Wednesday, October 30, 2013

WHITE HOUSE BRIEFING 10/30/13

In a livelier-than-usual press briefing, White House spokesman Jay Carney addressed reporters' questions about President Obama's seeming detachment of the scandals currently swirling around the Oval Office.

Brad Lanes of the Associated Press asked, "How is it that the President can claim that he knew nothing about the IRS investigation of the Tea Party, the problems with the ACA website, the wiretapping of foreign leaders by the NSA, the Fast and Furious program, or why troops were never sent to protect our embassy in Benghazi until he heard about all of them on the news?"

Carney sneered, "You're blaming us for all your hard work giving us this information? That's rich."

Apparently unsatisfied with Carney's answer, Lanes asked for a clarification. With a weary sigh, Carney said, "Look, President Obama is the president. That's why he's called President Obama. He's got a lot on his plate. He can't be on top of everything that goes on here. How else would he get anything done? So simmer down, skippy."

Still pressing the issue, Lanes said, "But it appears that he isn't on top of anything right now."

"Let's go back to your original question," Carney replied, drumming his fingers on the podium. "IRS, NSA, ACA. Who the hell can be keep all these initials straight? And don't get me started on Benghazi. I bet your spell-check gets a workout on that one. So let's not kid ourselves, OK?" 

Carney then called upon NBC's Mindy Bunker, who asked, "My network just presented an investigative report detailing that President Obama knew that millions of Americans would lose their insurance coverage but went ahead and promised the opposite."

"When the president said that nobody would lose their coverage, he didn't mean their 'coverage'," Carney replied making air-quotes. "What he meant was their coverage. That is, you can still buy insurance. It's just that it's going to be different, not what you wanted and more expensive." When Bunker pointed out it could affect 40 to 67% of the population who don't have employee-provided insurance, Carney replied, "Well, 40% is less than half. And 67% is less than 100%. Sounds good to me."

In response to a Washington Post's reporter's question regarding the president's state of mind in regard to the current crop of problems, Carney said, "I would take issue with your use of the word 'problems.'"

"But the president ran on the platform of healing relationships that had been damaged by President Bush," the reporter pointed out. "And those relationships have been harmed by the wiretapping of our allies' cellphones."

Carney held out his hands, palms up like an out-of-balance scale. "War. Wiretapping. OK?" 

Wrapping up the briefing, Carney stated, "Look, at the end of the day, the president looks out his window of the Oval Office. And when there are weeds in the garden, he says to himself, 'I see flowers, I see flowers, I see flowers!' And you know something? It works. Try it sometime."

                                                  ********************

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

MOVIE OF THE DAY: "WHOM THE GODS DESTROY" (1934)

Many successful businessmen want to make the road in life easier for their children. John Forrester, the lead character in Whom the Gods Destroy, is no different. A theatrical impresario who would have made David Merrick look like an usher, Forrester works day by day to make his son, Jack, a great playwright. But get this -- John Forrester is dead! And yet, he isn't. However... wait, let's back up a bit.

John Forrester is sailing on an ocean liner that collides with an abandoned ship. Bravely (stupidly?) offering up his life jacket to a woman he doesn't know, Forrester has a panic attack when the images of his wife and five year-old son appear before him. Naturally, this gives him the impetus to grab an abandoned fur coat, pass himself off as a woman and make his way onto a lifeboat. And don't tell me you wouldn't do the same thing, guys, even if you didn't have hallucinations of your wife and kid. 

As if.

By the time Forrester quietly makes it back to New York, he discovers that he's been hailed as a hero for sacrificing his life in order to save another's. Fearful of being found out as a phony, he changes his identity, grows a beard, and works at a diner for five years, then at a puppet theatre for another twelve. (Drowning at sea or working at a puppet theatre for over a decade -- which sounds like a worse fate to you?) 

Meanwhile, the now-grown son Jack quits college in order to follow in his father's footsteps by writing, producing and directing a Broadway show. Only the difference is, Jack's play sucks, big time. Forrester introduces himself to Jack as a friend of his father, and urges him to try again. Summoning all his talent, Forrester helps to shape Jack's new play into a triumph, never once revealing his real identity. Like anyone in the theatre would ever refuse credit for anything.

You can tell he's a Communist;
he's got a cool haircut and hipster overcoat.
Whom the Gods Destroy attempts to cram something of an epic story in its 70-minute running time, going off in several different directions before settling into the father-and-son thread. The shipboard scenes promise an interesting subplot featuring an Eastern European refugee, Peter Korotoff, who spits on Forrester in disgust. "You are a capitalist!" Korotoff exclaims (like Forrester didn't know already). "Men of money should be destroyed!" 

Forrester laughs it off, observing, "Some day we'll read a news item about him saying he's been hanged." Ah ha, I thought, we're going to see the commie swinging from a noose at the climax! 

Well, no. When he's later prevented by Forrester from escaping the sinking ship with the women and children, Korotoff pulls a knife on him, only to be shot by the Captain. His whole purpose, then, is to provide the cruel irony of Forrester successfully pulling off the same stunt. Commies and capitalists, they're all the same.

That's no lady!
The question any right-thinking person would have at this point is Who the heck would confuse this guy for a woman, even with a fur coat pulled up to his nose? If his ample girth wouldn't have been enough of a tip-off, surely his haircut, tuxedo pants and dress shoes should have been a dead giveaway. Only when carried off the lifeboat in a small Irish village is Forrester found out. Slapped around by the angry townsfolk, Forrester is condemned as a coward. Personally, I thought it was a pretty clever ruse that went unappreciated by these hicks, but that's the New Yorker in me.

Only one villager cares for the sickly Forrester, restoring him to health over the next several months. Together, they cook up a fancy tale explaining how Forrester survived the sinking, thus allowing him to return home with his head held high and his gut still hanging low.

Ah ha, I thought once again. Forrester is going to be treated to a hero's welcome by family and strangers alike, only to look nervously over his shoulder for any witnesses during the next six reels!

No, this is definitely not a headline
he wants to see.
And again, I was proven wrong. Once Forrester gets a look at the plaque outside his theatre proclaiming his alleged shipboard sacrifice, his mind goes into zany-montage mode as he realizes what would happen if the truth were to come out. 


Stumbling around in the rain -- you knew it would be raining, right? -- and mumbling to himself, Forrester is picked up by a cop and taken to court, where the judge throws him in the pokey for, well, stumbling around in the rain and mumbling to himself. If that was a crime, I'd have served a life sentence by now.


Keep it up, laughing boy, see how
funny things are when the reviews
come out.
And here's where the story really falls apart. John Forrester has been made out to be the biggest thing on Broadway outside of Sophie Tucker's ass. Playwright, director, producer. His plays run at the John Forrester Theatre. The concession stand probably sells Forrester Gummi Bears. Yet no one recognizes him when returns to New York! 

From that point on, my heartstrings were plucked without success, thanks to that enormous plot hole. All there was left to revel in was the sight of Jack Forrester -- played by Robert Young -- getting the smirk wiped off his smug face when his play bombs on opening night.


Well, one person eventually recognizes Forrester -- his wife, Margaret, to whom Jack insists on introducing on the opening night of his second, successful play. While Jack goes out for Champagne, John and Margaret reunite for the first time in almost two decades. In a genuinely touching moment, they reignite the love they once shared, while Margaret desperately tries to understand her husband's motives. John convinces her that their son must never know the truth, yet promises to see her from time to time "for the few years we have left." 

Ol' Sparky, circa 1934.
At that point, Whom the Gods Destroy abruptly came to an end, awkwardly cutting to the 1950s Columbia Pictures logo rather than its 1934 incarnation seen at the beginning. Something smelled rotten in Burbank, so a little investigation was in order. 

I discovered that apparently all of the prints of Whom the Gods Destroy currently in circulation leave out the scene that originally followed afterwards: John, suitcase in hand, sneaking away from his family forever, believing that any kind of a relationship with his wife is impossible under the circumstances. 

Thus I was deprived of an unhappy ending for which I was craving. Maybe if Columbia Pictures made the complete Whom the Gods Destroy available legally instead of forcing screwballs like me to troll the "grey market" for my fix, we wouldn't be disappointed by someone's scissor-happy hackwork. 

The title for its Swedish
release translated as
The Great Disaster,
leaving it wide open for
wisecracks galore.
As with other pre-code movies on this blog -- Why Men Fight, Guilty as Hell, The Sin of Nora Moran -- I was attracted to Whom the Gods Destroy initially due to its unusual title, perhaps expecting some pseudo-spiritual melodrama. I suppose it's rather churlish to expect greatness from what turned out to be nothing more than a big fat soap opera with a Broadway angle. And, as with soap operas in general, realism isn't what its creators were going after. 

But by no means is Whom the Gods Destroy a bad movie. The sinking of the ship is appropriately terrifying, featuring all-too realistic panic and, as with Forrester's later scene in New York, a surprisingly lengthy montage. Walter Connolly's performance as Forrester is emotionally believable even when the story isn't. (Even less believable is that the portly actor was only 47 years old at the time.) As usual, Robert Young is Robert Young, which isn't necessarily the worst thing. 

Pulling the
Big deal -- you can still see the strings!
strings -- of the marionettes -- are the Yale Puppeteers, a theatrical troupe established in 1922 by graduates from, of course, the University of Michigan. (This was apparently before truth-in-advertising laws went into effect.) Extra points are awarded to legendary character actor Akim Tamiroff in his brief but semi-pivotal role as the Commie. 


And just to show how Broadway has changed over the years, the curtain-closing scene of Jack's successful play consists of the lead character blowing her brains out on a church altar. I don't see a play like that opening in Broadway's Disneyfied world any time soon. Bring on the marionettes, boys!

                                                              ***********************

Monday, October 21, 2013

OBAMACARE UPDATE

Responding to the botched roll-out of the Affordable Healthcare website, President Obama today addressed a group of White House reporters to explain the steps the government was taking to rectify the situation.

"Look, no one is more disappointed than me regarding this unacceptable problem. But you have to understand,we had only two years to set up this website. That may seem like a long time to you guys, but look at the bigger picture. We've been in Afghanistan for 11 years and haven't accomplished a damn thing other than overthrowing a maniacal tyrant for a corrupt despot. So if you think that taking over 13% of the economy was going to be a cakewalk, then I'm sorry to bust your bubble."

But then the President had better news. "Fortunately, and surprisingly, the NSA has come to rescue. In studying the information gleaned from hacking into our allies' most sensitive emails, we've discovered that none of them believed we could set up a healthcare website. You know, stuff like, 'This is going to megabyte them on their ASCII.' 'They're going to have a worse operating system than a hospital with blind surgeons.' Real stupid jokes, y'know? But while engaging in this frankly juvenile behavior, they bragged about their own healthcare software and how it was set up. So right now, we're gathering all this stuff together, and we should have a new site up and running in no time. So next time you guys write about how out of control the NSA is, you might want to think about this. I mean, there's something called 'beta testing.' Who knew?"

                                                     ******************



Sunday, October 20, 2013

WASHINGTON UPDATE



Only days after the Government re-opening, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) began a filibuster at the Dupont Circle Subway sandwich shop in Washington, DC. Condemning management's "needless over-layering of avocado on the Turkey & Bacon sandwich" and demanding a cutback on "the bologna earmarks in the Cold-Cut Combo," Cruz vowed to stand his ground until Subway "listened to the will of the customers," adding, "When they say they want to bring home the bacon, they're not talking about spinach." 




Cruz was soon joined by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who told reporters, "There is not a foot-long's difference between me and the senator from Texas on this matter," and offered to take over if Cruz needed to use the facilities. "I just hope they have paper towels," Lee said. "Those hand blowers are just another scam by the environmentalists to control the way Americans dry themselves."  


Customers gave their orders over Sen. Cruz's filibuster. "All I want is my Chicken Cordon Bleu Melt," said a frustrated Brad Lanes, who was on his lunchtime break from nearby Dupont Computers. "And this guy just hogs the aisle yakking his head off." Turning to Cruz, Lanes shouted, "Don't you have a rotunda to go to or something?" But Jeannine Carpenter, a self-described "Tea Party queen," applauded the senator. "Until Ted brought this up, I hadn't noticed that the people behind the counter were skimping on the Genoa salami in favor of tomatoes on the Spicy Italian Sub. That's why we need government accountability. Who needs more tomatoes when salami is so thin? Go, Ted!" 

In response to reporters' requests, Subway spokesman Jared Fogel issued the following statement: "I urge Senator Cruz to come to the table and discuss this over a turkey sub without mayo and cheese."

                                                   *********************

Friday, October 18, 2013

MOVIE OF THE DAY: "GUILTY AS HELL" (1932)

America must have been a pretty hellish place in June of 1932 -- the month that saw the release of Merrily We Go to Hell and Guilty as Hell. Those freewheeling pre-code days coincided with the some of the worst of the Depression. People knew the score and were happy to have genuine adult emotions (i.e., sex, violence and risque dialogue) represented onscreen honestly. Or at least honestly as the local censor boards would allow.

Guilty as Hell. It's an eye-catcher of a title, is it not? -- and the only thing that originally piqued my interest. I didn't need to know the story before going in. I might not have even bothered with it had it gone by the title of the play it was based upon, Riddle Me This. As any Halloween merchant will affirm, hell sells.

The poster's tagline -- "Hidden hands ended her life! Whose were they?" -- -- turns out to be something of a ruse. You know from the first seconds who killed the lady in question (her name's Ruth, by the way); it was her husband, Dr. Tindal. Tindal strangled her (possibly for signing up for Obamacare) and framed her lover, Frank Marsh, for the crime. It's up to wisecracking reporter Russell Kirk to find the real killer.

Vera  would look pretty hot if she
didn't have that zombie vibe going on.
Did I say "wisecracking"? Make that nihilistic. Making himself at home at the murder scene, Kirk casually flicks cigarettes ashes on the corpse while telling his editor on the phone, "She passed out in her pajamas, but I think she'd look better in her nightgown." He eats her candy. He tries stealing evidence. He lies about his reason for visiting the home Frank Marsh shares with his pop-eyed sister Vera. This ink slinger must work for a Murdoch paper. Frank and Vera, by the way, live in a mansion-sized brownstone with no visible means of income. This is a typical early '30s conceit, as if everybody sported formal wear after 6:00 without any explanation of where all the dough was coming from, while 90% of the audience was barely scraping by. Talk about rubbing it in.

I'd like to see a newspaper reporter try this
on a New York police detective today.
The other typical conceit is the dumb cop (Detective McKinley) who wouldn't be able to crack a pistachio, let alone a murder case, without the help of a journo like his frenemy Russell. This was always good for a laugh back then -- who didn't like seeing cops given the razzberry? -- but rather dismaying, if you think about it. I mean, if the guy in charge of solving crimes is what anthropologists refer to as doltish ignoramus, what does that say for the police department as a whole? Besides, who're you going to call when you get mugged -- the Daily News

Guilty as Hell goes off in all kinds of tangents -- Russell falling hard for Vera; a gangster named Jack Reed getting hauled in as a material witness; a running gag involving a woman both Kirk and McKinley have been sleeping with -- leading up to Frank landing on death row. The prison scene features an early use of what would become a classic movie cliche. As Frank counts the hours before getting his neck stretched, a black prisoner sings a haunting spiritual. Well, kind of a spiritual. "The Lonesome Road" was something of a pop number, co-written and recorded by crooner Gene Austin in 1927. It was the go-to song when you wanted to feel all righteous without having to sit through a sermon. (Frank Sinatra, no saint he, turned it into a jazz standard in the '50s.)


What really sets Guilty as Hell apart from other crime movies of its day is its look. Perhaps conscious of the script's stage origins, director Erle C. Kenton goes to town with the visuals effects. It isn't just that Guilty as Hell contains fluid camerawork and more wipes than the baby care aisle of a CVS. In its opening moment, we see Ruth's strangulation from her point of view and in the reflection of Tindal's glasses -- an unexpected ratcheting up of the creep factor still effective over 80 years later. Is it possible that Alfred Hitchcock remembered this startling effect when shooting a similar scene for Strangers on a Train 20 years later? Or am I talking through my felt fedora with wild, idiot abandon as usual? I think we know the answer to that one.


A scene in McKinley's office features a whole mess of reverse POV shots during a heated argument among several characters. This is especially unnerving when being yelled at by McKinley, played by the decidedly undishy Victor McLaglen, and Adrienne Ames as Vera Marsh, who seems to be suffering from a textbook case of exophthalmos. Lady, see an ophthalmologist, you're scaring the children!


"No, point toward the camera!"
The twists and turns encountered in Guilty as Hell are engaging. The dialogue isn't bad (Russell to his detective nemesis: "They shot the wrong McKinley," which I nominate as the first presidential assassination joke spoken in movies). The suspense is, well, fairly suspenseful. But, again, it's the opticals that grab you from the get-go. There are so many hands reaching, fingers jabbing and, if I recall correctly, shoes kicking at the camera that director Kenton seems to have been pushing for a 3-D conversion. Maybe James Cameron can handle it now.

But one thing left me puzzled. Guilty as Hell appears to located in New York... except the capitol building is shown as being a few blocks from McKinley's office, which would make it Albany. Yet Jack Reed is hiding out in "the Heights" -- which made me think of Brooklyn. But the telephone exchange seen in a close-up of a phone book is Madison, as in Avenue, as in Manhattan. Googling the phone number today -- MA6-2020 -- will take you to businesses in Queens, Los Angeles and Phoenix...

You think me obsessive? Well, there's only one way I can possibly plead, your honor:

                                                   ********************




Tuesday, October 15, 2013

TIME FOR DEATH

It's a conundrum as old as The Twilight Zone: would you prefer to know the cause of your eventual death, or let it be an unwelcome surprise, like a visit from your mother-in-law? Thanks to a headline on the Drudge Report, we now have that choice: DNA company can tell you what will kill you -- for $99!

The DNA kit will give people like me time
to learn chess.
The California-based genetic-testing company 23andMe will study your DNA, thus sparing your family doctor from giving the bad news to your face. No longer will you strive to remember the fatal details; you can bring home the computer print-out to proudly frame like a Thomas Kinkaide painting.

This DNA testing is meant, of course, to act as a preventative. Angelina Jolie opted for a double mastectomy after testing positive for a cancer gene. The surgery was done in February. She announced it in the New York Times' op-ed page in May -- "coincidentally" a week before Brad Pitt started promoting World War Z. And when you take into account that the Times pays something along the lines of $150 for an op-ed, there's about $50 profit for saving her own life and her husband's movie which, until then, had been getting bad buzz. Genius.

"Why didn't I screw Ginger Rogers
when I had the chance?"
History might have been different had this testing come into being earlier. Take Abraham Lincoln. It's believed that he suffered from multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2B, which can cause cancer of the thyroid or adrenal glands. Had he known that in 1865, I think he'd have told Mary, "Look, you wanna go to the theatre? Fine. I'm going to bed. In case you can't tell, I'm sick." Or Lou Gehrig. Once he found out that he had the sword of ALS hanging over his head, he probably would have taken the time for a few swings with some cute starlets instead of playing 2,130 baseball games in a row. Then there's JFK, of whom a researcher said, "It is hard to believe that he could have been nominated, much less elected, if the public had known what we now know about his health." One doctor examining his medical records stated that Kennedy wouldn't have lived out a second term. That would have been reason enough to skip Dallas in favor of another assignation with Angie Dickinson. 

I don't have to
drink it to hate it.
As for me, I don't need to shell out $99 to know what's going to kill me. As long as there's Congress; Al Sharpton; network television; anyone named Kardashian; movies based on video games; Alec Baldwin's talk show; modern art; whipped-cream flavored vodka; tofu hot dogs; the Tea party; another Clinton, Bush or Kennedy running for office; censors; the NSA; people who don't retract their retractable dogleashes; commercials; celebrities telling me who to vote for, what to eat or how to excercise; bicylcists who think they own the road; runners who think they own the sidewalk; $15 movie tickets; sour milk in an unopened carton... I know I'm not long for this world.

                          *************************
 

Thursday, October 10, 2013

TOUGH AS NAILS

I was ready to find out.
Last Sunday morning, I was sitting on the couch minding my own business when my wife ambled over and said, "Let me see your toes." I didn't know what the sudden attraction was, but being married 21 years this week, I've long become inured to doing as ordered. I stuck up my feet,  allowing her to ruminate for a moment. No explanation, of course. That would ruin the mystery. Nodding her satisfaction, she allowed me to resume my previous position. Exiting to the bedroom for a few minutes, she returned and said, "Change your shorts. We're going for a mani-pedi." 

I was currently wearing my running shorts, which were dotted with Clorox bleach spots and a tiny hole in the rear. If someone was going to be looking at my nails, I didn't know why a change of shorts was necessary, until I realized that my wife didn't want to be seen with me in public wearing those. In fact, she doesn't want to be seen with me in private wearing them. 

Maybe if I had this thing
I'd clip them more often.
My wife had been hinting for a while that I should go for a mani-pedi. Actually, she was more focused on the pedi part of the procedure. Unlike the fingernails, my toes are usually hidden away most of the time, so I'm not  aware when it's time to get out the clipper  until taking off my sock to see a toe covered in blood from the adjoining nail digging into it. "I thought it was hurting all day," I always mutter sagely.

Not one to waste a good thing,
Mr. Bux grilled burgers after the
performance.
But my toenails are the least of it. Sections of the soles of my feet resemble a relief map of the moon. My daughter finds them hideous, and screams whenever I place them on her leg. My wife doesn't have such an extreme reaction, but she, too, is appalled. My usual defense -- "This is what a real man's feet look like!" -- doesn't fly with her. Just going by my feet, the real man I resemble is a failed of student of the self-styled Indian mystic Kuda Bux, who pioneered the stunt of walking on hot coals in the 1930s. 

After resisting my wife's entreaties for years, I now mutely nodded and did as I was told. The mani-pedi place being a block and a half away, we were there before you could say "paraffin wax."  I was rather proud of myself, really, for going along with this without putting up a fight or even asking what the rush was. I guess I've been worn down to the point where, like all good husbands, I just do as I'm told. It was interesting, truth be told, being 57 and walking into a particular storefront business for the first time. The only thing I have left to experience is a brothel, but that seems to be out of the question, unless my wife is really generous for my next birthday. From her perspective, treating me to the mani-pedi is more than enough.

Accurate representation of how they saw me.
My wife is regular customer at the salon, so her presence was no surprise. But the manicurists gave me a look that read something along the lines of, "What the hell is this oaf doing here?" My wife must have read their minds, because she said, "This is my husband -- it's his first mani-pedi." The manicurists, all Asian, mumbled something to each other. Being uni-lingual, I couldn't understand them, but I think they were deciding who was going to pull the short straw and handle my ugly paws. 

Maybe it's my keen sensitivity to others, but I've always considered pedicurists as something of slaves. There's something very 15th-century about young women on their knees clipping and filing toenails -- and, in my case, filing down the soles of my feet. But all that was forgotten when I stuck my feet into the warm mini-jacuzzi on the floor in front of my chair. Ahhh... What the hell, she'll get a tip at the end of this. Still, I don't know about you ladies, but I find getting my nails filed akin to running them down a blackboard. I twitched and turned as if getting electric shocks, while my wife, enjoying the same treatment, calmly sat there reading a month-old copy of People magazine. She's not as sensitive as me.

I'm not sure if  "The dainty little cake" refers to the product
or the guy on the left.
The pedicurist had to take out the heavy artillery when pushing back my cuticles and doing whatever else had to be done down there for the first time in my life. Such a novice was I that I had no idea what to say when I was asked, "Clear polish?" I thought maybe it was some kind of anti-infectious coating. I mutely turned to my wife for assistance. "No polish," she helpfully replied on my behalf, thus averting another Kevin-inspired disaster. The manicurist, on the other hand, didn't have to ask about polish when it came to my fingernails -- unlike my wife, she knew a real man when she saw one.

By the time the whole routine was finished, all 20 of my nails were shorter than they've been since I was three months old. My cuticles were invisible. My feet felt like they were resting on clouds. Best of all, I didn't have to walk home with tiny pieces of Kleenex between my toes. There was something to this mani-pedi stuff, I admitted, but I wasn't ready to commit to a monthly go-round like my wife. The closest to pampering I indulge in is the very occasional professional shave from my barber. Too much cuticle-pushing, I believe, can be a dangerous thing. I recall comedian Bernie Mac positively boasting that he allowed himself a mani-pedi every week. He died at the age of 51. They say it was pneumonia. I think it was one mani too many. Getting shaved with a long razor twice a year is the closest I want to get to pampering with danger.

                                                      ***************** 

 

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

RE-BRANDED

Fair and sticky.
There's nothing like a good slogan to sell a product. What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Fox News? I mean, besides the female anchors who look like hookers. Fair and balanced. Doesn't matter if it's true or not. Just using those three magic words makes it so. Short and catchy; like Debrox for the frontal lobes, something that floats in your ear and floats around in there, cleaning out any other preconceived thoughts you might have had.

Of course, not all slogans are timeless. No one under the age of near-death remembers  "A Little Dab'll Do Ya" or "It Takes a Licking and Keeps on Ticking." And if you do remember them, it's time to open those mortuary offers that arrive in your mailbox every week.  

Nope, at some point the time comes to retire a catchphrase for something that reflects the changing times. The Financial Times lays it out for us this week:

For more than three decades, the slogan “Death to America” has been a feature of public life in Iran. In speeches and Friday prayers, audiences and worshippers have shown approval by repeating the phrase, sometimes including Israel and, formerly, the USSR, for good measure.

But President Hassan Rouhani’s new push for moderation at home and abroad – including a taboo-busting phone call on the nuclear crisis with President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly – have prompted calls for the slogan to be dropped.


C'mon, Israel, they hated us first!
Whoa. Can anyone remember a time when "Death to America" wasn't part of the Iran's daily ritual along with public stonings, wife-beatings and Holocaust-denying? Roughly three generations of Iranians have lived with "Death to America" the same way we have Kit Kat's "Gimme a break." Entire factories are devoted to manufacturing banners with "Death to America" emblazoned on them. They're the first words Iranian children learn after "Dada" and "Mama is a second-class citizen, lower than a barren goat."  Don Draper would sell his last carton of Luckies for that kind of branding.

Fact: nobody enjoyed eating
before Coke was invented.
Now, you can't just drop a slogan without something waiting in the wings to replace it. Coca-Cola went from  "It's the real thing" to "I'd like to buy the world a Coke" without skipping a beat. On the other hand, two of its recent slogans, "Open Happiness" and "Twist the Cap to Refreshment," will never make it into the Advertising Hall of Fame. 

Those Mad Mullahs need to put some thought into it -- especially since they're going to have to change the way consumers think of the product while, at the same time, keeping the general feeling intact. You can't do a 180 overnight, especially since Iran's entire raison d'etre for almost 35 years had been blaming us for their near-antediluvian standard of living. It's all a matter of turning the temperature down a few degrees while still keeping the heat on. Something along the lines of the following:

AMERICA IS A PAIN IN THE NECK

U.S.A.? MORE LIKE P.U.S.A.!

POOPY ON AMERICA

WHAT'S WITH ALL THE RELIGIONS?

NO, OBAMA ISN'T A MUSLIM!

TED CRUZ? REALLY?

IF AMERICA WAS A CAR, IT'D BE A PINTO

WOMEN IN POLITICS? PUH-LEEZE!

GO AHEAD AND SHUT DOWN, SEE IF WE CARE!

AMERICA MAY NOT BE THE DEVIL, BUT WOULD YOU WANT YOUR DAUGHTER TO MARRY IT?

NOBODY REALLY WINS THOSE PUBLISHERS CLEARING HOUSE CONTESTS!

HOME OF HONEY BOO-BOO. 'NUFF SAID


                                              ***************

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

MOVIE OF THE DAY: "INNER SANCTUM" (1948)



Unlike the silliness of I Love a Mystery or the total misfire of The Shadow Strikes, Inner Sanctum makes the transfer from radio to movie a successful one, sticking to its mystery/horror roots with enough child abuse and violence toward women to justify the mask of Tragedy looming in its Daliesque poster. (Well, maybe it doesn't really look like a Dali, but I wanted to show that I have an awareness of something that doesn't have sprocket holes.)

Only a Poverty Row picture (apparently the sole release from M.R.S. Pictures) could generate a creepy eeriness -- or eerie creepiness -- from the opening seconds, practically a master class in low-budget film noir suspense.  The setting is the dining car of a train. The elderly Dr. Valonius is staring intently at the glamorous (by 1948 standards) Marie Kembar. A passenger interrupts the silence:


PASSENGER: I beg your pardon, have you got the time?
VALONIUS: [still staring at Marie] Eighteen minutes past six.
PASSENGER: Well, I could've made a guess myself. If it's too much trouble to look at your watch, why didn't you say so?
VALONIUS: I have no need for such contrivances.
MARIE: [looking at her watch] He guessed correctly. I have 20 after. I'm a little fast.
PASSENGER: I can believe that.


Not even Dr. Valonius can explain why Marie's
purse looks like a hurricane lamp.

I love this kind of dialogue. In a matter of seconds, you have a bead on these characters. Valonius, a low-key kind of seer, engages in a conversation with Marie. Interested in her story -- she's vacationing with her fiance -- Valonius tells her about a couple he once knew who were also traveling by train. And so the story proper begins.

Harold Dunlap can't catch a break. Not only has he accidentally killed his ex-girlfriend, he can't leave town due to flooded roads and washed-out bridges. And if that's not enough of Fate's practical jokes, he's stuck in a small-town boarding house with a 13 year-old who witnessed him dumping the body on the platform of a train. When he's not trying to kill the kid -- understandable, in light of things -- Harold's avoiding the come-ons of boarder Jean Maxwell. 

"You're unsociable, you're a killer, you smell
bad -- I love you!"
Jean has a thing for bad guys, responding  positively to their negative pheromones. It doesn't matter that Harold makes it clear he isn't interested; this dame is stuck on his butt like a diaper. Even after she's discovered Michael bound-and-gagged in Harold's closet and gets socked in the jaw for her troubles, Jean still wants to run away with the lug. As in high school, the pretty girls in B-movies always go for the gorillas. Why do they get to score with the best chicks -- the ones with good looks, high sex drive and low self-esteem? And if you think I'm still holding a grudge from my high school days, you're mistaken. I'm just asking a theoretical question.

"Say, Mike, let's see how long you can
live if  I hold you underwater!"


Inner Sanctum is filled to the brim with shocking violence both real and intimated -- Harold tries to smash the kid's skull with a crowbar when he's not plotting to push him out a window or drown him in the river -- and dialogue you couldn't replicate today. Ruminating over the flooded roads and bridges, Jean sighs, "This town is washed-out any way you look at it." One guy asks of Harold's ex, who was killed by a sharpened nail file run through her chest, "Any more news about the gal who had her heart manicured?" Another fellow sagely observes, "When you tell a woman over 40 she's beautiful, you're not being generous, you're a philanthropist." I'm sure women in the audience in 1948 laughed along with their husbands at that line. Now, like my wife, they'd merely grunt a disgusted "Ugh." Girls, what happened to your sense of humor?
"No. No kissing for me."

There's a lot going on under the surface of Inner Sanctum, at least through my prying eyes. Harold Dunlap is a guy whose seething interior can barely be contained. We never learn the source of his fury at the woman he killed, other than, as Valonius tells us, she made his life "complicated and miserable" (Take a number, bro!). Jean is throwing herself in front of him like a Persian rug, but all Harold has to say is, "You're very pretty... when your lips aren't moving." (I'd like all you husbands out there to try that on your wife to see her reaction. Just be sure that you're enrolled in Obamacare first.) He even refuses a kiss from her luscious, pouty lips. Man, is he irritating.



"Like what you see, kid?"
But there's something about his relationship with Michael that seems kind of off -- aside from trying to kill him, I mean. Forced to share a room with the kid, he has no problem undressing to his shorts and gazing at him from bed. Realizing that Michael's pretty sure that he's rooming with a killer, Harold urges him to come over to his bed to inspect his body, just to make sure that there aren't any telltale cuts that might have occurred during a murder. When you understand that actor Charles Russell plays Harold with a proto-Kevin Spacey vibe -- and wears clothes just a scosh too tight -- all of his scenes with the kid are on the discomforting side. That is, to reiterate, when he's not trying to kill him.

She would so go for me.
Mary Beth Hughes, on the other hand, is off-the-charts sexy as Jean Maxwell. By being both beautiful and approachable, she exudes a sensuality that the more glamorous A-listers couldn't match because, like her B-queen sister Ann Savage, she's real. While actresses like, say, Rita Hayworth or Ava Gardner were clearly out of anybody's league, the average guy could at least kid himself that Mary Beth Hughes would talk to him. Her first meeting with Harold is classic film noir. As she appears from the shadows, Hughes' eyes start near his crotch then wander up to his face, her look going from friendly to bedroom-bound before she opens her mouth. It's a wonderful combination of acting talent and directorial skill from Lew Landers. If you haven't heard of Landers, it isn't from lack of trying on his part. In his 28 year-career, he directed 154 movies, along with over 100 TV episodes until his death in 1962, which he probably directed as well.

Who do you find scarier: the killer or the driver?
Why did some radio series make mediocre transfers while others, like Inner Sanctum, hit the bulls-eye? Care, pure and simple. Everyone involved wanted to make the best product possible rather than simply cashing in on a hot property. Take producer Walter Shenson, for instance. Some years after making Inner Sanctum, he eyed another cultural phenomenon that he knew had box office potential -- yet took enough care so that despite it being a low-budget black & white picture, it would still be a class act that won critical plaudits everywhere: A Hard Day's Night. It's easy to make great movies, right?

I almost forgot to let you know how Inner Sanctum resolves. When last we see of Harold and Jean, they're sitting on a porch swing. Despite knowing that Harold just tried to murder Michael again, Jean still waxes romantic about running away with him. But Harold is tired of running; all he wants to do is wait for the police to do their duty. And another chance with this blonde dish goes blooey. There's something off about this guy, alright.

But then we return to where we began, on the train with Marie and Dr. Valonius. And... No, I can't reveal the ending. It comes completely out of left field yet... Well, suffice it to say that the next time I'm on Amtrak, I'm going to pay attention to someone who predicts the future.

                                            ******************
There are several copies of Inner Sanctum on YouTube. The complete print, running 62 minutes, is here.

To read about The Shadow Stirkes, click here. 
To read about I Love a Mystery, click here.