A Blog of My Own

A few illuminating minutes with Stephen Sondheim, as he describes the genesis of his 1970 masterpiece musical Company:

We saw Steven Soderbergh’s film The Informant! (starring Matt Damon), scored by Marvin Hamlisch, last night. I was surprised to hear a cue in the picture that was lifted complete (my memory tells me) from Hamlisch’s score for Woody Allen’s 1971 Bananas. It’s a sort of comic-dixieland piece punctuated by clown horns (you don’t forget something like that), and occurs about two-thirds of the way through the picture, accompanying one of several moments in which the Damon character strolls through the office space of his company. I was prepared for a score that would “reference” earlier styles, but I wasn’t prepared for a wholesale lift from an earlier Hamlisch-scored film.

Upon close side-by-side examination, the two cues may, in fact, have small differences, but my educated guess based on memory is that they are identical. Not that this is a crime against humanity or anything, and not that it would be the first time in history a composer cribbed from his own work. Usually, though, the cribbing contains a bit more variation than occured here. My guess is that Soderbergh (a director I admire) used the Bananas cue as a temp-track while he was editing the scene, then decided Hamlisch couldn’t do better, and had him recreate it. Just a surmise. Soderbergh and Hamlisch may believe the movie audience has a shorter memory than, in fact, some of us have.

I remember exactly when I first heard a Britishism that began creeping its way into American business. That one was “at the end of the day.” The year was 1984. A couple of British clients dropped the phrase repeatedly into their conversation with me to mean, in our American equivalent, “when all is said and done…at the conclusion of the process…when all factors have been considered,” and like that.

Believe it or not, no one in America up to that point ever said “at the end of the day” to mean this. If you said “at the end of the day,” it was because you meant nighttime. But this new, British meaning spread throughout the American business vocabulary like a cancer. Within a year or two, everyone in business was saying it here.

Now there’s another one. “Spot on.” Like “at the end of the day,” it comes from the United Kingdom. You’ve been able to see it in British newspapers and magazines for years now, and it means the same thing that we used to mean when we said, “exactly right…just perfect…right on,” and like that. You hear it everywhere now. Foodies on a message board I frequent say it to describe the flavor of a particularly successful dish. The other night I overheard a table of young people at a restaurant using it to describe someone’s critique of a movie.

I suppose we adopt these Britishisms because we think the Brits are so much smarter than we are. Or because by dropping them into conversation, we can demonstrate that we are cosmopolitan, and have been exposed to people from other lands. There’s really no need for these Britishisms other than for sheer pretense, because we already had perfectly fine American ways to say the same things.

So just stop it.

A nearly immutable law says that movies made from old TV sitcoms suck. So when Get Smart opened in summer 2008, I stayed away. It had cheap exploitation written all over it, and my good feelings about Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway weren’t enough to override my default setting. Even an amusing clip didn’t get me into the theater; I knew that the clip, which was clever and subtle, had to be unrepresentative.

But you know how when you flip randomly to a cable channel and through happenstance a movie is just about to begin, so you’ll be able to get in on the ground floor, and it’s a movie that has just enough going for it (despite your low expectations) that you’re willing to give it five minutes to prove you wrong? That happened.

One of the smartest choices the movie makes is to make Maxwell Smart smart. In the old sitcom, Don Adams was a buffoon, an idiotic jerk who foiled dastardly plots by bumbling into them. (There may have been an unacknowledged debt to Inspector Clouseau going on there.) But Steve Carell’s Maxwell Smart is a brilliant (if geeky) intelligence analyst who yearns to be an agent in the field, gets his chance, and comes through. This Maxwell Smart is a freshly and fully conceived comedic character, not a catchphrase-bot. He’s also not a retread of Carell’s Michael Scott from The Office, although I expected him to be.

Anne Hathaway’s performance as Agent 99 matches Carell’s. A very funny “dynamic” goes on between them, as their cover — they pretend to be a married couple — starts to feel so real to them that they fall into dysfunctional patterns with one another. Hathaway, by the way, is jaw-droppingly gorgeous in this film.

I believed, for some reason, that the movie got poor reviews when it opened. Maybe my expectation of mediocrity was so strong that I just assumed the general press confirmed it. But looking at the reviews now, I see that a number of them were quite positive and perceptive. Roger Ebert gave it three-and-a-half stars. The excellent J. Hoberman in The Village Voice liked the movie a lot. Salon’s Stephanie Zacharek called the film “a surprisingly smart comedy.”

You do have to give the movie about ten minutes to get fully up to comedic speed, but once it does, it maintains it. The good jokes come at you on all levels, subtle, broad, intellectual, physical, character-based, action-based, political, psychological. What all the jokes have in common is that none of them insults your intelligence. How the hell did that happen?

Not only is the movie a better one than I thought it was; it also did better. It grossed $230 million worldwide on an $80 million investment. And I see that a sequel, Get Smart 2, which will reunite Carell and Hathaway (and Alan Arkin, as The Chief), is in development for 2011. Yay.

Today, a rare “guest column,” written by Jim Dyer after his return from visiting the site where The Battle of the Bulge in World War 2 took place — a battle in which his father was an infantryman.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“J.J. Bittenbinder is a recognized authority on assault prevention.”

–jjbittenbinder.com

In Chicago, there’s an ex-cop by the name of J.J. Bittenbinder. He lectures on personal safety on the mean streets of the city. One of his talks is about not getting shot if somebody holds a gun on you and wants something you have.

His first rule is “run”.

Before you even think about getting in the car (absolutely do not get in a car) or before you think about struggling (you’ll get shot at close range — count on it), or pulling your own gun (your assailant will take it from you and kill you with it), run. Put distance between yourself and the person who has the gun. Bittenbinder presents a calculus of survival that goes something like this: at close range thugs have about a ten percent chance of hitting one of your vital organs on the first shot. For every X feet (ten? twenty? I don’t really remember) that you put between the thug and you, your thug’s chance of hitting you at all decreases by a factor of ten. If you get in a car with a thug with a gun, you’re about 90 percent certain of being dead within minutes.

Run. Run like crazy. That’s the deal. Do not look back. If you run, you will almost certainly survive.

In Diekirch, Luxembourg is the National Military Museum. In it is some of the detritus of the Battle of the Bulge. Bits left over from one of the most bloody battles in history. Somewhere in this museum, or maybe in the Patton Museum in Ettlebruck, or maybe in both, is a glass fronted case about seven feet tall and two and a half feet or so wide. In it is a mannequin dressed in the typical field gear of the American foot soldier who fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He’s got on wool uniform pants, shirt, a wool scarf, or balaclava over his head, a helmet, a wool trenchcoat, leather boots. He wears a web belt with a strap over the shoulder, on which is hung his canteen, ammunition pouches, and I can’t rememember what else.

Not a rig made to run in.

This is the gear my dad wore in the Battle of the Bulge. In the woods of the Ardennes. In the neighborhood of Diekirch. In the worst winter in Europe in a hundred years. Also carrying a bazooka, a rocket launcher about four feet long.

I remember one story my dad told about how after firing a bazooka you run like hell because the flash and the smoke trail tells whoever you’re shooting at exactly where you are. He was in a town, or on a farm, and he had fired his weapon, and he was running along a wooden fence about six feet high, or so, chin strap unbuckled, rifle over his shoulder, bazooka in one hand and the other hand on his helmet, holding it on and he came to the corner where this fence turned, and his head banged into something. He looked up and his head had banged into the helmet of a German soldier. They looked at each other for a split second, turned around and ran like hell. I can see J.J. Bittenbinder nodding his head and saying, “Exactly.”

“Much of the Ardennes is covered in dense forests, with the old mountains averaging around 350-500 m (1,148-1,640 ft) in height”

–Wikipedia

Running as a solution to being shot is not an option in the Ardennes. There’s a trail in Bettendorf, between Diekirch and Echternach maintained in memory of my dad, and the 85,000 American casualties inflicted during the few months of the Battle. Along this trail are stations showing details of what it was like. Foxholes. Tank Tracks. Graffiti carved in the trees. Small bunkers with tin roofing stolen from farmers’ barns. Most impressive, though, at least to me, was the forest itself. ‘Dense’ as Wiki describes it. A tree every four or five feet. Connected by underbrush.

I imagine trying to run in these woods. Getting my canteen, or my web belt, or my rifle, or my bazooka caught on the branches and undergrowth. Tripping over roots. Not going to happen. My dad’s not running in these woods, that’s for sure. I imagine my dad sitting still, not running, and the scratchy wool of his uniform rubbing his neck raw. His wrists. His ankles inside leather boots. Wet leather boots. And later his feet blistering and bleeding from being in water up to his knees for days on end. Freezing water. Until he finally has to face the fact that he’s got trenchfoot. Frozen feet. And he can’t even walk, much less run to keep from getting shot. And being my dad, somebody has to tell him he can’t walk. And tell him his Battle is over. And carry him to where he can get transported out. Maybe he’s glad. Maybe not. Probably he’s glad to be out of there. I would be. For sure.

“Some vehicles, like the M4 18-ton High Speed Tractor, gained popularity back in the 1950s when Revell put out a model of the 155mm M2 “Long Tom” gun with the tractor and a crew of figures, and this neat looking vehicle first became known to modelers.”

–cybermodeller.com

Some time in grade school I went through the plastic model phase, and actually built a model of the M4 with its long gun in tow. I know my dad watched as I put it together. What I now know is that there’s a beautifully restored M4, or one of its close relatives in the National Military Museum in Diekirch. Out front, in reasonable shape is a 155mm artillery piece just like the one I assembled. I was struck by the fact that across the aisle in the main hall of the museum was a very similar artillery tractor left by the German army. The American tractor was sharp. efficient. well built. On the German one, the windshield frame was wood. Rough wood.

I asked the museum docent about the wood windshield frames. He nodded and confirmed that the Germans were pretty much on their last resources at that time. Then he mentioned that he had been called out by a farmer and the police the day before to help investigate a skeleton that had been found on the battlefield. It was a German artillery horse. Horse drawn artillery. Child soldiers commanded by officers hardened on the Russian Front. Brutal. Now, as I write this, I wonder what my dad thought about this model I made of the M4 with its long gun. I can’t even begin to speculate. Dad never said a word.

I tried to engage him about a year before he died. Showed him some pictures, gave him copies of a military history of the battle in the Diekirch region. Tried to talk to him about it. Truthfully, I was looking for closure. I was looking for some explanation of issues and attitudes, hurts real or imagined, a fuller picture of why he was the way he was, why I am the way I am. He never rose to the bait. With few exceptions, like the story I related earlier, he kept his mouth shut.

“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.”

–Donald Rumsfeld

I know there’s a better quote somewhere to sum up what I learned when Mooneen and I spent two days chasing dad’s combat service this summer. From a better literary mind than Donald Rumsfeld. I can’t think of one at this moment. As I journaled about what we found in Luxembourg, I knew I hadn’t found the explanations, the causes and conditions, the closure I was looking for. I did learn two things:

It’s not the war. It’s the man.

And, It’s not the father. It’s the son.

I learned it’s me.

And part of me is from the region of Diekirch. In Luxembourg.

After last night’s horrid premiere of the primetime Jay Leno Show, I can see two eventualities happening:

1) The show will die a merciful death. (And I really mean merciful. It’s no skin off my back if the show continues for decades, because I’ve got plenty of other things to watch, or not watch. But I feel for Leno and the behind-the-scenes folks if they get caught in the soul-destroying rut of having to put this shite on night after night.)

2) The show will be a success, because vast portions of the American public actually enjoy seeing this particular president treated with shameful disrespect (satire works when it’s smart, pointed and funny; when it’s not, it’s just ugly), and think the idea of a white guy singing hip-hop in a car wash is a real hoot. (See Blackface, below.) The right-wing, borderline neo-Nazi demonstrations in Washington this week serve to show, sadly, that an audience like that is just waiting to have its comedy needs catered to.

One of the great radio broadcasters of all time is back on the air. Well, “air,” if podcasts count. Steve Dahl. I’ve listened to the first podcast (which was Tuesday — he does a new hour from his home basement studio every weekday) and he sounds to me in great form after a forced hiatus from FM. (CBS is paying him to sit out his contract for another couple of years — nice work if you can get it.)

There is no one to whom I could listen do nothing but sit and talk at me on the radio for an hour but Steve Dahl. There once was someone else — his name was Jean Shepherd, and he had a nightly radio show on New York AM station WOR in the late sixties and early seventies that I used to pull in from Philadelphia when I was in college. You’ve probably seen the movie of Shepherd’s A Christmas Story. Shepherd was a brilliant monologist, and so is Dahl. True, Dahl bounces off a couple of studio lackeys that he keeps around for the purpose, while Shepherd gave the impression of being in the studio alone, but I don’t take points off for that.

He talks about issues in his personal life that are bugging him, what he finds funny, the absurdity of the day’s news, his own considerable flaws, whatever. Sure, he’s witty, and there’s little enough of that on the airwaves, but it’s how wit is combined with realness that sets Dahl apart. You never feel he’s pulling punches, but you never feel he’s saying anything for effect, either. When you listen to Dahl, you hear a person, and you feel you may know him better than his own family does. The honesty is so vivid, it puts all else on the radio into relief; you realize that everyone else is faking it.

If art exists to imitate life — if all the arts, on some level, are about creating a recognizable analog of life — then Dahl is a rare artist whose medium is the extemporaneously spoken word. Over time, using only the sound of his voice, he has created a fully-formed realization of a man called Steve Dahl, who lives with you in your car, sits beside you in your office, or hangs out with you in your kitchen. He does have one disciple, a 10-to-midnight weekend guy on WGN-AM named Nick Digilio, who is the best younger hope for radio. When Dahl is ready to hang it up, Digilio (whose intelligence any Dahl fan will immediately recognize) will assume the mantle. Other than Digilio, there’s no one else. I hope Dahl takes care of himself, and lives healthy, because I don’t want him to die before I do.

He’s not a “shock jock,” because he knows that shocking people is easy, and he’s set his sights higher than that. It must be that being yourself on the radio is the hardest thing to do, judging from how few have done it.

You can find the podcast on iTunes, or at Dahl.com.

Some media attention is being focused this week on a scene in the most recent episode of the early-sixties advertising drama Mad Men, in which Sterling Cooper partner Roger Sterling, at a country club function he’s hosting, performs a song in blackface. (The still above is from that scene.) The moment shocked audiences as a reminder of our unenlightened past, as if it were from a past we have left behind.

But if you look around and listen, you’ll discover we haven’t left it behind, and are not any more evolved than people were in 1963. Slate today has a feature on “urbanized” cartoon-character t-shirts, including one depicting a black Bart Simpson; and anyone listening to the radio will hear white singer after white singer attempting to “sound black.” Indeed, the phenomenon of white suburban teenagers dressing and talking “black” is so well-known now as to have become a cliché. The only difference is that (actual, non-cartoon) people don’t put black makeup on their faces anymore — but I would argue that’s a minor difference. We may have changed the form blackface takes from the one Roger Sterling employed, but we have not changed the substance.

White people have been appropriating black styles of performance and presentation since Reconstruction (sometimes in admiration, sometimes in parody, and sometimes in an ambiguous blend of the two), and it shows no sign of stopping. To find yet more examples, one has only to look at all the scenes in movies of the last twenty years in which some white middle-class guy or grandma gets up at a wedding reception and does hip-hop, an idea clearly intended to be received as hilarious in itself. Blackface the way Roger Sterling did it is no longer approved, but our society has its own ways of doing it now, which are so much a part of our fabric that we don’t even think about it. Any more than Roger did.

Remember the 5 & 10? Before Targets, Walmarts and K-Marts, there were human-sized large stores that sold just about anything you needed, from panties to parakeets. Harry Warren and Mort Dixon even wrote a song about them, with a line that went, “I found a million-dollar baby, in a five and ten cent store.” Woolworth’s, Kresge’s, McCrory’s: The stores were cheap, and felt cheap. That was their glory. Most 5 & 10s are gone now. But wait!! An internet site called Wards 5 & 10 — which actually grew out of a real 5 & 10 of the same name in Northern New Jersey — recreates the old five and dime experience, and is here to sell you just about anything life requires. Brilliant! I’ll be over in the aisle with the Ja-ru Fun Bubbles blower. Meet you by light bulbs. Stop and smell the popcorn.