Ready For My Close-Up

It's the pictures that got small ... -- Picture courtesy of Paramount

by blogSpotter
Turner Classic Movies has become one of my favorite channels now. They run film festivals that honor specific people in the industry such as Alfred Hitchcock or Kirk Douglas. They also run movies without commercial interruptions, with small segments between movies for critics to dissect the movie just seen. It's as if someone created a channel just for the "movie nut". Thank you, Turner Classic.

Two nights ago, I watched one of the best movies ever made (it's in AFI's top 20), Sunset Boulevard. The movie is both a black comedy and a camp classic -- it provided fodder for a Carol Burnett skit many years later. It's considered film noir, although the style and content make it seem newer than 1950. The movie tells the story of Joe Gillis -- a handsome, young, down-on-his-luck Hollywood screenwriter. In running from repo men (chasing him to repossess his car), he dashes into the hidden driveway of Norma Desmond's secluded Sunset Boulevard manse. Norma is a semi-retired silent screen legend, age 50. Norma has a devoted live-in servant Max, a servile and vaguely sinister man also in his senior years. She mistakes Joe for an undertaker (summoned to bury a family "pet") and invites him in. From here, things develop and Joe becomes Norma's personal writer (fixing her unfixable Salome script). Joe ultimately becomes Norma's gigolo boy toy, -- showered with clothes, gifts and unwanted demonstrations of middle-aged, faded-star affection.

I won't rehash the plot much further. Sunset Boulevard is a classic in so many ways -- it has at least two lines of famous dialog:

"I'm still big. It's the pictures that got small".
"I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille."

The movie is fast-paced and witty --- you might have to watch it three times to catch all the repartee. Joe Gillis is cynical and originates quite a few of the lines targeting Hollywood execs. The movie innovated some things -- techniques like filming a man floating face down in a pool, meshing film noir with dark comedy. It also set the bar for other movies (Play Misty For Me, The Player) that deal with women "scorned" and/or Hollywood elites. Even Rocky Horror Picture Show gets a big inspiration from Sunset Boulevard. The script was written and directed by Billy Wilder, a short little rotund Jewish émigré who engineered some of the best movies of the 20th century (Some Like It Hot, The Apartment).

Interesting side notes. Pola Negri was approached for the role of Norma, but her accent was too thick. Mary Pickford was going to be asked but it was determined that she'd be morally incensed by such a role. Greta Garbo thought it was tawdry and beneath her. Gloria Swanson turned out to be the perfect match anyhow -- still beautiful at 50 and intrigued by the part. (In fact, it was the role of a lifetime!) Montgomery Cliff backed out of the part and gave the Joe Gillis role to William Holden -- excellent break for an excellent actor. It's interesting that in 1950, 50 seemed insurmountably old. In 2008, we have Madonna still strutting in tights, and Cher still singing. How old is old anyway?

If you want to watch the quintessential Hollywood story, catch Sunset Boulevard. There is talk that the 1990's Broadway musical version will soon be brought to the screen. Nothing would be better than to see this production in color, with modern actors and a 21st century interpretation.

© 2008 blogSpotter

Shoe on the Other Foot?

Turning a new page in American politics -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
Some nine days before the 2008 Presidential election, I’m being reflective about it all. I've ended up supporting Obama, though he wasn’t even my 3rd choice among the Democratic nominees. Too much is at stake – we have several geriatric Supreme Court justices. Can’t let that slip away.

I’m detecting as much bitterness among diehard Republicans as there was among Democrats when Bush won in 2004. They like to claim that the financial meltdown is as much a Democratic as a Republican fiasco. It’s true that home loans should not have been extended to poor prospects in the 90’s. Point taken. But the GOP had the presidency the last 8 years, and both houses of Congress 6 of the last 8 years. Democrats had a paper-thin majority the last 2 years, which was inadequate to overcome vetoes or much of anything else. Republicans rode the wave of Reaganomics from 1980 until it crashed on the shore of over-promoted derivatives and credit default swaps.

My previous blog entry, Ayn Rants, is a little bit obtuse and wordy. But here is a major point I probably lost in all of my George Willian verbiage. A policeman is not a dictator – he doesn’t tell you how to live your life. All a policeman does is enforce the laws of the land. One hopes that the laws have been crafted by a democratically elected legislature.

Many Republicans are laughably crying “Socialist” at the prospect of an Obama presidency. Socialism calls to mind the corrupt and lethargic GOSPLAN committees of the old USSR, working out their 5-year collective farm objectives. There is some irony that this criticism comes from the W. Bush party that just partially nationalized the banks and stuck U.S. tax-payers with a one trillion dollar bailout bill.

No, there won’t be any socialism. Some of Obama’s most strident supporters are California venture capitalists who have greatly enjoyed the freedom of our economic system. What Obama might do, along with Congress is decide how the commandment “Thou shall not steal” needs to be written and enforced in the echelons of high finance. At Northpark Mall, the boundaries and rules are obvious. Here is the store, here is the merchandise and here is the alarm system. It’s not so clear on Wall Street where all the boundaries are. We have murkiness about “store” “merchandise’ and “adequate alarm” as well as “legal transaction”. When the terms have been laid out by agreeable parties, there will be enforcement, not socialism.

Is this somehow tragic that we might end up with a liberal president and a Democratic congress? How could it be more tragic than the complete break down of our credit and financial system? Think about it some more, and be glad that there are checks and balances even if it has to happen via the electoral process.

© 2008 blogSpotter

Ayn Rants

Atlas Shrugged or Atlas Shrunken? -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
Today's Dallas Morning News has an editorial about Alan Greenspan -- "When His Bubble Burst". In it, they talk about how Reaganomics has gotten some serious bumps and bruises in the recent melt-down. The article recounts how Greenspan presided over a big Reaganomic expansion as our Federal Reserve chairman from 1988 thru 2006. He most notably opposed raising interest rates and opposed regulating the financial derivatives market. Greenspan is said to be a strong deregulation advocate and fan of Ayn Rand. Rand is the champion of "rational selfishness" for those unfamiliar with her writings.

In his deposition to Congress last week, Greenspan had to admit "Mistakes were made". He couldn't believe how foolish and greedy the Wall Street titans were, in retrospect. I myself have several observations to make -- the first one fairly trivial. Self-regulation never works. I only have to think of my 5th grade teacher saying, "You're on your honor not to cheat." That would be the cue, as she left the room, for the unscrupulous to get out their notes. Cynical? yes indeed. If the honor system worked across the board, we would need no police, store detectives or security systems. As it turns out, we do need the police. At higher echelons, we need police in the form of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Sarbanes Oxley audits, state Attorneys General and the Federal Reserve Board among other monitoring agencies. That every one of these recently failed us, in tandem, is remarkable.

Now lets get back to Ayn Rand’s concept of rational selfishness. I will be the first to agree that our capitalistic engine has produced remarkable results. Here are 3 of my personal favorites: Apple, Google and Starbucks. These companies innovated bold new products and markets – sometimes out-of-the-blue things new like internet search engines. Sometimes the innovation was a clever twist on something old like boutique, upscale coffee houses. These businesses could only happen in America. One of the primetime magazine shows (maybe 60 Minutes) recently had a special on what’s involved with setting up a hotdog stand in India. It isn’t pretty – dozens of forms, interviews, fees and applications will stand between you and hotdog profits. America has relatively unfettered markets where newbies can invest, create and make the world a better place.

How do we keep the genie under control, performing good magic (less the bad magic)? How can we stay dynamic without the necessity of $700 billion bail-outs? I have some general (dare I say Marxist-influenced) explanations that center around monetary value. Money represents more than anything, the value of labor (either human or machine). It represents the transformation of raw materials into useable goods or artistic renderings. Ideas and inspiration count as much as hard work if the end result is a human-or-machine produced commodity for which there is demand.

Financial instruments which tie immediately back to labor have “true value”. Financial instruments that tie back to other financial instruments become shaky and speculative. Their worth is a shadow worth, much like a lottery or raffle ticket. The purchaser is getting more of a chance than anything else and the odds can be very long on the purchased asset. Presidential candidate John McCain said something with which I heartily agree – “Wall Street has developed a casino mentality”. That may be our only agreement, but we have that.

Overall wealth accumulation should rely far more on actual work accomplished – not compounded interest or stock run-ups. In a healthy society, interest and dividends should reflect no more than the productivity increase of the society. Wealth accumulation that derives from paper asset manipulation (hedge funds, derivatives, credit default swaps) becomes a poker game where very few players come out ahead. To keep the game safe, sane and sensible we need the white collar police (SEC et al) to be involved. In coming years, Wall Street’s not cheating will no longer be about the honor system, it will be about a system of serious financial governance.

© 2008 blogSpotter

Tower of Terror

The deranged Eagle Scout... -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
In August of 1966 I was all of 8 years old living in Austin, enjoying my summer vacation. One hot day, my lunchtime TV broadcast was interrupted with a special TV report. It seemed a sniper was shooting people indiscriminately from the University of Texas Tower -- the 28-story Main Building with an observation deck.

I ran outside and joined my two friends (David Cotton and David Berryman) in the excitement of it all. We climbed to the top of Berryman's roof and strained to see what was happening with binoculars. We were a good 5 miles away, otherwise the action would've been foolhardy and tragic in the extreme. (In fact a couple of Whitman's victims may have been adult gawkers trying to get a look). Fortunately from the distance of University Hills, we could see nothing and were out of the maniacal gunman's range. My father was working on his math doctorate at UT and my aunt was working on her bachelor’s this particular day. Both had been ordered by campus intercom to stay huddled in their classrooms, away from the windows.

The gunman was 25 year-old Charles Whitman, an ex Eagle Scout, Marine veteran and UT engineering student. A nice-looking, tow-headed young man with a crew cut, nobody could have imagined that this former altar boy could harbor such violent feelings. When his journals and psychiatric records were later examined it seems that Whitman had a deep-seated hatred for his father. It’s ironic that he strangled and stabbed his wife and his mother earlier that fateful day – apparently his father-rage was redirected to his female relatives. (His journal said he didn’t want them to be embarrassed.)

In our post-9/11 world, it’s amazing how lax the rules were then. Whitman put his many supplies (gun, knives, ropes, water, spam, sweet rolls, journal, toilet paper, canvas, gasoline and other strange sundries) in a large trunk. He dressed a bit like a maintenance man and brought his trunk to the UT Main Building on a dolly. He simply showed his student/employee ID to the security officer and was waved thru as a maintenance worker. Upon reaching the Observation office suite, he killed the receptionist by bashing her head with a gun butt. He barricaded the office door and killed two tourists coming up the stairs with shotgun blasts. Then from 11:48AM until 1:24PM, Whitman engaged in a sniper attack that gripped Austin Texas and terrified the nation. He picked off pedestrians, students, shoppers and tourists like so many ducks in an arcade gallery – most victims were on Guadalupe Street, a west campus shopping strip.

At @ 1:24, Austin officers Houston McCoy and Ramiro Martinez pushed past the barricade and ran onto the south deck. In retrospect it seems like an invitation to death – Whitman was waiting for them in a corner, knowing they’d arrived. It may be that Whitman had already surrendered to some extent – he didn’t meet them with any fire. Martinez fired 6 shots with a revolver and McCoy fired two rifle blasts. It’s believed that McCoy’s rifle blasts are what killed actually Whitman, although the boastful Martinez received full credit for the killing long after the fact. For his part, McCoy dealt with post-traumatic stress syndrome for many of the years that followed.

In the final tally, Whitman killed 16 people and injured 31. One of the 31 had to be on life-support for 30 years – when he suspended the life support and died in 1996 the statistic was changed to 17 fatalities. At Whitman’s own pre-mortem suggestion, a thorough autopsy was done which did indeed reveal that he had a large brain tumor, a glioblastoma. Neurologists think that this type of tumor could affect emotions and fight-or-flight reflexes. This may be an explanation but never a justification for what horrible events transpired that August afternoon. The JFK assassination had somewhat inured us to irrational violence, but this was a new twist.

There have been several similar events since Whitman – most notably Columbine High School. All we can leave off with is a cliché, “Things are not always what they seem”. How could we miss the mark so tragically here? In the hindsight-is-20-20 department, it’s noted that Whitman had fantasized about “shooting people like pigs” to his therapist. There’s no clear way even yet to draw the line between psycho rants and a healthy person letting off steam. On August 1, 1966 America actually saw the difference first hand, gruesomely.

© 2008 blogSpotter

Prodigal Son

Hud makes an impression for a whole generation... -- Picture courtesy of Paramount Pictures

by blogSpotter
You might have noticed

A small note before doing my Hud review ….I deleted my blog from last week, “Freedom’s Just Another Word”. I decided it was too dark, cynical and worst of all, unfunny. It didn’t shed light on anything useful. As a blog writer with a readership of maybe 10 people, I have the prerogative to delete entries (let’s see Newsweek recall a magazine article :-)). My only hope is that nobody saved it in their cache so that it can reemerge somewhere else in all of its mediocrity.

Hud
TCM has been doing a Paul Newman film festival this weekend, to honor him after his recent passing. Last night, they showed 1963’s Hud which is possibly Newman at his best. I saw Hud when I was about 8 and was way too young to grasp any of its adult themes – all I remembered was the scene where the ranchers had to corral and shoot the cattle with hoof and mouth disease.

Hud tells the story of Hud Bannon, an irresponsible 34-year old rancher’s son who is a playboy, minor con artist and general ne’er do well. He lives in a Southwestern ranch town (it looks like it was filmed in the Texas panhandle) with his elderly father, his 17 year old nephew, and a slightly hardened, been-around-the-tracks housekeeper in her late 30’s. Patricia Neal won an Oscar for her outstanding performance as the housekeeper – it was very different from her other film roles. The style and cinematography of this movie would make you think it’s 10 or 20 years more recent. It delves deeply into the characters and is more character-study -- contains no plot gimmicks (it’s much less like typical movies of the early ‘60’s era).

Hud is filmed in black and white – there are many long shots of the countryside and the local townscape. I thought 1971’s Last Picture Show broke this ground, but Hud basically gave us the same thing in 1963. The movie is graphic enough in various scenes that it would probably be “punched up” and released with a “R” rating now.

Hud is basically the story of the Prodigal Son, with Newman as the son and Melvyn Douglas in the role of the elderly Rancher Bannon – a pillar of integrity who despairs at how dishonest and unworthy Hud is. The creators of this film obviously wanted to give some kind of intergenerational warning about restless, destructive youth. An interesting thing has happened along the 45 years since this movie came out – Hud the antihero has been very much embraced as a hero. His wayward hedonism jibes well with the anti-establishment messages that proliferated some 5 years after the movie was made. In fact, Rancher Bannon comes across as a hard-ass, unforgiving old prick of a man – he should cut Hud a break for God’s sake. It’s interesting how time can change our perception of some things.

For his part, Hud is full of life and energy – tooling around town in his ’58 Cadillac convertible, whipping people in barroom brawls, winning a greased pig contest at the local rodeo, and loving all the lonely hearted women around town. Even if he isn’t a tower of virtue, he cuts a dashing cowboy image in an otherwise tumbleweed grayscale world. No wonder he’s seen as a hero now. Hud is well worth renting – my only wish is that they had filmed it in color. I think the barren backdrop would still convey the lonely aspects, but it would be great to see the ’58 Caddy as well as all these fine actors in their Technicolor prime.

© 2008 blogSpotter

Who Would You Rather Have a Beer With?

Drinking with the Prez... -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
As I recall, the operative question in both the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections was “Who would you rather have a beer with?”. W. Bush was seen as a folksy, accessible “one of us” type guy. Gore was characterized by the Bush camp as an effete, politically correct, enviro-actionary snob. Kerry was similarly seen as a patrician, elitist, rich man who was more taken with Maybach automobiles than with middle class issues.

The fact is that the Bush family is one of the oldest, wealthiest, most “patrician” families in America. W. Bush is worth millions and he’s also a Harvard graduate. He did spend a great portion of his early years in Midland, Texas which probably helped give shape to his Texas twang. His slightly crossed eyes, which convey the opposite of intellect, can probably be credited to some unusual combination of chromosomes from his parents, George and Barbara Bush.

It was with particular satisfaction in 2004 that conservative pundits publicized statistics that most Americans (in the thrall of shows like American Idol and Survivor Fiji) would rather take a car ride or share a frosted mug with Bush than with Kerry. I will admit myself that an American President should be convivial and approachable; never did I think however that the requirements for this noble office would devolve only to that. I will also admit there is a distinction between the qualities of being book-smart and people-smart – we’ve had Presidents who amply exhibited one or the other, sometimes both. Reagan and Clinton were people smart – Carter was probably more of a wonkish policy nerd. W. Bush, regrettably seems to lack both qualities; his Texas macho is far from showing the personal, people-smart touch; he’s always lacked intellectual curiosity in the extreme.

A writer for the New York Times (can’t recall his name, maybe Paul Krugman) recently referred to the Bush trifecta:
• Iraq War
• Katrina disaster
• September 2008 Market Meltdown

To be fair, the Clinton administration got the ball rolling on thrift loans. But it took eight years of a self-regulated derivatives-loving Wall Street to get where we are right now. If I could travel back in time, there are probably several Presidents I’d like to chat with (Lincoln being the foremost). We might even have beer (although mine would be a non-alcoholic beverage). That quality – convivial drinking in a bar – is far from what I’d ever use as a quality Presidential gauge. Who would you rather have a beer with now? If W still drank, he’d be crying in his.

The $700 billion bail-out has been passed in Congress, but CNBC financial analysts estimate that it will take a minimum of one month to give adequate electro-shock to our markets. That’s about the time left until Election Day. America, please turn off Dancing With the Stars for five minutes and give serious consideration this time to what we are doing. It’s more than a drinking buddy.

© 2008 blogSpotter