"I was going to call my old, first phone number in the Bronx, and talk to whoever answered.... I would interview this person long enough to reveal our common humanity..."

"... and I would then tell his or her story with compassion; whatever differences we might have — cultural, political, whatever — would disappear with greater familiarity and understanding. Above all, we would, together, two ordinary people, prove that for all this country’s troubles, modernity does not have to be soulless. So I called. And got this recording: 'The next available service specialist will be with you momentarily. They will be happy to assist you with any inquiry.' Then I was put on hold, where I remained for 22 minutes, until I hung up." 

Story idea goes bad for Gene Weingarten, but he got a column out of it anyway: "Maybe the past is only a phone call away" (WaPo). They say you can never go home again, and, it seems, you can never phone home again. 

 

We were just talking about E.T. yesterday. Remember? "Like Steven Spielberg’s E.T., [Biden] seems to instinctually believe in the healing power of physical connection—even if that intimacy can sometimes feel a bit too close."

Everybody's trying to make a connection... but maybe nobody's there anymore. Weingarten's column made me think of Bob Dylan's "Talking World War III Blues":

"As a young widower, he drove them to school, blasting Elton John’s 'Crocodile Rock' from the car radio, willing normalcy’s return."

"In an effort to heal, he rushed to wrap himself around others in mourning. Like Steven Spielberg’s E.T., he seems to instinctually believe in the healing power of physical connection—even if that intimacy can sometimes feel a bit too close. As the Irish literary critic Fintan O’Toole has written of Biden’s grasp, 'There is something religious in this laying-on of hands. It is an act of communion.' After the destruction of the Trump era, the nation is desperate for a parental figure to cultivate renewal amid ruin; shattered institutions will require an almost irrational faith in healing."

From "Winning Was the Easy Part/Now Joe Biden needs to repair a badly broken country" by Franklin Foer (in The Atlantic).

Don't hike in the woods wearing sandals.

That's the central message in "Joyce Carol Oates’ foot photo is freaking everyone out."

“So important to wear proper hiking shoes,” the National Book Award winner tweeted, sharing a graphic close-up of her foot. “Never/ever walk in the woods in sandals. the instep of my left foot this morning--poison ivy? poison oak? must’ve stepped in something...”

Bonus JCO tweet at that link:

So barbaric that this should still be allowed... No conservation laws in effect wherever this is? https://t.co/hgavm9IBaM

— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) June 9, 2015

"A Jackson, Miss., neighborhood has been perplexed by the discovery of bowls of mashed potatoes that turned up in mailboxes, on door steps and on top of cars this week."

The Washington Post reports.

“What does it mean?” local television station WLBT wondered. “And will they strike again?”

The inscrutable tubers appear to have first been discovered by residents of the historic Belhaven neighborhood on Tuesday morning.....

“Mississippi’s most creative individuals have found their way to Greater Belhaven,” notes the American Planning Association. “Among the residents are celebrated writers, artists, and musicians.”...

The most likely explanation, and the least interesting one, is that someone came up with a weird idea for a practical joke....

Of course, it means something. And it's important....



It means... aliens...

"High school student Rachel Zegler has been cast in the starring role of Maria in Steven Spielberg's planned 'West Side Story' remake."

"If Zegler, 17, looks familiar, it's because she's already been a bit of a viral sensation for video of her singing the Lady Gaga hit 'Shallow' from 'A Star Is Born' in an empty auditorium," CNN reports. Here's the viral tweet:

someone: you use autotune😤😤😤😤
me: pic.twitter.com/9sPBkDj2kf

— rachel zegler (@rachelzegler) December 14, 2018

Who will play Tony in Steven Spielberg's "West Side Story"?

Ansel Elgort!

There will really be a new movie of "West Side Story"?

Oscar-nominated screenwriter and Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner has written the adaptation of the musical originally penned by Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim with music by Leonard Bernstein. Spielberg has spent the better part of the year looking for stars for his movie, with actors needing to be able to sing, dance, and, of course, act their hearts out for the story that transposes Romeo and Juliet into a 1950s New York setting featuring white and Puerto Rican gangs....

I'll give this my "race and pop culture" tag.  A white gang against a Puerto Rican gang. Let's hope the Tony Kushner rewrite finds a new way of living, a way of forgiving...

"If I said that phrase back then, quite some time ago, it was in a way to counter the Spielbergs and that lot who said a story had to have a beginning, a middle and an end, and so, as a joke, I said: 'not in that order.'"

Said Jean-Luc Godard, confronted with his old statement that films should not follow a conventional narrative arc, quoted in "Godard injects anarchic spirit at Cannes with small screen cameo." The 87-year-old filmmaker appeared via Facetime to promote his new movie "The Image Book," which is a collection of "clips from other films, stills, news footage and even Islamic State online videos, with a soundtrack often at odds with the images."

The entrance, like the song, is perfect in its comical grandiosity.

Trump's "We Are the Champions" entrance:



The cosmic green-blue with the blinding white light across the bottom: at 0:16, it's like the point where the aliens are about to emerge from the spaceship in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."



At 0:24, Trump steps into the light and we know him from his silhouette, though it's just a pudgy old man shape. It's not the kind of glorious female body we're used to seeing introduced in silhouette. For example, the models just before the runway walk on "Project Runway"...



... or this bit from "Seinfeld":



But it's not the only time an unshapely man has worked a silhouette. Alfred Hitchcock used it every week to walk onto our television screen:

"Of the more than 50 films Steven Spielberg has directed, was this my least favorite?"

Richard Roeper asked himself.

No, I haven’t forgotten about “The Adventures of Tintin” or “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” or “Hook” or “1941.” But if I had to rank all of the Spielberg-directed films, from the myriad four-star classics through the terrific but slightly lesser movies down to the very small handful of misses, I think I’d rather see every one of Spielberg’s previous films before having to sit through “The BFG” again.

"All 29 Steven Spielberg Movies, Ranked from Worst to Best."

At New York Magazine.

I've never seen #1. Or #4.

What if Joyce Carol Oates told a joke...

... and nobody got it ... even though you had to go to this obvious joke even to see what she was talking about....

This guy thinks it's cool to kill defenceless animals then take a selfie. Jerk. pic.twitter.com/WbgMklrd9u

— Chris Tilly (@TillyTweets) June 9, 2015

"Every weapons system, from the bow and arrow to the intercontinental ballistic missile, sometimes kills the wrong people."

"So why has the revelation that a U.S. drone strike accidentally killed two al-Qaeda hostages ­— a U.S. citizen and an Italian aid worker — created such a storm of drone 'rethinking'?" asks lawprof Noah Feldman.

I haven't read his answer yet, but mine is: People aren't good at thinking in the abstract. A problem seems different when you know the story of one individual. That's why Steven Spielberg had the little girl in the red coat, and why Joseph Stalin said: "When one person dies, it's a tragedy, but when a million people die, it's a statistic."

Now, I'm reading Feldman. He observes that there has been a "fantasy of precision has been at the heart of the political and tactical appeal for U.S. President Barack Obama." But:

The real military advantage of the armed-drone strike over a conventional airstrike... isn't the precision of the hit. It’s the fact that a pilot isn’t being put in jeopardy. Yet somehow the idea that drone strikes are more precisely targeted has lingered, giving the technique greater public appeal....

When it comes to drones, the fantasy of precision is just that, a fantasy. Killing innocent civilians, whether they’re Americans or Pakistanis or Yemenis, is an inevitable reality of war....

Feldman doesn't directly address why hearing about 2 specific innocent victims causes people to rethink anything. Is it too obvious?

"The 'Hey, it’s just a movie' excuse doesn’t wash. Filmmakers love to talk about their artistic license to distort the truth..."

"... even as they bank on the authenticity of their films to boost them at awards season."

Writes Maureen Dowd, about the blatant distortion of the LBJ-MLK relationship in the movie "Selma," which just got snubbed in the Oscar nominations.

[T]he truth is dramatic and fascinating enough. Why twist it? On matters of race — America’s original sin — there is an even higher responsibility to be accurate.

["Selma" director Ava] DuVernay had plenty of vile white villains — including one who kicks a priest to death in the street — and they were no doubt shocking to the D.C. school kids. There was no need to create a faux one.

One-on-one scenes with the President of the United States are dramatically different, and you can see why dramatists felt a need in spite of the church-burning and priest-kicking material they had. But the question of twisting history remains, and perhaps what's really galling is that many liberals would like to be using the 50-year anniversary of LBJ's inauguration to celebrate LBJ as a great hero.

Perhaps it's not so much that there are other villains — plenty of vile white villains — but that there are so few heroes. The GOP got its "Lincoln" (though Spielberg deliberately withheld it from pre-election release in 2012). Where is the great movie-hero President for the Democrats? It could have been LBJ, and with "Selma," Democrats are stuck with the opposite extreme, the would-be hero appropriated as a villain to boost the heroism of MLK.

Dowd saw "Selma" in "a theater full of black teenagers," who'd received free tickets, "[t]hanks to donations" — from whom, Dowd never says. She expresses dismay that "a generation of young moviegoers would now see L.B.J.’s role in civil rights through DuVernay’s lens." So I wonder whether historical accuracy is Dowd's real concern or whether it's got more to do with the political interests of the Democratic Party.

And who did make those donations? If you look at who benefits, you might guess: Republicans.

The “Selma for Students” effort started in New York, where more than two dozen black business leaders raised money to ensure that 27,000 students in seventh, eighth and ninth grades would be able to see the film at no cost. The tickets were taken almost immediately. Now business leaders and nonprofit organizations in a dozen cities, including Philadelphia, Boston and New Orleans, are working together to underwrite students’ tickets to the movie. In the District, the March on Washington Film Festival has raised more than $75,000 toward a $100,000 goal. D.C. Public Schools is developing lesson plans to guide classroom discussions about the film.

Any rehabilitation of the reputation of LBJ in those lesson plans?

"Malia Obama has been working as a production assistant on the Los Angeles set of Halle Berry‘s TV series 'Extant'..."

"... the upcoming CBS sci-fi produced by top Obama bundler Steven Spielberg."

Is this wrong somehow? She's not skipping school. It's summer vacation, and she's working, working with the stars. Maybe someone else's teenager would like the slot that went to the President's daughter, but she's reportedly "an aspiring filmmaker."

Is this a campaign finance issue? Daughters of politicians getting glamorous summer jobs from campaign contributors? Any potential for corruption there?

ADDED: Bad timing for this story, so soon after "Chelsea Clinton paid $600K by NBC." Last paragraph at that link:

Yet Clinton’s appointment did not mark the first time NBC Universal had hired children of high-ranking politicians. In 2009, it hired George W. Bush’s daughter Jenna Bush Hager to serve as a correspondent on the “Today” show. In 2011, it hired Sen. John McCain’s daughter Meghan McCain as a contributor on MSNBC.

Why are all these stories about daughters? Is it because we keep choosing — for our high-ranking politicians — men with daughters? Is it because big media more easily accommodates females? Or do females find it easier to hop onto a career path built with political favors?

AND: Whatever they're giving Malia, it seems they're getting their money's worth in PR. I'd never heard of the TV show "Extant." And Halle Berry shifting into television is an indication of her waning star power. But... suddenly, Malia!! "Extant" and Halle Berry's career are... extant.

In case you hadn't noticed, Halle Berry's career is so well known to be in bad shape that people talk about "The Halle Berry Effect." What could be more helpful than juxtaposing her radiant face with the radiant daughter of the most radiant face in all of history?

"Annie," in the present day.

There don't seem to be orphanages in present-day NYC, so how can the transposition be made? And if Cameron Diaz is running that modern-day equivalent of an orphanage, how does she manage to get her makeup done so heavily, prettily, and precisely? And more importantly, can she be mean enough to make us feel sorry for the little orphans?



I don't know, but I do know 2 other things about upcoming musical movies: 1. Steven Spielberg is doing a remake of "West Side Story," and 2. Clint Eastwood has made the movie version of "Jersey Boys."

"If you’re running a Hollywood studio, you may well think there are too many blockbusters."

"But that doesn’t mean there are too many of your blockbusters. You can only control your slate, and you want the other guys to cut back."

Mr. Spielberg, one of the most celebrated in Hollywood history, said that he had trouble finding a distributor for his acclaimed 2012 film “Lincoln,” which almost ended up on cable. And George Lucas, director of the original “Star Wars” franchise, said he had similar problems with “Red Tails,” an action adventure about African-American flying aces.

“You’re talking about Steven Spielberg and George Lucas can’t get their movie into a theater!” Mr. Lucas said this summer at the opening of a new media center at the University of Southern California.

Why are these medicinally historical films considered blockbusters? I know it's because some grotesque amount of money was thrown into them, but why was that done? Because Spielberg and Lucas threw their weight into these projects?

How entitled they feel — how the rich assume they should get richer and richer by dumping vast sums of money into their work! Ironically, the film projects about which they feel so entitled are the ones that purvey their supposedly liberal values, challenge the privilege and entitlement of the rich. Rich other people.

As for the actual non-rich who exist in large enough numbers to make a blockbuster strategy work (when it works), they seem to prefer those stories about boyish adventurers in outer space.

Anita Elberse, a professor at Harvard Business School and author of the recent “Blockbusters: Hit-Making, Risk-Taking, and the Big Business of Entertainment”... that the blockbuster syndrome “turns out to be a winning strategy. It makes sense for the studios to spend disproportionately on a select group of the most likely winners.”...

“The marketplace for entertainment is extremely cluttered,” Professor Elberse said. “When there wasn’t a whole lot of competition, small movies worked, but with so many demands on our time, you really have to convince consumers that they need to see this on the big screen at the same time their friends are seeing it. You need the wow factor. That’s a tough challenge.”

"'LIFE OF PI' tiger 'damn near drowned'... 27 animal deaths on 'THE HOBBIT'..."

"Dog punched repeatedly in popular DISNEY movie... Secret emails, documents exposed... Spielberg protected by cover-up of 'WAR HORSE' death... MORE..."

Drudge top-pages a set of headlines — including the main headline, "MOVIES, TV AWASH IN HIDDEN ANIMAL ABUSE"— aiming massive attention at a Hollywood Reporter article with a much subtler headline, "No Animals Were Harmed."

Obama's performance in the Theater of the Ineffectual President.

It's not "my job... to somehow get [Congress] to behave," said Obama at yesterday's news conference, quoted by Maureen Dowd, who says:

Actually, it is his job to get them to behave. The job of the former community organizer and self-styled uniter is to somehow get this dunderheaded Congress, which is mind-bendingly awful, to do the stuff he wants them to do. It’s called leadership.

He still thinks he’ll do his thing from the balcony and everyone else will follow along below. That’s not how it works.

How can the president star in a White House Correspondents’ Association dinner satirical film pretending to be Daniel Day-Lewis playing Barack Obama in Steven Spielberg’s movie “Obama,” and not have absorbed the lessons of “Lincoln”?

1. It's silly to think that because Obama played the role of himself (playing Day-Lewis playing himself) that Obama is all about Lincoln. It made Obama look like he's about Obama, and putting Obama on the same level as Lincoln, with the mock-historical grandeur and the direction by Steven Spielberg, seems likely only to inflate Obama's egocentrism.



2. Why would this Hollywood-in-Washington adoration make him deferential to some other historical figure, one who had to accomplish great things to achieve his high place in history? Quite the opposite! It should make Obama feel that it's always been enough for him simply to be Obama, the screen onto which a nation projects its hopes and dreams. Why should Obama "absorb lessons" from the movie about "Lincoln"? Obama created his own mode of arriving at greatness, and it's not much like Lincoln's at all.

3.  A "community organizer" doesn't really "organize" a community, but even if one does, Congress isn't like the communities Obama supposedly organized. The idea that Obama could "organize" Congress is silly. Congress has its own organization, and it's full of powerful individuals who are currently actively pursuing political goals, not a bunch of citizens going about their private lives who might be induced to back some political project run by somebody else.

4. Yesterday's performance at the press conference was — I would presume — theater. It was the Theater of the Ineffectual President. It was not the Theater of the Lame Duck. (Dowd's piece is titled "Bottoms Up, Lame Duck." The "Bottoms Up" refers to her suggestion that Obama "have a drink with Mitch McConnell.") Obama likes to say he'll never face another election, but he's facing the 2014 elections. His performance yesterday was — I presume — a scene in the script for winning the midterms. I can't accomplish anything without Congress. Congress is the problem. He needs his Congress. Will we not give this beautiful man — upon whom we've projected our hopes and dreams — the Congress that will bring his presidency to a successful end? He is the central character in this movie "Obama" that we've all got to sit through. If we stay in character as members of the audience — passively taking in whatever we see on the screen — we'll merge our desires with the main character in the big spectacle. Identification with the protagonist. In the scene that ran yesterday, we saw our protagonist suffering his doubts and his weaknesses. He is beset with adversaries. Oh, no!

5. So, now we can see that Obama is doing his "job," as described by Maureen Dowd: "to somehow get this dunderheaded Congress, which is mind-bendingly awful, to do the stuff he wants them to do." Somehow. I'm telling you how I think he's going about getting Congress — Congress 2015 — to do the stuff he wants them to do. Keep sitting on your bottom as he leads from behind. Or: Bottoms up! And I don't mean drinking. I mean, get your ass out of your theater seat and stop watching the "Obama" movie. The lameness is not in our President but in ourselves.

"The celebrated 'red coat girl' from Schindler's List, Polish actor Oliwia Dabrowska, has revealed she was left traumatised..."

"... after breaking a promise to director Steven Spielberg not to watch the film until she was 18."

"It was too horrible. I could not understand much, but I was sure that I didn't want to watch ever again in my life." She also said she "really regretted" not paying attention to the director's suggestion that she "grow up into the film", and not watch it until she was older.

"I was ashamed of being in the movie and really angry with my mother and father when they told anyone about my part," she said. But, having revisited the film as an 18-year-old, she said she realised "I had been part of something I could be proud of."

She was 3 when she made the film and 11 when she watched it for the first time. 

The monster in Peggy Noonan's childhood closet was... Abraham Lincoln!

Writing about childhood fears (post-Newtown), she reveals:

One night when the moon was bright and the wind was moving the trees, I looked from my bed into the shadowed closet . . . and suddenly the clothes and the things on the shelf above had transformed themselves into Abraham Lincoln, in top hat and shawl, staring at me and waiting to be shot. That fear came every night for years. At some point a neighbor saw my nervousness or overheard my obsession, asked what was wrong, came to my house, opened my closet and announced triumphantly "See? Lincoln isn't there!" I knew she meant well, but how dumb can you get? Lincoln only came at night.

She also talks about a child who was afraid of ET, so I was expecting a parade of Spielberg characters tormenting kids: the "Jaws" shark, a T-Rex, TinTin, Oskar Schindler... But here's where she's going with this:

Newtown, like 9/11, reminds us of "the mystery of being alone in the world as it is and as we are." The world is imperfect, broken, "with cracks running through it." A central fact of our lives... is that "We are all vulnerable. Anything can happen to anybody at any time."...

We attempt to respond to tragedies politically.... But there is no security from existence itself. The only answer is to "plunge into" life. "We have to engage in life and take it on with all the risks it entails, or we won't be alive at all."