Prison Break

I liked it, although I doubt I'll keep watching it.

I liked it because it was, to be upfront and obvious, cool. I have no idea how plausible it is and don't much care. I liked it for the same reason I like watching Jason Bourne and Batman: very, very smart guy--who thinks ahead--behaves in a levelheaded, yet crazily masochistic way to get his brother out of jail, and he does it in a cool, smart, masochistic way. The whole tattooed blueprint thing was kind of silly but incredibly awesome at the same time. (Although my instant thought was "Yikes, do they make the actor get all that makeup on everyday?" But my reason reasserted itself and pointed out that in the premiere we never see Michael Schofield's chest and back more than once. All the other times, he refers to the tattoo on his arm. Answer: no, he doesn't put the makeup on everyday, however it is done.)

The conspiracy stuff looks pretty lame but again, the plot is not what is so cool about the show. What is so cool about the show is the slow, cautious, cunning brain at work. I prefer the Bournes and Schofields to the James Bonds of the action world. Bond is all glitz and glame and big tanks. He's got the suit and the car and the style and the women, yadda yadda. I prefer desperately insane heroes with photographic memories personally.

I won't watch the show since it is one of these "gotta make you watch every week" types. I prefer House which, despite having a story arc, allows you to miss an episode here and there. And all House episodes are contained, more or less. With Prison Break, my original assumption was that Michael would get his brother out during the premiere and then the rest of the episodes would be about him surviving intelligently in prison. But it's all going to be about the silly conspiracy and Michael saving his brother (sort of 24ish--what will they do next season? Michael Schofield stays in, of course; he will sacrifice himself so his brother can escape, and then . . . he works to get someone else out?). Anyway, I really don't like being hooked on things. But it was a cool premiere. (For you Buffy fans, Michael was one of the swimmers in the episode "Go Fish.")

CATEGORY: TV

Nero Wolfe

It's been awhile since my last post. This past week, I have been training a replacement in my (ex) secretarial job. Tomorrow, I begin teaching at our local community college (English Composition). At the end of the week, I will be interviewing to be a substitute at a local high school. And the following week, I begin my second to last semester in my graduate program. Consequently, posts might be more infrequent over the next eight months. Of course, I am about to re-enter the world of academe, so perhaps the posts will increase!

On to the post! One of the great things about Hutton's Nero Wolfe (and I say Hutton since it is clear from watching the commentary and comparing the first movie to the series that Hutton had a HUGE impact on the series' style) is the morality of Nero Wolfe. It takes a bit of getting used to since it seems, on the surface, almost brutal. On one occasion, a woman comes to Nero Wolfe's brownstone. She wants to stay. Nero Wolfe rejects her proposition. He has been offered $10,000 to find her. But since she has come to him of her own accord, he informs her that (1) he will allow her to stay if she pays him an appropriate retainer ($10,000) or (2) he will give her 24 hours to run, and then follow her in order to obtain the $10,000. She decides on (2) and is killed within 3 hours of leaving the brownstone. Wolfe sees no need to investigate; he is not responsible, has no client and is peripherally involved. Archie disagrees, gets himself in trouble, and Wolfe ends up resolving the case on Archie's behalf.

In an age still very much affected by chivalric impulses (not a bad thing), Wolfe's proposition to the soon-to-be-murdered victim seems callous (as it strikes Archie), but the more Nero Wolfe you watch, the more you begin to recognize that this hard self-interest is, nevertheless, intrinsically honorable. In a later episode, Wolfe deliberately withholds evidence, to his own inconvenience, since a woman wanted the evidence withheld, and he feels her (self-interested) choice (which got her killed) should be honored. He will take on clients and then release himself when a conflict of interest arises (in other words, he doesn't develop a liking for his clients and resolve to defend them through thick and thin; the one time he does defend a client through thick and thin--a gardener--he does it because he wants the man to take care of his orchids, which the gardener can't do in jail). He will withhold information from the police that he feels is not their province, yet he will respect a city ordinance not to enter his own study, simply because it is the law. He walks a fine line between deliberately subordinating justice to gain his own ends and satisfying justice to gain his own ends. And he never drifts off the line.

It is, overall, a consistent study of behavior that reflects, from what I have heard, Rex Stout's picture of Wolfe in the books. The television series' plots (which are played over and over by the same characters) are simply a stylish backdrop against which Nero Wolfe and Archie argue over the cases. Chaykin and Hutton pull this off (with more than adequate support from a stellar cast, including the marvelous Colin Fox) through rapid-fire dialog and fascinating reaction shots, but the complexity of Wolfe's integrity is the meat that the audience waits for. Without that underlying gritty hardheadedness, the show would be a more than adequate period piece but nothing more. It is the producers' willingness to keep Wolfe unpretty, unsympathetic and unsentimental that makes the show work. For 2 seasons at least!

CATEGORY: TV

Evil Spam

I have been compelled by evil spam ("dastardly," the Blogger folks call it; how right they are!) to add word verification to the comment section. Not that this blog gets that many comments, but for those of you who do, I'm sorry. It's a pain to have to stare at blurry letters whenever you click "enter" on-line, but it's necessary.

Basically, automatic spamsters try to attach ads to posts by entering them as comments. I despise this. It isn't so much the annoyance of having to go in and delete the comment; it doesn't take that much time. It's the rudeness that ticks me off. I mean, they don't even have the decency to try to relate their spam to my posts! The jerks. I could respect someone who might comment on my Star Trek post with a plea, "Come to my site where I sell Star Trek memorabilia." (I might still delete it, but I'd respect it.) But these spamsters are just using the post because it's there, and they think people will read the comment because they read the post. I may be a thorough-going capitalist, but I'm an honorable thorough-going capitalist, and I think this sort of thing is, well, dastardly. And nefarious. And yucky. And mean. And sneaky. And underhand. And just real, real bad. So if you're a spamster, and you're reading this: SHAME ON YOU!

The Dark Pasts (and Futures) of Children's Writers, Expanded

The best scene in The Secret Garden is when Mary, infuriated by Colin's tantrum, accuses him of self-martyrdom. Colin, who is truly frightened by the idea of being a hunchback, claims that he "felt a lump." Mary insists on seeing his back and then states, emphatically, "There's not a single lump there! There's not a lump as big as a pin! If you ever say there is again, I shall laugh!"

The narrator continues:

No one but Colin himself knew what effect those crossly spoken childish words had on him . . . now that an angry unsympathetic little girl insisted obstinately that he was not as ill as he thought he was he actually felt as if she might be speaking the truth.

In this passage, Frances Hodgson Burnett reveals why she deserves her place in the echelon of children's writers. Like E. Nesbit, Burnett knew, or remembered, the quality of child fear—quite different from adult fear--the dull terror that children can live with without fully comprehending why and don't have rationals or experience to combat.

It is this quality that keeps Burnett (more than Nesbit) from descending into the maudlin. In The Little Princess, the true horror of Sarah's loss is captured in her nearly catatonic behavior. Little Lord Fauntleroy never experiences anything as horrific but Burnett does a fine job illustrating his homesickness:

Perhaps he was a trifle tired, as his bed-time was nearing, and perhaps after the excitement of the last few days it was natural he should be tired, so perhaps, too, the feeling of weariness brought to him a vague sense of loneliness in the remembrance that to-night he was not to sleep at home . . . and the more he thought of [his mother] the less was he inclined to talk, and by the time the dinner was at an end the Earl saw that there was a faint shadow on his face.

It is this ability to capture childhood unhappiness that gives good writers for children such power. It isn't the same thing as going back and creating a childhood memory. For all the great creativity and fun of Rowlings' books, I never get the impression that she actually remembers how children behave. (C.S. Lewis remembered how children behaved, but his children are ambiguous beings, not adults, not children.) But Burnett and Nesbit had remarkably clear recollections of the fear, terror and uncertainty that children carry with them. (Of the two, Nesbit is somewhat more detached.)

Now there's a difference between remembering one's childhood emotions and being so damaged by one's childhood that one's entire life becomes an attempt at exorcism. Elizabeth Enright, E.M. Boston, Z. Snyder, Barbara Robinson, J. Spinelli, Edward Eager and Laura Ingalls Wilder belong to the first group. Dahl and Barrie belong to the latter, and I can't say that I have ever cared for their books. (There are also writers who remember their childhoods and those who just know what kids like: R.L. Stine belongs to the last category.) The overall inference is that through children's literature, good children's literature, a dark thread runs, a thread that Lemony Snicket exploits quite mischievously. It cannot, however, be recreated in a serious-oh-I'm-reaching-children-now sense. The writer either has it or doesn't.

This more or less brings us to the issue of children's lit v. adult lit. The dark side of children's literature is often dismissed by people who think that all children's literature is sweet innocence and who, furthermore, mistake sweet innocence for a lack of quality. I have never fully understood these people, but then I surprised my mother by browsing the children's section well into my teenage years (and still do, but presumably teenagers are more abashed by that sort of thing). Whenever adults produce that particular 'I'm too mature for those kinds of books' moue in reaction to children's literature, I get nervous, like I do when people tell me that they "LOVED Junior High." These are the sorts of things monstrous aliens say before they bite off your head.

In terms of subject matter and approach, the split between children's lit and adult lit has validity (even in this day and age of supposedly corrupted youth), but often the people promoting the split (like the New York Times Bestseller List) are more concerned with profundity than adult themes. Children's lit, they believe, simply isn't as well-written and deep as adult lit. It's superficial, light, airy, "okay for kids," and so doesn't have to be taken seriously.

Which is just foolish. Harry Potter may be as pointless as Harold Bloom contests but it isn't any worse than The Da Vinci Code. In fact, in many ways, it is far superior.

The problem is the same problem that angstifies the Academy Awards people every year: how do you honor comedy which, on the surface, just doesn't seem as earth-shattering and profound and deep and all that as, say, American Beauty?

Well, first, you acknowledge that comedy is incredibly difficult to make, like Olympic gymnastics: sure, it looks easy, but you go try it. Slight tangent: in High School, I had to do a bit of abstract art with oils. I failed miserably. It basically ended up a dirty mess of paint on a board. And not an on-purpose dirty mess of paint. Just dirty. I only passed because the final project was painting from a still life, and I can do still life with, well, one hand holding a paintbrush. So, don't tell me your 3-year old could paint a Pollock. Cause she can't.

Secondly, profundity is not only easier than comedy but there's profundity and then there's profundity. Crime & Punishment is profound. Not much else is really. Maybe Moby Dick. There you go. There's your standard. A lot of books come off as profound because people die and have affairs and question their purpose in life and have those contemplative well-that's-life endings where people sit around and think about how much they've grown. I HATE those endings. I think they are lousy. (One reason I believe mysteries are so popular is because the ending IS an ending: bad guy dies or gets arrested or, occasionally, gets let go, but something happens.) And for those of you who think art is supposed to imitate life and people do sit around contemplating how much they've grown, see my post under Fiction on why I don't think that's the point of fiction.

Now, there are kids who react well to this kind of profundity, who like the deaths and divorces and mixed plots of young adult literature. Such kids go on to select the same kinds of things from the adult section. I am not trying to argue that such pseudo-profundity doesn't exist in children's literature, I am arguing that lack of profoundity doesn't translate into a lack of profoundly good writing. If you accept my earlier claim, then most things aren't really profound anyway. So the criteria of what makes something worthwhile to read has to undergo re-evaluation. I personally like: it's worthwhile if it's well-written. And it's well-written if it keeps your interest (isn't dull), reads smoothly (or, if it doesn't read smoothly, it reads not-smoothly on purpose), tells a story and isn't stupid.

I don't think my criteria will get me hired on at any universities, but it's a useful standard against which most things can be compared. And a great deal of children's/YA literature compares against it very well indeed.

CATEGORY: BOOKS

Best of Trek

One of my favorite Star Trek: Next Generation episodes is "The Hunted." The reason it is one of my favorites is that it is one of the few Star Trek episodes where the good bad guy (Roga Danar) has to outwit the bridge crew before he can get off the ship.

That is, he doesn't just walk into a shuttle bay, commandeer a shuttle without anyone noticing (because these places are always totally devoid of personnel), get the shuttle bay doors open, fly out of the bay AND get it too far from the ship to be tractored in before the system so much as blips a warning.

When Roga Danar escapes from his cell (unbelievably but hey, at least it takes some effort), the bridge crew immediately shuts down all of the shuttle bays and transporters. Finally! Personally, I think it is really dumb that the transporters wouldn't be shut down anyway. I mean, where's anybody going to go? The Enterprise left the planet to go chasing after Danar. Do individuals habitually want to use the Enterprise's transporters to mock transport themselves to non-existent places? "Look, Mom, I'm transporting myself out into space. No, I'm not." Still, at least Danar has to outmaneuver this obstacle.

The bridge crew also set up forcefields on every deck. Again, well, yeah, people. Do ya think? It amazes me how often the bridge crew are stymied by wandering bad guys.* I'm not sure Danar should be able to get as far as he does in fact but by Star Trek standards, he's pretty smart so I'll allow him to outmaneuver all possible non-addressed-in-the-episode forcefields.

*Actually, it doesn't amaze me all that much. See below for my theory on why.

Anyway, Danar then has to outwit some form of tear gas; this is never fully explained. I think he is able to endure it because of all the amazing superman genetic manipulation he has undergone. He also has to outwit Data, which is somewhat unbelievable. (See my theory below for why it MIGHT work.) And okay, the ease with which Danar gets to Engineering just blows your mind. And the fact that no one runs to catch him. "He's headed to Engineering," Riker says. "On my way," Worf says and saunters briskly down the corridor. (Of course, if he ran, the camera would run out of room.)

Still--STILL--Danar has to work to get off the ship. It is, on the whole, a preferable episode to those episodes where the bridge crew only learns that someone is transporting (or borrowing shuttles) after the fact and oops, it's just too late to do anything about it. (One could argue that for all episodes where this happens, the viewer should assume that a long, Danar-like chase occured before Wesley or Worf or Data says, "He's transported to the surface, Captain!")

*My theory regarding Star Trek. My theory is that the Federation is run by a bunch of bureacratic types who honestly believe (or pretend to believe) that they aren't a military organization, like having extreme leftists run the war in Iraq. So they have all these bizarre rules and regulations that hamper the people who actually know what they are doing (actually, it's more like the British uppercrust bureaucrats trying to run India versus the lowerclass officers and engineers in India who actually knew what was going on; Kipling had scathing things to say about the British uppercrust types). So, they insist that shuttle bays not be guarded because that would imply, oh horror of horrors, that the Enterprise is a military ship (this theory also explains the reason Picard keeps telling everyone it isn't when it is). And they have to leave the transporters on because otherwise the Enterprise will be deemed a hostile, prison-like environment. And all that business about having one huge computer system so that problems on the holodeck always, always, always cause photon torpedoes to arm: that's the fault of the idiot bureaucrats as well. (Actually, Star Trek 3: Search for Spock more or less implies that the Federation is run by lousy bureaucrats).

My theory about Data is that his creator built into his memory processes a "slow" device. That is, the creator wrote a program where Data is forced to discard or randomly select information before he finishes computing all possible variables. It's really subtle; he can still rattle off information and numbers at the drop of a hat, but it keeps him from being too computer-like and forces him to learn: it's kind of like one of those gates in irrigation drains in Utah that flaps back and forth depending on the force of the water so the more variables there are, the more Data's response is "slowed" or checked (it's still very fast, it's just Vulcan fast rather than machine fast). Data's program also insists that he actually experience an "agency moment" where he has to think about his final choice rather than simply--computer-like--producing it. This checking-and-agency program makes it possible for Troi to beat Data at chess. And for Danar to "outcompute" him. And various other unbelievable scenarios to occur. It also explains the absolutely awesome ending of "The Most Toys" (great episode with ever talented Saul Rubinek).

All in all, enjoying Star Trek is much easier if one accepts the basic pointlessness of the Federation. Of course, Deep Space Nine got all gloomy about it. It is much more user friendly if one simply assumes that most of these people are totally clueless. We lucky viewers get to watch the few non-clueless Federation members. Well, non-clueless most of the time.

CATEGORY: TV

The Irony of O'Naturals

We have two O'Naturals in our neck of the woods: Portland and Falmouth. The Falmouth O'Naturals is much bigger with a separate section for a table extolling non-profit organizations. Considering that I paid over $10 for a croissant, sandwich and drink, this is not Goodwill non-profit we're talking about. Or maybe we are. Perhaps the people who go to O'Naturals support non-profits like Goodwill, they just don't actually shop there.

I do, but I'm a soul-destroying capitalist so I don't count. I also don't mind the irony of O'Naturals since it amuses me when hippiness goes corporate. (If I minded, I would call it "hypocrisy.") P.J. O'Rourke once commented wryly on the so-called small business persona of places like Ben & Jerry's. Oh, yeah, he said, you think it's managed out of a house somewhere? Or words to that effect.

The odd thing about O'Naturals is how much it is, in a chain-like way, aimed at selling itself (note: selling itself) as a hippy-friendly, environmental do-gooder. Which isn't to say that it's all a front. The food is good, however pricy. I'm not particularly concerned about whether the chickens and cows were free ranging, happy chickens and cows before they were slaughtered but the quality is markedly better than your average grocery store purchase. I simply refuse to cavil at the use of animal products when, the last time I checked, tomatoes, lettuce and parsley are also living things. I can understand refusing to eat, say, lamb (but it sure is good, isn't it?). But once one starts angsting out over shrimp, one might as well wear a filter to prevent the inadvertent swallowing of bugs. And I've never understood why the people who think animals are on the same level as humans, nevertheless refuse to hold animals to the same standards. I mean, if humans shouldn't be eating animals, why should tigers be eating antelope? And if it's a circle of life thing for the tigers, why can't it be a circle of life thing for humans?

Of course, the same people who get freaked out over the eating of meat (there are many vegetarians who don't eat meat for other reasons than self-righteous posturing; I want to make it clear I'm not talking about them), get on board with animism and buy into the image of the Native American saying a prayer over the dead deer. Except the deer is still very dead. I can see thanking God for creating a world where I'm not going to starve, but feeling goopy doesn't do a thing for the deer. And tigers don't give prayers.

Of course, soulless capitalist that I am, I think humans are better than tigers--just because they discuss their own angst and build cities and write bad poetry and worry about killing animals. But it's an argument that gets one nowhere since in order to believe that humans are better than animals, you ultimately have to believe that cities, planes, cellphones and TV are worth giving up a hunter/gatherer existence for. Which I do, but a lot of people aren't willing to say so.

Leaving the animal question to one side, the irony of O'Naturals "look at how environmentally safe and wonderful we are" self-advertisement shows up in other ways. My dinner partner and I sat next to a window that extolled it's tint: the tint keeps the utility costs down. Well, hooray. My dad, who plays the stock market, does the same thing. Except that O'Naturals was air-conditioned. And my parents' house isn't. This is Maine, where non-air conditioning is uncomfortable but won't kill you and a surprising number of restaurants don't have air conditioning because we use it, what, four weeks out of the year?

I like air-conditioning. But then, again, I'm a soulless greedy capitalist pig, and I don't exactly believe that the world is disintegrating around me.

In any case, presumably the people who worry about the (thankless) eating of animals and the over use of energy, are the market for O'Naturals. But such people don't go to air-conditioned locations and pay money for food prepared by workers who, probably, don't earn much more than $9/hr. Which means that O'Naturals' real market are soulless capitalists and people who like to feel warm fuzzies about their political views while they eat . . . but not so much so that it jeopardizes their life style (closet soulless capitalists).

Which makes the whole experience ironic and avant garde bizarre in the extreme. Maybe the owners and sellers of O'Naturals are trying to create an environment which forces consideration of the ambiguous political and social environments in which Americans live.

But I doubt it.

$$$$$$$$$

NEW CATEGORY: FARES, FESTIVALS, FROLICS

Camping With Harold

My family had its third family reunion this past week. We aren't, in general, family reunion type people, being rather aggressively unsentimental and iconoclastic. But the reunion coincided with my parents' 50th wedding anniversary year, which encouraged our better instincts. Astonishingly enough, all seven children, their spouses and subsequent grandchildren were all present on at least two occasions! Pleasant occasions, moreover!!

However, my blog is not about the vagaries of the Woodbury family but about popular culture. I'm going to write about the camp.

The camp is Silver Bay on Lake George, a YMCA camp that is family-oriented and vaguely Christian, in the way of things these days. The music at vespers was less traditional/classical and more experimental. A man came into the dining hall during lunch one afternoon and gave a prayer (in which, most appropriately, he requested God to keep people from getting too grumpy). It was the only time I heard a mealtime prayer during our stay. There is babysitting at Silver Bay and board games for borrowing in the recreation center. There are two beaches, with strange hours, a gym, shuffleboard, sailing, kayaking, rock climbing, a library that randomly closes, an ice cream and pizza parlor, a craft center, a small hall with a grand piano and--just when you think you have finally "gotten away from it all"--a business center with wireless access and phones.

We stayed in Paine Hall, which is one of those houses that inspire you to look for Wardrobes in every room. It was originally a family home, and many of the rooms have been split in twos (or thirds) and bathrooms slotted in, resulting in small, odd-shaped rooms and winding corridors. At the back of the house, a stone roofed patio has been built on. Over the stones, someone has marked out a labyrinth (it's the hot new "ancient" meditation technique) with tape. As my niece, Kezia, remarked, "It looks like something from Buffy." Which was a most appropriate remark, considering that the house also had bats.

One of which I named Harold.

Harold flew in almost every night. Looking for bugs probably. He would become disoriented once he was inside and twice ended up in a second floor bedroom. It was rather like having a big moth blundering all over the paintwork. Harold became part of the ambiance, which included peeling walls, a wrap-around porch (filled with at least twenty rocking chairs) and a tower. The house also tended to produce strangers: cleaning crews, passing visitors, individuals sliding in to use the bathroom. These people would appear at odd moments, rather like ghosts passing through. It's the sort of house that shows up in gothic novels, only nobody in gothic novels slouches off to the dining hall (down the admittedly secret path) when the dinner gong sounds.

The dining hall served basic camp fare (better, my niece told me, "than SUNY"). It may not be up to Nero Wolfe's standards but then Nero Wolfe doesn't prepare his own dishes (despite his commentary on Fritz's methods) or wash them for that matter. For those of us who find the mere process of making a decision ("What am I going to eat tonight?") a burden, this sort of thing is pure heaven.

What struck me principally about the camp was the silence. Silver Bay is north of Lake George Village. Growing up, I was familiar with southern Lake George, on the eastern shore, where a friend's family owned a camp. That camp was on the edge of a bay near ten or so other camps. Northern Lake George is both narrower and less inhabited. Standing by the Inn at Silver Bay, you could look over a rock wall and a sloping baseball field to the water. On the other side of the water, the trees heaped up, crowding against each other. This is the Adirondacks: humid and hilly with layers of green, green, green. No matter how many people one saw during the day, that particular view never lost its otherworldly quiet.

I do not, as it happens, often get sentimental over nature. I like my nature to have bathrooms and dinner gongs. I love the ocean, as in: I love driving past the ocean or looking at the ocean from a window in a hotel. But a place like Silver Bay allows you to feel as if you're getting back to nature (bugs, bats, trees, lake) without the trouble of having to pitch a tent. Or cook your own food. Because no matter how close we think we are to nature, we never are really. We create, as it were, holding patterns around the earth, like dipping one's toes in the shallow section.

This is good and right. Our ancestors, those grunting primates, knew sharks awaited in the deep. The camps of the early 1900s (of which Silver Bay is a type), like the National Parks, civilized the encounter between humans and nature. (And yes, shuffleboard is a fairly good indication of civilization.) Only as we progress technologically, do we pretend our ancestors would have felt differently, do we imagine we would want the barriers and complex sociological/educational crutches removed. A place like Silver Bay is perfect for combining nature-heavy sensations with safe civilized expectations and, as it happens, I quite like paddling in warm, bath-like water.

CATEGORY: FARES, FESTIVALS, FROLICS

Cary Grant: Funny Guy

In the movie Arsenic and Old Lace, there's a scene towards the end where Cary Grant sits on the stairs and talks to himself. It's an off-the-wall performance, and one of the funniest moments in classic film.

When I first saw the movie, I was familiar with Cary Grant as the elegant, suave protagonist of movies like To Catch a Thief. I hadn't realized, until I saw Arsenic and Old Lace, how much comedy Cary Grant brought to his parts. It was always there, I just hadn't appreciated it before.

I'm currently reading a biography of Grant by Marc Eliot. I've learned that Grant's background was, well, vaudeville would be the best word. He was part of an acrobatic troupe when he came to New York. But in his first years in Hollywood, he was mostly cast as the "elegant guy in a tux," a role that demanded little from him and kept him in the second tier of acting. (He kept getting roles that Cooper discarded.)

And then Grant broke from the Academy and become an independent contractor, an incredible brave move in those days and also, the reason the Academy refused to give Grant any awards until 1970 when Gregory Peck insisted that they honor Grant with a lifetime achievement award. (I really don't know how anyone can believe that the Academy awards aren't anything but political grandstanding.)

As an independent contractor, Grant got lucky. He got cast in The Awful Truth where his comedic powers made the picture the hit of the year. And then Hitchcock discovered him and developed Grant's darker side. What Grant excels at IS elegant suaveness but with a soupcon of black comedy at the back of it all. It's the snaky part of his smile. In his biography, Eliot bemoans that Hitchcock couldn't get Grant for Shadow of a Doubt. However, I think Joseph Cotten was the better choice. The psycho uncle in Shadow of a Doubt has to disgust the viewer. The excellent script by Thornton Wilder emphasizes that this is a good town and a good family ("decent"--high praise from Wilder) that doesn't deserve this particular problem. The audience has to want Cotten to leave, has to feel more and more panicky as he continues to stay. The problem with Cary Grant is that even when he is scary, you want him to stick around. Oh, so, he might kill a few people, what's the prob?

But he is perfect both in Suspicion and Notorious, in which his dark critical side really shines (of course, Claude Rains, at 5'6", outplays everyone, with the exception of Bergman; it is truly a great film). But to return to comedy, regarding The Awful Truth, Eliot writes, "Grant's catlike physicality, which had brought him to the brink of lugubriousness in his earlier leading-heel roles, now translated into a youthful, rhythmic prance fueled by the high energy of light comedy. A bend of his knee become the equivalent of a punch line. A lifting of his palms expressed a lifetime's skepticism. A tilting of his head suggested a turning of the other cheek" (page 164). And I think that Eliot's insight here about Grant's physical (vaudeville trained?) comedy is right on. It is this plus Grant's dark comedic side that explains (or helps explain) his star quality; the amazing Cary Grant who makes it all look so effortless.

On a side note, one thing about the Hollywood of that era is that it was far more drug-ridden, debauched, political and just crazy than it is now, we just know more about it now, what with Entertainment Tonight and such. But the backstabbing, backbiting of "The Golden Era" was truly astonishing. And boy, didn't everyone dislike Katherine Hepburn! Now, there's someone who MADE Hollywood love her.

CATEGORY: MOVIES