Beach Blanket Bingo, Caged, Extinction & More

EXTINCTION — A sci fi drama with social justice messages — “We’re evolving and not that different from each other and if we can see that we’ll have a future after all.”  I watched this on Netflix shortly after the first Zoom UMN OLLI class on science fiction and it relates precisely to that lecture about a caring society and how ethics is fundamental to a functioning democracy. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3201640/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3

HAIL CEASAR — A big wet kiss from the Coen Brothers to Hollywood’s Golden Era with a loose plot involving disgruntled screen writers and the kidnapping of a drunken has been actor (George Clooney.)  The Channing Tatum scene with the waltzing sailors is borrowed from the 1936 Fred and Ginger musical, “Follow the Fleet.”  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0475290/?ref_=nm_flmg_prd_4

LIL ABNER (1958) — Filmed in a Hollywood sound stage, the movie looks low budget and is based on characters created by cartoonist Al Capp who tilted to the far right politically.  Memories are stirred of my senior year at Lewis & Clark when our class staged a Lil Abner production with John Campbell as Abner and Bonnie ? as Daisy Mae.  (I was the publicity guy, which meant I made signs advertising the performance.) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053001/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO & DOUBLE DYNAMITE  — Sources of our discontent are the underlying themes making these 40s films worth viewing.  Guardians of the wealth don’t bother with eye contact when hearing complaints from underserving laborers. In “Dynamite” the bank manager fiddles with a pipe when the bank clerk played by Frank Sinatra states his case for a raise in pay. That he is surrounded by great amounts of cash is little comfort to Sinatra getting paid $42 but mobsters help him realize his dreams.   Civilians show cold indifference and open hostility to veterans returning from WW2 to hyper competitive capitalism and lousy jobs in William Wyler’s award-winning Best Years.  Mob hysteria prevails when a discharged ex-marine who never fought in the war is worshiped by town folks who demonstrate in the streets and then elect him mayor in Preston Sturges’ comedy Hail the Conquering Hero. https://www.filmsite.org/besty.html

BEACH BLANKET BINGO (1965 AIP) — The gospel according to Frankie & Annette: It may be -20 here but beautiful bodies are at Malibu now and Frankie is paying too much attention to blonde bombshell Linda Evans so Annette is making goo goo eyes at handsome John Ashley.  Jealousy!  (Hopefully all will be resolved before the closing credits.)  Don Rickles makes snide comments about Frankie being so short and silent era comic Buster Keaton is doing a fishing shtick in deep water.  Muscular Bonehed (Jody McCrea) has fallen for the mermaid (Marta Kristen.)  We’re swooning now as Frankie masters a smooth ballad with the Hondells Band doing backup.  Famed New York columnist Earl Wilson who chronicled Broadway’s golden era has a recurring bit part in Bingo.  Why?  Writer-director William Asher must have worshiped MGM musicals and adored celebrities.  Also featured is Timothy Carey who acted in the 1953 film noir “Crime Wave.”  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058953/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

CAGED (US) — Hope Emerson plays a quite unpleasant prison matron in this unsettling film noir where newbie inmate played by Eleanor Parker goes from relative innocence to hardened criminal.  So much for prisons as correctional facilities.  Agnes Moorhead is the crusading warden battling corrupt political cronies on the prison board.  Betty Grable is somewhere in  the mix of prisoners but I never found here.  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042296/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_2 

Home of the Brave, Call Me By Your Name & More

HOME OF THE BRAVE (2006)  Spokane never looked more inviting than it does in this excellent film that explores Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome affecting soldiers of the Iraq war, with a commanding Samuel L. Jackson performance.  From a vantage point, the downtown skyline is shown and there is a driving scene where I saw the Fox Theater and the Spokesman-Review tower lit up at night.  Spokane — an excellent choice for Americans coming home with scars that never heal. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0763840/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1

K-PAX (2001).  A very understated film about a psychiatrist (Jeff Bridges) in a sanitarium who treats a mysterious vagrant Kevin Spacey) who makes a big difference in the lives of other patients in this facility.  It’s pure serendipity that I found this tape in the Blue Box exchange recently.  What a find! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0272152/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER.  An award-winning film featuring Maggie Gylenhaal as a teacher obsessing over a student to a dangerous conclusion.  Smartly paced filmTo say more would spoil the ending. (Netflix).https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6952960/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

WONDER BOYS.  Prof. Tripp (Michael Douglas) perseveres in the face of tremendous odds and an entangled love life amidst a dreary Pittsburg winter.  Aside from his personal problems, he encourages a promising but confused student (Tobey Maguire) who is a brilliant writer living in the bus station and surviving on donuts.  Enter the mix and important in his writing career is a whimsical gay book editor (Robert Downey Jr.) who is yet another house guest.  Yet this is a diverting and amusing film and one that never gets old. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0185014/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

THE ENDLESS SUMMER. (1965). It could be the cure for cabin fever.  It’s 11 degrees in Minneapolis but the surfers in this award-winning documentary are riding Nigerian waves in 100 degree heat with 91 degree water temperature.  You could boil an egg in that water.  On a day like today, the search for the ideal wave makes sense to me. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060371/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

BRIDGERTON. (UK).  I am watching this bit of nonsense for the second time wherein the mating game repulses Lady Daphne Bridgerton and the Duke of Hastings so they “pretend” to be engaged.  One can only guess where this will lead but the regal splendor appeals to me as I look at snow piled high outside my window.  (Netflix).  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8740790/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME.  Prof. Perlman (Michael Stulberg), admiring the statue found at the bottom of the ocean, states that it’s the work of Paxilites, the greatest sculpture artist of antiquity.  Oliver (Armie Hammer), looking at the photo, is struck by its resemblance to Elio (Timothee Chalamet).  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5726616/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 

MIDNIGHT COWBOY

It’s a film about people left behind, the Cowboy and Rizzo, and was released in 1969 amidst counter culture street protests and sexual revolutions that Glenn Frankel backgrounds in his book, “Shooting Midnight Cowboy.”   With a bit of reluctance, some movie moguls were savvy enough to see the “writing on the subway walls” and funded “Midnight Cowboy.” Movie critic Vincent Canby of the New York Times in 1969 wrote that “it’s not a movie for the ages” but Canby was wrong; it’s a big slice of cinematic art and is listed in the Times “Book of Movies; 1,000 Films to See.”https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064665/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 

SHOOTING MIDNIGHT COWBOY: ART, SEX, LONELINESS, LIBERATION AND THE MAKING OF A DARK CLASSIC, a book by Glenn Frankel, journalist and former director of the University of Texas journalism school.  The lives and careers of the creative team involved in this 1969 film, from actor Jon Voight to the costume designer and more, are the guts of this exhaustive journalistic endeavor.  I recalled when movie goers lined up to see edgy films foreign and domestic in the 60s and 70s before super heroes and animation ruled today’s silver screens. 

Thieves Like Us, LIttle Women, Holiday Affair

LITTLE WOMEN (MUSICAL).  Big voices, big dreams.  Returning to live theater in Bloomington after 2 years and the orchestra never sounded better.  A very talented cast last night for the musical version of  the 1933 RKO Radio film, the most successful in the studio’s history.  The musical has its moments but less would have been more; a bit long.  

GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK.  Very parallel  times; now and the Fifties when demagogue Sen. Joseph McCarthy smeared reputations of law abiding citizens with big red lies.  Edward R. Murrow was nationally respected journalist and famous WW2 war reporter (London Blitz).  He was a voice of reason when we needed one.  Who do we have now? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0433383/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

CINEMA PARADISO.  Ennio Morricone’s haunting theme lingers long after the movie ends.  In the tradition of Italy’s great filmmakers, Giuseppe Tormatore has borrowed from his memories of growing up in post-war rural Italy where the local movie theater was the community’s nucleus.  Not a foreign thought if you grew up with the Terrace Theater in Robbinsdale to see it demolished to make way for an ugly HyVee grocery store a few years ago. Saw it at the Ebert film festival in Champaign Urbana. (1989 Academy Award winner, best foreign language film, HBO Video) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095765/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

TICK TICK BOOM.  Wake up and shake the nation — says writer Jonathon Larson who is portrayed by Andrew Garfield in this new film based on Larson’s autobiography.  Kudos to lin-manual Miranda who produced and directed this film that casts a magic spell.  After seeing this I watched “Chorus Line” with a greater appreciation for theater. Larson wrote “Rent,” a musical of the AIDS epidemic. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/tick-tick-boom-movie-review-2021

THIEVES LIKE US.  Adapted from the novel of the same name and a remake of the 1948 RKO classic.  Very moody, dreamy version the remake and the actors Keith Carradine and Shelly Duvall look more emaciated than Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell in the original.  But the remake is a half hour longer to dramatize the Depression’s devastation on lives, while the original is more apt to keep our interest.  In a few days we will once again compare classic films with remakes when the big screen debuts “West Side Story” and “Nightmare Alley.”  The actors in the former may resemble teenagers compared to those in the original West Side Story.  It will be challenging to improve on the Tyrone Power original “Nightmare Alley.”  “Little Women” has been remade several times, but only the 1933 and 1994 versions are listed in the NYT bool of 1,000 essential films.

HOLIDAY AFFAIR.  A favorite holiday movie going back to 1949 when cousin Stan and I saw it at the Capitol Theater in Walla Walla.  In post-war New York a grieving war widow struggles to support her cute toothless son by working as a comparison shopper wherein she meets department store clerk Robert Mitchum who is at post-war loose ends.  RKO boss Howard Hughes thought this film would rehabilitate Mitchum’s image after his bust for weed, but it bombed badly at the box office.  It’s a December favorite on cable’s TCM channel.  Gordon Gebbert, who plays the kid, became a professor at Columbia University after he no longer was a cute kid.   A train for Christmas is the theme that binds the film with the ending on a crowded train on New Year’s Eve.

VIDEO RENTAL STORES, BEST BETS FOR HALLOWEEN, BLACK SUNDAY

ADJUST Your TRACKING.  Obsessive dudes with tattoos collect trashy low brow VHS tapes, paying as much at $670 for “Tales from the Quadradead Zone” and even Toxic Avenger, which I had and gave to a friend in Cottage Grove on Halloween. This fan-produced documentary includes an interview with an owner of a video store that rents VHS and also a member of the subculture that recreated a video store in his basement.  I have a very small VHS collection and 3 VCRs.  Some titles are hard to find on DVD. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu0L8i63E8M 

BEST BETS FOR HALLOWEEN: “Zombies on Broadway” (1945, RKO) combines two popular genres — musicals and horror with comics Wally Brown and Alan Carney who are ordered by Sheldon Leonard to find a zombie for a failing Broadway bar where singer-dancer Anne Jeffreys performs.  The hapless duo take off for a tropical island in search of zombies where (to everyone’s surprise) they stumble upon a crazy “scientist” played by Bela Lugosi.  Zombieness is catching much to the chagrin of Brown and Carney.

BLACK SUNDAY (1966) — a bit of witchcraft by Gothic horror master director Mario Bava where the fog machine works overtime.  The witch played by British actress Barbara Steele (Pit and the Pendulum) was paid for her efforts in wine and free lodging during the filming in Italy.  To say it is atmospheric is a gross understatement.  No doubt Lugosi’s Dracula inspired much of this but it’s classic Gothic horror.

Don’t say that Hollywood never made a bad movie until you see “Teenagers from Outer Space” where “teens” who look post K-12 annex earth as a food source and let loose their monsters: lobsters magnified on the rear screen.  Quite unexpected one of the invaders falls in love with the rather hapless local Betty.  Also, the space invaders are quite adept at driving standard transmission cars which is a task that overwhelms most of us earthlings.  They also have ray guns that turn humans and pets into skeletons. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053337/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 

INVENTING DAVID GEFFEN

He’s got that Alfred E. Newman what me worry look? about him and why should we give a rip about DG?  But I was captivated by this Netflix documentary on the billionaire Geffen, the new L.B. Mayer or Jack Warner.  

Dave appears in this documentary in an off-white t-shirt with a very frayed collar that he might have picked up at the Goodwill.  Yet the Geffen rose from a humble start in Brooklyn, the son of struggling immigrant parents, with his heart’s desire the good life in LA.  Somehow that got short circuited and he returned to the Big Apple to work in the William Morris (talent agency) mailroom in 1963 while I was shlepping news film from LAX to NBC News in Burbank.  

Our paths might have crossed because he returned to LA, newly minted as a freelance talent agent/manager associated with iconic folk-rock artists Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, Crosby Stills, Nash and Young, Jackson Browne and the Eagles.  Before he was fired by Warner Records, a stone’s throw on Buena Vista Blvd. where I worked at NBC, he invented Asylum Records and then convinced Warners that he should be a movie producer which led to “Risky Business.”  Some of the dollars from Geffen Inc. go to charities and he appears to be politically correct. 

MASH, EASY LIVING AND MORE

EASY LIVING, ’37 — Johnny: Mary you've got a job!  Mary: What is it?  Johnny: Cooking my breakfast!  Not politically correct by today's standards but a zany Preston Sturges script screwball depression era Cinderella romcom wherein a mink coat thrown from a luxury penthouse literally lands on a hapless working girl.  Hilarious slapstick automat scene as well. Great sendup on the foibles of capitalism pre-war.

NIGHT AND THE CITY — Hustler Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark) is chased through the alleys and back streets of London in a memorable scene from a ’50 British film noir that may not be available. Video store operators in ’92 were offered free copies of this gritty gem if they bought 5 cassettes of the remake with De Niro.  I stumbled on a promotional tape at a thrift store. Great British character actors include Francis Sullivan, Googie Withers and Herbert Lom plus American Mike Mazursky (Murder My Sweet.)

DR. X.  When you least expect it, the monster appears in bizarre colors in the restoration of this much anticipated 1932 horror masterpiece with the same cast, crew and color process as the 1933 Mystery of the Wax Museum.  Lee Tracy plays a dim witted newspaper reporter and Fay Wray warms up her vocal chords with random screams in anticipation of King Kong.  Of course Lionel Atwell is the focus of the ensuing mayhem. Even the butler is super creepy.  Dr. X exceeded my expectations ten fold.  

LABOR UNION members help save an east coast plastics factory from bankruptcy by developing a unique system for manufacturing TV set knobs in 1951 in Whistle at Eaton Falls.  It may be a true story since the producer Louis De Rochemont is known for films dealing with actual events.  Lloyd Bridges and Carleton Carpenter are feature.  The film was streamed this week from the DC Labor Film Festival. 

MASH. Taking a break from writing Plan B papers in 1970, I crowded into Northrup Auditorium (U of MN) with faculty and students to see a special preview and discussion with director Robert Altman concerning his new movie MASH.  If I would have been thinking like a journalist I would have written that "this is the movie that would define the decade."  But it all went before me in a blur.  From the opening theme song, "Suicide is Painless" to the Last Supper for Painless the dentist, it was a buffet of buffoonery, irreverence and caustic commentary as the country sacrificed lives to napalm in Southeast Asia.  It takes my breath away. 

FILM NOIR MEN: BOGART, POWELL, BEAUMONT

POWELL vs BOGIE — who’s the best Philip Marlowe, the Raymond Chandler tough guy PI in Murder My Sweet (1944) and The Big Sleep (1946)?  The Bogie-Bacall chemistry would favor BS but I like Powell’s off camera narration and interaction with Esther Howard and Mike Mazursky in MMS.  I watched both consecutively.  

Bogie has the best line in BS: “She tried to sit on my lap while I was standing up” in reference to the sexually aggressive Martha Vickers’ character.  Powell shows his disdain for conspicuous consumption in MMS when he strikes a match on the butt of a cupid statue.  Memorable in MMS is the drunken Ms. Florian character played by Howard when she advises Powell:  “Hold on to your chair and don’t step on no snakes.”  (Howard also appears in Detour as a diner waitress dismissive of the Tom Neal character.)

The Big Sleep is convoluted while MMS features Claire Trevor, a world class femfatale.  Yet Dorothy Malone is diverting with Bogie in BS.  Film noir moved into the mainstream with these two blockbusters from RKO Radio and Warner Brothers during the war.  Hold onto your chair!

LEAVE IT TO HUGH.  Before he was an icon of suburban domesticity as the daddy in “Leave it to Beaver,” actor Hugh Beaumont cut a rakish figure in the underbelly of film making as the leading man in low budget film noir.  Most memorable in PRC’s “Apology for Murder” is Hugh as a homicidal reporter conspiring with femme fatale Ann Savage to dispose of her husband played by Pierre Watkins. You’ve seen this before in the iconic film noir “Double Indemnity.”  Versatile Beaumont in Lippert’s “Pier 23” played an Irish private eye who crosses paths with a bad girl played Ms. Savage.  So don’t tell Jerry and Tony that dad had a past in the “dark city.”https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037518/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1

All American Coed, House on Haunted Hill, Across the Universe

 PICKLE FACTORY. In a spoof involving a Bing dummy and brother Bob Crosby, the later fondly recalls growing up in SPOKANE and “working in the pickle factory.”  For all I know there could have been a dozen pickle factories in the vicinity.  See the RKO 50s musical comedy Two Tickets to Broadway with Tony Martin and Janet Leigh.https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044158/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

“Nora, I think you’re a little upset.   Would you like a sedative?” 1958 HOUSE ON THE Haunted Hill is much better than the remake.  Besides creepy gags in the theater, the movie boasted great music and editing.  Elisha Cook Jr. is memorable. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051744/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_3

Platinum bombshell Mamie Van Doren was nearing  the end of her movie career in May 1966 when she married the hapless professional baseball player Lee Meyer at the Ada County Courthouse.  Fred was the police and courts reporter so he picked up the marriage data from the court records and wrote a short story that was buried in the paper.  I had been a Mamie fan for years and I thought her wedding in Boise deserved bigger play even if it involved a third rate ball player.  No one on the copy desk seemed concern so maybe I was making a big deal over nothing.  According to her autobiography, Playing the Field, Meyer was 25 when he died in a car crash in California — a tragic end after separating from Mamie that included an arrest in Hawaii for trying to smuggle hashish from Southeast Asia.  The Palm Springs Desert Sun thought it deserved a bigger play. https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=DS19660623.2.60&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------1

“You’re taking me apart,” Tommy, played by James Franco, screams in “Disaster Artist,” which focuses on a challenged dramatic “genius” who made a bad movie, “The Room,” for $5 million. Tommy and his Baby Face buddy played by Dave Franco sally forth to make Hollywood tremble.   Why is this funny?  I’ve watched it three times.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Disaster_Artist_(film)

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE:  Perfect escapism back  to the Sixties with Beatles soundtrack.  Camera work is flawless with scenes of the seaside, Greenwich Village and Liverpool.  LSD trips are fun as well.  Although over 2 hours, there’s never a dull moment.  Saw it at at the Edina and bought the DVD at Target.  Also have the 2 disk soundtrack CD. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0445922/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1

ZANY ZEKE frat boys infiltrate an all-girls school by enrolling one of the brothers in drag into a college that bars men entirely.  Broadway star Johnny Downs is at his best in this campy 1941 musical comedy from Hal Roach Studios with Alan Hale Jr. (Gilligan’s captain) in a supporting role.  Striking similarities between All American Coed and Some Like it Hot in 1959.  Available on the Movies TV Channel and on DVD from Alpha Video.https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033323/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_8

FIFTIES, SAFFRON AND MORE

SANTA SPOILER.  Vernon Bisterfeldt, a Boise cop working off duty as a Santa, nabbed a shoplifter in 1965 at Welles department store on the Boise Bench.  I was doing rewrite on the Statesman night desk and wrote up a short story with a photo from a staff lensman.  Backlash came the next day when a reader called in to complain that I ruined the Santa story for her kids.  Sorry.

I can relate to being a stranger in strange land  during holidays because much of  65-69 that was me when I was a reporter for the Idaho Daily Statesman.  As the years went by I made friends in the community and would be invited out.  I think this has been a different kind of crazy for me with paranoia related to the virus.  In a month of two with the vaccine that could change too. 

SAFFRON. Hats off to Moinak Choudhury, University of Minnesota PhD candidate, who is teaching the U of M OLLI class on the products of Kashmir and Assam — cashmere, saffron and tea.  Saffron sells for a mere $5,000 a pound and involves labor intensive harvesting.  In a documentary we saw in class I now understand why it’s so expensive.  You might use it in a chicken recipe.  I assume it’s available at better super markets.  https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/327017

RETRO FOCUS.  Reading Eric Burns non fiction book “1957” prompted me to OD on all things from the 50s including “Rebel without a Cause,” “Untamed Youth” and “Don’t Knock the Rock.”  The last two feature very talented dancers grooving to a very athletic version of the jitterbug.   (I flunked Dance 101.)  Untamed Youth has the girl who invented rock ’n roll Mamie Van Doren in a campy calypso production number — not to be missed.  We shook, rattled and rolled our way through the 50s with Mamie, Elvis, Alan Freed and Bill Haley and the Comets.  

Burns book is subtitled “The Year that Launched the American Future” or at least the ’57 Chevy Bel Air which he thinks defines that year.  I beg to differ.  Richie Cunningham drove a Chevy in American Graffiti.  DIG IT!  

SLAVE TO MADISON AVENUE. Author Sloane Wilson’s 1953 novel The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit is considered to be “prototypical of the fifties,” wrote Eric Burns in his nonfiction book 1957.  Also comedian Stan Freeburg on his 1958 CBS Radio show did a mashup of Suit and the cult horror flick I Was A Teenage Werewolf.  I concluded that Suit was another commentary on the vapidness of Madison Avenue, but actually it dramatizes the paucity of rewarding work for returning war heroes who suffer from post traumatic syndrome while trying to fit in.  Tom, the central Suit character, gets a PR job with a TV network and soon learns that the stress and demands of this work will make him crazy so he negotiates with the network chief for a less demanding job and gets it.  I find this unbelievable, having worked for less than two years in network TV news.  I also watched the Suit movie of 1955 with Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones, who is memorable as Tom’s wife.  Family life is sacrificed at the altar of Madison Avenue in the Suit novel and movie.https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049474/

STRANGE ONE, BIG BOY, LOVE SENSATION

 TAKE A BOW “You’re a Big Boy Now,” is one of my favorite films with the nightlife scenes in the seedier parts of 1966 Times Square.   Couple that with frolicking in Central Park and you have a big wet kiss to Manhattan.  There’s also a nod to avant-garde theater and dance clubs with go-go dancers.  Elizabeth Hartman gets top billing as the fem-fatale heart breaker Barbara Darling but Geraldine Page playing the neurotic mom was nominated for an Oscar.  When Sun Coast Video opened in Southdale I bought the VHS tape. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061209/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

AUTOCRAT.  Ben Gazzara is chilling in his 1957 film debut as a cunning viper out to destroy established authority at a military academy. The highly rated film also features George Peppard.  Docile fellow cadets sheep-like submit to his assumed authority.  Look for parallels with recent political events.  On the schedule for the Movies TV Channel in your city.https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051019/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_3

LOVE SENSATION.  A 70s disco hit from r&b singer Loleatta Holloway is my favorite morning workout music.  Feel free to share music that jump starts you in the morning. I scored the LP at the clearance basement sale at the Wax Museum in the early 80s.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Sensation

Joan Didion, Master Story Teller

DIDION GEM. Regarding the San Fernando Valley in the 1960s, Joan Didion wrote: “This is the California where it is easy to Dial A Devotion, but hard to buy a book.”  Her article, “Lifestyles in the Golden Land,” is true crime reporting at it’s best and you can find it in a compilation of her non fiction work “We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live.” https://www.thejoandidion.com/about/

ABOUT HUGHES.  He was a hermit with money which gave him “personal freedom, mobility and privacy” which is what we want.  Right?  Journalist Joan Didion in ’67 wrote the definitive essay on the illusive millionaire Howard Hughes, “7000 Romaine Street,” Los Angeles. Hughes “communications center” was located.  It could have been the setting for a film noir with criminals lurking in every shadow.  Nearby was the RKO Radio Pictures at 780 Gower that Hughes once owned and mismanaged into extinction. See her book, “We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live.”  https://www.loopnet.com/Listing/7000-Romaine-St-Los-Angeles-CA/13691826/

Joan Didion in an essay on Haight-Ashbury referenced a song she heard on KFRC radio which was the “Flower Power” station in ‘67.  When I lived in the Bay Area in 64-65 KFRC was MOR, playing Jack Jones and Sinatra — my favorite station. According to the Bay Area Radio Museum site: “In the mid-1960s, KFRC changed to a Top 40 rock’n’roll format, and quickly became the dominant station in the region with that format through the 1970’s, featuring the tight, carefully programmed sound developed by RKO-General’s star programmer, Bill Drake.

In 1969 I wanted to be the guy who wrote brilliant articles about urban affairs, like Joan Didion’s 1989 article “Down at City Hall” where she highlights the inconsistencies about Los Angeles residents’ attitudes.  Most people in ’89 had enough of LA and would move to San Diego given the chance.  Most of them supported LA Mayor Tom Bradley who was mayor when the quality of life deteriorated yet he managed to hold together his Black-Jewish coalition.  By 1993 LA would be increasingly populated by LatinX and Asians, Didion predicted, and Bradley might be irrelevant.

When I lived in LA in 63-64 doing rewrite at UPI and answering the phones at NBC News, nominal Democrat Sam Yorty was the mayor and would take the air out of “news” by proceeding his remarks with “as I have said one-hundred times before.”  This frustrated NBC government reporter Bill Brown no end. Reference: “We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live.” 

NEWS FROM PLANET FRIGIA

FRIGIA — (An outer space adventure fraught with imminent danger.)  Capt. Flash Zarkin reports that the expedition to the lost planet of Frigia had its anxious moments as the Electronic Stability Control (skid) light blinked wildly on the module of the Dodge space vehicle.  The air in the space capsule was quite “blue” as  Dr. Zarkor swore never to return to this remote planet lacking “any intelligent life.”   But that wasn’t entirely true since Frigia’s Princess Fria was hosting at Lund’s & Byerly’s deli on France Avenue.  The normally cheerful Princess muttered something about leaving this “frozen hell hole” for a more hospitable planet where icicles don’t hang from the eyebrows.  Could that be Mongo where the crazed Ming the Merciless rules until the third week of January?  Hello Mongo, goodbye Fria! (Next chapter: Zarkor Meets the Death Ray).

 

Weber Book As Related to Urban Renewal in 60s

The University of Minnesota Mapping Project which documented systematic racial segregation through racial covenants and redlining has been “‘the single most important recent gift to Minneapolis,” according to Tom Weber in his book “Minneapolis, an Urban Biography.”  Having been a student in a summer’s class on this eye opening topic, I agree.  Furthermore, before it was Minneapolis it was Dakota land and “we newcomers have generally been rotten guests,” he added.

Urban renewal here resulted in demolition of the historic Metropolitan Bldg.  Whereas, Boise enhanced it’s ethnic downtown diversity (Basque block) and didn’t demolish any businesses that made downtown attractive. Less is more in the case of Boise vs. Minneapolis. 

Minneapolis: White and Black neighbors didn’t “just happen,” but were the result of long standing processes carried out thousands of local residents and overseen “by exclusive leadership in the city.”

Pain & Glory, Bundle of Joy, Mpls Bio

 Spanish director Almodovar’s 2019 film “Pain and Glory” could be autobiographical about the life of a gay movie director growing up in rural Spain and then experiencing first love in Madrid.  What hit me hard was the vibrant interior colors; orange, red, purple and green.  Very Mediterranean.  It’s a tonic for the pandemic grey day winter blues. 

CINDERELLA. It’s Christmas Eve, a time honored tradition where I watch America’s cutest couple — Eddie and Debbie — in RKOScope’s “Bundle of Joy,” a lovely Cinderella story for the holiday.  Our Debbie, a newly minted mom, has been fired from her department store job but is saved by the handsome prince, Eddie, who’s the son of the boss.  Several catchy tunes carry the story including a jitterbug contest with Debbie, 7 months pregnant then, flying through the air of the RKO soundstage.

Kudos to Tom Weber for his recent book, “Minneapolis, an Urban Biography,” with a chapter on local discrimination, which was infamous.  White and Black neighbors didn’t “just happen,” but were the result of long standing processes carried out thousands of local residents and overseen “by exclusive leadership in the city.”

CITIZEN KANE, MANK

MANK. Income inequality and blatant disregard for the working class may have prompted Herman J. Mankiewicz (Mank) to write a screenplay in 1940 that Orson Welles crafted into the greatest movie ever made, “Citizen Kane.”   With Hearst’s fairy-tale lifestyle and conspicuous consumption exemplified by his monumental San Simeon Castle, Mank had the incentive to craft a compelling screenplay.

You don’t need to know the back story to appreciate the Netflix movie “Mank” where the writer’s angst builds around W. R. Hearst’s newspapers brutal propaganda against progressive author and gubernatorial candidate Upton Sinclair.  Fueling Mank’s fire is movie mogul L. B. Mayer, state GOP party chair, who produced phony “newsreel” interviews with “voters” that further destroy Sinclair’s chances. The specter of “socialism” is the dog whistle employed then as it is now by the Republicans.  

Watch “Mank” in tandem with “Citizen Kane” where in an interview with the reporter “Jed,” played by Joseph Cotton, the case against Hearst/Kane is candidly stated. (“He did brutal things.”)  “Mank” connects the dots on the CK puzzle that has entertained many for almost 80 years.  For more on Hollywood writers, watch “Trumbo” and “The Player.”https://www.netflix.com/title/81117189

Racism, The Crown, More

 CONSORTIUM TAKEAWAY:  Ellen Kennedy, World Without Genocide, said “terrible things are happening here…legal systems needed to protect vulnerable from harm with the  rollback of LGBT rights in US and murders of transgender people here.  We need to get involved.  Upper Midwest Consortium for Holocaust and Genocide Education and Research held this webinar Tuesday: The Holocaust: An Introduction From 4 Perspectives. http://worldwithoutgenocide.org/

 MUST SEE DOCUMENTARY, GRANITO:  Suggested by Paula Cuellar Cuellar in my U of Minn. OLLI class on human rights in Central America and available on DVD.   Where do US foreign aid checks go?  Under Reagan, the Guatemalan militay junta received USA tax dollars and practiced genocide against Mayan indigenous people in Guatemala.  A trial in Spain convicted several in the military of genocide.  The elites confiscated the Mayan farmers’ land.  Fearing that the Mayans would act to reclaim their property, the military murdered the natives.

Boston University humanities professor Ibram X. Kendi writes:  “If racism is eliminated, many White people in the top economic and political brackets fear that it would eliminate one of the most effective tools they have at their disposal to conquer and control and exploit not only non-Whites, but also both low-income and middle-income White people.”

Plan to read National Book Award winner “Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive Hisotry of Racist Ideas in America.”https://www.ibramxkendi.com/stamped

In the Netflix movie “Fruitvale Station” a Black man is ordered off a train in the Bay Area and then is shot by a cop.  No white people were asked to leave the train.  What would you have done if you were standing next to the deceased man?  To get a perspective, read George Yancy’s book, “Backlash: what happens when you talk honestly about racism in America.”  Take away:  we can’t continue to hide behind “white privilege.”http://georgeyancy.com/

MOMMIE DEAREST.  In the fourth season of  The Crown, all four of the royal adult children are summoned to the palace for separate audiences with the Queen who is sobered by their anger and frustration.  With three million British working class people jobless, the Queen is not in a charitable mood to entertain Prime Minister Thatcher when she comes to call.  Furthermore, Charles temperament regarding Princess Diana makes him a dubious choice for king and crown.https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/margaret-thatcher-queen-elizabeth-face-190357479.html

Sam G. Obit; Nightcrawler Review, Trump Call

IN WHICH WE SERVE.  Sam was a spry 96-year-old twice widowed World War Two veteran working out daily on his rowing machine, resurfacing the garage floor of his suburban home and tending the garden with the help of handyman Adrian.

Sam signed up as a teenager and served in the Pacific with the USN Construction Batallion (Seabees) where on a small island he would rendezvous with his cousins and fellow servicemen Louie Agranoff (Marine Corps) and my late uncle, Morrie Zarkin, a USN cook on a mine sweeper.

On the GI Bill he attended a business school where he graduated in accounting and worked for Minneapolis employers. The son of Russian immigrants, his mother and father were brother and sister to my father’s parents who moved from Minneapolis to Spokane, Wash., in the 1930s.  

Sam’s family remained in Minneapolis where he grew up in a Franklin Avenue neighborhood.

I first met Sam, his second wife Shirley and his two youngest children, Merryl and Arthur, in September 1969 when I arrived from Idaho and bunked with them for about three days before moving to a dorm at the University of Minnesota for graduate studies.  Sam and the kids gave me a tour of the Foshay Tower and Nicollet Mall and I went canoeing on Lake Harriet with Arthur on a perfect Indian summer’s day.

About five years ago I was reunited with Sam and Shirley for monthly dinners at nearby restaurants and then after Shirley passed away Sam and I lunched at the Jewish Community Center and Park Tavern.  I last saw him for lunch this past February and he called me most every Friday to wish me well for several months during the pandemic.

Words to live by from Sam:  Keep a step ahead of the grim reaper.  And he was successful doing that for 96 years. DAZ (Sam was my link to Uncle Morrie and the Greatest Generation and how the war influenced their lives.)

POWER. Get perspective on Trumpism,  See the 2014 film noir Nightcrawler wherein a sleazy photographer mouthing corporate jargon gains power in an LA TV newsroom by selling sensational crime news footage that can be marketed as suburban middle class families being victimized by inner city drug gangs, a distortion of the truth.   Viewership ratings that dictate news content are the catalyst to insure success for the this creepy photographer character played with conviction by Jake Gyllenhaal.   Well-schooled news gatekeepers who can see through his crude extortion attempts play his game, his way.  A nod to ethics and morality is given by a newsroom editor.  Hair-raising chase scenes in a red 2014 Dodge Challenger SRT are reminiscent of Steve McQueen in the “Bullet” Mustang.  

TRUMP CALL.  A rather hysterical Trump paced a robocall to me at 4:15 pm Tuesday with garbage about Biden and then a voice said if I wanted to make a donation, press 3 so I did.  I engaged the donation guy in idle chatter.  He said he was calling from DC, but not the White House.  He hung up on me when I offered to “donate to the defense fund for the tax evasion charge.”  Charles Koch’s group is supposed to know my voting record and social media leanings so Trump Inc. must be desperate.  I should have offered to send Stormy Daniels a check.

The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision has made global warming climate -change a taboo topic for Republicans because of the Koch network’s funding of candidates who favor fossil fuel industries.  Read more about this issue in Sen. Sheldon Wintehouse’s book, “Captured.”  Support Move to Amend to overturn Citizens United.