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Wednesday June 30, 2021

Seattle Is Burning

Well, that was hellish.

When I first arrived in Seattle in May 1991, I was taken aback by the weather. I grew up in Minneapolis where it would warm up in April, more in May and be superhot by June. And here it was in mid-June in Seattle and it was drizzly and in the 50s and maybe 60s. “When does it warm up here?” I asked a friend in late June.

“July 5,” he said.

I thought he was joking but it turned out to be a well-known Pac-Northwest saying. Saying? It was an axiom. Year after year, like clockwork, it kept coming true. The day after July 4, it was like God turned off the sprinkler, turned on the lights, and we had two months of beautiful, blue-skied, 75-degree weather. Tourists arrived from elsewhere to enjoy the temperate climate. We were a temperate people in a temperate land. When the sun came out you went out into it.

Those were the days.

Over the weekend Seattle suffered three straight days of 100+ degree temps and it's not even July. We broke our all-time record twice: Sunday, when it was like 104, and Monday when it was like 106 or 7 or 8. Portland suddenly became North Phoenix, with three straights days in the 110s. It was actually worse further north. Lytton, a village near British Columbia, became the hottest place in Canadian recorded history with a temperature of 116 on Sunday. The next day, it reached 118.

Here's Seattle's chart, via The New York Times:

And here's their explanation of the phenomenon:

The heat has resulted from a wide and deep mass of high-pressure air that, because of a wavy jet stream, parked itself over much of the region. Also known as a heat dome, such an enormous high-pressure zone acts like a lid on a pot, trapping heat so that it accumulates. And with the West beset by drought, there's been plenty of heat to trap.

And yes, Virginia (or Washington, or British Columbia), it's clmate change.

Making all of this worse is that Seattle is a city with few personal air conditioners. Normally we don't need them. Normally marine air is our air conditioner. So over the weekend, my wife and I did what we always did when I was a kid in Minneapolis during summer heat waves: We'd open the windows at night, close the windows and the blinds in late morning, and hope for respite. This worked for a day or so—and even then it'd still be in the 90s when we went to bed, so I'd be getting up at 1 or 2 AM to open windows. Monday was the worst. A normal summer morning in Seattle is in the high 50s or low 60s, but Monday at 6 AM it was still in the 80s and kept going up. There was no respite. When it reached 104 around 4 PM I took a walk around the block. Were we even doing it right? I wondered. Was it still hotter outside? Oh yes, it was still hotter outside. Opening the front door to our condo was like opening an oven set to 350. Even as I was walking around the block, the city was falling apart. Parts of I-5 buckled from the heat and several lanes had to be closed. I bought popsicles for Patricia at Bartell's and the box—all of the boxes—were stuck to the freezer from melting. At Trader Joe's yesterday, thick plastic shades were pulled over the dairy section to preserve the cool, while the entire freezer section had been emptied by staff because everything was thawing. In our pantry at home, the tub of thick coconut oil completely liquified.

Respite finally came Monday evening/early Tuesday morning. I went to bed at 10:30, when it was still 98, woke up an hour later when it was still in the 90s, read for a while. Before I went back to bed, I checked the temps again and they were in the 80s. When I opened the living window it felt less suffocating outside, so up went all of them. By the time I woke up at 6 AM it was legitimately cooler, closer to what we're used to. It felt great.

And not.

It won't last. And it doesn't bode well for wildfire season. And it's getting worse. Again, from The New York Times:

“We can say extreme weather is happening more as climate changes, and will continue to happen more,” said Erica Fleishman, director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University. “This heat wave is extraordinary, but this in a sense is not likely to be the last.”

It's more than climate change, it's culture change. We're now looking at air conditioners. Our axioms are no longer true. They're not who we are. 

Posted at 08:28 AM on Wednesday June 30, 2021 in category Climate Change   |   Permalink  

Monday June 28, 2021

Amen

Follow Judd here

Posted at 08:47 AM on Monday June 28, 2021 in category Quote of the Day   |   Permalink  

Friday June 25, 2021

Wilder Napalm

What does it mean to you to direct an actor or an actress?

You cannot generalize that. That is like asking a doctor the same kind of question. “Well, there are some nice patients, there are some terrifying nudniks, there are hypochondriacs and there are some jolly ones who say, 'So I've got a 106-degree fever, I'll be all right, Doc.'” It all depends. Maybe if there is some kind of generalization possible, I would say that fifty-five percent are bores. Yes, expecially when they start digging deep into the character, because then you have to spend a week with them saying, “Yes, blah, blah, my father, my grandfather, blah.” And then I say, “For Chrissakes, learn those goddamned lines and let's get it over with.”

-- George Stevens Jr. interviewing Billy Wilder in Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood's Golden Age

Posted at 10:48 AM on Friday June 25, 2021 in category Movies - Quotes   |   Permalink  

Thursday June 24, 2021

Lancelot Links Looks for Some Good News

  • This isn't a bad start. Forrest Hill Academy, a public school in Atlanta named for Confederate general and early KKK leader Nathan Bedford Forrest, has been renamed the Hank Aaron New Beginnings Academy, per The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It was a unanimous vote by the Atlanta Board of Education and the fourth such name change in recent months. “Names do matter,” said board chair Jason Esteves.
  • A New York appellate court has suspended Rudy Giuliani's license to practice law because of “uncontroverted evidence that respondent communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump and the Trump campaign in connection with Trump's failed effort at reelection in 2020.” Encore. Many encores. 
  • Conservative columnist and anti-Trumper Max Boot writes about how Pres. Biden wiped the smirk off of Putin's face at the G7 Summit. Boot talks up how Biden got fellow G7 leaders to agree on: a 15% global corporate minimum tax; China challenges; sending 1 billion vaccine doses to poorer countries; and settling an aircraft subsidies trade dispute. Three years ago, Trump took Putin's side against his own intelligence community—a low point in American political history. Here, Putin emerged saying, “President Biden is an experienced statesman. He is very different from President Trump.” To which Boot adds: “Ouch. That's got to sting for Putin's biggest fanboy in the United States.”
  • Speaking of China challenges: Nice New York Times piece on China expert Doug Guthrie's repeated warnings about doing business in China and how, “instead of empowering the Chinese people, American investment in the country has empowered the Chinese Communist Party.” No doubt. I like this line from Guthrie circa 2014: “I was going around to business leaders, and I'm like: 'Do you guys understand who Xi Jinping is?'” Yeah, this isn't exactly good news but best to be aware of what's happening. 
  • Speaking of being aware of what's happening: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mark Milley, was asked about this year's GOP bugaboo, Critical Race Theory, during congressional hearings, and he gave an answer that was bold in its honesty, empathy and toughness. “I do think it's important, actually, for those of us in uniform to be open-minded and be widely read. ... What is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America—what causes that? I want to find that out.” See video here. I like how he just ran over the GOP's idiot talking points to get at what matters. Always nice to have an adult in the room. 
  • Finally, The Washington Post excerpts from a book on the Trump administration's disastrous response to the COVID pandemic—here, about what happened behind the scenes when Trump himself fell ill in early October 2020. “By that time, the virus was surging again, but Trump's contempt for face coverings had turned into unofficial White House policy. He actually asked aides who wore them in his presence to take them off. If someone was going to do a news conference with him, he made clear that he or she was not to wear a mask by his side.” My, what a charmer. Article makes it seem he would've died with access to every drug available. No further comment from me.  
Posted at 12:39 PM on Thursday June 24, 2021 in category Lancelot Links   |   Permalink  

Monday June 21, 2021

Is a Good Comedy Better than a Good Drama?

OK, nerd alert: I keep a spreadsheet of movie awards, guild and otherwise, and how they match up against the Oscars, and update it each season. Mostly best picture stuff. Anyway, in the last Oscar crush, my eyes wandered over to the Golden Globe Awards for Drama and Comedy/Musical, and I kind of idly scanned the list. And then not so idly I began to realize that generally I preferred the GG winners for Comedy/Musical (usually thought of as a frivilous category) over the GG for Drama (serious and important).

Here they are since 1970. My preferences are in yellow. If there's no yellow, it's a wash (“Nomadland,” “Borat”), or I haven't seen one of the movies ('Beauty and the Beast,“ ”Green Card,“ ”Arthur,“ ”The Turning Point,“ ”Fiddler on the Roof“). 

YEAR DRAMA COMEDY/MUSICAL
2020 Nomadland Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
2019 1917 Once Upon a Time ... In Hollywood
2018 Bohemian Rhapsody Green Book
2017 Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Lady Bird
2016 Moonlight La La Land
2015 The Revenant The Martian
2014 Boyhood Birdman
2013 12 Years a Slave American Hustle
2012 Argo Les Miserables
2011 The Descendants The Artist
2010 The Social Network The Kids Are Alright
2009 Avatar The Hangover
2008 Slumdog Millionaire Vicky Cristina Barcelona
2007 Atonement Sweeney Todd
2006 Babel Dreamgirls
2005 Brokeback Mountain Walk the Line
2004 The Aviator Sideways
2003 Lord of the Rings Lost in Translation
2002 The Hours Chicago
2001 A Beautiful Mind Moulin Rouge
2000 Gladiator Almost Famous
1999 American Beauty Toy Story 2
1998 Saving Private Ryan Shakespeare in Love
1997 Titanic As Good As It Gets
1996 The English Patient Evita
1995 Sense and Sensibility Babe
1994 Forrest Gump The Lion King
1993 Schindler's List Mrs. Doubtfire
1992 Scent of a Woman The Player
1991 Bugsy Beauty and the Beast
1990 Dances with Wolves Green Card
1989 Born on the 4th of July Driving Miss Daisy
1988 Rain Man Working Girl
1987 The Last Emperor Hope and Glory
1986 Platoon Hannah and Her Sisters
1985 Out of Africa Prizzi's Honor
1984 Amadeus Romancing the Stone
1983 Terms of Endearment Yentl
1982 E.T. The Extraterrestrial Tootsie
1981 On Golden Pond Arthur
1980 Ordinary People Coal Miner's Daughter
1979 Kramer vs. Kramer Breaking Away
1978 Midnight Express Heaven Can Wait
1977 The Turning Point The Goodbye Girl
1976 Rocky A Star is Born
1975 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest The Sunshine Boys
1974 Chinatown The Longest Yard
1973 The Excorcist American Graffiti
1972 The Godfather Cabaret
1971 The French Connection Fiddler on the Roof
1970 Love Story M*A*S*H

I would've assumed a landslide for Drama, but it's 18-15 in favor of Comedy/Musical. Your mileage may differ.

Love that the raunchy Burt Reynolds prison/football comedy ”The Longest Yard“ got a Golden Globe. There should be more of that. And paired with ”Chinatown"? That's a fun year. If you had to do a double-feature, which year would you go with? I like '72, '74, '82, '14 and '17. 

Posted at 07:00 AM on Monday June 21, 2021 in category Movies - Awards   |   Permalink  

Sunday June 20, 2021

Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word

“You know, it was probably a stupid thing to do, not letting her play, but you can't be wise and in love at the same time, so I hope she sees the light sooner or later on that.” 

-- Bob Dylan, talking about not letting Joan Baez go on stage with him during his disastrous 1966 tour of England, in Martin Scorsese's great 2006 documentary “No Direction Home,” which is currently steaming on Netflix. I've seen the doc three, four times, but tonight the highlighted just leapt out at me. This is around the time in the doc Joan Baez talks about stealing Dylan's song “Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word.” Later Dylan hears it and goes “Huh ... pretty good song,” and she has to tell him, “You wrote it, you dope.” All of that is part of the doc's idea that a young Dylan somehow tapped into our collective unconscious. Which certainly explains why he was so wise at ages 21, 22, 23. 

Posted at 09:19 PM on Sunday June 20, 2021 in category Music   |   Permalink  

Saturday June 19, 2021

Hader Does Conan '15

This made me happy the other night: Hader does Conan. From 2015.

Posted at 09:49 AM on Saturday June 19, 2021 in category TV   |   Permalink  

Friday June 18, 2021

Movie Review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)

WARNING: SPOILERS

I’d always assumed James Cagney wanted to be in the 1935 Warner Bros. production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” as a chance to to do something different than the usual gangster, grifter, or hot-shot pilot roles he played. But according to biographer John McCabe, and Cagney’s own memoir (as told to McCabe), he had no real desire to play Shakespeare. “It was not, he said, his cup of tea,” McCabe wrote.

So then I wondered if Warners cast him as Bottom, the fool who becomes a literal ass, as punishment for forever fighting them over pay. You act like a stubborn mule, we’ll cast you as a stubborn mule. Nope again. Jack Warner wasn’t really involved in the casting, while Hal Wallis wanted character actor Guy Kibbee for the part.

So how did it happen?

Max Reinhardt. He directed a lavish version of the play on Broadway, took it on the road, and when Wallis saw it at the Hollywood Bowl he was inspired enough to suggest making it a film. (He was also inspired enough to put the girl playing Hermia under contract: Olivia de Havilland. One out of two ain’t bad.) And it was Reinhardt who insisted on casting Cagney. “Few artists have ever had his intensity, his dramatic drive,” he said. “Every movement of his body, and his incredible hands, contribute to the story he is trying to tell.” 

Shame it didn’t work out—for either of them.

Most lamentable
Reinhardt was primarily a stage director. His film work was minimal and dated: just three short photoplays in Germany in the early days of the silents. From Cagney’s memoir:

Because Reinhardt was essentially a spectacle director … he remained largely on the sideline while Bill Dieterle directed. Reinhardt, so used to broad stage gestures, made some of the actors do things that were, I thought, ridiculous for the screen. We used to stand back, watching him, and say, “Somebody ought to tell him.”

I'm curious if Reinhardt directed Cagney in this manner because he brings way too much energy to the role. He’s breathless from the beginning and it gets worse. And when he imitates the storm? Talk about broad stage gestures. Somebody ought to have told him.

Bottom’s personality here, the braggart, isn’t that different from some of Cagney’s successful roles— “Blonde Crazy” and “Devil Dogs in the Air” to name two—so it's a little odd that it doesn’t work. The theater troupe Bottom is part of, which is led by Peter Quince (Frank McHugh), is set to perform “The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe” during wedding-day celebrations for Duke Theseus and Queen Hippolyta, but they’re all hopeless. That’s the gag. Bottom is the big fish in the little pond, and he gets cast as one of the leads, Pyramus, but he wants to play him as tyrant rather than lover. Then he wants to play the other lead, too. Then he wants the lion’s part. When Quince tries to placate him by saying he’d be too fierce a lion, he suggests a dovelike lion. 

It’s tiresome. When is Cagney ever tiresome? Here. I guess it’s partly the broad gestures and breathlessness, but it feels like there’s something else. The glint in his eye is missing. He’s stupefied and selfish rather than joyous and looking for an angle.

You know the overall story. Different groups converge in the woods on a summer night, where they’re toyed with by spirits and faeries:

  • Hermia and Lysander (de Havilland and Dick Powell) are leaving to get married against her father's wishes
  • They are pursued by Demetrius (Ross Alexander), who loves Hermia, and Helena (Jean Muir), who loves Demetrius
  • Bottom’s theater troupe meets to practice the play

(The theater kids never interact with the young lovers, do they? Just with the faeries. Maybe that’s another problem: Quince’s troupe is not relevant to the main storyline.)

Meanwhile, the king of the faeries, Oberon (Victor Jory), is angry with his queen, Titania (Anita Louise, quite lovely), who has become enamored of an Indian changeling, and he wants to punish her for it. So he instructs his magic sprite, Puck (Mickey Rooney), to rub a love-in-idleness flower on her eyelids when she’s asleep, so that when she wakes she’ll fall in love with the first thing she sees. (He’s hoping for an animal.) Oberon then hears Demetrius lambasting Helena, and he instructs Puck to do the same to such a cruel man. It’s this latter order that creates chaos: Puck thinks Lysander is Demetrius and causes Lysander to fall madly in love with Helena. A correction with Demetrius means both men are now pursuing Helena rather than Hermia, and Helena thinks they’re making fun of her, while Hermia accuses Helena of stealing her man. Arguments, fights, ensue.

On his own, Puck transforms Bottom’s head into that of an ass, causing the rest of the troupe to flee in terror. Initially unaware of the change, Bottom sits waiting for them to return. He sings to himself, which awakens Titania, dabbed with the magical flower, and she falls for him.

For all the Shakespearean misunderstandings, most everything happens the way Oberon wants: He gets the Indian changeling, gets Titania back, and orders Puck to fix everything else. Puck does. Kinda. Yes, Bottom is restored, as is Lysander, but Demetrius remains in love with Helena. I guess we assume that’s for the good—it allows all four young people to be happy—but it doesn’t say much for his free will. Imagine if the spell was removed when Demetrius was 60. Poor guy. 

Afterwards, there's the wedding celebration, at which the Quince troupe performs lamentably to the condescending amusement of the royals and rich folks.

More cynical than Gore Vidal
A few things work. The flying of the faeries is pretty amazing, and makes me wonder what might’ve happened if a major studio had attempted a superhero film in, say, the 1940s. (Superheroes not having been invented at this time.) Most of the Warners players aren’t bad, given their non-Shakespearean backgrounds, while Joe E. Brown is hilarious as Flute, one of Quince’s troupe. We even get a mid-’30s Warners vibe at times. Early on, for example, Demetrius finks on our couple to Hermia’s father (Grant Mitchell), who drags her away, leaving Demetrius and Lysander staring at each other. Lysander, with the upper hand, then does a kind of insouciant tie-loosening gesture and leaves singing to himself. 

Mickey Rooney, who also played Puck on the stage, got some of the best notices, but it’s another performance that feels too broad, too loud. Even so, it had quite the effect on Gore Vidal, age 10, who was mesmerized by Rooney and sought out the play and the author. Because of this film, he claims to have read all of Shakespeare by the time he was 16. “Yes, Cymbeline, too,” he writes in Screening History, before adding, “I’m sure my response was not unique.” It’s one of those rare moments when I feel more cynical than Vidal.

Warners’ gamble didn’t do great box office but it was nominated for four Academy Awards, including best picture, and won two: cinematography for Hal Mohr (the only write-in nominee to win) and editing for Ralph Dawson. Trivia question: Name the four Cagney movies nominated best picture. This one, of course, but the other three?

Interesting the fates for these stars. Both Cagney and de Havilland broke free of oppressive Warner Bros. contracts (Cagney in '36, de Havilland in '44), helping upend the studio system. Dick Powell, singing sensation of the '30s, became a hard-boiled detective in the '40s. The rest of the lovers quadrangle were less lucky. Alexander, who played Demetrius, was a closeted homosexual who killed himself in 1937, age 29, while Jean Muir was named (along with Cagney and Bogart) by John L. Leech as a communist before the Dies Committee in 1940. She was cleared, left Hollywood in the '40s, but was named again in the 1950s and lost her livelihood in radio and TV. Her last screen credit is “Naked City” in 1962. She died in 1996. 

As to the best picture trivia? Yes to “Yankee Doodle Dandy.“ No to any of the gangster flicks: “Angels with Dirty Faces,” “The Public Enemy,” ”The Roaring Twenties“ and “White Heat.” Nor to ”Love Me or Leave Me," which garnered Cagney his final Oscar nod. But yes to another movie from that year: “Mister Roberts.” I'll tell you the final one, because unless you know it you won't guess it: “Here Comes the Navy” from 1934. None won.

Bottom and Titania, both punished. 

Posted at 08:22 AM on Friday June 18, 2021 in category Movie Reviews - 1930s   |   Permalink  

Thursday June 17, 2021

'Sure, but I wouldn't want Cagney under the same roof as one'

“Included in Jack Warner's résumé of unpleasant character traits was racial bigotry. He steadfastly resisted for decades to produce a picture with black actors playing anything other than background characters exuding subservient clichés. In 1951 Warner forced the screenwriter Ivan Goff to change James Cagney's African American roommate in Come Fill the Cup to a character played by the veteran Irish American actor James Gleason. 'You think Cagney's gonna be under the same roof as a nigger?' demanded Warner.”

-- from Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film by Alan K. Rode. The “Cup” story comes from John McCabe's Cagney bio, which I've read and referenced often. I even highlighted that particular story in my copy but I don't remember it, so glad Rode reiterated it. A few more things about “Cup”: It was Cagney's last feature with Warner Bros. (for this reason?); and it's one of two Cagney films unavailable in any form. The other is the George Arliss-starrer “The Millionaire.” If you know where to get either of these films, please drop a line. 

Posted at 04:29 PM on Thursday June 17, 2021 in category Movies   |   Permalink  

Wednesday June 16, 2021

Ned Beatty (1937-2021)

He played idiots and geniuses, subservients and dictators, along with painfully ordinary men. 

Ned Beatty was in everything when I was growing up. Everything.

Turn on “M*A*S*H,” and there he was playing Col. Hollister, a regular army priest admonishing Father Mulcahey for his kindly passivity. Go see “Silver Streak,” with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, and he was playing a randy salesman on the make who—wait!—was actually an undercover FBI agent. He was a country music singer-songwriter in Burt Reynolds' “W.W. and the Dixie Dance Kings” and reprised his role as Sheriff J.C. Connors in Burt Reynolds' “Gator.” He guest-starred in episodes of “Rockford Files,” “Petrocelli,” “Lucas Tanner,” and “The Rookies.” In “All the President's Men,” he was Mr. Dardis, a Florida politician who you think is giving Carl Bernstein the runaround but is actually just a busy man, and whose evidence—a $25,000 check deposted in the bank account of one of the Watergate burglars—leads W&B to Kenneth Dahlberg, Midwest finance chair for Nixon's re-election campaign, who says he got the check from Maurice Stans, the chair for CREEP, thus tying the burglars to the White House for the first time. (Yes, I've watched “All the President's Men” too much.) And he played Arthur Jensen, whose five-minute sermon to Howard Beale on the cosmology of corporations—“The world is a business, Mr. Beale”—garnered Beatty his only Oscar nomination. 

He was all of those things. And every one of those performances came out in 1975/1976, when I was 13/14. And that list doesn't even take into account “The Big Bus,” “Mikey and Nickey” and “Nashville,” which were also released during those years. That's a career, right there, packed into two years.

Of course, from there, he went on to play Otis, would-be ruler of Otisburg, the candy-bar-eating, sweet-natured stooge to Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor in Richard Donner's seminal 1978 movie “Superman.” I can still quote half his lines. “It's a little bitty place.” “Are we going to Addis Ababa, Mr. Luthor?” “He's serving notice to you...,” and in tandem with Hackman, “What more could anyone ask?” (Yes, I've watched “Superman” too much.) Back in 2013, I wrote “Most people go their entire lives without having the kind of chemistry with another person that Gene Hackman had with Ned Beatty.”

And I still remember Beatty from a 1979 TV movie, “Friendly Fire,” as the father of a soldier killed in Vietnam, who, with wife Carol Burnett, search to find out why. I remember him working in the front yard when a military officer and a priest show up, and the straightforward, heartbreaking way he said, “Is my boy dead?” 

I think I thought Ned Beatty had been doing this forever but 1973's “Deliverance,” which I still can't bring myself to watch, was his first screen role. I think I thought he would keep doing it forever, too. All the best movies and TV shows would have Ned Beatty in them. Alas, that was the sweet spot. It was also the sweet spot for American movies, and for my ability to take in things and remember them easily. And Ned Beatty was there, playing everything. Probably why I have such a sweet spot for him.

He died Sunday, in Los Angeles, age 83. Here's to Otisburg.

Posted at 09:03 AM on Wednesday June 16, 2021 in category Movies   |   Permalink  

Monday June 14, 2021

My Taiwan Movie

You know those company ice-breakers where you‘re supposed to go around the room and tell colleagues something about yourself they don’t know? I usually go with this one: “I was in a 1988 Taiwanese kung-fu comedy. It was called ‘Wan nung yuandong yuen’ and I played a hui waiguoren, or bad foreigner. In a bar fight, I get a bottle broken over my head by Hu Gua, the Johnny Carson of Taiwan TV.”

With a good crowd, it usually gets follow-ups:

  • No, I don't know kung fu or any martial art. I'm almost defenseless, really.
  • My Chinese is so-so. It was better then. 
  • The bottle was a breakaway, not a real one, but yes it hurt a little. 
  • No, the movie wasn't a big hit. Most Taiwanese probably haven't heard of it. Most Taiwanese at the time probably never heard of it. 

As for how I got involved? I had a lot of foreign friends—meaning western friends—at National Taiwan Normal University, or Shi Da, and someone at the school was contacted by someone at the movie studio, asking for foreigners, and I was invited along for the ride. I think we did all the filming over two nights, 9 PM to 5 AM or something. We had a few westerners—or maybe just one?—who knew martial arts, but he injured his foot during filming. As for why I had the honor of getting the bottle broken over my head by Hu Gua? Earlier, I was asked to do a scene where I got punched and I was supposed to fall backwards and I went all in, slamming myself against the ground. So much so they were momentarily worried about me. After that, they probably thought, “This idiot would probably be good for the bottle-breaking scene.” 

Basic premise: An international sports competition takes place in 1920s China, and we‘re the pushy foreign athletes who invade a local bar one night. I show up about 18 seconds in on the left side of the screen. Hu Gua is the guy in the Boy Scout outfit who tries to keep the two sides from fighting by, among other things, quoting Confucius: <<有朋自远方来, 不亦乐乎?>> Translation: “When friends come from far away, it is indeed a pleasure.” I heard that quote a lot, actually. The Chinese were always saying it to make sure you never picked up a check.

When I returned from Tawain in 1988, I brought a VHS copy of the film to show family and friends. A few years ago, along with some other analog items, I brought it to a digital transfer station in Queen Anne so they could make a DVD of it.  Then I posted that scene to YouTube

OK, drumroll... 

Yeah, the subtitles needed work.

For some reason, IMDb calls the film “Kung Fu Kids Part V” but it's definitely not No. 5 of anything. Its Chinese title translates to “Almighty Athletes” or literally: “10,000 Able to Do Exercises People.” No five anywhere. 

Oh, and the Chinese misfits won the international sports competition. 當然。

Here are some photos from back in the day.


  • I vaguely remember waiting outside Shi Da with the others and being driven (in a van?) to the movie studio on the outskirts of Taipei at about 11 PM. The above—an older period piece, a western—was being filmed as we arrived. There was no “Quiet on the set!” because they shot without sound and dubbed later.

  • The young Chinese guy tries to hit on the western girls until the big guy on the right objects. His name is Bobby, to which the Chinese guy says “Bo pi? Wo ye yo.” “Foreskin? I also have.” It was that kind of “Benny Hill” humor.

  • Here's the western kid who knew his stuff. He looks morose because he'd just injured his foot. The career that got sidetracked.

  • The peace sign is a gesture Chinese girls often made. It didn't mean peace; it was just something cute to do. 

  • Getting the run-through for my 15 seconds of fame. 

  • Here's the grainy video version before the bottle is broken. We had to do it twice because the first time the bottle didn't break properly on the first swing. So Hu Gua actually hit me in the head with a bottle three times.

  • Hu Gua clowning around on set. Nice to hear he's still doing well. 

  • A common sight: western soft drinks being sold with images of western stars. Wonder who the western stars would be today? Probably K-Pop stars. 

  • Near the end of a long night. 

  • I have such a vivid memory of this: Being dropped off on the streets of Taipei at about 5 AM as everything was waking up. These were outside a store waiting to be brought in. 

  • And here it is. The guy with the elongated arms, Bong Cha Cha, was my favorite. He had a Joe E. Brown quality to him.

I miss all that. I miss not knowing where life is going to take you.

Posted at 06:53 AM on Monday June 14, 2021 in category Personal Pieces   |   Permalink  

Sunday June 13, 2021

Lancelot Links is Still Worried About Our Democracy

Just trying to remind myself of all the horror that went on and is still going on.

  • Trump-inspired death threats are terrorizing election workers, says Reuters. Not last November or this January but this April, when it was long over except for the bullshit. Just read the lede of the piece. On April 5, the wife of Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger received a text saying she “going to have a very unfortunate incident.” Mid-April it was: “We plan for the death of you and your family every day.” End of April: “You and your family will be killed very slowly.” It has to stop, Gabriel Sterling said of the Georgia situation last December. It hasn't. Trump and company make it worse every day. They're a shithole country unto themselves. 
  • Ambassador Kurt Volker may have perjured himself as a GOP witness during the first impeachment trial (over Ukraine) of Donald Trump, says the Washington Post. He said there was no quid pro quo, and “Vice President Biden was never a topic of conversation” in the texts he turned over. But Volker was party to a July 2019 phone call between Rudy Giuliani and a top Ukranian official in which the president's lawyer said: “All we need from the President [Volodymyr Zelensky] is to say, 'I'm going to put an honest prosecutor in charge, he's gonna investigate and dig up the evidence that presently exists, and is there any other evidence about involvement of the 2016 election, and then the Biden thing has to be run out' ... Somebody in Ukraine's got to take that seriously.” So split hairs—it's not a text. But he knew what he knew, withheld evidence, and is obviously a dangerously partisan actor. Let that be his obit.
  • This seems the biggest Trump-era news story of the past week: Trump's DOJ sought the phone records of Democratic congressional leaders and their families, says the Wall Street Journal. Among those targeted: Rep. Adam Schiff and Rep. Eric Swalwell. 
  • Oh, Trump's White House counsel Don McGahn was targeted, too, along with his wife, says the New York Times. Apple Inc. says it turned over their phone records to the FBI in 2018. The why of it remains unknown. “... the disclosure that agents secretly collected data of a sitting White House counsel is striking as it comes amid a political backlash to revelations about Trump-era seizures of data of reporters and Democrats in Congress for leak investigations.”
  • Common refrain among Dems is that history will judge Trump and his stooges poorly. Maybe. Or maybe they'll write the history the way they want it. This week The New Yorker has a piece on how maybe Roman emperor Nero wasn't as bad as we think. He just had bad PR.

“And it's still going on, Danny. In today's newspaper, it's still going on. Right outside the door of this house it's going on.” — Paul Isaacson to his son Daniel in E.L. Doctorow's “The Book of Daniel.” 

Posted at 02:17 PM on Sunday June 13, 2021 in category Lancelot Links   |   Permalink  

Sunday June 13, 2021

The Democratic Party Needs to Listen to Marc Maron More Often

“It is Memorial Day. I do want to put my heart out there for people who have lost people, in all fights. And I do again want to stress my gratitude to the people that have had the courage to get vaccinated like fucking adults: the people that had the courage to take a hit for the herd, and move forward, believing in science; and with the belief that we can somehow push this virus back. We did it. Those are the people that fought for our freedom this year—the people that got vaccinated. Not the belligerent babies who didn't get vaccinated for whatever reason. I mean, I do have some empathy and understanding for people who have health issues and don't want to get vaccinated. But all of those people who fought against the fight to stop the spread of the virus, because of what they saw as 'the fight for their personal freedom,' can go fuck themselves, on this Memorial Day.”

-- Marc Maron on his WTF podcast on May 31, 2021. This is the way the Dems need to frame the argument. The other side has usurped the freedom label but it's really ours. We fought to make us all more free; so that we can go to restaurants and ball games and visit family again. They fought for their own freedom to be dicks and douches. Just be upfront about it. The other side is crazy and getting crazier, and you don't stop them with kindness.

Posted at 09:03 AM on Sunday June 13, 2021 in category Politics   |   Permalink  

Saturday June 12, 2021

Movie Review: Employees' Entrance (1933)

WARNING: SPOILERS

I’ve seen a lot of pre-code movies, so I know the score, but “Employees’ Entrance” still shocked me.

Warren William plays Kurt Anderson, general manager of Franklin Monroe & Co. department store, who is also the worst aspects of capitalism personified. “My code is smash—or be smashed,” he says. When a clothier, Garfinkle (Frank Reicher), can’t deliver all of an order for an advertised sale, Anderson cancels the order and sues the man for the advertising and estimated loss on the sale—ruining him in the process. When his right-hand man, Higgins (Charles Sellon), offers no new ideas to boost sales, Anderson not only fires him but insults him out the door—calling him old, sick, dead wood. Later, Higgins commits suicide, and while everyone stands around distraught, Anderson offers this eulogy: “When a man outlives his usefulness, he ought to jump out a window!”

Yet somehow this horror show comes off as the hero of the story. Maybe because he’s true to his code? He tells off subordinates and superiors equally. He sneers at softness and praises and promotes ruthlessness. When Denton Ross (Albert Gran), a jolly executive, admires Anderson’s tenacity, Anderson responds, “Beginning to like me, eh? I despise you for that.” When his new right-hand man, Martin (Wallace Ford), storms into Anderson’s office with a bottle of poison, threatening to kill him, Anderson offers the man a gun: “Go ahead—and don’t miss.” When Martin hesitates, Anderson calls him yellow. When Martin merely wings him, Anderson says dismissively, “You can’t even shoot straight, can you?”

All of which is kind of fun. But then there are the rape scenes.

In their place
“Employees’ Entrance” is ostensibly a Depression-era romance between the up-and-coming Martin and the bewitchingly beautiful Madeline (Loretta Young), who models clothes for customers at the store. But every romance needs its complication, and the complication here is Anderson, their boss. 

Martin is an up-and-comer because he has good ideas—putting the men’s briefs near the women’s dept., for example, since wives tend to buy for their husbands—and also because he’s ruthless. Anderson overhears him refusing to pay an artist for subpar work, then dismissing him with contempt, and he’s so impressed he offers him Higgins’ job. Then he peers in close.

Anderson: You’re not married are you? … This is no job for a married man. Where would I be with a wife hanging around my neck?
Martin: Don’t you like women?
Anderson: Sure, I like them. In their place! But there’s no time for wives in this job. Love ’em and leave ’em—get me?

Martin gets him. Except he’s just begun a romance with Madeline; and when they marry, they have to keep it secret from the boss. That’s the complication—or part of it. The bigger part is that earlier in the movie Anderson rapes Madeline.

That’s how we’d view it today anyway. Did Warner Bros. in 1933? Or society at large? Nah. A cursory search of the movie’s 1933 reviews indicates a “both sides” kind of thing: what girls do for a $10-a-week job; how employers take advantage. It's how the movie was marketed: titillation with a wink.

Here’s how it goes down. We open on a pullback shot of a busy department store over which we get its annual sales figures—$20 million in 1920—and then a 10-second vignette of a longtime employee getting fired by the unseen Mr. Anderson. Through the 1920s we go, with the ruthless Anderson raising annual sales to $100 mil by 1929. After the Wall Street Crash, sales dip to $45, and the board meets with concerns of Anderson’s overzealousness, suggesting he get a handler, but Anderson will have none of it. He demands twice the salary and no supervision or he’ll go to their competition. Then he insults all of them, particularly the fatuous owner Mr. Monroe (Hale Hamilton).

William is great in the role. With his angular face, sloe eyes, prominent, dignified nose and moustache, he already has a wolfish aspect, and he makes the most of it. One night, patrolling the store after hours, he hears a piano playing in a “model home” and investigates. It’s Madeline. The conceit is she’s homeless and hungry and needs a job, but at the same time she’s as put-together as a young Loretta Young. And if she's hiding there, why the piano playing? Kind of a giveaway. Anyway, sensing all this, the wolf closes in. He agrees to feed her; he agrees to give her a job. Then when she tries to leave, he closes the door and looms close.

Anderson: You don't have to go, you know.
Madeline: Oh, yes I do.
Anderson: No, you don't.

At which point he kisses her. Kisses? More like mashes his lips against her unresponsive ones. Fade out.

That’s the first instance. The second, which occurs at the annual office party, is even worse. By this time, Martin and Madeline are married and fighting. Off Martin goes to drink and sing “Sweet Adeline” with the boys, while Madeline sits and frets by herself. And the wolf closes in. Anderson plies her with champagne, and when she gets woozy he tells her to go to his room, 1032, to lie down for a bit. He’ll remain at the party, he says. For some reason, she believes him. Five minutes after she goes up, he goes up, finds her asleep on the bed, positioned alluringly, and loosens his tie. Fade out.

We expect some kind of comeuppance for all this—isn’t that how movies work?—but that's the shocking part of “Employees' Entrance”: It ever arrives. I don’t even think it departs. When Anderson finds out about the marriage—when he discovers that the woman he’s twice assaulted is married to the right-hand man he considers almost a son—he gets mad at them. “She’s hogtied you, my boy,” he tells Martin. “Turn her loose. A little money’ll do the trick.” The most startling moment is when Anderson blames Madeline for his own sexual assaults when he knows Martin is eavesdropping on the conversation:

“I was all right for you the first night I met you. I was all right for you the night of the party. Let’s see, you were married to Martin then, weren’t you? And that’s what you call love. You women make me sick! Come on, come on, how much?“

Holy shit.

That’s when she slaps him, leaves, drinks poison, is rushed to the hospital. Cue gun scene with Martin.

OK, there’s nearly comeuppance. For some reason, the board is ready to drop him again, but Ross, who is supposed to be Anderson’s handler, now works to get the proxy votes from the globetrotting Monroe to save Anderson. And he does. And at the last minute, they rush to the meeting to save the day. It’s a common movie trope—we’ve seen it a million times—but it’s usually about saving the hero. Here, it’s about saving a ruthless SOB who uses his position to sexually assault women … who, sure, also seems like he's the movie’s hero.

It almost ends there, too, on our victorious hero, back to his ruthless ways. But then we get a final perfunctory scene of the cuckolded Martin visiting the sickly Madeline at the hospital and promising they’ll start over. “It’s been done before,” he says helplessly.

Fade out.

Boop-oop-a-doop
Overall, the film is light comedy, with blackout-like “bits” sprinkled throughout. A Jewish man considers a football for his son until the salesman calls it a “pigskin.” A woman asks where the basement is and a bored saleslady tells her “12th floor.” There are perennial problems with the men’s room, the elevator operator keeps enumerating (in a flat voice) the long list of items available per floor, and the company proudly—and one assumes speciously—reiterates that its founders are descendants of Benjamin Franklin and James Monroe.

“Employees’ Entrance” was directed by Roy Del Ruth—who did some of the better pre-code Cagney flicks: “Blonde Crazy,” “Taxi!” and “Lady Killer”—and heralded the return of Alice White, a late-era silent star who got involved in an early 1930s scandal. Apparently she had an affair with British actor John Warbuton and accused him of beating her so badly she required plastic surgery; allegedly, she and her ex, writer-producer Sy Bartlett, then hired goons to beat up Warburton. All of that hurt her career. For a while, she did comic supporting roles, such as this and “Picture Snatcher,” married actor-writer John Roberts in 1940, then disappeared from the screen. In the 1950s, after a divorce, she went back to secretarial work, which she’d been doing when Charlie Chaplin discovered her in the 1920s. She died in 1983.

Here she plays Polly Dale, another clothes model. She’s great: funny, sassy, brassy. Anderson hires her to seduce the portly Ross, and we see her using her boop-oop-a-doop charms on him but to not much avail. She reports back he only wants to play chess. “Try Post Office,” Anderson tells her.

Big department stores were new things back then, and the trailer for this one promised to tell you the stories behind the scenes, but you don't have to squint much to see the whole thing as a metaphor for a movie studio. Everyone's scrapping to get by in the depths of the Depression, while one man, a near-dictator, a mogul say, ruthlessly cracks the whip and shows them the way—while taking advantage of women on the side. No wonder Warners made Anderson the hero. He’s them.

All in fun in 1933.

Posted at 09:56 AM on Saturday June 12, 2021 in category Movie Reviews - 1930s   |   Permalink  

Wednesday June 09, 2021

Movie Review: Midnight Run (1988)

Robert De Niro plays Jack Walsh, a bounty-hunter who is offered $100,000 by his bail bondsman (Joe Pantoliano) to bring in Jonathan Mardukas (Charles Grodin). Unfortunately Mardukas embezzled $15 million from noted wiseguy Jimmy Serano (Dennis Farina) and is in hiding. Walsh has his own past with Serano, which we learn by and by, but he tracks down Mardukas fairly quickly. The trouble is transporting him from New York to Los Angeles. Mardukas refuses to fly--has a phobia--and after an incident the two board a train. Good thing, too: since the bondsman's phone has been tapped (by the FBI) and his assistant is a fink (for the mob), both the FBI and the mob were waiting for them at LAX. Meanwhile, the bondsman, worried because he hasn't heard from Walsh, sends another bounty hunter after them--John Ashton as the hilariously dimwitted Marvin Dorfler.

Midnight Run (1988)

Written by:
George Gallo

Directed by:
Martin Brest

Starring:
Robert De Niro
Charles Grodin
Yaphet Kotto
John Ashton
Dennis Farina
Joe Pantoliano

Quote:
“Here comes two words for you: shut the fuck up.”

Misadventures multiply. Mardukas keeps initiating dialogue, hoping to get to know Walsh. Walsh, of course, wants part of no conversation, and De Niro and Grodin play off each other hilariously here. One of my favorite moments is Walsh on the phone threatening the bail bondsman. “If I find out you sent (Dorfler) after me I'm going to break Mardukas' neck and throw him in a swamp where no one will ever find him!” Mardukas, next to him, gives a start, but Walsh shakes his head slightly, scrunching his nose. Beautiful.

There's great support, not only from Ashton but Yaphet Kotto as FBI agent Alonzo Mosely, whose badge Walsh has swiped. Kotto plays it straight, as a competent officer who is repeatedly made to look the fool by Walsh. His “slow burn” is one of the best in recent years.

Grodin is the real find: the way he balances the inner-strength of his character with his almost womanly predicament--not to mention the lackadaisical, humming way he pesters Walsh. De Niro is De Niro and gives us--even in a comedy!--another uncomfortable, seat-shifting scene. Penniless and on the lam in Chicago, Walsh is forced to revisit his ex-wife whom he hasn't seen in nine years. While they argue, his daughter shows up, looking thin and vulnerable, very much an adolescent girl. The mother goes to get money and car keys and Walsh and the girl are left to fend for themselves. “So what grade are you in now?” he asks. “Eighth grade,” she tells him. “The eighth grade, really,” he says, nodding, before lapsing into a most uncomfortable silence--interminable for all that is left unsaid.

-- March 26, 1999

Posted at 08:35 AM on Wednesday June 09, 2021 in category Movie Reviews - 1980s   |   Permalink  

Tuesday June 08, 2021

Masked

Quick vignette. The other night, I was rushing to keep an appointment at a restaurant—about the fourth time I'd been to a restaurant since things began opening up—when I realized I'd lost my mask en route. These days, walking around Seattle, I mostly keep my mask around my wrist just in case I need it, and it wasn't there. Could I have dropped it? I looked at the sidewalk behind me. Nothing. I was beginning to head back home, knowing I needed the damn thing to get into the restaurant, and knowing all of this would make me even later than ever, when I finally figured it out: I was wearing it. 

It's the pandemic equivalent of searching for the glasses that are perched atop your head. I guess it means I'm really used to wearing these things. 

Posted at 08:14 AM on Tuesday June 08, 2021 in category Personal Pieces   |   Permalink  

Monday June 07, 2021

Movie Review: Ceiling Zero (1936)

WARNING: SPOILERS

“Ceiling Zero” is both same-old same-old and not. 

It’s the fourth James Cagney-Pat O’Brien picture in two years, their second as pilots, with Cagney once again the hot-dog womanizer who endangers everyone while O’Brien is the firm man in command who teaches him how to be a team player. In “Devil Dogs in the Air” and “The Irish in Us,” Cagney steals O’Brien’s girl; here, he’s already stolen her. He had a relationship with her years before that O’Brien doesn’t know about. For good measure, he also steals aviatrix “Tommy” Thomas (June Travis) away from her fiancé. All of this is familiar.

What’s new is the movie’s pedigree and it informs everything else. The earlier flicks were directed by Lloyd Bacon, a solid journeyman, and this is from Howard Hawks, a famed auteur. But I think the big difference is the screenwriter. Frank Wead was a U.S. Navy pilot and early authority on flying who suffered a freak spinal injury accident in 1926 that left him paralyzed. At that point, along with his sober aviation manuals, he began writing fiction of pilot derring-do for the pulps, some of which were bought by Hollywood. Eventually he began writing directly for the movies: “Air Mail” (1932) and “West Point of the Air” (1935), among them. He became friends with director John Ford, and after Wead’s death in 1947 Ford made “The Wings of Eagles” in 1957, which was based on Wead’s life and writings. John Wayne played Wead.

Wead also wrote one play, “Ceiling Zero,” about pilots delivering airmail in zero-visibility conditions, which debuted on Broadway in 1935 to mixed reviews. He adapted it himself for the screen, but didn’t adapt it much. Most of the action takes place in a single location: the waiting area/hangar at the Newark branch of Federal Airlines. Pilots come and go, radio operators try to reach them in hazardous conditions, planes crash. The action, and thus the drama, is concentrated, and feels like a filmed play.

Actually, you know what it reminded me of? Those theatrical showcases in the early days of television: Studio One, Good Year Playhouse, Playhouse 90. There’s a close, emotionally heavy, mano a mano sense to scenes. It’s a melodrama, truncated in time and space, and with a low budget. Even the DVD I watched, the French version called “Brumes” (no U.S. version is available for legal reasons), reminded me of kinescopes of early television.

I wish I could—
We don’t see Cagney’s character, Dizzy Davis, until 17 minutes in. I like that. I like it when movies keep the lead offstage but talk him up. With Dizzy, men tend to smile and women tend to frown. Management isn’t too happy, either, when they find out he's been rehired. An early bit of dialogue between Jake (O’Brien) and aviation boss Al Stone (Barton MacLane) is pretty much the movie in a nutshell:

Al: I’m telling you, Jake, Dizzy’s a menace and a liability.
Jake: And the best cockeyed pilot on this airline or any other.

The boss wants college men who are technically expert but we’ve already seen potential problems with them. Eddie Payson (Carlyle Moore, Jr.) is a pilot who checks all the boxes except one: reactions to emergencies. The night before, in the fog, his radio out, Payson panicked and abandoned his plane, and there went $40,000. Surprised Jake doesn’t use this bottom-line argument with Al. Also, what happened to the plane? He was over Pennsylvania. Where did it crash? Did it hurt anyone? Did no one sue anyone during this period? Anyway he gets canned. 

Dizzy’s the opposite. He arrives singing “I can’t give you anything but love, baby,” lands crazily, gets tossed around by his pals, Tex and Doc (Stuart Erwin and Edward Gargan), and lands at the feet of Joe Allen, commerce inspector (Craig Allen). Everyone’s got an eye on Dizzy but he maintains his rascally ways. He immediately makes a play for Tommy, strikes out, then bets the others he can get her to come with all of them to Mama Gini’s—their version of the Happy Bottom Riding Club from “The Right Stuff.” He wins.

Hollywood movies are forever tossing together older actors and young starlets without comment but here they comment. Fifteen years separate Cagney and Travis (37 and 22), and ditto Dizzy and Tommy (34 and 19), and he tries to convince her it’s no barrier. Why when she’s 34, he’ll only be 49. They keep upping the ages, flirting all the while, until this:

She: Do you realize when I’m 49 you’ll be 64?
He: When you’re 49 you’ll be rolling around in a wheelchair. I’ll be out dancing.
She: Oh yeah? With who?
He: How do I know—she hasn’t been born yet.

How the times have change. What would be a feminist punchline on SNL today is a winner here. Both chuckle and Tommy seems to soften. They’re about to kiss when Jake butts in.

For all that, the screenplay isn’t too backward-looking. The women are tough, with male names—Tommy, Lou—while Tommy, the beginner, is as enamored of aviation history as she is of Dizzy. After she ditches him at Mama Gini's, he confronts her the next morning, and they all but reverse gender roles. He feigns the vapors at the humiliation of it all; and when he corrects her when she says he's 35, she tells him not to be too sensitive about his age. She’s also up front about her sexuality. She admits she’s attracted to him but “I finally got a hold of myself and said, ‘Tommy, this is alright, but how does he look in the morning?’” 

Still, he doesn't give up. He offers her flying lessons on the condition she’ll have dinner with him. His Cleveland mail run? Oh, he’ll get Tex to take it. And does—by feigning a bum ticker in the locker room. Think of it: He hasn’t even done one mail run for the outfit and he’s already shirking his duties.

That moment, 40 minutes into a 90-minute movie, sets up the rest.

The movie opens with a description of the term ceiling zero: “... that time when fog, rain or snow completely fills the flying air between sky or ceiling and the earth.” According to Wiki, the service ceiling is the maximum usable altitude of an aircraft, so ceiling zero is when nothing should be in the air. That’s what Tex winds up flying in. Jake observes that even the seagulls are staying on the ground. So the men, behind radio operator Buzz (James Bush), try to talk Tex home.

Not sure when the movie is set—the opening titles indicate it’s a time when airmail pilots “challenged and conquered ceiling zero” but no date is given. I’m assuming the 1920s or early ’30s? Before radar anyway. Tex not only winds up flying in adverse conditions but he loses radio contact. The men on the ground can hear him but he can’t hear them. Earlier, Tex was the cool, calm counterpart to Eddie Payson’s panic, so when panic begins to creep into his voice, it’s startling, and sets up his end: his plane bursts into flame as he cuts through wires trying to land. All because Dizzy shirked his duties.

The rest is Dizzy’s attempt to make good. Dizzy gets Lawson (Henry Wadsworth), Tommy’s fiancé, and the pilot working on the new de-icing protocol, to tell him all about it; then he decks him and takes his place. It’s again ceiling zero weather and he radios back the dope on the de-icers: “Pressure has got to be doubled. And the rear tube has to be moved back at least eight inches, so the ice won’t fall behind it.” Eventually the wings ice up too much and the plane plummets. These are Dizzy’s last words:

Give my love to everybody and pay Mama Gini the four bucks I owe her. So long, baby, don’t be mad at me. I wish I could—

I wish I could. Not bad last words. The last thoughts for most of us, I imagine.

Dizzy and Tex redux
“Ceiling Zero” has a lot of similarities with another Frank Wead-penned Hollywood flick, “Air Mail,” directed by John Ford in 1932. There’s a character named Dizzy, another named Tex, and a member of the ground crew who keeps getting chastised for wearing his cap backward—instead of being chastised for not wearing it at all, per “Zero.” A crash at the beginning necessitates the hire of a reckless ace, “Duke” Talbot (Pat O’Brien, ironically), who has an affair with Dizzy’s wife, and who later saves the life of the stolid man in command, Mike Miller (Ralph Bellamy) during ceiling zero conditions. Most of the action takes place in the waiting area/hangar.

One of the most affective parts of “Zero” is Mike Owens (Garry Owen), a former ace pilot who suffered brain damage in a crash and now does menial work around the place. All this unbeknownst to Dizzy, who is excited when he sees him, calling him “the only guy in the outfit crazier than I was,” and referencing their WWI-era 59th Squad at Kelly Field. “Oh, I remember you,” Mike says slowly. “You were a pilot.” “I still am,” Dizzy responds. The collapse in Cagney’s face, the dawning realization in his eyes, is so well-done. Owen is quite good, too, but sadly never broke out. He has 186 credits between 1933 and 1952, uncredited in 146 of them. He died in 1951, age 49.

I also liked Erwin as Tex, Travis as Tommy and Isabel Jewell as Lou. Early Warner Bros. had some fast talkers—Cagney, Bogart, Bette Davis—but I bet O’Brien could give them all a run. He barks orders here that are impossible to keep up with. Coffee at the studio must’ve been strong.

This was the last Warners movie Cagney made before his mid-1930s break from the studio, and, as mentioned, his second go-round as a pilot. When he returned he would make two more: “The Bride Came C.O.D.” and “Captains of the Clouds.” In both, he's the hot-shot pilot who steals women. Not bad for a guy who was notoriously aerophobic and monogamous.

Posted at 07:25 AM on Monday June 07, 2021 in category Movie Reviews - 1930s   |   Permalink