"I’ve been writing lately about how American politics seem to have moved into a new dispensation — more unsettled and extreme..."

"... but also perhaps more energetic and dynamic. One benefit of unsettlement, famously adumbrated by Orson Welles’s villainous Harry Lime in 'The Third Man,' is supposed to be cultural ferment: 'In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.' There are certainly signs of ferment out there, in technology, religion and intellectual life. But I’m worried about pop culture — worried that the relationship between art and commerce isn’t working as it should, worried that even if the rest of American society starts moving, our storytelling is still going to be stuck...."

Writes Ross Douthat, in "Can We Make Pop Culture Great Again?" (NYT).

I got totally sidetracked by "dispensation." Here's my interaction with Grok that convinced me that Douthat didn't make a weird word choice. It's an excellent word choice, and I enjoyed reading about the religious meanings of "dispensation," including

"'The Mod Squad' was one of the first prime-time series to acknowledge the hippie counterculture and an early example of multiracial casting."

"It centered on three hippies in trouble with the law, who avoid jail time by joining the police department and working undercover. Mr. Cole was cast as Pete Cochran, a wealthy kid who was kicked out of his parents’ house for stealing a car. [Clarence Williams III] played Linc Hayes, and [Peggy] Lipton played Julie Barnes.... In his 2018 memoir, 'I Played the White Guy,' Mr. Cole described turning down the role, because he did not want to play a character who ratted on troubled teenagers. 'It sounds stupid, and I hope it never gets on air,' Mr. Cole recalled yelling the show’s producer, Aaron Spelling, during the audition. But his attitude was exactly what Mr. Spelling was looking for in Pete Cochran, he said. Ms. Lipton died in 2019, and Mr. Williams died in 2021...."

From "Michael Cole, ‘Mod Squad’ Actor, Dies at 84/Mr. Cole, who played the wealthy Pete Cochran, had been the last of the show’s three stars still living" (NYT).

I remember the opening — where "Julie Barnes" gets out of breath trying to keep up with "Pete" and "Linc" who seem to need to lug her along on their hippie-busting venture — but I don't remember watching the show...

"If somebody's going to try to blackmail me with advertising — blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is. Hey, Bob, if you're in the audience."

Said Elon Musk, video at "Elon Musk to Advertisers Leaving X, Disney's Bob Iger: Don't Advertise, Go F*ck Yourself" (Real Clear Politics).

That's the way he says it: "If somebody's going to try to blackmail me with advertising — blackmail me with money...."

An alternative line reading would be "If somebody's going to try to blackmail me with advertising — blackmail me with money...."

An idea that is always there but I don't think he ever stresses is: Don't you understand how rich I am and what it means to me to be this rich?

Makes me think of "Citizen Kane" (who laughs off losing money and can publish his newspaper at a big loss for 60 years):

ADDED: I'm seeing a lot of clips of that Elon Musk interview. Here's the whole thing:

Here are 7 TikTok videos I've selected as right for just now. Let me know what you like best.

1. The "squirrel" is crazy about the trampoline.

2. Yeah, I'll back you up on that.

3. Joni Mitchell, in 1970, telling the audience they're "really a drag."

4. Orson Welles saying he puts loyalty to friends above art.

5. He just happened to find everything he was looking for at World Market.

6. The rigors of Chinese womanhood.

7. How to write about characters who are not autistic.

"'Nobody ever came from nowhere more completely,' Welles says, drawing a big studio-audience laugh..."

"... with this description of not just Latka but Kaufman as well. Asked how he came up with such a distinctive character voice, Kaufman says only that he 'grew up in New York, and you hear a lot of different voices in New York' ('You don't hear that one,' replies Welles). He also cites the accents of a high-school friend from South America and a college roommate from Iran."

Open Culture (via Metafilter) about this 1982 interview (in which Andy Kaufman seems almost to hypnotize Orson Welles into doing all the talking):



Welles was obviously not a natural interviewer, and he did not — despite how this looks — have his own talk show. Orson Welles was a very common talk show guest in his later years, and on this occasion he was subbing for the regular host, a man who was a natural interviewer, Merv Griffin.

I wish I could show you a wonderful example of Merv interviewing Orson in which you'd see comfort and pleasure replace awkwardness and confusion, but — like the way Andy Kaufman wanted to do wrestling — Orson Welles wanted to do magic tricks:



But wouldn't we all be better off quitting our career — whatever it is — and becoming a magician? 

And if you were reading this blog in its 5th week, maybe you'll realize why I'm nudging you like that. Here, from February 23, 2004:

I saw Get to Know Your Rabbit when it was shown, pre-release, in 1971, to a test audience in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I and it seemed like everyone else in that theater experienced it as the funniest movie we had ever seen. Somehow, even though it was directed by Brian De Palma and has Orson Welles in its cast, it fell into oblivion. I still have never come close to laughing as much at a movie as I did that night....

Here's Orson Welles schooling Tommy Smothers in showbiz magic:

"The movie industry I’ve known for the past 30 years... is reconstituting itself in my mind this week like pieces of a broken mirror being glued back in place..."

"... the cracks now forever visible," writes Dana Stevens (at Slate), who's been writing about movies for something like a decade, yet claims she "truly didn't" know "any of the more sordid Weinstein rumors." (Did she know any of the less sordid rumors? She does "guiltily question" whether she should have picked up some clues and could have dug into them.)

In this metaphorical reglued broken mirror in her mind, Stevens sees:

Gwyneth Paltrow holding her Oscar for Shakespeare in Love, standing beaming next to the man whose hotel suite she had to escape from a few years earlier after he invited her to the bedroom for a massage.... Or Mira Sorvino getting her Oscar for Mighty Aphrodite and then mysteriously—or perhaps not so mysteriously anymore—fading from the screen. Or Rosanna Arquette never going on to the career she deserved....

But the linked column doesn't go where I would take it. When I saw the headline at Slate — "The Harvey Weinstein Scandal Is Changing How I Look at the Movies" — I thought it going to say what I've been saying: Because movies are shot through with human exploitation, we should withhold our patronage. These big expensive projects create immense power that is used to grind up young women, and we should not want to expose our mind to this material. If you need stories about human beings, read. A writer of books works alone (mostly) and uses words to create images of beautiful women and other human beings who do and say interesting, meaningful things. No actors needed.

But Stevens has no plan to redirect her consumption of stories. Well, her job is movie critic, so she can't just say no, can she?

Why Donald Trump is not like Citizen Kane.

Instapundit links to Eric Felten in The Weekly Standard, "Citizen Trump?/The eerie similarities between DJT and CFK":

"Wellesnet," the online Orson Welles news and fan site has noted that Donald Trump's campaign is coming, more and more, to resemble the doomed election bid of Charles Foster Kane in the 1941 film. One will remember that things for Citizen Kane started to come unraveled when he threatened, at a big rally, to prosecute his opponent once elected.

"But here's one promise I'll make and Boss Jim Gettys knows I'll keep it," Kane says. "My first official act as governor of this state will be to appoint a special district attorney to arrange for the indictment, prosecution and conviction of Boss Jim W. Gettys."

As Wellesnet recounts, in turn, "Gettys destroys Kane's political aspirations by leaking a sex scandal involving Kane in the final stretch of the campaign."

Citizen Kane was a movie about a character who, of course, didn't think of himself as a character in a movie. He was not aware of the drama of his story arc. He was not motivated to crank it up into the greatest story that ever hit the big screen.*

Donald Trump is a real man. He is witnessing the approach of doom. Maybe he holds onto some shred of hope — he's a fighter, he likes to win — but that's all the more reason to make his story as interesting as possible, for the inevitable movie or movies — who knows how many movies there will be over the years? Donald Trump has 4 more weeks to write the story that will be enacted in those movies he sees coming.

Alec Baldwin, his "SNL" impersonator, is a great and serious dramatic actor. Surely, Baldwin will get a movie made. I look forward to the meta material. Baldwin will play 2 roles — oh, should I shut up and just write the screenplay? — Trump and Alec-Baldwin-as-Trump mocking Trump on "SNL." We see Baldwin/Trump seething and scheming as he watches Trump/Baldwin imitating him.

He's seething and scheming and then he laughs maniacally. Suddenly, he envisions the movie that will be made.

For decades they've been saying that "Citizen Kane" is the greatest movie of all time, but my movie will be bigger and greater. It will be huuuge. Because this really happened. Not just a stupid sex scandal that brought Kane down — a tawdry little thing — but a torrent of craziness like nobody ever saw. A sex scandal — that's Bill Clinton crap and Bill Clinton's crap is already part of my story. My story! It will all be in there. The aging actresses — they're always looking for parts — they'll be falling over each other trying to get the roles of Paula Jones and Juanita Broaddrick and Kathleen Willey and that other one, the 12-year-old that Hillary laughed at. And I've got all the young women too. So many roles! All the beauty queens — Alicia Machado — and the journalists who all ganged up against me. Megyn Kelly. Megyn Kelly will beg to play the part of herself in my movie. My movie! There's Nancy O'Dell and that actress in the purple dress — the one I took the Tic Tacs for — and Ivanka — Ivanka! — and Hillary herself. Hillary! Ha! Streep wants that. Streep will beg on her knees for that. Of course, Streep will do it. Streep or any one of those old actresses hot for a meaty role — a meaty roll with Bill. Heh. Who will play Bill? Who cares?! The question is me! Baldwin will do it. Of course! It's such a great role. What am I saying? The story isn't over yet. The climax hasn't even happened. This real-life story is still getting written — by me, the greatest character in the history of movies. The greatest movie scriptwriter in history. Writing in real life. Writing history moment-by-moment, tweet-by-tweet, impromptu splutterings on stages in front of millions. I can play out whatever crazy real-life destruction — ha ha ha ha ha look out, Paul Ryan! — any destruction-of the-GOP fantasies I want and it's all part of The True Story of Donald Trump. I can say anything, do anything — grab them by their pussy, shoot a guy on 5th Avenue — and it's actual true story, history-of-the-United-States-of-America, craziest thing that ever happened. It's big. It's huge. It's bigger than President of the United States. Fuck President of the United States. You can take that lousy job, Hillary. I am become bigger than you ever imagined becoming! President of the United States — it's just a childish conventional dream. You didn't build that. Go. Live in that ugly little house. It's not like you can actually push the nuclear button. Knock yourself out "fixing" Obamacare and war-and-peace-ing the Middle East for 4 years. Good luck with the America that's going to hate you. Like they already hate you. They're voting for you, but I assure you, Hillary, they hate you. And they're gonna love me — me, the greatest character in the greatest movies, the most movies and the best movies ever made. And fuck you too, Citizen Kane.

________________________

* Citizen Kane was based on a real person, William Randolph Hearst, but he didn't want to be a character in a movie, and he wasn't motivated to live his life, as defeat approached, to maximize the entertainment value of the story if it were presented in movie form. My point in this post is that the more it is apparent to Donald Trump — in these last 4 weeks — that he will lose the election, the more he may fixate on accomplishing something else, such as the destruction of the GOP as we know it or the ruination of the presidency that doesn't get to be his. Trump is an entertainer and he's been entertaining us all along and he has reason to think that he will be entertaining America forever as a character in our history. How big of a character can he be? He wants to be huge.

"We who explore the future are like those ancient mapmakers, and it is in this spirit that the concept of future shock and the theory of the adaptive range are presented here..."

"... not as final word, but as a first approximation of the new realities, filled with danger and promise, created by the accelerative thrust."

Wrote Alvin Toffler, quoted in his NYT obituary.

He wrote some big bestsellers that affected how many people felt about plunging into the future. "Future Shock" (1970). "The Third Wave" (1980).

The NYT is standoffish: "Critics were not sure what to make of Mr. Toffler’s literary style or scholarship. The mechanical engineering scholar and systems theorist Richard W. Longman wrote in The New York Times that Mr. Toffler 'sends flocks of facts and speculation whirling past like birds in a tornado.' In Time magazine, the reviewer R. Z. Sheppard wrote, 'Toffler’s redundant delivery and overheated prose turned kernels of truth into puffed generalities.' Mr. Toffler’s work nevertheless found an eager readership among the general public, on college campuses, in corporate suites and in national governments. Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House, met the Tofflers in the 1970s and became close to them. He said 'The Third Wave' had immensely influenced his own thinking and was “one of the great seminal works of our time.' Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang of China convened conferences to discuss 'The Third Wave' in the early 1980s, and in 1985 the book was the No. 2 best seller in China. Only the speeches of the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping sold more copies."

IN THE COMMENTS: Eric the Fruit Bat said:

I think they might have made "Future Shock" into some kind of an educational film and we watched it when I was in 8th grade science class. All I remember is something about disposability and some little girl throwing her doll into the trash can.

Later on I read "Mega Trends," and whatever came after it, and I would go to the library to read some magazine that I think was called "The Futurist." Pretty dull, useless stuff, it turned out.

I really miss the feeling I got back when I was a little kid watching stuff like the 3M TV commercials during Jacques Cousteau. The future seemed like it was going to be wonderful.

But, you know, you can't go home again.

Oh? Maybe you can. Here:

10 reasons why there can't be a Prince bio pic... ... and there shouldn't be.

From BET, including:

Ninety-five percent of the time, Prince was not here for it. Shall we direct your attention to the "We Are the World" moment where Prince was sucking on a lollipop completely uninvolved?

Watch:



I don't know why that makes him unfilmable as opposed to worth figuring out. (We are the children?) Isn't it like "Citizen Kane"? Make it a Prince-like character, in his weird palace, with childlike attributes — like a favorite color — and a more intense work ethic than anyone we know — but most of the work product was put in a vault. Open the vault and pan over the mystery:

I wondered why Megyn Kelly didn't probe into what Trump saw in "Citizen Kane" and "All Quiet on the Western Front."

She asked what was his favorite movie and his favorite book and never stopped to ask why. I wanted to know more. A reader sent me this, footage from an Errol Morris project that became a short at the 2002 Oscars. Various celebrities talked about film. Trump's material didn't make the final cut, but he talks quite a bit about "Citizen Kane":



He says a rich man can be unhappy — even more unhappy than his wife — because wealth can distance you and insulate you from other people. He also says the right word matters — that "Kane" wouldn't be the same without that word "rosebud." He does not take what I hear as a prod to talk about the oft-discussed sexual connotation of "rosebud."

Here's a 2002 New Yorker article about the Errol Morris project, with this about Trump:

Did anyone watch that Megyn Kelly interview with Donald Trump?

I didn't get much out of it... other than that DT's favorite book is "All Quiet on the Western Front." Also that he thinks of himself as "a person."

ADDED: Less surprising but probably more significant: His favorite movie is "Citizen Kane." Kelly — presumably because she was doing some lightning-round set of questions — failed to ask the obvious question: Do you identify with Kane? Kane was an unsuccessful politician and a successful journalist, so a conversation between Trump and Kelly about Kane could have had some real content, but Kelly is not the journalist to see and do anything about that potential.

"His range was incredible... He made himself famous playing a leprechaun, though he wasn’t in any way Irish."

"On ‘Let’s Pretend,’ he played a troll, a parrot, a giant in ‘Jack and the Beanstalk.’ He was always the oddball voice. Arthur said: ‘I never got the girl, not in 19 seasons. I was never starred, I was never featured. But I always worked.’"

From the NYT obituary for Arthur Anderson, who played Lucky in Lucky Charms ads and Ducky in Drake’s Cakes ads and who also had a role in the movies “Zelig” and “Midnight Cowboy” and parts on the TV shows “Car 54, Where Are You?” and “Law & Order" and appeared on stage — in "Julius Caesar" — with Orson Welles.

"And then I saw you. You'd taken shelter under the balcony of the Old State House. You were wearing a teal ball gown..."

"... which appeared to me both regal and ridiculous. Your brown hair was matted to the right side of your face, and a galaxy of freckles dusted your shoulders. I'd never seen anything so beautiful.... We sat at the counter of that five and dime and talked like old friends.... After an hour or so, I excused myself to use the restroom. I remember consulting my reflection in the mirror. Wondering if I should kiss you, if I should tell you what I'd done from the cockpit of that bomber a week before, if I should return to the Smith & Wesson that waited for me. I decided, ultimately, that I was unworthy of the resuscitation this stranger in the teal ball gown had given me, and to turn my back on such sweet serendipity would be the real disgrace. On the way back to the counter, my heart thumped in my chest like an angry judge's gavel, and a future -- our future -- flickered in my mind. But when I reached the stools, you were gone. No phone number. No note. Nothing.... I'm an old man now, and only recently did I recount this story to someone for the first time, a friend from the VFW. He suggested I look for you on Facebook. I told him I didn't know anything about Facebook, and all I knew about you was your first name and that you had lived in Boston once...."

From a lovely piece in Craigslist's "Missed Connections," about a missed connection that happened way back in 1972 (via Jaltcoh).

It called to mind the little speech by an old man in "Citizen Kane," explaining what old men remember:

One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on a ferry and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in... and on it, there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on - and she was carrying a white parasol - and I only saw her for one second and she didn't see me at all - but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl.

I think a lot of old men read my blog. Sometimes I blog about what women are wearing and they crowd into the comments to say that it would never occur to them to think about what dress a woman had on....

"It’s been 14 years since Peter Bogdanovich made a movie, but that doesn’t mean he’s slowing down."

"The man who burst on the scene with The Last Picture Show is busier than ever and he joins Marc [Maron] in the garage to reflect on a life in show business, starting with his early foray into theater to his friendship with Orson Wells to his latest movie She’s Funny That Way."

Great interview.  Made me want to finally watch my DVD of "The Last Picture Show."

Hey, Marc, it's Welles. (Compare: H.G. Wells.)

There's so much in this interview I'd like to talk about, but there's no transcript, so I just limit myself to one thing, which is that Orson Welles supported the decision to make "The Last Picture Show" in black and white. It's the only way to get the depth of field you see in "Citizen Kane" and — most interestingly — it makes every actor's performance better. All the best film acting is in black and white.

"The Washington Post Co. has agreed to sell its flagship newspaper to Amazon.com founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos..."

"... ending the Graham family’s stewardship of one of America’s leading news organizations after four generations."

Wow! What an amazing moment of transition in media this is. The new overcomes the old. It's not Amazon that will own WaPo, but Bezos himself, individually.

I hope he gets rid of the paywall.

For much of the past decade... the paper has been unable to escape the financial turmoil that has engulfed newspapers and other “legacy” media organizations. The rise of the Internet and the epochal change from print to digital technology have created a massive wave of competition for traditional news companies...

Bezos, in an interview, called The Post “an important institution” and expressed optimism about its future. “I don’t want to imply that I have a worked-out plan,” he said. “This will be uncharted terrain and it will require experimentation.” He said, “There would be change with or without new ownership. But the key thing I hope people will take away from this is that the values of The Post do not need changing. The duty of the paper is to the readers, not the owners.”

ADDED: It seems as though the Bezos idea should be to forget about making money — like Citizen Kane — and simply plunge into making a great newspaper. Bezos doesn't need to make money. He can be simply spending money. Do what is good! What else should he do at this point? And even when Amazon was being developed, the need to make money soon was considered a distraction, if I remember correctly. He had the nerve to put that off way into the future. Here's the "Citizen Kane" scene this makes me think of:



"You're right, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll have to close this place in... 60 years."

Will the Koch brothers own The L.A. Times?

They are "exploring a bid to buy the Tribune Company’s eight regional newspapers, including The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, The Orlando Sentinel and The Hartford Courant."

[T]he papers could serve as a broader platform for the Kochs’ laissez-faire ideas. The Los Angeles Times is the fourth-largest paper in the country, and The Tribune is No. 9, and others are in several battleground states, including two of the largest newspapers in Florida, The Orlando Sentinel and The Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale. A deal could include Hoy, the second-largest Spanish-language daily newspaper, which speaks to the pivotal Hispanic demographic....

A Democratic political operative who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said he admired how over decades the brothers have assembled a complex political infrastructure that supports their agenda. A media company seems like a logical next step.

This person said, “If they get some bad press that Darth Vader is buying Tribune, they don’t care.”

The Tribune Company is worth  $623 million, but Koch Industries takes in $115 billion a year. So the Kochs don't need this media business to make money. They would, apparently, be doing this to get their message out. Is this fair to L.A.?

“It’s a frightening scenario when a free press is actually a bought and paid-for press and it can happen on both sides,” said Ellen Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan watchdog group.

Let's talk about what freedom means in this context. The newspaper businesses are privately owned and the newspapers themselves are objects of commerce in a free market. Anyone is free to start a newspaper business. L.A. is a liberal place, with lots of people who've made lots of money in the entertainment business, which is also a form of expression accomplished through privately owned businesses. News media and entertainment media operate in the commercial marketplace and the marketplace of ideas.

What is the frightening scenario? That so much money is involved that some speakers are far more powerful than others? But isn't that gigantic power needed to counterbalance the most powerful speaker of all, the government? And unlike the government, news and entertainment media can't make us consume their product. Or am I just saying laissez-faire things because the devious Koch brothers have insinuated their ideas into my innocent, pliable little brain.

By the way, speaking of brothers and frightening scenarios, what percentage of Americans think the Koch brothers are worse than the Tsarnaev brothers? I can't answer that, having lived in Madison, Wisconsin too long. I'll just share this old video, shot by Meade on April 4, 2011, with street performers in top hats portraying the Koch brothers as puppeteers manipulating Governor Scott Walker:



"Come along, Scottie!"

ADDED: "You're right, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year...."

"After 50 years at the top of the Sight & Sound poll, ['Citizen Kane'] has been convincingly ousted by ... 'Vertigo' – and by a whopping 34 votes..."

"... compared with the mere five that separated them a decade ago."

So what does it mean? Given that Kane actually clocked over three times as many votes this year as it did last time, it hasn’t exactly been snubbed by the vastly larger number of voters taking part in this new poll, which has spread its net far wider than any of its six predecessors.

But it does mean that Hitchcock, who only entered the top ten in 1982 (two years after his death), has risen steadily in esteem over the course of 30 years, with Vertigo climbing from seventh place, to fourth in 1992, second in 2002 and now first, to make him the Old Master. Welles, uniquely, had two films (The Magnificent Ambersons as well as Kane) in the list in 1972 and 1982, but now Ambersons has slipped to 81st place in the top 100.

Obviously, there's a lot of strategy in voting. It calls to mind the GOP primary here in Wisconsin. Tommy Thompson is "Citizen Kane." You know he's the favorite to win. How do you defeat him? You don't just pick your favorite film, or your favorite Hitchcock film. You've got to know the one film that all the anti-Kanes can get behind. It's been established over the years that that film is "Vertigo." You can't be all: But I think "Notorious" is better. You vote for "Vertigo." But this Sight & Sound voting has been going on for 50 years, so it's shaken out that you vote for "Vertigo" and not "Notorious" (or "Psycho" or "North By Northwest"). We haven't had time to figure out whether Mark Neumann or Eric Hovde is "Vertigo." Not enough information to get the strategic voting right.

***

You know... if I hadn't been very rich, I might have been a really great man.

Don't you think you are? 

I think I did pretty well under the circumstances. 

What would you like to have been? 

Everything you hate.

***

What's this doohickey? 
It's a brassiere! You know about those things, you're a big boy now.
I've never run across one like that.
It's brand new. Revolutionary up-lift: No shoulder straps, no back straps, but it does everything a brassiere should do. Works on the principle of the cantilevered bridge.

"Back in the '70s, I asked Orson Welles what he thought was happening to pictures, and he said, 'We're brutalizing the audience.'..."

"... We're going to end up like the Roman circus, live at the Coliseum.' The respect for human life seems to be eroding."

Mud.

"Life is made up of marble and mud." — Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud... And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud. " — Shakespeare

"I made all my generals out of mud." — Napoleon Bonaparte

"We sit in the mud... and reach for the stars." — Ivan Turgenev

"I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French." — Charles de Gaulle

"Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance..." — Thoreau

"My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring, diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?" — Virginia Woolf

"They teach anything in universities today. You can major in mud pies." — Orson Welles

"POLITICIAN, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive." — Ambrose Bierce (from "The Devil's Dictionary")

"'As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.' Having said these things, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva.' Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him, 'Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing." — John 9:5-7

"The broad-backed hippopotamus/Rests on his belly in the mud..." — T.S. Eliot

Movie watched last night: "Citizen Kane."

What was the motivation to pull the old reputedly-greatest-movie-ever-made down off the shelf? Some conversation about putting together a story by interviewing various people who knew a specific individual one had never met and wanted to try to understand. I said that's the famous, highly praised narrative structure of "Citizen Kane," you realize, but you didn't realize that because you'd never seen "Citizen Kane." How do you get through life without seeing "Citizen Kane"? People are always pushing "Citizen Kane," which you rightly pointed out is a reason to resist it. So thanks for not resisting it when I pushed it, which I did not because I'm shocked that you'd failed to take in the greatest movie blah blah blah — in fact, I admire resistance to that sort of pressure — but because it had to do with an idea we were already talking about that had nothing to do with the irritating pseudo-accomplishment of seeing all the things you're supposed to see.

"Citizen Kane" questions for discussion:

1. Why did you see "Citizen Kane," or how have you managed to avoid it? Have you been bullied into seeing it, or are you one of the bullies? Do you feel like there are movies you're supposed to see, and do you see them or avoid them?

2. If you've seen it, do you like it? What don't you like about it? Do you like that kind of extreme visual composition where one actor is right up against the edge of the frame and the other actor walks away into the set and looks about one tenth the size of the other guy? Do you like that stagey acting? Do those special achievements in makeup from 1941 drive you crazy or do you find them heart-rendingly touching evidence of striving after Art?

3. With all this snow we've been having, we could make a list of movies with important snow, and "Citizen Kane" belongs on that list. What else? "The Shining"...