MovieMonday: Chuck Jones and Warner Bros. Cartoons

Just about everybody over the age of five has enjoyed the Warner Bros. cartoons.  The piece above notes some of the characters we remember and how a man named Chuck Jones, credited with those creations, thought seriously about how to make people laugh.

Warner's Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies offerings date to 1930, one year after Disney had launched its own, long forgotten Silly Symphonies.  The idea, at Warner, was to leverage the studio's music to illustrate animated shorts that would be shown in theaters as accompaniments to full-length movies.

But the quality of the humor, not the music, was what increased the Warner cartoon unit's audience, exponentially, over time.  Jones' contributions, starting in 1933 and continuing till he left in 1962, have been lauded ever since.  The cartoon team broke up the next year after the release of its final product, The Iceman Ducketh, which of course starred Daffy.

These classic cartoons are familiar to generations of Americans, but not in recent years, alas.  Now the latest HBO iteration, HBO Max, seems to be planning to fill that truly unfortunate void, as discussed in this article.

Even better, the article links to a few Warner Bros. classics, including Baseball Bugs, One Froggy Evening and a personal favorite, Duck Amuck.

Check it out.

Notes

Jones played on that last cartoon title for his autobiography, Chuck Amuck, which was published in 1990 and is available on Kindle and, at higher prices, in print, probably because of its author's illustrations.  Jones died at 89 in 2002.

One highlight, which has rocketed around Twitter since 2015, is Jones' list of nine rules for the Wile E. Coyote/Roadrunner stories, which suggests that discipline can enhance humor in the pursuit of really fine comedy. 

MovieMonday: Harvey

Here is a movie that shows its age but still retains a kernel of its original charm.

It concerns an eccentric but unfailingly kind man, Elwood P. Dowd (Jimmie Stewart,) and his friend, an invisible white rabbit named Harvey who, per Elwood, is 6'3" tall.  Elwood, who has inherited his mother's house, now shares quarters with his widowed older sister, Veta Simmons (Josephine Hull,)  and her old-maid daughter, Myrtle (Victoria Horne.)

Both women are distressed at Elwood's attachment to Harvey, for whom he opens doors and pulls up chairs, and who accompanies Elwood to local bars for conversations with paroled inmates and bartenders who do not see the rabbit but accept him nonetheless and without criticism. Unfortunately, Elwood's nuttiness is offputting to Veta's socially elite friends and is seen as frustrating the chances for Myrtle to find a husband. (Elwood is understood to be a drunk, but we never see him take a sip or appear to be in his cups.  This may have to do with cinema standards of 1950, or with the fact that inebriation is not fun to watch.)

The film's first 30 minutes or so are irritating.  Their point is to establish Veta's hysterical embarrassment with her brother and, finally, her decision to commit him to a sanatorium.  At that point, things get a bit more interesting.

The looney bin scenes are absolute period pieces but serve to contrast Elwood's genial view of the world with those of the people who work in the place and who, against their expectations, come to like the guy and sorta see his point of view.  There is also a contrived explanation of what the Harvey the rabbit, whom Elwood describes as a "pooka," might be.

The nicest moments come toward the end, when Elwood explains himself in his appealing and generous way.

In a country built by itchy people willing to cross oceans or continents in search of something better, there always has been an audience for stories about lovable oddballs.  While Harvey is a fictional tale set in a largely fictional past,  it still resonates with the basic wish we all have for acceptance of our own personal quirks.

This movie was released five years after opening as a Broadway play that won the 1945 Pulitzer for best drama.  It has been popular, off and on, in subsequent screen and stage versions here and in London, but its appeal, like that of another old movie and dramatic standard, Charlie's Aunt, may have reached its end.  As recently as 10 years ago, Steven Spielberg was considering a Harvey remake, but that came to naught.

Perhaps what made the film most appealing on its release was its star.  Jimmie Stewart, already a popular screen actor, had been drafted as an enlisted man in 1941 and, from there, trained as bomber pilot, flew 20 missions over Europe and then trained other flight crews.  (The 20-mission limit was imposed because bombing missions were associated with unusually high casualty rates, i.e.,  death.) Other actors served honorably in war films and on USO tours, but Stewart was admired particularly among veterans and their families.  His sincerity seemed to come through in 1946's Christmas classic, It's a Wonderful Life, and his unassuming charm works well in Harvey.


Note:

The Idiosyncratist has been distracted but not sickened by the current coronavirus.   There has seemed to be no point in writing about personal stress when everybody else is in the same situation.  The hope is to have something interesting to say in the near future.  

MovieMonday: Manhattan

I'd seen this movie at least twice before and thought it would be nice, given the moment, to revisit Woody Allen's homage to Manhattan.  The film was released in 1979, a period when the city was regarded as an urban hellhole typified by sleazy characters in Times Square and dirty subway cars covered with graffiti.

Maybe Allen wanted to give another view.  He wrote and acted in the script, which was rendered beautifully in broad-screen black and white by master cinematographer Gordon Willis.  Willis died in 2014, but still is admired and studied for his framing of scenes to signal subtle barriers of curtain and glass and to indicate in color the light and dark aspects of characters' natures.

The Willis camerawork, backed by the New York Philharmonic's lush rendering of Irving Berlin's music, gives Manhattan an aura that, in retrospect, its story cannot sustain.

Consider the period -- after the introduction of the birth control pill and before the contagions of herpes and HIV -- in which its characters came of age.  We have Isaac (Woody Allen,) who is involved with 17-year-old Tracy (Mariel Hemingway) and his ex-wife, Jill (Meryl Streep,) who is raising their largely ignored son with another woman and writing a tell-all book about their former marriage.   Then there is Isaac's humbly named friend, Yale (Michael Murphy,) who is happily married but also involved with Mary (Diane Keaton) in an extramarital relationship that seems not to trouble his spouse.

Through all the sturm und drang, Isaac and the other adults cannot articulate what they want, but they continually assert their erudition -- effectively, their self-absorption -- in discussions of interpersonal issues.

For me, the ultimate moment comes when Isaac and Mary -- each momentarily available and uncertain -- talk about their respective situations in a visit to the planetarium at the Museum of Natural History.

Think of it this way:  "...It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people
like you and me don't amount to more than a hill of beans in this crazy world cosmos."

In short, Isaac and his friends lack perspective.  Allen is laughing at himself and all the other ostensibly adult characters.  At least I hope so.

Ultimately, the most genuine character is Tracy, who is younger and taller than Isaac and who talks straight.  Early on, she says,  "Well, I told you before.  I think I'm in love with you."  She's the authentic grownup.

MovieMonday: A Night at the Opera

I watched this Marx Brothers movie for two reasons.  First, I wanted to see its hilarious stateroom scene (below.)  Second, I needed some laughs. 

The movie's very light plot opens in Italy and is held together by a story of frustrated love and opera.  A famous tenor, Rodolfo (Walter Woolf King) pursues a beautiful soprano, Rosa (Kitty Carlisle,) who loves another another tenor, Riccardo (Allan Jones,) whose fame and wealth are less. 

Around the edges we have Otis B. Driftwood (Groucho) alternately courting and insulting a rich widow named Mrs. Claypool (Margaret Dumont, of course) and encouraging her to donate money to his employer's organization, the New York Opera.  The pompous employer, for his part, wants the money to sign big-name Rodolfo (now clad in a Pagliacci clown costume, haha) to perform in America. 

The opera leader gets his money and hires the Famous Tenor and Rosa.  The other two scamps, Fiorello (Chico) and Tomasso (Harpo) arrive to rep the not-hired Riccardo and to act wacky, respectively and together.

The next morning the Famous Tenor, the soprano, Mrs. Claypool, the opera leader and Driftwood board a steamer headed for New York.  The Lesser Tenor, Chico and Harpo stow away in Driftwood's steamer trunk, and the crowding of Driftwood's tiny stateroom ensues shortly afterward.  Always a fun watch.

It's easy to see where the story is going, of course, but it includes many diversions: Groucho and Chico discussing and shredding contracts, Chico and Harpo amusing the steerage passengers with piano and harp performances, the three castaways passing themselves off as bearded aviators to debark the ship and then finding themselves being feted, falsely, by the mayor of New York and exposed as frauds by the NYPD.  The inventiveness of the story is impressive and always in the pursuit of broad humor. 

The tour de force comes in the film's final act when the Famous Tenor opens in a performance of Rigoletto for a black-tie-clad New York audience.  Chico and Harpo sabotage the enterprise in various ways:  Chico's violin bow -- baton duel with the orchestra conductor,  the orchestral diversion from the overture music to "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," Chico and Harpo darting on and offstage during the "Anvil Chorus" while being chased by cops in opera costumes and, finally, Harpo's swinging like Tarzan on the backstage ropes and tearing up the scenery. 

Quite a production.  The viewer may not laugh at every moment -- and particularly the Groucho badinage, which has not aged well -- but distractions aplenty are on offer from beginning to end.

What more can be wished in a moment like this?


Notes

This film was one of the last produced by Irving Thalberg, the most lauded figure in film from 1921 until his early death in 1936 at the age of 37.

In preparation for A Night at the Opera, Thalberg urged the Marx Brothers, who got their comedy start in in vaudeville in 1905, to take many of the movie's set pieces on the road in live performances, which must have sharpened the timing and delivery.

In fact, the first two Marx Brothers movies were adapted from stage shows.  Their wordy dialog appealed in the early years of talkies, and their skewering of snotty elites also resonated during the Depression.

-----

The Marx Brothers' stock in trade was making fun of snooty upper-crusters, but in this show they come to the aid of impoverished opera singers, if not of opera audiences attired in evening clothes.  We associate opera with high-brow art now, but that may not have been so true in the last century.

In 1943, eight years after this movie was released, the New York City Opera was founded to provide an affordable alternative to the traditional Metropolitan Opera.  It was dubbed "the people's opera" by Fiorello La Guardia, the mayor at the time.

Over time, new genres competed for music audiences:  swing, jazz, rock, country, hip-hop and, always, pop.   The New York City Opera went bankrupt 2013.

..

MovieMonday: Monty Python and the Holy Grail

When this movie was released, Monty Python had been doing sketch comedy on British television since the mid 1960s.  The troupe launched its own show, Monty Python's Flying Circus, in 1969 and, unexpectedly, found an audience in the US starting in 1972.

The only thing for it was to make a film.  So the five-some put this movie together on a very limited budget and shot it in very damp Scotland in 1974.  In 1975, it hit the theaters and did very well.  It still is popular with fans of silly, collegiate-informed comedy with historical antecedents.

(Some call Monty Python humor "surreal," but those folks almost certainly missed the Rene Magritte exhibition I saw in San Francisco two years ago.  We are imprecise in our language, alas.)

The story in the film -- King Arthur of Camelot gathering knights to seek the Holy Grail, as he has been directed by a deliberately cartoon Lord -- is just a skeleton on which to hang humor about the muddy misery, superstitions and knightly battles of a millennium ago, plus contrasts between English and French points of view.

The grail quest sends Arthur to various castles in search of "the finest and bravest knights in the land to join my court at Camelot."

At one castle, a peasant tells him, "No one lives there (in the castle.) We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune."

When one of Arthur's knights pulls up at Castle Anthrax, he encounters dozens of unhappily chaste young women "between the ages of sixteen and nineteen and one-half," and is dragged out unwillingly by others of Team Camelot.

Some of the scenes are funnier than others.  I don't want to give away the plot, but, obviously it was not devised to show us King Arthur finding the Holy Grail.  Rather, it takes itself less seriously and butts up against the 20th century.  It is, as I have said, collegiate humor of the sort that might be expected from 1960s baccalaureates of Oxford and Cambridge.

I hadn't seen this movie before, but about 15 years ago I did see its Broadway musical version, Spamalot, which was more tightly scripted but, if anything, even more silly. Spamalot won three Tonys that year  -- best director (Mike Nichols, duh,) best musical (?) and best featured actress, (also ?) -- basically, for selling many, many tickets.  It also was popular in London's West End, and regional companies drew enthusiastic audiences for years in other American cities.

The source material in this movie is pretty good good.  True, the intro and finale are jerky.  True, some scenes are better as others.  But there are moments that will make you laugh out loud, and it is available free on Netflix and for not much more elsewhere.

In this moment, what more can be asked?


Note

The original subject of MovieMonday was intended to be Spinal Tap, the 1984 mockumentary about a heavy metal rock group whose fortunes are on a downhill slide.

Though it was made nine years later than Grail, Tap hasn't aged nearly as well.  It makes fun of the already-fading hard rock phenomenon -- neon spandex, grandiose but content-free staging, and not-too-smart band members. And while the Monty Python story does not pretend to invest itself in character development, Tap invents characters and conflicts that, worse, are there only for show.

A Narrative: Coronavirus, Oxygen Monitors and the FDA

Working flat out to produce possibly unnecessary ventilators         

We learn more all the time about Covid-19 SARS-CoV-2.  Below are some pieces of the puzzle revealed just this month.

1.  From the Emergency Room

 A New York emergency doctor, Richard Levitan, shared his observations about the role of oxygen deprivation in a widely read New York Times piece several weeks ago.  From his discussion:

...(W)hen Covid pneumonia first strikes, patients don’t feel short of breath, even as their oxygen levels fall. And by the time they do, they have alarmingly low oxygen levels and moderate-to-severe pneumonia (as seen on chest X-rays). Normal oxygen saturation for most persons at sea level is 94 to 100 percent; Covid pneumonia patients I saw had oxygen saturations as low as 50 percent.

Patients compensate for the low oxygen in their blood by breathing faster and deeper — and this happens without their realizing it. This silent hypoxia, and the patient’s physiological response to it, causes even more inflammation and more air sacs to collapse, and the pneumonia worsens until oxygen levels plummet. In effect, patients are injuring their own lungs by breathing harder and harder. Twenty percent of Covid pneumonia patients then go on to a second and deadlier phase of lung injury. Fluid builds up and the lungs become stiff, carbon dioxide rises, and patients develop acute respiratory failure.

By the time patients have noticeable trouble breathing and present to the hospital with dangerously low oxygen levels, many will ultimately require a ventilator.

(Note:  The comment that patients compensate for hypoxia by breathing deeper may suggest why cigarette smokers have slightly better outcomes from this disease -- they've had more practice.)


2.  Behold the Oximeter

Dr. Levitan says that oximeters, cheap blood oxygen trackers that have been sold over the counter for decades, can be of great help -- informing people what is wrong when they are in the early or middle stages of this coronavirus.

Before reading his article, I had never heard of oximeters.  I learned only this week that a good friend keeps one by her bed.  She got it when she had pneumonia and after she had gone to the emergency room because she was having a hard time breathing.

Like many others, I am glad finally to know about oximeters now.  I definitely would consider getting one, but I'm pretty sure they are as difficult to find as toilet paper was last month.


3.  A Missed Chance

Curiously, if not for the US Food and Drug Administration and its tender concerns for our health, oximeters could have been available to many millions of people worldwide.

The agent of this availability would have been a surprising one: the Apple Watch, which tracks wearers' health information, starting with steps taken each day, to how much time is spent sitting or moving, to pulse rates, to exercise this year v. last year, and so on.

In fact, Apple Watches were designed and built with oximeters inside them, but these have NOT been hooked up for watch owners to use because getting FDA approval for such would have taken too long and delayed getting the products to market.

How this came about and why this is so is revealed in a somewhat cranky article published a few days ago.

Under current FDA regulation, the function is disabled. It’s another example of how federal regulation of the production and distribution of pharmaceuticals and medical devices in the United States is less focused on stopping viruses and other diseases than on blocking private-sector innovators from developing solutions that may not work or might have harmful side effects.

But, cranky or not, the article's point is fair.  Oximeters are time-tested, reliable and effective.  If the owners of Apple Watches were able to make use of those watches' oximeters, much good would have resulted.

Imagine if your grandfather had taken to his bed six weeks ago with a fever and a cough; imagine that you could put your watch on his wrist and, from it, learn that he was seriously oxygen-deprived.  You could have got him help before he needed to be put on a ventilator.  You possibly could have saved his life.

It doesn't take an imagination to grasp that this scenario could have played out in a non-trivial number of situations this year.  It would have helped many people.  At least at the margin, it could have reduced the demand for ventilators and the stress on emergency rooms and intensive care units.

Don't ask me why the FDA would require a lengthy permission and approval process for something so simple and basic.  What harm could it have done?


4.  Other Priorities

 The FDA continued to protect us from other health dangers even this week, when the number of US coronavirus deaths passed the 61,000 mark.

Just last Monday, when the entire economy was all but comatose, the FDA announced that it was sending warning letters to 10 different manufacturers ... of backpacks and sweatshirts.

"The public should really be outraged by these products," said Mitch Zeller, director of the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products, reports yet another article.

The products being targeted by the FDA ... (are) ... designed with stealth pockets to hold and conceal an e-cigarette; vaping products that resemble smartwatches or children's toys such as a portable video game system or fidget spinner; and vaping liquids that imitate packaging for food products that often are marketed and appeal to youth, such as candy, or feature cartoon characters like SpongeBob SquarePants.

Egads! Stealth pockets! Children being tempted by Sponge Bob to take up smokeless nicotine!  Where would we be without the FDA to protect us?

In fact, governments are all over the vapes industry.  Flavored vapes, apparently pitched to children, have been banned at the federal level and are being more extensively banned in various states.  A number of states' attorneys general are cuing up a great big civil suit, rather like the one that shook down the tobacco companies.  The biggest vape maker, Juul, also seems to be under financial stress.

Good to know the FDA is all over the fashion/toy end of the e-cigarette matter. 


5.  Comparable History

Could the FDA have gone a bit too far?

The FDA arose after the 1906 passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.  The idea was to make sure that only pure products -- including cocaine, which was legal at the time -- were sold to American consumers.  (To my knowledge, the FDA has yet to take an interest in quantifying the THC strengths of ever-more-potent marijuana strains.)

In 1920 came the Volstead Act, a Constitutional amendment known as Prohibition, a failed effort to rid the country of alcoholic beverages.  Prohibition ended in 1933 when the state legislature of Utah (Utah!) provided the final vote to repeal it.

Between 1920 and 1933 people innovated to conceal their illegal alcohol.  Among the popular products were slim flasks to carry distilled spirits.  For men there were flasks that fit in the breast pocket of business jackets and hip flasks for the back pockets of trousers.  Some women wore stocking flasks on their legs

At right is an image of men of that period enjoying liquor from a flask in broad daylight.  Can you imagine?

If our current activist FDA existed at that time, there would be investigations and prosecutions of flask manufacturers and, then, demands that pockets be eliminated from men's jackets and trousers.  Just for people's protection, of course.

In fact, the FDA mandate to regulate devices and associated products came long after Prohibition ended.

But just as ridding the world of alcohol flasks and flask pockets would have been widely resented a century ago, inspecting children's clothing in searches for "secret pockets" seems like a bit of a stretch today.


6.  The Sad Legacy

Back to Dr. Levitan, who wrote the commentary at top after 10 days in the emergency room at Bellevue Hospital.  (The piece merits a read in its entirety and is available online even to nonsubscribers.) Toward the end, he has this recommendation:

All patients who have tested positive for the coronavirus should have pulse oximetry monitoring for two weeks, the period during which Covid pneumonia typically develops. All persons with cough, fatigue and fevers should also have pulse oximeter monitoring even if they have not had virus testing, or even if their swab test was negative, because those tests are only about 70 percent accurate. A vast majority of Americans who have been exposed to the virus don’t know it.

If not for an FDA barrier, a serious portion of the world's 100 million Apple Watch wearers would know what an oximeter is.  Those same people could check their oxygen capacity if they fell ill this winter.  They could have shared what they knew, or shared their watches, with friends or relatives who got sick and who, like this writer, never knew that oximeters even existed.   Such information spreads fast, and it is extremely valuable in volatile situations like the current one.

We cannot guess at the numbers of people who would have got earlier treatment, who would not have ended up on ventilators and, yes, who would not have died if they learned in time that they were seriously oxygen-deprived.  All we know is that there are such persons and that having access to a simple health tracker in a wrist watch would have made all the difference to them.

I do not know if the FDA's slow-moving and process-heavy approach to approving a basic health-monitoring device was an error as serious an error as the CDC's slow, bungled and protocol-violating rollout of its failed Covid diagnostic test.  At best it was an opportunity squandered; at worst, it was an enormous blunder whose consequences have been revealed only this year.

MovieMonday: The Graduate

This movie was an unexpected hit in 1967, which itself was an odd moment in US history.  It is the story of Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman,) an almost-21-year-old college graduate who comes home to his parents' house and is asked continually what he wants to do with his life.

He is unmoved when an older fellow offers a suggestion in the film's most famous scene, below.




The most Benjamin can say about his plans for his adult life is this:  "I want it to be -- different."

He spends his summer staring at exotic fish in a tank in the basement and then becoming a sort of fish himself -- wading into the backyard pool in the scuba outfit that his parents have given him as a graduation present.

A family friend, Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft,) seduces Benjamin, and they embark on a clandestine affair that seems to help him get over his extreme and extremely funny awkwardness, even if he does start smoking cigarettes, as she does.

But then the Robinsons' daughter, Elaine (Katharine Ross,) comes home from college and Benjamin is drawn to her -- against the adamant opposition of her mother.

Finally, he chooses the daughter, the only person near his age in the story.  He comes to life and pursues Elaine with great energy and against considerable odds.

In the end, Benjamin and Elaine choose each other -- effectively deciding not to be their middle-aged parents -- before they have worked out whom they plan to be instead.

The film has much going for it:  a fine screenplay with plenty of humor, excellent acting and Oscar-winning direction by Mike Nichols.

You've probably seen it once, but it's fun to watch again.


Note

The Graduate has remained popular since its release, and there was talk of a remake around the time of its 50th anniversary.  The idea was rejected, and no doubt for good reason. 

The movie is understood best as an icon of its moment.  Benjamin, who often wears a jacket and tie, looks like his parents and is cordial toward their friends.  But his restlessness suggests the discomfort that was rising among the first wave of Baby Boomers who were coming of age about the time the film hit theaters. 

John F. Kennedy was assassinated during Benjamin's first college semester.  When he and Elaine ran away, their generation had begun to agitate against the Vietnam War.  The following year came the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.   The early-60s Beatles pop music they had enjoyed as teenagers gave way to Woodstock and  the rock- and drug-inflected Easy Rider movie of 1969.  The Beatles broke up in 1970.

The movie doesn't go into the generational differences between Ben and his parents, but that probably wasn't necessary in 1967.  Mr. and Mrs. Braddock's early years were marked by the stresses of the Depression and World War II.  By the time they got around to having a family, life must have looked better than anything they had seen before.  The GI Bill made college affordable, and nearly 20 years of pent-up demand fueled a period of prosperity that continued into the 1970s. 

No wonder Ben's parents were expecting great things for him.   No wonder he didn't understand why they were so optimistic.

-----

For all its light moments, The Graduate has an undertone of what Woody Allen used to call "heaviosity."   Its music, from Simon and Garfunkel, is folky and melodious, but the song that starts and ends the film, "The Sounds of Silence," has a tone and lyrics that are downright ominous.  

The song was written by Paul Simon when he was 21 and worried about totalitarian government, and perhaps when he was like Benjamin Braddock and unsure of himself but more articulate than Ben himself.