How I Watch Films

     I don't always watch a film all the way through.  The films I write about are usually ones I've seen all the way through.  Within a week I write about the film, sometimes right after seeing it.  Sometimes I write during the viewing, making note of scenes, characters, then rewriting the whole thing as a crisp post.  Sometimes I don't write about movies I've seen.  Sometimes I don't watch movies.

     A few thoughts:

     Every movie has a Gollum.  Fredo in The Godfather Part Two.  Herman in The Vampire Bat, Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy.  Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook) in All the President's Men is a Gollum.  He appears only in a parking structure, a cave, he has precious information, but then, short (Hobbit-like) Dustin Hoffman is in All the President's Men as Carl Bernstein, the less famous of the intrepid Washington Post reporters.  Bernstein now offers a pundit's views, for the last few years spreading Russiagate propaganda, i.e. the swamp water we are swimming in as U.S. news media and politicians stoke hatred against Russia.  Fuck you, Carl Bernstein, and every Rachel Maddow-like brain-fucker convincing millions of people above the age of sixty that Russia stole the 2016 election, when in fact the DNC email data theft was an inside job.

     Bob Woodward, author of numerous close access books on presidential administrations, including the trashiest, Fear, about Trump's rule, behaves exactly like a long term intelligence asset.  That's not what the movie All the President's Men is about.  It shows an integrity-obsessed editor in chief played by Jason Robards, you can smell his coffee and tobacco breath, his not sleeping for forty-eight hours, armpit sweat staining his undershirt, his shirt, tainting the very air with the moist stink of a big city newspaper editor's rank pits.

     I saw the film once, some twenty years ago.  I enjoyed it.  It sanitizes the JFK assassination angle, a real thing confirmed by H.R. Haldeman.  When Richard Nixon said, in an Oval Office recording, "that whole Bay of Pigs thing" he was referring to the assassination of JFK, according to Haldeman, Nixon's Chief of Staff and a man with a million dollar crewcut.  Woodward, for his book Veil, obtained death bed interviews with CIA director William Casey.  Who else but a CIA journalist would get such access to a terminally ill man who, in 1981, said, "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false."

     Woodward's role, like Bernstein's with Russiagate hysteria, is to participate in that disinformation program.  Presidential administrations tolerate him because he's safe.  He doesn't rock the boat about the American ways of doing business.  Trump, in a released audio recording from a phone call with Woodward, said, in February 2020, Covid-19 was going to be a bad thing.  The following month, lockdowns, government overreach.  Woodward waited until the Fall of 2020 to release this Covid-19 statement by Trump.  It meant that while our government was downplaying Covid in early 2020, not preparing at all for the onslaught, plus the lack of interest in using the power of government to order businesses to manufacture personal protective equipment, Trump and his people, and some in Congress, knew the seriousness of the problem and didn't warn the public.  Nor did Bob Woodward, whose career and ego, his access to scumbags (politicians, CIA directors) are more important to him than the health and safety of the American people.  Ooh, I feel a little self-righteous, but I'm just calling it like I sees it.  

     Which reminds me: The Beatles wanted Stanley Kubrick to direct them in a film of The Lord of the Rings.  John Lennon was to play Gollum.  George Harrison would've been Gandalf.  It's tempting to wonder who Mick Jagger might've played.  Legolas the Wood Elf?  Better yet, Tom Bombadil.  My money's on Sharon Tate as Arwen.

     In The Vampire Bat, the nutty character Herman runs into a cave I've seen used in Republic science fiction movie serials.  1933, when that film came out, showed a strong predilection for horror films.  Horror a favored genre during the Great Depression.  Gangster films popular, too, and office romance or intrigue films, so-called skyscraper dramas.  Comedy, too, the Marx Brothers, their Monkey Business (1931) my introduction to wacky humor, Harpo Marx my hero for a time because he didn't speak, expressed himself instead through his art, his harp, his comedy, his magic trench coat filled with endless objects, bigger on the inside than on the outside, a TARDIS, Harpo Marx a Time Lord, like Tom Baker, the fourth actor to play the Doctor in Doctor Who, the Doctor I most identified with.  Tom Baker's puffed out hair resembled Harpo's wig.  For Halloween as a boy I dressed up as Harpo Marx.  Nine year old boy in a trench coat and a blonde wig.  My mates accepted me.  Two of them dressed as toughs, cigarette packages twisted into their white tee shirts, grease in their hair, combs, jeans, West Side Story, Jets, I guess, no Latino in their German and Polish backgrounds.

     What that film meant to me when I saw it a few times on TV as a child, Robert Wise's West Side Story, comes across as memories of Russ Tamblyn and his Jets gang running to and scaling tall aluminum fences, flipping their bodies over and scrambling to the concrete.  The choreographed athleticism of that stunt impressed me then, a fence climber I was like all 1970s boys in America.  Trespassers.  Short cut practitioners.  Makers of desire lines.  

     I admire the film.  The rumble, the stabbing, the switchblades, the duel tradition.  Natalie Wood and the sizzling Rita Moreno provide the female draw.  Imagine my surprise when I found out Steven Spielberg has made a remake of West Side Story.  Didn't Spielberg already know I despise most of his work?  Why antagonize me further by remaking a good film that doesn't need to be remade?  How about remaking a bad film, Steven?  Remake Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the most disappointing follow-up to a great movie ever made.  My enmity towards Spielberg goes back that far to the second Indy film.  It's irrational, it makes me wonder sometimes why I enjoy hating Spielberg's work so much, but I'm fine with it.  I'm not thrilled with Michael Bay or J.J. Abrams, either. 

     Throughout as I write this, The Vampire Bat from 1933 plays on the TV's YouTube system.  Fay Wray, King Kong's Screaming and Whimpering Bride, stars along with mad scientist Lionel Atwill.  This actor could put it across as a nutcase.

     Death in Venice, the film by Visconti, the novel by Thomas Mann, who I'm reading lately, Joseph and His Brothers.  Not a film, but a book the mass of a film canister with thirty-five millimeter film reel inside.    

Joseph, a Knopf edition, 1,207 pages, from an original edition of June 1948, my copy from the seventh printing, dated February 1971.  Four novels in one, written in German.  When I read even a philosophical cultural theological biblical speculative novel like this, I see some scenes clearly, as in a film, the long pack train of sheep, goats, cattle, oxen and the hundreds attending as Jacob leads his family and servants from Laban's influence.  The conversations between Jacob and "the clod Laban," ring with bright comedic line delivery.  When people spoke, they tended to mean their words.  Joseph presented as a beautiful youth, head crammed with knowledge, an intellectual with eleven working class brothers who can't read.  Special treatment given to Joseph by widower Jacob.  His beloved Rachel (second official wife) dies from an excruciating birth of her second and last child, Benjamin, whom she calls Benoni (son of my sorrow, among other meanings).  Joseph's favorite son status gets him into trouble.  He borders on moon-worship, nakedly (maybe with a loin cloth on) holding his arms out to the Full Moon, caught at this heathen practice by Jacob his father.  Jacob doesn't get on his case, just tells him to get dressed, and then they have a Lewis Stone-Mickey Rooney father-son chat.

     Mickey Rooney as a young actor, at the time of the Andy Hardy movies, could've played Joseph in a stage production of that story.  Joseph at all ages, so Andy Hardy with a long white beard attached to hooks wrapped around his ears.  Andy in his underwear, gasp in the audience, titters, looking at a White Moon with a classmate's face occupying its center.  Hal Robbs, Andy's competitor for the affections of new girl Gertrude von Shenk, an exotic brunette with a wasp-waist, a cigarette holder, a slinky way of walking, and a frosty kiss for Hal or Andy, depending on who best can fix her car.

     The Andy Hardy movies petered out around the time of World War Two's end.  I recall one of them dealing Andy coming home from the war, in uniform.  A gloomy entry in the series.  The world had changed.  America didn't want to see Andy Hardy anymore.  

     I wanted that Andy Hardy homecoming movie to be more like Andy Hardy Kills Hitler.  Starts with a bang.  Andy comes through the front door, suitcase handle in hand, steel box cradled in his right arm.  

     "Hey, I'm home!"

     Mom runs in from the kitchen, followed by that middle-aged woman who lives with them.

     "Andy's home!" Mom says, he puts down the suitcase, holds onto the package.  Hugs her with his left arm.  Hugs the other woman.  Blonde Cecelia Parker, his sister whose name escapes me, comes down the stairs.  She was in her room leafing through Life magazine.  Hugs.

     Cecelia: What's in the box?  A present?

     Mom: Oh Cecelia!  It's enough that Andy's here.

     Other Woman: (needlessly) He's the present, dear.

     Andy takes the box to a side table, moves aside the bakelite ear cup phone, fiddles with latches and opens the box, grabs something.

     Andy: It's a present for humanity (yanks it out and holds it, beaming a smile).

     Mom: What is that ghastly object!?

     Andy: Look under his nose.

     Cecelia: (leans forward) Hitler?

     Andy: In the flesh!  

     Other Woman: How did you get that?

     Andy: I fought him in a duel inside this bunker in Berlin.  (To Cecelia) That's in Germany.  I'll give it to old Adolf.  He put up a fight, but his sword broke.  Mine remained true.  I skewered him, then I took his head off.  Hal Robbs came in with his Bowie knife and took his hand.  He takes it out of his coat pocket and says, "Here, shake hands with Hitler."  

     Mom: (horrified) Hal has done this!?

     Andy: War has done it, Mother.  We're savages.  

     Mom: Where is Hal?

     Andy: In New York, trying to get someone to shake Hitler's hand.  He's writing an article about it.

     Cecelia: (warming up) Hal's a writer?

     Andy: Didn't you know?  He wrote The Grapes of Wrath under a pen name.

     Cecelia: I saw that movie!

     Other Woman: What will your father think when he sees this human head, rather the worse for wear?

     Cecelia: I would hope he would be proud of our Andy for ridding the world of its most hated villain.

     Mom: It's a...particularly...grotesque...thing...I demand you remove it...from my house...at once, Andrew!

     Andy: Gee, sorry, Ma, I thought you'd like it.  I thought we could mount it over the fireplace.

     Mom: Absolutely not!

     Cecelia: You better go, Andy.  Come back at suppertime, I'll put your bag in your room.  It's just as you left it.

     Other Woman: I'll start dinner.

     Mom: (soliloquy) I raised him to do good.  Well, joining the Army made a man of him.  And a killer.  I accept that.  Slaying the enemy in war is a good, righteous thing.  One must do it.  One doesn't want to.  It's easier and more enjoyable to sit back and read the paper, or work in the garden, drink lemonade, have a few cocktails with friends, dine out on someone else's dime, not be asked for sex by Judge Hardy, than it is to defend one's country, actually defend it by fighting a dangerous enemy abroad!  This Hitler was a bad man.  I don't understand how parents could raise a child who would turn into such a nuisance!  Andy did the right thing, I so acknowledge it.  His presentation was the shock.  He could've written, telling us he killed Mr. Hitler in a sword fight.  Are you all right, dear, and are you going to receive a medal?  I wonder if he will be awarded a medal?  By God, I'll write to President Truman if he doesn't receive one.  I expect him to receive nothing less than the Medal of Honor!  I want to see President Truman standing behind my short son, pinning the ribbon together and allowing the beautiful medallion of accomplishment to rest upon my son's dress blues breast.  Yes, I must tell Judge Hardy when he comes home to buy me a new dress for the Medal of Honor ceremony in Washington.  And shoes.  And a purse.  I've had the same purse since 1939.  I've been wearing the same nylons since January 1942.  We finally bought a new car, a Ford sedan, dark blue, looks black from a distance.  Hal Robbs.  It's hard to believe he's committed to that prank.  But a man's got to eat.  He needs material to draw from in his writing.  Experiential based fiction, or non-fiction, all of it worth reading--I'm an avid devourer of essays, letters to the editor, romance stories, the occasional fantasy, I even read War of the Worlds.  Reader's Digest is on my nightstand without fail, as is the Bible, and an alarm clock, always set for 5:40 in the morning, so Judge Hardy can take his pills by six and do his calisthenics before his warm bath, shave, dressing period--it always takes him so long to tie his tie!--and then the morning paper, coffee, orange juice freshly squeezed--I go through about fifteen oranges a day for that man!--three strips of bacon, two pieces of toast, three scrambled eggs with a dash of pepper, a celery stalk, and a shot of whisky to top it off.  Kiss on the cheek, "Bye bye, dear, I'll be home at 5:20."  He's always home at 5:20, except when Greta Garbo attempted to seduce him in that never-completed movie in the Andy Hardy series, Andy Hardy Meets a Swede.

     It's 5:20, Judge Hardy enters, dour Lewis Stone face, dark eyes in a pale visage.  

     Mom: Dear, where's Andy?

     Judge: He's at the soda fountain showing everybody the thing he says is Adolf Hitler's head.

     Mom: Oh no!

     Other Woman: Dinner will be ready in five minutes.

     Judge: Good, I'm starved.

     Mom: You always say that.

     Judge: I'll keep my truths to myself then.

     Mom: I'm just so glad Andy's home!

     Judge: As am I.  I missed our father-son talks.  Now, he's the one who can teach me a few things about war, and combat.  I'll bet he's got some stories.

     Cecelia enters.

     Cecelia: Yeah Dad, like the one about doing the Errol Flynn with Hitler and stabbing him and chopping his head off.  

     Judge: That's not the kind of behavior an Errol Flynn character would exhibit.

     Mom: But we have our Andy to thank for the demise of the world's most evil man.

     Judge: There's always another.  How about that evening paper?

     Vic Neptune