२४ डिसेंबर, २०१९

"The picture of a plastic box containing a joint is a nice bit of stoner fun, but it also evokes the glass-cube sculptures of Larry Bell, another of the artists whose work Hopper..."

"... and Hayward collected (and whom Hopper photographed). A neon Motel Alaska sign, with a glowing index finger illuminating a nocturnal streetscape, echoes a Duchampian credo that Hopper was fond of, that the artist of the future will 'point his finger at something and say it’s art.' Pointing fingers recur in the tender image of two hands—one an adult’s, one a toddler’s—hovering over a mud puddle, a moving study of Hayward and Marin."

From "Dennis Hopper's Quiet Vision of Nineteen-Sixties Hollywood" in The New Yorker.

"Hayward" is Brooke Hayward, Dennis Hopper's first wife. "Marin" is the daughter of Hayward and Hopper, and she is the "energetic steward of [Hopper's] photographic legacy." I'll say! Getting a New Yorker article with sentences like those quoted above is kickass stewardship.

I looked up Brooke Hayward in Wikipedia. Oddly (and speaking of photographs), the only photograph of her there includes Groucho Marx:



It's a really nice photograph of Groucho too. He and Hayward starred in "The Hold Out" on General Electric Theater (on TV in 1961). It was a serious dramatic role for Groucho, and the look on his face is not Groucho being Groucho (and thinking the serious thought, this is a seriously beautiful woman) but playing the part of a man who (according to the caption) "disapproves of his teenage daughter's (Hayward) marriage." She's quite beautiful, but nothing about her says "teenager." In fact, the actress was 24. Today, you could be 54 and look like that.

Speaking of artist-name-dropping sentences in The New Yorker and wives named Brooke, I was continuing to read "The Art of Dying/I always said that when my time came I’d want to go fast. But where’s the fun in that?" by Peter Schjeldahl, and I came across what I will declare the best really long sentence I have read in the 16-year history of writing this blog:
I went back to college in Minnesota for a year, dropped out for good, returned to the Jersey City job for three months, unwisely married, spent an impoverished and largely useless year in Paris, had a life-changing encounter with a painting by Piero della Francesca in Italy, another with works by Andy Warhol in Paris, returned to New York, freelanced, stumbled into the art world, got a divorce, which, while uncontested, entailed a solo trip to a dusty courthouse in Juárez, Mexico, past a kid saying, “Hey, hippie, wanna screw my sister?,” to receive a spectacular document with a gold seal and a red ribbon from a judge as rotund and taciturn as an Olmec idol.
The unwise marriage was not to the wife named Brooke. She arrived later. Like Hopper's Brooke, Schjeldahl's Brooke was an actress. We're told she quit acting after her best line in a movie was edited out, perhaps because Sean Connery thought it was stealing the scene from him. The line was about how nonsmokers were "in the hospital dying of nothing."

The movie was "Just Cause,"  from 1995, and I don't remember it, even though I saw a lot of movies back then. Sean Connery played — in the words of Wikipedia — "a liberal Harvard professor." If you imagine that I'd go out of my way to see movies about law professors, you have it exactly backwards. I did read the plot summary though. Don't read this if you don't want spoilers or if you feel bad laughing in the context of rape and the death penalty:
Paul Armstrong (Sean Connery), a liberal Harvard professor and former lawyer opposed to capital punishment, is persuaded by an elderly woman (Ruby Dee) to go to Florida to investigate the conviction of her grandson Bobby Earl Ferguson (Blair Underwood) for murder.... ... Ferguson gets a re-trial and is acquitted and thereafter freed from prison...

Back at the prison, Sullivan gloats that he and Ferguson struck a deal: Ferguson would kill Sullivan's parents in exchange for freedom, while Sullivan would claim responsibility for the girl's murder...

Ferguson's motives for everything turn out to be a desire for revenge on Armstrong's wife Laurie...  the prosecutor against him in a previous rape trial.... At the local regional swamps, Armstrong finds his wife and daughter in a small shack, where Ferguson appears. Ferguson's plans include raping and murdering Armstrong's wife and daughter (Scarlett Johansson)... ... Ferguson... drowns and is subsequently eaten by an alligator....
The alligator is an interesting touch — just what horrible filmmakers assume the debased audience wants after threatening 11-year-old Scarlett Johansson with rape by a black man in the swamp. I'm guessing the line "in the hospital dying of nothing" was cut because it was too funny and the filmmakers knew that they were risking inappropriate laughter all over the place and that they were reducing to nothing the chance that the big eaten-by-an-alligator climax would be taken seriously.

Does this post cohere? Yes. It's about writing and taking things seriously.

३८ टिप्पण्या:

Big Mike म्हणाले...

Tha is a damned good sentence, no denying it.

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

There's a long Bob Dylan sentence that also contains the word "Juarez": "When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez, and it’s Eastertime too, and your gravity fails, and negativity don’t pull you through, don’t put on any airs, when you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue; they got some hungry women there, and they really make a mess out of you."

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

The New Yorker has the accent mark: "Juárez." That must mean Bob Dylan is pronouncing it wrong. He accents the second syllable.

Temujin म्हणाले...

Wow!...what a post. I went into the long sentence skeptical, but I have to admit, that was a great long sentence and made me want to go back and read that article which I had purposely ignored a few days ago when I first saw it. From a serious Groucho giving his Brooke a serious once over, to the other passing Brooke, who's best line was snuffed out in favor of an alligator eating a wannabe rapist, while a miscast Sean Connery, whose presence was usually larger than anyone else on the screen plays a lawyer, all of whom and all of which is wrapped up by a Dennis Hopper photograph.

Invigorating! I'm ready for the day.

Earnest Prole म्हणाले...

The author’s Vanity Fair piece is equally fascinating: The Untold Story of Brooke Hayward and Dennis Hopper’s Hollywood Home

SeanF म्हणाले...

I never saw "Just Cause", but I think it was the movie I saw a trailer for where Connery's character declares, "Hish confeshion wash coershed." Always made me laugh.

Jeff Gee म्हणाले...

I don't remember hearing about "Just Cause" but they definitely had the poster at my local video store because I remember Laurence Fishburne's hat. It's a helluva hat.

David Begley म्हणाले...

But that crummy movie got made and I’m having a very tough time getting traction with my “Bride of Frankenstein” which is way, way better.

John henry म्हणाले...

"seriously beautiful"?

Good looking, sure but hardly more so than average.

I wonder how many women here find here find her seriously beautiful and how many think so because they feel they are supposed to?

And I wonder the same about men here.

I suspect it is mostly women who find her "seriously beautiful".

John Henry

Lurker21 म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
Lurker21 म्हणाले...

Much, much free association today for some reason, but I'll bite.

Brooke Hayward wrote Haywire about her crazy, suicidal family. The TV movie was quite memorable - back in the days when there were TV movies and some were memorable. If you've got an afternoon free, you can trace out the ways that the Haywards were related through marriage and divorce to other famous people.

Mr. Forward म्हणाले...

Little known fact. Three of the four original Marx brothers are still working at the CIA.

Phil 314 म्हणाले...

Wim Wenders commenting on Hopper’s photographic skills reminds me of “An American Friend”. That was probably my first experience of Hopper as an interesting actor. There was always s certain malevolence to his acting. My other early experience with him was in”Apocalypse Now” where he played the crazy. At the time that was the stereotype of Hopper.

Now I wonder who was this guy really: crazy and drug addled or quiet and introspective.

Laslo Spatula म्हणाले...

If I recall correctly, there's an 'Apocalypse Now' outtake where, on set, a muttering Brando is fed up with a motormouth Hopper and throws a piece of fruit at him.

Two Method-acting Marx brothers, perhaps.

I am Laslo.

khematite म्हणाले...

From a 1966 Playboy interview with Dylan, conducted by Nat Hentoff. Not all one sentence, though:

PLAYBOY: Mistake or not, what made you decide to go the rock-'n'-roll route?

DYLAN: Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I'm in a card game. Then I'm in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13-year-old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a "before" in a Charles Atlas "before and after" ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy - he ain't so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I'm in Omaha. It's so cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain't much to look at, but who's built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything's going good until that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say?

PLAYBOY: And that's how you became a rock-'n'-roll singer?

DYLAN: No, that's how I got tuberculosis.

wild chicken म्हणाले...

But who was Sullivan

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

“ Little known fact. Three of the four original Marx brothers are still working at the CIA...”

Little known fact: Zeppo Marx has a doppelgänger: Noah Feldman.

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

@ khematite

Thanks! I remember that... may have blogged it. That really is so much like the sentence I extracted that I feel it was the model.

It’s spoke word so we can posit that Dylan intended it as one sentence. Playboy punctuated it by the Playboy standard, which probably imagined its readers as easily distracted and in need of short amusements.

rcocean म्हणाले...

The actress reminds me of a young Lauren bacall for some reason. I always found in hilarious that Hollywood would cast Scotsman Connery in the all these ill-fitting roles. A scot-russian sub commander and an Irish policeman with a Scottish accent come to mind.

rcocean म्हणाले...

Of the 4 marx brothers only one was really funny. Little known fact.

rcocean म्हणाले...

Alligators get a bad rap. People confuse them with Crocodiles who are truly dangerous bad dudes.

Lurker21 म्हणाले...

Architectural Digest asks "Was Dennis Hopper a Better Photographer Than an Actor?" You can read the article if you want to register with the site.

I met Hopper once. I was lost and asking for directions. I didn't know it was him (and I'm still not 100% sure - it seems so unbelievable). But it's just as well. At that age, I would really have made a fool of myself if I met a celebrity, so instead of kicking myself now for not recognizing him and saying something, I would be kicking myself for not being able to keep my big mouth shut.

Amexpat म्हणाले...

@ khematite

Dylan has a wicked sense of humor and that's a prime example. Clearly Groucho Marx was one of the many greats he was influenced by.

HoodlumDoodlum म्हणाले...

I saw that movie! Lawrence Fishburn does "sweaty intensity/sleazily dangerous" well.
I think you missed an angle--the guy who threatens to rape Connery's character's wife and daughter hates them because the wife prosecuted him for rape when he was in college. He wasn't convicted but he was raped in prison and lost his scholarship so he had to drop out of school.

I can't remember if he was actually guilty of the rape he was charged with originally, but there's your #MeToo/college Title IX sex crime prosecution angle (as well as a school-to-prison pipeline one, a prison violence creating worse criminals instead of rehabilitating people one, etc).

Tom T. म्हणाले...

That photo looks like Floyd the barber and Helen Crump from some sort of noir stage adaptation of the Andy Griffith Show.

tcrosse म्हणाले...

I traveled for two years in Tibet, therefore, and amused myself by visiting Lhassa and spending some days with the head Llama. You may have read of the remarkable explorations of a Norwegian named Sigerson, but I am sure that it never occurred to you that you were receiving news of your friend. I then passed through Persia, looked in at Mecca, and paid a short but interesting visit to the Khalifa at Khartoum, the results of which I have communicated to the Foreign Office. Returning to France I spent some months in a research into the coal-tar derivatives, which I conducted in a laboratory at Montpelier, in the South of France.

Guildofcannonballs म्हणाले...

They are dying in the hospitals from medical errors.

It is sickening. Look it up. Just look it up.

Guildofcannonballs म्हणाले...

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z3bepe/lawyer-who-told-cumstain-opposing-counsel-to-pay-up-fuckface-is-off-the-case

Real world writing right there bub.

Howard म्हणाले...

If you really want to get to know Dennis Hopper in-depth as an artist watch his interview on inside the actors studio.it used to be available on YouTube I'm not sure if you can still get it there or not. One interesting tidbit his father was in the OSS and they said he was dead after the war he just showed up back at home because life.Dennis landed a part in a John Wayne movie because of his marriage to Brooke Hayward whose mother was Maureen Sullivan one of the best friends of John Wayne. Hopper was so radical in his method acting that Wayne and the director had him banished from Hollywood which forced him to go to New York and pursue his painting photography and additional training at the actors studio

Narr म्हणाले...

I'll suspend judgment on 'seriously beautiful' until I can look at other pix. There are seriously beautiful women who don't photograph well, at least from certain angles.

Narr
Just 'cause I can

Michael म्हणाले...

Althouse


Rookie Hayward wrote Haywire a super read.

reader म्हणाले...

On unwise marriages and Mexican divorce. My grandfather died in 1944 and I knew that my grandmother had remarried in about 1947ish but that second marriage had been annulled. A few years ago I found a letter written to my grandmother by a women. The letter stated that my grandmother was married to the woman’s husband. The Mexican divorce that he had (attempted) to obtain was not valid.

I don’t know why, after the annulment, he didn’t obtain a valid divorce and remarry my grandmother. My grandmother never talked about him. My mother liked him and I have pictures of my mother with him (she was about 5 then). I know that polygamy was an issue in Arizona in the past.

There is a little family soap opera of which I will never learn the details.

khematite म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
khematite म्हणाले...

Howard said
Dennis landed a part in a John Wayne movie because of his marriage to Brooke Hayward whose mother was Maureen Sullivan one of the best friends of John Wayne.

Brooke Hayward's mother was not Maureen O'Sullivan (best known as Jane in the Tarzan movies and as the mother of Mia Farrow), but rather Margaret Sullavan, (best known for the The Shop Around the Corner and Back Street)..

narciso म्हणाले...

Well that was based on the novel by Miami herald reporterjohn Katzenbach, who they also adapted the mean season, and hart's war (the last was based on his father nick Katzenbach's war service,

Connery could play the Latvian, the Spanish ramirez,(who was actually an alien) the arab raisulu, just because

Narr म्हणाले...

OK, I goomaged her and yeah, very pretty. "Seriously beautiful" may go too far.

Narr
I wouldn't kick her out of bed for eating crackers

Amadeus 48 म्हणाले...

"Ferguson... drowns and is subsequently eaten by an alligator..."

Ah, yes. Gators in the movies are real go-getters. Less so in real life, I think, unless you are a small dog.

That sentence reminds me of my favorite John Mulaney one-liner:

I always thought that quicksand was going to be a much bigger problem than it turned out to be.

TML म्हणाले...

I do not understand where "Sullivan" came from. Who is this in the story?

"Back at the prison, Sullivan gloats that he and Ferguson struck a deal:"