Harmonica Is The West’s Rosebud

Title: Once Upon A Time In The West

Rating: 5 Stars

Still working through the BFI best films list, I decided to choose a film from a bit deeper in the list. Since I’ve never seen it and it is generally acknowledged as one of the best Westerns, I went with Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West. It clocked in at 95 on the list. Weirdly enough, right after it is another Western, Howard Hawk’s Rio Bravo.

The film centers on five characters. Three are emblematic of the old West. There is Harmonica (we never learn his real name, Leone really must like characters with no name), played by Charles Bronson. He’s a loner that, yes, plays harmonica a lot. He seems to be on some kind of mission to kill Frank (Henry Fonda) and his minions. Frank is a brutal killer in the employ of a railroad magnate. He will stop at nothing to get the rights to the land that the railroad needs to pass through. The third character is Cheyenne (Jason Robards). He is also leading a band of outlaws, but he’s much more likely to be sympathetic to the cause of the individual than to the railroad. The three of them are on a collision course.

The other two characters are symbolic of the change that is coming to the West. First of all is the railroad magnate Mr Morton (Gabrielle Ferzetti (this is after all, a spaghetti Western)). He is not at all interested in the ways of the old West. His obsessive mission is to build a railroad that runs from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific. He has a painting of the Pacific ocean that he continually stares at.

The other character is Jill McBain (Claudia Cardinale). She has just become a McBain. A sex worker in New Orleans, she falls in love with Brett McBain. She marries him and agrees to travel later to his home in Flagstone. Although McBain is barely eking out a living on his poor land, he knows that it’s the only path that the railroad can take on its way to the Pacific. Therefore, he thinks that he’s going to be rich.

Instead, Frank and his gang, impersonating Cheyenne and his gang, raids McBain’s ranch and kills McBain and all of his children. The next day, Jill arrives in Flagstone to discover her brand new happy life that she envisioned has been destroyed. Not sure what to do, Harmonica, Cheyenne, and Frank all conspire with and against her for their own motivations.

That’s essentially the film. Who is Harmonica and what does he want? Will Frank either kill Jill or somehow manage to steal the land? Will Frank continue to work for Mr Morton or take over his operation? Cheyenne is the wild card. Where does his loyalties lie?

It’s not until nearly the final scene that we learn who Harmonica is and why he keeps playing that same mournful tune on his harmonica. Since it reminded me of Rosebud’s sled burning in the furnace, that inspired the title of this post.

Although it’s titled once upon a time, Leone’s places it at a very specific point in time, the time when the West began to be tamed. At least according to the American myth of the West, the West was originally populated by strong, brave, self-reliant individualistic men. Harmonica, Frank, and Cheyenne all represent this ideal. When people today talk about the days when men were real men, this is the myth that they refer back to.

The film represents the point in time when that begins to change. Just look at Mr Morton (a name very close to the historic Morgan business family dynasty). Mr Morton is not a strong, brave man. In fact, he suffers from some physical ailment such that he can’t even stand on his own. He walks with crutches. He is only mobile because of the train car that he commands. Even though he is physically weak, the power of his money allows him to command Frank, even though Frank clearly despises his physical weakness. Mr Morton cares nothing about the land itself. It is only a vehicle that allows him to lay tracks to the Pacific Ocean.

The railroad itself brings change to the West. It will no longer be simple log houses and men on horses. The railroad shows that mechanization is coming to the West. With mechanization will come increased goods and increased population. The hard, solitary life will be coming to an end.

Jill McBain represents the feminization of the American West. This land will no longer be the sole province of men. She is bent upon building the town that will surround the soon to be constructed railroad station. She is destined to be the wealthiest person in the area. By that fact alone, she will probably become one of the most powerful local figures.

Why did I only give is three stars? Well, it runs for two hours and forty minutes. That wouldn’t be a problem except for the fact that it felt like it ran for about four hours. At least for this film, Leone isn’t content with a five minute scene if he can extend it to ten minutes. There are so many scenes of Harmonica, Frank, and Cheyenne eternally looking sternly amongst themselves. The pacing of the film made it seem interminable.

This is especially so when considering Leone’s inspiration. I’ve mentioned before how his film A Fistful of Dollars is basically an outright ripoff of a Kurosawa samurai film (written about here). Although this film is not based upon a specific Kurosawa film, it clearly has elements that would not be out of place in a samurai film. There’s the helpless victim apparently without recourse. There’s the cadre of purposeful men bound to steal the victim’s property. There is the loner hero that takes on the mission of destroying the gang and saving the victim.

The difference is that Kurosawa’s film is full of action with overwrought characters. Leone’s film, in contrast, is composed of, at best, intermittent action taken by taciturn men. It’s pacing seems catatonic in comparison.

I’m guessing that I might have had a different experience if I watched it on a Cinerama 70mm print on a big screen. Scenes are beautifully shot. Although filmed primarily in Spain and Italy, Leone did some shooting in Monument Valley to capture its grandeur. I’m sure that I lost a lot by watching it on my laptop.

As I continue to work through the list, it’ll be interesting to compare it to the other Westerns to see how it stacks up. Also, Leone’s Once Upon A Time In America is also on the list. Considering that that film is nearly four hours long, it’ll be interesting to see the pacing of that film.

Person of the American 19th Century

Title: Blood and Thunder

Rating: 3 Stars

Even though this article is completely taken from it, I’m not going to spend much time discussing Hampton Sides’ Blood and Honor. I’ve read several of Sides’ works, including Ghost Soldiers, Hellhound on his Trail, and On Desperate Ground. I’d thoroughly enjoyed all of those works. They were some of the best historical narrative that I’d ever read.

I did not like Blood and Thunder as much. I think that Sides’ strength is on tighter, more focused subjects. When he’s focused on something specific, whether it be World War II POW’s and their rescue or the Korean War Battle on the Chosin or the assassination of MLK Jr and the search for his killer, his writing propels you forward as if you’re reading an action novel.

Blood and Thunder is a much broader subject covering a much longer period of time. It’s about white America’s dream of manifest destiny as it clashes with the Native American tribes that had the audacity to, you know, live on the lands that white Americans claimed was their birthright. It spans some sixty years. While it was interesting reading and there was much to be learned, I just wasn’t as drawn into it as I was with other Sides’ other histories.

If you’re interested in reading about the tragic history of a group of people that were destined to be triumphant over another group of people that were doomed to be nearly eradicated, then you’ll find this interesting. Having already read histories such as Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, the sad saga of broken promises, systemic mistreatment, and outright massacres is tragically, grimly, familiar.

One of the lens that Sides uses to tell this story is through the life of Kit Carson. I, of course, had heard of Kit Carson but I didn’t realize how much his life spanned this crucial time in the American West.

I’d like to spend the rest of this article with a brief biography of Kit Carson. In my opinion, he’s the Zelig of the American West in the nineteenth century. Hardly anything happened that Carson didn’t somehow end up in the middle of.

Let’s start with his birth. Born in 1809, he was one of fifteen children (in a blended family). His father fought in both the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. Shortly after his birth, his family moved to Boone’s Lick, Missouri. Boone’s Lick was owned by the sons of Daniel Boone. So, from birth, he had connections to our first two wars and the great pioneer Daniel Boone.

When Kit was eight, his father died in an accident. Carson was then apprenticed to a saddler. That work did not suit him and he ran away at the age of seventeen. Running away is a bit of a misnomer. The saddler encouraged him to leave and he placed an ad for Carson’s return with a reward of one cent.

Carson made his way to the Santa Fe Trail. He then began his career as a mountain man. He became a trapper. He led several expeditions. He hunted beaver until he noticed that the beaver population was beginning to die off.

He was an Indian fighter. As a mountain man, he often crossed paths with Native American tribes. Although he was illiterate (he usually signed his name with an X; it was only much later that he could even sign his name), he was fluent in Spanish and several Native American languages. His first two wives were both Native American. Even so, he engaged in many violent fights with Native Americans.

His exploits became so famous that he became a heavily sought after guide. John Fremont, famed as The Pathfinder, hired Carson to be his guide for three different expeditions. He led Fremont on one expedition that spanned the Oregon Trail to Wyoming and then another that went all of the way to the Columbia River in Oregon. The third expedition went through Salt Lake City to the Sierra Nevada in California and Oregon. Although Fremont was known as The Pathfinder, it’s safe to say that Carson was The Pathfinder’s Pathfinder.

In 1846, there was the Bear Flag Revolt. This was Californians trying to break free of Mexico. Carson served as the courier for Fremont during this struggle. On one trip, he met up with the US Army’s General Kearney and his troops. Carson turned around and led Kearney’s troops to California, making them the first US soldiers in California. Later, one of Carson’s courier messages that he personally delivered from California to Washington DC was the first news of gold being discovered in California.

Still working with Kearney’s men, Carson fought in the Mexican-American War. At one point, hopelessly outnumbered, Kearney sent Carson out for reinforcements. Having lost his shoes sneaking past the pickets, Carson walked twenty-five miles barefoot to San Diego to get reinforcements. They came in the nick of time to save Kearney and his men.

His military time was not over. Carson served the Union army during the Civil War. A Confederate army invaded New Mexico with dreams of cutting the Western territories off from the rest of the Union. Commissioned as a Lieutenant Colonel, he successfully led a New Mexico regiment into battle. The Confederate army never threatened again.

Although he was famed as an Indian fighter, he was also empathetic to the plight of beleaguered Native American tribes. For many years he served as an Indian agent charged with managing the affairs of the Utes, Apaches, and Pueblos. Far more than typical, he treated the tribes fairly and with respect.

Even so, he was also the person that was put in charge of subduing the various Navajo tribes. He did so ruthlessly. Knowing that he and his men could never defeat the Navajo in a conventional battle, he used the tactics of total warfare to defeat them. He went after their food supply, burning every field that he came across. The Navajos had an extensive fruit orchard that held spiritual significance to them. He had it all chopped down.

Starving, the various Navajo tribes eventually surrendered. Carson believed that the only way that they could survive is if they learned to farm and to assimilate with Western ways. Unfortunately, the reservation land that was set aside from them had a poor water supply and was not conducive to farming. Eventually, the Navajo tribes were relocated to a reservation that was closer to their original homeland.

Carson became such a national celebrity that there was an entire publishing industry of Western pulp novels written that featured a highly fictionalized version of Carson doing all kinds of heroic exploits. Carson was himself a short, quiet, soft spoken, modest man that, at best, was bemused when he was told some of the stories that were published about him.

By the late 1860s, Carson was tired. He’d led an active life for forty years. He had a farm and a sheep ranch and just wanted to quietly live there with his third wife and ten children (from three marriages). However, it was not to be. About a month after his wife died after giving birth to their eighth child, Carson died of a aneurysm.

So there you have it. Kit Carson, running away from home as a young man, mountain man, explorer that ranged all over the American West, Indian fighter, Indian agent, committer of Indian atrocities, illiterate, fought for California’s independence, fought in both the Mexican-American War and the Civil War, and became a mythic celebrity in his lifetime.

Kit Carson, I anoint you as the Person of the American Nineteenth Century.

Kicking The Daughter Loose

Title: Late Spring

Rating: 5 Stars

As you can probably guess, this is another entry from the BFI Sight and Sound all time best film list. This one clocks in at 22.

This is a Japanese film released in 1949. Directed by Yasujirō Ozu, it’s the story of Professor Shukichi Somiya (Chishu Ryu) and his adult daughter Noriko (Setsuko Hara). Before the events of the film, Somiya’s wife / Noriko’s mother has apparently died. Noriko has taken her place and takes care of her father.

Noriko is now twenty-seven. Somiya comes under pressure from his sister to find a husband for Noriko. Somiya agrees. However, Noriko strongly opposes. She is happy taking care of her father and thinks that her father would not be able to take of himself. Noriko announces that he’s about to take a wife. Shocked, Noriko reluctantly agrees to meet one of her suitors. They’re a good match and Noriko agrees to marry him. Before the wedding, Noriko apologizes to her father, saying that she’d been selfish in wanting to stay with him if his heart is set on marrying. Somiya forgives her and tells her that marriage is hard work but that she’ll be even happier with her husband than she was with him. Only after the wedding do we learn that Somiya lied about getting married. He only said it because he knew that Noriko would have never otherwise left him. As the film closes, we see Somiya sitting solemnly alone in his now empty house.

And that’s about it. But there’s so much more to it than that.

There’s the historical context. Being released in 1949 means that it was probably filmed in 1948. This is a scant three years after Japan’s surrender ending World War II. At the close of the war, Japan was utterly devastated and under American military occupation. The fact that somehow, in this cultural and actual wasteland, Ozu was able to create such a beautiful film is amazing to me. On top of that, the occupation had censors in place that Ozu had to carefully navigate.

In the film, there are several references to the war and to some of the difficult times that the Japanese people had. In particular, Noriko had apparently suffered forced labor during the war that she is just now recovering from. There are several signs that the occupation has changed Japan. Noriko’s best friend is making a good career for herself due to her shorthand English ability. On the road are English signs (eg Coke).

In fact, you see this growing Western influence beginning to spread even into Japanese culture. The first floor of Somiya’s house appears to be a basic Japanese home. The film starts with an elaborate tea ceremony. Somiya and Noriko attend a traditional Japanese concert. You see Somiya and his sister walking around in traditional wooden clogs.

On the other hand, the second floor of Somiya’s house, which seems to be Noriko’s domain, is much more Western. There are chairs and raised tables. When Noriko and her friend meet, they have something closer to an English tea service.

As expected, this seems to break along generational lines. Although the younger generation is willing to practice the traditional Japanese styles of dress and culture, left to their own devices they dress in Western clothing and read Western books. One of the young boys in the film is obsessed with playing baseball. You can just imagine that, as the older generation dies out, that many of the Japanese customs that have been place for generations will fade away.

Somiya represents that older generation. Although he knows that he’s going to become less happier and less comfortable as a result of his daughter’s marriage, he knows that he must step aside. As he pretty bluntly states, his time has passed. He does not have many years left. It is now his daughter’s and her generation’s turn.

Ozu is an interesting filmmaker. He eschews dynamic shots. All of his shots are static (and I do mean all, I might have missed it but I don’t remember seeing a single moving shot in the entire film). Most of his static camera shots are very low, close to floor level. As the film rolls, characters just enter and leave. He also doesn’t believe in filming big scenes. Action regularly takes place off camera. For instance, we don’t see Noriko’s wedding. It just happens off camera and you see Somiya’s response to it.

If you’re reading this and thinking that this sounds familiar, well you’re right. Back in February, I discussed a BFI best film called Tokyo Story (read about it here). Tokyo Story is ranked fourth on the BFI list. Although they’re definitely different stories, the filmmaking style (low, static shots) as well as the generational conflict arising from the forced modernization that the Occupation is imposing upon Japan are prominent in both films. Ozu even uses the same actors.

Don’t get me wrong. They are both beautiful, wonderful films. It just seems odd to me that the BFI would include two of Ozu’s films in the top twenty when they are technically and thematically so similar to each other. It would be kind of like if they were huge fanboys of Tarantino and included both Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown in their top twenty. One or the other, sure, but I don’t see the need for both.

This might be a controversial opinion (as well as an example of recency bias) but if I had to choose one to include, I’m inclined to choose Late Spring. Nearly an hour shorter, it’s a more succinct expression of Ozu’s themes and style.

The Balzac Of Noir

Title: Perfidia

Rating: 4 Stars

Over his career, James Ellroy is doing something interesting. He is creating a panorama of noir novels spanning decades. His first LA quartet covers the late 1940s through the late 1960s. His Underworld USA Trilogy covers the late 1960s through 1972. His still in work second LA quartet (of which Perfidia is the first) covers 1941 through the late 1940s.

He’s trying to bottle the essence of a thirty year period. He wrote Black Dahlia in 1987. His most recent, the second in the second LA quartet, was published in 2019. Assuming that he finishes this second quartet (after all, he’s 75), he’ll have written eleven novels over a forty year period, all to form a mosaic of that thirty year period starting in 1941.

Hence my blog title homage to Honoré de Balzac. Balzac is a French writer that tried to capture the whole of post Napoleonic French society in literature. He envisioned it as a series of 150 related novels. Amazingly enough, he finished 91 of them. The rest were partially completed, barely started, or even left just as titles.

Ellroy is attempting to do the same, except instead of describing post Napoleonic French Society, he is portraying the dark netherworld of criminals and law enforcement, in all of its brutal, violent, sexist, racist, boozy, druggy, double / triple crossing glory. His novels cover everything from real events like the JFK assassination to the still unsolved Black Dahlia murder. Characters that make appearances in his novels include everyone from J Edgar Hoover to Howard Hughes to Bette Davis to real life legendary LA Police Chief Bill Parker to the gangster Bugsy Siegel. Have no doubt that he has absolutely no problems ascribing heinous and immoral thoughts and actions to any of them.

Many of his characters recur. It’s interesting since he’s now writing essentially the prequels. It gives him the opportunity to add a backstory to characters whose actions in later temporal novels appeared inexplicable.

Perfidia opens on December 6th 1941. A family of four Japanese have apparently committed ritualistic seppuku. One of the lab investigators is an American Japanese named Hideo Ashida. A brilliant investigator and scientist, he casts doubt on the suicide theory. Sargent Dudley Smith is under tremendous pressure to solve the case, specifically with a Japanese assailant. He’ll go to any lengths to put the frame on the nearest hapless Japanese patsy. Captain Bill Parker, Smith’s bitter enemy, seeks to find the true murderer. Moving between the three is a thrill seeking young woman named Kay Lake.

Of course, the following day Japan attacks Pearl Harbor. Immediately, LA is put on a war footing of chaos and mayhem. Ashida can barely go anywhere without random strangers hissing epithets at him. In this chaos, several characters, including Smith, see opportunities for riches by exploiting LA’s suddenly vulnerable Japanese population.

In the frantic race to get to the truth or, alternatively, to hang the crime on a patsy, characters go seemingly days without sleep, keeping themselves alive and awake via extensive use of benzidines and bourbon.

As with all Ellroy’s novels, not only does the plot move at a frenetic pace, but the writing does as well. Ellroy’s sentences are spit out at a telegraphic pace. This style of writing is not going to be to everyone’s taste. I would not recommend this novel as your starting point if you’ve never read Ellroy. Black Dahlia is a much better way to experience the literary thrill ride of Ellroy.

One thing that does amuse me is that Ellroy is himself apparently politically conservative. He has said multiple times that he has a deep respect for the LA police force.

It’s amusing to me because he really does paint them in their worse possible light. I’m not sure if I’ve ever encountered one of his police officers that was actually straight and true. His police officers take bribes, viciously beat whomever they want, run prostitution rings, are drunk or high at all hours of the day, are ruthlessly ambitious, are racist, sexist, and homophobic, just want to solve cases regardless of whether they get the real culprit, and are always looking to make a buck, no matter how immoral the action is. Despite his conservatism and his love of law and order, his books always seem to me to be an advertisement for Defund the Police. In Ellroy’s novels, police is power and power is corrupt.

I know that this will seem to be a tangent, but it kind of reminds of Fyodor Dostoevsky. After a period of radicalism in his youth, in his mature writer years he became a deeply religious conservative. His masterpiece was Brothers Karamazov. The three (legitimate) brothers were sensualist party animal Dmitri, the atheist, intellectual Ivan, and the novice priest Alyosha. Alyosha is ostensibly is the hero of the novel but it’s Ivan that has all of the best stories and lines. Alyosha passively vanishes compared to the two other brothers. Considering Dostoevsky’s personal philosophy, you’d think that Alyosha would have come out swinging with the best arguments. After all, those same arguments have already convinced Dostoevsky’s himself.

It’s as if Ellroy and Dostoevsky, both committed conservatives but also committed to the honesty of their art, in their works almost have to release a torrent of empathy for those that they now disdain while tamping down their own true beliefs.

Blaxploitation Sci-Fi

Title: They Cloned Tyrone

Rating: 4 Stars

Fontaine (John Boyega) is a drug dealer. Although seemingly set in something like the present, his neighborhood seems reminiscent of the 1970s. Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx) is a pimp that owes Fontaine money. Yo-Yo (Teyonah Paris) is a sex worker for Slick Charles.

Slick owes money to Fontaine. After going to Slick’s motel room and grabbing money that Slick owes him, Fontaine gets ambushed by one of his rivals and is shot dead.

Fontaine wakes up the next morning with no memories of what happened. He goes to Slick to collect the money that he is owed. Slick, knowing that Fontaine has been shot dead, is understandably shocked when Fontaine shows up at his door.

Slick and Yo-Yo manage to convince Fontaine that something strange is going on. When they investigate, they end up at an abandoned house. At the house, a closet is actually an elevator. When they descend in the elevator, they discover a lab. Among other things, they discover a corpse that looks exactly like Fontaine.

This leads them into an even deeper investigation that ultimately upends their lives and all of their notions of reality.

I don’t want to say anymore because this is a relatively new film and much of the fun of the film is watching it unspool.

First things first. This film is fun. It is quite funny. In particular Jamie Foxx as Slick Charles is hilarious. For those too young to remember, Foxx was a highlight of the In Living Color series. He is an outstanding comedic actor. Here he leans into every stereotype from a 1970s blaxploitation film yet at the same time brings out the decent humanity of the character. For whatever reason, the Academy doesn’t seem to acknowledge / reward comedic acting performances. Here’s hoping that an exception is made for Foxx. I think his performance is that good.

I saw a review that called this film an Afrofuturistic neo-Blaxploitation. Another review called it retro-futuristic. Both of these terms seem accurate. There are clear homages to Blaxploitation films. There are the larger than life characters of Slick Charles and Yo-Yo, both attired in the garish finery of 1970s sex worker culture. At the center is Fontaine, a quiet, determined, nearly stoic character that has a foundation of honor and sorrow. As we learn more about the sordid details of the conspiracy that the three find themselves in, we see the sci-fi elements. We see a state of the art clone farm. We see scientists and workers teeming in underground labs. When the three leads enter this world, there will inevitably be a conflict between these contrasting worlds.

Yet this film is so much more than that. There are many themes at play here. One theme is Black genocide. Another is corporate greed and its attempts to subjugate, manipulate, and mind control entire communities to get them to acquiesce to their dismal existence. There is a nod to the fact that, in their own way, drug dealers, pimps, and sex workers have their own role to play in getting communities to this acquiescence.

This film plays into conspiracy theories that have taken hold in Black communities. Actually oppressed for centuries, it’s not exactly surprising that such conspiracies take hold. I’m talking about such theories that AIDS was genetically designed to attack the Black community and that the government intentionally introduced crack cocaine to weaken the Black community (which, when you learn about Iran-Contra, isn’t exactly a crazy hypothesis).

For me, although the first two-thirds of the film is brilliant, it falters a bit in bringing it to a close. Again, without going into details, it manages to make the conspiracy that the three are exposing to be personal to Fontaine.

I understand why, for plot reasons, that this was done. However, by personalizing the plot to Fontaine, it takes away from the systemic condemnation that it was on course for.  To me, it’s one of the big disappointments when comparing the Tim Burton Planet of the Apes to the original. Although Burton’s version is so much technically better than the original, it somehow manages to make the whole Planet of the Apes to be the fault of the protagonist. In the original, at its climax, Charlton Heston realized that we did it to ourselves.

The whole tone of the film seemed to be leading to this systemic conclusion. I was disappointed that the film didn’t follow through.

Despite that, it was a pretty awesome film. On my blog, I’ve referred often to the AFI list. One of its significant omissions is that only one black director, Spike Lee in Do The Right Thing, makes the list. Films like this (and many other films like Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Boots Riley’s Sorry To Bother You) show that, given the opportunity, that people of color will create entertaining and innovative films in their own voice that deserve a slot in the list. Hopefully, if the AFI list is ever updated, this diversity will be much better represented.

How Does A Monster Judge A Monster’s Art

Title: Monsters – A Fan’s Dilemma

Rating: 4 Stars

How we consume art has become more challenging in the interconnected age in which we live. The distance between the art and the artist is much narrower.  A good example is a band like Led Zeppelin. In the 1960s or 1970s, what you’d know about the members of Led Zeppelin was limited to magazine articles (eg Rolling Stone) or perhaps the occasional rock journalist full length book. On the other hand, their music was everywhere.

That left you with an at best skewed perspective of the members of the band. For instance, Jimmy Page seemed to be an almost cherubic presence filled with the gift of musical genius. Does your opinion of Page and Led Zeppelin change when you find out, when Page was 28, that he began a sexual relationship with a 13 year old girl? That she was effectively kidnapped, kept locked in a room during Led Zeppelin’s entire tour to keep Page from getting charged with statutory rape?

It’s a tougher question than you might think. Either though you think it shouldn’t, it kind of depends upon your relationship to the artist. For instance, I used to respect Kevin Spacey as an actor. He seemed to be quite skilled and talented. However, given his abhorrent behavior, I find myself unable to watch him in anything anymore. Similarly, even though Louis CK was once probably my favorite comic, when I learned his predatory sexual behavior towards younger female comics, I haven’t any inclination to check out his work.

With me, it gets more complicated with someone like David Foster Wallace. He is unquestionably a genius. Infinite Jest is one of my favorite novels and, in my opinion, his essays are some of the greatest ever written. However, his behavior with Mary Karr is shocking. He threw her out of a moving car. He followed her five year old son. He climbed up the side of her house. He threatened to buy a gun to kill her husband.

What should I do with that information? How much does that diminish his greatness / genius? That’s the subject of Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma.

With Dederer, her DFW is Roman Polanski. With films like Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby, he made some of the all time great films. However (there’s that word again), he roofied a thirteen year old girl and then vaginally and anally raped her. You can try to excuse his behavior by saying that this was in the everything goes 70s or you can point to his personal history where he hid for years from Nazis even as his mother was being gassed at Auschwitz and then later, infamously, the Manson Family murders taking place at his house, resulting in the death of his pregnant wife. Does his horrific personal history explain his behaviors?

She discusses other monsters as well. There’s Woody Allen marrying one of his much younger adopted daughters and being accused of sexually molesting another of his adopted daughters when she was seven. Manhattan is considered one of Allen’s great films. At the center of it is a forty-two year old man dating a seventeen old woman. Given Allen’s history, does his history tarnish this film? In my opinion, it would certainly seem so.

Or how about Michael Jackson? In the documentary Leaving Neverland, he was accused of sodomizing young boys. Like Polanski, he certainly had an abusive childhood. Introducing Jackson, Dederer asks the question does knowing of these acts tarnish the artist’s entire legacy? Is the music of The Jackson 5, recorded when Michael was just a child, still OK to listen to? Trying to apply these gradations leads to rationalized, if not ridiculous, moral parsing.

This also leads to the question of at what point is the artist life so much in the past that it doesn’t seem to matter? Pablo Picasso treated women horribly, as did Ernest Hemingway. Richard Wagner was notoriously antisemitic, as was (if lesser known) Virginia Woolf and Willa Cather. Does the work of Wagner, because it was so closely associated with the Nazi regime, deserve censure while we let the lesser crimes of Woolf and Cather go?

Being a feminist, Dederer discusses at length women that may or may not be considered monsters. In our world, a woman that abandons her children to pursue her art seems to be a special sort of monster, even though men do the equivalent with very little impact. Doris Lessing fled from her husband and two of her children that were living in Rhodesia (weirdly enough, taking a third child with her) to start a very successful literary life in London. Joni Mitchell had a child and gave it up for adoption. How much should the fact that a mother sacrificed her children for her art color into our appreciation of the art?

By the end of the book, she doesn’t really have any answers. She eventually lands on the imperfections in all of us. We are all effectively monsters. Not only that, but we find ourselves loving things that we know are not good. We can’t really reason our way out of that. She discusses a prominent black woman talking about how important the jazz music of Miles Davis is to her. Even though she knows that Davis slapped women and apparently made money as a pimp, she can’t help but remember how his music carried her through several difficult periods in her life.

Maybe that’s how we have to deal with monsters. We have to look upon their sins with open eyes while also acknowledging the occasionally oversize impact their art has had upon our lives.

The Day The Democrats Lost Labor

Title: The Hardhat Riot

Rating: 4 Stars

It’s an interesting question. Labor unions were a critical part of FDR’s New Deal coalition. This continued on for decades. This made sense. After all, the Republican party had been the party of business since, oh, the end of the Civil War or so. The Republicans were never fans of unions, thinking that unions trespassed upon the rights of honest, hardworking businessmen to conduct their affairs however they see fit.

Just giving voice to worker rights was enough for Democrats to get the union vote. In the 1950s and 1960s, when unions were at their strength, their financial power and manpower made them a political force to be reckoned with.

Now, here we are in 2023. First, unions are a fraction of what they once were. However, the union members that are still kicking, especially the traditional blue collar members, now overwhelmingly support the Republicans and, specifically, Donald Trump.

On the surface, that seems strange. After all, Republicans are still very much a pro business party. All across the country it was Republicans that created the right to work laws that effectively neutered unions. It’s the Republicans that advocate tax cuts that greatly benefit the wealthy. It’s a little murky, but some seventy to eighty percent of the benefits from Trump’s tax bill went to the top 1%, a population not known for its blue collar members.

Although Kuhn focuses his history on one day, May 7th, 1970, he does deal with this larger question.

In the immediate years before 1970, there was the rise of something called the New Left. Composed primarily of the so-called youth generation (think Boomers), their priorities were different than the traditional Democratic ones.

Their focus was two fold. One was to get the US out of the Vietnam War. The other priority was getting equal rights for those that have been historically marginalized (women and people of color).

On the surface, this was well and good. There arose two main problems. The first was their methods. Not having any real power, they instead made their voices heard through aggressive and active protest. This involved loud protests that interfered with normal activities like business and traffic. Not only that, but for maximum effect some protesters did things like spit on cops, burned American flags, and flew Vietcong flags. The even more extreme protesters exploded bombs and burned buildings.

If you’re a 40 something or older union member during this time, there’s a good chance that you served in either World War II or the Korean War. Even if you wondered what in the world our country was doing in Vietnam, you would have a visceral reaction to anyone desecrating the flag that, after all, you were willing to give your life to protect. Similarly, there’s a good chance that the local policemen lived in your neighborhood, so you would also be bothered by any abuse hurled at the cops. On top of that is the sad fact that it was the sons of the working class that fought in Vietnam. Watching another young man waving a Vietcong flag while your son was fighting in Vietnam would have been infuriating.

The second problem was the idea of equal rights. Sure, everyone agrees that everyone should be treated equal. However, if you’re in a union with your fellow white men, be they Polish or Irish or Italian, you’re going to look askance at any movement that tries to impose conditions that result in people of color (or women) being given slots that you feel that you’ve worked for and have earned.

This becomes an even larger problem when elected politicians begin to espouse those same radical political positions. Case in point was New York City mayor John Lindsay. A Republican that later ran for President as a Democrat, Lindsay gained national prominence by giving speeches that aggressively support New Left politics. Thinking that they were no longer part of Lindsay’s constituency, blue collar union members felt betrayed.

This brings us to May 8th, 1970. The key thing to know here is that, just four days earlier, the Kent State shootings had taken place. Inspired by Nixon’s decision to start bombing Cambodia, there were anti-Vietnam protests all across the country, including at Kent State. At these protests, members of the Ohio National Guard fired upon unarmed protesters, killing four and injuring nine.

This caused protests to erupt all over the country, including New York City. Lindsay sympathized with the protesters and flew the US flag at City Hall at half mast.

It’s still exactly unclear to me how it got started, but hundreds of blue collar workers, many of them hard at work building the World Trade Center, decided that they were going to counterprotest. During their lunch hour, they marched, singing pro American songs.

When the sides met, the blue collar workers became violent. Anyone that looked like a student was assaulted. Anyone that flashed a peace sign was beaten. Women were beaten. Young pacifist men were beaten. People of color were beaten. Some of the workers had lead pipes and wrenches that they used to beat their victims.

Protesters were, even at that time, generally unpopular. This was true even on university campuses. For the large majority of people that were not in college, protesters were generally seen as elite, spoiled children that didn’t realize how good they had it.

Therefore, as the blue collar workers were beating anyone that looked like a protester, there were businessmen in suits following along with them and, occasionally, taking part in the violence. Women office workers were raining down ticker tape upon the workers to show their approval of the violence.

The workers made it all of the way to City Hall. They nearly broke through. They finally agreed to stop their protest in front of the City Hall once it was agreed to raise the flag back to full staff.

The situation was violent anarchy. The police, even if they’d been motivated, were unequipped to handle the carnage. The problem was that most of the police were not motivated. Most stood by watching as people were beaten. Some were openly supportive. Attempts to identify those workers that committed assault and should be arrested were ignored by the police. In fact, during the entire riot, a grand total of one blue collar worker was arrested despite hundreds of injuries.

Watching from the White House, Nixon aides Pat Buchanan and Chuck Colson looked at the riots and saw opportunity. This was a prime chance to peel away a crucial part of the New Deal coalition from the Democrats. Within days, union leaders were invited to the White House where they presented Nixon with an honorary hard hat.

Although years in the making, it was that moment that formally marked the blue collar transition from the Democrat party to the Republican party. In the 1972 election, for the first time in decades, the labor unions refused to endorse the Democratic candidate (even though George McGovern had a much stronger record of supporting unions than Nixon).

Here we are, in 2023, still seeing the effects from this collision.

The Republican Prisoner’s Dilemma

Imagine a presidential party primary. There’s a large set of hungry, ambitious candidates that feel somehow uniquely qualified to lead their country.

However, there’s another candidate. He doesn’t really even seem to want to run for President. He refuses to participate in debates. He barely even campaigns. When he does campaign, he doesn’t talk about some optimistic future for America. His campaign speeches, such as they are, are full of past grudges and grievances. He’s a seriously flawed candidate. Not only has he been impeached twice but he has four active criminal cases pending against him, at least some of which will take place during the election campaign. He’s deeply unpopular to all but the party faithful. If he gets nominated, the chance of the party winning the Presidency decreases dramatically.

Here’s the thing. He’s dominating the other candidates. He has a forty point lead over the candidate in second place.

Obviously, we don’t have to imagine it. We’re living it.

If you were one of the other presidential candidates, what would you do? Common sense tells you that if someone has a forty point lead on you, you have to go on the offensive. You can’t just passively stand around and wait for Trump to be felled by some deus ex machina. Every new criminal charge lodged against him just hardens his support. Even if convicted of a crime, there’s nothing in the constitution that will keep him from still running. After all, the socialist Eugene Debs received a million votes in 1920 while in prison serving a ten year term. Maybe if you’re Ron DeSantis, before you go to bed at night, you get on your hands and knees and pray for Trump’s death. However, prayer is not a strategy.

No, you have to go hard at Trump. However, it won’t work if only one of the candidate attacks. Look at Chris Christie. Alone among the other candidates he understands that you have to attack Trump if you really want to beat him. There is no other path. However, since it’s only him that’s attacking, it looks like he’s only doing it out of personal spite (which he probably is) and it is tanking his popularity numbers among the Republican faithful.

No, every single candidate has to go hard at Trump. As long as Trump is in the race, being Trump-Lite or Trump-Adjacent or Trump-Nice or Trump-Smart or whatever is going to get you nothing. Why would a voter consider a facsimile Trump when the real Trump is running at the same time?

Every candidate has to go hard. Every candidate has to spend their ‘hard-earned’ soft PAC money relentlessly attacking Trump’s many negatives. It takes many ax chops to take down the mighty oak.

The question to the candidates is, are you running for President or are you running to stroke your ego or gunning for a Fox host spot or running for a cabinet position in an unimaginably chaotic Trump administration where you will, nearly on a daily basis, be subjected to abuse and insults while being forced to roll around obsequiously on your back (boars on the floor, anyone)?

No, all candidates need to go hard and go now.

Of course it won’t happen. It’s kind of a bizarre version of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. In case you’re not aware of it, it’s a concept out of game theory. The idea is that you and your gangster partner have committed a crime together. You’ve been arrested but there’s very little evidence. The only way that the prosecutor can get a conviction is if one of you turns on the other. The prosecutor offers a deal. The first one to confess and implicates the other will get a light sentence while the other defendant will get a stiff sentence.

If the two of you stay strong, you’ll both get away. However, if one of you confesses, then the other will suffer a severe penalty. In gaming scenarios, being the first to confess (to get a lighter sentence) is the most common resolution to the dilemma.

If all of the Republican candidates were to stand strong and attack Trump (you know, actually employ the only strategy that gives any one of them a chance to win), then there is a chance that they could eventually break the spell that the Republican party rank and file seem to be under.

However, the candidates can see what happens if they don’t all commit. They just look at Christie, who has no chance of getting elected and will end up a pariah within the party (move over, Liz Cheney, here comes another one!).

So, there the rest sit, pretending to be serious candidates, making pronouncements about what they’ll do ‘when’ they become President, seemingly ignoring the fact that none of them have any chance whatsoever. There they sit, apparently standing there with their fingers crossed quietly hoping that Trump dies.

Hope is not a strategy.

Tom Cruise’s Terminator

Title: Collateral

Rating: 4 Stars

I’m know that I’m not the only one, but I wonder what happened to Tom Cruise. Obviously, he’s had a huge career. After all, according to Steven Spielberg, he’s the man that, by making, starring, and releasing Top Gun Maverick, saved Hollywood.

It’s just that, for the last ten years, he hasn’t taken any artistic risks with his career.  If you look at those films, you see a bunch of creatively safe films. You see the Mission Impossible films. You see a couple of possible franchise films that didn’t really pay off that well (a couple of Reacher films and The Mummy). You see a couple of high concept sci-fi films (Oblivion and Edge of Tomorrow).

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed several of those films. I even enjoyed his Reacher films, even if he is probably a foot too short to play Jack Reacher.  Edge of Tomorrow is one of my favorite all time films. The Mission Impossible series are great popcorn films.

It’s just that Tom Cruise is capable of and has been in much more interesting films. He took on weighty roles that the Academy recognized with nominations. Just look at his work as Ron Kovic in Born on the Fourth of July or as Jerry McGuire. He even held his own against Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man.

He has demonstrated a knack for comedy. Look no further than Les Grossman in Tropic of Thunder.

Earlier in his career, he took amazing risks. I’m thinking of the bizarre Vanilla Sky. One of the world’s most recognizable actors spends most of his screen time hiding behind a mask. Even more crazy, there’s his role as a washed out rock star in the musical Rock of Ages. If you haven’t seen him sing Rock You Like A Hurricane, you should immediately go over to youTube and watch it. I’m not saying it’s great, but holy crap, he went for it. Let’s not forget his role in Kubrick’s very strange Eyes Wide Shut.

For some reason, he decided to stop taking risks. I would think, as an actor, that such parts would be way more interesting than playing Ethan Hunt for the eighth time. I can’t imagine, at this point, that he needs more money.

So, I wonder what happened. One theory is that he got scared off when he went public with his Scientology beliefs. The backlash against him was so swift that he immediately decided just to make blockbuster hits that he knew his fanbase would enjoy. I don’t really buy this argument. The Scientology controversy started in 2004 or so. He continued to make interesting films for several years after that.

The second reason makes more sense. If you take a look at his films for a five or six year period starting around 2007, you’ll see that he was in several films that were not huge hits. I’m talking about films like Lion for Lambs, Valkyrie, and Knight and Day. Could it be that his own idea of self is so wrapped as being a blockbuster movie star that this run of films scared him away from artistic risks? Is he replacing the artistic risks that he used to take with the actual physical risks of doing his own increasingly dangerous stunts?

Regardless, 2004’s Collateral is another example of the direction that Cruise’s career was heading in before the course correction. In it, Cruise plays Vincent, a relentless, ruthless hit man. Jamie Foxx plays Max, a mild mannered cab driver with dreams of one day running his own limo company. Their paths cross when Vincent catches Max’s cab. Unbeknownst to Max, Vincent has a list of five victims that he has been contracted to kill and is planning to use Max to drive him to all of the victims.

Max is in for a rude awakening when Vincent’s first victim comes crashing down on his cab. For the rest of the night, Vincent threatens and coerces Max to continue giving him rides to his next victim while Max tries to figure out how to escape. Meanwhile, government agents are trying to stop their trial witnesses from being murdered and LA cops are trying to find the executioner that is wreaking havoc throughout their city.

First of all, it’s not really a great film. For the film to absolutely work, you need to buy into Max’s problem. It just didn’t seem believable to me. Max had so many opportunities to escape that honestly I had trouble suspending belief for the film.

The film rests upon the relationship between Max and Vincent. Foxx does good work as the everyday nice guy that’s been put into an impossible relationship.

However, the film is Cruise’s. Cruise plays Vincent as an implacable Terminator. Impeccably dressed, coldly handsome, and with dead eyes, Vincent is a force.

I’m not really even sure if Cruise is technically a good actor. One thing that I can say is that he brings purpose and energy to every role that I’ve seen him in. Here, that purposeful drive serves the role of Vincent to perfection.

This proves to me that Cruise, if he had so desired, could have also had a successful film career playing villains. The inexorable purpose that he brings to every role would have led quite naturally to any number of villainous turns.

Cruise is going to finish up the Mission Impossible series with the next installment. I can only hope that he finds himself up taking on more interesting, challenging roles. However, since one of his next projects appears to be taking place in actual outer space, I don’t have a lot of confidence.