MovieMonday: The Big Lebowski

This 1998 film, which is pretty wacky, has achieved cult or near-cult status for several reasons, not least because its characters may say "fuck" more often than in any other movie.  (Someone actually made a count.)

This, and other charms, have given Lebowski an enduring popularity among filmgoers who enjoy watching people do dumb things or struggle in ridiculous situations.  And, honestly, the talky dialogue is often hilarious.

The movie was the seventh from from the Coen brothers, Ethan and Joel, following "Fargo," which won two Academy Awards (actress, original screenplay) and was filmed in the Upper Midwest.

I'm going to speculate here that the Coens decided to choose a sunnier setting for their next outing and came up with Malibu -- either that or they had retained the services of actor Jeff Bridges, who lives in Malibu, to play the lead role of the Dude, and all the pieces fell into place as they wrote their screenplay.

Where "Fargo" is a crime/comedy with a dark edges, Lebowski is a comedy/crime story with eccentric characters and a lot of property damage.

That latter sets the story in motion.  The Dude, a drifter who favors Black Russians that turn his mustache milky, is disturbed one day by two thugs who bang into his apartment, push his face into the toilet, pee on his rug and demand to know where the money is.

The Dude explains that he is the Dude, and while he seems to have the same official name as a rich guy in Pasadena, he does not have a wife named Bunny who is being held for ransom.  After the thugs leave, the Dude is very angry because, as he says repeatedly,  the fouled rug had "really tied the room together."

He gets into his battered car and drives to confront the big Lebowski at his mansion.  There, the Dude demands the replacement of his rug, which is not offered, but he hears later from the big L, who desires his assistance.  From there the plot is off to the races, and we learn, again and again, that things are not always as they seem. 

There are three hostile nihilists; a pornography king who employs enforcers; an avant artist Maude Lebowski (Julianne Moore), daughter of the non-Dude with her own enforcers;  a nasty but silent 15-year-old, and, just for the humor of it, a "brother shamus" who follows the Dude around and whom the Dude assumes is an Irish monk, presumably a Brother Seamus.

The local bowling alley is the Dude's hangout, where he and two teammates are in a finals tournament.  They are dim Donny (Steve Buscemi) and, more dramatically, Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) a Jewish convert and a hothead prone to overreactions that cause the Dude to step up as a calming influence, but without much success.  When asked to represent the Pasadena Lebowski's interests, the Dude takes Walter with him, which is not as helpful as might have been hoped, given Walter's oft-mentioned military experience.  

Besides Coen regulars Buscemi and Goodman, another one, John Turturro as Jesus (Geesus) Quintana, is there not to advance the plot but to promote, humorously and in his own way, his bowling team in its coming competition with the Dude/Donny/Walter squad.  

There are repeated riffs -- bad guys storming into the Dude's apartment (which really could use a deadbolt), more and more damage to his old car with its tape deck and Creedence tapes, and at least two Dude fantasy sequences occasioned by violence and spiked White Russians.

Since I'm speculating about how this story came together and since the plot isn't entirely coherent or even the point of the exercise, I will venture further and guess that another Malibu resident, Sam Elliott -- he of the distinguished mustache and gravelly voice -- was drafted to provide some semblance of narrative structure as the Stranger.

  

The Stetson-wearing Stranger introduces the story in an opening accompanied by a Sons of the Pioneers chorus of "Tumbling Tumbleweed" and as an actual tumbleweed -- no doubt imported as a prop -- rolls down a Malibu beach toward the Pacific Ocean.  Midway along and at the end of the film, The Stranger meets the Dude over sarsaparilla and beer, respectively, in the bar at the bowling alley.  

In their final conversation, the Stranger puts a question to the Dude:  "Do you have to use so many cuss words?"  The answer seems to be, why not?

"The Dude abides," the Dude says as he leaves to join his bowling team, leaving the Stranger to put the Dude and his story into perspective. 

Notes

-- The Dude is a fashion-casual fellow whose street attire not infrequently consists of pajama bottoms and a distinctive sweater, a Pendleton Westerly that reportedly came from Jeff Bridges' personal wardrobe.  

The Portland-based Pendleton Woolens company drew on Native American designs for the Westerly, which was sold from 1972  until sometime in the 1980s.  It was reintroduced sometime after 2010, presumably to appeal to Dude  enthusiasts. 

-- Sam Elliott appeared with Lil Nas X in a 2020 Super Bowl commercial that made use of Elliott's Western look and Nas' very popular "Old Town Road."    Good song.

A Christmas Playlist

Most of us have nice stereo systems and the ability to design our own playlists with songs playing from serial albums or randomly from several albums.  At chez Id, we do the latter with classics from several generations. 

Early in December, we start playing our holiday version, a family tradition.  If you're into such, I recommend these titles.

Lou Rawls

"Christmas is the Time" was first released in 1967, and many of the same songs were on subsequent holiday releases.  Rawls, who died in 2006, had a smooth, memorable voice and great accompaniments, including the guitar solo on the title track.

(An old jazzer friend recommended "Stormy Monday," the Rawls/Les McCann collaboration from 1962.  It's not Christmas music, but it is very cool.)

Andrea Bocelli

"My Christmas" also is a favorite.  Bocelli, the fabulous Italian tenor, has great pipes, and I sometimes wonder whether his collaborators don't tend to over-orchestrate his numbers.  That is not the case in this  duet with Mary J. Blige.  

Sarah McClachlan

Wintersong

"Wintersong" is the first of Sarah McLachlan's two holiday albums, and it seems to be the more popular one.   The songs, like this one, are rendered simply and in a low-key wistful tone that has its own appeal.

Ray Charles

"The Spirit of Christmas," released in 1967 by the fabulous Ray Charles and the Raettes, features about the only version of the The Little Drummer Boy that I can stand to hear.  Don't miss his version of "Baby, It's Cold Outside," with Betty Carter.  Like all his work, a fine piece of music.

Peter Kater
 

"For Christmas," pianist Kater's solo rendering of traditional music, has been popular since its release more than 30 years ago.   This all-piano album of traditional music, is well done.  Sing along or just enjoy the familiar tunes.

Earth Wind & Fire

 

Who doesn't want to have a little funk at this time of year?  "Holiday" was released in 2014 and, happily, includes December, a seasonal repositioning of its possibly most joyful song.

Willie Nelson

Yes, Willie is traditionally a country singer,  but this album (like "Starlight," which Texans used to call Willie's grandmother album) treats traditional favorites in Nelson's own style.   

Josh Groban

"Noel" employs simple accompaniments to feature Groban's fine voice, as on this French Petit Papa Noel.

Frank Sinatra

Old Blue Eyes released this classic during his swing period with Capitol Records, and it remains a seasonal pleasure.   (Another Sinatra classic from that period, is "Songs for Swingin' Lovers," with arrangements by Nelson Riddle.  Just saying.)

Michael Bublé

This album, aptly titled "Christmas" is also appealing.  This singer has a nice voice, and his phrasing is good.  I do like this horn-informed cover of the Elvis classic.

Note:

My enthusiasm for Mariah Carey's classic Christmas single, as performed by her, remains undiminished, as noted last year and in 2016.

Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal took notice as well:  How Mariah Carey Built "All I Want for Christmas Is You" into a Holiday Juggernaut

MovieMonday: Mank

This movie is mostly about another movie -- "Citizen Kane" -- that many regard as the finest film ever.  That earlier movie is mostly associated with Orson Welles, who starred, directed, produced and co-wrote it.

"Mank" is about the other writer, Herman Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman).

(I watched "Citizen Kane" again before seeing this new film.  There is a very short plot summary here.)

The film opens as Mank, one leg in a huge cast after a car accident, is taken to a house in the Mojave Desert east of Los Angeles.  He is there to recuperate and, under orders from Orson Welles, to produce a Kane screenplay in 90 days.  Actually, 60 days.   

Mank is a complex fellow -- one of the  writers who left New York for less lofty but higher-paying film assignments in Los Angeles.  He's good when he's on point, but his alcoholism makes his work erratic.  A California associate, John Houseman (Sam Troughton), has been assigned to bird-dog the writing effort.

Mank's script will be about Charles Foster Kane, a rich young man who buys a newspaper, then many other newspapers and who aims for political glory, only to lose all that he values and then die, old and alone in a massive pleasure dome, ala Kubla Khan of the Samuel Tayler Coleridge poem.

"Citizen Kane" resembles a then-living American, William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance), founder of a newspaper empire who has his own "pleasure dome," San Simeon, high above the California coastline.  Hearst has taken an interest in filmmaking to promote the career of his blonde mistress, Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried.) Hearst died 10 years after "Citizen Kane" was released and probably did not appreciate the characterization.  Marion Davies was said to resent her portrayal.

Mank's moments are intercut with scenes from his earlier experiences in California.  The film is made in black and white, and the cut-in scenes are rendered, script-style, like this:  "INT: San Simeon -- night"

On Mank's first visit to San Simeon, he is told, "George Bernard Shaw was right -- it's what God might have built if he had the money."  In that scene, Hearst establishes himself as tight-lipped and peremptory, but Davies and Mank begin to form a friendship.

Mank also visits the MGM offices, where he watches a "writers' room" working on a script and then sees chief Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard) tell an all-hands gathering that the studio must cut all wages by 50 percent until the new president, FDR, reopens Depression-closed banks. 

He also talks with other writers when the Writers Guild (like other labor unions) are being formed.  They are knowledgeable about the looming Nazi threat and sympathetic to a more collective government, with Mank saying, "Socialism is where everybody shares the wealth, and Communism is where everybody shares the poverty."    

During that period, California was a business-oriented Republican stronghold.  But one renegade named Upton Sinclair (Bill Nye) had become a problem.  Sinclair, the muckraking journalist and socialist, registered Democrat and ran in 1934 for the office of  California governor.  Mank observed the film industry's apparently staged campaign of faked stories from everyday voters favoring the Republican candidate, who did in fact win the election.  

The movie is directed by David Fincher  -- "The Social Network," "Gone Girl," "Fight Club"-- and is done well.   The acting is excellent, but the script drops literary references like crazy, apparently to establish Mank's intellectual erudition.  (He calls Hearst "Cervantes" and Louis Mayer "Sancho," not flatteringly; and he likens Davies repeatedly to "Dulcinea," in references, duh, to Don Quixote.  There are many others.)

Orson Welles (Tom Burke) is almost entirely absent.  He and Mank talk over the phone and then argue at the end over whether Mank will get any credit for the screenplay.  On the other hand, Welles' name has been associated almost exclusively with the original film since its release in 1941.

Note

Early in this movie, Mank is advised to "Tell the story you know."  

In fact, the script for this film about a screenwriter was written by the director's late father, Jack Fincher, a screenwriter himself.

This happens again and again in all forms of art.

How many self-portraits do we have of famous painters?  Photographer Cindy Sherman has made a career of photographing herself in different costumes and roles.  

Televisions shows about people who make television shows started (I think) with  "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and continued to "30 Rock."  

"Chorus Line" and "Chicago" and "Singin' in the Rain" are musicals are about musical plays.  

Thomas Wolfe's "You Can't Go Home Again" is just one of many novels by and about novelists.  

Readers with other examples are invited to share them in comments.

MovieMonday: Let Him Go

This is a well-plotted movie with an unusual plot arc that moves from family sorrow to Gothic horror, all set in the largely empty western interior from Montana to North Dakota in the early 1960s.

The main characters are Margaret and George Blackledge (Diane Ladd and Kevin Costner), long-married ranchers whose son is killed in an accident.  

A couple years later, the son's widow, Lorna (Kayli Carter), remarries and leaves the Blackledges' home with their toddler grandson to live with her new husband, Donnie Weboy (Will Brittain) in an apartment in town.  

That there was tension between Lorna and Margaret is hinted; that Lorna is uncomfortable with her new husband is suggested more strongly.  

Then Margaret, sitting in her car in the grocery store parking lot, sees Lorna and her son being abused  by the new husband.  

Margaret decides to investigate, nice-lady style, by taking a fresh-baked cake to the new family's home the next day.  There she learns that Lorna, Donnie and grandson Jimmy have upped stakes and left without leaving a forwarding address.

George, a retired sheriff who is stoical but no less resolute, understands his wife.  When she loads the car and says she is going to find their grandchild, he joins her.  

The strong relationship between these two is rendered effectively and in a minimal style.  The losses of a son and then a grandson resonate but without noise.  The quiet harmony of their life in the first act contrasts with the drama that follows.

Their journey takes them to the North Dakota home of the Weboys, a family whose line of work is unclear but who scare everybody in the surrounding region.  The Weboy sons provide the muscle, and their mother, Blanche (Lesley Manville), is the family leader -- plainspoken, brassy and downright menacing.  

One short visit to the Weboy house convinces the Blackledges that they must rescue their grandson and also his mother, if she is willing.

Naturally, this is not a simple matter.  Margaret and George work together as a team (and with a Native American character imported apparently to provide a useful ally) as the conflict gathers suspense and moves to its fiery end, which is difficult to watch but is faithful to the story as it has been laid out.

This movie was made in 2019 and was released on November 6 on about 2,500 screens, a lot this year, where it sold well, again for this year.   It is available now for streaming at a cost of $20 and is best watched on a large screen.  

The source material is a novel of the same name by Larry Watson, who seems to mingle personal and action themes and who is familiar with the northern interior between the Rocky Mountains and the upper Midwest.

The screenwriter and director, Thomas Bezucha, decided to make the film after reading the book. Michael Giacchino, a veteran film musician, has delivered a score that enhances the film's themes.

Note

Let Him Go was shot in Alberta, Canada, in locations that are similar enough to the sites in the story.

A Thanksgiving Wish

This is a day to be grateful for friends, family and the comforts we enjoy.  But there are many people suffering the effects of two major hurricanes, two weeks apart, in November.  If you believe that all men are brothers, you might consider a contribution to relief agencies that are now active in the region.  

Two major hurricanes, Eta and Iota, lashed Central America earlier this month.  The Guardian, a serious  English newspaper, has a retrospective here and links to previous stories at the bottom of the article.  

The problems:  heavy flooding, landslides, hundreds of deaths, many thousands of families whose homes were destroyed and further destruction to economies already damaged by the pandemic.  Additionally, people crowding into shelters have increased the spread of Covid.

These three agencies get high marks for efficient management from Charity Navigator and are on the ground already in Central America.

Doctors without Borders 

Catholic Relief Services

World Vision

A fourth agency, the  Red Cross is unrated.  Its downside is its large bureaucracy, but that is also an upside:  The Red Cross has teams all over the world and decades of  experience alleviating all manner of human turmoil. 

Further photos from Central America this month, all from Reuters:

MovieMonday: Extraction

In a year when Marvel has decided to defer releasing new superhero movies until theaters reopen, this Netflix movie may have benefited by attracting some of the genre's audience.   Extraction was scripted and directed by MCU veterans (Joe Russo and Sam Hargrave, respectively) and stars Chris Hemsworth, who played Thor in three Marvel movies.

Here's the setup: Tyler Rake (Hemsworth), a grizzled mercenary, has been living in a country shack and doing not much more than drinking when when he gets a call:  "We landed the whale."

His new assignment is to rescue Ovi Mahajan (Rudhraksh Jaiswal), the 15-year-old son of a now-imprisoned Mumbai drug lord.  Ovi  has been kidnapped by henchmen of another drug lord based in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh.  

(An interjection:  Why would these drug lords care about each other?   Their bases are in different, very populous countries, after all.  Why start a war with a gang 1,500  miles away?  Even if you really hate the other guy, why kidnap his son?  You don't need ransom money.  Why not just kill the child and and leave the body where it lies?  I know, I know -- action movies generally have plot holes, but geez.)  

Tyler arrives in Dhaka where he uses his buff build and combat training, plus guns, to get the boy out on the street, where they are pursued in a long, well-orchestrated sequence of car chases, also with guns blazing.

Then, after it turns out that the mercenary group's plan to get Ovi out of Dhaka has been foiled, Tyler and Ovi end up hiding in "the worst-smelling sewer in Asia" until they are rescued, surprisingly, and there is an interlude in which the characters reveal their motives. The final act involves these two, a new ally, the mercenary team, many police officers, multiple helicopters and much collateral (human) damage -- all while the Dhaka drug lord watches through binoculars from a marble porch, rather as if he is observing a cricket match.  

I don't want to be unkind here.  This plot has more in the way of human motivation than most shoot-em-ups.  There is a father-son theme that explains Tyler's empty life and is echoed in other situations.  A foggy memory reveals its meaning over time, and there is a recurrent underwater motif.  Some scores are settled and, at the very end, there is a suggestion that a prequel or sequel may be in the offing.

Some critics believe the plot reverts lazily to a white-man-rescuer theme, but there may be reasons for that.  First, if you have well-established Chris Hemsworth as your star and a big-budget premise, you're not aiming for the indie market.  (Remember the film's originators came out of Marvel.)  Second, setting this movie anywhere in the U.S. would have been ruinously expensive.   The South Asian location added interest, reduced cost and provided work for local actors and craft talent.  

Finally, the funding didn't come come a major U.S. studio, and there appears to have been some participation by investors from India -- not least because the working title was changed from Dhaka  to Extraction and because virtually the entire movie was shot in India.  The film has attracted much attention in the Indian press and presumably a large audience in that country as well.  

Potsdam, Truman, Chopin and Mom

In late summer 1945, the leaders of the the United States, Great Britain and Russia gathered in Potsdam for a conference after the end of World War II in Europe.   The goal was to reach an agreement on what to do with territories Germany had held.   The setting was depressing, and, worse, the discussions were tense and unavailing even after a welcome Allied victory.   It was a long two weeks. 

By many reports, the most pleasant part of the conference was an evening entertainment planned by the Americans.  A grand piano was set out on the portico, and music was provided by an American violinist and pianist currently serving in the military.  

The two played several pieces together, and then US president Harry Truman, a pianist himself, played Paderewski's Minuet in G.  

To end the evening, the other pianist, Sgt. Eugene List, played  Frédéric Chopin's "Waltz in A Minor," Truman's favorite.  The musician did not know the piece from memory, and he was surprised when the president offered to stand by the piano and turn the pages as List tickled the ivories.  (None of the other conference attendees or aides was confident enough to take the job.  Wimps.)

Later, in early 1947 and after List had resumed his career as a concert pianist, he was invited to the White House to perform for a diplomatic reception.  Once again, Truman asked to hear the "Waltz in A Minor."

Harry Truman

This engaging biography lets us understand the serious but low-key man who was president during a consequential period in the middle of the 20th century.  It opens with his grandparents' settlement in the "Muzzuruh" part of Missouri and continues through his foreshortened schooling, his several careers in banking, farming, artillery leadership in the Battle of the Argonne Forest, among others,  and ultimately to political office and the presidency.  The story is further enhanced by local and political context and observations about Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower,  the presidents who preceded and succeeded him.  

Definitely worth a look.

Frédéric Chopin

This Polish composer was born in Warsaw just about a century after the invention of the piano.  (Its predecessor keyboards were big pipe organs and small harpsichords,  which were useful but not particularly expressive.)  As a child, Chopin took to the piano and became known for for his performances and, later, for his musical compositions as well.  

He and the instrument were enormously influential as European music moved from its Classical period to the Romantic one.  The piano's capacity for loud or soft intonation and for staccato or legato renderings, plus its pedals' accommodation of further nuance, allowed more emotive renderings of music. Chopin, Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann and others made full use of these new tools by writing music that allowed pianists to draw more sensitive shadings from the notes on their music scores.     

My Mother

My mother, like several of her children, studied piano as a child.  One of the happiest days of her adult life must have been when she and my father bought a used baby grand piano.  She played often, and Chopin was her favorite composer -- or maybe, on some days, it was Mendelssohn.  Much as I enjoy the waltz that was Harry Truman's favorite, the Chopin waltz I like best is  Op. 64, n. 2, perhaps because I remember my mother playing it or maybe because it is moving and beautiful.

Mom died young, but not as young as Frédéric Chopin.  Dogged all his life by poor health,  he died in 1849 in Paris of complications from tuberculosis.  He was just 39 years old.

Note: This review discusses the latest of many books on why Chopin remains essential to audiences, performers and musicologists.