in our culture of how people with marginalized positions believe “if only I could make people understand this one truth, they’d realize I’m totally right,” let me refer you to almost every chat thread on the internet. (Not here! We’re quite civil when we disagree. Mostly…) Or The Atlantic review of The X-Files from 1997 by James Surowiecki, from which I take this fine quote: “If the conspiracy is really as powerful as Mulder thinks it is, only collective action can change it. Only some version of democracy can stand up against it.”

Exactly. And by turning real fears, genuine abuses of power, into plot material for a monster show, Chris Carter mocks the very notion of democracy. He says, in effect, “It’s all just another form of entertainment… but that’s OK, since it has a little meaning to it.” So, too, did Indiana Jones defeating the Nazis.

Star Trek and Doctor Who have more bite. And Terry Pratchett would eat this weak social commentary for breakfast.

But I still love Gillian Anderson.

Creation as a Spiritual Act

Posted on 25 Jul 2016 by Frank Moraes

Pillars of Creation - NASA After some wait, I got Carmine Rocco Linsalata’s Smollett’s Hoax. It it an academic treatise from the 1950s by a professor at Stanford. And it is about — What else?! — something that most people would think incredibly minor: an 18th century translation of Don Quixote, which was actually just a rewrite of an earlier translation. But I’m not here to discuss the book. (That will come later!) I’m here to talk about creation for its own sake.

As I was reading through the book, I was taken by a sidetrack that Linsalata made into The Works of Alexander Pope. It was related to what he was writing about, but a minor point. And in that capacity, he had read a 600 page book. He must have read many other such books that he never found a use for. And I find that so inspiring. Why am I reading all that Pope? Oh, it’s just part of my work. Now go away!

Slowing Down

I’ve always seen myself as the human equivalent of a terrier: smart and hyper. But as I’ve gotten older, how I long for the leisure of working slowly — just letting the thoughts accumulate — taking whatever course is necessary for the creation process. What a glorious luxury that is in this time where we always know what we are going to produce: a commodity.

If Linsalata were working today, his book would likely have been quite different. The story he has to tell is quite sensational. But he would have written it rather differently. He would not have assumed, as he did in 1956, that his readers would be fluent in English, French, and Spanish. And I haven’t finished the book; he’ll probably get to Latin and Greek soon enough. Clearly, he was writing only for intimates — and total freaks like me who will take the time to work out the other languages. (Thank Google!) But mostly, he was just writing for himself — for the pure pleasure of the creation itself.

A Forgotten Act of Creation

It’s interesting because a couple of days ago, I moved my office/living-quarters/life. And I came upon a play I had written, “MP3.” I had no memory of writing it. I remember thinking about doing it. The basic idea is that a dog is angry at his owner for using MP3s. You see, a big part of MP3 compression is the removal of stuff humans can’t hear. But dogs hear well. So MP3s would sound terrible to them. I had thought of it as a 5 minute play to be part of a collection of plays. But no, there it was, all neatly typed — about a half hour running time.

As I read through it, I was struck by how idiosyncratic it was. It made me laugh, of course. (I find myself hilarious. Really!) It is clearly something I wrote just for myself, however. Creation for creation’s sake.

In it, the dog recites a poem he wrote. The owner doesn’t understand it. The dog replies:

I thought it was very clear, but maybe you have to be a dog. I sent it to those pricks at Exquisite Corpse. Laura Rosenthal gave me a No Mas! And if I ever run into that pretentious Romanian no-talent Andrei Codrescu, I’m gonna bite him in a place he probably has nothing to bite.

My Bizarre Mind

So let’s see: a puppet ranting about getting turned down from an old poetry magazine, with reference to two little-known poets and a dick joke thrown in. But if that isn’t bad enough, it gets more and more crazy throughout. There’s a sequence on the wooing of women with a Shakespeare parody. Then, there is a mini rock concert. Then, the chorus begins a technical interview with Dr Knowitall — son of Mr Knowitall. (“My first name is ‘Doctor,’ just as my father’s first name was ‘Mister’.”) But the actors are informed that he is actually doing the wrong character — it should be Dr Whoopee (son of Mr Whoopee). A long discussion of cartoons follows, but eventually, Dr Knowitall (who turns out only to have read a Wikipedia page on MP3s that he didn’t understand) interviews the chorus who explains MP3s.

I can’t imagine that an audience would know what to make of it. It is utter chaos. The material jumps from high culture to science to low culture and back. The only thing that would be clear is the Abbott and Costello style word play throughout it. But why shouldn’t I write something just for me — creation for the pure pleasure of it? It is ultimately a spiritual question. After we pay the rent and buy the groceries, what are we to do? It is creation or spiritual death. And that may explain why I find such a religious country as the US to be so lacking in spirituality.

Comparison of a Mixed Bruce Campbell Double Feature

Posted on 22 Jul 2016 by Frank Moraes

I bought the “2 times the Bruce” Man with the Screaming Brain/Alien Apocalypse DVD[1] and finally sat down and watched both. I’m not going to provide a review of them. I’m going to do a comparison. Because it is remarkable that despite the films being mostly identical, one works brilliantly and the other is almost unwatchable.

Both films were shot in Bulgaria for the Sci-Fi Channel. They are both, well, Bruce Campbell films. The screenplays are both sloppy. The action is at best silly if not just bad. And otherwise, they are competently executed television movies. In fact, I thought the camera work was pretty good and the lighting often excellent. And the editor of both, Shawn Paper, is a real pro who makes both films work better than they ought to. So why is Man with the Screaming Brain such a joy and Alien Apocalypse such a tiresome bore?

Alien Apocalypse

As longtime readers know, I have my preferences, but ultimately my interest is in whether a film works on its own terms. And Alien Apocalypse does not. It tries. It has its moments, although none come quickly to mind. The biggest problem is that the script (by writer-director Josh Becker) doesn’t even try to be clever or wacky or whatever that is that makes a Bruce Campbell film a Bruce Campbell film. It seems to just assume everyone will “get” it because he’s doing his thing.

The plot is so predictable that it actually tricked me once. There was a scene late in the film that implied that the reformed bad guy had turned. But for people who watch a lot of movies, well, it’s an obvious reversal — the time when the questionable guy saves the hero from someone you would have never suspected. But no. It turns out the bad guy does exactly what the most naive film-goer would think. In addition, the dialog is just awful.

Glasshouses and All

Interestingly, I heard just a couple of minutes of the commentary for the film. And all I heard was Becker complaining that the stunt men in Bulgaria really weren’t that good. That’s certainly true; but they were far more competent than he was as the writer of this film.

One technical aspect of Alien Apocalypse that was bothersome was the unbelievable amount of looping and off camera audio. It’s very much like watching a spaghetti western. But I’ll concede that I would have found this charming if the script hadn’t been so terrible.

Man with the Screaming Brain

Maybe it isn’t right to compare Alien Apocalypse to Man with the Screaming Brain. The former film did, apparently, have only half the budget. And it had to pay for a fair amount of special effects — both digital and practical. But the problem with the film is not its look. What makes Man with the Screaming Brain work is that it is a soup of lunacy.

Co-written and directed by Campbell himself, Man With the Screaming Brain revels in its senselessness. If you don’t like this sequence, you might like the next. It has the feel of a farce. Ted Raimi spends most of the film drinking Red Bull, waiting around to be in the right place to drag yet another dead body back to the lab. His character is tasked with finding the others, but he’s not much interested. When one character gets away on a bus, he doesn’t think to get in his van and follow it.

More Than Just Silly

Most of the film is like that. Yet it has momentum. And it is all setting up pieces of the plot for a denouement that is quite satisfying. What’s more, as Man with the Screaming Brain moves along, we learn more about the principle characters. They become more human, even as two dead people are combined into a single brain, and the female lead gets placed into a robot — all gloriously indifferent to the first word in “science fiction.”

(Note: one of the funniest conventions in science fiction films of the 1950s was to put in some kind of plausible-sounding scientific explanation. For example, there was some reason that Glenn’s heart is not growing at the same rate as the rest of his body in The Amazing Colossal Man. Like anyone cares! I mean: let’s have more scenes in the circus tent!)

One Works, One Doesn’t

I think that ultimately, Man with the Screaming Brain works because Campbell (and co-writer David Goodman) didn’t have that much confidence in Bruce Campbell the actor. And so they give him a bunch of things to do — like pour milk all over his head because he claims his brain is on fire. It’s actually because, well, it’s totally insane. And if you don’t like that scene, some different insanity is 30 seconds away.

Alien Apocalypse just gives us Bruce going up the mountain and Bruce coming down the mountain. He gives a couple of over-the-top speeches along the way. There is side material, but it is banal: the slaves act like slaves; then they see Campbell as a demigod. You can skimp on just about anything in a movie. But if you don’t start with a good script (or just one with a lot of good material), you’re lost.

But you should see Alien Apocalypse, because it is parodied in My Name Is Bruce.

[1] It shouldn’t amaze me, but it still does, when people selling movies seem to care not in the least about those movies. At Amazon, under “special features” it states, “None.” For a Bruce Campbell collection, that’s kind of important, given his fan base. Special features are greatly valued by freaks like me. Well, both these DVDs are loaded with extras. Maybe it isn’t as good as the extras on My Name Is Bruce, but it’s still impressive. “None.” Just brilliant.

DVD cover licensed under Fair Use.

Larry Miller’s The Secret of Skiing

Posted on 21 Jul 2016 by Frank Moraes

When I was a teen, there was some comedy competition that ran on HBO or something. It was first done regionally. And then the winners of each regional one met. As I recall, Eddie Murphy won. Now I think Murphy is one of the best comedic actors ever. But I never thought much of him as a stand-up comic. It just doesn’t play to his skills. But in that competition, I discovered the comedian Larry Miller. He was interesting in one particular way: he was the only comedian who did a different routine in the final than he had done in the region — an indication of his greatness.

One of the routines he did was “The Secret of Skiing.” It was about 8 minutes long. But I found a version online that is 35 minutes long. I don’t know if the routine has grown over the years or if he just whittled it down to 8 minute for the competition. It doesn’t matter. It’s magnificent. He’s really an old style comedian. He reminds me of Shelley Berman, although I think Larry Miller is actually more talented.

You owe it to yourself to listen to this. After all these years, I laughed myself silly. Of course, my opinion of skiing is pretty much the same as his — and the goat’s (listen and you’ll know what I’m talking about).

Image of Larry Miller taken from the video, licensed under Fair Use.

A Somewhat Less Menacing Mark Zuckerberg

Posted on 20 Jul 2016 by Frank Moraes

This movie [Batman vs Superman] is not good, but I liked it more than I expected. Wonder Woman is in the film for some reason, and Jesse Eisenberg decides to play Lex Luthor as a somewhat less menacing, less dangerous version of Mark Zuckerberg.

I’m going to credit that last as an actual decision and not an accident, and it’s… interesting. Maybe the point is that Luthor has never conceived of a scheme to dominate the lives of everyday people so grandiose, and so completely successful, as Facebook? Would Batman or Superman have destroyed the algorithm on Zuckerberg’s dorm room window?

—Robert Farley
Movies on a Plane

Image cropped from Mark Zuckerberg Facebook SXSWi 2008 Keynote by Jason McELweenie, licensed under CC BY 2.0.