WHAT I'M READING NOW: JANUARY 2015

Some good books here! I'm reading a biography of film director, Geoge Cukor (that's him, above). It's a library book but I'm considering buying a copy of my own just so I can underline it...it's that good! The book is just brimming with practical information about how he did what he did.

With a couple of well-known exceptions Cukor got along remarkably well with his producers and writers. That's because he was only too happy to take their advice, and why not? Those guys were interested in plots, Cukor was interested in performances. He believed it was his job to maximize a good actor's charisma, to see that it got into every frame of every shot.

According to the book he was gay, but he turned that to his advantage. Being secretly that way prompted him to perceive his screen characters as outsiders like himself. He got good at making us sympathize with their attempts to fit in. If the script wasn't written that way he'd subtly add it in the handling. An interesting technique, eh?

Another book I've started is Ann Radcliffe's 1790 Gothic novel, "The Mistress of Udolpho" (above). It's full of castles and sepulchres, trap doors, sealed rooms and underground passages lit by torches. What do you think of this sample.....

"From Beaujeu the road had constantly ascended, conducting the travelers into the higher regions of the air, where immense glaciers exhibited their frozen horrors. Around on every side far as the eye could penetrate, were seen only forms of grandeur...the long perspective of mountaintops, tinged with ethereal blue, or white with snow, valleys of ice and forests of gloomy fir."

And this:

"...the waxen figure of a woman, made by her lover who had found her dead and buried upon his return...a lizard is sucking her mouth, a worm is creeping out of one of her cheeks, a mouse is gnawing one of her ears, and a huge swollen toad on her forehead is preying on one of her eyes." 

You don't have to buy it; the book is free on Project Gutenberg. I warn you though, the prose can be frustratingly dense and old-fashioned. It's strange to think that this book with all it's novelties and ghosts was popular in George Washington's time. The British soldiers who fought at Yorktown might have read similar books in their tents at night. Come to think of it, maybe the Americans did too.

The last thing I have to recommend is a Jon Favreau film called "Chef." It's about a chef who tires of working for other people and sets off on his own. It's a wonderful tribute to every small businessman who's ever rolled up his sleeves and taken the plunge.

The film is rated "R," which is too bad because it glorifies hard work. That's something every kid needs to see.

IT'S THE FOURTH OF JULY!!!!!!!

There it is...Old Glory. It's a symbol that I can't be owned by a Pharaoh or a Sun King, that I'm the author of my life's script.



This video (above) is from 1938, three years before America entered WW2. The song is by Irving Berlin. I like the preamble, which you never hear nowadays.



Geez, Red's reading of the Pledge says it all.



Woody wrote this as an answer to God Bless America. I don't think that song really required an answer, but you can't argue with the beautiful result. Woody expands on Berlin's lyrics about the country's natural beauty.



I like the opening title of the recent John Adams miniseries. The composer and art director might have settled for a Ken Burns-type treatment of Revolutionary War paintings and no one would have complained. Instead they wisely chose to illustrate with music and graphics that which is hard to put into words about that time.



Wow! Giametti was a great John Adams!

I like the way the series showed Adams as a tireless worker and blunt idealist who nevertheless had very little personal appeal. Franklin had to request that Congress withdraw Adams from the French court because he was alienating the French.

Poor Adams doesn't write often to his wife back in the States and she misinterprets it as neglect. When they're finally reunited he admits that the true reason for silence was that he failed in every undertaking in Europe. He was tortured by the thought that his life amounted to nothing and that he was an obstacle to his country and not an asset.

The show was produced by HBO who might be expected to emphasize only the negatives about America but the show doesn't come off that way. Even Adams' failures in the film showed greatness of heart. It was easy to imagine that he exerted a benign influence on his peers, even if they didn't realize it at the time.

EVIL OLD LADY (EXPANDED)

Yikes! Sorry for the absence! No sooner did my marathon Downton Abbey series end than my kid came to visit, and I've been busy doing things with him. One of the things we did was talk about Photoshop and I made the the sloppy collage above to illustrate a point.

My kid might work on a project that requires him to sign what he does and I offered to help him come up with a signature. There's lots of reference on the net.

I tried my hand at it myself. My first name is easy to write in a flamboyant style but my last name is long and resistant to design. Maybe I should just call myself "Eddie." That'll be a tip off that I'm either famous or utterly insignificant.

I envy Jerry Lewis. His first and last names are short and are full of letters that look good in script. The "J" and "L" in particular lend themselves to lavish thick and thin.

MY LUNCH WITH MIKE

Here's my own version of the Welles/Jaglom restaurant-type dialogue, with Mike as a sort of Orson Welles.  It's a fairly accurate account of what we actually talked about there, but Mike won't allow me to post his picture so I've had to represent him with pictures of Tex Avery's wolf. If you've ever been in a restaurant with Mike you  know how apt that is. The man is never less than fully aware of what the pulchritude in the room is doing. 


INT. RESTAURANT:


EDDIE: "I wish I could remember which actor said that the purpose of the acting in a scene is to make it memorable."

MIKE: "Yeah, like Eli Wallach did with Tuco in 'The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.' "

EDDIE: "Wow! A great example! Everything he did in that film was memorable. He went way beyond what must have been in the script."

MIKE: "That's what every actor should do. It's an actor's job to bring something to the table that only he can provide. 90% of acting is cast...Uh, Eddie, QUICK! Look at the salad bar! The girl...the girl!"

EDDIE: "Huh? That's not a girl...that's a guy."

MIKE: "No, no, no! Marone!!!! Not him! What's the matter with you? The girl behind the salad bar!"

EDDIE: "Can we get back to..."

MIKE: "Oh, yeah...sure, sure...I didn't mean to interrupt your high tone babbling with something as trivial as a drop dead gorgeous girl. Paaardon moi. So what were you jabbering about, Edward?"

EDDIE: "Acting."

MIKE: "Acting? Oh, right...okay. Well, remember what Jodi Foster said in that Esquire article...the one where they ask a famous person, 'What have you learned?' " She said she learned the most from DeNiro when they were doing the Taxi film."

EDDIE: "Really? What did he say?...er, Mike, you're not paying attention!"

MIKE; "Did you see what JUST WALKED IN? Did you SEE her? Oh, my Gaaaawd!"

EDDIE: "That's her boyfriend with her. You're gonna get a knuckle sandwich, wait and see."

MIKE: It'd be worth it, it'd be worth it!!!!

EDDIE: "...MIKE! Nearby: oyfriendbay (Pig Latin for 'boyfriend'). Ucklenay andwichsay (Pig Latin for 'knuckle sandwich') coming this way."


MIKE: "Okay, okay. Don't worry about it. Well, DeNiro took Foster out to lunch four times and every time he went over her lines with her. She didn't understand why because she already knew her lines but the fourth time she realized what was going on. He was trying to provoke her to be the character the lines were about, and not just a reader of lines.

He said it was okay to deviate from the lines if she was totally in character and remembered to bring it all back to the phrase that would justify his dialogue, which came next. Foster said she never forgot that."

EDDIE: "That's great! That must be how Woody....."

MIKE: "EDDIEEDDIEEDDIEEDDIE!!!!! Speaking of a WOODY, check out that girl behind the counter! The one with the black hair. OOH, MY GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWDDDD!!!!!!!!..........."

*************************

A LOVE POEM FOR LIP READERS

It's almost Valentine's Day!!!!!!!  Is your loved one hard of hearing? Maybe she'd appreciate a copy of the love poem I'm writing for the hearing impaired.  I'm not finished yet, but here's how it starts. See if you can guess what the poet (me) is saying. I'll give phonetic hints along the way, then print out the whole thing in ordinary script at the end.  

Okay, let's do this thing!

(Cough! Cough!)

Oops! Sorry about that.

Okay, here goes......

M...m...

iiiiiiiiiii

luuuuvvv

fur

yuuuuuuu

izzz

like

āā

tikled

thhhh

issss

llllllll..... There, I let that last "L" syllable just roll off my tongue.

The whole thing is "My-love-for-you-is-like-a-tickled-thistle." Tickled thistle...get it?...it's a repetition of the "th" sound. Us poets know about stuff like that. 

Notice that I left out harsh, explosive syllables...you know, stuff like....

"PATTERSON'S"

"POOCH!"

Don't ask me how I know to do that. It's a gift I was born with. 

VINTAGE MENS MAGAZINES (EXPANDED)

While searching for the pictures I used in the Philosophy Girls post (the previous post), I stumbled on some interesting men's sleaze magazines from the 50s. These weren't high class mags like Playboy and Esquire, these were the raunchy low class ones that dads all over America hid in their sock drawers.

What struck me about these magazines was how expertly they were put together. They usually combined high and low class elements. You'd find genuinely beautiful and insightful photographs side by side with the lowest sleaze. It seems incongruous at first, but when you think about it that's the way real life is...the sublime and the ridiculous served up in equal portions.

How do you like the picture above, shot in glorious, dramatic, philosophical black and white?

The photos were often shot in small apartments with modern, minimalist furniture. I imagine that a lot of readers lived like that, or wanted to. It was really smart of the magazines to avoid classy locations.

A lot of sleaze magazines avoided the porn laws by selling themselves as art reference. Every issue had to feature some models in classical art poses. I love the example above, which is funny and kitschy, but also artistic in its own way. Click to enlarge.

You would think that the sleazies would favor girls who look kind of dumb and slutty (above). After all, in real life girls like that are more likely to be sexually available.Well, these women are represented in these magazines to be sure...

..but the pearls of greatest price (above) were not exactly slutty girls...they were fallen girls...world-weary, downright evil...fallen girls, like the one above.

These women (above) came off as completely dissipated. They'd not only seen the dark side of life, they dwelled there. It was the only side of life they knew, or cared to know. 

Editors liked to give these girls "Evil eye" poses. 

Were the girls in these pictures really that bad in real life? Who knows? For the sake of magazine sales they certainly had to look like they were. 50s man wanted to feel like he had an adventure when he read magazines like this. He wanted to feel worldly, like he'd come in contact with the seedy underbelly of life and only just barely escaped unscathed. The magazine was selling reader self-image as well as sex.

Interesting, huh?

Wait a minute! Is there room for a Post Script?  Auralynn When, who gave me the link for these photos, says diversity is what made the sleazies so interesting. These magazines contained good girls, bad girls, beautiful girls and plain girls. Some were completely confident in the nude, some were embarrassed to be seen only half naked. Auralynn says that's what made these early magazines so vibrant. A good analysis!