Birth of a Notion: 1980

Showing posts with label 1980. Show all posts

Saturday, December 19, 2015

Taming a Raging Bull

Jake La Motta (Robert De Niro): She says he's pretty.

Joey LaMotta (Joe Pesci): Yeah, well, you make him ugly.

I like black–and–white movies. I know some people don't. I've noticed that younger people are often dismissive of black and white, but they deprive themselves of some truly great movies that way — classics, whether they came out in the '30s or on this day in 1980.

That was the day that Martin Scorsese's "Raging Bull," the story of boxer Jake LaMotta, premiered — and it seemed fitting to tell the tale in black and white, just as it seemed fitting 25 years later to tell the story of Edward R. Murrow and Joseph McCarthy in "Good Night, and Good Luck" in black and white.

Both movies were based on true stories that took place at a time when color was cost prohibitive, something you really only saw on movie screens, not the much smaller screen of the television set. And you certainly didn't see color in news footage of either LaMotta's fights or the Murrow–McCarthy clashes.

But "Raging Bull" wasn't really a boxing movie, and Roger Ebert came about as close as anyone has to explaining what it was really about. He wrote that it was "about a man with paralyzing jealousy and sexual insecurity, for whom being punished in the ring serves as confession, penance and absolution. It is no accident that the screenplay never concerns itself with fight strategy. For Jake LaMotta, what happens during a fight is controlled not by tactics but by his fears and drives."

LaMotta's obsessiveness with his wife (played by Cathy Moriarty), who was 15 when they met, told the story best.

LaMotta constantly worried that she would have relationships with other men. When she made an offhand remark about one of his opponents, saying he was "good–looking," LaMotta made a point of pounding the man into a pulp, then glaring at his wife in the crowd. She got the message.

It's one of those basic, primal urges in man, I guess, to stake out a territory and be jealous of anyone who posed a threat to it, whether that territory was land or livestock — or female. It may not be the sort of thing that can be changed, as deeply ingrained as it appears to be.

In modern man, much of that instinct is contained by various factors that didn't exist or were much less pronounced centuries ago, including professions, but some professions still urge those within them to utilize such instincts. One such profession is boxing, where violence is not just permitted but openly encouraged.

It really shouldn't surprise anyone when a professional fighter resorts to violence outside the ring. It is the only way many of them ever learned to resolve any kind of conflict.

The story was told in a kind of flashback style with the present day being an aging Jake LaMotta, past his boxing days and doing standup routines to support himself, followed by reflections on his life and career.

The movie followed a recurring theme that those familiar with Scorsese's work must have recognized. Again, Ebert may have described it best: "the inability of his characters to trust and relate with women."

"Jake has an ambivalence toward women that Freud famously named the 'Madonna–whore complex,'" Ebert observed. "For LaMotta, women are unapproachable, virginal ideals — until they are sullied by physical contact (with him), after which they become suspect."

Or, as Groucho Marx put it, "I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member."

It isn't funny, though. Jake even went after his brother (Joe Pesci) in a jealous rage.

Ebert couldn't stop gushing about the movie. He wrote that it was "the most painful and heartrending portrait of jealousy in the cinema— an 'Othello' for our times. It's the best film I've seen about the low self–esteem, sexual inadequacy and fear that lead some men to abuse women. Boxing is the arena, not the subject. LaMotta was famous for refusing to be knocked down in the ring. There are scenes where he stands passively, his hands at his side, allowing himself to be hammered. We sense why he didn't go down. He hurt too much to allow the pain to stop."

"Raging Bull" tied with "The Elephant Man" for the most Oscar nominations at eight apiece. De Niro won Best Actor, and Thelma Schoonmaker received the Oscar for Best Film Editing, but "Ordinary People," in hindsight a rather routine drama, won Best Picture and Best Director.

There are probably some Oscar voters who regret those decisions now. Certainly the folks at the American Film Institute would go along with awarding those Oscars to Scorsese and his movie. AFI ranks "Raging Bull" #4 on the all–time greatest movies list. "Ordinary People" didn't make the Top 100.

Saturday, December 12, 2015

Robin Williams' First Starring Role

Poopdeck Pappy (Ray Walston): Children. They cry at you when they're young, they yell at you when they're older, they borrows from you when they's middle–aged, and they leave you alone to die — without even paying you back.

I remember watching Popeye cartoons when I was a child, but I don't think those cartoons ever told the story of how Popeye came to be in the coastal town of Sweethaven or how he met his future bride Olive Oyl. So I never knew how that happened — until the movie "Popeye" was released on this date in 1980.

Popeye was one of my favorites when I was a little boy. In fact, there was a time — when I was probably 4 or 5 — when I really believed that my muscles would grow like Popeye's if I ate my spinach. And I remember eating spinach and then flexing my muscles, and my mother would ooh and ahhh — not because my muscles really grew but probably because I was eating at least one of my vegetables. Like all mothers, she liked that idea.

Like most kids, I suppose, I didn't care for vegetables. I love spinach today — and not because I think it will make my muscles grow, either. I just honestly like it. But I can't eat spinach, even today, without thinking of Popeye. He has had a permanent influence on my life.

For those of us who grew up with Popeye, the movie was a treat. In his first starring role in a movie, Robin Williams played Popeye, which was something I struggled with before I saw the movie. In hindsight, I have to say it was the right role for him at the time. He was in his Mork from Ork period, arguably the most outlandish, off the wall phase of his career — and the role of Popeye gave him an opportunity to really spread his creative wings.

I thought the casting of Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl was positively inspired. Since the movie's debut 35 years ago, I have heard many people say that Olive Oyl was the role Duvall was born to play. I don't know if I would take it to that extreme, but I do think Duvall was the only actress in 1980 who could have been a plausible Olive Oyl.

Ray Walston, who was probably best known for his sitcom My Favorite Martian, was a little over the top as Poopdeck Pappy, Popeye's long–lost father, but he was only in the movie in its last half hour.

At the time I recall reading reviews of the movie that were rather lukewarm, but critic Roger Ebert said it was "lots of fun," and I agreed.

Ebert was one of those critics who said Duvall was born to be Olive Oyl. As I said earlier, I'm not sure I would go quite that far, but I can't argue with Ebert on this: "She brings to Olive a certain ... dignity, you might say. She's not lightly scorned, and although she may tear apart a room in an unsuccessful attempt to open the curtains, she is fearless in the face of her terrifying fiancé, Bluto."

I guess "Popeye" came along at the right time for me. John Lennon had been shot and killed only a few days before, and I badly needed something like "Popeye," a reassuring reminder of my childhood.

Calling the comic strip (which of course was where Popeye began) "one of the most artificial and limiting of art forms," Ebert acknowledged that director Robert Altman's movie "suggests that it is possible to take the broad strokes of a comic strip and turn them into sophisticated entertainment. What's needed is the right attitude toward the material."

As I recall, Harry Nilsson's score was pretty well received, as it should have been. As Ebert wrote, the songs "fit into all of this quite effortlessly. Instead of having everything come to a halt for the musical set pieces, Altman stitches them into the fabric. Robin Williams sings Popeye's anthem, 'I Yam What I Yam' with a growling old sea dog's stubbornness. Bluto's 'I'm Mean' has an undeniable conviction, and so does Olive Oyl's song to Bluto, 'He's Large.'"

Nilsson's music was dripping with irony, which may well have been lost on younger viewers.

"Popeye" got a bad rap from the critics of the day. It was better than many thought and deserves to be seen again through fresh eyes.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Letters From Home

"I have no need to write letters to communicate with children. I have you for that, Pierce."

Charles Emerson Winchester (David Ogden Stiers)

On this day in 1980, M*A*S*H's second episode of the season aired. Traditionally, a network television series begins its new season in September.

Why the delay? Well, there was this three–month strike by the Screen Actors Guild and AFTRA against television and movie studios, and it delayed the start of most series by a month or two.

At the time, as I recall, the public angst was over having to wait to find out who shot J.R. on Dallas. There certainly was no shortage of suspects, and the subject sparked some pretty intense debates while impatient viewers waited for the strike to be resolved.

But perhaps the greater tragedy was the fact that the delay deprived TV viewers of some top–quality writing and acting, such as was displayed on M*A*S*H on this night in 1980.

It was the ninth of what turned out to be 11 seasons on the air for M*A*S*H. The show was a fixture in the Top 10, and its producers knew it had nothing to prove. That is truly a rare opportunity in television — or in any human endeavor, for that matter — to be able to pursue any creative angle you desire, knowing that you can get away with it even if it bombs — but, because you are who you are, such a failure is not likely.

(Sort of like Apple Inc., I guess.)

It can encourage people to push the envelope, which is what the folks at M*A*S*H did in an episode called "Letters."

Speaking of envelopes ...

In the episode that aired on this night in 1980, Hawkeye (Alan Alda) had received a package from home. It was from a friend of his who was teaching fourth grade in Hawkeye's hometown of Crabapple Cove, Maine. In the package were letters from this friend's pupils, who had been assigned to write letters to the people serving in Korea. Hawkeye had written a letter to his friend telling him how boring life could be around the compound — between those chaotic periods when casualties kept the surgeons on their feet for 18 or 20 hours — so his friend had the idea of perhaps sparking some pen pal relationships between the kids and the folks in the M*A*S*H unit.

Hawkeye distributed handfuls of letters to the familiar gang — B.J., Col. Potter, Charles, Hot Lips, Klinger, Father Mulcahy — and made only one rule: They all had to answer the letters they had been given. No swapping, trading or stealing.

Even though Father Mulcahy (William Christopher) had already opened a letter that asked if he had saved many lives. "A doctor really should answer that one," he noted. "I specialize in saving souls, not lives."

Col. Potter (Harry Morgan) reminded Mulcahy of his efforts with someone named Irving, which inspired Mulcahy's response. Turned out Irving was a homeless dog who showed up around the compound — and had a bit of a taste for booze. Well, more than a taste. Irving was a lush.

Mulcahy recalled that there had been a dog like that when he was in seminary. The way the seminary students had cured him was to make him drink bowl after bowl of whiskey until he was sick, then give him more whiskey when he was hung over. It worked on Irving.

"If people only had the horse sense dogs do," Mulcahy wrote.

One of the best vignettes of the episode focused on Hot Lips (Loretta Swit) and the attachment she formed to some of the patients who came through the compound — even, or perhaps especially, the ones who died. The viewing audience saw her sitting next to a mortally wounded soldier, smiling even though she knew he only had an hour or two to live. It was a rare glimpse into what touched Hot Lips on a personal level.

Col. Potter shared his exploits as "Hoops" Potter and his near miss at tying the camp record for making consecutive free throws.

"Take a word of advice from a retired bucketeer," Col. Potter wrote in his reply to one of the students. "If you take up a sport, make it horseshoes where you don't have to be perfect."

Klinger (Jamie Farr), the first–class Army scrounge, told one of the correspondents about his latest get–rich–quick scheme. He had acquired a couple of chinchillas and was planning to breed them for their fur — until Charles (David Ogden Stiers), who had worked with lab rodents when in medical school, informed Klinger that both of his chinchillas were male.

Hawkeye found himself having to answer a letter that struck a nerve. It was from a youngster whose older brother had served in Korea. He had been wounded and was sent to a M*A*S*H unit that patched him up and sent him back to his unit, where he was killed in combat.

"You doctors just make people better so they can end up dead. I hate you all," the letter concluded.

Hawkeye tried to get Father Mulcahy to write the reply, but Mulcahy refused. He said the letter had stirred up deep emotions within Hawkeye, and he would have to deal with them whether he wrote the letter or not. So Hawkeye answered the letter.

"It's not a good idea to take the love you had for your brother and turn it into hate," Hawkeye wrote in his reply. "Hate makes war, and war is what killed him. I understand your feelings. Sometimes I hate myself for being here, but once in awhile in the midst of this insanity a very small event can make my being here seem almost bearable."

That was good, but I think my very favorite part of the episode involved Charles. He had been enjoying penning sarcastic replies to the letters he had been given, but one letter made him pause. It was from a young girl who wrote about autumn in Maine and the beauty of the leaves. She enclosed a leaf from a birch tree because she wasn't sure if Korea had an autumn, and she wanted to share the beauty with the person who got her letter.

Charles, a native of Boston, knew about autumn in New England. "It is with indescribable joy," he wrote, "that I accept your gift. It is indeed testimony to the beauty that exists in all creation, but perhaps nowhere more than in a young girl's heart."

From time to time, M*A*S*H aired episodes that followed a similar structure. A single thing, like the receipt of all those letters, was an opportunity to look into the hearts and souls of the leading characters. I don't think it was a new technique, but I believe M*A*S*H perfected it.

Perhaps on this night 35 years ago.

Saturday, October 10, 2015

'The Elephant Man' Was Blunt and Uncompromising

"People are frightened by what they don't understand."

John Merrick (John Hurt)

"The Elephant Man," which premiered on this date in 1980, was an extremely difficult movie to watch at times.

That does not mean it was a bad movie. Quite the contrary. Nearly everything about it was great. The acting was great. The directing was great. All the technical aspects of the movie were great.

The makeup was so impressive, in fact, that the Oscars were shamed into creating a new category for makeup and hairstyling the next year after Christopher Tucker's makeup work in "The Elephant Man" wasn't honored. Tucker wasn't overlooked deliberately by the Academy. There simply wasn't a category to recognize makeup artists.

Prior to that, two Special Achievement Oscars were awarded — to William Tuttle (in 1964 for "7 Faces of Dr. Lao") and John Chambers (in 1968 for "Planet of the Apes") — but there was no standing category for makeup artists (or, in Tucker's case, prosthetic work), and that was a mistake, considering the many great things that were done with makeup in the decades before "The Elephant Man."

The first recipient of the new Oscar — and, thus, the first beneficiary of the fallout from Tucker's snub — was Rick Baker for "An American Werewolf in London."

Tucker was recognized with an Oscar for Best Makeup a few years later.

In all, "The Elephant Man" received eight Oscar nominations, tying it with "Raging Bull" for the most nominations that year, but it took none home. That may have been the greatest shock of that year's Oscars.

John Hurt was brilliant in the role of John Merrick (in reality, Merrick's first name was Joseph; I have no idea why it was changed for the movie), the grossly disfigured hero of the story, and he was recognized for his work with an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. (He lost to Robert De Niro in "Raging Bull.")

None of the other performers — Anne Bancroft, Anthony Hopkins, John Gielgud, Wendy Hiller — were nominated, but the movie was nominated for Best Picture and David Lynch was nominated for Best Director. Both awards went to "Ordinary People."

It was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design. How on earth did it fail to win a single Oscar?

It couldn't be because the subject matter was regarded as too rough. The winner of Best Picture that year was "Ordinary People," a story about a family coming apart at the seams, and it could be every bit as difficult to watch as "The Elephant Man."

I suppose more people could relate to "Ordinary People" than "The Elephant Man," though. You never have to look very far to find a dysfunctional family, but Merrick suffered from a rare disease, one that hasn't touched a fraction of the people that dysfunction has. Still, even if far fewer people could relate to his circumstances, his character was every bit as sympathetic.

He endured all kinds of abuse in Victorian England as a result of his affliction — and abuse, unfortunately, is not uncommon, even in today's politically correct climate. Hurt's performance deserved all the praise that film critics were eager to heap on the movie.

There were those in the movie who recognized what was happening. Merrick was a friendly and intelligent person, but he was hideous to behold, and that was what drove his treatment from others — and drove away those who might have been his friends.

"Can you imagine the kind of life he must have had?" pondered John Gielgud at one point.

"Yes, I think I can," replied Hopkins.

"I don't think so," Gielgud countered. "No one could possibly imagine it. I don't believe any of us can."

Merrick was regarded as a freak by many; in fact, the movie opened with him in a carnival, advertised as the "Elephant Man."

It was early in the movie that the viewers began to get a real taste for the grim reality of Merrick's existence. By the time Hurt was introduced to Hannah Gordon, who played Hopkins' wife, most viewers must surely have perceived the irony of their conversation.

"I'm very pleased to meet you, Mr. Merrick," she said.

"I'm very pleased ..." Merrick began but couldn't finish. He was overcome with emotion.

"What is it, John?" Hopkins asked, concern creeping into his voice. "What's the matter?"

"It's just that I'm not used to being treated so well by a beautiful woman," Merrick replied.

The fact that being told "I'm very pleased to meet you" upon being introduced to someone could be regarded as being treated well speaks volumes and is heartbreaking testimony to the life he led.

"The Elephant Man" was blunt and uncompromising. Hurt's performance may have been the most sensitive I have ever seen.

I still can't believe the American Film Institute did not include "The Elephant Man" in its Top 100 movies of all time list.

Saturday, September 19, 2015

Dysfunction Junction

"Don't admire people too much. They might disappoint you."

Cal (Donald Sutherland)

"Families can go along for years without ever facing the underlying problems in their relationships," Roger Ebert wrote. "But sometimes a tragedy can bring everything out in the open, all of sudden and painfully, just when everyone's most vulnerable."

That, Ebert said, was the underlying premise of "Ordinary People," which premiered on this day in 1980. It was a remarkable achievement for first–time director Robert Redford and a great cast that included Mary Tyler Moore, Judd Hirsch, Donald Sutherland, Timothy Hutton and Elizabeth McGovern.

It may have been even more remarkable for Moore and Hirsch, who almost certainly were best known for their TV comedy performances when this movie was made. Both were rewarded with Oscar nominations — as were Hutton (who won) and Redford (who also won). I guess everyone couldn't be nominated — and Hutton beat castmate Hirsch for Best Supporting Actor — but Sutherland was left out. I will confess that I didn't understand that. I thought then — and I still think today — that his performance was one of the best of his career.

And, while I like McGovern, I didn't really think her performance merited an Oscar nomination.

The movie richly deserved the Oscars it received — but it could be very difficult to watch. Once was probably enough for most people. It was gritty. It was candid. It was emotionally uncompromising.

That does not make for the kind of movie that most people want to watch for entertainment. While there are probably exceptions to that, I can't say that I know anyone who has a copy of it in his/her DVD collection.

"Ordinary People" picked up the loose threads of an ordinary American family in emotional turmoil after the death in a boating accident of the oldest son. That tragedy exposed those unaddressed issues, like a festering sore, of which Ebert spoke. Most families have them (I'm tempted to say all families have them, but I suppose I should leave open the possibility that there are some exceptions to that rule — although, personally, I doubt it), those issues of which no one speaks until circumstances leave them no choice.

In "Ordinary People," I suppose the most jarring performance against type was delivered by Moore, whose career up to that point had been in popular sitcoms. Her performance as the emotionally distant and apparently unfeeling mother was hugely effective; Redford said it was the heart of the piece, and Moore played the part to perfection.

Beth (Mary Tyler Moore): Calvin? Why are you crying? Can I ... can I get you something?

Cal (Donald Sutherland): I don't ...

Beth: What did you say? Calvin, what did you say? Tell me!

Cal: You are beautiful. And you are unpredictable. But you're so cautious. You're determined, Beth; but you know something? You're not strong. And I don't know if you're really giving. Tell me something. Do you love me? You really love me?

Beth: I feel the way I've always felt about you.

Cal: We would have been all right if there hadn't been any mess. But you can't handle mess. You need everything neat and easy. I don't know. Maybe you can't love anybody. It was so much Buck. When Buck died, it was as if you buried all your love with him, and I don't understand that, I just don't know, I don't ... maybe it wasn't even Buck; maybe it was just you. Maybe, finally, it was the best of you that you buried. But whatever it was ... I don't know who you are. I don't know what we've been playing at. So I was crying. Because I don't know if I love you anymore. And I don't know what I'm going to do without that.

Ebert described the family flawlessly.

"There's the surviving son, who always lived in his big brother's shadow, who tried to commit suicide after the accident, who has now just returned from a psychiatric hospital," wrote Ebert. "There's the father, a successful Chicago attorney who has always taken the love of his family for granted. There's the wife, an expensively maintained, perfectly groomed, cheerful homemaker whom 'everyone loves.' The movie begins just as all of this is falling apart."

At the heart of what Ebert calls the "falling apart" of this family was "the complexities of love." Moore, as I say, was the icy character everyone thought she was, incapable of loving her husband or her youngest son, at least to the extent that she clearly loved her first born. Sutherland played her husband, a truly sympathetic character who wanted to love and support his wife and surviving son but, like so many men of his generation, had trouble expressing his emotions.

Hutton, as the youngest son, suffered the most from the death of his brother. Ebert called him "tortured," and that is a good description. He blamed himself for what happened to his brother. He was always afraid — and he was resentful of the fact that his mother clearly favored his brother over him. As Ebert observed, he attempted suicide — and spent four months in a psychiatric hospital. Yep, lots of issues for this family.

Hirsch played a psychiatrist who tried to help Hutton's character. Next to Moore's, his performance was probably the most jarring for audiences of 1980. At the time, Hirsch was probably best known for playing Alex the affable cab driver on Taxi. In "Ordinary People," he had to deal with post–traumatic stress disorder and survivor's guilt. That's a pretty toxic cocktail.

But he helped Hutton's character tremendously, at one point telling him, "A little advice about feelings, kiddo. Don't expect it always to tickle."

As I wrote earlier, "Ordinary People" richly deserved the Oscars it received — the three I have already mentioned and a fourth one for Best Adapted Screenplay.

We're In the Money, We're In the Money ...

Lynda Dummar (Mary Steenburgen): C'est la vie.

Melvin Dummar (Paul Le Mat): What's that?

Lynda: French, Melvin. I used to dream of becoming a French interpreter.

Melvin: You don't speak French.

Lynda: I told you it was only a dream.

It is probably most people's secret dream to have a fortune just drop into their laps no questions asked. The origin of the fortune would surely differ, but you'd like to have a lifetime's worth of financial security without having to work for it, wouldn't you? Of course, you would — because then work could be an option, not a necessity.

It would really take the pressure off the whole thing.

Unless you happen to be Melvin Dummar. Dummar, a Utah gas station owner, claimed to have rescued billionaire Howard Hughes when he was stranded in the Nevada desert in December 1967. Dummar said the man asked to be driven to the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, about 150 miles from where Dummar claimed to have found him, and only revealed his identity to Dummar in the last minutes of their drive together.

A few weeks after Hughes' death in 1976, a handwritten will was found at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter–Day Saints in Salt Lake City. In part, the will awarded one–sixteenth of Hughes' fortune to Dummar.

But it wasn't cut and dried. Dummar couldn't just show up and collect $156 million — which is what his share of the estate would have been — unless the will had been determined to be legitimate. When that much money is involved, you can be sure there will be someone who will contest the will, and, in this case, there were several someones contesting the will. In 1978 a Nevada court ruled that the will was a forgery.

Really, it couldn't have been hard to reach that conclusion. For one thing, the will gave $156 million to the Mormon Church, even though Hughes was never a member of the church. He employed many Mormons, but he never was one. For another, it named a former Hughes CEO, who left Hughes' employ on bad terms more than a decade before the will supposedly was written, as the executor of Hughes' estate. Numerous words were misspelled — including the name of Hughes' cousin. The will left money to Hughes' two ex–wives, even though both had alimony settlements that specifically prohibited them from making any claims on Hughes' estate. And it left $156 million to someone named "Melvin DuMar."

Two years later, Jonathan Demme made a movie based on Dummar's story. It was called "Melvin and Howard," and it made its premiere on this day in 1980.

How incredible it would have been if the story had been true.

But the movie, wrote film critic Roger Ebert, "doesn't depend on whether the so–called Mormon Will was really written by Hughes. That hardly matters. This is the story of a life lived at the other end of the financial ladder from Hughes. It sees Dummar as the kind of American hero who would send [Horatio] Alger out to hang himself."

If Ebert was right about the film's objective — and he usually was — it succeeded on that level.

"The genius of 'Melvin and Howard' is that it is about Melvin, not Howard," Ebert wrote. "The film begins and ends with scenes involving the Hughes character, who is played by Jason Robards as a desert rat with fading memories of happiness. Dummar stops in the desert to answer a call of nature, finds Hughes lying in the sagebrush, gives him a ride in his pickup truck and gets him to sing."

And, Ebert observed, Robards was "chillingly effective" in his role — and Robards certainly could be that if the part called for it. I have seen many of Robards' performances, and he always did what the role called for.

"But this movie belongs to Paul Le Mat, as Dummar," Ebert wrote. "He is pleasant, genial, simple of speech but crafty of mind, and always looking for an angle. He angles for Milkman of the Month, he plots to get his wife on a TV game show, he writes songs like 'Santa's Souped–Up Sleigh,' he plays the slots at Vegas and goes through his life asking only for a few small scores."

It also belonged to Mary Steenburgen, who won Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Dummar's wife.

I was familiar with Steenburgen before most moviegoers were, I guess. She was a student at the small college where my father taught. I can't tell you what she majored in — probably theater arts — but she was active in the drama department, appearing in several stage productions in the late '60s and early '70s. I know. I saw some of them, heard about others.

She moved to New York in 1972 and was discovered by Jack Nicholson, as I understand it, and made her movie debut in "Goin' South" in 1978. "Melvin and Howard" was her third big–screen appearance.

Saturday, July 25, 2015

It's In the Hole ... Well, Not Exactly

"Cinderella story, out of nowhere, former greenskeeper, now about to become the Masters champion. It looks like a mirac ... It's in the hole! It's in the hole!"

Carl (Bill Murray)
#92 on the American Film Institute's list of the Top 100 movie quotes of all time

I have friends who will tell you that "Caddyshack," which premiered 35 years ago today, was the greatest comedy ever made. I'm not one of those people. The first time I saw "Caddyshack," I got some chuckles out of it, but I figured that you had to be a golfer to really appreciate the humor — as haphazard as it was — and I still feel that way. I have never played a round of golf in my life.

Film critic Roger Ebert may have put it best. The movie, he wrote, "never finds a consistent comic note of its own, but it plays host to all sorts of approaches from its stars, who sometimes hardly seem to be occupying the same movie. There's Bill Murray's self–absorbed craziness, Chevy Chase's laid–back bemusement, and Ted Knight's apoplectic overplaying. And then there is Rodney Dangerfield, who wades into the movie and cleans up."

Dangerfield shook things up, all right.

But, even so, I found "Caddyshack" to be a disjointed tale with humorous scenes linked together by a story that really wasn't much of a story.

"The movie never really develops a plot, but maybe it doesn't want to," Ebert wrote. "Director Harold Ramis brings on his cast of characters and lets them loose at one another. There's a vague subplot about a college scholarship for the caddies, and another one about the judge's nubile niece, and continuing warfare waged by Murray against the gophers who are devastating the club."

Each of those subplots had its moments, but the movie never really united those elements behind a single story. As I said, golfers probably got a lot of the humor. Much of it escaped me — or came across as hopelessly juvenile.

"Maybe one of the movie's problems is that the central characters are never really involved in the same action," Ebert wrote. "Murray's off on his own, fighting gophers. Dangerfield arrives, devastates, exits. Knight is busy impressing the caddies, making vague promises about scholarships and launching boats. If they were somehow all drawn together into the same story, maybe we'd be carried along more confidently. But 'Caddyshack' feels more like a movie that was written rather loosely, so that when shooting began there was freedom, too much freedom, for it to wander off in all directions in search of comic inspiration."

It did have a kind of improvisational quality to it — sort of a "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" goes golfing (with some sailing on the side). Don't misunderstand. Improv can be good. Sometimes it can be very good. But I can't think of an example when it worked in the motion picture format.

The thing is that I liked all the stars — but in what I regarded as their own milieus. Ted Knight was great as Ted Baxter on the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Chevy Chase was funny on Saturday Night Live — which he had left a couple of years earlier and was replaced by Bill Murray, who struggled at first with a skeptical public but eventually endeared himself to viewers and found his niche on the show.

But I just never got carried away with "Caddyshack." I remember seeing it when it first hit the theaters — and laughing at the obvious points that tend to amuse young viewers. But much of it — like the Baby Ruth bar floating in the swimming pool — just didn't amuse me after I got past that stage in my life.

I'm not even sure I was amused by that the first time I saw it.

Thursday, July 02, 2015

'Airplane!' Is 35? Surely You Can't Be Serious

"Ladies and gentleman, this is your stewardess speaking. We regret any inconvenience the sudden cabin movement might have caused. This is due to periodic air pockets we encountered. There's no reason to become alarmed, and we hope you enjoy the rest of your flight. By the way, is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a plane?"

Elaine (Julie Hagerty)

"Airplane!" has always been something of a guilty pleasure. For me, anyway.

Even in the far less politically correct climate of this day in 1980, when "Airplane!" was first shown on America's movie screens, much of its humor was of the National Lampoon, Saturday Night Live variety — irreverent. Mostly, though, it was silly, the kind of stuff you probably giggled at when you were in fourth grade.

Film critic Roger Ebert put it this way: "It is sophomoric, obvious, predictable, corny and quite often very funny. And the reason it's funny is frequently because it's sophomoric, predictable, corny, etc."

A good example: Robert Stack pulling off a pair of sunglasses, revealing another pair of sunglasses beneath it.

If "Airplane!" premiered today, it would probably draw the wrath of many groups who would claim to be offended by something — either on their own behalf or someone else's.

Even in the context of its 35–year–old form, it probably is not advisable to quote lines from it if you're in the company of people who belong to certain social, ethnic and/or religious groups. In fact, I am convinced that it would not be a success today. The times just aren't right for it.

The times were right for it, though, in the 1970s and 1980s — which, despite their many shortcomings, were good years for movies like "Airplane!" — and "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," "Blazing Saddles" and "Young Frankenstein."

"Airplane!" wasn't really discriminatory, though — at least, not in the traditional sense. It was an equal opportunity insulter.

The story was loosely based around Ted (Robert Hays) and Elaine (Julie Hagerty) and their rather dysfunctional relationship. Ted once flew planes in battle, but he suffered a traumatic experience and steadfastly refused to fly a plane again — until he was forced to do so by circumstances.

Ted (Robert Hays): Surely you can't be serious?

Dr. Rumack (Leslie Nielsen): I am serious. And don't call me Shirley.

One thing I have discovered with movies that I really find humorous, like "Airplane!" is that I find things that are new to me each time I watch them — and I can only conclude that I must have missed them the first time because I was laughing at the joke before it.

That would probably be my only complaint about "Airplane!" — there are places where its pacing could be much more beneficial to the overall script.

But I can say that about many comedies that I have enjoyed over the years. It often takes two or three viewings to get the full benefit from such a movie.

All my old favorite moments are still my favories — like the scene where the former June Cleaver (Barbara Billingsley) volunteered to translate the jive lingo of two black passengers for their white stewardess.

And I always laugh at the line that formed of people who wanted to calm an hysterical passenger. The first few people slapped her around; those standing in line had a crowbar, a lead pipe, a revolver ...

Randy (Lorna Patterson): Excuse me, sir, there's been a little problem in the cockpit …

Ted (Robert Hays): The cockpit … what is it?

Randy: It's the little room in the front of the plane where the pilots sit, but that's not important right now.

The last time I watched it, it occurred to me that "Airplane!" was written in the Mel Brooks style — not quite as clever as Neil Simon but easily capable of producing a belly laugh or two.

I will admit, though, that most of the movie's humor was related to things and people that would have been recognizable to audiences in 1980 — but not necessarily audiences in 2015.

There isn't much point in relating any more of the plot — such as it was — except that it is probably just as funny now as it was then for someone seeing it for the first time — even if that person isn't familiar with many of the references — although my guess is that, if you're seeing it for the first time and you don't know who June Cleaver was, you'd probably be wise to watch an episode or two of Leave It To Beaver before you watch "Airplane!" It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to watch the movie that is being parodied — 1970's "Airport." That's just my opinion, though.

Incidentally, "Airplane!" marked the debut — and probably the career high point — of actor David Leisure, who went on to star as Joe Isuzu in TV commercials in the late '80s and early '90s. He played one of the Hare Krishnas at the airport.

Saturday, June 20, 2015

On a Mission From God

Mrs. Tarantino: Are you the police?

Elwood (Dan Aykroyd): No, ma'am. We're musicians.

One of the enduring mysteries of life is this: Why are some of the greatest talents in every field snuffed out far too soon? Entertainers appear particularly prone to this — or maybe it just seems that way, given that entertainers are in the public spotlight and people who teach or do important research generally are not. Nevertheless, talented people from every walk of life are taken before their time.

And every time I watch "The Blues Brothers," which premiered on this date in 1980, I am reminded that such a talent, John Belushi, was lost when he had so much still to share with us. I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that Belushi was one of the elite performers of my generation, but the sad truth is that he was known to most of us for only a few years before he died.

Ah, but what years they were! And "The Blues Brothers" is probably exceeded only by "Animal House" in terms of the influence Belushi's work had on that generation.

The story opened with Belushi (Joliet Jake) being paroled from prison and Dan Aykroyd (Elwood) picking him up. Jake's first stop after being released was a visit to a nun known as "the Penguin" who told them the orphanage where Jake and Elwood were brought up was going to be shut down unless $5,000 could be raised. The Blues Brothers offered to come up with the money another way, but the Penguin refused to accept stolen money.

And that led the Blues Brothers to their "mission from God."

They went to a church where James Brown was pastor — and they saw the light. They were inspired to raise the funds the Penguin needed by legal means. They set out to reunite their old band and put on a show to raise the money.

And thus began the Blues Brothers' odyssey. They found their old buddies in some pretty improbable places. Aretha Franklin, for example, was running a restaurant and Ray Charles was running a music store. (Franklin, wrote critic Roger Ebert, "occupies one of the movie's best scenes." I am inclined to agree.)

Along the way they trashed a mall by driving through it, offended a restaurant patron and encountered Henry Gibson and a group of Nazis blocking a bridge.

Somehow, they managed to do their benefit show and raise the money for the Penguin's orphanage. They were a little late to their show so Cab Calloway filled in to warm up the crowd with a rendition of "Minnie the Moocher."

And they repeatedly encountered a mysterious woman (Carrie Fisher) who was intent upon killing Jake. She took potshots at him periodically. She tried to blow him up. She used a flamethrower around a gas tank next to the phone booth where the Blues Brothers were trying to make a call. All without confronting him directly — until she actually did confront them at the end of the movie.

The Blues Brothers drove off in a hail of gunfire, and they were eventually followed by a line of police cars that rivaled the one that pursued O.J. Simpson in real life 14 years later.

I'm not kidding. There have been some wild car chases in the movies, but the one in "The Blues Brothers" has to be one of the wildest.

"The fact is," wrote Ebert, "the whole movie is a chase, with Jake and Elwood piloting a used police car that seems ... to have a life of its own."

In spite of everything it had been through, that car led a merry little chase at the end of the movie that was worthy of "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" or "Sex and the Single Girl."

"The Blues Brothers" is still enjoyable. I watched it again recently, and it is as entertaining now as it was 35 years ago.

Trouble in Paradise

"There's so many things I don't understand, like why do the fish stop swimming and lie on top of the tide pools after a heavy rain? Why do you hear the waves inside the big shells? Why are all these funny hairs growing on me?"

Richard (Christopher Atkins)

In the weeks leading up to the premiere 35 years ago today of "The Blue Lagoon," I remember seeing many tantalizing and provocative movie trailers and TV commercials that emphasized the forbidden love aspect of two young cousins, a boy and a girl, being marooned alone on an island and surviving there for years, ultimately succumbing to sexual curiosity and the urgings of nature. I guess it wasn't quite as forbidden for cousins as it would have been for a brother and a sister. (They were cousins in the turn–of–the–century novel upon which the movie was based, too. The makers of this movie, as I shall discuss shortly, apparently had no interest in altering the original story in any way.)

Incidentally, film critic Roger Ebert said it was "the dumbest movie of the year," and that really is a difficult conclusion to contradict — especially when you read his summary of the story:

"It could conceivably have been made interesting, if any serious attempt had been made to explore what might really happen if two 7–year–old kids were shipwrecked on an island. But this isn't a realistic movie. It's a wildly idealized romance, in which the kids live in a hut that looks like a Club Med honeymoon cottage, while restless natives commit human sacrifice on the other side of the island. (It is a measure of the filmmakers' desperation that the kids and the natives never meet one another and the kids leave the island without even one obligatory scene of being tied to a stake.)"

Ebert's conclusion is rather remarkable, considering that, while 1980 produced some of the finest movies in recent memory, it also saw such bombs as "Can't Stop the Music," "Herbie Goes Bananas," "Little Darlings," "Motel Hell" and "Wholly Moses!" Competition for designation as the year's dumbest movie was pretty steep.

The girl was played by Brooke Shields, who was just barely 15 when the movie hit the theaters but was already an old pro in front of the camera. She wasn't even a week old when her mother declared that she wanted her daughter to be in show business. She was a child model before her first birthday and continued modeling even after she started appearing in movies.

In fact, it was around the time of the premiere of "The Blue Lagoon" that Shields appeared in a suggestive advertising campaign for Calvin Klein jeans. "You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins?" she purred. "Nothing."

In addition to sending Calvin Klein's sales into orbit, I'm sure the publicity didn't hurt the movie. It earned nearly $59 million in the United States and Canada after being made for less than $5 million. It was the ninth–most successful movie of 1980. It even received an Oscar nomination (Best Cinematography) — and, from what I could see of it when I watched it on TV several months later, it deserved it. How could it miss with all that great scenery?

Of course, there was the matter of nudity — as there had been a few years earlier when Shields, then 12 years old, played a prostitute in "Pretty Baby," in which she allegedly did some scenes in the nude. I've only seen that movie once — like "The Blue Lagoon," it was on TV — and my memory is that the scenes involving Shields were dimly lit, but that did not keep people from complaining about the implications of child pornography. At the time, I heard that Shields actually did her nude scenes wearing a flesh–colored body suit.

I guess Shields and her mother learned from that experience. Or maybe the makers of "The Blue Lagoon" learned from it. Perhaps both. There was nudity in "The Blue Lagoon," but it was indistinct and fleeting, like underwater views of the young couple swimming, or otherwise obscured, as in a scene showing them beneath a waterfall. Shields herself tried to put to rest the allegations by saying that older body doubles were used for the nude scenes of her and co–star Christopher Atkins.

I don't know if that is true or not, but it made a satisfactory story for those who desperately wanted to believe that no one would abuse underage people like that. That was kind of a strange mindset, given what was driving people to the theaters to see "The Blue Lagoon."

"Let's face it," Ebert wrote. "Going into this film knowing what we've heard about it, we're anticipating the scenes in which the two kids discover the joys of sex. This is a prurient motive on our part, and we're maybe a little ashamed of it, but our shame turns to impatience as [director Randal] Kleiser intercuts countless shots of the birds and the bees (every third shot in this movie seems to be showing a parrot's reaction to something)."

The two young versions of Shields and Atkins were shipwrecked along with a cook who gave them guidance until he died, leaving the children to fend for themselves — which they did quite well, thanks to his instructions. He warned them about berries on the island that he believed to be poisonous, but he used words ("never–wake–up berries") that 7–year–olds would understand. They sounded odd coming from the lips of teenagers later in the movie — until you remembered that they hadn't had any instruction from adults in quite some time.

That was one of the things Ebert either forgot or failed to comprehend for one reason or another. The absence of adult supervision could be seen in many ways, but the staying power of the cook's lessons was evident, too. For example, at the end of the movie, the boy and the girl and the baby they conceived were adrift at sea, and they ate some of those berries the cook warned them about, fully expecting to die. It just so happens that, after they had eaten the berries and, as the cook described, fallen asleep (or lapsed into unconsciousness), who should come by in a ship but the boy's father, who, according to the original story, had been looking for his son ever since the first ship was lost.

Ebert thought the movie left the viewers hanging because it was never determined whether the berries had merely put them all to sleep or fatally poisoned them. The movie did leave the audience hanging, but the problem was, so did the book.

"The movie cops out," Ebert complained. "The burden of contriving an ending was apparently too much for such a feeble movie to support."

He was wrong to blame that entirely on the movie. The original sin was Irish author Henry De Vere Stacpoole's more than 70 years earlier. But that certainly doesn't absolve Kleiser and everyone else in the cast and crew of all responsibility for giving their audience an ambiguous ending to the movie — they could have changed it if that had been what they wanted, and, apparently, it was not. They chose a faithful re–telling of Stacpoole's story — and it can only be interpreted as a choice. Stories are "re–imagined" in the movies all the time. Sometimes they are done well. Sometimes not. But it is a choice to do that.

It's a calculated risk, especially if the movie is likely to draw armies of fans who are dedicated to the original book(s). For example, it is my guess that millions of the people who went to see the "Lord of the Rings" movies were fans of the J.R.R. Tolkien books and were likely to notice even the slightest deviation from the original text. In this case, however, I doubt that there were armies of Stacpoole fans going to see how faithfully his story was told; apparently, the story was told as it had been told for decades — there were other film versions before the 1980 edition. I've never seen them, but it is my understanding that none of them changed the ending, either.

Would a different ending have improved the movie? I don't know. A movie is what it is, with the beginning, middle and ending — and all the other decisions — the director made. Speculating on whether a movie would have been better if any part of it had been changed is an exercise in hypotheticals. Suppose someone else had played Atticus Finch in "To Kill a Mockingbird." Would it have been better or worse?

That is a matter of personal taste and opinion. The only thing that could be said for certain would have been that the movie was different.

And that was what the makers of "The Blue Lagoon" could have given their audiences 35 years ago — something that was different from what previous generations had been given. But they played it safe. Ebert thought that was a copout. What do you think?

Saturday, March 07, 2015

'Coal Miner's Daughter' Was Two Stories in One

Doolittle (Tommy Lee Jones): [after Loretta's first appearance on the Grand Ole Opry] What we got to do next is figure out what to do next.

"Coal Miner's Daughter," which premiered 35 years ago today, was really two stories in one.

The first story was about a rural Kentucky girl named Loretta Webb, raised in poverty in a bump in the road called Butcher Hollow ("Holler" in Kentuckyspeak). For the first half of the movie, the focus was on Loretta (Sissy Spacek) and a young man, Doolittle Lynn (Tommy Lee Jones), who wanted to marry her.

Doolittle was kind of wild, and Loretta's father (played by my fellow Arkansan, Levon Helm) disapproved of the relationship. But when the two decided to get married, he didn't stand in the way. In fact, he showed up at the little country church where vows were being exchanged — at least long enough to answer in the affirmative when the preacher asked, "Who gives this woman's hand in marriage?"

So the two embarked on their life together, but life was hard for the newlyweds — until Doo discovered Loretta's musical talent, which led to her well–received performance before an audience.

That was the transitional moment. The audience loved Loretta, and she and Doo used it to launch her musical career. They succeeded — and found that fame and fortune didn't solve all problems. They merely created new ones.

But that scene in which she sings in public for the first time is an empowering moment. You could see her gaining confidence with each note.

It was the transition to that second story in the movie — about the problems that fame and fortune brought to their lives. Such is the nature of biographical movies, I guess. Of course, the fact that such a movie is being made at all is evidence that the subject of the movie succeeded — to an extent, at least — in overcoming his/her demons.

Loretta Lynn often used those problems as inspirations for her most successful songs.

Spacek also re–created the relationship Lynn had with country music legend Patsy Cline, a relationship that ended tragically when Cline was killed in an airplane crash. As big a star as Cline was, Lynn was probably country music's first female superstar, and their scenes together represented more than a friendship. They represented a transitional period in country music.

There was kind of an odd dichotomy, though, in the film's treatment of that relationship. On the one hand, the stars — Spacek and Beverly D'Angelo in the role of Cline — didn't lip synch while someone else did the singing for them — even though lip synching was usually done in that kind of movie at that time. The refusal of the film to yield on that point suggests (to me, anyway) a commitment to an honest approach by the actors — rather like not having a stunt double do the rough stuff in one's scenes.

On the other hand, though, the film did take certain liberties with the truth. For example ...

Lynn and Cline never toured together. In the movie, they tour together and confide in each other. They were confidants in real life, but they never toured together. I don't know whether touring together was the custom of the time for popular stars, country or otherwise, but I know Cline and Lynn never toured together.

They might have talked about it, though. I have heard that Cline may have been thinking about buying a touring bus shortly before her death. If so, then there are scenes in "Coal Miner's Daughter" that offer a tantalizing glimpse into what the future might have been like if Cline had not died.

But they do not re–create actual events.

Now, I'm a history buff, and I always enjoy good historical movies. And I know that, the movie business being what it is, even the best stories are going to get embellished in some way before they make it to the silver screen — whether I think the stories need embellishment or not. Sometimes I can live with those embellishments. Sometimes I can't.

In "Coal Miner's Daughter," I have decided I can live with the ones I know about. I can't say how I will feel if I learn about embellishments of which I had no knowledge. Depends on what they are, I guess, and how crucial they are to the story.

The scenes from the tours were kind of used to tie together loose ends and establish the closeness of Lynn's relationship with Cline. It was during such a Hollywood–created tour, for example, that Lynn caught Doo cheating on her, and she confided in Cline. Now, that didn't fundamentally alter the facts. Doo still cheated on her, and that still led to her authorship of one of her biggest hits.

That's the kind of Hollywood lie that I can live with, though. In the movie, Cline was the sympathetic friend, an innocent bystander. She wasn't the one with whom Doo was cheating nor was she the one who broke the news to Lynn. If the script had altered either of those conditions, it would have fundamentally changed the story and almost certainly changed the nature of Cline's relationship with Doo.

Speaking of Doo, I think this may have been the first time I ever saw Tommy Lee Jones in a movie. He had been in movies for about 10 years prior to that, and I saw some of the movies he made in the '70s, but I believe I saw them on TV long after they made the rounds of the theaters. If I saw one or more of them before I saw "Coal Miner's Daughter," his appearance(s) made no impression on me.

I saw "Coal Miner's Daughter" on the big screen when I saw it the first time, and I was impressed with the work done by all the participants, not just Spacek, who took home the Oscar for Best Actress. Jones really did make an impression on me with his performance. I'm tempted to describe it as sensitive — but that almost seems to deny a steely resolve that Jones brought to the role of Doo. If Doo really was that persistent, it's no wonder Lynn became a country superstar.

Whether it was the first time I saw him or not, I have seen him in quite a few movies since — and I honestly think this was his best performance. Or, at least, I believe it is the best performance I have seen him give. He wasn't nominated for an Oscar for his work — that kind of recognition came later, perhaps belatedly, although it would have been hard to wedge him in as a nominee for either Best Actor or Best Supporting Actor that year.

Without him, though, it is hard for me to imagine Spacek winning Best Actress — so maybe that was as much his award as it was hers.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Not-So-Sweet Dreams

Of all the thought–provoking episodes the MASH TV series created in its 11 seasons on the prime time schedule, the one that first aired 35 years ago tonight may have been the series' most poignant.

Called "Dreams," the episode explored the dreams of the series' leading characters, and each revealed something about the character — his/her desires, fears, insecurities. Everyone was tired after the marathon sessions the MASH staffers put in. Sometimes they flopped into their cots and were asleep before their heads hit their pillows. Other times they dozed off while sitting in the mess tent or post–op.

Inevitably, there was a peaceful quality to many of the dreams that would be interrupted by the reality of the nightmare they couldn't escape. Col. Potter (Harry Morgan) dreamed of riding his horse through an open field and hearing his mother calling to him. At that point, he was awakened by Klinger with news that he was needed in surgery. Potter lamented the fact that he couldn't have had a little more time so he could taste his mother's cooking again.

That was an indirect intrusion of the war. The intrusion was more direct with the others. It was absorbed into the story line of the dream — the way that dreams do. Or, at least, mine do. I don't know about yours. When my alarm goes off in the morning, it often weaves itself into whatever dream I am having, and for a moment there is a tug–of–war going on between my dream and my reality.

Father Mulcahy (William Christopher) was nodding off while listening to a wounded soldier's confession, and the soldier's words became gibberish. Mulcahy would rouse himself, and the words would begin to make sense again, but then he would drift off again and the gibberish would resume. When he finally fell asleep, he dreamed he was the pope blessing the faithful before he was roused from his slumber by the soldier.

I don't recall having many dreams that were as intimate and deeply personal as the dreams of the MASH staffers, but their dreams clearly revealed their most cherished desires and principles — and their greatest fears. Being awakened from the dream was almost a relief for many.

Charles (David Ogden Stiers), for example, dreamed he was a magician, performing magic tricks that astonished the MASH staff. But, when he was faced with a life–and–death matter, none of his tricks could save the patient.

Hawkeye (Alan Alda) dreamed he was in a medical school class being conducted in the camp's mess tent. He couldn't answer the professor's questions so, each time, he had to surrender one of his limbs. Then he found himself in a boat floating in a river with arms and legs all around him. On the shore, he saw a little girl who was holding an apparent wound. She looked at Hawkeye with the silent plea for help. He looked at her and shrugged.

Hot Lips (Loretta Swit) had perhaps the most bittersweet dream. She was dressed in a white wedding dress that became blood stained from the wounded.

Clearly, her mind had concluded that her problems finding the husband and home she had always wanted were the result of her work in a war zone. Not an entirely injudicious conclusion, either.

His dream took B.J. (Mike Farrell) all the way back to his home in Mill Valley, Calif., where he was dancing with his wife. But he was called away to the O.R. by his sense of duty, and his wife went back to the ballroom on the arm of another man.

Klinger (Jamie Farr), too, went all the way home in his dream — back to his beloved Toledo. He saw all the familiar sights, then looked in a window and saw Potter operating on someone. The person on the table turned and looked in his direction — and Klinger saw that it was himself.

Potter beckoned for Klinger to come in.

It was a powerful episode made plausible by the writers' ability to portray the ways of dreams. I was impressed with their skill when I saw this episode for the first time, and I have been envious of it, as any writer should be, on the occasions when I have seen it again. Given the fact that a 30–minute episode is really about 23 or 24 minutes when one accounts for commercial time, the writers had, on average, less than four minutes to tell the story of each character's dream.

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

On the Other Hand ...

"Your hand may be stilled, but your gift cannot be silenced if you refuse to let it be. The gift does not lie in your hands. I have hands, David. Hands that can make a scalpel sing. More than anything in my life I wanted to play, but I do not have the gift. I can play the notes, but I cannot make the music. You have performed Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Chopin. Even if you never do so again, you've already known a joy that I will never know as long as I live. Because the true gift is in your head and in your heart and in your soul. Now you can shut it off forever, or you can find new ways to share your gift with the world — through the baton, the classroom or the pen. As to these works, they're for you because you and the piano will always be as one."

Charles (David Ogden Stiers)

From time to time, MASH managed to enlighten its viewers. I always appreciated that, just as I appreciated the way that the West Wing did the same thing a couple of decades later.

MASH didn't do that all the time, though — which, I suppose, made those occasions when it did so much more special.

Thirty–five years ago tonight was one such occasion.

As usual, the story started with a bit of misdirection. Col. Potter (Harry Morgan) was tired of the complaints he received from the surgeons about the quality of the recreational activities at the 4077th so he appointed Hawkeye (Alan Alda) and B.J. (Mike Farrell) morale officers — whereupon they discovered how challenging it can be to boost a unit's morale.

Eventually, they decided on a clambake with fresh seafood. Klinger was drafted to pick up the seafood and bring it back to camp.

Charles (David Ogden Stiers) had no problems with morale. He had just completed some rather tricky surgery on a young man who had suffered a serious wound to his leg and was pleased with the results. By taking grafts from the young man's right hand, he was able to save the leg with minimal loss of dexterity to the hand. He would be able to walk. That was the bottom line, the big picture.

Just one problem, though. The young man (James Stephens) had been a concert pianist in civilian life, and he had planned to resume his career when his military service was over. Walking was unimportant to him compared to having 10 nimble fingers to play the piano.

When music–loving Charles learned the truth, he was determined to motivate the young man to continue his career, and he gave him a composition by Maurice Ravel that had been commissioned by a man named Paul Wittgenstein, whose right arm was amputated in World War I. Wittgenstein, too, was a pianist, and the pieces he commissioned were written for the left hand. Few composers would accept such a challenge, Charles told the young man — although, in fact, several of the most prominent composers of Wittgenstein's day did accept the challenge.

Charles didn't tell the young man (and the viewing audience) the whole story. Wittgenstein didn't perform every piece he received, but he retained exclusive lifetime performance rights to them; after he was dead or no longer performing publicly, he wanted the pieces to be available for others.

He died nearly eight years after the end of the Korean War so I have long wondered exactly how Charles was able to acquire the sheet music. Perhaps that is part of the Wittgenstein story with which I am not familiar. Perhaps the Ravel piece was available because Wittgenstein had performed it in public — or perhaps Ravel retained certain contractual rights on most — but not all — of the compositions he commissioned.

Personally, I find that hard to believe because Wittgenstein himself wrote to a colleague before the U.S. started sending troops to Korea, "You don't build a house just so that someone else can live in it. I commissioned and paid for the works, the whole idea was mine. ... But those works to which I still have the exclusive performance rights are to remain mine as long as I still perform in public; that's only right and fair. Once I am dead or no longer give concerts, then the works will be available to everyone because I have no wish for them to gather dust in libraries to the detriment of the composer."

That suggests to me that Wittgenstein saw to it that every piece he commissioned was exclusively his as long as he continued to perform. So the writers for MASH were mistaken. In reality, Charles could only tell the young man about the pieces. He wouldn't have been able to share the physical sheet music with him.

But that wouldn't have made the story as effective, would it?

I give the writers for MASH high marks for attempting to enlighten their audience on this night 35 years ago. They took what they probably considered poetic license in their treatment of Wittgenstein and his commissioned compositions. Ravel's name probably carried the most weight at the time, his "Bolero" having been used in the movie "10" a few months earlier.

Poetic license. That isn't how I see it. If the writers knowingly fictionalized their account, they crossed an ethical line. They should have clearly labeled the product they wished to sell.

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

The Many Casualties of War

MASH was on the air for 11 years, and it was always walking the tightrope between comedy and drama.

That could be challenging enough when you were dealing with the casualties of the battlefields of war, but 35 years ago tonight, it examined a different kind of casualty.

When the episode began, Col. Potter (Harry Morgan) was cranky because he had the mumps. His disposition was made worse by the fact that Winchester (David Ogden Stiers) had them, too, and the two of them would have to be quarantined together.

That created a shortage of surgeons so a request was made for a temporary surgeon, and Dr. Newsome (Edward Herrman) was quickly dispatched.

Dr. Newsome seemed to fit right in with everyone else at the 4077th, but he cracked up under pressure when the casualties started pouring in, and he just walked out of the OR.

"The blood won't come off," he said to Hawkeye and B.J. when they caught up with him in Potter's tent — but, really, he said it to no one in particular. "No matter what I do, it just stays there. See? Never gonna go away. No matter how many times I wash or how much I scrub, it's gonna stay there. Where do they come from? What do they expect me to do? I can't. I can't."

I don't recall if they were using the phrase post–traumatic stress disorder in 1980, but it has always seemed to me that that is what this was about. A more severe case than most, I would say. Modern viewers know about war veterans and the PTSD they must fight, but stories are never told about the Army surgeons who wash out under pressure.

PTSD, of course, is the same disorder whichever name you choose to use for it — and the name changes in every war. In World War I, they called it shell shock. In World War II, they called it battle fatigue. In the conflict in Korea, they called it operational exhaustion.

It was during or after America's long involvement in Vietnam that the health community began calling it post–traumatic stress disorder; I just don't remember when the use of that phrase became the widely accepted one for that condition.

I am sure the same thing happens in the civilian world on a regular basis. People who work in a big–city ER, where there is a lot of gang violence and other types of violent crime, may have a lot of medical talent, but some, perhaps many, will be discouraged from pursuing a career in the health field, perhaps because of an episode that was similar (albeit less extreme) than the one Dr. Newsome experienced.

MASH was always reminding its viewers of the human side of war. In its own way, it acknowledged that there are times when war is necessary, no matter how much we may hate it. But it is never neat and clean, and there are all kinds of casualties.

Thirty–five years ago tonight, it reminded its viewers that there are wounds that can't be seen and casualties who never spent a second on the battlefield.