JERRY WALD: PRODUCER EXTRAORDINARY

The guilt is eating me alive! I know I promised not to do another "Mildred Pierce" post, and I know that fewer than 1% of the people reading this have access to the film...or even care about it. I'm sorry, but I've just gotta write about this thing anyway. I can't help myself! I'm obsessed! Pity me!

Anyway, as I may have said in a previous post, the story is about a mother who works her fingers to the bone to give her daughter a highbrow education, then the daughter rejects her for being low class. It doesn't sound like much, but the screenplay is terrific and James Cain, who wrote the novel the film is based on, is a really significant writer who even now is underappreciated. Maybe that's because some of his books are so flawed.

I read "Double Indemnity" and was amazed to see to see that Cain gave his brilliantly-conceived characters the short shrift and spent most of his time on trivial details of the crime. I also read the novel of "Mildred Pierce", and that had the same problem. Once again the characters and situation were brilliant, but Cain didn't know what to do with them. That's OK. He was still a brilliant writer.

Jerry Wald, who produced the film, wanted to flesh out the talky Cain story and add a murder. He'd just seen "Double Indemnity", which was a wildly successful Cain adaption, and since that had a murder in it , Wald figured Mildred should have one too. He also had the notion that you can combine women's melodrama with noir crime, something no one else had done before (though D. Indemnity and "Laura" came close). Wald was trying to create a new genre.

He had six famous writers (one of the was Faulkner) take a shot at it before he got what he wanted. It was frustrating because combining two separate genres isn't easy and he didn't know how to go about it. He just had a feeling that he'd know it when he saw it.

Sometimes he had three writers working simultaneously and completely separately on the same project, a practice that makes writers furious. One writer "broke the spine" of the improved story, but was too slavish to the book in the details. Two others added too many fantastic and implausible elements, and made the story too long. One made the story too violent. Wald believed melodrama couldn't support too much violence. One murder was enough.



Finally he had enough interesting scenes to make a good story. Every writer contributed something of value, but it was still too long. With the shooting date approaching he took the bold step of getting a radio writer to condense the story. Radio people were experts at telling long stories in short formats. The radio guy, Ranald MacDougal, accomplished miracles and tied it all together deftly.

At one point in the story Mildred marries a guy and one minute later -- one minute! -- she decides to divorce him...and it works! Now that's compression! MacDougal did it by making the audience hate the guy and want to see Mildred divorce him. We're actually impatient to see Mildred dump him and when she does it, after only a minute of screentime, our only reaction is "Well, it's about time!" MacDougal actually makes the guy appealing in certain other parts of the film, he just emphasized the negatives in this section to smoothe over the story compression. Wow! Is that expert writing or what!?

I forgot to add that Wald hired Curtiz to direct the film, which was a brilliant choice. Curtiz injected humor into the story to smooth over the sometimes fuzzy logic, and it worked beautifully.

I'm not aware that Jerry Wald did anything else that was particularly distinguished, but in 1944-5, when Mildred was made, he was definitely cooking with gas. The womans' film/noir synthesis he created is now one of the most common types of film.

'BE BACK SATURDAY!

MORE ANATOMY

WARNING: Pictures of naked artist models below.


I wish I could recommend a book of anatomy for artists but I can't. There are a few passable books on the subject but no great ones. Some of the manga books are good for cartoony girls' anatomy, some of the older books are good for illustration reference, but no book I know of discusses the human body the way it really is.

Where a lot of books fail is that they rely on simplified muscle charts like the one above. Nobody has a split calf like the one in the drawing above. I'm sure the drawing is accurate but in real life some additional muscles, ligaments or fat must cover the two parts of the calf and make them seem like one.


Look at the drawing of the sternomastoid muscles on the left, above. According to the drawing charts they form a big "V" in the neck. You can only see half of them here but you know what I mean.

Now look at the photo on the right (above). The "V" is clear enough when the neck is normal but when it's strained as it is in the picture, or the face grimaces, the V becomes an "A." That's because muscles the drawing doesn't show cover the sternomastoid and they also have an influence on the way the neck looks. The muscle charts are incomplete. They leave out muscles just to have a tidy drawing.


Before I leave the subject here's a couple of photos (above) to prove that most people have long torsos in relation to their legs. You could almost say that long legs are an invention of artists.

My guess is that less than 20% of adults have long legs. A lot of women who appear to have long legs seem that way because they're wearing heels. Or maybe they have long legs but even longer torsos.

Do you disagree?

MY CHILDHOOD SLEEP FANTASIES

I won't bother talking about my present getting-to-sleep fantasies because if they were known I'd be arrested for sex mania. In other words I'm a pretty typical male in that respect. What I want to describe here is the fantasy that got me to sleep when I was a kid, starting when I was...mmmm, maybe in third grade and ending in my last year of high school. It was my flying saucer fantasy.

In this fantasy I had my own flying saucer in the garage. After a hard day being chased by bullies I'd come home, lock myself in my room and, when I could be sure no one was listening, push a button that would cause the wall to slide open, revealing a part of the garage known only to me. Inside, almost touching the wide walls on either side, was the awesome powerhouse crouching tiger sting chord of a real flying saucer.

Of course the saucer recognized my approach and put out its ramp to meet me. Naturally the door slid closed when I was inside. From this point on all was seriousness and protocol. I'd settle into the black leather seat and flick switches on the high-tech control panel. The saucer would vibrate into life and I'd take a moment to see if the comic book and root beer dispensers were in good working order. They were. A few more switches and the roof slid back and then came the magic moment when the humming saucer slowly rose into the sky.

Once in the air I'd take a couple of turns around the higher trees then head straight up into the clouds. Satisfied that the city looked OK from up there I'd then dive down to ground level where I'd careen around the streets just above the cars. People had to duck and run away but they didn't resent it. They admired me for having such a way cool machine. Finally I reached the school where I'd strafe bullies with my machine guns and bask in the admiration of adoring girls.

After a couple of years it dawned on me that I might invite one of my girl admirers to take a ride. You know, give her a thrill. I was too young to think of doing anything else with her. Of course the girl oooed and ahhhed at everything and was much impressed. I even would let her look at my comic books and drink my root beer!

As the years slipped by it seemed that the admiring girl more and more wanted to sit on my lap, the better to see me work the controls. It was getting hard to concentrate with all that hair and body parts next to me. I began to think that a kiss wouldn't hurt. Hmmm, that wasn't bad. Maybe if we...well, it wasn't long before we were enacting the whole Kama Sutra.

And the saucer? What saucer? Who needs a saucer when you've got hot girls like this!?

KALI NEEDS A ROOM TO RENT!

Who would have thought that a nice cartoonist girl like Kali would have difficulty finding a room to rent? Her other arrangements just fell through and here she is about to start her senior year at Otis (an art college in L.A.). What's she going to do?

Here's some drawings that Katie Rice did of Kali. Kali's normally really happy but I think she's bummed out about this room situation. If you have a spare room to rent and your place is on a bus line that might conceivably pass near Otis (near LAX) , will you drop her a line at her blog?

http://kalikazoo.blogspot.com/

Or maybe you're a student too and you're looking for some room mates to share an apartment with....well, look no farther! The ideal room mate is here!

Kali's fun to do photo comic strips with. Think of all the great comics you can turn out together!

Nice to have a country singer in residence.

Tell your friends! This student needs a place to hang her guitar!* **

*It's an acoustic guitar. Nice and quiet.

** Thanks again to Katie for the drawings.

THE ACHILLES HEEL OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY

Fernandel: Hey, you guys like Greek philosophy don't you? Good, so do I!

Uncle Eddie asked me to tell you that he really liked the two "Kill Bill" movies but when a commenter asked him to defend them he cringed, and for good reason. The fact is that it takes twice the energy to defend something than it does to attack it.

That's because Greek philosophy, which shaped the way we make arguments, never devoted much time to the defense side. The Greek philosophers arose during a time of change in Greece and their job was to pave the way for that change by attacking the establishment. The poor establishment never got it's share of philosophy.


The best the Greeks could do for the defense side was to come up with rhetoric and oratory. Rhetoric teaches the arguer to flatter the audience and establish himself as a likable and trustworthy speaker. He's saying, in effect, "If you like me then you should like my argument. Trust me. "

That seems like a shabby way to argue but really, what choice is there? Surely the establishment can't always be wrong. Surely revolutionaries can't always be right. There has to be some way to argue the defense side of things and the Greeks haven't given us much to work with.

Actually the Greeks came up with another way to argue for the defense. That way was to limit the people debating to the landowners. The thinking was that people who had a financial stake in stability and tradition could be trusted not to carry attack arguments too far.

I don't agree with this but you have to admit that it's interesting.

THE NEED FOR PROFUNDITY

I’m ashamed to admit that these thoughts were prompted by a hard-to-sit-through film called “Little Miss Sunshine.” It’s one of those frustration stories where everything goes wrong for a dysfunctional family but they all pull together at the end. Usually I hate films like that.

The reason I'm writing about this story is that it brings up a point worth discussing, and that is the need everybody has for profundity in their lives and a kid’s ability to deliver it.

If you have a kid then you know how amazingly comforting a kid can be. When you're feeling low a little hand on your shoulder or a kid’s head on your arm is amazingly restorative. Why that is I don’t know. It can’t help you to get a job or pay your taxes but it does recharge the batteries in a way that booze or caffeine can’t.



The film is about a family who are bored and irritated by each other and who all are harboring secret fantasies about taking off on their own without even a good-bye. One of the only things they all have in common is that they’re all quietly moved in some way by the earnestness and innocence of the youngest kid. The girl isn’t Shirley Temple. She’s plain and awkward and doesn’t have witty lines. She’s just good-hearted and sincere.

If you only saw a few of her scenes you wouldn’t think the kid had much influence on the family at all...that’s why you have to persevere to the end. If you see the entire film you realize that she exerted a subtle but stabilizing influence on the family all along.



Everybody in the family wanted to leave and start fresh somewhere else, but the audience knows what the family doesn’t, viz, that they’d probably do even worse on their own. These are luckless people who are doomed to experience tough times and disappointment. That happens to some people. What they don't realize is that life could get even worse. They don't know it but the only chance they have for even a small amount of happiness is to dig in and be loyal to each other.

I said before that I had a theory about the need for profundity, and here it is. The awe you feel standing on a hill or a mountain, or watching waves break on a beach is not a luxury; it’s a necessity for your mental health. You need it. Humans crave profundity, and that’s what your own kid has to offer in abundance.


Having a kid of your own fills you with awe several times a day. If you're adventurous, and especially if you're an artist, then you need that awe to recharge the batteries. For me that's the message in this otherwise irritating film.