Tag Movies

Proper Attire Required

Michael 11 Comments

I think I’ve reached fuddy duddy stage. I know I’ve gotten to fuddy duddy age yet I don’t feel I’ve overly dudded any fuddies. I believe I qualify for the standard because I know I look spectacular in a tuxedo yet have nowhere to wear one.

It became clear to me and confirmed for me that what is wrong with modern America (besides aging former reality stars insisting we’re part of the Me Generation), while watching Mr. Lucky (the fabulous movie, not the over-acted TV offering although it has a pretty nifty theme song) is we don’t dress for dinner anymore. Of course, the 1940s film industry wasn’t known for putting out documentaries of real-life America, but even the humble middle-class family was having more fun and doing it better dressed than most of us.

Consider this. In nearly every 1940s vintage film offering from romance to comedy to drama to noir, someone is going out to dinner where there will be dancing, at least one torch song singer singing at least one torch song, someone falls in love, the bad guy always pays and the good guys always end up with the lady. And all those people dancing at dinner? Formal attire required. Casino hopping? Tuxedos and gowns. Murder in the penthouse? The corpse is wearing no less than a smoking jacket and if the responding detective happened to be at dinner when the call came in – yep, even he shows up in a tux. Once I remember even white tie and tails.

Perhaps those at is not the norm but it’s not a stretch to say that the average 1940s family sat to dinner with jacket and tie, and dress and pearls. Possibly paste knock offs but something was hanging around mom’s and eldest daughter’s necks. After dinner together they repaired to the drawing room where apparently they drew stuff.

But back to Mr. Lucky with Cary Grant and Laraine Day. He wants to swindle her war relief group. She gives blood. He gives blood. They get together for a late night drive. They fall in love. He transforms his gambling boat into a medical supplies transport. It sinks. Neither is ever out of at least semi-formal attire until the last scene when he shows up in sailing garb. They live happily ever after. I cried.

How could you not get emotional when Cary Grant as Joe Adams as Joe Bascopolous (it’s complicated) tells Laraine Day as Dorothy Bryant, “I don’t know what to make of a dame like you,” and Dorothy answers, “Neither do I,” as they both look out into the countryside with the fire crackling in the fireplace after they drive all the way from New York to Maryland (apparently without stopping since she changed and tied his tie while they were on the road) to prove to her father she would marry him if she had to? (Yes, that was a question. Go back and read it slower.) I get choked up just thinking about it – and thinking how they both look still impeccably put together after a 5 or 6 hour drive in an open convertible. It’s uncanny.

Every movie from the 1940s that I’ve seen, which is close to every movie (worth seeing) from the 1940s, has that formula. Dinner, dancing, singing, at least one murder, accidental death or sufficient injury slash illness to render one character hors de combat, fall in love, question decision to fall in love, bad guy gets what he deserves, fall in love again, live happily ever after, all in formal attire.

I want to go to a casino in my tux and not be given the side-eye, or pop into Olive Garden in a white dinner jacket and bow tie (it is before 6!), or go dancing and end up with the snooty dame who nobody likes (whom nobody likes?) but is really a misunderstood sweetheart who only needs to see me in my formal wear to realize that yes happiness is right around the corner and I’ll be there waiting for her!

Ah sweet dream. Does that sound fuddy duddy to you? Of course it doesn’t!

I wonder where my cuff links are.

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Not me but darn close!

It is said, “It is not  the destination, it is the journey.” With our apologies to Emerson, it is neither.  The experience of any journey, the joy of any destination, is found in the people it is shared with. We explain our thinking in the latest Uplift post, The Road Most Travelled.

Type Casting

Michael 8 Comments

Last week I took a couple hours out of a day and put on Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  It had been forever, or as Holly Golightly would say, just simply forever, since I had last watched it. I think Breakfast at Tiffany’s and I think Audrey Hepburn sitting on a fire escape singing Moon River. It was the first song I learned to play on the piano. The first song that wasn’t a lesson. That was the perfect song in the perfect scene for that part of the movie. A frightened, sensitive girl playing the sure, knowing woman beginning to realize she might not be either of those people.

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Audrey Hepburn sings “Moon River” in YouTube

You know Audrey was never meant to be Holly. The part was supposed to go to Marilyn Monroe. Say what you will, it would never have become a classic with Monroe, who would remove all doubts of Holly’s income source and turned Moon River into a parody of itself. That is if we even still had Moon River in the movie considering it was written specifically for Audrey Hepburn. But its title notwithstanding, this post is not about Audrey’s performance. Nope. It’s about 3 others and then some.

In order of appearance, those three are George Peppard, Patricia Neal, and Buddy Ebsen. Everybody knows George Peppard. Thanks to the A-Team. But everybody knew George even before the A-Team. He was the “name” to get people to watch the A-Team. But who was George Peppard, other than a name? The only movie I ever saw him in is Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Next comes Patricia Neal. Another name everyone knows, even before the coffee commercials.  Odd, I remember the coffee but not the brand that was advertised. Other than one other movie where she also plays a woman of questionable morals, I’d never seen her in any movie other than Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

And finally Buddy Ebsen. Best known as Jed Clampett and/or Barnaby Jones, he appeared in literally hundreds of movies and TV shows. Almost everyone identifies Buddy as the famous former stage and screen dancer. And yet, the only movie I ever saw Buddy play in is Breakfast at Tiffany’s. We could have counted Wizard of Oz but for his allergies to tin colored makeup.

It’s not odd that I watch a movie and have never some or even several of the actors in any other movie. It is odd that three famous people, names I know as well as my own, I had never seen in any other movie (or in Ms. Neal’s case, one other). A bunch of people that if you were to ask me, who were they, what did they do, even for knowing their names as well as my own, I know nothing of them. Couldn’t even write a mini-bio.

It had me wondering, some day when I’m not around anymore, and if my name should come up, will there be anything for anyone to remember, or will I have been perfectly type-casted as nobody special?

There are always people special to us in our own lives, but they will not always be here. They represent the one constant that never will change. Sometimes it takes a death for us to discover the value of life. How do we value it? You can read that in the latest Uplift, Today. Not negotiable.

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Ahoy Matey!

Michael 10 Comments

Okay, first things first. Do people really say that? Ever said that? It seemed an appropriate title because this post is about sailing, although sailing is a poor choice of verbs because the boats I am talking about don’t sail. I was on a sailboat once, in the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida coast and it was fun, lots of fun. But even that boat had a motor. I suppose if the winds died, those who paid for the privilege of pretending to be Blackbeard, or Bluebeard, wouldn’t die along with them. I don’t remember if I ever wrote a post for this blog about that experience. That’s the closest, and I’m sure the only time I will be even that close, to a real sailboat. And I dare say, will most everybody I know who has ever gone “sailing.”

But I digress. Let us talk about sailing, and the boats that do, even though they don’t. I have been on only a handful of boats: a 35 foot fishing boat in Lake Erie a few times, always to do battle with the walleye. I’ve been on the sightseeing cruise ships that ply the rivers around my town and a few others, although “cruise” seems as inapt a verb when talking about these vessels as “sail” does when we (eventually) get to the big boats I mean to talk about, which to be honest, really isn’t the real subject of this post but it makes a nice vehicle, or vessel. And then of course there have been the odd human powered boats including, row, outboard motor, canoe, and paddle. Oh and twice on the boating equivalent of public transportation to get from mainland to nearby island (ferry boat?). I guess that actually is four times because I got back each time also.

Now then, about that sailing I had started with, the one that isn’t actually sailing although they always say sail, which is I suppose more attractive sounding that telling someone, “I went dieseling last week,” when you return from a cruise. And now we got to the crux of the matter, or of the vessel. Those big cruise ships. I have never been on a “cruise” (unless you want to call any or all of those other boats cruising which only seems fair since the big cruise boats seem to insist that they sail) and although I honestly don’t believe I have missed anything, I now find myself considering one but a very specific and particular one.

You should have read enough of these posts to know I am close to fanatical when it comes to old movies, as in older than me, which means movies from the 30s, 40s, and some of the 50s. The definitive stops for old movie buffs for routine viewing are television’s Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and The Criterion Channel. Of those, TCM also sweetens the cinephile’s pot with an annual film festival and – drum roll please – a cruise. The cruise alternates coasts and this year it “sails” from Florida. Not in my backyard but at least on the same side of the country.

I have never considered splurging on a TCM festival either on land or on sea, and I started thinking, I should go ahead and splurge on a vacation I would truly enjoy (because if there are old movies involved I will enjoy it) and on something I’ve never done (which is sailing on a diesel powered floating hotel). You know, I’d not be so reticent about big cruise ships if they weren’t so big. What ever happened to the Love Boat? So I thought I should consider it, fear of floating hotels notwithstanding.

Well let me tell you something! I always thought I was one of sufficient means. To paraphrase the dialogue of what I consider to be world’s greatest movie, Casablanca, when Rick tells Sam that Ferrari would pay him twice as much if he were to work for him, I don’t have enough time to spend the money I do have. Then I got a look at what it costs to watch a couple old movies while bopping along the Caribbean Sea and/or Atlantic Ocean. It doesn’t sail until October and already the luxury and not quite that fancy cabins and suites are sold out. The only space left are mostly interior cabins and a few small mid-ship ocean views and they are going at better than 5 grand a cabin! Do you know how many movies I can see at the local theater showing classic films for $5,000? About 500 – with popcorn!

Not to be all Scrooge-like about it, I could still be talked into considering it. If anybody out there would like to “sail” the Caribbean and/or Atlantic and watch some old movies, presumably in swim and vacation wear (I’ll bring my tux for dinner just in case), please let me know in the comments. We can discuss financing.

Can an egoist be redirected to a more sharing and caring lifestyle? We say yes, you, and they can be someone’s sunshine. Read how in the latest Uplift, Out of the Shadow.

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“The End” is not as near as it once was

Michael 18 Comments

I’ve noticed a disturbing trend that’s been going on for years, and it’s mostly most disturbing (mostly) because I’ve not noticed is before, yet it’s really mostly out there, like more than it isn’t. What you asked? Go ahead and ask, I’ll wait. What? Oh I’m glad you asked. “The End” is missing. That practice that once was a staple on movie end title cards, and in books on their end pages of declaring the end as “The End” is ending, in fact, seems to have indeed ended, and nobody is in a hurry to bring it back.

It may seem a silly thing, in fact it most probably is a silly thing, but that “The End” wrapped things up neater than solving a locked room murder. It closed the book, as it was. It put the stamp of a job well done on a job well done. There was no mistaking when you got to the end that it was the end. Any cliffhangers, unanswered questions, or unresolved loose ends, were more often the result of your not having paid attention to some seemingly unimportant detail than it was to the author’s or screenwriter’s lack of imagination or meticulous care to continuity.

It seems to me, the disappearance of “The End” occurred quite simultaneously to both print and film media, not unlike the unexplained (although welcomed by me), change of printing copyright dates in Arabic numerals rather than Roman numerals. (If you’re intrigue by that, check out my post here. It doesn’t explain it but I do have fun talking about it!) (But back to “The End” which I’m sure you’re now hoping we are getting close to as far as this post is concerned.) I noticed, or I think I noticed, “The End”’s demise in books and at movies because I’ve been on an odd quest (yes, odd even for me) of attempting to read the source material of all the old movies I am so addicted to. I want to see if the observations I made last year about movies based in books in the early days of the Hayes Code were more universal than just those handful of stories i mentioned

Even the most casual of casual readers knows that I much prefer movies of the 1930s, 40, 50s, and in a pinch, very early 60s to any other dreck put out since, but that’s just my opinion. Why do I say “attempting to read” the sources of the screenplays of those early movies? Because the source material is not always 1)known, 2)published, or 3) available even if it is both 1) and 2). But in those cases I have found a source that 1), 2), and 3) and the material ended in “The End” (or the more exotic “Finis”), so did the film. Those that did not, neither did they, and they did not about the same time as movie credits expanded to included everybody who happened to be in Hollywood at the time of filming, perhaps to make up for the lost screen time and then some by not including “The End.”

And so I suppose I’m going to have to watch more and more 60s and maybe even 70s vintage films to see exactly when movie producers decided it was more important for us to know who drove the catering trucks than that the movie is over, now please go back to your real lives.

And now, please go back to your real lives.

-The End-

Bonus points if you can identify the movie from the end title card below.

Do you plan so much you never get around to doing? When you do, are you overly concerned about what others think about what you’ve done? The most recent Uplift! explores why it is better to just do, and then do some more! Approximate reading time – 2 minutes.

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The most wonderful time of the year

Michael 8 Comments

It’s almost here. The day we’ve been waiting for. (Don’t you just love ads, articles, blogs even that start that way. Like all of the world is “we.” It’s like the YouTube videos that begin, “You’re doing [something incredibly common and impossible to do wrong] wrong.”) (But I digress.) The day we’ve (cough cough) been waiting for is almost here.  Yes…[dramatic overture type music]…it’s Oscar time. (You know I’m really not allowed to say that. It’s copyrighted and a couple years ago they were going after those using it without permission hard. Yeah, well, tough on them! I said it!) Now where was I. Oh yes, it’s Oscar time!

For movie buffs, it really is a big time. Those awards still hold a mystique among awards, and people who live and die for movies have no real life. 

I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to say that.

Take 2! People who live and die for movies look forward to this time of year like normal people look forward to Groundhog Day. And I can say that because I too look forward to Oscar season. Oh not for the awards. I mean I guess they’re okay even though they really have gotten away from awarding the best performances and replaced that with awarded the performances that have the most to say but then sometimes that happens to be the same picture like last year. That was a good movie and I can’t wait to se it again when it’s like 40 years old. Umm…

Oh darn,I lost my place again. Don’t go anywhere. Hmm, people live and die. Look forward to too. I’m one of them. Oh yeah, I found it.

And I can say that because I too am one of them. One of the them who look forward to Oscar season but not for the awards. I look forward to this time of year because my favorite television station, TCM, plays an entire month of Oscar nominated and winning films from when they really were really good. I’ve said many times, my passion is old movies, preferably pre-1950s, certainly pre-1960s, and a rare one after that.

There was a difference in the movies from 70 and 80 years ago. There will never be a movie couple so well matched as William Powell and Myrna Loy. There will never be an actress so perfect in every role she played as Audrey Hepburn. Nor a musical as free spirited as Singing in the Rain, or a drama as soul searching as The Red Shoes. And there will never be another Casablanca. What made so many of the great movies of the golden age of movies such great movies is something we will never see again in movie land. The studio system. So completely controlling of all that went in the it should be The Studio System.

Take Casablanca as an example. Every part was perfectly cast. Not just the leading roles which none of the leads were who the producer Hal Wallis wanted but who the studio gave him. Even the director Michael Curtiz was not the first choice. All off the minor characters filled their roles like they had been doing those jobs for ever. And they had. Actors then were on contract to the studios and they all filled a niche. You want a bartender? They got an actor who played a bar tender so often he’d be a better bartender than a bartender. Do you need a street vendor? Central casting has a dozen to pick from, what do you want to sell? The system worked. Casablanca was nominated for 8 academy Awards and came away with 3, best picture, best director, and best adapted screenplay.

So next Sunday while most movie maniacs will be glued to their sets to see who gets slapped this year, I’ll be halfway through a smorgasbord of the best movies, some that even won for being the best movie when being the best mean being the best and the only message was “let us entertain you.”

Every moment of every day has the potential to be one that will be never forgotten. Those memorable moments can be anything and happen anytime. Last week in Uplift! we asked, will some moment today be your most memorable?

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The sort of annual way too talked about Christmas movie controversy and why I’m right again

Michael 12 Comments

It’s the Monday after Thanksgiving and that can mean only one thing. Well it could mean billions and billions of things but if you’re here (and clearly you are) it means it’s time for this year’s My Favorite Christmas Movie post. If it’s my favorite why do we need to rehash this every year? Because, “I say my current favorite because like children there can be no real favorite among Christmas movies. The favorite is the one making you smile today or remember yesterday, the one encouraging a perfect alternative to an imperfect world and providing an escape from the ordinary.” –Me, 12/5/2019. One more thing. It’s the sort of annual because I missed a year here and there. Maybe more than here and there but I’ve done a lot of them!

This year I started watching Christmas movies early and I’ve already seen close to a dozen of them. And only one of them had “Christmas” in the title. And that got me wondering, how many movies have been released as Christmas movies and included the word Christmas in the title? There are plenty of movies and you often know from the title you are going to be in a holiday themed show, but in the grand scheme of things, precious few come right out and mention the word “Christmas” or even “Holiday” and leave no doubt. (Just so there is no doubt, Twentieth Century Fox and John McTierman could have shimmied out on that limb and title the 1988 disaster of a flick “Die Hard on Christmas Eve” and it still wouldn’t be a Christmas movie.)

“Miracle on 34th Street” could be about any inexplicable event happening in New York City in December but it’s pretty clear we’re talking Santa, and “Elf” could be about cookie bakers living in hollow trees but again Santa clarifies that point. The majority of Christmas movie titles themselves can be addressing almost anything. “Love, Actually” could be a garden variety romcom. “The Polar Express” might be an Agatha Christie mystery gone north. “Home Aline” could be about the plight of inner city latch key kids, “The Apartment” might be a prequel to “Rent,” and “Meet Me in St. Louis” a travelogue. Even my favorite from last year, which is still a favorite in any year, “Remember the Night” might be about the sinking of the Titanic if your memory is just a little faulty.

So I did some research and I tried to dig up all the Christmas movies with Christmas in the title. Naturally I mean theatrical releases, not Hallmark or Lifetime or any other movie mill cable network holiday offerings. It’s not an exhaustive list but a list until I became exhausted by it. (And you won’t find “Black Christmas” and “Christmas Evil” among them because even though they have Christmas in the title, see the Die Hard in Christmas Eve explanation above. And unfortunately you will not find “A Charlie Brown Christmas” among them either because it was released directly to television.)

  • A Christmas Carol (all 20-some versions)
  • A Christmas Story
  • A Christmas Story 2 (really, from 2012)
  • A Christmas to Remember (I didn’t)
  • A Muppet Christmas Carol
  • Christmas in Connecticut
  • Christmas in July
  • Christmas with the Kranks
  • National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
  • The Nightmare Before Christmas
  • White Christmas

Almost all worthy to carry the word Christmas in their titles, there are a couple that stand out for me. “Christmas in Connecticut” stars Barbara Stanwyck and that’s never a bad thing, and “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” made moose head egg nog cups complete with antlers THE gift in the early 1990s. But of them all, my favorite Christmas movie with Christmas in the title has to be “White Christmas.” It has singing, dancing, comedy, romance, a gruff old guy and a gruffer old gal. It’s one of only two movies with Vera-Ellen that I can name off the top of my head (“On the Town” is the other), and it’s just plain fun. How can you not look at the final scene when the wall opens and the first snowfall of the year is blanketing the Vermont countryside and not smile about it.  

What was that I said? “The favorite is the one making you smile today or remember yesterday.” I’d say “White Christmas” does a little of both. 

Merry Christmas Movies everyone!

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There aren’t any post about Christmas movies but there are lots of articles on refreshing your enthusiasm for life and finding the motivation to push through the day everyday at ROAMcare.org. I’d be honored if you were to visit.

Read the book

Michael 2 Comments

Not too many posts ago I wrote one about the changes that a story goes through on its way from printed page to silver screen. That got something stirring in me and I set out to read or reread as many of the books that have been the inspiration to some of my favorite movies. Along the way I noticed something curious. Many modern movies hold themselves much closer to the original stories than movies from the golden age, and while I think that’s a good thing for the high school football star who has little time for such nonsense as reading, the older movies are typical of a higher quality, story telling wise and even production wise. (Yes, I know, but that’s my opinion. It’s also my blog. Get over it.)

We likely have Will H. Hays to thank for the creative license taken by screen writers in the 1940s and 50s. Although the so-called Hays Code “governed” film propriety until 1968 when the now familiar 4 tiered Motion Picture Association of America rating system was adopted, it was during the golden age of moviemaking (1936-1962) that the classic movies differed much from their classic written beginnings – but often in a good way.

Reading the book versions of some film classics revealed three major changes. Most movies were targeted to run from 105 to 115 minutes. Provocative talk was okay, action was not. The bad guy not only never wins, he always gets more than his due.  Although I the past two weeks I’ve read The Thin Man, The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, and To Have and Have Not, I’m going to use Farewell, My Lovely, adapted to “Murder, My Sweet” as the film/book comparison. I’m case you want to read, watch, or do both with this story and have not yet done either, I will not reveal any plot information in this discussion.  

Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely, released in 1944 as “Murder, My Sweet”* has enough character exposés and plot twists to fill 3 hours of screen time. Even “Gone With the Wind” couldn’t keep audience members who were honest entertained for 180 minutes. To keep it to a reasonable length, some sub-plots were completely eliminated and characters combined to make transactions flow through the deleted scenes less awkwardly. Of thirteen main characters from the novel, eight made the transition to the screen version and three of them were significantly altered.

Before we discuss plot changes it is worth noting the Chandler was not a stickler for plot details. Rather than relying on formula and a certainty that everything wraps up neatly at the end, he said he was more interested in the message conveyed by his stories. During the adaptation of another of his novels, The Big Sleep, screen writer William Faulkner, a pretty good novelist himself, was unable to reconcile one of the murders. It is said that after many hours of trying to successfully reveal, or at least hint at the culprit responsible for the character’s demise, the screenwriting team decided to call Chandler and ask who did it. His response? He didn’t know either!

In both book and movie, a missing necklace and a missing woman are central to the story. While the compactness of the plot and some subplot elements that were victims of time are obvious if you read the book before watching the movie, but if your first exposure to the tale is at the movies, there are no unresolved issues.  How the woman and necklace become missing and found, and what happened in between were victim to the censors and may leave your wondering if the suspension of disbelief might be stretched just a little. Illegal drug use, questionable social couplings, racial and economic disparities, and police corruption were tempered or cast aside. The resulting screenplay, although missing many of the stops along the way to the conclusion, does not suffer for these details. In most cases, the viewers can replace with their imaginations what was handed to them in writing. This is not always a bad thing. Often your imagination can make a better story than the one first considered and when the inferences are made deftly, the conclusions can be fairly consistent. In a different movie/book tandem, The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett, although Nick and Nora sleep in separate beds in full pajamas with dressing robe and gown, there is no question that they are giddyingly in love with each other and present as a passionate couple.

The conclusion of “Murder, My Sweet,” although satisfying, takes a major departure from the novelist’s vision. Again, needing to satisfy the censors of the time, the character wrap up are quite different. Some “bad guys” in the novel are still walking around when the last page is turned. The Hays Code wanted audiences to see that crime not only doesn’t pay, but exacts a price. We never see the bullets fly (too violent) but we see the results. And who does the “cleaning up” and how they are manipulated so nobody gets an easy way out are somewhat vague. A final twist is the movie’s version of a happy ending, although working well for the movie, may not have been exactly as Chandler would have written it.

The is no question that if you watched “Murder, My Sweet” you know you are watching the story behind Farewell, My Lovely. It is faster paced, you might think you missed something when you went to re-butter the popcorn, and at the end you could be saying, “oh, yeah, I can see that,” but it’s clearly the same story. It’s just not the same.

Is it a bad thing that movie adaptations deviate from their source materials? Not always. When nothing but the title and a character name are all that are recognizable you get the sense the studio or production company know they have a dog of a story and the only way they stand a chance to make money is to buy a popular title. But a good story in the hands of talented screen writers, especially if they are source writers themselves, will show through regardless of constraints placed by the questionable morals police or to the keep it short so they don’t get bored police.

To quite somebody from some book or movie, “It’s all good!” (But it wouldn’t kill you to read the book.)

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* Murder, My Sweet was not the first screen adaptation, nor the last, nor was the screen the only adapted medium of Farewell, My Lovely. Although the latest adaptation was made in 1975, it still was subject to significant changes for time and cultural references.

You affect everyone you meet, whether with words, actions, or just a smile. Read why we say you brighten everybody’s day with your presence at http://www.roamcare.org.

Based on a story by…

Michael 4 Comments

I don’t know why but last weekend I was thinking about Raymond Chandler, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Alfred Hitchcock. Not necessarily in that order. As I’ve written before, I don’t know why I think the things I do, but I do and that is enough to make me think, and then think that I’d rather not want to think about it.

It all started with me re-reading The Curious Case of Benjamin Button which got me thinking about how a movie and a book can be so different. A movie and a 600 page novel, an epic, the proverbial tome may differ because who could get all that detail into a movie people would be willing to sit through, except perhaps Gone With the Wind, but that has its own problems. But with Ben, or BB as I like to call him, that’s a short story, and still Eric Roth managed to write a 2-1/2 hour movie based on a tale that took me a fifth of that time to read, with a bathroom break thrown in. How did he do that! The answer is, he didn’t. Roth and story writing partner Robin Swicord wrote a different story with a title and a character of the same name. It’s a good movie. It’s a good short story. They just aren’t the same. And that’s been going on pretty much since we’ve had movies.

William Faulkner’s 1944 treatment of Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not does the same thing. A character or two are mentioned in both book and movie, and those plus the title are the total of what remains of the story the movie was based on. Now the 1950 adaption, “The Breaking Point,” by screenwriter Ranald MacDougall is much closer to the Hemingway classic. It’s on a different ocean and there’s an extra couple of characters, but it’s recognizable as being a story based on. But does that make it better than the 1944 classic or just different?

You can’t say that Faulkner, who was no slouch in the book writing department, was flexing his writing muscles, because he quite faithfully followed Chandler’s The Big Sleep, changing only what needed changed to make the movie acceptable to those who moderated the 1946 version of the production code (and to make it acceptable to those who wanted to see Bogart and Bacall become Bogart and Bacall). Perhaps that is why when Chandler took to the task of writing the screenplay to Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, he stayed as close as he could to the original story. Oh wait, you’re going to say, they aren’t close at all. You might even say in the movie, the strangers are on an entirely different track than the one the train chugs along on in the psychologically thrilling novel. The “Strangers” presented by Alfred Hitchcock that we see is not the version Chandler wrote. That script ran afoul of the censors (and to a large extent, of Alfred) and was almost entirely rewritten by Czenzi Ormomde. 

When Chandler and co-screenwriter Billy Wilder adapted James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity, they took much liberty with the original story, changing names and timelines, and most radically, they added a new character, the insurance investigator, which created a completely different story.  

“Double Indemnity” and “Strangers on a Train,” a double dose of two books, two movies, four stories, none of them bad but none of them based on any other. So maybe when you have great writers adapting great works of writing, you will get great results, just not always recognizable as the story they are based on. 

Now let’s talk about what Leon Uris and Dalton Trumbo did with “The Exodus.”

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Blog Art (25)Everybody is more engaged and more fun to be around when they feel valued, and they feel most valued when they are treated like people. Read why we say good manners never go out of style at www.roamcare.org. While you’re there, check out the rest of our site, then share us with your friends and family!

 

More things I think I think, I think

Michael 2 Comments

Sometimes I think those things that I think and I think what the heck am I thinking? For example for instance like:

We all have had red towels or blue jeans or black shirts that we will not under any circumstances wash with anything else the first maybe 3 or 4 times until the color stops bleeding because we don’t want to pull pink, or robin’s egg blue, or gray clothes from the washer. But we don’t do that with white. Most white textiles don’t start out that white. That’s a dye that makes them white but we happily toss them in the wash right from the get go. Every now and then as we are we sorting and folding and hanging and doing whatever in order to out away those freshly laundered clothes we will look at a load and say, darn, these shirts/jeans/towels/socks and underwear are fading.  Has anybody out there ever considered that maybe they aren’t fading but those new white jeans you tossed in the load had bled white dye? Just wondering.

Or make this for like example:

Remember when I talked about my microwave being a real nag. It still is and it still beeps periodically whenever I’m not in a hurry to take out whatever it was that I put in there. And I asked, who forgets they put food in the microwave? And then I answered myself. Stoners man. Well, I’ve been so intent on making sure I get stuff out of the microwave in a timely manner before it beeps at me, that I never noticed when I open the door, it beeps at me. Why? I know I’m opening the door. Do I have to be warned that I’m opening the microwave door? Who else would care that the microwave is being opened? And then it dawned on me…stoners, man! Those same guys who would stick a bag of popcorn in the microwave and in 90 seconds completely forget about it, are the ones who would want to know if somebody else is making off with their popcorn!

Or sometimes like this:

Regular readers, or even irregular readings if they read the right posts, know I like old movies. Old like 1930s, 1940s, in a pinch maybe early 1950s movies. As far as I’m concerned, and as far as anybody else with half a brain knows, they were just better back then. Really long term readers know I like to read movie credits. They were better back then too. They were certainly easier to read. A casual movie goer has no idea who did the accounting or catering or painted the scenery for Casablanca. As it should be. It seemed sometime in the 60s, when movie making took a decisive down turn in quality, they also wanted the viewer to know everybody who came close to the camera, even the guy who drove the truck that pulled the trailers the movie stars hung out in when they weren’t in front of the camera. It was sometime then they also made a monumental change in the credits besides just crediting everybody and their proverbial brothers. And this one made sense. The copyright date. Sometime in the 60s or maybe 70s, they started publishing the copyright date in Arabic numerals. Those are the numbers like 1,2, 3 (which is weird because they were “invented” in 6th century India) rather than I, II, III (you know, Roman numerals, which oddly really were invented around Rome, or roughly the area that modern day Tuscany occupies). You can read the entire credit crawl of In a Lonely Place and never lose your place until you get to the copyright. Then it’s “hmm, let’s see, MCM, that’s easy 1900. Okay now, XLI… dammit, come back! I almost had it…wait, that’s too many characters anyway. It came out in ’50, that’s just L. Or did it. Oh H-E-double hockey sticks, now I have to go look it up.” Even old books published copyright dates in Roman Numerals. Why couldn’t they have used real numbers then? Was there a law? We got a bunch of other crazy laws, so maybe so.

And then that started me thinking about crazy laws but we’ll let them pass for now.

If you’re curious…In a Lonely Place indeed was released in 1950 (MCML) but the screenplay was copyrighted in 1949 (MCMXLIX).

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The envelope please…

Michael Leave a comment

And the envelope please…

Ah, Major Movie Award time. The Academy is cracking down in unauthorized used of the gold statuettes’ nickname but you know what Major Movie Award I mean. The Major Movie Award ceremony was last night and I missed it – again. Intentionally. I love movies and this year I actually saw most of the nominees for the Major Movie Award best picture award. But I love old movies a whole lot better and I dislike awards shows even more. Awards shows, awards banquets, recognition ceremonies, even graduations, but especially awards show when anybody who ever got lucky enough to be cast in a good movie demonstrates how valuable screenwriters are. Anyway, I didn’t watch the ceremonies but instead, as is my custom, I watched a couple Major Movie Award winners from 60 years ago.

In general, forty years is my cut off.  If a movie is still entertaining (and relevant, if possible), 40 years after it first hit the theaters, then that’s a good movie. I would say I’ll be re-watching this year’s winner in 40 years but in 40 years I’ll be well ensconced in the centenarian camp, so…that’s a maybe.

So with all this experience of watching long-lasting, significant award winning movies from 40, 50, 60, 100 years ago, you’d  think I could pick out this years winner effortlessly. Yeah, no. A hundred, 90, 60, 50 years ago, significant was defined differently. Right around 40 years ago, it started to be more important to have the right message than to have the right stuff. But that’s okay. That only holds true for the “big” awards.  The true magic in movies, the costumes, sets, music, and cinematography are still awarded on merit so there will always be good old movies to watch. Even forty years from now.

moviefilm

It so happens that I am writing this before the Major Movie Awards ceremony and the announcement of best picture. So, given that I’ve seen them, what movie would I vote for if I were a member of the Major Movie Award voting bloc?  I will say I don’t think the one I would vote for will win, but it should.  I think several of the best picture nominees are definite possibilities for cinematography and costume and would be worthy of those honors. But those same movies have no story, no coherence, or are just not good enough to be “best.” And there are so many this year (10 nominees for best picture), the field is clearly watered down.  But I digress.

What movie would I vote for if I were a member of the Major Movie Award voting bloc? West Side Story. It will have a hard time getting to the podium.  Although remakes dominate moviedom, rarely do remakes get nominated for the best picture award. To win the award, the odds are greater than finder teeth in a hen, but just barely. Only twice has a best picture been a remake. (Ben-Hur in 1959 and The Departed in 2006). To make it an even higher mountain to climb, West Side Story is the first time a remake of a previous best picture winner (1961) has even been nominated for best picture.

So … if I don’t think the. Ivies I would vote for will win for best picture, where would I put my money? Although almost all of the rest of the world thinks, The Power of the Dog will be so honored, I think last night’s winner was CODA. But wouldn’t it be a hoot if Licorice Pizza walk away with it?

We could do this for the other 23 categories too but I have to get dinner on the table.

How did I do?