Proulx Goes Hollywood

Yesterday on the readers/hobby message board I stumbled upon some knowledgeable posts about the origin of the Nominated movie Brokeback Mountain. I found direct quotes from 'Annie' Proulx the author of the short story upon which the screenplay is based.  That short story was published in the New Yorker. Ms Proulx writes that she has in her past direct experience of the milieu, Wyoming, in which the story takes place.  She even says she's observed real life men in Wyoming on which her characters are based.

Why does she bother to published such blather? "Readers" who have read Shipping News from Proulx cite that reading experience, which emboldens them to assert the movie based on that writing is also mighty fine, en masse assert that the movie Brokeback Mountain must be mighty fine also.

Personally I subscribe to a theory of literary criticism that posits all such peripheral support has absolutely zero to do with the with the work in question, in this case the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain, and how that screenplay was translated to a movie. 

Lenin, the architect of the Russian Revolution writes all huffed up about how Tolstoy got the War and the Revolution all wrong when he wrote War and Peace. If we're studying Russian political history that might be interesting, but in the domain of literature what he says is meaningless. Dredging up Proulx and places she's lived and the personal opinions she might or might not hold are also meaningless.

": a method of literary criticism that assumes language refers only to itself rather than to an extratextual reality, that asserts multiple conflicting interpretations of a text, and that bases such interpretations on the philosophical, political, or social implications of the use of language in the text rather than on the author's intention
- de·con·struc·tion·ist /-sh&-nist/ noun lookupchange('deconstruction','lookUpDic');" -Websters 

I think Ms Proulx is full of it.

I also have a hunch she published another short story in the New Yorker under another name. If that's true, she may have already decided it's foolish, if one is Herman Melville, to spend enormous amounts of time proving that there really and truly are vicious white whales out there.

Barry

 

From Peter Lawford to Scrooge

Peter Lawford wasn't always an alleged procuror for the Kennedy brothers. You know, the scruffy gossip that he fixed them up with Marilyn. Gee, for him to have done that he'd have to have been into necrophilia and imagined that everyone else was too. Marilyn's star on Hollywood Boulevard is in front of McDonald's jammed between Asinio Hall and Stephanie Powers. Day before yesterday I was there waiting for someone; all along the block the only star that was photographed by tourists was Marilyn's; I took the camera of one family group so the father could be in the picture too. Hope it comes out. In 1961, when I met Marilyn in Lee's private acting class, upstairs in the Capitol Theater Building on Broadway, she actually did seem half dead: hair like brittle aluminum string, voice tiny and whiney, kinda pathetic. The book of plays I gave her, French, which included Mademoiselle Colombre, to ask her to do a scene for class, must have ended up in her estate; I never heard from her. But I'll always remember her asking in her tired, sweet whisper, "What's your name?" I pointed inside the book where I'd written my name and phone number. She wasn't standing up, but sitting she looked very small.

In the movies Peter Lawford played amiable sidekicks all smiles and good cheer. He was the good friend, not often if ever the leading man.  The other day I called someone I hadn't seen since school days when he was perpetually smiling and cheerful; in personality in those days he was a lot like the movie personna of Peter Lawford.

I fear my friend has fallen on evil days. Could he have lost his money? Not likely as he still treks to his Caribean hideout, where, I guess, he's king for a season, waited on and pampered. I don't know that, it's just the image I have from small pieces and clues.

I called him twice: the first time I got his announcement. His announcement consisted exclusively of those he didn't want to hear from, salespeople, for example. His litany sounded as if for his entire adult, long life he'd been hit upon mercilessly. So, am I to assume, he's chosen, for that reason, to live alone? The only weak spots in his fortress, I suppose,  are the phone line and the mails. later in the day when he did answer the phone he alluded to mail from me sent to him from Mexico where I lived for nearly five years, retired; apparently I was rude or abrupt, or something. Maybe I was simply pissed that he didn't answer his mail. In college we dated the same girl, Park Avenue easy type looking to marry money of which I had none, ha ha ha. But he didn't do any better, probably because he really was never really interested in girls of any age; if his interest was her money he could have better not bothered: she didn't really have any, she just had a rich address and a high salaried father.

How bleak life can seem when a Peter Lawford fictional movie character can, in real life, have been whittled down to a Scrouge, alone, bitter, angry, put upon, pestered, judgmental and not doing much, not really, but waiting for death.

Barry

 

AOL's Sins

An AOL window politely asked me to fill out a survey. I clicked, reluctantly, 'Yes I would.' AOL then replied with another window telling me, "You do not qualify for this survey." Are they friggin nuts!? Why use insult when it would have been so easy to give me the 'patriotic' satisfaction of signalling I'm ready to make a difference, and at the same time cancel my unwanted replies?!

Present AOL management is the dumbest I've ever heard of or imagined could exist in the American market place.

Go ahead, tell me where I'm wrong in my reaction; do they seriously believe treating people poorly will benefit them?!  (I just spent about an hour replying to friendly email from former AOL Members who have found greener pastures.)

Barry 

Oscar Countdown

Today's Los Angeles Times Calendar section contains a most enlightening, amusing, and doubtless accurate summary of the Oscar Nominations and their place in the history of Oscar-giving, at least in recent times. They don't mention that Garbo never got one. She more than just ornamented Grand Hotel (1932) which won Best Picture. I've wondered if she quit acting at age 37 because she was simply under-appreciated?  She died quite old, loved, and very rich. May God bless her.

La Times points out the most amusing fact that the (Oscar Winning?) documentary March Of The Penguins earned more money than today's Nominated Feature movies combined. Well of course! The love making, the ceremonious love making of the penguins shames the current male to male gropings which have Hollywood giddy, ha ha ha ha. In other words the public overall doesn't give a damn about these Nominees so the ratings for this year's Oscar telecast will be thin to invisible.

Wasn't there a now-forgotten shibboleth oft quoted in Hollywood: "If you want to send a message call Western Union"? (for the very young: in other words a telegram.) LA Times calls the Nominated movies 2005 "Message movies." I suppose the 'message' of Brokeback Mountain is that bad grammar is cute and gays deserve our respect and admiration 'cause they have feelings too. In passing, let me note that women staffers on the Times have managed to insert a small piece about the neglect of women in the screenplays of Nominated movies this time 'round. 

I've always gone to the movies to drool over the acting of the actresses, beginning with Garbo, then later Liv Ullman (sigh, groan, weep) Maria Schell, Liz Taylor, Ingrid Bergman, Judy Holliday (Wow!) When my present wife watched Casablanca for the first time, as an adult, she gasped when Ingrid Bergman made her first entrance, to Rick's. So, of course women enjoy good actresses too. Movies can give women the courage to be bold, feeling, adventurous, strong. Even the elementary instruction that men will move mountains to get the woman of their dreams. (I didn't move mountains, but I did travel 28,000 miles to nail it down. The other day she said, "I only got married to get away from my mother." Sure honey!  Ha ha ha ha ha. Women sometimes like to remind their man to not be too cocksure.

Okay, so the Times regrets Hollywood's neglect of women viewers through peddling movies for men, not women. Big mistake. Hollywood has totally forgotten that other shibboleth (actually the product of the pen of a good writer, (Paddy Chayevsky) the guy who wrote The Goddess, a movie vehicle for  stage actress Kim Stanley, movie leading ladies should have, "a quality of availability." Today's women stars are not 'available' because they were chosen by belligerent, gay, male Hollywood. Now it's balls-to-the-wall, pay up time. In other words there is now in place in Hollywood a new breed of gay male executive: the militantly gay male. The earlier breed of gay male director/executive fully understood what hetero males responded to. It isn't, never has been, such technicians as Nichole  Kidman, brilliant actress but cold as ice onscreen, which is why she was so perfect as (a screen version of) Virginia Woolf.

In short, 'available' women will return to the screen after a few more shakeups in Hollywood, where turning the world gay will be found to not make money.  Women, Hollywood, are definitely not interested in 40 year old male virgins. Count on it. That's what gay men are interested in. Boxoffice: the great leveller.

Barry