The House Next Door

By Sheila O'Malley

This is not meant to be an overview of Paul Newman's career, or even a list of favorite performances. A life as long as Newman's is inevitably filled with many dips, valleys, peaks, and missteps. I have really enjoyed reading the tribute pieces about him, which have served to deepen my understanding of what it was that made Newman so special. His is a story of endurance, certainly, but also one of tenacity. His early work in the 50s can have an over-studied feel to it (albeit engaging, and boy, was he beautiful)—it's like he's being a "good Method student" trying to get an A in class. Marlon Brando so dominated the atmosphere at that time that Newman (whose resemblance to Brando in his youth was always irritating to him) struggled to find a way to separate, to stand out. But it was in the 60s and 70s when Newman took off, in unexpected singular ways—sinking into his persona, inhabiting it like a well-worn sweater ... and by then nobody would think to hold him up next to Brando because his work was so, well, his own. This was not an easy journey for Newman, and it's sometimes easy to forget that because of his many successes. But he made his mark. Indelible ink.

There's so much to say about him, so many great roles: Hud, Cool Hand Luke, The Hustler, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Nobody's Fool, The Color of Money. Mr. and Mrs. Bridge is a detailed, exquisite examination of a cold bottled-up man, one of his best performances in my opinion. There's also Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Fort Apache, the Bronx, Blaze (I love him in that), Slap Shot (Hallelujah!), Sometimes a Great Notion. And I can't forget his beautiful, sensitive work as a director. He directed his wife Joanne Woodward in two of her most searing performances: The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-In-the-Moon Marigolds—an almost unbearably intense performance—and The Glass Menagerie.

Playing failed southern Belle Amanda Wingfield in Menagerie, Woodward has said that Newman gave her one piece of direction: "Don't cry." If she ever shed a tear, he'd ask for another take. Having seen many a tear-drenched, maudlin Amanda Wingfield in my day, I can say that Newman was a genius for understanding that it is the surface of Amanda—her flouncing, pretentious surface—that will make the audience ache for her, not any tears that she might shed, which would, necessarily, come off as self-pitying. Tennessee Williams was always ferociously specific in his stage directions and notes for actors—to play the survival of these characters, not their victimization. He said that he had never written a "victim." (Words to live by for performers approaching those great parts.)

I'm a bit overwhelmed right now, but I want to hone in on three specific roles (or moments) of Newman's because, first of all, they span his career (beginning, middle, end), and, second of all, they illuminate the Newman-ness of Paul Newman, that indefinable thing that makes a good actor specific, memorable, and alive under imaginary circumstances.

SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH (1962)

Paul Newman originated the role of Chance Wayne, the washed-up stud in Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth, on Broadway, and reprised his role in the 1962 film with Geraldine Page (who also played her role on Broadway). I sometimes think that the later Paul Newman, the more grizzled tough guy of the 70s and 80s, would have been even better in this part. Newman still has the glow of youth about him, and the truly corrupt nature of this character (a tragic corruption) is soft-pedaled in the film, which weakens it. Regardless, Newman is wonderful here: riveting, sexy (that dive off the diving board!). You ache to touch him.

There's a moment when Geraldine Page, as the pot-smoking crazy washed-up movie actress, pulls back his shirt to stare at his chest, and the expression on her face is like she's looking at a scrumptious piece of key lime pie. It's a startling moment of objectification, and Newman, lying on his back on the bed, is so "over" her in that moment, so ashamed of who he has become, so taken up with his dreams of failed glory and the love he has ruined that he barely notices her voracious eye. Perfect Tennessee Williams moment of missed connection. The male offered up to the fading female as eye candy, as comfort in her mania and loneliness ... but at what price to the male? What echoes are in his head? What does he want? Newman, in an unselfconscious unself-important way (he never seemed all that interested in how beautiful he was, although he knew how to use it to great effect), manages to suggest all of that torment in his characterization. We forgive him. Steve Vineberg writes in his book Method Actors (which has a whole section on Newman):

"There's an old-fashioned Hollywood moralism at work in both the touchingly well played The Hustler and the vastly entertaining Hud that keeps threatening to dampen the proceedings. This is the stage in Newman's career when he's expected to pay for his good looks and easy charm—for making everyone fall in love with him when he flashes those bedroom eyes ... The ending [of The Hustler], a mixed triumph for Eddie, makes it possible for us to live with the fact that the movie has used the very qualities we love Newman for to score points against him."

In Sweet Bird of Youth, Newman's beauty is an undeniable fact of nature, like a rainstorm or a sunset. You can't dispute it, you just have to deal with the reality of it. And in the context of that play, his beauty is seen as somehow dangerous, disingenuous, hinting at a shallowness of character. Perhaps if Chance hadn't been so damn good-looking he might have, you know, developed into a better man.

Newman does not have the crazy, cocky charm in Sweet Bird of Youth that characterized his later roles, but there is one moment which, for me, movingly illustrates Newman's interest in the craft of acting, in imbuing it with a natural dignity:

He's in the bar in the hotel, and, naturally, all caught up in the moment-to-moment reality of his situation. He's back in town where he's enemy number one, he's playing stud to a failed movie actress, he's hoping against hope that he will have a reunion with Heavenly—the local girl whom he ruined by giving a venereal disease. So he's got a lot going on. Not to mention the fact that Newman is also creating the drunkenness (Chance always has a flask in his pocket) and the "high" that accompanies the pills he pops. Chance is polluted. Perhaps he needs to pollute himself after polluting the once-pure body of his girlfriend. Newman's work here does have what I would call a "workmanlike" quality to it. He came out of the Actors Studio where "sensory" work was paramount: creating heat, drunkenness, headache, a head cold, horniness ... whatever it was. So you can see Newman doing all of that, obligating himself to the demands of the script.

And there's a moment where suddenly, in the midst of all the activity going on in the bar, he hears a scrap of music from the next room, or maybe it's from the bandstand by the lake ... and it stops him in his tracks. You know how sometimes you hear a bit of music and it is not as though you are transported back in time, you really feel you are back in time: when your mother sang you that song as a toddler; when you heard that song on the radio the moment before you got the news your father had died; when you had your first kiss to that song ... whatever it is ... and that is what Newman plays here. It's startlingly good. It's what sensory work should look like.

The best part about it is that it is not done in closeup, which would have meant that the director would have had to cut (then Newman would have had a chance to privately create the moment for himself). No, it's all done in one take. He's babbling, drinking, laughing ... and then, in the same take, he stops, head cocked, and you watch him flow back in time. There's sadness there, a wistful quality that is quintessential Tennessee Williams ... and it is Newman's freedom with his own process, his own imagination, his craft, that I remember. It's not easy to act a moment like that. The traps are all over the place—it could seem mawkish, sentimental, or, worse, fake. Newman also had to do it within the larger context of the scene, so it had to actually happen to him—which makes it more like something you would see on the stage, rather than on the screen. It is why so many film actors fail when they try to do a play. They are used to having prep time for their big scenes. They are used to the cutting and interrupted flow of storytelling. To use their imagination in the moment is difficult. Newman, with all his stage work, and his devotion to the craft of acting, had none of those problems. He knew how to do it. It's a true piece of poetry!



THE STING (1973)

The second thing that came to mind when I heard of Newman's passing was his raucous, campy performance as Henry Gondorff, the con man in The Sting. It's a mere 11 years after Sweet Bird of Youth and the transformation is so startling that you can't believe it's the same actor. Newman has none of that studied quality anymore, none of that "let me show you my sensory work" Method-type acting from earlier in his career. He has, to put it mildly, arrived. This is an example of perfect casting, as well, and I think that Newman, because of his looks, took hits harder when he was miscast. There's an Adonis-like quality to his younger face which, naturally, led him to be cast in certain kinds of roles. He was in Picnic on Broadway, his debut, where he played Alan Seymour, the preppy college boy whom Madge throws over for Hal, the sexy drifter. It's interesting to consider that Newman's actual personality was far more suited to the Hal part: the wild-boy ways, his undomesticated charm, and the fact that every woman—married homemakers, spinsters, intellectual bookworms, or high school beauty queens—looks at him and can't help but think: "That man knows how to fuck." Mrs. Potts, the hard-working Kansas woman who has hired Hal to work on her house, has a monologue in the last couple of moments in the play where she admits the effect Hal had on her:

"With just Mama and me in the house, I'd get so used to things as they were, everything so prim, occasionally a hairpin on the floor, the geranium in the window, the smell of Mama's medicines ... He walked through the door and suddenly everything was different. He clomped through the tiny rooms like he was still in the great outdoors, he talked in a booming voice that shook the ceiling. Everything he did reminded me there was a man in the house, and it seemed good ... And that reminded me ... I'm a woman, and that seemed good, too."

If that doesn't describe who Paul Newman was in his best roles, then I don't know what does! But Newman's natural devilishness had not yet gotten a chance to express itself. The 60s freed him up. The Yale-educated preppy boy faded and the rakish "man who knows how to fuck" persona ascended.

The reason I bring up The Sting is personal. When I was a little kid, my parents let my brother and me stay up late (on school nights, no less) only two times. Once was to see What's Up, Doc?, and I still remember my brother, probably 8 years old at the time, hunched over on the ottoman, holding his stomach he was laughing so hard at the Chinese dragon flying through the streets of San Francisco. The other time was to watch The Sting. I was probably 9 years old when I first saw it, and to this day it has the glow around it—a personal glow—that my parents wanted my brother and me to see it. They thought we would love it, and that we were ready for it. I do remember being shocked by the strip club scene with the dancer twirling her tassels (this on primetime!), and I also remember being utterly gobsmacked by the last "sting" in the film—the one where the film itself "stings" the audience. I didn't get it. My parents had to explain it to me: "See, that FBI office wasn't real ...."

Paul Newman's performance in The Sting was probably a walk in the park for him. This was not new territory for him, neither was working with Redford, but one of the things I love so much about it is how much of a kick HE is getting out of the entire thing. Newman took acting seriously. He was the president of the Actors Studio, after all. He had worked hard at his craft. He has said that he felt that his wife was actually a genius ... a natural talent, and he was the one who really had to work at it. But by the time he did The Sting, you rarely catch him "working." He is fearless, funny, campy, crotchety, sexy in a mischievous (yet always friendly) way, never soft. He is behaving in front of the camera. All moments feel "caught" rather than "performed." He is having a blast. That translated to me as a small child. Even though he was a grown man, I related to him. He behaved inappropriately. He had fun for the sake of fun. He messed with people. He burped. You know. That was all in the day of a life for me as a child!

Again, to imagine that Newman got his start playing Alan, the upstanding domesticated waiting-for-marriage good boy of Picnic is just indicative of how hard Newman really worked, and how he seemed to understand very early on that it would be his acting that got him ahead, not just his looks. If he skated on his looks, then he would never have played Henry Gondorff in the way that he did. Newman's relationship with his beauty was always an interesting element in his career, and it just got more interesting the less interested he was in it. It's not that he grew into his face. It's that life did a number on him, as it does a number on all of us, and his experiences showed. His became one of the most lived-in faces in movies, and in The Sting we are starting to see the veneer crack. What comes out is a helluva lot of fun.


OUR TOWN (2003)

Lastly, I must mention Paul Newman's performance as The Stage Manager in the televised production of Our Town (2003), which he had also played on Broadway. I have seen Our Town more times than I can say. I have seen all kinds of Stage Managers. It's the kind of role that lends itself to pretty much any energy. I saw it at Trinity Rep in 1986, and Richard Kneeland, the actor playing the part, inhabited it with a kind of folksy gentle humor. He strolled through the audience, you'd suddenly realize that he was sitting right next to you on the stairs, nudging you and grinning about the action going on onstage. He was compassionate towards the poor mortals in the play, who had no understanding of their own mortality. You got the sense that he once lived in Grover's Corners.

I saw Spalding Gray do it on Broadway, with Eric Stoltz and Penelope Ann Miller as George and Emily—and Gray was much more of a modern presence. That guy never lived in Grover's Corners. He represented the universal eye, the omniscient consciousness. The production, with its completely empty stage and its stunning poster (a picture of the globe from outer space) had a distance to it, as though all of us in the audience were circling the earth via satellite, staring down at the puny problems of the invisible masses below. Gray dressed in unobtrusive gray (the other characters wore period-appropriate costumes, but he was in modern dress), and really did nothing more than be himself, saying Wilder's words. It fit. While he wasn't warm, you also got the sense that he "got" it. You knew that he looked on George and Emily's blossoming romance, thinking, "Yes. Yes. Life sometimes can be like that. I do remember." Penelope Ann Miller spent the entire third act shrieking at the decibel-level of a Greek-tragedy (please leave some space for ME to cry, Penelope, don't take up all the tears for yourself!), but Gray emerged as the real tragic figure. He was us ... and I realized that the poster was from his perspective, and that was what made him so quietly sad.

Now we come to Newman. The televised production is so worth seeing with many wonderful performances (Jane Curtin, especially), but Newman, looking at the action over his glasses, with a rather forbidding expression on his face, his presence a stern, still reminder of mortality, is truly haunting. I've never seen the Stage Manager played the way he played it. Emily looks around for comfort, reassurance, but she'll find none of it from him. He acts mainly as a tour guide, but the way Newman does it makes it seem like a tour of Pompeii, as opposed to something in the more recent past. Our Town is performed so frequently that I sometimes forget its power. It becomes diluted. Not so here. The set is shadowed, Newman stands silhouetted in the background, and there are times when he seems almost tired in his role. Life wearies him. He's over it. It's so effective. He too, to quote James Joyce, is becoming a "shade." And so Emily's new-found grief is nothing to him, because his concentration is already starting to turn to the end, his own end.

Patricia Neal tells a chilling story in her autobiography about one of her first conversations with Paul Newman, when they began working on Hud. Her daughter Olivia had died the year before. Neal had not recovered. Neal writes:

"We had not yet played a major scene together. In fact, we may have been discussing the work to come. Suddenly, I found myself not talking about the picture at all. I was telling him about Olivia. I went on about her loveliness and talent and her fragility and how much I loved her ...

""My sisters-in-law took charge of everything. They did not let me do a thing. I didn't even see Olivia." I found myself admitting. "Do you think that's right?"

"Paul didn't answer.

""I just saw that damned closed coffin. I should have taken a stand at the time, don't you think? I was her mother. I had a right to see her."

"Paul finally looked at me. For a long moment, he just stared through me with those blue eyes. Then he got up and said quietly, "Tough," and walked away."

Neal was crushed. Maybe Newman felt like she was over-sharing, maybe he was uncomfortable, or maybe he felt that whatever dynamic they developed had to be expressed onscreen, not off ... and in this vein, Neal writes:

"I began to realize that although I had poured out my heart to Paul Newman, it was Hud Bannon who had responded."

I bring this episode up because Newman's blunt "Tough" in response to Neal's story is what I see him capturing in the Stage Manager, and his performance highlights, in a very unusual way, the true brutality at the heart of that American classic.

In the last moments of the play, Emily turns to the Stage Manager and says:

"Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute?"

The Stage Manager replies: "No," before softening it a bit with, "The saints, poets, maybe—they do some." Richard Kneeland, at Trinity, said it in a sorrowful way, feeling Emily's grief as his own. Spalding Gray had more of an existential shrug in the line, he had to tell her the truth, but he was so used to it that there was no sense getting sad about it!

Paul Newman is ruthless in the moment. She barely gets the line out before he fires back, "No." Total shut-down. Total rejection of her concerns, and her sadness. Truth: unvarnished. Don't bother kidding yourself, sweetheart. This is the reality. Get used to it ... and stop sniveling. His elaboration of "saints, poets, maybe," then, comes off as a careless afterthought, relatively meaningless. Instead of being a contemplative moment of acknowledgment that yes, some people do "get it," it feels more like he's throwing her a bone. Brilliant. Devastating.

"No." I can see the entire trajectory of Paul Newman's diverse career in that one ruthless line-reading.



There was always a cool-ness to Newman in his best roles. He didn't cheapen himself by giving it all away. He did not make a commodity out of his own emotions, like so many actors do. He worked. He knew what he was good at, and yet when he needed help he took it.

Sidney Lumet, in his book Making Movies, shares a very moving anecdote about Paul Newman, when starting work on The Verdict:

"He is an honorable man. He is also a very private man. We had worked together in television in the early fifties and done a brief scene together in a Martin Luther King documentary, so when we got together on The Verdict, we were immediately comfortable with each other. At the end of two weeks of rehearsal, I had a run-through of the script ... There were no major problems. In fact, it seemed quite good. But somehow it seemed rather flat. When we broke for the day I asked Paul to stay a moment. I told him that while things looked promising, we really hadn't hit the emotional level we both knew was there in David Mamet's screenplay. I said that his characterization was fine but hadn't yet evolved into a living, breathing person. Was there a problem? Paul said that he didn't have the lines memorized yet and that when he did, it would all flow better. I told him I didn't think it was the lines. I said that there was a certain aspect of Frank Galvin's character that was missing so far. I told him that I wouldn't invade his privacy, but only he could choose whether or not to reveal that part of the character and therefore that aspect of himself. I couldn't help him with the decision. We lived near each other and rode home together. The ride that evening was silent. Paul was thinking. On Monday, Paul came in to rehearsal and sparks flew. He was superb. His character and the picture took on life.

"I know that decision to reveal the part of himself that the character required was painful for him. But he's a dedicated actor as well as a dedicated man. And ... yes, Paul is a shy man. And a wonderful actor. And race car driver. And gorgeous."

The 20th century is marked by his work. Gorgeous, indeed. Gorgeous, indelible ink.

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House contributor Sheila O'Malley blogs about film, literature, photography and life at The Sheila Variations.

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By John Lichman, Vadim Rizov, Keith Uhlich, Glenn Kenny, and Andrew O'Hehir

[Editor's Note: The views expressed in this podcast are those of the commenters, and do not necessarily reflect the official policies, positions, or opinions of The House Next Door.]

INTRODUCTION

Hello, and welcome back you crazy kids.

Episode 3 marks the first time we've started recording under our new name, and just in time! Andrew O'Hehir (Salon's Beyond the Multiplex) and Glenn Kenny (Some Came Running, That Other Film Magazine That Used To Be Good) return to Grassroots to give us their thoughts on what should be a surprise at this year's New York Film Festival (which began this past Friday evening).

We go over the hit-making process, Glenn's recent delve into the newly released Godfather collection (the first two films are now playing at Film Forum) and O'Hehir defends his loving takedowns of Burn After Reading and Towelhead.

So listen on, and join us next time as Keith Uhlich, Steven Boone and Lauren Wissot take our place at the bar while Vadim goes across the country in search of himself and I look for work in Manhattan.

As always, thanks to our guests, and if you see Vadim or me at the bar, buy us a drink and employ us. (JL)

Podcast is embedded below. Any problems, it can also be found here as a downloadable mp3 file. (TRT: 01 hour, 07 minutes, 02 seconds)

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PODCAST



_________________________________________________
John Lichman is a freelance writer who contributes to The Reeler, Primetime A&E [print only] and anyone with cash. He works odd jobs to afford his vices, sleeps on couches and can drink Vadim Rizov under a table.

Vadim Rizov is a New York-based freelance writer. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, The Onion AV Club and Paste Magazine, among others.

Keith Uhlich is editor of The House Next Door.

Glenn Kenny is the man, the myth, the legend.

Andrew O'Hehir is former mentor of the Andy Kaufman of journalism (three guesses).

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By John Lichman, Vadim Rizov, Keith Uhlich, Jeremiah Kipp, Kevin B. Lee, Preston Miller, and S.T. VanAirsdale (in absentia)

[Editor's Note: The views expressed in this podcast are those of the commenters, and do not necessarily reflect the official policies, positions, or opinions of The House Next Door.]

By this point, I think we could be discussing Godard for all I remember. (Ed note to John: You predicted the death of Paul Newman, you callous son of a hamster!) Let's listen together faithful non-listener. (JL)

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PODCAST

Embedded below. Any problems, it can also be found here as a downloadable mp3 file. (TRT: 22 minutes, 52 seconds)




_________________________________________________
John Lichman is a freelance writer who contributes to The Reeler, Primetime A&E [print only] and anyone with cash. He works odd jobs to afford his vices, sleeps on couches and can drink Vadim Rizov under a table.

Vadim Rizov is a New York-based freelance writer. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, The Onion AV Club and Paste Magazine, among others.

Keith Uhlich is editor of The House Next Door.

Jeremiah Kipp sees no evil.

Kevin B. Lee walks in the shoes of many a great man before.

Preston Miller is taken. Hands off ladies!

S.T. VanAirsdale had to run.

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1. Had the great pleasure of meeting GreenCine's David Hudson yesterday (sorry I didn't see you after the Che screening, and safe flight home today), so lead link to him: the first NYFF podcast (direct audio link here) by Aaron Hillis and Andrew Grant, recorded after the Film Criticism in Crisis panel at Lincoln Center, featuring Hudson, Jonathan Rosenbaum, and Gavin Smith.

["Aaron Hillis and Andrew Grant begin this year's series of podcasts from the New York Film Festival by talking with a few of the participants in Saturday's panel, Film Criticism in Crisis? I blather a bit, but things get interesting when Jonathan Rosenbaum and Film Comment editor (and panel moderator) Gavin Smith exchange views on the current state of things."]

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2. "New DVDs": Dave Kehr's latest NYTimes column looks at Early British Cinema.

["On this side of the Atlantic it’s easy to get the impression that filmmaking in Britain began in the late 1940s, with the first big-budget films of David Lean (“Brief Encounter,” “Great Expectations”) and Carol Reed (“The Fallen Idol,” “The Third Man”). With few exceptions, like the science-fiction epic “Things to Come” in 1936 and a handful of Alfred Hitchcock films, the prewar British cinema remains a blur. The standard histories maintain that there wasn’t much worth seeing: this was, after all, the era of the “quota quickie,” cheap little movies made solely to fulfill the demands of the 1927 Cinematographic Film Act, which required that 5 percent of the movies on British screens actually be British. (That figure was raised to 20 percent in 1935.) But now, thanks largely to the efforts of the British Film Institute, some of those quota quickies have slipped back into distribution, and it seems that something might have been going on there after all. Two recently issued collections offer strong evidence of life: “Classic British Thrillers” from MPI Home Video (mpihomevideo.com) has two quota quickies by the great Michael Powell, “Red Ensign” (1934) and “The Phantom Light” (1935), as well as a compelling postwar curiosity, Lawrence Huntington’s ingeniously constructed “The Upturned Glass” (1947)."]

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3. "Bush: ‘Painful and lasting’ economic damage": A report and video from MSNBC on the bailout situation.

["President Bush said Tuesday that the economic damage to the nation will be “painful and lasting” if Congress fails to pass a $700 billion bailout bill. Bush said Tuesday that “Congress must act” and said the economy is depending on “decisive action on the part of our government.” He spoke before the U.S. stock market opened for trading Tuesday and one day after the House voted narrowly to defeat the massive relief measure that his administration and leading members of Congress had agreed was necessary. Bush said he wanted to “assure our citizens and citizens around the world that this is not the end of the legislative process.”"]

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4. Ebert on Newman, thrice over: "Paul Newman: In memory"; "Campaigning with Paul Newman"; and "You wild, beautiful thing. You crazy handful of nothin'".

["After she read my obituary of Paul Newman, my wife Chaz asked me, "Why didn't you write more about his acting?" She was right. Why didn't I? I've been asking myself that. Maybe I was trying to tell myself something. I think it was this: I never really thought of him as an actor. I regarded him more as an embodiment, an evocation, of something. And I think that something was himself. He seemed above all a deeply good man, who freed himself to live life fully and joyfully, and used his success as a way to follow his own path, and to help others. If Newman was that kind of person, so, too, was his wife of more than 50 years, Joanne Woodward. Too little attention was paid to her in the appreciations. They grew old and fine together. None of us can ever know the truth of another life. But to the degree that we can guess it, I believe that Joanne and Paul shone upon each other, agreed on the fundamentals, expressed the same fusion with acting, did good, were happy in a way that brings contentment."]

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5. Catching up with two posts at The Pinocchio Theory: 1) "More electoral ruminations" (excerpted below), the response to which inspired 2) "A Note on Evil."

["In recent years, and especially in the weeks following McCain’s selection of Palin, conservatives have excoriated liberals for, basically, thinking that conservatives are stupid, and that stupidity is the only explanation for why anybody would, say, be enthusiastic about Palin. And I think that the conservatives who argue in this manner are somewhat correct — at least to the extent that, as I’ve said before, many liberals’ scorn for Palin has prevented them from seeing the great appeal she has, affectively, to large segments of the electorate. We shouldn’t argue the election on the grounds that Palin is “unqualified” or that she is “trashy.” Rather, we should make it clear that even the most minimal sense of human dignity requires us to throw the Republicans out of power. It is not stupid to vote for McCain/Palin; rather, it is evil. Republicans are intrinsically, and necessarily, morally depraved. Anyone who votes for McCain/Palin, or supports them, by that very fact demonstrates that he or she is a person utterly devoid of basic morality, and lacking in any respect for others. To vote for McCain is to shit on human civilization, and show utter contempt for human values and human hopes. And not in spite of the Democrats’ hypocrisy, but rather precisely because of this — because their hypocrisy is, as it were, the compliment that vice pays to virtue — the moral thing to do in this election is to vote for Obama."]

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Quote of the Day: Wendell Phillips

"What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first step to something better."

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Image of the Day (click to enlarge): Can't go wrong with Kinski. (From Jahsonic, who reminds us that 120 years ago today...)



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Clip of the Day: Lichman's right, Dancing Bananas are great in times of crisis (and even better when joined by Pedo Bears).

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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged. Suggestions for links are also welcome. Please send to keithuhlich@gmail.com.

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By John Lichman, Vadim Rizov, Keith Uhlich, Jeremiah Kipp, Kevin B. Lee, Preston Miller, and S.T. VanAirsdale

[Editor's Note: The views expressed in this podcast are those of the commenters, and do not necessarily reflect the official policies, positions, or opinions of The House Next Door.]

The drinking continues. The arguments get louder. We get worse. Sigh. (JL)

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PODCAST

Embedded below. Any problems, it can also be found here as a downloadable mp3 file. (TRT: 45 minutes, 53 seconds)




_________________________________________________
John Lichman is a freelance writer who contributes to The Reeler, Primetime A&E [print only] and anyone with cash. He works odd jobs to afford his vices, sleeps on couches and can drink Vadim Rizov under a table.

Vadim Rizov is a New York-based freelance writer. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, The Onion AV Club and Paste Magazine, among others.

Keith Uhlich is editor of The House Next Door.

Jeremiah Kipp ... what can one say?

Kevin B. Lee is also like life.

Preston Miller can drink Vadim Rizov and John Lichman under more than a table.

S.T. VanAirsdale will de-FAME yo' ass!

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By Max Winter

I have to admit that I began watching the first presidential debate with a considerable number of preconceptions, so the notes below are more a record of slow evolution of opinions rather than up-to-the minute observations.

What were my opinions? That McCain, by virtue of being a Republican, is better at this stuff than Obama, "this stuff" being the nitty-gritty, the mud-slinging, the toughness, the way you win elections. Obama is a talker, not a fighter; his hope must be that through deluges of sheer verbiage he can drown out his opposition. That technique is interesting, in his case, because he's a good talker, but it doesn't work. Or hasn't, yet. The opposition is floating on a comfortable swimming pool raft, maybe even the kind with a drink holder.

As I turn on the TV, having promised myself I wouldn't listen to that much commentary, I hear Keith Olbermann saying that McCain has to be at the "top of his game," and then I hear Chris Matthews saying, on the one hand, that Obama "better have some set pieces," and then comparing John McCain to Admiral Queeg on the other. I understand the need of our commentators to frame these debates, conventions, and the like, but why must the framing always be so aggressive, so over-caffeinated, so quintessentially male? The intent is always to ramp up excitement and anticipation, but the effect for me, always, is one of deflation.

As the debate starts, I'm thankful that Jim Lehrer is moderating. He's always been a comforting presence to me. He might also lend a note of maturity to the proceedings. And from the outset, he seems very gentlemanly, relaxed, aware of the urgency of the economic backdrop, but not nervous about it, or at all interested in promoting the tabloid fervor that's filled the airwaves recently. To look at him, you would think nothing was wrong, almost—his professionalism could stem from the fact that he comes from an era when there was actual news to report, and public/political affairs were not so … meta. Where the circumstances surrounding an event, the ephemera, become more important than the event itself, and, further, where any sort of event might stir commentary—a New Yorker cover, a fist bump, whatever's available. What about the suicide bombers? What about the tensions with Iran, with Pakistan…?

The first question, about the recent economic problems we've been having, fills me with relief. I was hoping it wouldn't be avoided or skimmed over, and it certainly wasn't. And yet the response I get is not heartening. I want to hear an explanation of what happened, exactly, in 20 words or less, but I don't get it; I wanted to be educated, as FDR might have done during the Depression. The candidates' responses, here and elsewhere, seem to clash in a muffled way—no one candidate's attitudes ring loudly enough to resound. I find myself pleasantly surprised, overall, by Obama's performance. While his remarks carry their trademark low-key tone, they are also very simple and very direct; he makes the 5-6 points of his plan very clear, which I rarely see in campaign speeches, his or others.

McCain, like Obama, though few people give him credit for it, has a command of language, or at least stands for the valorization of language in his speeches. I can't say I believe in the purpose his lengthy lines are intended for, but I do respect their general complexity. In this debate, though, his sentences seem often disconnected, unrelated to the question at hand. He wastes valuable seconds thanking his hosts and expressing concern about Ted Kennedy, then addressing the toll on "Main Street." But there's no connection to be had here—it's all the traditional platitudes, mixed into a goulash of social and economic risk.

Once the conversational part of the response begins, in which the candidates are allowed to talk to each other, the pettiness begins on both sides. They both flash their angry smiles: McCain's stiff and somewhat surprising, every time it happens, Obama's with a little too much dimple. So I haven't gotten my summary, they haven't made their positions on the crisis overly clear (in addition to not discussing how they felt about being part of the conversation), and yet they still seem to be arguing. Over what? Is it that they feel obliged to argue?

On the question of sacrifices necessary in their plans due to the economic crisis, neither is terribly succinct. Obama wins on clarity this time, but not on memorability; here and elsewhere, his words drift into your ear, you like them, and then they drift out. Because I've listened to a lot of his speeches, I remember them, and so I suppose his approach is working with me, but I wish I had some sense of the passion that's driven him to this point. McCain aims directly at the question, and he is quite direct on spending, if his message at times seems too simple. Simplicity, as I often say to my hopeful friends, wins. Or has a chance at it.

As the focus shifts to the war, things get more interesting, and more aggressive, at least relatively. The candidates' positions on the current war, and on future wars, should be evident to anyone who reads the newspapers or has some ability to predict liberal vs. conservative thinking, and so their responses to the various questions raised tend to bleed together. I find myself unsettled, at various points during their discussion, by sides I have not seen before and by sides I have.

McCain fully displays his stale grandfatherly side, the voice filled with the impulse to reassure, to quiet doubts of him, even at a time when his listeners need more reassurance than he could ever offer, and also at a time when they could not be more doubtful. He also uses a tone I haven't heard before, but one which is apparently quite common with him: the angry tone. It comes out with each of his oft-cited statements of Obama's inexperience, it comes out when he talks about Ahmadinejad's anti-Israel statements (even turning into a stage whisper, somewhat Reagan-esque, when you consider that he named Reagan his favorite statesman), and it comes out, oddly enough, when he doesn't say anything at all. I don't mind seeing anger in political candidates, but if that's the emotion that comes through strongest on the night of a debate, rather than compassion or, at a time such as this, concern, then I feel misgivings. Is it best to make anger at an opponent your most distinguishing characteristic at such an event?

I was unsettled, on the contrary, to see Obama give a similar performance to the ones he's given before. He added nothing new to his anti-war rhetoric outside of the bracelet moment (when he matched his veteran's bracelet with McCain's), or in the series of "You were wrong" reproaches of McCain, or in the citing of McCain's "Bomb Iran" song. He states the facts as they are and as 90% of his voters must know them. But can we say he lost? Or McCain won?

In watching this debate, a viewer would have to fight against the temptation to award brownie points based on political bias. Obama has been praised widely for looking at his opponent when his opponent did not look at him. I'm not sure if, in balance, this matters much. It matters as an expression of attitude, but certainly not as a matter of presidential qualifications. Anyone can pivot their trunk. The aim should be, for such a candidate, to control the conversation, to have the room. And neither did.

We also have to avoid giving points to either candidate based on our sense of experience. Obama's praise always carries with it, like a silent letter in a word, the understanding that he's never done this before; McCain's praise, when he receives it, always carries with it the understanding that he's a seasoned Washingtonian. Moral aspirations are more important than anyone's experience, or lack thereof, at this historical moment.
_________________________________________
Max Winter is a New York City-based poet, critic and editor. His poems are collected in the volume The Pictures and have been published in the Denver Quarterly, Volt, The Yale Review, Octopus, The Paris Review, Boulevard and elsewhere. He is a poetry editor of Fence.

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By Robert C. Cumbow

[Publication Note: This article is being cross-published with Parallax View.]

[Editor's Note: The House Next Door is proud to reissue a series of articles developed at 24LiesASecond, a now-defunct platform for provocative criticism with an underdog bite. The essay below was first published on 11/26/2005, under the editorial guidance of James M. Moran (editor-in-chief) and Peet Gelderblom (founding editor).]

(Caricature Zone)
Robert Altman and Francis Ford Coppola, arguably the two pivotal figures of American cinema in the 1970s, both rose from the turmoil of the transition from studio-based to independent production, to emerge as leading forces in film production as well as film style. Each eventually formed his own production company—Altman’s Lion’s Gate, Coppola’s American Zoetrope—and patronized the work of aspiring young film-makers (such as Altman’s nurturing of Alan Rudolph and Coppola’s of Caleb Deschanel).

Though Altman’s films compare with Coppola’s as chamber music does with grand opera, their work in the 1970s exemplifies what ultimately became the prevailing style of American film direction in that era: maverick resistance to studio-imposed time and budget constraints, insistence on directorial authorship, reliance on location shooting, use of improvisational acting, an emphasis on ensemble playing rather than star performances, Fordian gatherings—weddings, church services, parties, dinners—as exponents of group character (both Altman and Coppola had Catholic upbringings), and a revisionist approach to the mythic archetypes of the Hollywood genre film.

Each in his own way overhauls, even debunks, the generic conventions of the war film, road film, crime film, screwball comedy, and private eye film established in the heyday of the moguls. An important part of that overhaul is the rejection of the star system, and the consistent suppression of the very notion of “star”—and often of the star himself: Altman’s radical alteration of Paul Newman’s screen image is as crucial as Coppola’s of Brando’s. Moreover, more so than most of their contemporaries, both directors rely on supporting characters and unknown actors to carry the burden of a film. Altman distributes attention among so many players that there is no clear “star;” or he discredits the very idea of stardom or screen heroism (The Long Goodbye, Nashville, Buffalo Bill and the Indians). Coppola acts directly on the star to evoke a self-effacing, even self-abusive performance (most memorably Gene Hackman in The Conversation and Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now).

The relation of star to supporting players, of mythic hero to the community, and, of course, of the artist to his public is manifest in Altman’s and Coppola’s abiding concern with the workings of power. In each director’s films of the 1970s, character is defined in terms of the individual’s response to the temptations and demands of power. Altman is interested in the relation between power and performance. For him, power imposes, as in Greek tragedy, the dilemma of a choice between equally painful courses of action (the forced service of the doctors of M*A*S*H, the sell-or-die option offered John McCabe by Harrison Shaughnessy); but the choice carries with it the opportunity to assert a higher kind of freedom (the doctors of the 4077th save lives and subvert military authority; McCabe founds a community as much through resistance and death as through entrepreneurism). Coppola is more concerned with the struggle between power and traditional morality. In his world, the free man is nothing (Michael Corleone at the beginning of The Godfather, Harry Caul throughout The Conversation, Captain Willard at the opening of Apocalypse Now) until he adapts to the demands of power, even embraces power for its own sake.

What happened in the world of movie-making between the Hollywood of the 1950s and that of the 1970s was not a weakening but a redistribution of power. Not coincidentally, the redistribution of power is exactly what Altman and Coppola, in different ways, made their most enduring films about.

"I wonder how such a degenerate man ever attained a position of responsibility in the Army Medical Corps?"

"He was drafted."

—Conversation between a military nurse and a military chaplain, M*A*S*H—

For the theatre full of GIs with whom I first saw M*A*S*H in 1970, that reference to the draft was the high point of the film. This was clearly a Vietnam-era movie, the dilemma of the surgeons a neat metaphor for the one each 1970 draftee had faced. The draft is the moral basis of M*A*S*H: It is the arbitrary, faceless intrusion of power that forces the free man to choose between undesirable alternatives (in 1970, prison, expatriation, or forced service and the face of death). The surgeons’ assertion of freedom and humanistic values in the Korean War of M*A*S*H parallels what happened in the Vietnam era when a like-minded generation of draftees, pressed into service of a cause most of them opposed, forced the military to adapt to them.

At the height of anti-Vietnam protest from within the ranks, a dissenting army psychiatrist wrote that military psychiatry is a contradiction in terms, since psychiatry aims to help the individual realize himself, while the military depends upon conforming him to the group. The same kind of collision makes rebels of the doctors and nurses of M*A*S*H. Stealing a jeep turns military structure against itself: When everything is “issued,” what is theft? Where war itself is justified, anything can be justified.

Religious values are crudely perverted (the self-defeating fanaticism of Major Frank Burns) or utterly lost (the charming ineffectuality of “Dago Red” Mulcahy). “Military chaplain” is also a contradiction in terms, and Father Mulcahy seems to realize it. The Last Supper parody, from Buñuel out of Da Vinci, stresses the absence of substantive religious values in the formalized wasteland of the military at war.

Altman has peppered M*A*S*H with reminders of the popular “snafu” war-comedy films of the 1940s and 1950s. This is very much to the point, for in its revision of the prevailing trend of Hollywood comedy, away from plot contrivance and toward the spontaneous, improvisational comedy of individual assertiveness, M*A*S*H attacks that worn genre and the values that created it. “War comedy” is the biggest contradiction of all.

"I don’t make deals."

—Dog Butler, bearhunter, McCabe and Mrs. Miller—

Contempt for authority and embrace of moral absurdism color all of Altman’s films of the 1970s. Subjectivism is the only reality in such internalized fantasies as That Cold Day in the Park, Brewster McCloud, Images, 3 Women, and Quintet. In the pre-civilized world of McCabe and Mrs. Miller, a primitive ethic prevails. Kathleen Murphy perceptively noted that there is no need of law, lawyers, or enforcers until the faceless, relentless firm of Harrison Shaughnessy enters the film. In California Split, a post-civilization film, the exemplar of power is money, and once its mystique fades, so does the whole complex structure of contemporary American values. Ultimately, nothing matters: The staggering amount Bill owes, his job, the women, his overwhelming winning streak, his friendship with Charlie—all conventional cares give way to the apocalyptic anarchy of M*A*S*H and the elevated liberation of Nashville’s “It Don’t Worry Me.”

"I got poetry in me! I do!"

—John McCabe, businessman—

There is a peculiarly Joycean sensibility in much of Altman’s work. Nashville’s satirical optimism, from “We must be doin’ somethin’ right” and “Yes, I do” to “It Don’t Worry Me,” is an ironic but joyous refrain like Molly Bloom’s “yes i will yes.” Nashville is, in fact, remarkably reminiscent of Ulysses: Witness the long, episodic design; the mixture of the satirical with the nightmarishly painful; the layering of mythic archetypes over the comings and goings of small characters through a real city over a well-defined period of time; the revelry in the possibilities of cinematic style (like Joyce’s festival of literary parody and typographical experimentation); and the celebration of human frailty over the strictures of society.

If Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus evokes Daedalus the designer of the labyrinth, Brewster McCloud evokes Daedalus the builder of wings. But Brewster fails as Daedalus, and is destroyed like Icarus because he reached too high. A quieter variation on the same idea is the visual metamorphosis of Sueleen Gaye into a caryatid on the stage of Nashville’s Parthenon.

Altman’s best examination of the tension between spiritual ideal and fleshly reality that informs all myth is McCabe and Mrs. Miller. John McCabe and Constance Miller build their business on appeal to the flesh: whoring, drinking, gambling. The ironically-named town of Presbyterian Church grows around their industriousness, while its namesake remains unfinished and empty. The church’s outer shell is completed with the placement of a spire by the preacher, while McCabe’s chippies arrive to the tune of “Sisters of Mercy.” As long as McCabe and Mrs. Miller flourish, the church stands empty. Constance cautions John not to give his whores time to relax or they’ll surely turn to religion. The preacher is placed in tacit opposition to McCabe—an opposition that becomes explicit when McCabe seeks shelter in the church during the climactic gun battle: The preacher drives him out at gunpoint.

A moment later, Dog Butler, gunning for McCabe, shoots the preacher instead, and a dropped oil lamp sets the church ablaze. The fire, fought by the villagers, is extinguished only after the three hunters and their prey—McCabe—are dead. Mrs. Miller, who has seen the futility of McCabe’s stand and has failed to comprehend his self-image (perhaps because she does not understand America), loses herself in a deeper commitment to opium.

Brewster McCloud, John McCabe, and Nashville’s Barbara Jean are pioneers of the human spirit, transcending and transforming the society around them. They represent the best the human race has to offer.

"Freezin’ my soul, that’s what you’re doin’, just freezin’ my soul."

—John McCabe, poet—

Power in Altman’s films tends to destroy people or turn them into symbols—or both. Even in their raucous assertion of freedom, the surgeons of M*A*S*H become symbols of defiance. Their distance from their own identities is slammed home in the shock-cut of a docking troopship and cheering crowd inserted into the silence following the announcement of Hawkeye’s and Duke’s transfer home. The significance of Brewster McCloud and of John McCabe is more enduring than the men themselves. Quintet transforms the ice-world of McCabe and Mrs. Miller into a frozen world-soul, proposing a quietly violent parlor game, with a name from chamber music, as a metaphor for life. On one level, 3 Women is about people who make symbols of themselves: Millie is the archetypal American consumer, Pinky turns herself into an image of Millie, Willie is the kind of mystery-creature she paints, and Edgar’s studied adoption of the trappings of the B-western gunman indirectly authors his own demise. The progress of Nashville is a process whereby its characters, objects, and events contrive to become symbols.

"You don’t belong in Nashville!"

—Haven Hamilton, country star—

For his mythic statement, Brewster McCloud usurps the Astrodome, home of football. Nashville’s Opryland is a forum for the musical equivalent of football, and its Parthenon a metaphor for both the endurance of America and its overhaul of the Athenian principles of democracy. When Barbara Jean sings “My Idaho Home,” a paean to what she—and America—have lost, singer, song, and stage are metamorphosed before our eyes and those of the kid with the gun. Kenny fires not at an individual but at a symbol—and thereby steals the scene. He’s a performer, too, with a gun in his fiddle case.

"Do you want to go see Nine to Five?"

"Who’s in it?"

"Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton."

"No."

"But I thought you liked those people."

"I liked them when they were entertainers. I don’t like them now they’ve become Statements."

—Conversation with my wife—

How do the people, the mass, the audience deal with the power inherent in their heroes? What are real heroes (as opposed to “stars”) like? Altman is always asking these questions. His most direct approaches to the tension between person and symbol—his 1970s “showbiz” movies Brewster McCloud, Nashville, and Buffalo Bill and the Indians—deal with the difference between person and star, between entertainer and statement. Casting Paul Newman as Buffalo Bill, the living lie who is always more comfortable with made-up history than with real identity and responsibility, Altman attempted a definitive statement about show people that, unfortunately, mixes uneasily with Arthur Kopit’s definitive statement about the American Indians.

In the Nashville airport there’s a poster of singer Connie White, and someone has slapped a Hal Phillip Walker campaign sticker across it. Tom, Bill and Mary hurry past, but Bill stops long enough to observe, “Wait a minute! Hal Phillip Walker looks exactly like Connie White!” This mock-confusion of star with politician is an early preparation for the grimmer confusion of star with politician that climaxes the film.

Since the Romantic revolution, western society has increasingly placed the mantle of priest on the shoulders of either the politician or the performer, and in the 1970s, Altman was already commenting on this cultural confusion. In true Altmanesque fashion, at the end of the decade the United States would elect a former movie star to the presidency.

In Nashville, Barbara Jean’s importance as both celebrant and victim of a ritual sacrifice is prepared by the film’s methodical use of religious imagery. Altman cuts from Mary’s quiet adoration of Tom in bed to a stained-glass Christ; her upward glance echoed by the upward angle from which the camera begins a slow descent along the church window. The cut contrasts the contemporary mythos of Saturday Night with the Christian mythos of Sunday Morning, while comparing two kinds of worship and love. The montage continues through three different church services, ending with a humble tableau of wheelchaired Barbara Jean in the hospital chapel, singing, “He walks with me and He talks with me …”

She’s an unlikely Christ, but a Christ nonetheless, with a Palm Sunday processional (the airport), an Agony in the Garden (the outdoor concert), a public crucifixion, and an exuberant resurrection. Less appreciated is Brewster McCloud, a pagan priest who falls because he has given up his virginity. Brewster is an unacceptable offering to the gods.

"When it’s over, it gets real sad."

—The end of a wedding, and a marriage, in A Wedding—

The title sequence of Brewster McCloud is a tilt-down from blue sky to band and singers rehearsing the national anthem. At the end of the film, the movement is echoed in a fast downward swish-pan to Brewster’s crumpled body, almost under the feet of the circus parade. Nashville, by contrast, begins with the camera still as the door of the Walker-Talker-sleeper rises; and ends with the world holding still as the camera rises, lifting us for the first time above those singers and that massive flag, then stopping-down to bring blue sky into proper exposure before fade-out. The two films, in all their remarkable imagistic similarity, describe a fall from the divine to the depths of fleshly failure, and an ascent through Purgatory to Paradise regained.

Too often Nashville is discussed in terms of Altman’s “bleak view” of America at the Bicentennial. For all his cynical satire, Altman infuses the film with much that is positive about Americans, and climaxes with an exhilarating reaffirmation of life in the face of death and despair. Both Brewster and Barbara Jean become symbols of the aspirations, struggles, successes and failures of the American Dream, and are destroyed at the peak of their identification with all that is most typically American. Society destroys its heroes? Perhaps. Maybe the People participate vicariously in the fall of the hero, then revel in the passing of the myth. Celebration of the enduring community is the province of the People, not of individuals. Altman’s is a Fordian sort of populism: Brewster McCloud’s circus parade and Nashville’s “It Don’t Worry Me” both evoke resurrection, but of the community, not of the fallen hero.

The people of Presbyterian Church put out the fire while McCabe dies: The moment of the little guy’s destruction is again the moment of reaffirmation of the community spirit. Insofar as the community survives the hero, it may be said to participate in his destruction. Yet this is not a matter for mourning, for the hero’s legacy makes survival of the community possible, and that is worth celebrating.

The central conceit of Nashville, and of all Altman’s work in the 1970s, is to blur, even obliterate, the distinction between performers and their audiences; between entertainers and their statements about the community; between individuals and society; and, of course, between movie-images and movie-goers. In Nashville, Altman picks his characters out of crowds, and puts them back there; follows one, then another; watches them or leaves them alone (a conceit that he would later exaggerate in the self-satirical and Welles-lampooning opening shot of The Player). They attract our attention from within the frame more often than they conspicuously enter it. In A Wedding there are twice as many characters to keep track of in the same way, too many of whom, in mid-shot, look like too many of the others—which is of course part of the point of both A Wedding (as it is, much later, of Gosford Park).

Altman’s use of a resident stock company of actors, à la Bergman, gives his world a hermetic, mythic property, while stressing his underlying populism. Every time an Altman hero is ritualistically destroyed, like the Fisher King (Brewster McCloud, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Nashville), or punctured and debunked (The Long Goodbye, Buffalo Bill and the Indians, Quintet), or dispersed among so many characters that no more distinction exists between lead and supporting player (M*A*S*H, Nashville, A Wedding, Health), the star system and “old Hollywood” are subverted, along with the top-down capitalistic hierarchy that created them.

"We’re not supposed to be in Cambodia."

—GIs confront the limitation on human behavior, and imperceptibly cross the line, Apocalypse Now—

The Fisher-King is celebrated and destroyed. The individual is replaced by the community, just as families and friendships are replaced by alliances in Quintet (and, by the way, in The Godfather). Power is transformed, redefined, redistributed; the People survive; and it remains for the Poet to chronicle the passing of the Hero. The centrality of this timeless mythic experience to contemporary life and art is insisted upon in Apocalypse Now, where we see conspicuously displayed copies of the poems of T.S. Eliot, Weston’s From Ritual to Romance, and the omnipresent spectre, however disturbed, of Joseph Conrad. Altman’s world borders, and minutely overlaps, that of Francis Ford Coppola.

"Michael, we’re bigger than U. S. Steel!"

—Hyman Roth, The Godfather, Part II—

The two Godfather films of the 1970s form a sweeping parable about the decline of the family in America. They are built on a series of formalized, family-based rituals central to the Italian-Catholic mythos: Baptism, First Communion, wedding, feast, festival, funeral. The “family”-centered world of organized crime is a metaphor—perhaps an equation—for the ruthless, dehumanizing practice of American capitalism (of which the making of movies is inescapably a part). Based first on family structure and the need to protect interests closest to home and heart (Vito), corporate enterprise ends by dehumanizing (Sonny), denying (Fredo), and alienating (Michael) its own foundation.

Yet that top-down capitalistic hierarchy, in whose face Altman continually flies, enjoys a less assailable position in Coppola’s world. It is the preeminent reality by which all individuals are defined. Throughout the Godfather films we are reminded of the close connections among the business of crime, the workings of government, and the protective role of the military. The emphasis placed on Michael’s uniform, and on the important day he enlisted in the army, speaks as much to the military’s place in the overall capitalist picture as to the impossibility of true heroic gesture in the world of The Godfather.

"Save me, Don Corleone. Pull a few strings."

—Consigliere Cenco on his deathbed, The Godfather—

The absence of heroes—even artificial ones—distinguishes Coppola’s world from Altman’s. Genco’s plea to Vito Corleone to save him from death illustrates the limitations of temporal power, even as it reflects human unwillingness to recognize those limitations. Instead of heroes ritualistically sacrificed to the betterment of the community, Coppola presents power gods, in whom all authority is vested and all trust placed by the mass. Unlike Altman, Coppola eschews close shots in crowd scenes. The wedding party in The Godfather is shot without close-ups, contrasting starkly with the ferocious ECUs of the intercut scenes in the Don’s office. Close-ups in Coppola’s films are reserved for the dark confessional zone where power meets morality head-on. Chiaroscuro cinematography clashes shadowy half-light with the blinding glare from windows to the outside world—a brightness that intensifies the interior dark with which it collides, while blurring the outlines of the characters themselves, who melt into light when not hidden in shadow. They become their milieu.

"We’re both part of the same hypocrisy, Senator. But never think that it applies to my family."

—Don Michael Corleone, The Godfather, Part II—

Michael’s willful separation of himself from his family signals the collapse of family altogether—inevitable in a world where the word “family” has become a euphemism. Michael is as cool and as capable an administrator as Vito, unlike the hot-headed and impulsive Sonny. Yet Michael differs crucially from Vito: The all-consuming love and family feeling that inform Vito’s actions are paid mere lip-service by Michael. Vito’s empire is built not on money, fear, or force, but on favors. “Just remember I did you a favor” is the Don’s appeal to personal honor, whose bond builds him a vast network of loyal supporters. Vito’s approach is to Michael’s as barter is to corporate commerce. Michael, not Vito, is the herald of big business and its dehumanizing objectivity.

Michael’s rejection of his family to Kay at his sister’s wedding (“That’s my family, Kay—it’s not me”) betrays his lack of the kind of love-inspired solidarity that Vito and Sonny have in spades. For that reason, Michael’s later acts must be seen as a drive for power, his love and protection of his family a mere posture, even as Senator Geary says it is.

"By being strong for his family, can he lose it?"

"You can never lose your family."

"Times are changing."

—Conversation between Michael and Mama, The Godfather, Part II—

At the end of The Godfather Michael condescends “this one time” to let Kay ask about his affairs, then lies to her. The gap between the Don and his family widens, stressed by lens distances and the repeated motif of closing doors and gates. By the end of The Godfather, Part II, Kay has become something like a good Sicilian wife, kneeling at prayer and lighting a candle instead of cursing the darkness.

"You can kill anyone."

—A lesson from history, The Godfather, Part II—

Michael, meanwhile, in an almost Hays Code justice, ends up alone, bitter, cautious, unhappy, his “plans for my future” irrevocably altered, the ranks of friends and family decimated along with those of enemies. Yet he remains an imposing power: He owns a senator, commands the loyalty of a few good men, and has a son, to whom will pass hereditary leadership of the family, or what’s left of it—and therein lies the rub. Coppola, the individualist, in many ways the anti-Altman, stresses Michael’s lost soul and underplays the survival of his empire. And he does this not only to moralize but also to alert us to his real interest: not the achievements of power, but power itself. Coppola in the 1970s is already the man who would make Tucker, The Godfather, Part III, and Dracula.

"You’re not supposed to get involved."

—Credo of a wiretap and a prostitute, The Conversation—

Michael Corleone’s coolness epitomizes the suppression of emotion and personal involvement in the face of the naked brutality of power. In The Conversation, wiretap Harry Caul is as alone as Michael, but at the other end of the scale: powerless. “I don’t have any personal property,” he says, “nothing of value.” Moran calls him “Lonely and Anonymous.” He tells Meredith, the hooker, “I don’t need anyone.” Michael postures love to mask its absence; Harry boasts of professional detachment (“I don’t care what they’re talking about; I just want a nice, fat recording”) to hide the depth of his sensitivity (“I’m not afraid of death, but I am afraid of murder.”). To a huge ear, glimpsed dimly through a screen, Harry gives the confession of his life, then quickly disclaims, “But I’m not responsible…”

Concluding on the face of the evidence that he is once again an accessory to a murder he is powerless to stop, Harry hides from the act, and from his own guilt, by covering himself with blankets and turning the television up full-volume. His freedom is increasingly limited by moral compunction and the spectre of his own responsibility. He is Kurtz before the horror.

"Have you ever considered that the greatest freedom is freedom from the opinions of others, and from your own opinions?"

—Colonel Walter E. Kurtz—

Through the transference of power from Harry Caul to his tormentors, and the transition of Harry from bugger to buggee, tool to victim, Coppola’s sympathies seem to be with him, and against the cold-blooded practitioners of power who, like Michael Corleone, survive only by emptying out the world. Yet The Conversation and The Godfather, Part II betray a growing fascination with the process whereby conventional morality, and even private morality, is totally suppressed. Coppola begins to take a certain delight in witnessing the corruption of the incorruptible, seeing the embrace of power as liberation from responsibility for men like Michael Corleone, Kurtz, and Willard. The offer is made to Harry Caul, who becomes instead an eternal victim because of his inability to renounce guilt. Michael and Willard are more willing wearers of the mantle of power. Even though the theatrical release and the redux version of Apocalypse Now no longer end, as originally planned, with Willard’s accession to Kurtz’s profane throne, both Willard and Coppola are irrevocably impressed with the denial of moral responsibility that Kurtz’s vision of freedom-as-power offers. A significant change from Conrad is Coppola’s emphasis on Kurtz’s son as the proposed recipient of his jungle reminiscences, replacing the quite different implication of Kurtz’s references to his “intended” in Heart of Darkness.

"Never get out of the boat."

—What a crewman learns from a tiger, Apocalypse Now—

Coppola takes a back door into the war, and uses it as metaphor and milieu, never as subject. In reiterating Conrad’s long, slow, relentless journey from the bustling center of civilization to the primitive limits of human experience, Coppola has recourse to one of the most often-remarked and psychologically shattering aspects of Vietnam: the high speed with which men were taken in and out of the war, from safety to harm’s way in minutes—almost as if “the war” were a place. “Disneyland,” Lance Johnson calls it.

At one end of Captain Willard’s mission to the primitive is a roast beef dinner, where a comically grotesque, self-important G-2 type maps out the strategy of passing food around the table, while another spills a top secret file and mutters “Shit!” At the other end is Cambodia, the arbitrary but emphatic limit to acceptable behavior (“We’re not supposed to be in Cambodia”). Cuing off the kaleidoscopic shifts from civilization to primitivism that scarred so many Vietnam veterans, from tape decks and Playboy bunnies to elemental confrontation with violence, atrocity and death, Coppola adopts a surreal approach to his subject. No titles open the film, and the first words heard are “This is the end,” a joke that signals both the apocalyptic intent and the disorientation of the film to come. A burning helicopter in a tree is not the only reminder of Herzog’s Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes, another long river-trip in which the primitive swallows the civilized and reality fades into its own denial.

But Coppola employs his surrealism inconsistently. The uncompromising realism of his depiction of atrocity and violence strikes a discordant note with the farcical portrayal of the perpetrators of outrage—the cardboard Colonel Kilgore, the motley riverboat crew, the wild-eyed photojournalist, the larger-than-life Kurtz. The atrocities seem real, but the people who commit them are cartoons. It is as if Coppola—the man who wrote Patton—wants to indict atrocity, but not to assign (or accept) responsibility for it.

"Don’t look at the camera! Keep moving ahead, like you’re fighting!"

—A movie director, Apocalypse Now—

Coppola’s cameo in Apocalypse Now as an agitated film director determined to get good footage whether anything is happening or not is a nod to the role of the news media as a controlling force in the war. But it’s also a telling metaphor: the film director as general. Coppola first seems to identify himself with Willard, who says in voice-over, “To tell his story is to tell my own, and if his is a confession, I guess mine is, too.” But Coppola is more Kurtz than Willard, and finally more Kilgore than Kurtz.

“It is judgment that defeats us,” says Kurtz. “You have the right to kill me, but not to judge me.”—Coppola to his critics? Kurtz is less like Chef’s judgment of him (“He’s worse’n crazy—he’s evil!”) than like Nietzsche, struggling to live beyond good and evil. To violate one’s own moral sensitivity out of sheer will—that is what Kurtz stands for here, a rather more explicit “horror” than Conrad was willing to present. Kurtz confronts and accepts the savage in himself, bows to the “genius” of primitive, violent willpower. “He is clear in his mind,” says the photojournalist, in a line straight from Conrad, “but his soul is mad.”

In a land and an experience from which there is never any real going back, Kurtz alone has gone all the way. For both Coppola and Conrad—but in distinctly different ways—the height of madness, and of power, is to make oneself a god. Apocalypse Now is Coppola’s most personal and stark confrontation with the question that has obsessed him all along: What dark vision makes a man abandon his moral ideals and embrace power for its own sake? The departure from customary morality—both that imposed by social norms and that dictated from within—is seen by Coppola not as a degeneration but as a liberation, freedom as unabashed flirtation with raw manipulative power—the kind of power that, at its worst, is marked by arrogance and contempt; the power once wielded by the Hollywood moguls, and was now, in the Zoetrope 1970s, wielded by Coppola’s own production system over his actors, his investors, and his public.

When Apocalypse Now first appeared, a friend remarked to me that the film’s voyage into the heart of darkness is less intense than the novel’s because Coppola, unlike Conrad, had not made that voyage in himself. I agreed then. Today I think differently: Coppola did make the voyage; but unlike Conrad he had not returned.

Where Robert Altman—cynical but hopeful populist who rose from television to become a new voice—insists upon the rejuvenation of the people through a ritual death signifying the redefinition and redistribution of power, Francis Ford Coppola—cynical despairing realist who rose through the studio system to become a new mogul himself—is very nearly his opposite, reasserting the solidification of power in the individual. If, in this backward glance, Altman and Coppola seem to emerge the Trotsky and Stalin of Hollywood in the 1970s, it only emphasizes, in that crucial decade, both how much and how little the business of making movies had changed.
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Robert C. Cumbow has been writing about film for nearly 40 years. His work has appeared in Film Comment, Film Quarterly, the Seattle Film Society journals Movietone News and The Informer, and in numerous newspapers. He is the author of Once upon a Time: The Films of Sergio Leone and Order in the Universe: The Films of John Carpenter, both available from Scarecrow Press. He is especially proud of his liner notes for the Rhino Records/Turner Classic Movies edition of the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bob is a trademark/copyright lawyer, heads the intellectual property practice at Graham & Dunn, Seattle, and teaches Trademark Law and Advertising Law at Seattle University School of Law.

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