Author Archives: Roy Zornow - Page 5

“Where’s Poppa”: When farces plod.

Posted by on 04/19/2008 3 comments

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I was prepared to love “Where’s Poppa”, it features the nexus of Normal Lear sitcom character actors who, when I was growing up, felt like extended members of my raisenette-sized broken nuclear family. How fun it would be to see censor-free Barnard Hughes, Vincent Gardenia, Ron Liebman, Rob Reiner, and a pre-SNL Garret Morris.

But alas,”Where’s Poppa” drags. It’s claustrophobic and plodding, and breaks the cardinal rules of farce, lightness of mood and a fast pace.

The plot involves the efforts of a lawyer (George Segal) to rid himself of his overbearing Jewish mother, who lives in his gigantic New York apartment. Along the way we are exposed ridiculous characters and situations: a comedic group of muggers who repeatedly mug the brother of the main character, the rape of a policeman which involves the use of a gorilla suit and subsequent gay love, Ruth Gorden pulling down Segal’s pants and biting his ass as he serves her dinner. Why doesn’t this work?

Part of the explanation is the sense of doom engendered by the cramped, dark interiors and antique set-decoration. I absolutely eat up cinematography of New York during this era, but watching this movie felt like I was leafing through the Police Gazette in a dark bus terminal.

The main reason though is the slow pace. Modern MTV-style quick cuts have changed what moviegoers feel is a comfortable editing tempo, but, even taking this into consideration, camera shots are held for an excessively long time. Plot developments are also very slow. There is one situation in which this works: a weird love song George Segal sings to Trish Van Devere, softly, very close to her face, and for an excruciatingly long period of time. It reminded me of those cringeworthy extended shots in the British version of “The Office”, where you find yourself mentally begging the camera to cut away, and at the same time you can’t stop looking.

Sadly, most of the film is more “hurry up” than “can’t look away”. Which made me wonder if it’s possible to have a black comedy that is also a farce. The dilemma is that the gravitas of the subject matter in a black comedy tends to weigh down lightness of the farce. Movies like Robert Altman’s “M*A*S*H” and Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove” prove that it can be accomplished.  They do this not only through speed but also through entertaining subplots,  something “Where’s Poppa” neglects.

Although the film features multiple, stereotypically-funny characters, almost all of them are directly involved in the central drama of how to deal with the recalcitrant mother. The scenes featuring Garret Morris and the Central Park muggers are as close as the viewer gets to a mental break. The muggers seemed almost Shakespearean, following the tradition of comic ne’er-d0-wells. If the rest of “Where’s Poppa” had clung a little more closely to stage tradition it would have been a better film. Edgier isn’t always better. It’s as if all these talented actors and the director Carl Reiner, were taking a short sabbatical before the creative maelstrom of the 70’s .

Random notes: After stealing Ron Liebman’s clothes, the muggers mention Cornel Wilde’s “The Naked Prey” (1966), a great action movie that was a stylistic precursor to 1968’s “Planet of the Apes”.

As politically incorrect as he was, it’s disquieting to learn about the death of an action hero as formidable as Charleton Heston. Linda Harrison, who played “Nova”, Taylor’s mute mate, said that James Fransicus, in the sequel seemed to be cute and tiny compared to Heston.

Chicago 10: Gen X’er gets the 60’s wrong

Posted by on 04/05/2008 2 comments

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1968-born director Brett Morgan makes two excellent choices in creating “Chicago 10”: to avoid the use of 60’s songs in the soundtrack, and to employ a fluid style of animation for much of the picture. Ultimately though he proves himself to be unwilling to grapple with the complexities and emotional underpinnings of the events of the 1960’s, and the result is a mashed-up documentary without a point of view, rather than a serious film.

In a “Fresh Air” interview, Morgan explained that because the anthemic music of the 60’s has been so thoroughly co-opted by Madison Avenue, he could no longer use it in the movie. He’s right. Imagine hearing “Revolution” by the Beatles while watching documentary footage of a protest march: it’s only a matter of time before the Nike logo appears. Morgan instead employs modern music, although it’s a stretch to say that the Beastie Boys and Rage Against the Machine are truly contemporary.

The near 3-dimensional animation used throughout the film is detailed enough to allow you actually look into the character’s mouths, but it serves the traditional reductive purposes of puppetry: to take the audience out of context, to remove the prejudices inherent in viewing human actors, to symbolize reality rather than portray it. These opportunties are squandered. Instead, 70’s-sitcom-viewer Morgan uses animation as a comic counterpoint to the harsh documentary film footage of the Chicago riots.

From time to time the totemic potential of using animated characters emerges though. Watching a cartoon Abbie Hoffman doing stand-up short-circuits all those “oh god it’s political stand-up” thoughts, he is free to function as a greek chorus, commenting on the action in the courtroom that took place earlier that day.

But for the most part “Chicago 10” fails to provide context. There is brief footage of the announcement of Martin Luther King’s death, but no sense of the the reasons for the worldwide social changes that were coming to a head in 1968, and no in-depth examination of the burgeoning youth demographic as it realized the moral bankruptcy of the old guard.

Morgan makes no attemp to reconcile the urgent protests of 1968 with the Sarandon/Mumia/Earth-First watered-down antiwar protests of today.   Imagine how energized Iraq war protests be if there were an active draft and big daily casualty counts like there were in Vietnam.  Jim Crow laws were in effect a up until the mid-60’s. “Loving vs. Virginia” was a court case that ended race-based restrictions on marriage. It was decided in 1967.

“Chicago 10” inadvertently minimizes the legitimacy of opposition to these injustices by focusing on the antics of the defendants. We don’t see the pain and frustration of a real human beings. Instead we see the Yippies descend on a city officials office and threaten to put LSD in the city water if they aren’t given the permit they want. Grainy film footage of cops wielding billyclubs substitutes for the more complicated social grievances rather than symbolizing them. Similarly the much-touted courtoom shackling of defendant Bobby Seale at the hands of a deliciously insidious Judge Julius Hoffman functions as a calculated shorthand for addressing racial injustice, which is absent elsewhere in the film.

It’s unreasonable to expect a single fim to capture the complexity of the 60’s, but “Chicago 10” doesn’t come close. Director Morgan, a child of the 70’s, babies the audience, using the animated sequences for emotional relief when the documentary footage gets frightening or boring. He puts the drama in a courtroom where he knows there is only farce. Opportunities for real drama abound: in the latter part of the film there is footage of Allen Ginsberg deciding, as he talks, whether or not to go on a prohibited march where there may be violence. What would you have done? What if you had just been drafted? And why did this idealism die? Why did this gritty passion get swept away into the Pina Colada 70’s?

Credit needs to be given to Brett Morgan for addressing this time in history. And to Roy Schieder for his wonderful voiceover of Julius Hoffman. But in the end “Chicago 10” doesn’t even rise to the level of received wisdom, it’s received footage.

On vacation

Posted by on 03/12/2008 3 comments

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The Krapmeister is on vacation for the first time in a loooong time, which is not a Calvinist brag, more a reflection of the vacationphobia spawned by my parent’s many (unsuccesful) “save the marriage” vacations. That and the fact that, like a cat, I’m a creature of habit.

I’m very much enjoying waking up without the blinding, painful yak flash of my “to do” list. I have worked out twice here, which is exactly how often I worked out in February, so I’ll soon be ready for the “World’s Strongest Man” competition.

Another white woman has a baby – Critics drool over slack “Juno”.

Posted by on 03/01/2008 2 comments

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What is it about any movie that shows a hip white woman bringing her baby to term that causes film critics to temporarily lose their minds? “Knocked Up” was given a free pass and Juno is inspiring some of the worst film criticism I’ve ever seen.

The truth is that “Juno” is a calculatedly juvenile film with an immensely appealing main actress (Ellen Page), fake meta-dialog, and an inability to follow-through on its central theme of abandonment.

Juno is constructed so as to allow moviegoers to feel as if they’ve gone through a significant emotional journey, without doing the work. One way it blunts serious emotions is through the use of hipster patois in the place of real dialog. Rob Harvilla, a music critic with the Village Voice described this best:

“Teenagers who talk like thirtysomething screenwriters. “Cool” parents who talk like teenage screenwriters. A 16-year-old heroine who actually says things like “Just looking to secure a hasty abortion!” and “Just dealing with things way outside my maturity level!” and (grits teeth) “Swear to blog!”. Just appallingly cute cute cute CUTE CUTE.”

The cutesy dialog has been universally panned in reviews, but its also serving to throw critics off serious discussion of the film’s major shortcomings. A.O. Scott in the New York Times:

“…not many are so daring in their treatment of teenage pregnancy, which this film flirts with presenting not just as bearable but attractive. Kids, please! Heed the cautionary whale. But in the meantime, have a good time at “Juno.” Bring your parents, too.”

Scott cannot resist writing in a similar style to the dialog, in fact thinking in this teenage way. “Heed the cautionary whale. But in the meantime, have a good time at “Juno.” I don’t know anyone personally who has brought a pregnancy to term and given up her baby, but I can imagine it’s a lot more painful and less attractive than is portrayed in Juno. No amount of squiggly animated fonts and warbly hypersincere outsider-style singing can make up for that fact, and pretending otherwise is the opposite of daring.

At one point in the film, after he adoptive couple has seen their relationship dissolve, the character Juno gives voice to the main point of the movie. She says something like: “I just want to know that love can last. That two people can love each other and it’s not going to go away.” A movie-sequence childbirth follows, then a shot of Juno saying she does not want to see her newborn, followed by a single tear coursing down her face. Cut to a postpartum Juno, happily riding her bike, spitting wisecracks and singing twee duets, with the afraid-of-his-own-shadow Paul Cera.

I’m not being a moralist here, I don’t want to see the character Juno punished for giving up her baby. But it’s an unsatisfying experience to have the main theme of the movie evaporate, and to instead be fed a dose of indy candy rather than a resolution, or at least a coherent point of view. Critics have responded to this shortcoming by either ignoring it – offering, as Scott does, a blithe positive assessment of the films earnestness, or else, as Stephanie Zacharek does in Salon, constructing tortuous “filmic” criticism:

“Juno” is partly about the necessity of making choices for ourselves, but it’s also about knowing when we need to accept help from others. That idea is never spelled out in so many words; it comes through in the actors’ faces. “Language is the house man lives in,” Jean-Luc Godard told us, borrowing from Martin Heidegger, in “Two or Three Things I Know About Her.” There are lots of words in “Juno.” But in the end, it’s really all about language.”

OK I’m going to let the royal “we” pass. Her evasive argument reminds me of “cold-readings” by psychics, who employ verbal tricks to keep their marks engaged: “you’re a shy person, but if it’s something you care about you have strong opinions, although you mainly keep them to yourself, but when the chips are down…” Zacharek’s version is: “it’s all about language, but not the talking kind, but instead the kind you find in actor’s faces, when they are letting you know they need help, which is really what it’s all about, just ask Jean-Luc Godard, when he borrows from Martin Heiddeger.”

Anything to keep abandonment at bay.

Perhaps it’s a zeitgeist thing, there seems to be a generalized post 9/11 anxiety about the future of mankind, for example the spate of recent movies about apocalyptic threats to
civilization (cf. “Cloverfield”, “I am Legend”). Combine this with role-uncertainty created by modern decisions to delay childbearing (cf. Lori Gottlieb’s article “Marry Him” in the Atlantic Monthly), and the result may be that a simple squiggly-lined movie about a young woman’s lack of anxiety in futhering the human race has an appeal that is irresistable. Just not to me.

Swear to blog.

Lumet loves Lattices: The Pawnbroker

Posted by on 02/18/2008 3 comments

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(photo from K. Silam Mohammad’s lostintheframe.blogspot.com)

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“The Pawnbroker” stars Rod Steiger as a Holocaust survivor who becomes a pawnbroker in Spanish Harlem in the early-60’s. This places the action 20 years out from WWII, roughly the same time that has passed since the first Desert Storm — not a long time.  It must have been even more powerful to see this harrowing film in the 1960’s than it is today.

Steiger has a sheer presence that makes minor quibbles, like his hard-to-place accent, inconsequential. The weight of experience is so heavy upon the main character, Mr. Nazerman, that he can only respond to people in the most perfunctory manner. All social niceties have left him. Thus when the pimp who is laundering money through Nazerman’s pawnshop mockingly calls him “Professor”, Nazerman simply hangs up the phone. Or when a junkie, trying to sell a gimcrack radio, berates him as a “filthy blood-sucking kike”, he barely glances up as he replies “Still at the same address?”. Seeing this disregard for social convention is a guilty pleasure, like watching Michael Imperioli of The Soproanos pull out a gun in order to get faster service in a donut shop. It brings you over to Nazerman’s side, a dangerous place to be, because when the emotions do come out, they will be titanic.

Lumet uses grids and latticework as a symbol of confinement throughout the film: the metal protective metal grid inside the pawnshop, often casting shadows on the characters, the fancy cross-hatched room divider in the pimp Rodriguez’ pad, the railing on the patio of the social worker’s apartment, the barbed wire in the flashbacks to the concentration camp. And who can blame Nazerman for staying within the lines?

Ultimately though, Nazerman discovers that his business is being financed through prostitution, he flashes back to images of his wife (girlfriend?) in Nazi “Joy Division” sexual slavery, and he has a breakdown. The final scene is of Steiger plunging his hand through the sharp ticket-holder spine, then wandering the streets of Spanish Harlem, staring at his stigmata, shortly after his assistant has been killed in a botched robbery attempt.

The power of Steiger’s performance isn’t in the shaking and grimacing though, it’s in his non-reactivity. Being non-reactive is a high-status trait, and we find it intriguing that Nazerman, essentially a schlemiel who is at the behest of petty crooks, can carry himself with such authority. Perhaps we fellow schlemiels can model ourselves after him in some way.

Yet there is an underlying tension of knowing that, in order to achieve this equanimity, he must essentially kill the parts of himself that are human, and this cannot last for long. How tempting it would be for an actor of lesser stature to give up on this theme, to instead portray the character as angry or simmering, and to try to force meaning into the dialog that Steiger wisely treats as throwaway. Steiger rejects poignancy and is a master of self-control. Thus when he breaks down it is all the more terrible.

Minor notes and other gulity pleasures: Interiors are shot with that old klieg-light style that makes every character look like an escaped prisoner pinned against a prison drainpipe. The apartment furnishings inside Brock Peter’s apartment are authentic Saarinen pedestal items (Saarinen claimed he wanted to provide a “solution for clearing up the slums of legs in US homes”) and Eames chairs. Peter’s manservant looks like a photographic negative of himself, instead of a black man in white clothing it’s a white man with silver hair in black clothing, an early Andersen Cooper type.

1940’s meet the 1960’s: “Go Man Go!”

Posted by on 02/18/2008 3 comments

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A charming time-capsule starring another charismatic but forgotten actor, Dane Clark (not the execrable Dane Cook), alongside a young Sidney Poitier, “Go Man Go!” features a bebop score by Slim Galliard, who was a favorite of Jack Kerouac. I wonder what the connection with “On the Road” is — I remember the phrase “Go Man Go” as an exhortation Sal Paradise shouted out to improvising jazz musicians.

Slim Galliard makes an appearance, playing a piano with his fingers upside down for a small gathering of Globetrotters. I love Kerouac’s description of a Galliard concert:

‘… we went to see Slim Gaillard in a little Frisco nightclub. Slim Gaillard is a tall, thin Negro with big sad eyes who’s always saying ‘Right-orooni’ and ‘How ’bout a little bourbon-arooni.’ In Frisco great eager crowds of young semi-intellectuals sat at his feet and listened to him on the piano, guitar and bongo drums.”

“…Then he slowly gets up and takes the mike and says, very slowly, ‘Great-orooni … fine-ovauti … hello-orooni … bourbon-orooni … all-orooni … how are the boys in the front row making out with their girls-orooni … orooni … vauti … oroonirooni …” He keeps this up for fifteen minutes, his voice getting softer and softer till you can’t hear. His great sad eyes scan the audience.”

What kills me is “ovauti“, it makes sense next to “o-rooni” but it’s so weird, where is it coming from? It’s perfect though.

That’s the 1950’s part of this movie, the 1940’s part consists of stereotypical interactions between Clark as Abe Saperstein, Bill Stern (as himself) a hard-bitten but honest sportswriter, and the evil Potter-like sports magnate Mr. Willoughby. The Bowery-Boys-style slang they use — “Hey ya mug! Ya gonna be a chump all your life? Of course you’re invited!” — is the direct precursor of today’s crushingly unimaginative board-room Ebonics appropriation: “Quarterly earnings doubled? Girl, go on with your bad self!”. It was probably just as hard to listen to back then.

The 1960’s part of the movie is best shown in the final scene, Abe Saperstein, arm-in-arm with the Globetrotters, walking triumphantly towards the camera, in a hopeful message of racial healing. Shades of Blackboard Jungle. I can’t recall another movie from the 1950’s that was this hopeful and unabashed about race. Today’s derivative ironic culture cannibalizes sentiment like this.

“Go Man Go” also has something to say about acting. In an early scene real-life Globetrotter “Sweetwater Clifton” speaks some lines about how he likes soda pop (the origin of his nickname). He delivers them woodenly, although with charm. This is the low end of the acting scale.

Raising the bar, Dane Clark as Abe Saperstein, shows real conviction, but he’s always hitting something when he acts. “I’m going to get us into big arenas if it’s the last thing I do!’ (SMACK). It’s as if the director fired him up before every scene (“Now this time really mean it!”) without thinking what the cumulative effect would be. Clark’s “average Joe” always seems to be in a harangue.

The best actor in the movie is Sidney Poitier, in a relatively minor role, who pops up from time-to-time to speak a few impassioned lines. He does so with quiet conviction, and having seen the other actors telegraph and flail, one gets a sense of the star quality of Sidney Poitier.

A couple of minor points about this movie: it is exemplary in showing what I like to call “old-time small basketball court syndrome”, action shot in a remarkably cramped gym. Another film that features this is “Angels with Dirty Faces” where the players are dodging trapezes and other non-basketball equipment as they play on a tiny court.

“Go Man Go” made me think of why, although everyone knows Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball, no one knows who did it in the NBA. It turns out that Charles Cooper was the first drafted, Nat Clifton was the first signed, and Earl Lloyd the first to play in a game, all in 1950. Even though it’s complicated, I would think this deserves a little more recognition. Is it because basketball is not “America’s Game”?

Sontag vs. Kael: Opposites Attract Me

Posted by on 02/13/2008 Comments Off on Sontag vs. Kael: Opposites Attract Me

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Craig Seligman begins by saying “I didn’t want to write a book with a hero and a villain, but Sontag kept making it hard for me.”, a statement which reflects my primary objection to this book: too much Craig Seligman.

“She [Sontag] is not a likeable writer — but then she doesn’t intend to be. She’s elitist and condescending towards those less-informed than she is (i.e., everbody) and gratingly unapologetic about it.” By using this “shoot from the hip” style, Seligman is simply emulating his heroine Kael.

Pauline Kael is my favorite film critic, not because of her approach to criticism which is undisciplined and ideosyncratic, but because she is right almost all the time. I love Kael’s line about Richard Chamberlain: “He keeps us conscious that he’s acting all the time. His toes act in his shoes”.

This approach to writing falls apart quickly though when the instant conclusions don’t resonate.   In contrast I was struck by the principled approach Sontag took to larger issues, such as her early comment about the complexity of the issues surrounding the 9/11 attacks:

“Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a “cowardly” attack on “civilization” or “liberty” or “humanity” or “the free world” but an attack on the world’s self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq?”

This statement prompted the misguided Andrew Sullivan to create the “Sontag Award” for those who oppose the war on terrorism. Is this the signal example of the old vs. new public intellectual? The real scandal is the death of half a million Iraqi children, prior to 9/11, due to U.S.-sponsored sanctions:

from a 60 Minutes interview (5/12/96)

“Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.”

Sontag and Kael weren’t opposites, Kael was a brilliant pop writer for whom judgments about personal style were paramount (her own style excepted). She wrote about popular culture within the bubble of popular culture. Sontag’s imperious personal style may have been an important defense mechanism against the oppressive male high culture crypt-keepers of the day. If you remove the personality factor, and look into the substance of Sontag’s writings, to me she comes across as brave and warm-hearted.

“Opposites Attract” is, in fact, inapposite: Kael and are not opposite personalities — for Sontag personality was oblique, an accoutrement, her inner thoughts revealed only in the context of her writings, and in the times in which those writings were created (e.g. 9/11). Analyzing ideas in within these layers is a challenging task, and just as Edmond Morris did in his Reagan biography “Dutch”, I think Seligman may have taken the easy way out.

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The Charles Nelson Reilly Conundrum

Posted by on 01/26/2008 4 comments

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I’ve recently run into several mid-30’s, culturally hyperliterate NYC women who, when asked if they know who Charles Nelson Reilly is, respond with a blank stare. Although the Krapmeister is no spring chicken, this is making me feel Really Old, it’s putting me into Ian McKellan in “Gods and Monsters” territory.

CNR was a gem, one of the first openly gay comedians on network t.v. I don’t think Paul Lynde was “out” to the same degree.

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Charles Nelson Reilly started out taking acting lessons with Steve McQueen, once married to the lovely Ali McGraw, (see previous post, ed.) He appeared on Broadway and won several Tonys and later became a “game-show fixture”. His spluttering, sailor-hatted, giant-glasses-wearing, ascot-sporting persona was funny and refreshing to me, and I always imagined him as a calm, honorable mensch underneath.

This would distinguish him from Paul Lynde who was also very funny but with an air of menace that hinted at the mean-ass alcoholic he was in real life. There is an apocryphal story of how, as a confirmed kid-hater, he was driven crazy by a squalling baby on a long plane flight. He is said to have left his seat and confronted the baby’s mother, saying “Madam, if you don’t quiet that baby I’m going to fuck it!” It’s bad enough he says “fuck” in regard to the kid but he also calls it an “it”. Drugs, rough trade, booze, early death… standard Hollywood story arc.

But back to me. Why is it that it’s so difficult in the ostensible cultural capital of the world to find a woman who knows who Charles Nelson Reilly is? I’m not big on cultural litmus tests but I’m feeling a little isolated here. Now if I could only find someone who knows who this man is:

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Love Story

Posted by on 12/22/2007 1 comment

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Ali McGraw is so appealing in Love Story. Ryan O’Neal too. The movie is overwrought but it’s truly character-driven. Ali McGraw looks like an ex of mine, and the deathbed scenes reminded me of my mom’s recent passing so I suppose the experience was preloaded. I found myself feeling that slightly painful feeling of falling in love. I suppose that’s the motivation for the teenage girls who would see the movie multiple times during its first run.

Ryan O’Neal was great at one time, fantastic in “Paper Moon”, funny in “What’s Up Doc?” How did he turn into a bloated angry mess? Ali McGraw wrote a book called “Moving Pictures” where she describes her battles with alcohol and her relationship problems – like Jane Fonda she was only attracted to cold, witholding men. Who could have predicted that watching her be so fresh-faced, funny and cynical back in 1970?

9/11 Comedy

Posted by on 12/10/2007 2 comments

I admire Sarah Silverman for being a comic who isn’t afraid to joke about 9/11. I remember a few days after 9/11, seeing a comedy show in a basement space in Manhattan (“Two Boots”), featuring a Muslim comic, who was making jokes about being a Muslim, I don’t even remember what the jokes were but they were tremendously funny, owing probably to how nervous everyone was. It’s true, risky stuff is funnier.

Sarah Silverman’s schtick depends on her being an attractive woman. Will she be funny when she’s old and not as attractive? Maybe she’ll be a modern Phyllis Diller, making fun of her body. That might even be funnier because it would be edgier – aging is an uncomfortable topic in America.