THE POST-BLEEP CULTURE: WHY ARE WE STILL SILENCING 10 YEAR OLDS AND JON STEWART WHILE MOTHERS ARE MUTILATING THEIR SONS IN EFFIGY AND GIANT ALIEN HANDS ARE CRUSHING OUR ATHLETES AND PRODIGIES????

 

     A TV ad recently alerted me to Comedy Central’s practice of charging subscribers $2.99 to hear the “unbleeped” versions of BOONDOCKS, one of their animated sitcoms featuring perceptive and profane children (the network’s other most prominent such program is, of course, South Park).It made me think that George Carlin might be profoundly sad, were he still alive, that after all his work to defuse the shock from the obscenity, bleeping is still in existence at all.

     The ad, and the service it promotes also prompt the long overdue question; does anyone out there really find such an expense necessary anymore?

     British butlers are educated from childhood to respect and exceed traditional, nay, historical, standards of erudition, sophistication, and class; but even one of these icons of aristocratic attitudes would still easily be able to tell you that, when Samuel L. Jackson, in the FX transmission of Tarentino’s JACKIE BROWN, says the compound word “melon farmer,” his character is, in fact, not referring to agricultural practitioners, or their agricultural activity or any of the fruits thereof.

     Pat Robertson is so pious, bible-literate-AND-literal, that he has, after working really hard at it, distanced himself from even the most religious non-nutjob American Christians (His blaming of 911 on the gay community seemed to be the camel’s-back-breaker for most people), and one can’t ever imagine him using anything but the most courteous and refined, if heavily drawled, speech…in public, anyway. But do you really imagine that when the crudely animated  young Colorado resident Eric Cartman emits the bleeped squeal, “—damn it, Kyle, you Ass—-!,” Mr. Robertson isn’t cognizant that both a holy name and the one of the most private of human orifices have both been invoked with considerable disrespect?

     And whatever you’re making, I’ll confidently bet you a year’s salary that even a divine-to-semi-divine guy like Pope Benedict has a working knowledge, especially these days, that the censored print-term “cock%$&!@*” does not refer to someone who is trying to slowly consume a rooster in an oral fashion.

      So why are we still going through the motions? Why do we still pretend, as a people, that we don’t know what’s under the bleep, and why won’t we admit we’re no longer really shocked?

     When the FCC pursues obscenity charges against CBS for the Janet Jackson “Nipplegate” Super Bowl, and ABC for Cher’s potty-mouth at the Emmys… are they really trying to tell us that these networks are criminally liable for the unpredictable and unscripted behavior of spoiled and irresponsible celebrities? Is a pop star saying a questionable word any sort of surprise to any reasonable being?

    And please notice that the FCC, which only reacts to certain specified words, or exposed skin, doesn’t rile-up at all when CBS plops TWO AND A HALF MEN into the first hour of its lineup on any given night (A time period that used to be the federally mandated family hour). Does the network do this  because Les Moonvees, or one of his minions, has decided that when Charlie Sheen tells his brother that “a 22 year-old girl is like a good carpenter, no wood gets wasted,” the average 10-to-15 year-old boy (or girl!) won’t know that erections are the topic du jour? Are they telling us that because the dialogue isn’t bleeped, it isn’t dirty?

     Comedy Central also bleeps Jon Stewart and Stephan Colbert in their tandem weekday faux-newscasts, but they do it with what could be either incredible ineptitude or deliberate subversive intent; a viewer can hear Stewart’s “ou” while the “Fuck y“ is safely obscured. And Colbert’s obscured “Sh” manages to sneak into the audio-sphere, even if its companion “it” is never heard.

     When was the last time that a broadcast word GENUINELY offended and/or surprised you?

     And the most compelling proof that we are living in the first days of a post-bleep culture is the astonishing fan-and-critic reception to the revamped BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and its similarly revamped version of the f-word, “frak.” Never before in the history of science-fiction television, has a program successfully invented and used a euphemism that sounded and felt like the word it was replacing, although many have tried with cringe-inducing results (Remember the word for “shit” on the original BATTLESTAR in the seventies? It was “felderkarp,” and I believe I’ve made my point.) The actors on the 2^nd BSG always delivered the word with either the casualness or sincerity or venom that the situation required, and its impossible for those who really enjoy the series to even realize while they’re watching that an obscenity hasn’t been uttered: BSG has eerily managed to make “frak” pack exactly the same punch.  

     So why, really, does anyone bother with this whole obscenity charade anymore?!!

     It will be interesting to see if Comedy Central actually makes money with their “unbleeping” venture.  

     If the “bleeping” situation suggests that we as a culture get upset about the wrong things, two commercials I’ve recently noticed confirm that suggestion as a fact.

     The first spot, which I believe is about a year old, is actually two conceptually identical spots from the American Egg Board, and they are sometimes shown in tandem. The free-runner and stuntwoman Luci Romberg introduces the concept by showing us her various skills. She then sits in an egg-shaped rotating chair and declares how eggs have helped her to achieve her various goals. Just after she spins the chair so that her face and body are obscured, a gigantic hand, obviously belonging to some sadistic, homicidal giant from another reality, grabs the chair-egg containing Ms. Romberg and cracks it open causing the yellow and white mess which seems to be the rather surprising contents of the athlete’s circulatory system to spill forth and be cooked! This unthinkably sadistic spectacle is repeated in the other spot with a teenager (!), Luke Meyers, who is described in the press as a “speed stacker” because his hands move unbelievably swiftly, and he can, duh, stacks things fast. Well, this young harbinger of a potential new evolutionary ability for mankind gets similarly scrambled, and no youth or women’s organizations are on record with complaints.

     And that’s not even the creepy one! The most horrifying concept being passed to the American Public as acceptable commercial content is in the Tarentino-esque Teleflora spot that recently aired in anticipation of Mother’s Day. In it, a mother and father open a box of flowers sent by their sons, and the flowers, demonstrating that “a box of flowers sometimes says the wrong thing,” start speaking anthropomorphically in the voices of said moronic sons. Sick of the banality, stupidity and downright insincerity of the foliage containing the spirits of her offspring, she sticks them down the garbage disposal as they scream in horror, one of them shrieking, “Oh, my stamen!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

     Do you suppose that whoever conceptualized and scripted this spot had a happy or perky childhood? Or parenthood? Is showing casual mutilation of even mere totems suggesting the personal essence of family members truly in the best interest of America’s nuclear unit?

     I remember the good old days of unintentionally offensive commercials. Occasionally, Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble would unwind backstage (!) at Bedrock by smoking Winstons. The Frito Bandito would remind all chip-consuming children that Mexicans weren’t complete without their gold-teeth, sombrero, and snappy song. If you were a child in grade school, you learned about Native Americans from films provided to your classroom by Old Gold cigarettes, which showed buckskin clad citizens of all ages and tribes merrily puffing their way across the reservation. And of course, if you were a person of color in 1960 who objected to under-representation of your racial/ethnic group in national programming and advertising, you were in for a LONG wait. But casually grinding and otherwise mutilating the liquids, bone and various viscera of America’s youth was not even yet on the menu… so to speak.

     Those who believe that we are, in fact, worried about the right things, and that obscenity in ten-year-olds trumps racial insensitivity and public visualization of barbarism will no doubt continue to attack their obvious targets… but count me among those who think that, if we are truly determined to get upset about something, we need to spread our nets wider and react to these creatively new and ingenious stimuli… rather than just become upset by rote one more infinite time over those same tired old words that George Carlin proved to be so harmless so many, many years ago.

Clint Eastwood: Ultimate Embalmer to the Stars?

CLINT EASTWOOD: ULTIMATE EMBALMER TO THE STARS?

Clint Eastwood’s credentials as a great director are unquestionable by this time… but ever since his early Eighties drama “Honkytonk Man,” a sign of his personal character has leaked out of his films that I find quite enlightening: Eastwood seems dedicated to providing aging performers with one really great role as they approach their exit from the movies and life. While I’m sure I’ve missed a few, let me give you the examples of which I am most aware.

One of the first I know of, and perhaps the most touching of all, is, as I’ve stated, in “Honkytonk Man,” and the performer in question is not best known for acting, but for singing. Marty Robbins, whose performance of “El Paso” is one of the most haunting audio documents of the 20^th century, appears onscreen during the final scene of this severely neglected, if overly long, oddball drama. SPOILER ALERT: In the movie’s final scene, Eastwood’s character, a mostly failed country singer, gets to record his greatest song, only to die halfway through the recording session, and Robbins seamlessly picks up the vocals and completes the recording. If you don’t respond to this scene, and Robbins’ performance, you are a hopeless automaton. It is, quite simply, one of the most unforgettable movie conclusions I’ve ever seen, made all the more unforgettable by Robbins’ death a few weeks before the film was released. Did Eastwood know Robbins was close to the end, and that this would be the ultimate send-off? I have no way of knowing… but the performance is part of a very cool pattern.  

Now fast-forward a few years to one of my favorite Eastwood films, “Pale Rider,”

essentially a supernatural re-make of “Shane,” featuring career-best performances from Michael Moriarity, Carrie Snodgrass, Sydney Penney, Richard Kiel, Richard Dysart, and Christopher Penn.  John Russell, like Eastwood, was a star of a well-respected late Fifties western series, “Lawman,” and would only make one more screen appearance after this one. Eastwood gives him a GREAT villain role (basically a reprise of the Jack Palance character from “Shane,” aided, this time, by a posse) and a VERY memorable send-off. SPOILER ALERT: Russell plays a gun-for-hire, Stockburn, who has already killed Eastwood’s rider previously, and left a circle of bullet wounds in his chest. The look of terror on Russell’s formerly stolid face as he’s dispatched by his past victim is a classic, just the come-uppance an audience desires for all truly despicable villains. Russell died in 1988.  “Pale Rider,” a supremely under-estimated Eastwood film, stands strong, due in no small part to the unbelieving look of horror on Russell’s face. (In case you can’t tell, I LOVE this performance, AND this movie.) I would argue that “Pale Rider” is Russell’s proudest legacy.

This next swan-song is perhaps my very favorite, because I happen to revere E.G. Marshall, an actor who excelled at playing both intellectual giants and utter whack-jobs.  If you read William Goldman’s book, “Which Lie did I Tell?”, you’ll realize what a miracle it is that “Absolute Power” has any positive qualities at all, since it is a complete about-face from the book (in the novel, Eastwood’s character, Luther, dies less than halfway through the story.) Goldman describes the ordeal of writing the screenplay, sorting through too many characters and trying to find a core-story that would both serve Eastwood and somehow satisfy moviegoers who’d read the book. Having never bothered with the book, I’ll never know how well he succeeded, but I do know that the role Goldman wrote for the then-ancient pro Marshall, is one of the most heart-grabbing I’ve seen in a political thriller.  Marshall plays a political power-broker whose MUCH younger wife has an affair with his best friend, President Gene Hackman. The dignity which Marshall bestows on a character that could have descended into the darkest soap-opera clichés literally has to be seen to be believed. It was this performance which first prodded me to consider the fact that one of Eastwood’s concerns as a director was to provide great exits for aging actors.

And now, we come to “Mystic River,” and one of my all-time favorite performances in an Eastwood film. Eli Wallach, Eastwood’s co-star as “the Ugly” in “The Good, the Bad, and…” appears as the appropriately named Mr. Loonie, the owner of Loonie’s Liquors, and there is no other performance I can name that is so obviously meant to be a meaningful swan-song. Wallach was born in 1915, but in “Mystic River,” released in 2003,  he looks to be at least 137, and he is the only actor I’ve named in these paragraphs who went on to give many performances after working with Eastwood in 2003. Amazingly, he’s still alive at this writing, and has added at least 20 credits since “River.” Ah well, no pattern is perfect. I will note that “Mystic River” remains the late-period performance that Wallach will undoubtedly be remembered for. Interestingly, it’s uncredited.

Now, having set my tone for this piece, let me cite the appearance that I believe started this whole pattern: again, as with Robbins, the player isn’t an actor, but someone who meant a lot to Eastwood, who’s always mentioned two directors as his main influences as to how he runs a set: Sergio Leone, the director of the famous “Spaghetti Westerns,” and Don Siegel, the perpetually under-appreciated film-noir vet who directed Eastwood in “The Beguiled,” “Dirty Harry” and “Coogan’s Bluff” (which led to a perpetual week-to-week remake as TV’s “McCloud”). Siegel is also responsible for at least two other classic films, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” and John Wayne’s last film, “The Shootist.” Siegel appears as a weary character named Murphy in Eastwood’s very first directorial effort, “Play Misty for Me,” and you only have to see the scene to know that it’s a special moment between two friends. Eastwood dedicated “Unforgiven” to Don Siegel, and that fact seems to underline their appearance together.

If there are some Eastwood send-offs that I’ve missed… I hope someone will correct me. I await your responses.

“Pursuit”: a nutty classic waiting for stoners to find it!

PURSUIT: A FASCINATING MICHAEL CRICHTON ARTIFACT FROM THE TRANSITION BETWEEN THE PRE-COMPUTER AND COMPUTER ERAS… AND A STONERS’ FAVORITE WAITING TO BE DISCOVERED.

We’ve all experienced it by now: We re-view a well-remembered film from our childhood, and are forced to realize how young and naïve we were when we viewed it… and just how much society and entertainment have changed since the original screening.

Perhaps it was because Michael Crichton had died just a month before, and I had experienced a surprisingly huge regret at his passing… or perhaps it was just that I hadn’t seen this particular film in well over 35 years and remembered it well, or thought I did. Whatever the reason, I picked up, for 3 dollars, the DVD of “Pursuit,” a VERY obscure ABC “Movie of the Week” from 1972, distributed on disc by MGM. Ever since, even as I write this article, I’ve been forced to marvel at how consistently this modest little thriller functions as a time capsule: incredibly prescient, quaintly naïve, and unintentionally funny all at the same time. If “Mystery Science Theatre” were still around, I could understand how this movie could pose a problem for their staff: it’s too technically good to totally dismiss as trash, and yet the evolution of society, entertainment, and science have turned it into the cinematic equivalent of an eight-track tape… appreciable for the melodies it contains, but laughable in its technological obsolescence.

It’s also fantastically noteworthy as a souvenir of the extraordinary and rather strange career of author Michael Crichton, the best-selling author with a medical degree who first entered the public consciousness with the almost unprecedented success of “The Andromeda Strain” in the late Sixties.” Strain” was an anomaly amongst Sixties bestsellers: it was science-fiction, but heavily grounded in the known science of the day, explained in understandable and entertaining terms, paving the way for such other medically trained novelists as Nicholas Meyer and Robin Cook. “Pursuit,” is based on a throwaway Crichton novel, “Binary,” written under the pseudonym of John Lange, just as Stephen King used to write second-tier novels under the name of Richard Bachman. In another precursor to King’s phenomenal success, Crichton became the first best-selling author, in MY memory anyway, to be allowed to direct a movie based on his own work (from a screenplay officially credited to Robert Dozier). To my knowledge, only Nicholas Meyer (The Seven-Percent Solution,” “Time after Time,” “Star Trek II,” and “The Day After”) and King himself (“Maximum Overdrive”) have been awarded similar largess due to their popularity.*  While King never earned a second chance at helming a feature, “Pursuit” was successful enough to convince MGM to let Crichton direct and write “Westworld,” an astonishingly tidy little sci-fi thriller that single-handedly revived the career of Yul Brenner, and made his black-clad gunslinger image even more iconic than in “The Magnificent Seven,” a pretty tall order when seriously considered. Crichton made one other well-regarded techno-thriller, “Runaway” with Tom Selleck and Gene Simmons, and then seemingly just staggered into box-office and creative dead ends such as “Looker,” “The 13^th Warrior,” and “Physical Evidence.” And all this happened before the notable “third-act” of his career, which included his “Jurassic Park” trilogy with the accompanying cinema juggernaut franchise… and a little thing which he produced called “E.R.”.   

“Pursuit” is the single-minded story (there are NO subplots) of Steven Graves, an FBI agent shadowing James Wright, a political extremist who dismisses both Democrats and Republicans as identical, differing in name only. At a ridiculously slow pace by today’s surveillance-thriller standards, it becomes glaringly obvious to the FBI that Wright is planning to obliterate an unnamed San Diego-based political convention and the President in attendance, through the use of a binary gas, an exotic concept mostly unknown to the public at the time.

The film both suffers and benefits from its place in history. It’s the first film I remember seeing that focused on domestic terrorism. In 1972, the concept was not just exotic; it was pure science-fiction. While Wright is clearly patterned after Lyndon LaRouche, it would be at least another decade before news stories about “survivalist compounds” would convince the public that legitimate threats to America could be internal. The fact that Wright can actually escape from an FBI interrogation by walking past the questioning agents while pretending to use an ashtray and then saunter through a door with no further security posted outside is a huge groaner for a modern audience, but in 1972 it seemed sort-of plausible, because the concept of an American trying to kill masses of Americans was still unheard-of: the FBI agents in the film can actually be excused for their naivete, IF you’re viewing it as a citizen of the early Seventies.

(Because the film’s FBI agents are so hilariously slow in seeing the real nature of Wright’s plot and dealing with it, I am consistently surprised that this film hasn’t become a favorite of America’s stoners, wishing to create their own “Mystery Science Theatre” in their living room. The film even contains a “4:20” reference between two agents that makes you wonder what Crichton was doing when he wasn’t on the set, even though it pre-dates the popularization of that term by a full-decade. The whole film is just one long “bong-game” waiting for the right couch potatoes to appreciate it. The typical Jerry Goldsmith score, shiny, insistent and polished compared to the rest of the production, seems out of place, and just made for stoners to mock.)

“Pursuit” is also the first film in my considerable cinematic memory to feature a digital readout across the bottom of the screen, a full thirty years before the debut of “24.”

The device is inconsistently used (making it another “bong-game” possibility), but its mere appearance is rather startling considering the film’s age. Digital readouts were still VERY new and exotic in 1972; take it from someone whose brand-new clock radio still featured hands circling numbers.

Also considered  VERY new in 1972, the concept of plastic explosives, crucial to the plot, and binary gas, the subject of explanatory technobabble that must even explain the meaning of the word “binary” itself to the audience… exceedingly quaint in today’s digital world. The film is also the initial reference I remember to the virtual invulnerability of cockroaches to disasters.

(Oh, additionally, “Pursuit” is an artifact due to the complexion of the actors involved. By this time, after the debut of “All in the Family” on CBS, African-Americans were regularly penetrating TV in bit parts at the very least; but “Pursuit” is ENTIRELY white, and the inclusion of Jewish actor Joseph Wiseman seems the only concession to the concept that America isn’t entirely composed of WASPs. {Martin Sheen would not publicly acknowledge his birth name of Ramon Estevez for another few years, and boy, does he look pasty in this film!})

Finally, “Pursuit,” is the first film I remember seeing that posited the possibility that information can be stolen from government computers (by the Martin Sheen character), and the first time the word “on-line” was used in a computer-context in a movie. If anybody can cite an earlier example, I’ll gladly modify my statement.

The psychological discourse of “Pursuit” is also unique for the time, although nutty by modern standards.   Wright’s entire motivation for his terrorist attack seems to be a fear of “impotence,” strictly defined here as the inability to act. It’s to the movie’s benefit that then-current broadcast standards didn’t allow more explicit discussion of this corny and simplistic notion on the obvious sexual level… but again, it amazes me that the film hasn’t become a cult movie for chronic consumers of cannabis because of this aspect. Also, the concept of an FBI agent seeing a psychiatrist seemed fairly new in 1972, an attempt to further sophisticate the battle of wills between two almost-equals. The entire “poker-player against poker-player” concept is referenced ludicrously often by Grave’s superior, making such observations appear to be his only real job.

“Pursuit” has several quality problems that can be attributed to a virgin director. Twice, Crichton uses a voice-over to remind us of what a character has previously said… but the sound-level is so low and unsure that it’s almost unintelligible (It’s amazing that no supervising producer noticed this!). Also, there are some wonderfully ham-handed moments, such as a news announcer’s assessment that the President is protected against everything EXCEPT a major disaster, followed by a quick cut to the two tanks of gas. The “act breaks” where commercials were once inserted are achingly funny in their cliff-hanger nature, typified by William Windom’s line, “They have not been able to reach the President!” A climactic explosion is basically a very primitive optical effect followed by actors falling to the floor while someone shakes the camera and someone else releases an unconvincing smoke plume.

Two or three performances seem to have, rather amazingly, stood the test of time. An astonishingly young Martin Sheen appears in a brief key role, and Joseph Wiseman, forever enshrined as the craggy Jewish actor who played one-handed villains of unspecified “oriental” origin in both “Doctor No” and “Enter the Dragon,” is thoroughly enjoyable and creditable as the perpetually gloomy gas expert. Ben Gazzara, best remembered for the TV series “Run for Your Life,” and his films with John Cassavetes, is much less deadpan than usual (perhaps responding to his brilliant co-star) playing with understated humor the already clichéd role of the FBI agent who does crossword puzzles for fun and sees every assignment as an intellectual contest between two opponents. William Windom, as Gazzara’s petulant superior, has most of the worst lines in the movie, but is well remembered by fans of the original “Star Trek” series and the James Thurber homage, “My World and Welcome to It.” 

But the real joy here, and again I’m stunned that this performance hasn’t become a favorite of stoners, is E.G. Marshall as Wright. I don’t remember the source of the quote, but someone once remarked that if you slice ham thinly and skillfully enough, you can no longer tell that it’s ham: this is the work that proves the saying. This interpretation, incredibly, would work equally well in a good-movie or a bad one… and “Pursuit,” as I’ve described it, is more than a little bit of both. Whether you like “Pursuit” or deride it, Marshall is untouchable: Remarkably, he somehow seems to both underplay and overplay this role at the same time, aided by the fact that his balding, incredibly average appearance constantly surprises audiences when passion flows from his seemingly passionless facade: an extraordinary man in an ordinary body. Marshall’s pleasure in portraying Wright is palpable in every frame. The gleam in his eye when he confronts Graves person-to-person is absolutely puckish. He also manages to sell the clichéd “impotence” motivation. His performance, rather subtle visually, and entirely nuanced vocally, serves as a prescient artifact to his cult status among then-young radio listeners as the best-remembered host of the “CBS Radio Mystery Theatre,” the long, cherished, last gasp of radio drama on commercial airwaves. Just watching him, and listening to him of course, conjures a smile. Marshall, whom some younger readers might remember as a doddering surgeon during the first seasons of the Nineties series “Chicago Hope,” excelled in two types of characters: men of supreme intellect and character, as in his classic TV show “The Defenders,” and total whackjobs with a thickish veneer of civilization, as in “Pursuit.” If you’re unfamiliar with him and you want to see more of this extraordinary performer, I’ll recommend that you watch Sidney Lumet’s film of “Twelve Angry Men,” George Romero’s “Creepshow” (in a scenery-chewing “Tales from the Crypt”-like story about a millionaire battling cockroaches, which really has to be seen to be believed), and his cinematic swan song as an ancient husband (of a much younger wife) betrayed by a friend in Clint Eastwood’s “Absolute Power,” which is practically a love-letter from director-to-actor. Also, MP3 copies of his “Mystery Theatre” work are readily available. You’ll mourn his death anew with each performance you discover.  

“Pursuit” remains forever maimed by it’s own prescience, but the quaintness of it’s virginal approach to subject matter that would soon become clichéd… and the performance of E. G. Marshall make it a uniquely nostalgic and pleasurable time-waster… as well as a nice homage to Michael Crichton, whom many of us remember as the man whose unprecedented media-crossing made the later omnipresent success of Stephen King possible.

Warren Stone

Obscene and political jokes #1

Obama said yesterday that “the US fails to understand intelligence.”What was his first clue? For me, it was the success of Carrottop.

The FBI, CIA, and NSA are still trying to effectively sort and share information about violent threats… but it’s going VERY slowly. Yesterday they told Obama they think someone in Dallas is going to shoot JR Ewing.

Tia Tequila’s girlfriend, Casey Johnson, just died. The Autopsy will show that she just got ahold of a bad clam.

Dick Cheney’s still bitchin’ about Obama. Y’know Cheney’s never going to have an honest bone in his body until he gets sodomized by Gay Zombie Abe Lincoln.

What’s all this fuss about Underwear bombs? When I’m eating Mexican food, I must get them 4 or 5 times a week!

I’ve discovered a cure for my lifelong clinical depression: SEVERE HEAD TRAUMA! I fell down a fire escape drunk, and once the scabs formed, I was a changed man! My mood is terrific now, but the Q-tips keep coming out red…

My nervous system has bonded with my cable system. I only have to blink 187 times in a row to get to the Playboy channel. Outside of the constant retinal tearing, it’s really worth it. Of course, my eyes are bloody by that time, but if I just imagine that Jenna Jameson is a redhead, I can still get my business done!

#2:I call my dick…

I call my dick “the economy,” because it doesn’t get all the new jobs it needs every month, and I have yet to see that rapid growth that we ALL need so desperately.

I call my dick “Avatar,” because it’s been in production for years, it’s in 3-D, and I can’t afford for it to flop.

I also call my dick “Titanic,” because Kate Winslet needs to go down on it.

I call my dick “Kanye West,” because it’s always standing up at the wrong times.

I call my dick “Rush Limbaugh,” because… well, because they’re BOTH dicks.

I call my dick “Cheney,” because it shot me in the face once.

Obscene Christmas Carol #2: Santa’s Hidden Gland

Santa’s Hidden Gland (sung to the tune of “Winter Wonderland”)

 

Friday night, and the mall’s packed…

They all plop on my ballsack:

I’m not talkin’ kids,

Just Moms and their Ids:

Moms who sit on Santa’s hidden gland.

So the kids pose for photos…

While their mom grabs my scroto:

It gives me deep peace,

When she grinds her crease…

Mom who sits on Santa’s hidden gland.

Every Friday night, the mall’s a nightmare…

Families swarm into every store,

Meantime Santa’s big red pants get tight where

Victoria’s got no secrets anymore.

Later on, I’ll be jerkin’

Thinkin’ ‘bout  Mama’s merkin.

The winter winds blow…

But I produce snow

{for} Moms who sit on Santa’s hidden gland.

Obscene Christmas Carol #1… Santa Smells

Boy, he smells (sung to the tune of “Silver Bells”)

 

Busy mall time, fuck it all time,

That’s the mall this twelfth month…

And the kids all have real tiny bladders.

Keep a kind eye and your pants dry…

These are Santa’s big jobs…

And from every small child, you can hear…

“Boy, he smells. Santa smells.”

I’m litter, they are the kitty.

Hear their wish, while they piss…

on my lap, this Christmas day.

So the kids come, and the kids dump

Onto Santa’s red suit,

Which turns into a big yuletide diaper.

Spray some Lysol on your moist balls

While the elves hold their nose,

And from every small child you can hear…

“Boy he smells. Santa smells!”

Its Christmas time, I smell shitty.

Hear their wish, while they piss…

on my lap, this Christmas day.

“I call my dick…”

I call my dick “Obama’s Afghanistan Policy,” because it doesn’t know when to withdraw either…”

I call my dick “Steven Seagall,” because it’s career is over as well.

I call my dick “Mrs. Tiger Woods’ nine-iron,” because I was swinging it behind the wheel one day and I totally wrecked my car.

I call my dick “the E.P.A.,” because it doesn’t have a consistent emissions policy either.

I call my dick “Army Psychiatrist,” because it shoots off 13 quick rounds and then sinks into a coma.

I call my dick “Sarah Palin,” because it keeps standing up and spouting for no reason.

John Frankenheimer: The GREAT collaborator?

The neglect and disdain of directors for writers is an ingrained show business cliché as old, or older, than the concept of the tragic clown or star-crossed lovers. But fans of the hyper-accomplished director John Frankenheimer will have new reason to respect him even further when they learn that he extended a truly legendary compliment on writer George Axelrod, the veteran playwright whose stage vehicle “The Seven Year Itch” made Marilyn Monroe’s most iconic moment possible. Due to initial incomprehension on the part of his film editor, Frankenheimer actually invited his writer to edit the most important scene in “their” movie; this magnanimous gesture resulted in the initial cut of one of the most arresting scenes in suspense filmmaking.
To appreciate the enormity of this gesture, first get your hands on “The Manchurian Candidate,” on DVD, the 1962 original, not the 2004 update starring Denzel Washington. While a passable version for its own time period, bolstered by a typically well-done Meryl Streep performance in the Angela Lansbury role, the Jonathan Demme version has the disadvantage of having to live down an original that broke new cinematic ground in photographic, stunt-fighting, and expositional ways; and the lack of surprise that the fame of the Frankenheimer original has bestowed on all late-comers to similar plots, including the other great assassination film, Pakula’s “The Parallax View.” The Frankenheimer/Axelrod collaboration is the classic example of a complicated story told in a supremely complicated manner, but with incredible style, sardonic wit, and panache. This tale of a U.S. soldier brainwashed into committing murders, with an ultimate goal of facilitating the election of a Communist pawn, was historic in its blend of cynicism and Freudian perversion, and gave its audience credit for intelligence, presenting them with the most elaborate, and most potentially confusing, exposition scene in motion picture history.
The “Garden Club Party Dream” is what clues-in Major Ben Marco (Frank Sinatra) that his “friend” Raymond Shaw (Lawrence Harvey) is actually a time bomb waiting for an unknown trigger. Marco, sweating and mumbling feverishly, imagines waiting for a train in a hotel lobby, listening to a hostess, Mrs. Henry Whittiker by name (played by the wonderful Helen Kleeb who’s best known as one of the bootlegging Baldwin sisters from “The Waltons.”) drone to her club membership on the subject of hydrangeas. Firstly, the camera establishes this situation, moving over Marco, Shaw, the hostess, and other soldiers and off the stage, circling the room while hydrangea trivia fills the air. Soon, even the densest movie-goer senses that our viewpoint is circling the room in a 360 degree pan, and that we are headed back for the stage… and one of the most surprising “reveals” in history.
Upon returning to the stage, before we see Sinatra again, we now see, instead of the Garden Club lady we saw before, Henry Silva’s character Chunjin, serving as a sort of stenographer or court reporter. Next, we see Sinatra again, still bored and barely tolerant of his surroundings, but now the background behind him is different, and we are obviously in an amphitheatre of some sort, with Communist symbols and photos on display. Presiding over the meeting, we no longer have Mrs. Henry Whittaker: we now see a bulky, bald Chinese psychiatrist, Dr. Yen Lo, played by the wonderful actor Kneigh Deigh, who would be immortalized in “Hawaii Five-Oh,” as Jack Lord’s returning nemesis, Wo Fat. We discover that the platoon has been brainwashed into thinking they are awaiting a train, while the truth of their situation is far more ominous, and two of their members are about to die in a grisly demonstration of effective hypnosis. Astonishingly, this transition always works: through the years I’ve discussed this scene with moviegoers of varying levels of sophistication when it comes to, edits, storytelling and movies in general.. NOBODY, in my experience, is ever confused or in doubt. They ALL get it, and this revelation has a WOW factor rivaled only be the Statue of Liberty pull-back in “Planet of the Apes.”
(Prior to the advent of CGI, this amazing switch was enabled by two sets on a railroad track: one showing the Garden Party set and women, and the other showing the Manchurian set. The actors playing the platoon ran from one set to the other, while the camera was still arching around the hotel lobby set.)
The surprises aren’t over, not by a long shot. We next get a wide view, from behind Sinatra and the others… and we see that the Garden Club ladies and the hotel lobby are gone, replaced by said amphitheatre and now populated by both Chinese and Russian Communists, working in concert in a way that Americans always feared, but that history tells us never really occurred. Cannily, original novelist Richard Conden, and later his cinematic collaborators, use American paranoia of an “international Communist conspiracy” to tell a tale that will eventually condemn the fear of Communism at the expense of certain constitutionally-bound American ideas. In other words, it uses the trepidations that created the blacklist to slam the blacklist itself, as well as the overreactions it spawned. How America could have used an equally powerful and surprising film prior to the advent of the Iraq War.
At this point in Frankenheimer’s DVD commentary, he reveals the enormity of the task he took on. He filmed this scene in no less than six different combinations: “We filmed it with the soldiers on the New Jersey stage, with the woman and with the Chinese psychiatrist. We filmed it in the Manchurian amphitheatre with the Chinese psychiatrist with the woman; with the woman with the dignitaries and the woman with the women; with the Chinese psychiatrist with the dignitaries and the Chinese psychiatrist with the women. So, the combinations were endless, and we put the whole thing together in the editing room. We had no idea how we were going to edit it when we shot it: that “we” being “I”, really.”
(Can you imagine, in the current Hollywood climate, where even Steven Spielberg is groused about by artless bean-counting executives, a contemporary director being granted the liberty of shooting a vital scene in SIX different combinations? Not likely.)
Frankenheimer adds, “Now by editing together all these unique combinations, the way we shot the scene, you can see it takes on a very kind of surrealistic quality: but we had all the elements to work with, which made it a relatively simple procedure. It was just a question of choice.”
Now, Frankenheimer reveals, with absolutely no sense of self-aggrandizement, the almost unprecedented largess which he granted to his screenwriter: “This scene is a really perfect example of what you can do if you have the right elements, when you go to edit it. We had a very good film editor, a man named Ferris Webster, but he was very confused by this, as I think almost anybody would be. I was busy directing the movie and didn’t have really a whole lot of time to figure out how to edit this scene. So, I said to George Axelrod, I said ‘George, why don’t you go in with a script and just put something together.’ And he said ‘But John,’ he said, ‘I have never edited a scene in my life.’ I said, ‘well that might make it very interesting. You have an idea of what you’d like to see. You have an idea… you’ve been around a lot of movies; you have an idea of what maybe should be on the screen.’”
“So, he said ‘yes’, he said, ‘but I’m a writer! And I will do it like a writer.’ So he sat down with the script and he just marked the script with various things that he might like to see. And the editor, Ferris Webster, put it together. And, believe it or not, that’s more or less what we ended up with here. I changed it a little bit, but very little.”
What we see in the finished film is essentially 10 minutes of groundbreaking expositional cinema that has emerged in a shape primarily dictated BY THE SCREENWRITER, because he’s been judged to be the man most conversant with the intricacies of the plot! Is there any other example in film history of a director placing such faith and power in the hands of a screenwriter? If so, I’m unaware of it… unless you regard such writer-director hyphenates such as Preston Sturges, Richard Brooks, and M. Night Shamelyn.
Having already constructed a legendarily arresting set piece, Frankenheimer and Axelrod add to it by staging a continuation of this one-of-a kind sequence in a different skin shade. Later in the plot, we have another soldier in the Marco/Shaw platoon; played by African-American actor James Edwards, experience the rest of the brainwashing sequence in a scene showing all the Garden Club ladies played by black women, as he would have dreamt it, complete with a white bellboy in the back of the hotel lobby. (In this scene, the black actress, Maye Henderson now plays Dr. Yen Lo.) Also, Frankenheimer casts other African American actors in scenes throughout the film, notably Joe Adams, about one year prior to Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech. (These castings were not dictated in the novel or script and were hardly standard at the time.)
Sit back and imagine that: You’ve already constructed a scene that intrigues the viewer while bombarding them with conflicting images and multiple castings of the same role… and amazingly you’ve pulled it off and the viewer’s comprehension has been increased, if anything, rather than diminished. So what do you do? You CONTINUE the scene adding yet a third dimension to your trick of multiple castings for the amphitheatre audience and the Chinese psychiatrist.
(Frankenheimer’s more liberal political leanings are on constant display throughout “Candidate.” He is particularly gleeful when he dresses the Eugene McCarthy figure, played by James Gregory, as Lincoln during a costume party, and has the oaf desecrate a caviar mold shaped and decorated as the American flag, as he dips a cracker into it. A liberal senator, played puckishly by John McGiver, has his head transposed over that of an American eagle at one point. The ACLU is also prominently featured in the dialogue. Frank Sinatra, a close friend of the still un-assassinated JFK, reputedly came on board because he agreed so much with the film’s messages and presumptions… although he would later align himself tightly with the much more conservative Reagan White House.)
People often speak of how brave Hitchcock was, to do edgy one-of-a-kind plots such as “Psycho” and “The Birds” at a time when the average viewer was not as sophisticated as they are today, in the age of “The Sopranos,” and “The Shield.” But try and imagine the guts it must have taken to mount this sardonic, convoluted, anti-paranoia, pro-libertarian thriller, just a few short years after McCarthy, when the Hollywood blacklist was still limping along automatically. Frankenheimer, who practically invented the nail-biting, nuclear age thriller with this picture and “Seven Days in May,” is always tops on my list when it comes to bravado.
Sinatra, not always known for being gracious or easy to work with, pays Frankenheimer and Axelrod the ultimate compliment in a reunion interview taped for the late Eighties VHS re-release which got the film recognized as a pre-cognitive classic, since it was withdrawn from view for more than 20 years after JFK was shot: “It’s so simple to explain. We three people believed what we were doing… we wouldn’t have been together if we hadn’t believed it. And that really was the answer to how it came about.” Frankenheimer was famous for being a perfectionist, shooting as many takes as were necessary, and Sinatra was equally famous for delivering great spontaneous performances on the first take and for giving results of lesser quality in subsequent attempts. In fact, Frankenheimer was forced to use an out-of-focus shot of Sinatra during a Marco/Shaw confrontation because all the following, in-focus, versions of the scene just weren’t as good, Sinatra-wise. He was later amused and shocked when he received grand reviews for photographically depicting Marco as he must have looked through the eyes of the brainwashed and mentally foggy Shaw. And amazingly, although working together was not easy for either of them, Sinatra and Frankenheimer reunited some three years later, on yet another thriller, “The Train,” a solid, well-remembered World War Two chase. This fact alone displays the respect that these two very different men cultivated for each other during the shooting of “Candidate.”
These two examples of a director choosing to work with the strengths AND weaknesses of his collaborators, strengthening the picture as a result, mark Frankenheimer as a largely unsung master, who truly deserves respect approaching that accorded to Hitchcock or Fritz Lange when it comes to suspense filmcraft. If you’re unfamiliar with Frankenheimer, who originated his signature style, deep focus claustrophobic interior scenes shot with a wide-angle lens, in the days of live television drama… then you really need to wade around in his works. Begin, if you want to start at the top, with “The Manchurian Candidate,” but also pay close attention to his two other scariest films, “Seven Days in May,” and “Seconds.” The former is a nail-biting political thriller concerning a potential U.S. military coup waged over the use of nuclear weapons, benefiting from one of the nine Burt Lancaster-Kirk Douglas team-ups. Seldom has a political thriller been more in tune with it’s time. The latter is largely unknown, a truly unique 1964 science fiction story concerning an unhappy senior executive who buys his way out of his stagnant life, and emerges from groundbreaking plastic surgery as the much younger and more handsome Rock Hudson. It’s unquestionably Hudson’s best role, and the film he was proudest of, undoubtedly his most personal, since he was playing someone who was pretending to be someone else based entirely on his outward appearance: Hudson’s entire career as a supposedly heterosexual leading man, served as great training for this role. Perhaps that’s why Frankenheimer cast him. “Seconds” is also more than worth your time for the deep focus, fish-eye photography of the legendary James Wong Howe, exploiting the chiascuric possibilities of black-and-white cinematography as they would seldom be used again. As with most of the really great science-fiction films of the Sixties, it has a deeply disturbing, cynical and unhappy ending. Unlike the uncannily timed “Seven Days,” this one was WAY ahead of its time.
1962’s “The Birdman of Alcatraz” is technically a biopic, but plays like a suspense thriller for much of it’s running time, partly due to Frankenheimer’s claustrophobic style… perfectly suited to a prison drama… and also due to the presence of Burt Lancaster and Telly Savalas.
Frankenheimer made other kinds of films of course, and sadly one of his last “genre” pieces was the bewildering 1996 remake of “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” which didn’t result in much except his classic show-biz quote concerning his leading man, “I wouldn’t cast Val Kilmer in ‘The Val Kilmer Story,” but fans of racing films should also seek-out 1966’s “Grand Prix,” in which he used his widescreen interior shots to change the way that high-speed car sequences were put onto a screen. Also, his film 1962 “All Fall Down” is notable for his first on-screen use of Angela Lansbury, who would later give such an oedipally complex performance in “Candidate.” She kisses her son on the mouth in that film, too.
Seek out his work, especially discs that contain Frankenheimer commentaries, such as “Candidate” and “Seconds.” You will find him to be a wonderfully informative, warm, and congenial movie-going companion, and will be most pleasantly surprised and rewarded.

A modest proposal

I noted with keen interest last week that the Oscar ceremony wherein Heath Ledger received a posthumous Oscar got the highest ratings of the week… and the most that this annual show has garnered in years. Last year, when “No Country for Old Men,” basically an art-house film, got the top prize, the public’s apathy was palpable and they stayed away from the broadcast in droves. Only this year, when a really famous dead guy was up for a bauble, did disenfranchised cinephiles come back.

All this has given me a brilliant idea that will close the gap between the academy and the movie-going public, and I share it with you now, via this modest proposal.

I believe it’s in the best interests of the future of cinema for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to form a Covert Actions Squad and murder one hugely popular movie star every year, after the nominations and prior to the ceremony. Life threatening injuries and deaths propel the popularity of almost everything that’s truly American: Football, Wrestling, Nascar racing and plastic surgery.

We are all rubber-neckers, and when the Oscars were really big viewer-bait, it wasn’t because the winning films were good: Have you ever really seen the 1951 winner, “The Greatest Show on Earth,” or “Cavalcade” from the thirties? You could find better, more interesting film on Courtney Love’s toothbrush glass. No, the reason people tuned in was because the Oscar’s always promised some sort of celebrity train wreck: streakers, Streisand’s transparent dress, Vanessa Redgrave’s “Zionist hoodlums” acceptance speech, or even a John Wayne temper tantrum against screen sex. It almost never failed. Even when “Hanoi Jane” Fonda won for “Klute,” and DIDN’T mention Vietnam, it was still huge news the next day.

But in the years since, the seven second delay and a lawsuit happy FCC have sapped all the spontaneity and danger out of the Oscar show in the same way that the bank meltdown drained all the hope out of John McCain. There’s more hope for peace in the Middle East than there is for another Ashley Judd commando stage-crossing in a high slit gown. Think about the Oscars’ recent history and only two moments stand out… Jack Palance’s push-ups and “Uma… Oprah.” These days, if we want to see a celebrity self-destruct, all we have to do is wait for Lindsey, Britney or Paris to climb over an armrest.

So, back to my suggestion: not only would the yearly chance of a posthumous award bring out the inner Enquirer reader in the average viewer, but it would also give Chuck Norris, Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal something to do in their golden years, such as they are.

Let’s be realistic. Just how many good years does Meryl Streep have left? Sure, she’s gotten two statues and 15 nominations, but as she herself has pointed out, she’s also lost more than anyone else. When a show horse can’t jump the fence anymore, it’s time to put morphine in the hay. Timothy Dalton hasn’t been doing much since his last Bond movie, in the freaking ‘80’s. Let’s see if Q gave him an extra poison champagne cork, and get him to pour some choice bubbly for Sophie.

Here’s another example: Should Mickey Rourke really get a FOURTH comeback? He bounced back with “Sin City,” and then faded for 3 years. But Sean Penn stole his “Wrestler” Oscar and the ref has issued the final count: Do we really want to see “Nine and a Half Weeks III?” Let’s put Sly Stallone in a parking lot with a ski mask over his face, and see who the top boxer REALLY is.

And take a look at Clint Eastwood. Sure he’s still a good director, but did you see him in “Gran Torino.?” In 7-11s all over this country, there’s beef jerky that’s juicer and less stringy. He’s gone from “make my day,” to “make my bed.” Let’s get Mel Gibson out of Mount Sinai, or wherever he’s detoxing, and get him to go apocalytco all over Clint’s raw hide.

And don’t even get me started on Tom Cruise.

This needs to be done, and quickly. The FCC has made the world safe from Cher’s potty mouth and Janet Jackson’s nipples, but they’ve doomed the rest of us to awards shows that are about as stimulating and interesting as a “very special” episode of “She’s so Raven.” Awards shows and life should be spontaneous, and since the current economy will bleed the spontaneity out of all of us for the next 3 years at least, what left do we have left? Pasteurization makes for great milk, but lousy TV.

Save the movies. Kill an actor today!