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You know, you are not a person, Mr. Burns, you are an experience
The absence of internet from my life for the last five days has, among other issues, made it difficult for me to post about the movies I've seen recently. Let's start with Herb Gardner's A Thousand Clowns (1965).
I've seen this movie three times now; I don't know if I would call it a favorite of mine in the same way that I can point to The Long Voyage Home (1940) or A Canterbury Tale (1944) or Wittgenstein (1993) and see how something in them resonates deeply with me, but I seem to jump at every chance I get to see it and I recommend you at least once do the same. It's a small story, sharply and subtly written; it was adapted by the author from a play I've never seen or read. Jason Robards stars as Murray Burns, a committed iconoclast proudly unemployed after walking out on a three-year stint as head writer for Leo Herman's stultifying kids' show Chuckles the Chipmunk.1 He celebrates invented holidays like Irving R. Feldman's Birthday, which honors "the proprietor of perhaps the most distinguished kosher delicatessen in our neighborhood," and starts each day by addressing the shuttered apartments of his neighbors like an officer at parade, exhorting them to put out "a better class of garbage—more empty champagne bottles and caviar cans!" He has conversations with the public-access weather forecast. His apartment is one of the great clutter collections of the century, proving his oft-repeated point that "you can never have too many eagles." He carries a pair of binoculars for people-watching and takes seriously the project of teaching his twelve-year-old nephew "the subtle, sneaky, important reason he was born a human being and not a chair." He's a charmer, a wiseass, a weirdo, and he has some very good points to make about the soul-killing conformity of consumer society; he is also, the longer the film goes on and the more the audience observes the effect he has on the people around him, a painfully prescient rebuke to the valorization of the American man-child, the hero who's so unconventional and so brilliant that he gets a pass from the universe for all his immature hijinks while the rest of the ordinary people are left to flounder along behind him, picking up the pieces of the workaday world. To wit, while Murray's joyous nonconformism may well be saving his beloved Nick (Barry Gordon in a great portrayal of a serious, intelligent child who really is a child, never mind that for most of the runtime he looks like the resigned, responsible one in this partnership; he has one of those elastic crescent faces that fold into their smiles and he does a not bad impression of Peter Lorre, although his Alexander Hamilton impression is even better) from growing up into "a list-maker . . . one of the nice dead people," it's also placed the kid in danger of being removed from his uncle's custody by the New York Bureau of Child Welfare because of his unstable home circumstances. Six months of willful unemployment plus three months of dodging the Welfare Board's letters and phone calls is no recommendation for fit guardianship. Or as Nick puts it in his slightly Runyonesque syntax, "An unemployed person like you are for so many months is bad for you as the person involved and it's definitely bad for me who he lives with in the same house where the rent isn't paid up for months sometimes. And I wish you'd get a job, Murray. Please." We get that line within the first ten minutes of the movie. The other hundred and six minutes determine what dealing or not dealing with it is worth to Murray Burns.
That angle alone is reason enough for me to care about A Thousand Clowns, but there is a very real possibility that I actually love the film for the character of Albert Amundson, the social worker played by William Daniels in a reprise of his 1962 Broadway role.2 I imprinted on Daniels, of course, with 1776's John Adams, and certainly Albert trends toward the "obnoxious and disliked" end of the actor's range. He introduces himself and Barbara Harris' Sandra Markowitz as "a carefully planned balance of social case worker such as myself and psychological social worker such as Miss Markowitz" and if her earnest Freudian concern looks like one negative stereotype of social work, then his punctilious paper-pushing looks like the other—bureaucracy incarnate with the briefcase to prove it, all file folders and the latest model of jargon, a professional cold fish. He has one-piece dark hair, a pale owlish face rendered almost a cartoon by heavy horn-rimmed glasses that leave his eyebrows nowhere to go but up. His clothes are business anonymous, his speech self-consciously depersonalized except when his hasty conferences with Sandra—conducted in mutters in Murray's kitchen alcove, as if there's any privacy in a one-room apartment—slide revealingly into the cracks of their personal as well as professional relationship. "He's really a very nice person when he's not on cases," she defends him after the fact, adding with damning sincerity, "Last month I fell asleep on him twice while he was talking." For social courtesies, he has a polite little tic of a smile that the audience quickly identifies as a tell for embarrassment rather than pleasure and is otherwise prone to a curiously compressed expression, not quite as though he has a lemon in his mouth, but as though there might be a lemon in his future any second now.3 Pushed to the limit of his patience, he delivers the psychological assessment "maladjusted" like a professional judgment from God. It does not have its intended effect. Murray flusters him and puts him off his script, distracts, double-talks, and generally demolishes him. He is an authority figure, so he is meant to be defied; he is an expert, so he is meant to be confounded; he is humorless, so he makes a fine figure of fun. He exits the scene in a discombobulated state of all of the above, leaving behind a laughing, crying, liberated Sandra admitting to Murray that "there is a kind of relief that it's gone—the job, and even Albert . . . and I don't have the vaguest idea who I am." So far, so free-spirited. When her erstwhile partner returns the next morning, both the audience and Murray are prepared for more of the same. At first it is more of the same, as a cautious but hapless Albert finds himself once more playing straight man to Murray's unerring absurdism, saying in all sobriety sentences like "That's a very silly thing for her to be in, that closet" and, a pull quote if I ever heard one, the title of this post. But he also has something very real to say, whether Murray wants to hear it or not, and presently, still talking like a textbook and just as square as Flatland, he fires the first and best shot over the bows of Murray's countercultural complacency.
It comes out of nowhere. With his usual circumspect correctness, Albert is trying to discuss the decision made the previous day by the Child Welfare Board when Murray cuts him off with the casually dismissive, "You know, you speak like you write everything down before you say it." The audience expects some kind of reaction out of Albert, especially when their last encounter wound him up so badly he got his file folders caught in his briefcase zip; instead there is only the breath of a pause before the case worker responds with the following astonishing speech:
Well, yes, I do speak that way, Mr. Burns. I wish I spoke more spontaneously. I will always appear foolish in a conversation with a person of your imagination. Please understand, there is no vengeance in my activities here. I love my work, Mr. Burns. Now, I believe that you are a danger to this child . . . I wish this were not true because it is obvious you have considerable affection for your nephew. It shows in your face, this feeling. Well, I admire you for your warmth, Mr. Burns, and for the affection the child feels for you. I admire this because I am one for whom children do not easily feel affection. I am not one of the warm people. But your feeling for the child does not mollify the genuinely dangerous emotional climate you have made for him. Now I wish you could understand this. I would so much rather you understood, could really hear what I have to say. For yours is, I believe, a distorted picture of this world . . . I was right. You really can't listen to me. You're so sure of your sight. Your villains and heroes are all so terribly clear to you. And I am obviously one of the villains. Well, God save you from your vision, Mr. Burns. Goodbye.
Almost nothing about his manner or his delivery alters during this exchange which is nearly a monologue. He slows down his dry, precise diction a little, perhaps; he makes an effort to make eye contact, addressing himself to Murray's profile when the other man pointedly turns away. He doesn't try his official smile, which actually makes him easier to take seriously, but neither does he become any more visibly emotional, informal, approachable—he can't, not unless the actor's appeal is going to undercut the character's self-awareness. He's right that he doesn't have Murray's knack for the pinpoint metaphor or his lightly worn ease with people. All he has is the admission of his words and the care with which he chooses them and it's not enough. The audience may feel a sudden pang of compassion for a character who previously appeared to possess all the inner life of an unbent paperclip; Murray gives the impression that he's listening to a dreary plea for sympathy from a very boring devil indeed. The fact remains that Albert is trying to communicate something very specific which has nothing to do with self-justification. When he emphasizes the cumulative importance of the Board's three-month "thorough study . . . quite thorough" and stresses that he is "not responsible, personally, for the decision they've reached," he's not blaming the system to exonerate himself; he means exactly what he says about "no vengeance." He's not out to get Murray. He's not taking the nephew away to punish the uncle, he hasn't pulled any professional strings to get even with the man who made him look a fool in front of his fiancée and then spent the night with her: the balance of the case rests on Murray's behavior for the last six months, not on Albert's wounded pride since yesterday. It's an important distinction. Murray wouldn't have to accept the Board's decision if it were personal; it wouldn't really say anything about his care of Nick. If he can't dismiss it as a combination of institutional indifference and petty spite, however, then he might have to rethink the situation, which Albert wishes he would and Murray doesn't want to. He's already decided what kind of story he's in. So he needles the social worker with obvious lines like "Then why don't you send me to a foster home?" and when Albert smiles sadly, for the first time it looks real. He takes his briefcase, quite quietly this time, and he leaves. We never see him again. I paid very close attention to the rest of the movie.
It's a rewarding movie to pay attention to. Arthur J. Ornitz's cinematography is gorgeous, a gelatin silver panorama of New York City in the days when my father lived off St. Mark's Place and my mother visited Brooklyn from Bard College; Ralph Rosenblum's editing plays the kinds of tricks with time that you see in good prose, compressing the crowds of rush hour into a sprightly brass chorus of "The Battle Cry of Freedom" or drawing out a moment of confetti and exuberant farewell to an ocean liner into a real consideration of a relationship, examined from all directions like the recurring theme of "Yes Sir, That's My Baby," which can be Murray and Nick's vaudevillian party piece or a quietly strummed meditation, floating through one perfect afternoon: Oh, by the way, oh, by the way, when we meet somebody we'll say . . . The opening credits establish marching band music as the leitmotiv of that "horrible thing . . . people going to work" so that the film can later show Murray making the job-hunting rounds to a loose-jointed ragtime arrangement of "The Stars and Stripes Forever," signaling at once his attitude toward the whole business. Enough references to pastrami go by in the script that I always leave the theater wanting a sandwich and never being anywhere near a deli in time. It's a very New York movie. It's a very New York Jewish movie. Jason Robards was neither, but he makes Murray Burns work, sympathetically and sardonically, where I can easily see the character's determined anarchy simplifying in the hands of a less complicated actor to standard-issue whimsy or just being an asshole.
Of the uniformly excellent cast of A Thousand Clowns, the only one who walked away with an Oscar was Martin Balsam, primarily on the strength of his eleven o'clock scene in which he describes his philosophy of being "the best possible Arnold Burns." It's true that it's a memorable piece of acting, for once giving the last word to a man who has always lived conventionally in his outlandish brother's shadow. I'm not sure that it sticks with me more than Daniels' two scenes, or even just the way Albert Amundson pushes his glasses up his nose with the emotional effect of a rueful shake of the head. Autolycus has spent the last five minutes purringly and insistently trying to climb between my hands and the keyboard, so I should wrap things up before he succeeds. In the course of writing this post, it has become obvious to me that if anyone had wanted to make a movie of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wind in the Door when it was published in 1973, William Daniels would have made an ideal Mr. Jenkins. This casting brought to you by my complex backers at Patreon.
1. As he soberly explains to a pair of social workers, "Six months ago, a perfectly adult bartender asked me if I wanted an onion in my martini and I said, 'Gosh and gollies, you betcha!' Well, I knew it was time to quit."
2. The entire cast transferred from Broadway with the exception of Larry Haines, who originated the part of Arnold Burns, and Tony-winning female lead Sandy Dennis, who was replaced by Barbara Harris for reasons unknown to me but demonstrably the right ones, since I can't imagine anyone other than Harris in the part. "Miss Markowitz, or, actually, Dr. Markowitz" looks at first like as much of a stock type as her partner, the professional woman who needs to be loosened up by the hero—freed from her clipboard, her checklists, and her engagement to Albert, she turns out to be goofy, warmhearted, and unreservedly disorganized, taking readily to Murray's habits of visiting the city's landmarks like a tourist and waving off cruise ships he doesn't know. Her inability to keep a dispassionate distance from her cases is fervently encouraged by her new partner, who cites it as evidence of her undamaged humanity: "You are a lover of things and of people, so you took up work where you could get at as many of them as possible—and it just turned out there were too many of them and too much that moves you." In keeping with the play's insistence on three dimensions for all of its characters, however, her degree in psychology is more than just a handicap for her awakening sense of eccentricity to overcome. Her second-act parting words to Murray are gently spoken and as piercing as a much longer speech: "I can see why Nick likes it here. I would like it too if I was twelve years old."
3. To be fair to Albert, it's a lemon a minute being on the receiving end of Murray's wit.
I've seen this movie three times now; I don't know if I would call it a favorite of mine in the same way that I can point to The Long Voyage Home (1940) or A Canterbury Tale (1944) or Wittgenstein (1993) and see how something in them resonates deeply with me, but I seem to jump at every chance I get to see it and I recommend you at least once do the same. It's a small story, sharply and subtly written; it was adapted by the author from a play I've never seen or read. Jason Robards stars as Murray Burns, a committed iconoclast proudly unemployed after walking out on a three-year stint as head writer for Leo Herman's stultifying kids' show Chuckles the Chipmunk.1 He celebrates invented holidays like Irving R. Feldman's Birthday, which honors "the proprietor of perhaps the most distinguished kosher delicatessen in our neighborhood," and starts each day by addressing the shuttered apartments of his neighbors like an officer at parade, exhorting them to put out "a better class of garbage—more empty champagne bottles and caviar cans!" He has conversations with the public-access weather forecast. His apartment is one of the great clutter collections of the century, proving his oft-repeated point that "you can never have too many eagles." He carries a pair of binoculars for people-watching and takes seriously the project of teaching his twelve-year-old nephew "the subtle, sneaky, important reason he was born a human being and not a chair." He's a charmer, a wiseass, a weirdo, and he has some very good points to make about the soul-killing conformity of consumer society; he is also, the longer the film goes on and the more the audience observes the effect he has on the people around him, a painfully prescient rebuke to the valorization of the American man-child, the hero who's so unconventional and so brilliant that he gets a pass from the universe for all his immature hijinks while the rest of the ordinary people are left to flounder along behind him, picking up the pieces of the workaday world. To wit, while Murray's joyous nonconformism may well be saving his beloved Nick (Barry Gordon in a great portrayal of a serious, intelligent child who really is a child, never mind that for most of the runtime he looks like the resigned, responsible one in this partnership; he has one of those elastic crescent faces that fold into their smiles and he does a not bad impression of Peter Lorre, although his Alexander Hamilton impression is even better) from growing up into "a list-maker . . . one of the nice dead people," it's also placed the kid in danger of being removed from his uncle's custody by the New York Bureau of Child Welfare because of his unstable home circumstances. Six months of willful unemployment plus three months of dodging the Welfare Board's letters and phone calls is no recommendation for fit guardianship. Or as Nick puts it in his slightly Runyonesque syntax, "An unemployed person like you are for so many months is bad for you as the person involved and it's definitely bad for me who he lives with in the same house where the rent isn't paid up for months sometimes. And I wish you'd get a job, Murray. Please." We get that line within the first ten minutes of the movie. The other hundred and six minutes determine what dealing or not dealing with it is worth to Murray Burns.
That angle alone is reason enough for me to care about A Thousand Clowns, but there is a very real possibility that I actually love the film for the character of Albert Amundson, the social worker played by William Daniels in a reprise of his 1962 Broadway role.2 I imprinted on Daniels, of course, with 1776's John Adams, and certainly Albert trends toward the "obnoxious and disliked" end of the actor's range. He introduces himself and Barbara Harris' Sandra Markowitz as "a carefully planned balance of social case worker such as myself and psychological social worker such as Miss Markowitz" and if her earnest Freudian concern looks like one negative stereotype of social work, then his punctilious paper-pushing looks like the other—bureaucracy incarnate with the briefcase to prove it, all file folders and the latest model of jargon, a professional cold fish. He has one-piece dark hair, a pale owlish face rendered almost a cartoon by heavy horn-rimmed glasses that leave his eyebrows nowhere to go but up. His clothes are business anonymous, his speech self-consciously depersonalized except when his hasty conferences with Sandra—conducted in mutters in Murray's kitchen alcove, as if there's any privacy in a one-room apartment—slide revealingly into the cracks of their personal as well as professional relationship. "He's really a very nice person when he's not on cases," she defends him after the fact, adding with damning sincerity, "Last month I fell asleep on him twice while he was talking." For social courtesies, he has a polite little tic of a smile that the audience quickly identifies as a tell for embarrassment rather than pleasure and is otherwise prone to a curiously compressed expression, not quite as though he has a lemon in his mouth, but as though there might be a lemon in his future any second now.3 Pushed to the limit of his patience, he delivers the psychological assessment "maladjusted" like a professional judgment from God. It does not have its intended effect. Murray flusters him and puts him off his script, distracts, double-talks, and generally demolishes him. He is an authority figure, so he is meant to be defied; he is an expert, so he is meant to be confounded; he is humorless, so he makes a fine figure of fun. He exits the scene in a discombobulated state of all of the above, leaving behind a laughing, crying, liberated Sandra admitting to Murray that "there is a kind of relief that it's gone—the job, and even Albert . . . and I don't have the vaguest idea who I am." So far, so free-spirited. When her erstwhile partner returns the next morning, both the audience and Murray are prepared for more of the same. At first it is more of the same, as a cautious but hapless Albert finds himself once more playing straight man to Murray's unerring absurdism, saying in all sobriety sentences like "That's a very silly thing for her to be in, that closet" and, a pull quote if I ever heard one, the title of this post. But he also has something very real to say, whether Murray wants to hear it or not, and presently, still talking like a textbook and just as square as Flatland, he fires the first and best shot over the bows of Murray's countercultural complacency.
It comes out of nowhere. With his usual circumspect correctness, Albert is trying to discuss the decision made the previous day by the Child Welfare Board when Murray cuts him off with the casually dismissive, "You know, you speak like you write everything down before you say it." The audience expects some kind of reaction out of Albert, especially when their last encounter wound him up so badly he got his file folders caught in his briefcase zip; instead there is only the breath of a pause before the case worker responds with the following astonishing speech:
Well, yes, I do speak that way, Mr. Burns. I wish I spoke more spontaneously. I will always appear foolish in a conversation with a person of your imagination. Please understand, there is no vengeance in my activities here. I love my work, Mr. Burns. Now, I believe that you are a danger to this child . . . I wish this were not true because it is obvious you have considerable affection for your nephew. It shows in your face, this feeling. Well, I admire you for your warmth, Mr. Burns, and for the affection the child feels for you. I admire this because I am one for whom children do not easily feel affection. I am not one of the warm people. But your feeling for the child does not mollify the genuinely dangerous emotional climate you have made for him. Now I wish you could understand this. I would so much rather you understood, could really hear what I have to say. For yours is, I believe, a distorted picture of this world . . . I was right. You really can't listen to me. You're so sure of your sight. Your villains and heroes are all so terribly clear to you. And I am obviously one of the villains. Well, God save you from your vision, Mr. Burns. Goodbye.
Almost nothing about his manner or his delivery alters during this exchange which is nearly a monologue. He slows down his dry, precise diction a little, perhaps; he makes an effort to make eye contact, addressing himself to Murray's profile when the other man pointedly turns away. He doesn't try his official smile, which actually makes him easier to take seriously, but neither does he become any more visibly emotional, informal, approachable—he can't, not unless the actor's appeal is going to undercut the character's self-awareness. He's right that he doesn't have Murray's knack for the pinpoint metaphor or his lightly worn ease with people. All he has is the admission of his words and the care with which he chooses them and it's not enough. The audience may feel a sudden pang of compassion for a character who previously appeared to possess all the inner life of an unbent paperclip; Murray gives the impression that he's listening to a dreary plea for sympathy from a very boring devil indeed. The fact remains that Albert is trying to communicate something very specific which has nothing to do with self-justification. When he emphasizes the cumulative importance of the Board's three-month "thorough study . . . quite thorough" and stresses that he is "not responsible, personally, for the decision they've reached," he's not blaming the system to exonerate himself; he means exactly what he says about "no vengeance." He's not out to get Murray. He's not taking the nephew away to punish the uncle, he hasn't pulled any professional strings to get even with the man who made him look a fool in front of his fiancée and then spent the night with her: the balance of the case rests on Murray's behavior for the last six months, not on Albert's wounded pride since yesterday. It's an important distinction. Murray wouldn't have to accept the Board's decision if it were personal; it wouldn't really say anything about his care of Nick. If he can't dismiss it as a combination of institutional indifference and petty spite, however, then he might have to rethink the situation, which Albert wishes he would and Murray doesn't want to. He's already decided what kind of story he's in. So he needles the social worker with obvious lines like "Then why don't you send me to a foster home?" and when Albert smiles sadly, for the first time it looks real. He takes his briefcase, quite quietly this time, and he leaves. We never see him again. I paid very close attention to the rest of the movie.
It's a rewarding movie to pay attention to. Arthur J. Ornitz's cinematography is gorgeous, a gelatin silver panorama of New York City in the days when my father lived off St. Mark's Place and my mother visited Brooklyn from Bard College; Ralph Rosenblum's editing plays the kinds of tricks with time that you see in good prose, compressing the crowds of rush hour into a sprightly brass chorus of "The Battle Cry of Freedom" or drawing out a moment of confetti and exuberant farewell to an ocean liner into a real consideration of a relationship, examined from all directions like the recurring theme of "Yes Sir, That's My Baby," which can be Murray and Nick's vaudevillian party piece or a quietly strummed meditation, floating through one perfect afternoon: Oh, by the way, oh, by the way, when we meet somebody we'll say . . . The opening credits establish marching band music as the leitmotiv of that "horrible thing . . . people going to work" so that the film can later show Murray making the job-hunting rounds to a loose-jointed ragtime arrangement of "The Stars and Stripes Forever," signaling at once his attitude toward the whole business. Enough references to pastrami go by in the script that I always leave the theater wanting a sandwich and never being anywhere near a deli in time. It's a very New York movie. It's a very New York Jewish movie. Jason Robards was neither, but he makes Murray Burns work, sympathetically and sardonically, where I can easily see the character's determined anarchy simplifying in the hands of a less complicated actor to standard-issue whimsy or just being an asshole.
Of the uniformly excellent cast of A Thousand Clowns, the only one who walked away with an Oscar was Martin Balsam, primarily on the strength of his eleven o'clock scene in which he describes his philosophy of being "the best possible Arnold Burns." It's true that it's a memorable piece of acting, for once giving the last word to a man who has always lived conventionally in his outlandish brother's shadow. I'm not sure that it sticks with me more than Daniels' two scenes, or even just the way Albert Amundson pushes his glasses up his nose with the emotional effect of a rueful shake of the head. Autolycus has spent the last five minutes purringly and insistently trying to climb between my hands and the keyboard, so I should wrap things up before he succeeds. In the course of writing this post, it has become obvious to me that if anyone had wanted to make a movie of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wind in the Door when it was published in 1973, William Daniels would have made an ideal Mr. Jenkins. This casting brought to you by my complex backers at Patreon.
1. As he soberly explains to a pair of social workers, "Six months ago, a perfectly adult bartender asked me if I wanted an onion in my martini and I said, 'Gosh and gollies, you betcha!' Well, I knew it was time to quit."
2. The entire cast transferred from Broadway with the exception of Larry Haines, who originated the part of Arnold Burns, and Tony-winning female lead Sandy Dennis, who was replaced by Barbara Harris for reasons unknown to me but demonstrably the right ones, since I can't imagine anyone other than Harris in the part. "Miss Markowitz, or, actually, Dr. Markowitz" looks at first like as much of a stock type as her partner, the professional woman who needs to be loosened up by the hero—freed from her clipboard, her checklists, and her engagement to Albert, she turns out to be goofy, warmhearted, and unreservedly disorganized, taking readily to Murray's habits of visiting the city's landmarks like a tourist and waving off cruise ships he doesn't know. Her inability to keep a dispassionate distance from her cases is fervently encouraged by her new partner, who cites it as evidence of her undamaged humanity: "You are a lover of things and of people, so you took up work where you could get at as many of them as possible—and it just turned out there were too many of them and too much that moves you." In keeping with the play's insistence on three dimensions for all of its characters, however, her degree in psychology is more than just a handicap for her awakening sense of eccentricity to overcome. Her second-act parting words to Murray are gently spoken and as piercing as a much longer speech: "I can see why Nick likes it here. I would like it too if I was twelve years old."
3. To be fair to Albert, it's a lemon a minute being on the receiving end of Murray's wit.
Bringing back memories. . .
It's wonderful to read your thoughtful analysis. Now maybe I can appreciate the movie.
Re: Bringing back memories. . .
Thank you. I think it holds up. I can't speak to the original play, but the movie doesn't feel dated to me: it's fifty-one years old and it's a snapshot of its time, but I think it may actually benefit from the intervening decades in that it's no longer just recent enough to risk feeling out of step. (Also, the location shooting means you get to see things like Lincoln Center being built.)
I don't believe it's available through Netflix. Someone has posted a copy to YouTube, though I can't vouch for its quality since right now I can't stream anything substantial (I'm using a wireless hotspot for internet and it freaks out if I draw heavily on the bandwidth). Otherwise it looks like there's an on-demand DVD. Libraries? If I hear that it's playing on a big screen around here, I'll let you know.
Re: Bringing back memories. . .
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I hope it comes around again soon! See also reply to
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I really **love** settling down with one of your reviews. I hate to feel rushed when I read. That's why sometimes it takes me a few days to reply: I don't want to do a hasty read.
If the movie does half as good a job getting to the moment of Albert's soliloquy as you do--wow. It must be truly spectacular. There's so much truth in what Albert says, however much one might disagree with the guiding rubrics of social services at that point: people really need to listen. It's hard to entertain the possibility that you might be wrong--not about what's an appropriate outfit for a wedding or how best to can tomatoes, but about something truly important. I mean, we can't go through life pulling the rug out from under our own feet; we have to have certainty, most times--being plagued by self-doubt is a whole other problem--but we have to have ears to hear from time to time too, and that soliloquy puts it really well.
as though there might be a lemon in his future any second now--this made me smile, as did your footnote.
The audience may feel a sudden pang of compassion for a character who previously appeared to possess all the inner life of an unbent paperclip [Yes!] What a hilarious simile--and now I'm thinking of Clippy meme saying something like, "It looks like you're about to detonate some explosives. Mind if I hug my wife and kids?"
I like the line you quote from the nephew, too; that's great roundabout locution!
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You're welcome. It's my favorite of the Murry books, too.
That's why sometimes it takes me a few days to reply: I don't want to do a hasty read.
Thank you. I'm honored to be something you want to appreciate reading.
If the movie does half as good a job getting to the moment of Albert's soliloquy as you do--wow. It must be truly spectacular.
It works beautifully. Albert is the type of character the audience is used to rooting against, a familiar intrusion from the world of small-minded rules and regulations; he appears to personify the very forces of social conformity that Murray is kicking back against, sticking families into little ticky-tacky boxes until they come out all the same. (Malvina Reynolds wrote her song in 1962, the same year A Thousand Clowns premiered on Broadway. Part of what makes Murray complicated is that he's not rebelling against—or for—nothing.) His unvarying seriousness makes his interactions with Nick and the quicksilver Murray an extended exercise in shooting fish in a barrel, which is funny until Albert's second scene puts you in the perspective of the fish. It certainly pulled me up short. I love when narratives open types out into people, but I hadn't been expecting it from this one. And it's the movie's first real hint that perhaps we should not be accepting Murray's freewheeling philosophy uncritically—he can't listen to Albert. He can't hear Albert's concern, the point he's trying to make; he can't see the other man as anything other than a dangerous but otherwise rather silly opponent. If the audience has been at all paying attention, they'll notice the discrepancy between what they've just witnessed and how Murray reacts to it. He becomes a kind of unreliable narrator. But the film doesn't simply reverse its polarity of sympathy, and that's part of what makes it complicated. Everybody in it is real.
. I mean, we can't go through life pulling the rug out from under our own feet; we have to have certainty, most times--being plagued by self-doubt is a whole other problem--but we have to have ears to hear from time to time too, and that soliloquy puts it really well.
Yes. We have to be able to see outside of our own heads. Nick has an excuse for not being able to: he's twelve. But Murray's in his thirties at least and for much of this movie, you're not at all sure that he can—or will—anymore.
and now I'm thinking of Clippy meme saying something like, "It looks like you're about to detonate some explosives. Mind if I hug my wife and kids?"
Well, that's heartrending!
I like the line you quote from the nephew, too; that's great roundabout locution!
It's a really quotable script! I don't know how closely it aligns with the original play, but I assume substantially in dialogue if not necessarily in structure. I'm keeping an eye out for a copy in used book stores.
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Definitely sounds like something I want to see. I've reserved it through interlibrary loan.
Nick's way of speaking reminds me of the protagonist of a fan-made OC Pony video the healing angel showed me. My poor memory makes me unable to come up with an accurate example--or to remember the name of the video--but when the healing angel gets up, I'll get the info and share it.
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I look forward to hearing what you think of the whole thing!
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We talked about it absorbedly for about an hour after. I really appreciated how everyone got to say their piece: Murray, of course, throughout, but also Nick, several times, and the scene with Arnold, but also Sandy, and even the Chuckles-the-Chipmunk guy (which... rabbit ears? Really? Had the producers never seen a chipmunk, or was that to reinforce how bad the show was?) They were chewing over the problems of life and compromise and self respect and honesty, and they never made it feel (which it could have done) like they were lecturing the audience. It was great.
(One thing before I forget: I loved the skit that Nick and Murray start to perform featuring Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, and the Chuckles-the-Chipmunk guy's reaction about how that's old-man humor. If only that character could see present-day Hamilton! What a rebuttal! And yet--speaking to how all the characters are three-dimensional, even that guy is more than just a self-absorbed schmuck; he's desperate and driven and angry and brittle and grateful by turns. Fascinating.)
I could have hated Murray; I often hate characters like him because they're always dismissing the Alberts and Arnolds of the world as somehow less-than-human. But he was saved from that, for me, by his tenderness toward Sandy and Nick.
[Spoilers! don't read on]I did feel that the film had a rather dim/grim view of what a conventional life is all about, very in keeping, I suppose, with its era. The Murrays of the world really *don't* need to compromise their essence away, and I thought his deflated failure to holler at the very end was depressing; similarly Sandy's getting rid of all his knick-knacks. You can live in the conventional world and still collect eagles, yo![End spoilers]
The film also got me thinking about stories on conventionality versus eccentricity more generally, I guess because it seemed to me that Murray's situation was so amazingly privileged. Even his dreary conventional prison is what, for other people, might seem wildly free and eccentric. (The movie does make clear why it's not, but I just mean that a life in TV would be, in another story, the freeing choice.) He has the good fortune of being surrounded by indulgent people who understand him and want to help him--not every eccentric does. I was thinking of the movie Billy Elliot, about the boy from a mining town who wants to be a ballet dancer. Not sure what I'm saying here ... I guess it's just interesting to see that the conventionality-eccentricity story can have narrative power even in very safe, genteel situations.
One final, completely irrelevant, but interesting thing that came out of our discussion. The healing angel referred to the abandoned Chinese restaurant as the biggest Chekhov's gun never to be fired, and that got us talking about how sometimes guns on the wall really are just scene-setting decoration, leading the healing angel to remark that the concept of Chekhov's gun was really an exercise in confirmation bias (i.e., you notice them when they go off, and so you say, ah yes: a Chekhov's gun, but you don't notice when they don't. Usually, anyway.)
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I was just reading a Criterion essay about Shelagh Delaney and Tony Richardson's A Taste of Honey (1961) which mentions something similar about the location shooting:
"Their script is faithful to the dialogue and plot of the play but explodes it out of the cramped settings of cheap apartments and into the rural and urban landscapes of industrial Lancashire. Free Cinema's cinematographer of choice, Walter Lassally, renders the canals and streets of Salford, one of Manchester's satellite towns, into an extraordinary composition of black-and-white photography. Some critics have dismissed these sequences as unmotivated by the plot, and it is true that they were quickly to become clichéd by the overuse of such shots in subsequent films. However, there is no doubt for this critic that Richardson succeeds in making the setting an integral part of the film . . . In particular, the decaying industrial landscape is an integral part of the love scenes between Jo and her sailor. Indeed, the most moving shot of the film, bringing setting, plot, and character together, has Jo watching her lover on the deck of his ship as he, unaware of her gaze, sails out from the narrow canal to the open sea."
I know the almost documentary sense-of-place wasn't unheard of in earlier movies, because it's always something I watch for (1950 Boston in Mystery Street—or 1953 Coney Island in Little Fugitive, which I never wrote about but which was amazing), but I have gotten the idea that it really took off in the '60's because of the New Wave. I like that sort of thing personally, even if it doesn't get the narrative anyway. It's part of what I think of as a film's prose style.
(I've read A Taste of Honey, but never seen either a stage or the screen version; I couldn't find a Region 1 DVD anywhere the last time I looked in 2009. I'm really glad there's a Criterion edition and plan to watch it as soon as I can get out from under some of this backlog of other, mostly noir movies I want to write about.)
I loved the skit that Nick and Murray start to perform featuring Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson
Yes! Nick is ahead of his time. "You can't do an impersonation of Alexander Hamilton! Nobody knows what he sounds like!"–"That's the funny part."
the Chuckles-the-Chipmunk guy (which... rabbit ears? Really? Had the producers never seen a chipmunk, or was that to reinforce how bad the show was?)
I took it as a sign about the show. And, yes, I really like that when Leo "Chuckles" Herman finally shows up in person, he is exactly as exhaustingly difficult as we've been braced to believe, and also a person.
You can live in the conventional world and still collect eagles, yo!
I agree. The ending overstates its case unless you take it as Murray's subjective view of the effects of his choice, in which case I still think he's wrong! But it interests me that even if he considers it total creative death to return to a nine-to-five job for Chuckles the Chipmunk, he still does it for Nick's sake.
I was thinking of the movie Billy Elliot, about the boy from a mining town who wants to be a ballet dancer.
Talk to me about Billy Elliot? I know my mother loved it, but I've never seen it. I take it there is not the same support structure available to the kid.
how sometimes guns on the wall really are just scene-setting decoration, leading the healing angel to remark that the concept of Chekhov's gun was really an exercise in confirmation bias (i.e., you notice them when they go off, and so you say, ah yes: a Chekhov's gun, but you don't notice when they don't. Usually, anyway.)
What was the healing angel expecting to happen with the restaurant?
I'm so glad you liked it!
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But actually, it's fine and worthy just as scenery and as grist for Murray's imaginative mill. That's significant in and of itself--I think. Sometimes scenery is important just as scenery: sometimes it's important to have guns on the wall simply because the gentry like to go out hunting and this shows it's a genuine, lived-in, country manor house. (Not a perfect analogy because actually the Chinese restaurant is doing more, by stimulating Murray's imagination.) But if I imagine what the healing angel might say, it's something like the previous paragraph.
it interests me that even if he considers it total creative death to return to a nine-to-five job for Chuckles the Chipmunk, he still does it for Nick's sake.
I think that viewpoint--if that's what the film were trying to express overall (whichI don't think it is; see next paragraph)--would put me pretty strongly at odds with the film. It would be saying that you have to choose between imagination/creativity and bringing up the next generation. It's a pernicious idea for lots of reasons, not least because through much of history the people doing the childrearing have mainly been women, so it's a way of dismissing women as uncreative. But it's also patently not true.
But I don't think the film does want to say that: it shows what a wonderful person Nick is. He's clearly not harmed by his unconventional upbringing. So I would have liked a lighter hand at the end.
I don't remember Billy Elliot well, but basically, the rejection and threat of violence Billy faces as a boy wanting to do ballet are very dire. It's wonderful in the film (and I guess in real life) when Billy's father realizes how talented Billy is and starts to support him--so it's not like he has no support; he does get support; it's just that at first he's really alone. And the dancing is just such a visceral part of him; it's like he couldn't be alive if he couldn't dance.
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It does take place in the restaurant, but there's no attention called to the surroundings.
It would be saying that you have to choose between imagination/creativity and bringing up the next generation.
No, I don't think the film is saying that, either. I'm just talking about Murray's perspective. At the heart of things, he's willing to do what's best for Nick, even if it doesn't feel like what's best for Murray, and it was not necessarily foregone from the opening of the film that he would.
But I don't think the film does want to say that: it shows what a wonderful person Nick is. He's clearly not harmed by his unconventional upbringing.
"You got to admit, you don't see boobies like that every day."
So I would have liked a lighter hand at the end.
If I ever find a copy of the play, I'll let you know if it's different.
(I think it makes a difference to me that Nick is part of the eagle-junking, that the film doesn't just strand Sandra as the civilizing feminine force or what have you: "Wilbur. Wilbur Malcolm Burns." And at least they put the knick-knacks in a box, they don't put them out with the trash. I speak from experience when I say that you can keep a box of knick-knacks around for years.)
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I agree that the film made this a real choice, one that wasn't certain. That's a real strength.
the film doesn't just strand Sandra as the civilizing feminine force or what have you --yes, that's good! And she is shown to have more to her than just interior decorating--she stands up for herself and her ideas against the Albert when he's both her boyfriend and her mentor, and she maintains her convictions even when it means, as it seems, leaving Murray, and she's able to have fun.
And that's true about a box of knick-knacks. Maybe they'll come back out again in a few months' time, when everything's settled down.
Nick-like quotes
Excuse me, weird adult, talking to a little kid. I'm supposed to avoid stranger danger situations. For that, I need myself a pretty wide bubble with no strangers in it. Now, are you going to have a stranger danger situation?
The adults roll their eyes and move away, whereupon Aurora says,
Thank you! I can tell by the lack of proximity to me that you are all pretty good adults.
The rest of the video is really cute too. At one point Aurora is trying to convince her mom to buy a sweetened breakfast cereal, and she's listing its virtues, but she concedes,
Now, it does contain marshmallow bits. In fact it is entirely a cereal of marshmallow bits.
Link here.
Re: Nick-like quotes
One of Nick's first lines begins "Now for me as an actual child . . ."
Re: Nick-like quotes