What's the First to Go, Again?

Netflix, that infamous online DVD rental store, does a very neat thing for members: They keep track of very single movie, television, or oddity rented and returned. On one of my slower days, I’m gazing at my list. I’ve been a member since 2001, so it’s a long list. But I remember every single movie, episode, and oddity…except that one.

Strange Impersonation?

What’s a Strange Impersonation? Other than a bad Rich Little routine, I mean.

I go online, check the Internet Movie Database. The plot rings a bell, but not much else. So I look up a review or three. Vague outlines begin to appear, but they’re blurred by bad camerawork and poor developing. One review has a picture, of a blonde woman ironclad in a stiff Forties suit, severe blonde pompadour, and horn-rimmed eyeglasses. The blur refocuses a bit—I remember the scientific accident, a jealous assistant, the vengeful lead heroine, a misunderstood beau, a convoluted setup…but that’s as far as it gets.

For the life of me, I can’t remember how it ends.

Sigh.

This is what happens, right? First the eyesight (which faltered before puberty, actually), then the old brain pan springs a few leaks. I’ve never forgotten a movie, even ones I wish I could forget. Some are welcome houseguests, others are burned in with a brand. Except this one.

Yes, Strange Impersonation is back in the queue. I swear old age is a conspiracy.

Of Editors and Rebels

I was one of the Star Wars generation, the group of kids who were still kids when the original, first movie came out 30 years ago next month. It’s hard to explain how that film affected us, even that famous and fabulous first scene. Imagine seeing for the first time that small transport suddenly streaking over our heads, fleeing the impossibly huge Star Destroyer running it down, all the while John Williams's trumpeting score erupting in echoes around us. From Luke and Leia’s daring swing across the chasm in the depths of the Death Star, to Han's “negotiation” with Greedo, from Vader’s first menacing appearance to Ben Kenobi’s sacrifice--now pieces of pop culture, they once were simply a story told well. All the way to the end, when the center of mechanical evil suddenly bursts into fragments of light, all by the hand of one boy trusting in himself. No doubt, Star Wars is a great adventure, but the film is one of those rare works where everything--characters, story, music, eye candy--combine to do more than entertain. As Luke found his own way, the film made children believe they could, too. And for adults, it uncovered a bit of their own missing childhood.

I just wanted to know what the hey happened to Biggs.

Like many other kids, I clamored for the Star Wars toys: playsets and action figures, ships and games. Because I’m a bit of bookworm, I also wanted the books, and one of the first ones was the movie picture book--a toddler’s retelling embellished with movie stills. And there, near the beginning, was a picture:



Hey, I knew who that was! That was that guy who was the last to get blown up in the Death Star trench run! The one whose death made Luke seem slightly put out! What was Biggs doing on Tatooine?

Of course, when I read the novelization ghostwritten by Alan Dean Foster, I found out. Biggs was an old buddy of Luke’s, and at the very beginning of the story, he had come back to say goodbye. Novelizations usually are based off of the original script, before the film receives its final edit. Many times, scenes that seemed crucial on paper become extraneous on celluloid, and they’re cut and cast aside. They live on, however, where they started--in words.

Because of that picture, I knew even at my preteen age that the scenes had been filmed. It was the first time I knew anything about deleted scenes, and that knowledge began a lifelong obsession about them. I love to see what might have been and what justifications the editor or director used in removing them from the finished story. In a strange way, it probably led me to my career as a book editor--trying to figure why some things work and others don’t, why a piece of information that originally seemed so important suddenly has outgrown its need, long before the narrative is made public.

A age or so later, I read that the Biggs scenes still existed, and I hoped that one day I could finally see them. Thirty years after Star Wars surprised everyone, I have. Whoever dirtiejon is, I owe him and, by extension, YouTube a debit of gratitude. Enjoy:

Poetic Silents

In the living room, under the table, sits a book saved from childhood. Its jacket gone, its cover slightly bent, the binding with faded gold lettering weak from age. Open it. Inside, hundreds, thousands of stills and portraits, three decades’ worth, black and white and staring out frozen or posing dramatically, with little explanation other than a name. Silent, like the films they show.

Open it.

In another era’s theater, the lights dim. From everywhere comes a crash of pipes and whistles, and a bright light appears at the foot of the stage. The organ rises, where it belongs, with an older man playing by inspiration and tradition. The audience is enthralled and applauding; the movie hasn’t yet begun.

The fairy tale film pretending but doing it well preaches of love and acceptance. Modern melodrama done up like old, accompanied by the strings and winds of an orchestra.

In the classroom, a boy among others hears the projector cough and whir, and soon a flicker appears of a mountain, people in single file winding up the pass like ants. One falls and remains still. Later, when the little man makes the rolls dance a gig, the boy can’t help but laugh.

Open it.

The groom by duty strides down the middle of the road, leading to the only woman he wants. Behind him unknowingly a horde of brides, wanting anything but love, pursues and gathers speed. Soon, he sees, and he is running like a madman. He becomes a blur.

The dashing buccaneer laughs in triumph from the main mast, betrayed pirates swirling in frustration below. All in ancient color.

The wife cowers in the corner of the tram, looking away. The husband, horrified at what he did and what he may lose, stands over her, his eyes never leaving. They remain still, but the tram slips from woods to town to city.

The woman lies prone on the ice flow, senseless from misery. Her baby dead, her reputation gone, her new family betrayed, everything lost, she has given herself to the storm. The river rushes heedless toward the falls, while forgiveness jumps from ice block to ice block after her.

Three women, never trusting, drift like fragments of ghosts in the desert, stumbling from the body of the man who loved all. One plots to destroy, another hates. The third knows, and struggles against hopelessness.

He is innocent, and the girl knows now. She is there, in the projection room, after he awoke from a dream. He does not know what to do, so he looks to the screen for inspiration.

Open it.

The girl kisses him; he never smiles, but the joy is in every movement. The couple rediscovers their love in the vows of another, and he cries to her for forgiveness. The lost baby brings out the women’s better natures. The tramp thinks her note is for him. The disgraced doorman is on his knees in the washroom. The daredevil man hangs periously from the clock.

Open it.

Still images made fluid, wildly fluid. Not fiction but memory, burned forever. Tinted or monochrome, scratched and worn, but still moving, dancing, laughing, crying, living. Living. Living.

They're Hangin' at the BMMB

It occurs to me that I have other reviews reclining over at the B-Movie Message Board, aka the BMMB. Since I'm not going to have Internet access for a few days, head on over there and witness some serious gushing about Equilibrium, some serious hurtin' over Shatter, and some serious self-consciousness in praising Bubba Ho-Tep. Hey, there might be a pop quiz someday.

Incidentally, I wrote two of those reviews after seeing them in the theater. The only other time I did that? Brick.

Hager Haunted No More!

Even a little good news is still good.

When I saw the ruins of the Hager Drive-In this past weekend, I got worried. A friend had told me about the act with the inflatable screen, but what I saw made me think something had gone awry. At home, I got even more worried: their website was down, even though the one for the Hager Cineplex was still active. Luckily, the cineplex site included an e-mail address for the drive-in, and the resultant worrywart missive captured a happy response.

I'll not post it here, since it was a private communication, but the gist is good: the crumbled ticket booths actually represent progress on renovating the drive-in, and although nothing really everlasting will be constructed for a couple of years because of various zoning issues, a permanent steel screen tower rising 80 feet should arrive in a few weeks--probably one of the reasons why the theater hasn't opened yet. (Oh, and the website is being overhauled by a professional, and "it will ROCK.")

In other words, that golden marquee will be alone no longer.

Huzzah!

Virginia Tech

Sometimes, you wish it were all a movie.

You wish that the people who died were acting. You wish that you could rewrite the script, that you could add a hero to stop the madness, that you could change the plot an hour earlier.

But the shuttle still explodes, the plane still flies into the tower. And one morning, one student destroys the lives of many others.

A family member goes to Virginia Tech. On this day of all days, he skipped class and spent the morning in town. Thank God for small favors. A coworker awaits the list, hoping for safety of old friends who went to school at Tech and stayed to teach. My prayers and thoughts are with them, the families, and the survivors.

We watch the violence on screen, both wide and small, where soldiers and foreign enemies, murderers and vigilantes, crime syndicates and cops, heroes and villains all rain fire. It’s exciting, it’s entertainment.

One survivor said the shooter “had a very serious but very calm look on his face.”

We live in a connected world. We touch someone, and that touch migrates to others. Throw a pebble in the ocean and birth a wave. The violence we cause rings out and wounds. Someone loses five loved ones in the tower. Her friends see her grief and share it.

Today is a day to share. Solace is necessary, needed, either in thought or action. We live in a connected world. Touch.

REVIEW: Slapstick of Another Kind

(Note: I actually wrote this movie review for the BMMB, but I always felt it was overbaked. Now, with Vonnegut's passing, I thought this might be a good time to post a review of one of the (justifiably) lesser known film adaptations of his work, especially of one I discussed specifically this past weekend. You'll also see I used "loving sadness": When I wrote So It Goes, using that again just felt right. This review is the new, improved version; you can read the long-winded one here.)

“I was born in 1922, and I call my generation of writers the class of 1922. This would include Gore Vidal and James Jones and others all born around then. We are the last generation of North American writers to be inspired by other novels rather than movies--Norman Mailer, John Updike, we wrote book books, and just thought that a movie sale was found money. Now young writers write books intending to be movies. But I never did that.”
--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

When authors sell the movie rights for their works, it’s the studios that actually make the devil’s bargain. Although each novel comes with a built-in audience, that audience is harder to please than, say, the stereotypical teenager who’s never cracked open any book on their own, much less one translated for the screen.

Therefore, it’s ironic that Kurt Vonnegut Jr.--a classic “unfilmable” author if there ever was one--has had not one, but two artistically successful theatrical films that both he and his fans are happy with: Slaughterhouse-Five and Mother Night. But Vonnegut didn’t completely escape unscathed. Back in 1982, writer/director/producer Steven Paul somehow got hold of one of the author’s lesser known works and brought it to the screen. In so doing, he forgot the meat, heart, and damn near all of the skeleton.

Hi ho.

Slapstick the novel is a short breath of a tale. Like Mother Night and Bluebeard, Vonnegut structures it as a memoir--in this case, that of Dr. Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain, a 100-year-old, 2-meter-tall, Neanderthal-like man who served as the last President of the defunct United States and now lives in the ruins of Manhattan, renamed the “Island of Death.” With the sad humor of Stan Laurel and Buster Keaton, Dr. Swain recalls his strange life, which always revolved around his twin sister Eliza. The two grew up together in seclusion at their family’s abandoned Vermont estate--their parents thought the two were as stupid as they were ugly. But when the siblings touched heads, they became geniuses that would have made Albert Einstein look average. After their unwilling separation at age 15, Wilbur eventually becomes President on a campaign of artificial families (based on an essay from one of Wilbur and Eliza’s “lesser” thinking sessions) and the slogan of “Lonesome No More,” all while American civilization crumbles around him. But Eliza still remains a part of his existence, even as an absence he can’t fill until death.

Not a perfect book, Slapstick still could have made an interesting little movie with its absurd humor laced with loving sadness. An enterprising screenwriter or a visionary director could have strengthened some of the plot’s weaknesses and inherent difficulties. But writer and director Paul proves himself neither as he recasts a somewhat flawed satire into an insanely unfunny and tedious low-rent comedy.

Hi ho.

Instead of an elderly Wilbur, the film opens in outer space, or at least a badly painted backdrop of stars and galaxies. A glowing flying saucer floats by, looking suspiciously like an escaped extra from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Two god-like disembodied narrators--one male, one female--begin discussing the problem of Earth, where their previous gifts of intelligence to the Chinese have gone astray. They decide to try again, this time with a model American family blessed with power, beauty, and intelligence. And thus the twins Wilbur and Eliza are born unto the beautiful couple of Mr. and Mrs. Swain, played by Jerry Lewis and Madeline Kahn.

Let me say that again: The beautiful couple played by Jerry Lewis and Madeline Khan. Just wanted that to sink in a bit....

The babies, unfortunately, are so ugly that their appearance sends the doctors and nurses into hysterics and causes Mr. Swain to accidentally fall out a hospital window and into a convenient trough of mud (it’s a Lewis thing...go with it). A distraught but concerned Mrs. Swain takes her doctor’s advice to seclude the twins and allow them to live out their hopefully short days without ever knowing they are freaks. The doctor handles the hiring of the staff to take care of the children, including a Chinese cook, a Brooklyn handyman, a French maid, and Sylvester, a mortician-turned-butler played by Marty Feldman. Meanwhile, the 3-inch-tall Chinese ambassador (Pat Morita) announces that they are withdrawing their embassy from the rest of the civilized world.

Fifteen years later, the Swains are still distraught; their supposedly doomed children are still alive. As Mrs. Swain vents her frustration to her doctor--strangely, Mr. Swain stays mostly in the background for the run of the movie--a badly animated flying fortune cookie suddenly appears, scattering everyone on the patio (and Mr. Swain down the cliff, of course). The cookie lands, and out jumps the miniature former Chinese ambassador. He tries to convince the Swains that their children--who their doctor insists are morons--are in fact geniuses and America’s only natural resource. Somehow, this all ties into the Chinese wanting to negotiate for approval to take control of gravity. Somehow, but screenwriter Paul forgets to tell us.

Hi ho.

At this point, we’re 20 minutes into the movie, and we haven’t even seen Wilbur and Eliza. With that amount of build-up, you’d think that there would be a big reveal. Instead, we get the maid tucking them in for the night. Once she leaves the room, Wilbur and Eliza (also Lewis and Kahn, in heavy make-up and pj’s) get up to review several of their essays and to waltz to music while the hired help party away downstairs. It’s a routine to which everyone’s grown accustomed, until Mr. and Mrs. Swain phone Sylvester in mid-reverie. For the first time since the twins were born, the parents are coming to visit . . . and the President is coming along.

And that, sadly, is more than half the movie. No film can contain every part of a novel, but Paul guts Slapstick, ripping away much of its story and shredding the remnants. Gone are the Island of Death, Wilbur’s presidency, the King of Michigan, Eliza’s forgiveness, their writing of So You Went and Had a Baby in a five-day orgy, Wilbur’s granddaughter Melody, fluctuating gravity, Vera Chipmunk-5 Zappa and her slaves, and so on. Wilbur’s plan of artificial families is regulated to a final plot point, and “Lonesome No More” is just an exclamation from Wilbur when he awakens from electroshock therapy near the end. All that remains in the film is Wilbur and Eliza’s backstory--hardly half of the original work. Without the aching tragedy and conflict that Vonnegut created, the movie is infused with an inertia that doesn’t let up until Paul finally and completely abandons the story for a Hollywood climax that undermines any meaning left over.

Are you ready?




You’re sure?




Okay . . .




The twins are aliens. Hi ho.

The Wilbur and Eliza of Vonnegut’s novel are freaks, but they’re still human. Like everyone else, they have to muck through their lives and deal with the pains inflicted by loved ones, even by themselves. In many ways, that’s what the art of slapstick is about. But Paul doesn’t understand that--he sees pratfalls without pathos. So he goes for sap instead.

Paul errors badly in trying to make a goofy comedy out of a satire. Slaughterhouse-Five and Mother Night succeed because their makers didn’t attempt to shoehorn them into a certain genre style. The films follow their books’ rhythms, and like the books, create something unique. Vonnegut is not a comedy writer, but Paul ignores that, and the result is that Vonnegut’s gentle absurdity is replaced with clumsy slapstick and comedy with a capital C. The family doctor is named Dr. Frankenstein. Comedy! Wilbur’s mandated disguise at military school is a pair of Groucho glasses. Comedy! Wilbur sticks his smiling mug through a portrait’s hole where the head used to be. Comedy! Hey, watch the flying fortune cookie! Comedy!

And we all know that there’s nothing funnier than a Chinese man speaking bad broken English. Ugh.

There are some admittedly nice touches. Laurel and Hardy, to whom Vonnegut dedicated his novel, make a silent cameo appearance. When Wilbur and Eliza appear at the top of the stairs, intelligent and well-attired for the first time in public, the scene is strangely moving and slightly surreal. The make-up for the two giant Neanderthanloids also is very good, although slightly toned down--Eliza looks cute rather than ugly. Tall, but cute. And Paul actually provides the movie’s best joke: Because gasoline has become too rare or expensive, the remaining cars and airplanes run on chicken “products.”

However, any goodwill won is lost by the film’s obvious low budget and Paul’s incompetence with his own material. Many of the sets look like they were lifted from the nearest television sitcom, and the staging for several of the physical comedy bits is placid, cluttered, and slow. Eliza and Wilbur’s height varies wildly throughout the picture: when Sylvester introduces the twins to their parents, his head only comes up to their waists, but later on, Eliza is obviously only a head taller than her butler. Then there’s a prolonged scene in Air Force One, where the President discusses America’s situation with the plane’s captain. It’s nothing more than a big set-up: the camera eventually pulls back to reveal that the compartment is filled with chicken cages. But Paul already spoiled his punchline by telling the joke earlier in the picture, and the entire scene becomes a waste of time.

For Vonnegut fans, the resulting mishmash becomes even more painful whenever something from the novel creeps through. The miniature Chinese ambassador’s press conference at the start of the film begins with a line from the book: the Chinese are severing relations because “simply there was no longer anything going on in the United States which was of interest” anymore. It’s a very simple, subtly funny line, but Morita’s ensuing dialog slides downhill from there, ending with, “Up your ass with Mobile gas!” Not to mention the tiny sumo wrestlers laughing and high-fiving behind him. Other pieces of the original novel peek through, but they’re distorted or dimmed through Paul’s cracked circus mirror.

The dreary cast doesn’t help, either. Lewis and Kahn sleepwalk through their dual roles; Kahn seems uncharacteristically half-asleep. Perhaps she was trying to play “dumb,” but both her mother and daughter characters stretch the same blank expression throughout the picture. Lewis gets more mileage out of his make-up as Wilbur, but his physical comedy is lifeless and most of the time spontaneously out of place. For his part, Feldman saves some dignity by channeling Alec Guinness’ Professor Marcus from Ladykillers, but resorts to mumbling as the film lumbers to its denouement. Morita seems to be the only one having any fun with his role, and it’s unfortunate that most of his lines are Paul’s and not Vonnegut’s.

By itself, Slapstick of Another Kind isn’t as painful as, for instance, a Tom Green waste of celluloid. But by taking the novel’s title literally and forgetting to read beyond the first hundred pages, Paul misses out on most of the story and thus its meaning. There is little slapstick in the original Slapstick. But Paul can’t even handle his own handiwork, and the haphazard remains only remind us of what could have been. Ironically, the traces of Vonnegut’s inherent absurdity save the film from its own utter dullness; perhaps that’s a kind of comedic poetry after all.

Hi ho.

Flickers of a Ghost

I got lost. Took a wrong turn, wound up in a different state, discovered a direction, and began to wind my way home.

I was tired, and the sunlight was fading rapidly behind the grey and black clouds roiling in the sky. So when I saw it, I tried to blink away the hallucination.

It is huge--a bright, pulsating marquee of yellow and orange, standing, it seems, at least two stories high. A white placard juts out, demanding passer-bys to come see the zombie movie premiere at the Hager 10 Cineplex. But the strange thing is that the marquee fronts an empty parking lot.

I drive by, but slow...the cineplex actually is about a football field or so away. What’s behind that empty lot, though, causes me to turn around.

For about 20 years, the Hager Drive-In had operated here alongside the cineplex, but 20 years ago, it closed down. The marquee is the only operating remnant of the drive-in left, but there are other bones.

The parking lot, which probably once held the bulk of the drive-in, stretches far back and curls all the way behind the indoor movie theater. Even though a Saturday crowd is at the cineplex, their numbers are dwarfed by the size of the lot. In a far corner sit the drive-through ticket booths, weirdly guarding the edge of an overgrown field. Only a year ago, the entryway was still intact, but since then, the roof with the Hager heraldry has crumbled, leaving the two booths standing free. A deteriorating snack bar and projection house building stands in the field, drowning in the brown weeds and vine.

As I gaze at the ghost, the skies open. The deluge matches my mood.

But the Hager may not be completely lost. According to Drive-In Theatres of the Mid-Atlantic, a group is working with the cineplex to to restore and reopen the drive-in. In the meantime, an inflatable screen shows double- and triple-feature revivals of b-movies past and present.

I hope they succeed. Drive-ins are an American creation, one in-grained in our collective conscious like Route 66, jazz, convertibles, and baseball parks. Losing part of the American identity to a dusty, historical relic would be more than a simple shame--we would be giving up a unique part of our culture willingly.

They’ve started to have a revival the last few years, but the resurrection can’t come fast enough. More than 200 drive-ins once dotted the landscape of Maryland and the Virginias. Now only 11 remain.

Far too many ghosts.

So It Goes

One regret I’ll never dispel is that I never got to meet Kurt Vonnegut.

Like many people, I first encountered Vonnegut’s writing in high school, where his surreal storytelling seemed to make a lot of sense to an embryonic adult. The first novel I read was the mostly forgotten Jailbird, but it was good enough for me to seek out the granfalloons, artificial families, Tralfamadorians, and Kilgore Trout. My literary gluttony only ended when I grew sick with influenza; trapped to a bed, I was in the midst of Player Piano, Vonnegut’s first novel about a dystopian society where punch-card computers dehumanize the human worker. I had just reached the point where the story’s hero, the nervous and gentle Paul Proteus, finally rebelled and began running from the authorities. My fever was hot, and I began to hallucinate--suddenly, I was Paul, and I needed to get away. Right. Now.

No, I never finished the book. An absurdity that Vonnegut would appreciate.

I’m sure many will call him the modern Mark Twain; heck, they even looked like each other, especially late in life, when despondency overtook both. Vonnegut, however, was his own writer, a unique narrator who brought a fantastical brevity to modern literature, and a prose that turned a cynical but humorous eye to humanity’s foibles. Lord knows we need it.

War, as with other writers, shaped most of Vonnegut’s work, not just his penultimate novel, Slaughterhouse Five. As a prisoner, he survived the Allied bombing of the German civilian city Dresden, an event that the American government denied for years, yet fully demonstrated man’s inhumanity to man. A lesson like that cannot be forgotten, and Vonnegut struggled to write about it for two decades.

Despite that experience, or perhaps because of it, Vonnegut never lost his own love of humanity. The villains in his stories usually weren’t individuals but characters representing corporations, the science community, the military, even society itself, all twisting good intentions into bizzare contortions. In his most famous short story, “Harrison Bergeron,” people of talent and intelligence are purposely handicapped by the government so that everyone is equal--idealism run rampant. His heroes tended to be the meek, the Billy Pilgrims, Rabo Karabekians, and Eliot Rosewaters, who, for one reason or another, find themselves in the convolution of ridiculous tragedy brought on by a blinded adherence to a higher ideal.

For Vonnegut, humanity was forever building the tower of Babel, never realizing that the blueprints were in gibberish.

Still, the best of his stories, even dark satire like Mother Night, contain more than biting deconstruction of the human condition. Whenever I think of Vonnegut, Buster Keaton somehow slips in. The Great Stone Face persona was a myth--Buster’s characters weren’t emotional automatons going through the motions of comedic timing. He perhaps was the most subtle actor of the silents; joy, fear, nervousness, and frustration all were conveyed through his eyes, quick expressions, and body movement. What Keaton never did do was smile--no matter what chance or fate threw at him, Buster’s characters doggedly persevered, usually to the unheard laugher of his audience. Vonnegut fully understood Keaton’s art. One of my favorite Vonnegut novels is Slapstick, considered to be one of his lesser works. Flawed it may be, but the narrative is Vonnegut unfettered. His hero is a gifted freak who recounts his sad life from the shambles of Manhattan, of how his own well-meaning mistakes helped push away those close to him as the world slowly frayed. But the story is not a tragedy because the storyteller is not tragic; his telling is lighthearted despite itself, and a helpless hope still clings.

That is the essence of slapstick. And that is the essence of Vonnegut.

This week, we lost a voice for humanity, one that loved us enough to gently poke at our own grotesque grandiose. Vonnegut understood us, perhaps too well, and his stories will forever remind us that while we are still human, we sometimes forget the humanity of others. A lasting image of Slapstick is that of the hero’s pregnant granddaughter, crossing the Midwest with nothing but a shopping cart to find the grandfather who doesn't even know she exists. It’s an image that is both lovely and sad. And that’s Vonnegut’s gift to us: loving sadness.

I think I’ll finish reading Player Piano now.