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I went to the same university as Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Clay Bennett, and we worked on the same student newspaper. Too bad we missed each other by a couple of years because we had a lot of friends and colleagues in common.
In the early 1990s, however, we both worked at the St. Petersburg Times, and I finally got to make his acquaintance. Really nice guy and one of the best cartoonists working today. Check out his stuff.
Recently caught Richard Shickel's 1991 documentary on Myrna Loy, one of the great film and stage actresses of our time.
It's the sort of respectful but severely truncated biography that lacks any real depth. Only one hour in length, it doesn't feature any interviews with her peers and admirers. On the plus side, Schickel knows his stuff and smartly enlists the husky-voiced Kathleen Turner as narrator.
Loy starred in the successful and endlessly enjoyable series of Thin Man movies, and classics such as The Best Years of Our Lives. She was the first actress to make a stand against the unfair business practices of a major movie studio (a staredown she handily won). She was an avid supporter of liberal causes and, very late in life, launched a terrific stage career with all the enthusiasm of a young ingenue.
I was so fascinated by Loy's career that I went looking for more about her. During my travels, I found this fascinating Filmbrain essay, The Orientalization of Myrna Loy:
A redhead by birth, it took only a dark wig to prompt many a director to cast her as an exotic beauty -- be it Mexican peasant girl or Senegalese spy (in blackface, no less). Yet most fascinating are the films in which she portrayed Asian characters, for they say quite a bit about Hollywood's perception of and approach towards the "oriental".
There are certain quintessential LA experiences that one must, as a rite of passage, endure.
Having famous people sneer down their noses at you? Been there. (And fuck ya right back, Erik.)
That script meeting where the producers tell you they just love, love, LOVE your script ... but they want you to change every single thing? Check.
Fender-bender on the LA freeway? As of yesterday morning ... yep, friggin' check off that bitch.
Look, it's simple: tail-gating and driving just don't mix. If you must tail-gate, do it at a college football game, not on the freeway -- specifically, not on the West 118 at 7:20 a.m., and in particular not behind a certain 2005 Honda Civic driven by a guy who, truth be told, would rather be blogging or writing a screenplay than navigating the suicidal concrete arteries of LA.
But all's well for me and the car. The doctor who examined me said to expect a mild case of whiplash, and sure enough, I awakened hours ago to find that my neck has all the limited range of Ben Affleck.
Actually, that's just a cheap jibe I couldn't resist. In the new movie Hollywoodland, portraying the tragic arc of Superman actor George Reeves, Affleck gives a performance that I actually like.
Whoa. Stop right there a second ...
I gotta let you know that the previous sentence took an uncommonly long time to type, as my fingers have never formed that configuration of letters and words before. It's like learning a new alphabet after a stroke or something: I liked Affleck's performance. Is such a thing possible after Bennifer and red leather pajamas and that suck-ass Xmas atrocity? Is this a sign of the Apocalypse? If so, do I have time to order a drink? And refill my prescription for these nifty muscle relaxants?
What I thought was meh about Hollywoodland (and, in retrospect, that meh definitely becomes a strong and negative blech!) was Adrian Brody, that bug-eyed, hatchet-faced actor whose sad-sack visage and wise-guy intonations all but put me to sleep. As a fictional detective investigating what never really is a convincing murder mystery, the slimy yet grating Brody is miscast in a badly-conceived, underwritten role. I wish they'd just made a movie about George Reeves without the feeble stab at a low-rent bogus Chinatown pedigree.
Aside from Affleck, what's good about Hollywoodland? That's easy: the radiant and yet-sort-crazy-eyed Diane Lane, showing a steely vulnerability as an aging film mogul's wife who takes Reeves under her wing to feel young again. She's showing her age here, with more lines than you'll see on any actress this side of Helen Mirren, and it's simply beautiful. This a wonderfully heartbreaking performance from an actress who doesn't land enough good roles these days.
Filmbrain has a great piece on another fantastic Lane performance in Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains, a cult classic I used to watch endlessly on the late, lamented Night Flight block of programming back in the 80s. If you've never heard of this one, go read about it, you won't be sorry. When people talk about the great teen-pics of the 1980s, they rarely include this one, but it's truly one of the best. Somebody needs to revive this on DVD, like, yesterday.
And finally: a shout-out to Seamus Dever, who's got a small part in Hollywoodland as a private investigator. We met in the lobby of the ArcLight after the screening (it's truly surreal to meet an actor in person after seeing them forty feet high) and I was pleased to learn not only that he's a funny, nice guy, but also a fellow CMU alum. Expect to be seeing a lot more of him on the big (and small) screens near you.
The masterful Brian Hodge has a new book that flat-out rocks: World of Hurt, a Pittsburgh-set novella currently available from specialty press Earthling Publications.
I got to read an advance of this dark gem months ago. I've devoured everything this guy's written and he never fails to astonish me. With World of Hurt, Brian's written an amazing, horrifying, truly touching tale, and I'm not just saying that because he owes me a pitcher o'beer.
What, you wanna little taste? Stuff this in your pipe and smoke it.
Here's but one example of the great reviews World of Hurt is getting:
As far as I'm concerned, for fifteen years, Brian Hodge has delivered butt-kicking horror. Hodge is still burning, even more brightly than before, and WORLD OF HURT is leaner and much more intense than [his earlier work]. Hodge manages to combine fragility and sheer terror, to erect tender emotions and then rend them from the flesh of his characters. In WORLD OF HURT, he peels away the skin of the world. There is a war within us, and it will exact a toll that we're probably not prepared to pay. We humans have exerted quite an effort imagining Hell and its denizens, but it might behoove us to look at the flip side of Perdition. After all, Heaven is by definition every bit as dead as Hell.
—Rick Kleffel, The Agony Column
How do I commemorate the fifth anniversary of 9/11?
I do exactly what I was doing when the towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001. I turn my heart and mind to Aeschylus' great play The Persians, written circa 472 BC.
The play is told from the point of view of the Persians, whom the Greeks had defeated years earlier. I believe this to be the only surviving Greek play based on an actual historical event. It's remarkable because it asks the audience to feel pity for an enemy the Greeks defeated in battle, an invading army seeking to topple the Greek empire.
The play asks: why did the Persians lose the war? They were a great army led by Xerxes, a great leader. They fell because of their unmitigated pride, we learn. Hubris. This is a play about wars and the fools who lose them. Aeschylus served up this tragic and chilling cautionary tale to an audience that would've felt freshly the wounds of this conflict. For any nation to believe itself invincible and ordained by God, says Aeschylus, is a cosmic sin that invites punishment accordingly.
And he wrote it to warn the Greeks against following a similar path.
Read it. Highly recommended on any day, but especially a day like this one.
The Daily Mail is running excerpts from Rupert Everett's upcoming memoir. Check out some good gay Brit-snark on Madonna, Paula Yates, Sharon Stone and Julia Roberts.
For Lost fans (and those interested in TV writing), here's a new WGA profile of showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse.
This Sunday there's a free Writer's Faire (aye, kind sir, they spell it as 'twas done in days of yore) courtesy of UCLA's Extension Writers Program.
You gotta pay attention to words, even if you're not a writer. Language, not money, makes the world go 'round.
Which brings us back to politics!
Hopefully you've heard about the latest 9/11 bullshit propaganda to come down the pipe. ABC is airing a docu-drama that doesn't just alter history to blame eternal whipping-boy Bill Clinton, and not King George, for the Bush administration's failures. No, this mini-series flat-out slips history a Rooffie, ties its limp form to a soiled mattress and sodomizes it with Halliburton-approved power tools.
For example, they want you to believe that Sandy Berger dropped a phone call from a field operative who said he had Osama bin Laden in his crosshairs. Except, um, that never happened.
In short, they want you to forget undeniably true facts such as: one month before 9/11, King George, on a month-long vacation, read and dismissed a Presidential Daily Briefing titled: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike In the U.S."
I'd have absolutely no problem with a docu-drama that accurately reflects the bi-partisan 9/11 Commission Report. Both Clinton and Bush administrations made plenty of mistakes that allowed this terrorist attack to happen. I'd only ask that such a docu-drama show, at least briefly, how hard Bush & Cheney fought the existence of the commission in the first place, and how the families of 9/11 victims shamed them into action.
But we're not getting an accurate reflection of the 9/11 report. This is fiction written and produced by Republicans that in no way reflects the exhaustive findings the 9/11 Commission. Teleplay writer Cyrus Nowrasteh's disregard for history has been highly praised in the right-wing press and blog circles, especially by Rush Limbaugh, who counts Nowrasteh among his close friends. In fact, it's telling that Disney/ABC only provided advance review copies to the right-wing media. Moderate and left-wing bloggers were left out in the cold, despite repeated requests.
The Republicans are crown-deep in shit this election season, and only a vicious pack of lies can hope to rally their dwindling fundamentalist Bible-thumpin' wacko base. Will it work? Considering that half the nation still believes the falsehood that Iraq had WMDs and almost half of them believe the BushCo-sponsored lie that Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11, there's no reason to think it won't. And that's precisely what the bastards are banking on.
If you wanna sound off about BushCo using 9/11 as insidious propaganda, you can sound off to Disney/ABC right here. Lots of the political blogs on the links to your left are working to expose this sham. Do yourself a favor and check 'em out.
The show's lead actor, Harvey Keitel, sounds off here about the script's inaccuracies, which he tried to correct in conversations with the producers (and there's video here). Even Bill Friggin' Bennett is on record condemning this movie. Yes, that Bill Bennett.
In particular, Dave Neiwet over at Orcinus serves up expert analysis on the right wing's war on language. If you haven't read John Dean's excellent new book, Conservatives Without Conscience, it lays out clearly how such strategies have always served fascist regimes in-the-making. And yes, folks, that's exactly what we're gonna be stuck with, unless we start cleaning house this November.
Celeb-spotting is one of the great perks about living in LA. Being a nerdy film buff, I tend to spot the lesser-known actors far more often than the big shots.
Me: "Look, there's Julie Kavner!"
My friend: "Um, dude, you almost ran into Keanu Reeves."
I've seen Paul Dooley three times now, and each time has been sorta exciting. You may not recognize his name, but you're sure to recognize this gifted character actor's face. To me, he'll always be Molly Ringwald's dad in Sixteen Candles.
I bumped into Elizabeth Perkins at a movie theater. Took me a moment to place her ... and she stared back at me for a long moment, obviously checking me against her mental Rolodex. Haven't seen much of her Emmy-nominated turn in Showtime's Weeds, but she rocked in Big and About Last Night.
I saw Victoria Principal at a coffee shop in Studio City. She's a once-gorgeous and completely natural-looking woman who, sadly, has become another plastic surgery victim.
Victoria after:
I'd have to say my greatest sighting thus far has been standing at the ArcLight urinals alongside Sir Paul McCartney. I didn't say anything to him because it's not my style (though in retrospect I wish I'd looked down to exclaim: "Damn, Paul, you are the Walrus!")
I don't approach celebs when I see 'em. I feel like a total dork. Beyond the cliched, "I'm such a fan," there's really nothing to say. And God knows there are enough crazies out here to send even the nicest celeb into a minor panic attack when a stranger starts talking to them.
But it's more than that. I'm starting to think it's bad luck to approach them. No good can come out of it, for them or us. They'll never be our sudden best friends the way we'd like to imagine, and we can never worship them to their satisfaction. Like nymphs and hobbits and trolls and compassionate conversatives, they are fanciful, almost imaginary creatures best left in their own little fantasy worlds, no matter how often their boundaries may overlap with ours.
That's why, last Friday, I didn't say anything as tiny Ellen DeGeneres and gal-pal Portia de Rossi walked by so closely I could smell their perfume. It was subtle, it was manly, but it was definitely perfume. They were leaving Orange, an upscale furniture store on 3rd (the kind that's so expensive I don't even bother looking in the window).
I was doing laundry next door. I'd returned to my parked car to raid the change box for quarters. I'd also grabbed a sack of comic books. Are you sensing the great socio-economic divide betwixt myself and this dynamic duo? Yeah, me too. So I looked ahead and kept walking.
No sooner had the two set sneakers to sidewalk than someone behind me immediately started yelling: "Hi Ellen! Hi Ellen! Hi Ellen!"
Ellen and Portia zipped quickly to her Porsche, parked right behind my Honda Civic. (Portia in a Porsche, I thought suddenly, her parents totally knew when they named her). The ladies kept their eyes down, tight grins on their faces, obviously wishing the person would shutup and leave them alone.
But the Fan, a large woman out walking with two friends, stood her ground at a nearby parking meter and persisted in a horribly cheerful voice: "Hi Ellen! Hi Ellen! HI! ELLEN!"
And just before slipping into the driver's seat, Ellen glanced up to flash a very patient smile and quietly returned the greeting. The Fan actually started clapping as if Ellen were a trained dog who'd just performed a trick. I wanted to thwack this idiot with a fistful of comics.
I read in the next day's newspaper that, a mere ten minutes later, Ellen and Portia were rear-ended by an alleged drunk driver on Sunset. Not only that, but the sandwiched car between them was filled with paparazzi who'd been tailing them for photos.
That's a lesson for you celebs: ignore those damned persistent fans. It's bad juju.
Afterlife, by Stormcrow Hayes & Rob Steen
CURRENTLY WATCHING:
Mullholland Drive, by David Lynch
Battlestar Galactica Webisodes
CURRENTLY LISTENING:
Eric Clapton, The Twelfth Night (live bootleg)
CURRENTLY LIVING:
(pun, ahem, intended)
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