Woody Allen Potpourri

DVD REVIEWS

Over the past year I have been re-watching some and watching for the first time other of Woody Allen’s extensive accomplishments in film as an actor/writer and director. While Allen’s efforts have, on occasion, as with all culturati sometimes been mixed the overall effect is that of a master of film. Below is a potpourri of recently viewed material in no particular order.

Hollywood Ending, 1994

NYC-LA Culture Wars, Part II

As I noted last year in a review of Woody Allen’s classic Annie Hall, which is among other things a defense of New York City as the epicenter of American culture such as it is, this is matter that has preoccupied him from early in his career as a director/ writer/actor/comic. Allen is the quintessential New Yorker so one knows where his sledgehammer will fall. In the current movie under review Hollywood Ending that same premise underlies his story line as he, once again, portrays on screen the trials and tribulations of trying to maintain some kind of artistic integrity in the world of Hollywood commercial film making.

The plot line centers on Allen’s character, Val Waxman, an aging has-been director given another chance by, of all people, his ex-wife and her boyfriend studio owner. In the process Woody, seemingly without defying the laws of probability here, is paralyzed by the prospects to such an extent that he has become temporarily blind. Nevertheless in the interest of comedy and his career (and their careers, as well) Val and his friend’s con their way through the filming of the remake of a 1940’s film about New York City that is to be the key to his comeback.

Along the way Allen gets his licks in on Hollywood culture, commercial film making and the funny premise that commercial films are so dumb, for the most part, that a blind man is entirely capable of making a bad film just like most other directors. An interesting film and, as always, full of autobiographical references, Allen’s trademark cerebral humor and his extensive use of sight gags. Well worth a look see.

Alice, 1992

As mentioned above I having been retrospectively over the past year running through films Woody Allen directed, wrote, acted in or produced. Interestingly they run the gamut of his intellectual and cultural interests but I must admit that I did not realize how many of his films featured his old paramour Mia Farrow. She must be the number one actress featured in his various efforts. That is the case here with Allen’s whimsical modern day take on the Alice in Wonderland saga in good old New York City (naturally).

Here Farrow is the unfulfilled wife of a stockbroker who along the way has lost her moorings and her values and is desperately seeking a solution. In that effort she runs to the wisdom of the East exemplified by Doctor Yang, the acupuncturist. Going through a series of madcap false starts and pseudo-love affairs she finally is able to right her course, leave her husband and bring up her children out of harm’s way. Damn, I want the telephone (or more correctly these days, the cell phone number) of the good Doctor Yang, pronto. A piece of fluff. Woody has had better ideas for a film in his time but not a bad performance by Farrow here.


Small Time Crooks, 2000

Everyone I hope recognizes that, if one lives long enough, that one is bound to start recycling ideas. That is the definitely the case with Woody Allen’s partial revival of his early film classic Take the Money and Run, this time with a sharper class twist. Here Roy (Allen’s character) is just as dimwitted as old Virgil of Take the Money but as an older and wiser man he knows when to quit (for a while anyway). So when Roy and his associates’ attempted bank robbery is foiled by his bugling his wife’s successful cookie shop cover operation sees them through the rough spots, again for a while. After a trip through the wilds of bourgeois New York the couple, after some disasters- personal and financial, goes back to the old tricks of their former trade. I am not altogether sure what this says about class mobility in a democratic society but Roy please do not call me for your next caper. Funny, in Allen’s maniacal, acerbic and cerebral way, in spots but not his best in this genre.


Bullets Over Broadway, 1994

Apparently, as long as it involves a New York City scenario Woody Allen is more than happy to take a run at a plot that involves that locale in some way. Here it is the Great White Way- Broadway during its heyday in the Prohibition Era 1920’s that gets his attention (Broadway was also the subject of his classic Broadway Danny Rose). What really makes this plot line very, very funny and makes the film work however is the plot twist of interspersing semi-serious production of a play with nefarious (and deadly) gangster activity.

Here a struggling Greenwich Village writer (weren’t they all and presumably still are) has a thoughtful dramatic play in search of a backer and as the story progresses a gangster ‘ghostwriter’. Presto, up comes one backer-with a problem- his ‘doll’ wants in on the play and (on the side) he needs to stay one or two steps ahead of his gangster rivals. These antics drive the play nicely as does a brilliant performance by Diane Wiest doing a fantastic send up of Gloria Swanson as the has- been actress searching for a comeback in Billy Wilder’s classic Hollywood Boulevard. This one is definitely five stars, with no hype needed. See it.


Celebrity

The Chinese have their years named after various animals. Apparently this year for me is the Year of Woody Allen. For the better part of the year I have been watching, and in several cases re- watching films, that the comic has acted in, produced, directed or some combination of the three. Some have been disappointing. Some, like Annie Hall, have withstood the test of time and go into the pantheon. Others, reflecting the fact that if one lives long enough, as Allen has, then one is sure to repeat themes worked in the past, sometimes with uneven results. That is the case with Celebrity. There are some very funny individual scenes that rank with Allen classics but overall we have been here before. Allen’s look at the pranks and pitfalls of celebrity in New York City (his favorite locale, and correctly so) in the mid-1990’s is the updated version of his less than funny Zelig that looked at celebrity in the Jazz Age.

Moreover, the film has an overly manic quality, particularly on the part of the frustrated male writer (surprise, surprise) and his unfulfilled and bewildered schoolteacher wife soon to be separated so that said writer can ‘find’ himself. The mannerisms (to speak nothing of a certain vague similarity of appearance) of the pair reminded me of the good old days when Woody and Mia (oops, better not mention that) held forth. Except here on speed. If you love black and white film, if you love Woody Allen and most importantly if you are new to the Allen genre then get this film. Others, veterans, can take it or leave it.

Deconstructing Harry, written and directed by Woody Allen, 1997

Okay, I will admit that finally after almost a year of watching or re-watching films that the comedic legend Woody Allen wrote, directed, played in or produced I am Woody-ed out. Moreover, there is a reason for that beyond fatigue. As I have pointed out previously in this space if one lives long enough and produces enough work then one is bound to repeat oneself. And that is what has happened to brother Allen here.

Allen’s premise has been used before as he plays the part of Harry, a writer (what else?) down with a case of writer’s block who is also having romantic problems (again, what else?) because the young woman he truly, if belatedly, loves is getting married to a lesser writer. Sound familiar? There are many individually funny moments, mainly by Allen, alone the way even if not enough to sustain the film. Naturally, as is usually the case in an Allen feature in the end things are not qualitatively more resolved than at the beginning. Well that, after all, is life.

A nice cinematic touch used here is Harry’s (Allen’s) sequencing shots to show how autobiographical most novels and short stories really are. Changing the actors in the ‘real life’ story and in the ‘made up’ stories does this well. That part also gets nicely put together at the end. No so nice here, and a bit unusual for an Allen film, is the extensive use of profanity by Allen and the rest of the cast to show their frustrations with the various antics that Harry is up to and in their own lives. Every thing is moreover just a bit too frantic, partly to justify the profanity it would seem. That may tell the tale of why I had a problem with this film, as well. If you must see a Woody Allen film you must see Annie Hall or Manhattan, if you have an off hour and one half watch this.

When Studs Terkel Spoke Truth To Power In A Sullen World -A Tribute From NPR’s Christopher Lydon’s “Open Source”-Studs Terkel Looks At His Craft

When Studs Terkel Spoke Truth To Power In A Sullen World -A Tribute From NPR’s Christopher Lydon’s “Open Source”

Link to Christopher Lydon's Open Source program on the late "people's  journalist" Studs Terkel

http://radioopensource.org/sound-of-studs-terkel/ 

By Si Lannon

It was probably Studs Terkel via a series of book reviews of his interviews trying to get a feel for the soul of the American from Sam Lowell that I first heard the expression “speaking truth to power.” Spoke that message to a sullen world then. Unfortunately since that time the world had not gotten less sullen. Nor has the need to speak truth to power dissipated since Studs passed from this mortal coil of a world that he did so much to give ear and eye to. The problem, the real problem is that we in America no longer produce that pied piper, that guy who will tell the tale the way it has to be told. Something about those gals and guys who waded through the Great Depression, saw firsthand in the closed South Side Chicago factories that something was desperately wrong with the way society operated and slogged through World War II and didn’t go face down in the post-war dead ass could war night spoke of grit and of a feeling that the gritty would not let you down when the deal went down. When Mister (Peabody, James Crow, Robber Baron you name it) called the bluff and you stood there naked and raw.        

Fellow Chicagoan writer Nelson Algren (he of The Man With The Golden Arm and Walk On The Wild Side) put the kind of gals and guys Studs looked around for in gritty urban sinkhole lyrical form but Studs is the guy who found the gritty unwashed masses to sing of. (It is not surprising that when Algren went into decline, wrote less lucid prose Stud grabbed him by the lapels and did a big time boost on one of his endless radio talks to let a candid world know that they missing a guy who know how to give voice to the voiceless, the people with small voices who are still getting the raw end of the deal, getting fucked over if you really want to nitty-gritty truth to power). So check this show out to see what it was like when writers and journalists went down in the mud to get to the spine of society.     

Click On Title To Link To Studs Terkel’s Web Page.

BOOK REVIEW

Studs Reflects On His Craft

The Spectator, Studs Terkel, The New Press, New York, 1999

As is my habit when an author "speaks" to me, I have been running through the oral histories of the mainly average citizens of America collected by the recently departed Studs Terkel, the premier interviewer of his age. When I latch onto a writer I want to delve into I tend to read whatever comes into my hands as I get it rather than systematically or chronologically. Thus, I have just gotten my hands on a copy of Terkel's "The Spectator", a professional actor's memoir of sorts, that goes a long way to filling in some blanks in the life story of one Louis "Studs" Terkel (including information that the nickname "Studs" is from the Chicago trilogy "Studs Lonigan" by James T. Farrell, another author who will be reviewed here in the future).

For those unfamiliar with Terkel's work other than his seemingly endless capacity to interview one and all this little book acts as glue to understanding a life-long commitment to his craft as an actor, his appreciation of those who gave memorable performances, his fantastical recall of such moments in the theater and on film and his creating of a wider audience appreciation for various musically traditions like jazz, folk music and the blues. Nice work.

Studs, like many of the members of his generation, was formed by the hardships and cruelties of the Great Depression that I believe in his oral histories are his special contribution to insights into that period and that is reflected here, as well. That was a time, as today's' current economic and social events seem to copying, where one was forced to get by on wits, cleverness and sheer "guts". Studs himself did odd jobs around the theater trying catch on a performer. But not just any theater and not just any performer. This is the period of the Theater Guild and of WPA which gave cultural workers or those who aspired to such a chance. These early efforts formed the lifelong interest that he has in the theater, playwrights, directors and of the 'tricks of the trade' in order to make the audience "believe" in the performance. I found, personally, his probing and informed interviews with Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams , two of my own favorite playwrights, the most interesting part of a book filled with all kind of interesting tidbits.

For his efforts, then and later, Studs had some success in his career as a performer first in the ubiquitous radio that informed the consciousness of many in the so-called "greatest generation" as a disc jockey and interviewer of various musical figures like Billie Holiday on his shows, the Wax Museum and the Eclectic Disc Jockey. It is the combination of the radio as a medium and the in-depth interview as a format that sets Studs apart. Today we have no comprehension of how important these little extended interviews are as a contribution to the history of our modern culture. Will the ubiquitous mass media sound bites of the 21st century or even the unfiltered presentations on "YouTube", or its successors, tell future generations what that culture was all about? I don't even want to hazard a guess. But for now, savor, and I do mean savor, Studs going one-on-one with the above-mentioned Miller and Williams or songwriter Yip Harburg, come-back actor James Cagney, culture critics Harold Clurman and Kenneth Tynan and many, many more actors, actresses, playwrights, impresarios, directors and other cultural gadflies. Kudos and adieu Studs.

Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?
Gorney, Yip Harburg

They used to tell me
I was building a dream.
And so I followed the mob
When there was earth to plow
Or guns to bear
I was always there
Right on the job.
They used to tell me
I was building a dream
With peace and glory ahead.
Why should I be standing in line
Just waiting for bread?

Once I built a railroad
I made it run
Made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad
Now it's done
Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once I built a tower up to the sun
Brick and rivet and lime.
Once I built a tower,
Now it's done.
Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once in khaki suits
Gee we looked swell
Full of that yankee doodle dee dum.
Half a million boots went sloggin' through hell
And I was the kid with the drum!

Say don't you remember?
They called me Al.
It was Al all the time.
Why don't you remember?
I'm your pal.
Say buddy, can you spare a dime?

Once in khaki suits,
Ah, gee we looked swell
Full of that yankee doodle dee dum!
Half a million boots went sloggin' through hell
And I was the kid with the drum!

Oh, say don't you remember?
They called me Al.
It was Al all the time.
Say, don't you remember?
I'm your pal.
Buddy, can you spare a dime?

*From The Archives- POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND THE 'G-Y' WORD

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for Mormons.

RUMBLINGS FROM iPOD /MP3 NATION

FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY THAT FIGHTS FOR A WORKERS GOVERNMENT!

Readers of this space know that this writer centers his commentary on ‘high’ politics, usually lambasting the bourgeois politicians, especially Democratic Party politicians for being eunuchs or worst on the war in Iraq and other pressing social questions. And I am entirely comfortable with that, after all we are all adults in this game and it comes with the territory. While I am waiting to comment on what promises to be another ugly Democratic somersault on the upcoming war budget fight however another little issue has crossed my path. Believe me I enter this dispute with more fear and trepidation that I have ever had in my ‘adult’ battles for it involves the mysterious ways of teenagers. I had enough trouble trying to survive my own teenage years to be wary, very wary, of the trials and tribulations of teens a couple of generations behind me. But here goes.

I have recently read about the case of a Mormon girl out in Santa Rosa, California, Rebeka Rice, whose parents have taken school officials there to court over a reprimand and notation in her record that she received as a freshman in high school a few years ago. The gist of the case is that at that time some fellow students, as is the nature of such things, razzed her about her Mormonism by asking whether she had ‘ten mothers’. In response, Rebeka stated that their comment was ‘so gay’, meaning to her stupid. And she was right, it was stupid. However, in the interest of ‘political correctness’ local school officials, assumingly well trained in how to ferret out real gay-bashing hate speech , and apparently with plenty of time on their hands decided to take a forthright stand for gay liberation over the statement and took the above mentioned action. As is the nature of the times the parents thereafter filed suit. And they were right to do so, as well.

Hello, school officials. Apparently someone has been living in a bubble. Haven’t these august school officials been out to the malls in Santa Rosa lately? As least here I have. And assisted by a foreign language translator, a necessity in such situations, I found out that indeed common usage and understanding by teens is on Rebeka’s side. If one wants to use hate speech toward gays and lesbians there are other more robust forms of expression that I will not bother to repeat here. Moreover, in the present case the school’s hypocrisy trumps its supposed virtue. The local school officials passed on taking action on the really hateful expression in the exchange-the other students’ taut about Rebeka’s religion which is clear and unmistakable. In my teenage days, back in the days when the world was ‘young and gay’, that kind of statement would have been the equivalent of ‘your mama’ or ‘your mother’ and would have been fighting words, with fists flying. But, dear readers, we live in a kinder, gentler more civilized age with the requisite peer counseling, arbitration and, of course, the ubiquitous liberal ‘thought’ police to smooth things over.

Okay, okay. Yes, we live in an age of victimhood. And damn there is more discrimination against gays, lesbians, transsexuals, women, the aged, blacks, Hispanics, the mentally-challenged, immigrants, teenagers and X oppressed groups that we can shake a stick at. But, something is desperately wrong when the everyday language of teens (or any other sub-culture) is subject to official governmental inspection and sanction allegedly in the interest of making bourgeois society ‘nice’. Where did we go off the rails on this part of the ‘culture’ wars? Well, one place to look is the 1960’s. I have written elsewhere about the fun, even for teenagers, of being alive at that time and imbibing in the whirlwind of the changing cultural currents.

But, my friends, we were politically, socially and, in the case of some groups like the Black Panthers and Weatherpeople, militarily defeated by the forces of reaction in this country. A response by some of my generation was either to deny that reality and drop out of the political struggle or turn into ‘cultural guerillas’ and head for the jungles, oops I mean, universities and try to create some kind of politically and morally correct ‘small’ universe there. That is at least part of the genesis of this ‘correctness’ mania.

Unfortunately, moral gestures will not change this sad old world but only by changing the material base of society so that NO ONE has a vested interest in hating anyone. But that requires political struggle against the current forces that want to keep each oppressed group separated in a 'divide and conquer' strategy that works so well for them. If you want to really fight against gay discrimination (and all the other discriminations) then you had better be prepared to do a lot more than play ‘cop’, even if for ‘do-gooder’ motives. In any case, I hope even in a communist future where no one will have a vested interest in ‘razzing’ anyone that the teens then will still have their own ‘tribal’ language as they try to figure out there place in the world. In the meantime-VICTORY TO REBEKA RICE!

***"A Rose Is A Rose Is A Rose"- Gertrude Stein In Exile

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for Gertrude Stein.

"A Rose Is A Rose Is A Rose"- Gertrude Stein In Exile

BOOK REVIEW

March Is Women’s History Month

The Autobiography Of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein, Vintage Books, New York, 1990

Okay, Gertrude so there was no there, there in Oakland. (I agree, having lived there for a period at a much later time-San Francisco, however, is a different matter). So, by hook or crook, Miss Gertrude Stein gets herself (along with her older brother) by a circuitous route to turn of the century Paris (turn of the 20th century that is) and becomes not only an international literary and cultural figure in her own right but a veritable magnet for every "advanced' bourgeois cultural tendency in the then known Western civilized world. Starting with the nova Paris anti-academy art world as the likes of Picasso, Braque and Matisse and their schools take it by a storm on through to the sparse World War I years when the flower of European culture was almost destroyed to a re-emergence in the aftermath of that war with "lost generation" types like Hemingway and Fitzgerald we get a bird's eye view of important trends in modern cultural history during the first third of the 20th century. And of Stein's own struggle to get the kind of literary recognition she craved and desired.

What we do not get is anything that, even with the looser standard for such endeavors in the beginning of the 21st century, that we recognize as autobiography either of the ostensible subject of the book, Stein's long time companion (to use a quaint term of the time for two women living together) Alice B. Toklas or Ms. Stein herself. Nor as we suppose to. What we are treated to is a `modern' writing sensibility trying to free up the language (and grammatical constrains) from their 19th century moorings. More conventionally we are given a travelogue, gossip column, some helpful hints and some very witty writing that gives tidbits of what Ms. Stein thought of literature, her place in it and the place of others in her literary pantheon.

In some sense this book, while quite readable even today, is not for the faint-hearted, or those who are not modern Western literature majors or readers of something like "The New York Review Of Books". Fortunately I am a devoted reader of that magazine and therefore the seemingly hundreds of literary figures that Stein `name drops' along the way I had at least passing familiarity with. Some of the many art figures that passed through I was less sure of. What is clear is that Ms. Stein's `mobile salon' (for lack of better words to trace this pair's movements) and her literary achievement here is an echo from a bygone era. Nobody today, as least in the circles I run in or want to run in, could stand up to the `precious' visits by English and other celebrities that dropped in Stein's residences. Or the standard variations on the European grand tour by American college students or young marrieds that made a stop obligatory. Or the stifling aimlessness and routinism of many the various denizens of the Paris of the day, famous or not. But in a world that currently suffers from serious disconnects with its cultural past it is interesting to read about those who had time to "do' the literary scene. But, mainly, get this book for some very clever writing by Ms. Stein.

Poet's Corner- Yevgeny Yevtushenko-"Babi Yar"

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Russian(Soviet)poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Markin comment:
No question Yevgeny Yevtushenko knew how to twist and turn with the Soviet Stalinist Cold War winds. He had no Lenin-Trotsky Bolshevik flame within. However he could write a few very good poems that captured part of Russian culture. Babi Yar is one of the better ones.

Babi Yar by Yevgeny Yevtushenko

No monument stands over Babi Yar.
A drop sheer as a crude gravestone.
I am afraid.
Today I am as old in years
as all the Jewish people.
Now I seem to be
a Jew.
Here I plod through ancient Egypt.
Here I perish crucified, on the cross,
and to this day I bear the scars of nails.
I seem to be
Dreyfus.
The Philistine
is both informer and judge.
I am behind bars.
Beset on every side.
Hounded,
spat on,
slandered.
Squealing, dainty ladies in flounced Brussels lace
stick their parasols into my face.
I seem to be then
a young boy in Byelostok.
Blood runs, spilling over the floors.
The barroom rabble-rousers
give off a stench of vodka and onion.
A boot kicks me aside, helpless.
In vain I plead with these pogrom bullies.
While they jeer and shout,
"Beat the Yids. Save Russia!"
some grain-marketeer beats up my mother.
0 my Russian people!
I know
you
are international to the core.
But those with unclean hands
have often made a jingle of your purest name.
I know the goodness of my land.
How vile these anti-Semites-
without a qualm
they pompously called themselves
the Union of the Russian People!
I seem to be
Anne Frank
transparent
as a branch in April.
And I love.
And have no need of phrases.
My need
is that we gaze into each other.
How little we can see
or smell!
We are denied the leaves,
we are denied the sky.
Yet we can do so much --
tenderly
embrace each other in a darkened room.
They're coming here?
Be not afraid. Those are the booming
sounds of spring:
spring is coming here.
Come then to me.
Quick, give me your lips.
Are they smashing down the door?
No, it's the ice breaking ...
The wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar.
The trees look ominous,
like judges.
Here all things scream silently,
and, baring my head,
slowly I feel myself
turning gray.
And I myself
am one massive, soundless scream
above the thousand thousand buried here.
I am
each old man
here shot dead.
I am
every child
here shot dead.
Nothing in me
shall ever forget!
The "Internationale," let it
thunder
when the last anti-Semite on earth
is buried forever.
In my blood there is no Jewish blood.
In their callous rage, all anti-Semites
must hate me now as a Jew.
For that reason
I am a true Russian!

*From The Horse's Mouth- The Supreme Court's Decision In "Holder vs. Humanitarian Law Project"

Click on the headline link to the United States Supreme Court decision of June 21,2010 in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project mentioned in the Workers Vanguard article posted earlier today.


Markin comment:

Read it and weep.

Of Music and Movies and Politcal Doldrums

Commentary


Over the past several weeks I have been doing more commentary on music and movies than I have previously done in this space. Part of this is a conscious effort on my part to integrate those cultural phenomena into this blog as part of our common history, whether they have impact today or not. My own political evolution is bound up with, as is that of many of the Generation of ’68, the cultural phenomena associated with the times- folk and rock concerts, various communal activities, people’s art, etc. Moreover, at least for the 1960’s, one cannot separate out, at least not easily, the cultural from the political in trying to draw some lessons for today’s struggles.

Those are personal reasons to be sure but, my friends, the main reason that I am writing more of this kind of material is that there is not much doing on the political horizon today. And that fact does not have to do with the summer doldrums, although that is always part of the mix. What it has to do with is the hard fact that the bourgeois politicians, and here I mean Obama as well as McCain, have sucked the best part of the air out of politics. Surely, there are things to comment on in the world beyond that narrow, basically technical presidential campaign trip but other than our traditional on-going propaganda efforts we are not getting a hearing on those issues.

One indication of that impasse is the material posted on various Indy Media sites that I monitor. Up until a couple of years ago there were plenty of hard-hitting reports on struggles and commentary on what to do next. Today, most of the items concern various crank conspiracy theories or fervent messages that we get behind Obama in order to deprive Bush of a third term (meaning a vote for McCain). Meanwhile we have those few little problems in the Middle East and South Asia like Iraq and Afghanistan that are not being addressed by those we wish to reach. I wish I had a positive message of encouragement right this minute but more later. Given world conditions though our day will come, or at least we will get our chances at it.