Two items: forgotten films and invented greetings. Thanks to my granddaughter (she who visited Paris with us this past summer) there is a new greeting in the family. In fact, our holiday dinner yesterday started with lunch and by request - matzoh ball soup, and by tradition – potato latkes. It is a tradition because they are fried in oil, and it was the miracle of the oil that burned for eight days that underlies a lot of the Chanukah celebration, and is expressed by the eight candelabra Menorah. Evening meal was turkey with cranberry sauce, dressing, pumpkin pie and wine. So much for the amalgamation of Christmas and Chanukah.
Now to the entertainment portion of this epistle The afternoon was passed combing through our son’s prodigious collection (two walls!) of DVDs. Watched one of the most beautiful movies no one ever seems to have heard of. Maybe I missed the fuss over it when it opened nearly ten years ago, if indeed there was any “fuss,” but I had never heard of “Tortilla Soup” before Christmas Day. It is a sweet and startling, sometimes sad, sometimes funny examination of the relationships in a Mexican-American family living in L.A. Three different and delightful daughters, and a superb performance by their father, a master chef played by Hector Elizando. The critics didn’t rave about it when it came out in 2001 and the audiences apparently stayed away. (Not that critical acclaim makes a movie work. Some of every weekend’s top grossing movies get one star panning.)
If you are the father of daughters, you will be delighted.
Almost upstaging the actors is the food presentation. It is a must movie for “foodies.” The dishes are astonishing and the photography is perfect, done by, I am sure, the best food stylists in the business.
What occurred to me more though, was that some movies simply are avoided or ignored. “Tortilla Soup” did not deserve to be. But there are dozens of stories like this. I remember having a conversation with Jeff Daniels about “The Butcher’s Wife.” It was a weird story and co-starred Demi Moore as the clairvoyant daughter of an elderly butcher. I told him I had so enjoyed the movie but asked why did it get so little play? He told me that there was a big management shuffle at Paramount just as the movie was to open and it was “orphaned.” It got no big advertising. No big promotion.
There are other “relationship” movies that seem not to have prospered. By the way, I have no problem with films that are labeled “chick flicks.” Like “Beaches” which was, at least for me, a startling examination of the relationship between women who are best friends. In the film they are Barbara Hershey and Bette Midler. Maybe it did better than I suspected having a “gross” of more than $50 million.
I remember “Where’s Poppa” a very funny, very dark comedy with Ruth Gordon, George Segal, Ron Liebman, and Trish Vandervere (who was then married to George C. Scott.) I laughed so hard I went back two days later and laughed even harder – in anticipation of what was to come. At week’s end it disappeared. Gone. Forgotten.
A few years later I interviewed its author and director, the incomparable Carl Reiner. I asked him why the movie disappeared. He told me it was coming back as a cult movie.
Maybe it did. But it’s another one that if you have never seen is worth visiting. There is a peculiar change in the editing between the theatrical version and the one released on videotape. I presume the first was the studio edit and the other was the director’s edit. The one which I suspect was the director’s edit, had an extra scene that turns the entire story around. It is better ending but the studio honchos must have considered it too daring,
Maybe I should put some of this on Facebook so my “friends” and curious trouble-seekers can tell me what movies they loved that the public ignored. Maybe some of you blog readers will join the quest for more of "the best movies people never saw."
Meanwhile - Happy Christmakah.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
ALL HAIL THE THINKING VOTER - ER - TAXPAYER
Even after so many years away, people still ask me: “Would you go back into Talk Radio?” It is only then that, realizing I have no interest in returning to the scene that made me a household word so many years ago, I wonder. Is it because I am too old? Burned out? Bored? None of the above. It is because, when given a forum to air views, compare opinions and – most of all – perhaps actually learn from what is said – nothing changes. Every time I returned to the mike there were the same callers saying the same angry and empty things. They weren't the same people of course, but you get the point.
I made several returns to radio, mostly because nothing else was happening in my “career” and there were still broadcast executives who thought I would be good for the ratings. What appalled me was that twenty, thirty, forty years after the mind-numbing calls from people who wanted to talk about crosswalks while the world was in turmoil – nothing had changed. The final reminder of futility came today.
I’m at my computer at early morning to check local and international media for news, and editorial opinion. One of my stops is the Toronto Star. Not because I love the Star, but because it is local and expresses a local point of view. (I could say the same about the Sun, but that would be stooped.) This morning I went to the “comment” section to read what Torontonians were saying about Mayor Ford. A column had been written saying that he had already pushed through three of his campaign promises. Those, in my opinion, were a slam dunk, and like the writer of the article, I warned that he was about to come up against some of the really big stuff. (Even though he promised he would stop the "gravy train," he announced that he had staff working to find elements of that gravy train.) What colossal gall! What I found among the hundreds of responses to the article on Rob Ford’s future, was a replay of the same kind of comments I heard more than forty years ago!
Some were good, but most were expressions of distaste for the Toronto Star, and expressions of delight that Ford had “swept” to victory. What was missing, and it chronically was on the radio, was a real sense of “knowing.” Did these commenters have anything in their words but personal bile? Did they actually have any information? Neither of those two questions can be answered positively. The responses were simply vacuous rants against imagined enemies. The commenters were the very people Ford spoke to successfully when he elevated (?) them from voters to taxpayers. The latter word having the required emotional pull.
Let me pause here. In my radio years people would ask: “How do you keep listening to all those stupid people?” I would try to respond with something to redeem the medium, and in fact, there were always callers who had their wits about them, who contributed opinions based on information. But information doesn’t matter as long as you can persuade people that they are unhappy and voting for him would be a poultice for that unhappiness.
I had hoped, I guess, to be a small contributor to raising public awareness. Instead I became the receptor for some awful illiteracy. I suppose I still envy the Steve Paikens of this world who can do a profoundly intellectual job of dealing with current affairs. I did have my own moments when I could communicate at a decent level and make some small change. But I was, and still am today, haunted by the declaration: “That’s my opinion and I’m entitled to it.” The most mindless reading of democratic thought. The notion that whatever opinion you have, even though it is not backed by information, but is supported by prejudice, is a worthy opinion.
Do I want to re-visit it? You tell me.
I made several returns to radio, mostly because nothing else was happening in my “career” and there were still broadcast executives who thought I would be good for the ratings. What appalled me was that twenty, thirty, forty years after the mind-numbing calls from people who wanted to talk about crosswalks while the world was in turmoil – nothing had changed. The final reminder of futility came today.
I’m at my computer at early morning to check local and international media for news, and editorial opinion. One of my stops is the Toronto Star. Not because I love the Star, but because it is local and expresses a local point of view. (I could say the same about the Sun, but that would be stooped.) This morning I went to the “comment” section to read what Torontonians were saying about Mayor Ford. A column had been written saying that he had already pushed through three of his campaign promises. Those, in my opinion, were a slam dunk, and like the writer of the article, I warned that he was about to come up against some of the really big stuff. (Even though he promised he would stop the "gravy train," he announced that he had staff working to find elements of that gravy train.) What colossal gall! What I found among the hundreds of responses to the article on Rob Ford’s future, was a replay of the same kind of comments I heard more than forty years ago!
Some were good, but most were expressions of distaste for the Toronto Star, and expressions of delight that Ford had “swept” to victory. What was missing, and it chronically was on the radio, was a real sense of “knowing.” Did these commenters have anything in their words but personal bile? Did they actually have any information? Neither of those two questions can be answered positively. The responses were simply vacuous rants against imagined enemies. The commenters were the very people Ford spoke to successfully when he elevated (?) them from voters to taxpayers. The latter word having the required emotional pull.
Let me pause here. In my radio years people would ask: “How do you keep listening to all those stupid people?” I would try to respond with something to redeem the medium, and in fact, there were always callers who had their wits about them, who contributed opinions based on information. But information doesn’t matter as long as you can persuade people that they are unhappy and voting for him would be a poultice for that unhappiness.
I had hoped, I guess, to be a small contributor to raising public awareness. Instead I became the receptor for some awful illiteracy. I suppose I still envy the Steve Paikens of this world who can do a profoundly intellectual job of dealing with current affairs. I did have my own moments when I could communicate at a decent level and make some small change. But I was, and still am today, haunted by the declaration: “That’s my opinion and I’m entitled to it.” The most mindless reading of democratic thought. The notion that whatever opinion you have, even though it is not backed by information, but is supported by prejudice, is a worthy opinion.
Do I want to re-visit it? You tell me.
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