"Anytime Movies" II: Citizen Kane

So obvious a choice.

Yet “Citizen Kane” (or RKO 281) has been fielding off re-appraisals and critical backlash since the day of its premiere. Is it really "the greatest American film ever made?"

Yes.

So far….

Part of the argument against it is that it can’t be since it was the product of a 26 year old who had never made a film before. But Orson Welles was a 26 year old who grew up pampered and precocious—who read Shakespeare at an age when other kids are reading Seuss. As a teen he made his way in the world by his brio and his considerable talents and his nerve to try just about anything. He was an artistic sociopath who staged alternative Shakespeare productions and avant-garde radio plays for years before be given, as Kane puts it, “the candy store”—a carte blanche contract with a film studio to make any film of his choice, any way he wanted with final cut and a stipulation that said no one could alter it in any way in perpetuity (This is the reason why Turner Broadcasting in its rush to colorize movies could never put so much as a pink pixel to “Citizen Kane.” Some contract!). With it, he gathered his seasoned Mercury Theater actors (some of whom would go onto major Hollywood careers), one of the most innovative and painterly cinematographers, Gregg Toland, young, daring editor Robert Wise, the arrogant and brilliant composer Bernard Herrmann, and the amazing technical crew at RKO who produced such amazing feats as “King Kong” and the Astaire-Rogers musicals and turned them loose on Herman Mankiewicz’s long-in-the-planning screenplay that he believed could never be produced.

Out of all that talent at the top of its game, Welles produced the best American movie ever made, and as a reward he was never allowed that freedom again. Ever.

No good movie goes unpunished.

His next film, “The Magnificent Ambersons” was a more mature and accomplished–looking film, but RKO chopped it up. re-shot the ending into a certain incomprehensibility and threw it on the bottom of a cheesey double bill. Welles’ Falstaff movie “The Chimes at Midnight” was the project closest to his heart, and might be better if not for the logistical and technical hurdles Welles had to jump in order to make it.

But “Kane” is the grail—the stuff of legend, and has been looked on ever since with avarice by would-be auteurs with more guts than talent, and therein lies the danger. That reputation could make "Kane" as cold and lifeless as one of the statues in Xanadu’s basement. It’s actually more like one of Susan Alexander Kane’s puzzles—intricate and maybe unsolvable without a lot of effort. There’s one shot where Welles shows his hand. It occurs after Susan has left him, accompanied by the screeching cockatiel superimposed on the screen (“I wanted to wake the audience up at that point,” Welles joked. Really, Orson? Right there?) and right after he trashes her room—destroying the acquisitions of her life—and Kane picks up the snow-globe that will fall from his hand at his death. “Rosebud,” he murmurs (both times) and then walks as in a daze out of her room, into the hall, and past the servants. He then crosses through a mirrored hallway that reflects an endless line of Kanes that recede and disappear. After Kane (and his many reflections) has passed, the camera then pushes into the mirror and out of the reverie of the butler (“Sentimental fella, aren’t you?” “Mmm. Yes and no.”)

That shot is the exit from the worlds of memory through which we have seen many reflections of Kane—the house of mirrors that makes up the bulk of “Citizen Kane,” the movie. It is also our last image of Kane, himself, in the film. He’s talked about through to the end, of course, but that splintered mirror-shot is our final impression of him (Kane—and Welles—are not even seen in the End Credits review of actors). At that point it becomes clear (as crystal) that the entire film is like that hall of mirrors that reflected back the aspects of Kane important to each narrator—a process that began with the newsreel that quickly jumped through the highlights of Kane’s life as a public figure and set up the film’s surface mystery—what is the meaning of Kane’s last word (and so serves as a stand-in for “who was Kane, really?”).

In the course of the various reflections there are all sorts of legerdemain—little tricks and in-jokes—that Welles, who was an amateur magician, clearly loved pulling off even if an audience didn’t immediately “get” them. One of my favorites is the craning shot through the model of the “El Rancho” nightclub where Susan Alexander performs and drinks herself into a stupor every night. The night of Thompson’s first visit it’s storming outside and flashes of lightning hide the camera’s passage through the roof sign and through the glass transom into the nightclub inside. When, half the movie later, we again travel through that transom it’s broken—presumably by our first trip through it. In the film’s original framing (unfortunately not in the DVD presentation) there is the slightest nudge of the camera to the right in the rather severe shot of Mrs. Kane signing little Charles away to the banker, and we see, just on the edge of the frame, that significant snow-globe that keeps popping up in dramatic moments. In the newsreel there is a shot of a newspaper of the entire Kane family. Later in the film, we actually see that shot being taken. Another is the way Kane’s hectoring “Sing-Siiiiing!” to “Boss” Jim Gettys is cut off by a shutting door, but continues by a braying car-horn out on the street. These are little filigrees to the grand architecture of lighting, framing and editing tricks that Welles and his crew pull off.*

But that central question “who was Kane?” is purposely never answered, not by a word, not by an object, and not by a person. In the end, the film says that it can’t solve the problem, that it can only present it, and leave us with the acknowledgement of its complexity.

So what are we left with as the remnants of Kane and his life fly up from the furnace of Xanadu? An answer to the mystery of "Rosebud," but not an answer to the man. For Kane was many things, but as Kane himself passed judgment on himself, he was never great. Given gifts that many of us will never ever have, he ultimately squandered them. Insular, wasteful, in his house of mirrors, he is left alone to contemplate himself.

We all have our gifts. What do we do with them? “Citizen Kane” is like that glass globe that we can peer inside and see the illusion of life…and consider our own lives. And in the end we are left with its final image to contemplate, and one may consider that Kane was a master illusionist himself, pretending greatness where there was none, and utilizing the very same tools used by those other illusionists—magicians and very young film directors--to create those illusions.

Those tools being smoke…and mirrors.

* Orson Welles is unique in the group of directors of movies that I’ve seen in that every time I exit from a new film of his, I come out looking at the world with new eyes…or with a new perception of the old world--one that seems filled with possibilities.

Anytime Movies are movies I can watch anytime, anywhere. If I see a second of it, I can identify it. If it shows up on television, my attention is focused on it until the conclusion. Sometimes it’s the direction, sometimes it’s the writing, some times it’s the acting, sometimes it’s just the idea behind it, but these are the movies I can watch again and again and never tire of them. There are ten. This is Number 2.

2. Citizen Kane
3. Once Upon a Time in the West
4. -Only Angels Have Wings
5. The Searchers
6. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
7. Chinatown
8. American Graffiti

10. Goldfinger

SuperThunderStingCar!

For anyone growing up the the "Super-Marionette" shows of Gerry Anderson, this should be a treat. Anybody else seeing it will think it's just bizarre. It features Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.
(For the record, I was a "Supercar" fan)

Personal Heroes-Schulz

Good ol’ Charles Schulz

He was nicknamed “Sparky.” He taught me how to read. He taught me what was funny. He probably had more than a hand in making me appreciate suffering and melancholy.

And he always made me laugh. He still does. One of the great joys in snatching up the new publications of “The Complete Peanuts” is to see the early, humbly ground-breaking work of Charles M. “Sparky” Schulz—his gentle skewering of life and ideas in Eisenhower-era America-a kind of combination of "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit" and “The Button-Down Mind” dressed in shorts and penny-loafers. The consistent chagrin of Charlie Brown at another talent unachieved. The constant harpiness of Lucy that constantly expanded into inventive new areas of abuse. Linus, the intellectual, who, although he always had a fact or a scripture quote at the ready, still depended on a security blanket. Schroeder-an obsessive compulsive deifying Beethoven to the point he can play classical pieces on a toy piano. Schulz’s kids were doomed to only be seen from two angles only: straight-on or profile--like a “wanted” poster. They walked six inches above the ground at all times. Linus’ little cult of “The Great Pumpkin” that turned religion and the pageantry of Christmas on its ear. The complete neuroses of these little losers that, of course, turns the dog to flights of fancy. You’d escape, too, if your lemonade stand had been replaced by a “psychiatric booth.” (“5¢ The Doctor is In”)

It became the norm (I was going to say fashionable, but that takes some effort) to simply dismiss Schulz and his work. You couldn’t ignore him, he was everywhere—TV specials, greeting cards, Macy’s Parade balloons, hawking Dolly Madison sugar snacks and Met-Life Insurance. Al Capp once wheezed that Schulz was the only man in history who made a fortune selling “clean” postcards. Schulz’s scribbles made him a multi-millionaire with a big skating rink as his own private Xanadu. It’s easy to look at all that and discount the work he was doing. Anything that popular, so universally received, couldn’t be of any REAL value, could it? And sure, he could play it safe. But the basic concepts of “Peanuts” (he hated that name—it was the idea of a publisher) are bizarre. We just grew used to them. And then we took them for granted.

The fact that Schulz, day after day, faced his white cardboard and created a strip six days a week with an expanded Sunday strip by himself with no assistants for nearly 50 years is an amazing achievement (something that is endlessly written about in the links below). That he could still go to that well-spring of creativity and come up with fresh concepts with the exquisitely-timed four panels of his strip makes him that much more inspiring than his contemporaries. Trudeau couldn’t do it. Breathed, Watterson, Larson—they all quit, fearing the dreaded “staleness” that Schulz—humble Charlie Schulz—nimbly avoided for nearly half a century. And his ambitions were rather small: a good quality gag, a fine ink line.

The strip was so much a part of the man and the man the strip, that he only retired, very reluctantly, when he feared he was dying. And when the nation heard that he was hanging it up, it was like somebody pulled a football out from under them. Suddenly, the book collections that stopped being printed every year like clockwork, reappeared. There was a crush for interviews. Tributes were made. At the end of it, Schulz saw just how relevant he was. That must have meant something very special for him in his last days. Or he might have seen it as another “Peanuts” irony, hung his head against a brick-wall and said “Augh!” For me, there is something awe-inspiring and just a little sacred that on the eve of the publication of his very last original strip, Schulz died in his sleep. When his creation ended, so did he. And it outlasted him just a little bit. From a lifetime documenting the frustrations and heart aches of failure, he got that one exactly right. But then, Schulz’s timing was always perfect.

Among the links below are some of those last tributes, and I’ve included Art Spiegelman’s rather cold (and admiring) analysis of the man and his work. Plus, there’s my favorite strip of his…at least today’s.

Bill ("Calvin and Hobbes") Watterson's tribute

Time Magazine weighs in

Fresh Air's Terry Gross interviews Schulz

Mark Evanier on the continuation of "Peanuts" post-Schulz

Bill Waterson (again) reviewing a Schulz biography

John Updike reviewing "The Book" in The New Yorker

An interesting "Slate" slide-show that ties in the Schulz psychology with the work--a bit cruelly

The Boyhood Charles Schulz

"Of all the Charlie Browns in the world, he's the Charlie Browniest"

"Anytime Movies" VI: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

I’m very suspicious of patriotism (I always recall the "last resort of a scoundrel" remark), yet nothing moves me so much like a movie extolling the virtues of America.

It wasn’t until I was voting on the Emmy’s that I sat down and watched “The West Wing.” I figured it was going to be a vapid “America-Love It or Leave It” tract (starring Rob Lowe), even if it did have Martin Sheen playing the President, in which case, I could leave it. But TWW was a serious look at government work—its glories and disappointments, the combination of ego and sacrifice. It could criticize individuals and “ideology for ideology’s sake,” but one thing it never ever criticized was the idea of Public Service, no matter what side of the aisle it was on. At the same time the country is being run by crooks specializing in an institutionalized form of bribery and graft, there is an infrastructure of people for whom government service is a sacred trust (well, there’s gotta be ONE!) “The West Wing” paid tribute to that corps of people wherever they might be, week after week, and it made for refreshingly positive TV. It also made for a refreshing look at our nation as it stands.

And so, too, does “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Made in 1939, it plays like it was written yesterday. When I saw it for the first time—right after “Watergate”—I found it amazingly prescient. But no, it was talking about its own times. The problems just keep re-occurring again and again. And again. Whoever doesn’t know history is doomed to repeat it, and with every fresh crop of people governing, they’ll keep making the same mistakes. Maybe they think they’re unique. Maybe they don’t know history. They say that if you keep making the same mistake over and over, it’s a sign of insanity. Well, psychology never factored in term limits.

“Mr. Smith…” is the story of a youth leader who is appointed to the Senate after the incumbent dies. This runs afoul of the state’s political machine that ran that senator as well as the senior Senator, Paine (Claude Rains)—who just happens to be an idol of the new senator’s.

It wouldn’t work if director Frank Capra didn’t have tall awkward Jimmy Stewart—not James, Jimmy—whose every stammered syllable bespoke humility. But get him talking about America or Liberty of The Capitol Dome and the stutter disappears in a fervent stage whisper that trails off in awe. Mr. Smith isn’t sure of himself, but he’s sure sure of the Country.

And Washington, D.C. is just the place to shake him up with a few lashes of the Beltway. Stewart could be frustratingly folksy, but for Capra (and for Hitchcock and Anthony Mann) he could be unnervingly vulnerable and, at the other end of the bi-pole, dramatically unhinged. The last act of “Mr. Smith…”—the filibuster against false charges of graft—features Stewart in both phases. At one point, he's knee-deep in political hate-mail, clutching it in his hands and looking skyward like Jesus at Gethsemane. Then a few short paragraphs about “lost causes” later, he’s at his most defiant. “You think I’m licked! You ALL think I’m licked!!” That was his Oscar-winning performance, not the next year’s “The Philadelphia Story” where the “cynical reporter” bit just didn’t wash with someone who looked so homespun. The filibuster scene always brings a lump to my throat, and it’s not sympathy pains for Stewart’s frayed larynx.

Now, I’ve read the screenplay to “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” It ends with a big parade honoring the completely vindicated Smith, surrounded by his boy-rangers, supported by the woman-he-loves (Jean Arthur, again, who manages to make her extraordinarily jaded Senate Aide adorable, even when she’s at her worst—and she has a great drunk scene with Thomas Mitchell. Hmmm, Thomas Mitchell, again). Why, even the disgraced Senator Paine is being lionized. Oh, it’s just so sweet, your eyes could roll back in their sockets and jam and stick that way. As Arthur’s Miss Saunders tipsily says in the film, “Nah, I can’t think of anything more shappy!” “Capra-corn” is what the very self-aware director called it.

So, he cut it. Orson Welles has said: "If you want a happy ending that depends, of course, on where you stop your story." Capra leaves his story’s ending ambiguous. Oh, you could call the riotous goings-on at the end a Happy Ending—but all of Paine’s Senate pals are trying to calm him down, telling him it’s okay…everything’s all right, we're still on your side. The only solace Jefferson Smith is granted is in the sympathetic smile from the Vice-President (played by John Ford’s silent cowboy film-star Harry Carey) before he collapses in a heap of his enemy’s mass-generated letters. The movie "celebration" has all the weight of an Al Gore victory celebration on Election Day 2000--a case of premature exaltation. But nothing's been solved. No one's been cleared. Nothing has been decided. There is just misunderstanding and confusion. Carey leans back and has a chaw while the chaos of Democracy continues unabated. It may not be a "happy" ending, considering the sequence that was shelved. It may not even be a dramatically satisfying ending. But it is representative of the loud, messy process that turns the gears of Democracy. However slow-moving, however off-course, they still turn.

Jeferson Smith (Jimmy Stewart) looks for guidance.

Anytime Movies are movies I can watch anytime, anywhere. If I see a second of it, I can identify it. If it shows up on television, my attention is focused on it until the conclusion. Sometimes it's the direction, sometimes it's the writing, sometimes it's the acting, sometimes it's just the idea behind it, but these are the movies I can watch again and again and never tire of them. There are ten. This is Number 6.
III: Once Upon a Time In the West
IV: -Only Angels Have Wings
V: The Searchers

VI: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

VII: Chinatown
VIII: American Graffiti
X: Goldfinger

Personal Heroes-Goldsmith

Jerry Goldsmith

This falls under the category of "writing about music is like dancing about architecture." Suffice it to say that any attempts will be nothing but empty metaphors and vacuous hyperbole.

Jerry Goldsmith is my favorite composer. He wrote film scores--an odd little art not too different from the usual classical commissioned pieces but also having to fit the limitations of the medium, both mechanical and dramatic. Such was my appreciation that when I heard he was giving a series of concerts for his 70th birthday in Scotland (and realizing that he was getting "up there") I was determined to see Goldsmith in concert before one of us died ("Hey, honey, ya wanna go to Scotland?" was how I approached Katheryn) It's one of the best decisions (for the most trivial of reasons) I've ever made. We spent 10 days in Scotland, primarily Edinburgh, which was absolutely wonderful. Truth to tell, the Goldsmith concert, though terrific, was a bit anti-climactic. Still, it was an opportunity to see Goldsmith conduct, and a symphony orchestra play, his wildly-weird music for the first "Planet of the Apes"-- piano players pounding on the strings, brass players playing with their mouth-pieces reversed, percussionists hammering on metal mixing bowls bought that afternoon at Harrod's. And its also important, in this world of recorded music, to see your favorite music performed live, and FEEL it--feel the power of the orchestra pushing against your body. I had a great time.

It hit me hard when he died. He was still composing up until a few months before his death from cancer (His last film, incongruously being "Looney Tunes: Back in Action"--a bizarrely eclectic and technologically challenging score for someone weak from chemotherapy. Anyway, I was inspired to make a compilation of some of my favorite music of his, combined with some of his most challenging pieces--and for the booklet, this is, in part, what I wrote:

Notes on Jerry Goldsmith

So, why this? And why these selections?

It came purely as a reflexive move upon hearing of Goldsmith's death, and as sad as that was, came another thought, purely selfish--well, that means no more new music (And with that, the remembrance of the story about the two directors leaving Ernst Lubitsch's funeral. "Well, no more Lubitsch." said the one. The other--Billy Wilder-- replied: "Worse! No more Lubitsch movies!"). The canon stops right here on this date. No more surprises. No more smiles of recognition. No more new music because the source of that music is no more.

Goldsmith is over.

From the time when I bought my second soundtrack album (with my own money) I have had a great love for the music of Jerry Goldsmith. I bought the "Patton" LP just to have a record of the Patton "speech." I played that a few times, but once I went beyond the words, I found the music spoke more eloquently of the man, and more importantly, had a life beyond the subject matter. It spoke of depths of time and emotion, and I was hooked for the rest of Goldsmith's output. I started to seek him out in record stores. "Papillon" came out, and upon the first hearing I was disappointed--this wasn't the same music. It was undoubtedly Goldsmith, but he was doing different things. This music was more wistful, and also savage. I didn't know whether I liked it. But upon putting needle to record a second time, this "new" Goldsmith spoke to me. After the shock of the new, the appreciation took over, and each new release had its own shocks and new discoveries.

And that's what made Goldsmith so interesting. It wasn't the same old wine in new bottles ala Mancini and Horner and yes, even Bernard Herrmann. This was new wine. As if he went back and re-constructed his career and experience for the sake of the next film. Sometimes, masterpieces would emerge. "The Wind and the Lion." "QBVII." "Islands in the Stream." "Hoosiers." But there would be the failures, also: the "I.Q.'s" and "Mr. Baseball's," and the "Mom and Dad Save the World's". Interesting failures, to be sure, but sometimes in the quest for a solution to the film's problems, the music itself would suffer. For some reason, the essence of film-comedies seemed to elude Goldsmith.

It was fun anticipating new works. What was he going to do for "Logan's Run?" He's doing "Chinatown?" When did that happen? Oh, man! Goldsmith landed "Star Trek: the Motion Picture!!" The new wine flowed and in amazing quantities, from a seemingly inexhaustible and eclectic vineyard. Sometimes it would be good. Sometimes bad. Sometimes magnificent. He reportedly didn't like science-fiction, and claimed he didn't understand it. Yet he scored seminal science-fiction films. Each had its own signature sound: whooping electronics for "Logan's Run;" High-flying nautica for "Star Trek;" Filigreed textures for "Alien." All were different. They were, in fact, worlds apart. Goldsmith did not write for the genre. He wrote for the drama and the story. Rather than overlay a double dose of emotion to tell the audience how it should feel, he wrote inside the story. His music told you how the characters feel.

And he could be counted on to bolster up the infrastructure of the film as well, the perfect example being "Planet of the Apes." A cheap-jack story with obvious ape make-up filmed at the Fox Ranch. But Goldsmith, in the film's first twenty minutes, sets up the crucial mystery and strangeness and other-worldliness. His music distracts us from the Utah locations these "astronauts" are hoofing over, and it's not some cheesy lightning mattes telling us that it's an alien planet. It is Goldsmith's tentative, echoing, uneasy music that takes us off Earth and someplace "not here." All those cooing notes, poinking mixing bowls and cracking balsa wood tells us that despite all the apes speaking English, despite the silly suggestion of a reverse-Darwinism, despite everything on screen and in the story telling us (look, folks...) we're still on Earth. the ending still comes as a shock. And it's Goldsmith--nothing else--doing that.

There's another example in a later minor film called "Malice." It opens with a girl on a bicycle, and a sweet melody that evokes naive innocence. In fact, it's too sweet, in a morose and saccharine kind of way. It's icky-sweet, and you wonder if Goldsmith has fallen off his rocker. Well, the girl in the bicycle becomes a victim of a serial killer, but the sweetness of the melody stays, now tinged with regret and tragedy: what might have been. And it sets you up for the surprise ending of the film two hours later. The melody returns with its hints of victimization and a cruel world, and it blinds you to the fact that the villain of the piece is, in fact, the female lead. You should have seen it coming a mile off. But Goldsmith musically and intellectually trips you up. These movies needed Goldsmith desperately and he made them better than they were.

Well, that's the films. But, as to the selection of the music for the 2 disc overview, I'll admit to leaving off some standards. The Theme from "Star Trek" is there in the form of "The Enterprise." There's no "Alien" to speak of (but you could count the "Freud" selection which Ridley Scott and his editor chucked into the film's mix). No "Papillon." There is none of his essential (and endlessly reused) music for the TV version of "The Twilight Zone." You don't even hear the cascading trumpets of the "Patton" march.

No. What I was going for was artistry. This is Goldsmith at his characteristic best. His way of taking a melody, adding an off-rhythm and punching up the adrenaline. There are themes that thrill or make you cry - music that may clobber you with its brio or savagery. It's music that bolsters the spirit, or dresses you down. I dare you to listen to "A Game of Pool" from "Studs Lonigan," one of Goldsmith's very early film scores, and not have your eyes widen at the turns, cartwheels and jaunts that the young Goldsmith throws at his orchestra (and mention should be made, too, of the incredible performance of session musician "Johnny" Williams at the piano. I'm surprised Williams and Goldsmith remained friends after the rigors of that cue!). His themes for "The Omen" aren't here, but the horrors evoked from Goldsmith in "Jadwiga Revisited" from "QBVII" are more real, and unsettling.

There are very familiar pieces, too: "The Blue Max," "Chinatown," "Basic Instinct" and "The Man from U.N.C.L.E. "But there are some that aren't heard enough--or simply have not received the release they should, for example the amazing action writing from "Lonely Are the Brave" that features some kinetic writing for percussion--then followed by a similar technique used in his score for "Under Fire," with a completely different sound. Goldsmith's plaintive melody for solo-guitar for "Rio Lobo" is far removed from the celebratory Copland-like Americana the (now) late Elmer Bernstein wrote for John Wayne. His music for the little-seen John Huston romp "The List of Adrian Messenger" sounds like it was written for Mr. Scratch himself. And a couple of his concert pieces--"Fireworks," "09-11-01," and "Soarin' over California"--are also included. If only there was room for his fanfares for the Academy Awards and for Universal pictures.

But, alas, that's the limitations of CD's. This compilation actually started out as one CD of some of my favorite Goldsmith music, and it was impossible. My first cut included an extra twenty minutes of music. So, a second CD was planned--and it was soon filled to overflowing as well. There are many things I'd wished I could include on this--"The Invaders" from "The Twilight Zone," for instance--but it would've gobbled up twelve precious minutes of CD-time. Time better spent on Goldsmith's masterful Prologue music for "The Agony and the Ecstacy." This is a pretty good overview: Goldsmith at his most celebratory and introspective. Musical moments of high adventure and deep despair.

It's odd, though. There is a curious thing about the sequencing: it goes from a light mood to dark on both discs. Perhaps it's just my sadness at Goldsmith's passing, but it's actually the way I preferred the music to flow. One would wish to end on a note of triumph, but at the end of the day, it's the end of the day. For example, I felt that Goldsmith's triumphal music to "Omen III: The Final Conflict" was absolutely necessary, but once it soared announcing the Second Coming, it transitioned back into a dark section, and served as the lynch-pin between the two sections of celebration and darkness. That seemed to work naturally, just as the sad triumph of QBVII's End Titles seemed the perfect way to end Disc 2. And there was no better way to end disc 1 than the "Patton" coda. All glory is fleeting.

Long after Goldsmith's sole Oscar for "The Omen" flakes and cracks, the music will remain: constant and eternal.

Bravo, Maestro. Though I understand there'll be no encores, I'll keep applauding anyway.

Below are three Goldsmith video's: the first is a short segment of a "Making of..." documentary, discussing some of the behind-the-scenes negotiating on "Star Trek: The Motion Picture."
The second showcases Goldsmith's writing supporting an evocative scene from "Patton."
The third is an editor's whimsical attempt to put "Planet of the Apes" into "The Twilight Zone" format (after all, they're both from the pen of Rod Serling) and features quite a bit of Goldsmith's score for "Apes" (and no, he didn't write the theme for "The Twilight Zone").







Jerry Goldsmith On-Line -a pretty definitive fan-site
Jerry Goldsmith at imdb-Wow! He got nm0000025
Jerry Goldsmith at Wikipedia
Film Score Monthly
FSM's tribute to Goldsmith
Goldsmith on WHYY's Fresh Air
NPR (All Things Considered) report remembering Goldsmith
NPR (Weekend Edition) Aprreciation of Goldsmith
Extended video interview with Goldsmith (ostensibly about "The Sand Pebbles but is fairly wide-ranging)

Visitation Writes

Katheryn's been at work all week, commuting between Tacoma and work, so it's been me and the Animals for the past week. Towards the end, they're not holding up their end of the conversation any too well, so it's always nice to get a visit. Last Saturday, Farmer Scott and the "Other" Steve Martin stopped by The Big Moat, and I walked onto the ferry and met them for a leisurely breakfast at The Greasey Spoon--a fine eatery in the lovely town of Schmuckitewya. It's been awhile since I'd seen them, me living so far away, and I appreciate the extra effort it took for them to make it out there.

I know it took an extra effort because they were both limping going into the restaurant.

But over coffee and hearty meals, we did some catching up. Farmer Scott is heading off to New Zealand for a farmer's junket, evidently to study how the Hobbits do crop-rotation (anti-clockwise in that hemisphere, I believe) and to site-Zea. Envious. Green, I am, and it's not easy, being. "The Other" is still cranking away out at Redmond, and making plans. It was good to see them, and I must say, that walk-on business is the only way to float the Moat. I just abandoned my cares and my car (with its freshly-done laundry) and hoofed it to the dock, where they let me on for FREE (I had to pay to get back, though)! We made promises that we'll get back to seeing movies together again...but damnned if we could come up with one that we regretted missing over the last summer.

Then, this past week, Director Dan came out to see the place. I get a call from him about every three weeks, checking in, and this weekend, he said, he was coming out.

To the Island.

After missing the place (by a good 10 miles), he doubled back and met me and Smokey down at the beach--that being neutral ground. Smokey's pretty territorial when it comes to the house...the car...us..., so Katheryn and I have been reading up on "Pack Psychology" in order to out-fox the dog. We're now being "quietly assertive pack-leaders," which translates to not yelling at him or kicking him in the head every time he barks. It's made a big difference in how he relates to us (but I have to admit missing the kicking part). So, by the time Dan walked up to us, Smoke' was otherwise engaged chasing a rubber, squeaking hamburger out into the waters of the Passage. By the time Dan got to throwing the burger, Smokey was won over. There was a little growliness when he saw him up on the porch of the house (He drove up from the beach, we walked), but some quiet assertiveness (reminding the dog that he was supposed to be "healing" and that meant staying out of the way of my feet) let the dog know that he was supposed to be a welcoming influence. When we were in the cabin, there were some more growls, but once attention was being paid to the cat (Dan and the cat go way back), the dog couldn't have been more solicitous...or obsequious...or other four syllable words that are far too complicated to explain dog-behavior. We fed the animals, and went out to dinner (Toby's, natch) and came back. Well, we're going to have to work on that re-entry because Smokey returned to his barking aggressive ways. Maybe we were too complacent. He's a work-in-progress.

Speaking of works-in-progress, here's one of Dan's films, courtesy of Ifilm. It's called "The Quest for the Noble Desert Poodle," and it stars a lot of our friends in a tale about "Science Gone Bad." I did the sound design for it.

Enjoy.

Or, at least don't spam me about it.



Update: I just heard from another Dan--Dan, The Morning Man of Cape Cod (he with the "voice like burnished oak," and, boy, is that a story to tell) e-mailed me to say that he was flying to swingin' London to see John Barry (briefly) in concert at the Royal Albert Hall. Barry is the film-composer responsible for "Born Free," "Out of Africa," and "Dances with Wolves," as well as scoring 11 James Bond films (woof!). Dan's taking a page out of my play-book, when I...well, that's a story for another time. Like tomorrow.

Coming up this week: a musical hero and a political Anytime Movie (like we need more politics in our lives)...

"Anytime Movies" III: Once Upon a Time in the West

Landscapes.

That’s what’s featured in Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West.” Whether it’s the vast,
aboriginal spaces of Monument Valley—an affectionate genuflection to the films of John Ford—or the intricately chiseled planes of the faces of Charles Bronson and Henry Fonda, you spend a lot of time looking at both in “Once….”, as well as deep close-ups on the faces of Jason Robards and Claudia Cardinale. There is one shot where Bronson ever so slowly relaxes a smile out of existence. It’s one of those shots where you don’t know what’s happening until it’s happened, Bronson does it so subtly. It’s one of the things I look forward to in the Dance of Death of “Once Upon a Time in the West.” Here are some others:

1. “Looks Like We’re Shy One Horse…” The first twelve minutes. A dilapidated train station in the middle of nowhere. Three long-coated bad-men wait for a train. They while away the time, each in their own unique fashion. Driven mostly by sound and filmed in extreme close-ups, the sequence, accompanied by the homely squeak of a windmill--one of the out-sized sound effects typical of Leone’s westerns--and the jokey placement of the credits, rolls on and on until a confrontation ends explosively. It’s an opening of great economy and intricate film-making. Few words are spoken throughout. I’ve shown students this sequence to show just how much presence and atmosphere simple sound effects can bring to a scene. Here’s the ending of the sequence. It’s just the opening gambit in a plot by two men who are playing against each other. It will take the entire movie to explain why.



2. “You Don’t Know How To Play” The gist of “Once Upon a Time in the West” is a chess game with lives and futures as the playing pieces. As scripted by Sergio Leone and his co-scenarists--the soon to be master of Italian horror films Dario Argento and the young Bernardo Bertolucci--the movie is a series of moves and counter-moves by the antagonists, each one trying to tame the frontier in their own way, and taking their own sweet time about it. Each has to make the pieces fall their way. For the first-time viewer it can be maddening following the strategems of the four participants in the story, but by the end the motivations and loyalties--or lack of them-- become clear.

3. “People Scare Easier When They’re Dyin’” The villain of the piece is the meanest, rottenest most conniving scumbag to ever walk a dusty street and spit on it. “Frank” is a sadist who smiles when he kills and for the first time in his life he has a patron with a vision—one big enough for Frank to start to see how there might be such a thing as a future, and that one man can own it. He just can’t understand why people are getting in his way.

4. “Instead of Talking, He Plays. And When He Better Play, He Talks.” The composer and the director did it backwards. Ennio Morricone wrote the music for the film first and Leone built his sequences around the music, playing it on-set to establish mood. There are two spectacular pay-offs--one in the previously mentioned Monument Valley sequence. But the other is at a train station where Claudia Cardinale, has just arrived from New Orleans to find no one to meet her. After a long wait (which is actually mercifully short for a Leone western) she decides to hire passage. Sounds disappear as she is seen through a station window talking to an official, and then the camera HEAVES up and over the roof, and in a burst of music reveals a burgeoning western town full of life and activity. It’s as if all of America is presented in that one astounding crane shot. My wife audibly gasped when she saw the shot in some movie clip program on TV, so stunning is the effect. And more than a little of the power of that shot is due to Morricone’s music and the angelic voice of Edda Dell’Orso, wordlessly cooing an ode to the country and to the protagonist around whom the movie and the future hinges.
5. “Ma’am, It Seems To Me You Ain’t Caught The Idea” For the first time in a Leone western, a woman is the hero, but like her predecessor—The Man with No Name—she is flawed, and has some learning to do, and it’s up to Leone’s trio of men – another man with no name using the names of dead men, a wolf-like vagabond-thief, and the villain, Frank—to push, prod, blackmail, challenge and coerce her into a new role. It’s a role each man knows they’ll have no part of and that, for a time, she is reluctant to fulfill. In the last shot of the film, she is seen bringing water to the railroad work-crew who will be bringing people and prosperity to what will be her town. It may seem a servile role, but as we pull away and follow the disappearing tracks to the frontier, leaving her to her future, she begins to bark orders, to direct and take charge. Her station will become a cornerstone of the push west. “This movie drips with testosterone,” a colleague once told me after a screening. Yes, but Leone includes a healthy shot of estrogen as, for the first time, he is dealing with a story that not only leaves the past behind, but also looks forward to the future.

Anytime Movies are movies I can watch anytime, anywhere. If I see a second of it, I can identify it. If it shows up on television, my attention is focused on it until the conclusion. Sometimes it's the direction, sometimes it's the writing, sometimes it's the acting, sometimes it's just the idea behind it, but these are the movies I can watch again and again and never tire of them. There are ten. This is Number 3.

III: Once Upon a Time In the West

IV: -Only Angels Have Wings

V: The Searchers

VII: Chinatown

VIII: American Graffiti

X: Goldfinger

Personal Heroes-Jones

Chuck Jones

Chuck Jones is a big hero of mine, because I grew up watching cartoons. My favorites were always the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies—the products of Termite Terrace, the animated unit at Warner Bros. And of the anarchic geniuses to sync a spitting lisp onto a character,* Charles M. Jones was my favorite. His cartoons had a bit more artistry, a better sense of design. That’s not why I liked them when I first encountered them, sitting on the floor in my ‘jammies, the television looming above me. I liked them because they were meaner.

What I didn’t know at the time was they had a sense of gentleness and tragedy and of doomed inevitability that just tickled me pink--that combination of sweet and sour with a cruel cynicism that delighted me. I didn’t know how powerful Jones’ influence on me was until I was in college, majoring in communications. In a rather useless assignment for some theory class or other, they were showing one of Jones’ Oscar-winning cartoons “The Dot and the Line,” with the sound off, the challenge for the students being to determine what the cartoon was “communicating.” Easy, right? Except for the fact that the cast for “The Dot and the Line” consisted of…a dot…and…a line. No faces or expressions were painted on either character. They were your basic black India ink dot and line. The film had a narration, but the class was not privy to it. Despite all of that, I was able to suss out exactly what was going on throughout (even though I had never seen it before), and even interpret what emotions the…”dot” and the…”line” were going through. I was the only one in the class to do so.

Now, this had nothing to do with me, but everything to do with Jones’ story-telling style being consistent from cartoon to cartoon. This is the guy who made a cartoon featuring musical notes, for sufferin’ succotash. So, when the dot in a moment of sadness sighed, Jones had a way of animating that…even for just a dot…that was distinctive, and for me, identifiable.

Charles M. Jones Esq. is also the only hero I’ve ever met and had a sit-down discussion with. When I worked at KIRO Newsradio, Jones was selling animation cells and was appearing at a gallery (I believe, at the time, owned by his daughter) downtown, and he’d agreed to appear on the Jim French program. He was in his early 70’s at the time, and my impression of him was that he was just like his cartoons—a short, sweet-looking little man, who was as crusty as all get-out. I had him sign an ad for the video of the Jones compilation movie “The Bugs-Bunny-Road-Runner Movie” (“Where the hell’d you find THAT!?” he rasped.) We had a nice, casual conversation before he went into the studio, and, for some reason, we got into the origins of Marvin the Martian. “Well,” he said, “I based it on Mars, the Roman God of War. I figured with the helmet and the armored toga, I could get away with showing what an angry little guy he was with a minimum of work—so I based it on that.” “So….” I said. “What about the sneakers?” There was a Jonesian pause (approximately 48 frames) while he squinted at me like I was an idiot. “I LIKE sneakers!!” he yelled. I howled, and he chuckled. He was called in to do the interview and that was that. There were a couple of other times I had planned to see him, but at one I was booked to work, and the other—a talk and a showing of his adaptation of his buddy, Dr. Seuss’ “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” at the King Cinema, he was too sick to attend. His brilliant background artist, Maurice Noble, came instead.

He died on February 22, 2002, at the age of 89.

I have an animation cell of his that has Daffy Duck (from “Duck Amuck”) holding up a sign that says “Sound, Please!” that I treasure.

Acme Poem Company

Nature’s Cruel. Chuck Jones is crueler.
Time stops for the revelatory pause.
The realization, the brief reaction
Hesitations of inviolable laws
The cosmic clockwork has seized its gears
to present your moment of doom.
Then, once you’ve noticed, it’s on with the show.
Now, wait for it………………

..............................boom!

There are quite a few Chuck Jones cartoons hovering around the web. The one I’d like to have shown “Duck Amuck,” the quintessential Jones cartoon, is no longer available (Now it is! See below), and a bit out of sync and that just wouldn’t do, given his precise comic timing. I briefly considered “Feed the Kitty,” which is very sweet and has fleeting moments of terrible cruelty. I can present, for the time being (as it's been snatched from my clutches before!) "One Froggy Evening." If you’ve never seen it, frankly, I’m amazed—but you’re in for a treat. And, another plus—except for a few songs, it tells its story with no dialog—only visually. Steven Spielberg calls it "The Citizen Kane of cartoons." It, like “Duck Amuck” and Jones’ Wagner parody with Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, “What’s Opera, Doc?,” are part of the National Film Registry, as being "among the most culturally, historically and aesthetically significant films of our time."

As a bonus, an enterprising YouTuber has attempted a 3-D CGI version that is quite impressive. I think Chuck would have been amused...or would have grumbled about it...not sure. Anyway, enjoy...there's another cartoon after.

So, back to genuine Chuck. Here's that all-time classic "DUCK DODGERS in the 24 1/2 CENTURY!"

"Well, I wish you'd explain it to ME, buster!"

Update: Here's my all-time Favorite Chuck Jone short--the surreal meditation on the animated art-form, "Duck Amuck"--not only one of the most radically ground-breaking--make that exploding--cartoons that ever existed but one of the funniest. Enjoy it while it lasts.

* The lisp was a secret dig at the animator’s boss, Leon Schlesinger, who had a prominent lisp and was loathed by all his employees, and who seemed blissfully unaware of the jokes at his expense.

Chuck Jones’ Official Web Page
The Chuck Jones Center for Creativity
Chuck Jones on Toonopedia
A Chuck Jones Fan Site
Chuck Jones at IMDB
Chuck Jones’ Wikipedia entry
Roger Ebert on Chuck Jones
Chuck Jones section of the “Academy of Achievement”
PBS’ Great Performances: “Chuck Jones-Extremes and In-Betweens”
A comprehensive List of Jones’ cartoons
An essay on Jones from “Senses of Cinema”

9-11-2006

"Anytime Movies" Part VII: Chinatown

This is the first of “Anytime Movies” that falls into the category of “Lost Causes and the Futility of Good Intentions,” but lest anyone think these films are depressing, they’re not.

Well, okay, this one is.

It’s also perfect. Given the nature of the trio of men who oversaw its creation—screenwriter Robert Towne, director Roman Polanski, and producer Robert Evans—the thing could have self-destructed like a fragment grenade. And, in fact, the planned trilogy of films featuring detective JJ “Jake” Gittes investigating three big California crimes (water, land, and nuclear) stopped after the personality clashes that derailed the first attempt at filming “The Two Jakes.” Polanski couldn’t set foot on American soil due to rape charges, and Evans (who was producing and co-starring) and Towne (writing and directing) clashed on the set. The combination of expanded roles and ego following the first film’s success shut down production, and it was only the efforts of star Jack Nicholson, who took over directing, that allowed the film to be made. They say that great films need a miracle – “Chinatown” had it, but “The Two Jakes” didn’t have a prayer.

“Middle of a drought and the water commissioner drown. Only in L.A., huh?”

Based loosely on the construction of the William Mulholland designed aqueduct, and the real estate swindles it engendered, “Chinatown” starts out as a mystery even more steeped in the locale of L.A. than Chandler’s Marlowe stories. Here, the very city is a part of the crime and corruption is steeped in its soil and water. Water is the heart of “Chinatown.” Its ebbs and flows are constantly monitored –the original object of investigation is the city’s head of the Department of Water and Power who then becomes the victim of a grisly murder. Water is never too far from the surface of the story. Even Jerry Goldsmith’s shimmering score suggests water in its low harp trills, and the sighing of, yes, water phones.

“Chinatown” gets all its details right—the language, the costumes—Richard Sylbert’s period work is amazing, and a perfect cast makes the most of Robert Towne’s wise-acre dialog. A perfect cast? Right down to the smallest part. There’s a favorite moment of mine when Gittes, after badgering the secretary of the new head of Water and Power, is distracted by an odd squeaking noise. He, of course, has to investigate, and opens the outside door on the two work-men who are scraping the dead man’s name off the door. The one guy looks irritated—the other guy smiles, nods, and as the door is closing shakes his head ruefully—“Happens every time.” It’s a tiny little moment that feels so authentic, so much more than a mere movie might provide, it provides a moment of truth in a continuous string of truths.

But, that is a moment you can appreciate as it happens. “Chinatown” lives on in the memory. After the mystery is solved, moments come back, as the pieces come together and the journey to the conclusion coalesces. They haunt. On repeat viewings, “Chinatown” is a treasure trove of call-backs and foreshadowing’s.* Little things, like the odd cadence of a name, mispronunciations that can be traced back, a birth-mark—lead you downstream to a resolution that you should, in retrospect, have seen all along. Like Gittes, its only at the end that you get the full story. Of course, like him, you follow the most obvious things that seem out of place or arouse suspicions. ** But the world is a more complicated place and long after the film is finished does it strike you that the two most suspicious people while watching the film are actually the most decent and altruistic ones acting with the best of intentions. Of course, in this world they come to a bad end.

“Do you know how long I've been in this business?”

And here’s where that mix of personalities comes in. Towne’s screenplay is very grey—Jake Gittes at the beginning of the film—the very beginning—gets angry and abusive with his moaning client, Curly (In the film, there’s only an impatient irritation). Later dialog casts a sympathetic spin on water magnate Noah Cross. The original screenplay ends with, if not a happy ending, then a triumphant one. Evans loved the screenplay (though he didn’t quite get it), but in one of those odd bursts of inspiration that sustained him throughout an eccentric career as a producer, decided that the film needed a European sensibility, and so, brought in Polanski, who had left the country and Los Angeles following the murder of his wife Sharon Tate by the Manson family. His perverse take on the city and the material focused it, and made a stronger delineation between good that is good and evil that is truly evil—and provided the ending that doomed those most in need of rescuing. “Chinatown” ends in shock, and with a sense of tragic inevitability. That Jake, in a moment of selfishness and hubris, sets up a series of events that ends up completely bollixing up his good intentions, completes a circle and a character arc that had been percolating below the surface the entire time. He ends up ignoring the lessons he learned in Chinatown (the district, not the film), and paying the same consequences. The final words are ironic--“Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.” Forgetting isn’t his problem. Remembering is. Towne would hammer the point home with the last line of “The Two Jakes”—“Kitty! You never get over it.”

But by that time it wasn’t necessary to say.





Jake wants the truth.
He can't handle the truth.






* On my most recent viewing, I noticed a moment that shocked me. After Jake and Evelyn flee a scene in her car amidst a hail of gunfire, the superbly coiffed Evelyn touches her left eye—as if she has something in it. Whether it was Polanski’s or Dunaway’s choice, it’s a brilliantly sick one.

** Towne’s screenplay is so fully formed that, unlike Chandler’s Marlowe stories, a first person narrative isn’t necessary. We are always aware of what Gittes is doing, and thanks to Nicholson’s performance, what he’s thinking.


Anytime Movies are movies I can watch anytime, anywhere. If I see a second of it, I can identify it. If it shows up on television, my attention is focused on it until the conclusion. Sometimes it's the direction, sometimes it's the writing, sometimes it's the acting, sometimes it's just the idea behind it, but these are the movies I can watch again and again and never tire of them. There are ten. This is Number 7.


IV: -Only Angels Have Wings
V: The Searchers

VII: Chinatown
VIII: American Graffiti

X: Goldfinger