MOVIE-TV: REVIEWS
DIARY 10285
11/20/75
"THE NUN'S STORY"
IT seems so CLEAR now where things should and shouldn't be: SHE needn't stay in the convent because SHE can't keep the rules of INSTANT, UNQUESTIONING obedience, but that doesn't mean that OTHERS might not find that the way, NOR should SHE stay and break the rules, since that sets a bad example that might remove someone who OTHERWISE might have VALUABLY done the sacrifices of her own pride and self-esteem and become an "instrument of the Lord," though it's not made clear enough that ALL these women would have had the same doubts, fears, moments of weakness---and it didn't help that the priest could only quote the "patience, my child" clichés without making it clear that HE may have had the same fears and doubts, though there IS a tiny touch of jealousy (or at least exasperation) in some of the faces when she must simply leave the convent, having signed one paper for herself, one for the archbishop, and one for the papal archives. But SOME people would PROFIT from this rigidity, just as some people would profit from the rigidity of est, but I'M not one of them: there ARE times when one MUST insist that one is different from others---or at least ABOVE the person who is making the rules and judgments! The mother superior who "recommended" that she flunk a test was later "said to make a mistake." But who's to say that WERNER made a mistake except someone who goes AWAY from the movement---as Stewart Emery and Leonard Orr have been doing. And as I'm doing. The idea of remaining charitable to ENEMIES, even those who may have killed your father, seems more problematic: but he IS now dead, and the Germans she would have come in contact with may not in ANY way have been responsible for HIS or for anyone ELSE'S death, so she has no REASON to treat them badly. But the emotions, of course, would still be there. All this idea of "uniqueness" will undoubtedly play a great part in "Throwback," and I'm playing with the idea of RECORDING more on tape, just to get some pages finished, since I seem to be so reluctant to put ideas onto paper. One DOES wonder what would have happened to the woman afterwards---certainly she was strong, competent, and self-willed, but did she later despair and commit suicide, for instance, because of the insidious undermining of her self-esteem in the order of nuns?
DIARY 10313
12/1/75
"STAR TREK" PLOTLINES
On Friday I was definitely stoned to watch Gary Lockwood, who has a NICE face, large brown eyes fitted with contacts that glittered with light or like diamonds, and a LOVELY body that swells up appealingly when he realizes that he's being SUPER-powerful. He can read minds, move objects from a distance, and shows every sign of becoming PERFECT, but then he starts killing people, and as the lousiest ending, he converts a woman into his kind, but SHE retains enough of her "humanness" to kill him when he threatens the life of someone else, and then he kills HER, too, "in the line of duty." Why the SUPERMAN has to be a VILLAIN isn't clear, though we'd surely kill vermin that stood in our way of getting whatever it was that WE may have wanted. On Saturday it was "first part evil / second part good" dichotomy that so often happens that it's hard to remember: the "space buoy" definitely seemed to want to kill them, the "large asteroid" seemed dangerous enough, but then the "towing ship" was surpassed by their powers and they found the fanged kid saying "it was all a joke." Anyone who REMEMBERED the beginning would have trouble matching the BEGINNING with the ENDING. But again, the forces from Earth were right, and could ACCEPT more powerful creatures if THEY agreed with what WE thought was the right way to go. But the new series is good. "Space 1999" turned me off on FIRST viewing since there seemed no PLOT, only incident and response and SPECTACULAR special effects, sets, and men. SECOND special I watched, which had the first hour repeated and THEN the lovely thing about the black sun, going through it, getting old ala "2001," "knowing" that everyone was everyone, we're brains in the mind of god, and that everything is for the best. Then the NEXT one had the marvelous people from the FAR future who had banished FEAR, and they AT LEAST made it clear it might be good to live without fear, and that they could COMPRESS a POSSIBLE catastrophe to "teach them a lesson," and I watched with renewed eagerness. Then on Sunday it went downhill again: a super-strong Philosopher who was also immortal went crazy and tried killing people, and had to be gotten rid of by being sucked into space, though his blasted asteroid was re-formed, and it might be that we'll see him AGAIN, though the NEXT future-people encounter seems to meet the SAME dome-headed guy from FEARLESSVILLE as a BEARDED-FUTURE person.
DIARY 10435
12/24/75
"PINOCCHIO"
Not really THAT stoned when the movie starts, though I'm impressed to see that it was made in 1940, so I saw it when I was VERY young, and it starts with Jiminy Cricket saying "Pretty, isn't it?" after he's sung "When You Wish Upon a Star" during the credits, and "I think it's just fine" for the medal he gets at the END, so that's really bracketing it between two POSITIVE statements. But the WINNING character is really Figaro, being peeved at Pinocchio, stepped on, covering, sleepy, angry, transparent blue-black in the starlight, and happy, incensed, and reluctant to kiss the goldfish Cleo, and THAT'S where Mom got "feed Cleo" for the ASHTRAY that's one of my earlier memories! (DIARY 94030) The "fairy" is so 30ish that no one laughs at the common word, and Jiminy even says "How about that?" to laugh at HIM rather than at "fairy." Was probably CRUSHED when Pinocchio was slammed into the cage and the horses started off, swinging his cage, and then the lightning and thunder made him collapse in fear and sobbing in the corner of his cage, even having lost Jiminy, let alone his father. The awful part for me. Would have liked the Pleasure Island sequence to have been longer, but the silhouette-fighting and the glowering bully outside "Roughhouse" seemed to ring a bell with me. Lampwick's turning into a jackass was ANOTHER terrifyingly well-done scene of rage and terror. But Monstro the Whale was still the best part: the incredible swimming into the air to be snapped up for the first time, the ineradicable FIRST sight of Monstro, sleeping, with tiny bubbles curling out of his wide mouth, the mechanics of the sneeze, and then the impossibly orchestrated but still gripping pursuit of Pinocchio and his drowning father by the whale, leaping and spraying, finally BASHING his head against the rock cliff that saves them all, and then the electrifying vision of Pinocchio face-down in the puddle (though he didn't need to breathe UNDERWATER, but that only connected with me NOW). Then he didn't QUITE look the same when he came back to life, and then I'd forgotten Jiminy getting the gold medal which had "maybe" been promised to him. But I enjoyed the second time to watch lantern-light on wagon wheels, the background paintings, the expressions on the face of Figaro, the shadows from candles, and the amazing swiftness of the most impressive scenes, which I'd even like to see AGAIN!
DIARY 10464
12/31/75
"SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS"
Since I last saw it in 1967, I hadn't built up too much a charge on seeing it (not as much as for "Bambi," "Cinderella," and "Sleeping Beauty," for instance, or even "Pinocchio"), and then it turned out to be NOT one of the best. True, there's the witch, with her marvelous cape-swirl going down the stairs, and the lightning-slash that sends the wicked witch to her unseen doom, except that you know it's doom because the vultures smile and drift down toward her body. But there's really not that MUCH of the dwarfs in the film, though the kids laughed MIGHTILY when Sneezy built up to such a sneeze with Dopey on his shoulders, dancing with Snow White, that Dopey was shot upward like a cannonball, to sit on a rafter waggling his ears. The speaking mask in the mirror was still quite ghastly in its greens and shimmering violets, hollow eyes showing the flames behind, though I was interested in seeing that the film was made in 1937 (and used the phrase "Jiminy Cricket" a number of times!) so that I couldn't have remembered anything from its first go-around. Snow White's face really didn't have that much character: Alice was much better drawn for that. But the scene where she ran away from the woodman who was supposed to kill her was quite terrifying as the trees clutched at her gown and the chinks turned into eyes and the owls flew out at her. I'd forgotten the NUMBER of little animals, and the turtle that was always late and sent spinning by the rushing animals, and they must have worked HARD on all those figures dashing madly about. I'd forgotten Doc's "Crook and nanny, cook and granny" speech impediment, too. And NEVER again will I forget the names of the dwarfs: Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sneezy, Bashful, Sleepy, and Dopey. The Prince with his "One Song, I Have But One Song," wasn't NEARLY as sexy in his tunic that covered sexless gray legs as was the guy in "Sleepy Hollow." And EVERY time I see it, I notice how the freshness of the ANIMATED flowers becomes so much darker when it's absorbed into the PAINTED background around her bier. The waddling walk of the witch was notably successful; but I might not even watch it if it came on TV at this point---too much of not THAT great a movie.
DIARY 10496
1/7/76
"SWEPT AWAY..."
Aside from "Day of the Locust," I can't think of a better film that I saw in the last year, though there must have been SOME others. Beautifully set up with the bitchy woman on the ship, believably lost, convincingly table-turned, acted so well it seemed not like acting, the film is also highly instructive of a woman's point of view, not to mention giving a great picture of a man who's trying to be rough and is yet gentle and loving. The fact that a woman wrote and directed the film makes the vagaries of the woman character completely believable: her bitchiness, her constant insulting, her falling in love, her urge to be sodomized, her leaving with her husband (who even had the wit to be handsome and portrayed as intelligent enough to know when something was going on). The scenes of his almost irrational anger at her were properly led up to by the scenes of her ridiculous, yet TRUE, behavior on the boat with the spaghetti, the smell of the shirts, and the warmed-over coffee. His revenge was perfect, his loving her even more so, his desertion the only possible thing that could have happened, even though he was so totally irrational as to buy her the large yellow ring with the million lire her husband gave his wife in a check. Even the climax, with him wrenching away his wife's luggage and then miserably following her home, was the perfect picture of a man castrated by circumstances, the exact simile for the communist-party credo that the film touted, the perfect image of the strong weakened by the rich. Literate, well-paced---neither did the ship scenes, the shipwreck scenes, the "beg-for-my-love" scenes, nor the love scenes lasted too long, though the end was a BIT stretched out, almost because the beginning had been so perfect, and because the time had to drag much more for him AND for her in the end than any film could properly show. Even the title: they were swept away in love, his manhood swept away by the women, his strength swept away by their riches and his wife's traditionalism, and I was swept away by the mastery in putting together a film: the antithesis of the nonentity that was "L'Avventura," the silliness that was "Admirable Crichton," and even a step up from her OTHER two films in elegance and content---and in the colorful wide eyes of Giancarlo Gianninni!
DIARY 10552
1/15/76
"BEYOND THE HORIZON" BY EUGENE O'NEILL
Good performance by Richard Backus and Maria Tucci gets us into it, but I don't at ALL like the reading of the older brother by John Randolph, who LOOKS pretty and has a humpy somewhat older body but whose reading of some of the lines is a great embarrassment to me. Also, I can't stand the classical string quartet music, though Paul says it symbolizes Robert's distance from the farm; recognize John Houseman before he does, and think that the production is VASTLY improved with authentic vistas of fields and farms and rocky seashores. Then Paul makes the MARVELOUS observation that this is REALLY connected with the misery in Ulster today: the desperation of people connected ONLY to the land, and added to that, Protestant, which denies them even the consolation of the church that the Catholics have, and adds the strictness and severity that even prevents them from breaking away from reality by getting drunk. ALL they have is family, tradition, land, and hard work to keep them going. Though there was a marvelous amount of TRUTHFULNESS in the play: everyone knew what everyone else was thinking and what they were doing and why they were doing it, it still didn't make for a good relationship because there was so much about DUTY; to the family, to the farm, to promises made, to keeping everyone where they SHOULD be. Ideally, Robert WOULD have gone to sea, the farm would have gone to ruin without all the hard work that led it to ruin ANYWAY, the child wouldn't have been born to die at 10, the woman may have married someone more to her taste than EITHER of the brothers, and the father would have gotten the comeuppance he deserved if he was silly and prideful enough to tell his oldest son to get out of the house and never see him again. And maybe the brothers could have enjoyed each other's bodies in their bare garret, too. Surely, Robert wouldn't have died of tuberculosis if he'd had more fun; Andrew would have kept more money if, as Ruth wisely observed, he hadn't been a traitor to the land by speculating in it rather than working it, and Robert would have been able to put his book-learning to some USE. Even the hint of Robert's HAPPINESS in leaving for his voyage at death, and the possibility of Andrew and Ruth living together, didn't prevent the play from being a DREADFUL tragedy that I hope the human race has evolved BEYOND!
DIARY 10720
2/24/76
BERGMAN'S "MAGIC FLUTE"
There are some extraordinary faces in the audience at this precious old theater (and there were NO credits but for Mozart and Trollfloet), and one 40ish man I simply fell in love with: everyone looked so INTELLIGENT and TOGETHER and BEAUTIFUL (not facially, by any means, but SPIRITUALLY, as if the harshness of the Scandinavian winter scoured sinfulness away and left glowing faces). Then his daughter, small flecks of pimples and all, had the most ELFIN eyes I've seen in ages, seeming to contain boundless feminine knowledge that would be terribly potent in just a few more years. She surely looked much older than the 5 I seem to remember she was. That same beauty of character shone in the cast: Tamino was strongly handsome with his bull-neck, sculptured skull, and close-set eyes, but Pamina was quite ordinary looking until she started acting, and then there was TOTAL conviction. The three "witches" were marvelous: I started smiling then and didn't stop until the end of Act I. Papageno was too fleshy, but again his QUALITY came through, his HUMANNESS, and then even Monastatos was too beautiful of blue eyes to be QUITE convincing as a villain. Sorastro was a marvel of aging wisdom, eye-filling understanding, and totally open love. The Queen of the Night was shrill and haggy in incredible green light when she wanted to regain control, and the tests (which it seemed they always FAILED) were sort of silly: they talked when they weren't supposed to, had help when they faltered, and the "passage through hell" looked like lots of FUN with writhing white-leotarded bodies. But then the symbolism began mounting up, and I had an almost ENLIGHTENMENT-experience when it seemed that everyone KNEW that this was magical: I felt the "perfection" of showing it in this old theater with clanking scenery, but expanding to limitless vistas when needed; the three urchins in the balloon, the snow that didn't melt, the glove with a hole in the finger---all these things made it so HUMAN that I felt warm and good toward it, glad that the theater was almost empty so there was no one to make noise, and I almost burst into applause at the end. But the ENLIGHTENING part was MARVELOUS (see DIARY 10721).
DIARY 10863
4/28/76
"HEAVY TRAFFIC" AND "FRITZ THE CAT"
The JFK-like head-shot of the artist-hero of "Heavy Traffic" was the most gripping sequence, the black walking with him turning into a screaming crow that flew away totally arresting. The battles of the Italian father and Jewish mother were more horrifying when the MOVIE artist drew them, and then Arnie said that this WAS his parentage. So much of the blood got laughs from the audience that I really didn't MIND it when the hero killed someone for money by beating him over the head---that's how much the film got me into it! "Fritz" seemed to have been done YEARS before, much more vapid, much more dated (though the hoods in Traffic WERE), and the superior attitude of Fritz seemed far more wearing after the funky acceptance of the cartoonist in Traffic. Some of the psychedelic scenes were the best in the lot, reminding of some of the Disney specials, and the exactness of the jargon, the goodness of most of the drawing, and the general plotlines were quite good. Not nice to see how he seemed to have included OTHER things (like the "Maybelline" cut; like the "God-Dead-on-the-World" cut) that he seems to have made BEFORE and just threw in. Didn't recall immediately that he'd made a third called "Coonskin," but I'm anxious to see it, to see if he went as far between 2 and 3 as he did between 1 and 2. If so, he's close to being a genius at this point. The AUDIENCE was far out: the black with two kids wasn't at ALL phased when his 6-year-old son sat on the OTHER side and his 4-year-old daughter stood behind, next to a black that was SO stoned that he kept shouting out, bopping around in his seat, and had to be told to be quiet by the management. Two YOUNG girls in front smoked joints and got out a PIPE that I ask to share, and she turns and says simply "No." At least she knows where she's at with THAT. Others smoking all over the place, making cracks back at the film, shouting down the aisles, a real CIRCUS of ugliness, smells, torn seats (except the wall coverings seem new), and unpleasant people. What a place to take a tourist that you'd want to convince that New York was going down the tubes: not to mention all the kids at this R-rated film---and WHAT was going on upstairs, where there's no balcony??
DIARY 10865
2/29/76
"BARRY LYNDON"
Because I'd smoked, the episodic quality of the movie was more annoying than enlightening. People seemed only puppets moved about on a stage whose direction I wasn't sure of. But the first shot of country greenery was SO spectacular that even Arnie, who'd seen it before, gasped at the brilliant colors. The common setup of a narrow image gradually drawing back into a grand panorama was very stoned-good. But it took so much attention to itself as a gimmick it didn't leave much mentality left over to appreciate the CONTENT of the scene. Later, when the grass wore off, the story seemed more connected, but unless I see it again (which I doubt I will, unless it comes on cable TV---THIS IS one that I don't think would stand up under the cutting-by-commercials on regular TV), I'll never know, so I would rather have not smoked at all. I really couldn't understand why Rolf would have thought this a better film than "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" except for the fact that its message about authority DISTURBED him, as did some of the images of a mental institution. I felt rather sorry for Barry's wife, which wasn't anything which would have come from the reviews, and at the end I was rather surprised by how much story there WAS. The ending was sad, with legless Barry Lyndon mounting into a carriage: himself from the front and someone legless from the back, since it WAS a start to see him, wondering where on EARTH his foot might be hidden. Thank goodness Arnie is up on the pertinent trivia. I'm also glad I saw it in a quiet theater: the mood of the film would be completely destroyed by seeing it in something like the St. Marks, with shouting, stoned people attracting more attention than the cool images on the screen. Much as I'd like to see others of Kubrick's films again, I doubt this will stand up, except as a snob-appeal "well, it's merely visually beautiful, but it's good anyway." The sensitive-to-light film didn't strike me as much as the panning-back---even the music, heard during lunch with Arnie's recording, didn't impress me that much. But I'm rather glad I didn't pay $4 or more to see it at a first-run theater; the disappointment with it might have been a bit TOO much in that case.
DIARY 10898
4/29/76
"ALL OVER" BY ALBEE
Both BobG and Dennis had said it was a lousy play, but I wanted at least to see what it was like: Hal Holbrook said it lasted only a few performances on Broadway with "mixed" reviews, then said something about the triumph of quality over popularity---an amusing phrase. The play WAS somewhat of a bore: a family of mother, her lawyer, husband's mistress, and son and daughter with peripheral doctor and nurse wait for a rich old man to die. They talk about whether to burn or bury him, about how much the daughter hates herself, how worthless the son is, how elegant and composed the mistress is, how empty the wife is, how old the doctor is, how practical the practical nurse is "Wishing to be a man so that I could rage in unreasonableness at the death of Bobby Kennedy." The language is anti-natural, striving for poetry, and Albee in an interview afterwards said that every writer wants to be a teacher, wants to help change society, and then he rather loftily said that the families in Sophocles and Shakespeare were unhappy too, and I was impressed by his supposed peers. Unhappy because drama required tension and conflict, "Unless you want to write about happy problems as demanded by TV producers today." But there were few things that were BELIEVABLE: the constant SITTING waiting for more laceration, the eternal NIBBLING on each other. As a study of custom, society, and ritual, it surely pointed out how silly it is, but do people really DO that anymore? Well, I guess they do, but if they DO, they wouldn't be watching the play ANYWAY: only those LIBERAL enough to NOT act like that would WATCH a play like that. A built-in anti-audience. The acting was reasonably convincing in close-up, but the PLAY wasn't---even the end, where the wife repeats three times: I'm crying "because I'm unhappy," and the light goes out behind the bed and the doctor intones the title: "All Over." And overly trite! NOW would be the interesting part of the play: DO the people break down, change, break away, heal, die---now that you've got the characters and the situation, what HAPPENS, or did he INTEND to write a "Lady and Tiger" or want ALL of us to write our own endings for it? Pointedly, that's the job of the PLAYWRIGHT.
DIARY 10989
6/9/76
"THUNDERCRACK"
Marion Eaton is that funny-looking woman, but she has a NICE body, and George Kuchar is the least attractive guy, running the menagerie truck. The plot is outrageous: two GREAT-looking, great-cocked guys who I guess are Rick Johnson and Ken Scudder start cruising each other, two gals pick up a hitchhiker and start getting him hot enough to bring out his cock, and the menagerie guys all end up at the woman's house, where her husband has been eaten by a plague of locusts in a MARVELOUS takeoff of "Suddenly Last Summer" and is kept in bottles in the wine cellar, where a guy and gal have sex, and then there's the nurse who helps Eaton masturbate in the tub. At length the two guys get it on, with Eaton masturbating with a cucumber behind the eyes of George Washington, and they have two of the greatest shooting scenes I've ever seen, with GREAT cocks; and there are other scenes of some of the girls jerking off the guys into their faces, too, while the hitchhiker takes care of Eaton. Then there's the elephant silhouette on the door, and the ape breaks in to grab Kuchar, now dressed in a bride's costume, and the ape-hand jerks him off nicely---and the hitchhiker had a GREAT come scene, too, with a FABULOUS chest. There are flashbacks within flashbacks, and the actors are so horribly bad that it comes as a surprise when they start getting serious and they begin to fall into their roles, and then they say something so OUTRAGEOUS that half the audience will be beating their feet helplessly on the floor, breathless with laughter. Dennis said he really got hot during the sex scenes, and we wrung out each other's fingers and I debated holding onto his cock down his leg, but didn't. Two and a half hours of outrage, but it got no yuckier than Eaton vomiting and dropping her wig into the toilet and then putting in ON, and her meat cleaver didn't get to the hitchhiker's cock, thankfully. The deformed son wasn't done well enough, except for the silhouette of his balls, and the constant thundercracks, lightning, and drawings of the old house were masterfully done. Curt McDowell directed and edited, Mark Ellinger did the perfectly presentable music, and I hope it gets the midnight-show treatment so that EVERYONE gets a change to see this masterpiece.
DIARY 11166
8/9/76
"L'ECLISSE"
The quotes I took say everything: HE: "Tell me what to do." SHE: "I just don't know." SHE: "I'm not hungry; I'm not hungry." And all those HARD surfaces and ECHOES of sounds and BLACK clothing. SHE: "I'm so tired, bored; I don't know what to think." You're THINKING bitch, it's just that you're not thinking anything USEFUL. Sadly, I think the praised "long montage" at the end was somewhat clipped because even WNET wanted to get to the next program; they probably ran 120 of the 123 minutes, but figured it'd cut too deeply into "Sam's Victory Garden" that followed,---or else the film broke with too little in the machine to be REALLY concerned about, since all the people were gone. The opening scene was masterful too; you were dying for them to OPEN the drapes rather than pulling them aside to peep out. Then when the drapes wee open, the glaring daylight was so unflattering to them and the room that you wished they were closed again. So it was a WELL-MADE film---and I'd forgotten all about the Rome Bourse scenes because they meant absolutely nothing---fulfilling their purpose in the film---which was the purpose of the FILM, for that matter. I don't LIKE the idea of this film being shown and shown, any more than I'd like to see lots of people connect up a water sprinkler that pours shit or piss or vomit onto a green lawn. Better that it not be shown. Censorship? YES, in a way: in the same way killing and brutality and using people should be censored in real life, or at LEAST censured! But too often the killing and brutality are praised (Vietnam, wars in general, and in many too many things connected with the federal government), and there's no antidote, no sponge to soak up all these negative vibrations save the poor people who sit in front of their viewing boxes and view! Maybe the best Antonioni could have done was to get it on film to rid HIS system of it, and then get RID of it, purging it from himself and saving it from having to be purged later from others. I can't IMAGINE that Monica Vitti has a pleasant life, looking at how WELL she acts the totally anomic heroines in such a string of movies by so many people: Antonioni, Godard, Truffaut.
DIARY 11169
8/13/76
"PETER IBBETSON" AND "RESURRECTION"
"Peter Ibbetson" turns out to be VERY different from the Masterplots description of the book: Gary Cooper kills HER husband, not HIS uncle, and in the book it's called "dreaming true" and they go way back in time, but in the movie they simply visited each other in the SCENE of their childhood, but as young men and women, not as children. The movie had some extraordinary effects: the first time she backed through the bars it was totally CONVINCING; later, when he backed out, careful watching showed that the bars could be seen superimposed on his body with two images. The clouds and mists and sunbeams of the dream sequences were totally beautiful, even though the castle was obviously ersatz, but the landslide was frighteningly real as it kept pounding down over the extras who were almost swept away by the sand, stones that didn't bounce like rubber, and trees that came down from above. The light-rays at the end were quite touching, too. Then "Resurrection" was a musical, and Arnie said John Boles DID sing, so HE sang the folksong at the beginning and the drinking song in the restaurant, and what a scene THAT was: huge stage filled with dancers, instrumentalists, and singers, then about 11 by 5 tables with six people at each, THEN the private dining room with about 24 around the huge table, with the whole panorama rather spectacular. Then the bubbles foaming UP in the champagne scene where he made lively with the girls changing to the DOWN-falling snow framing HER in a window, moaning for him. Lupe Velez was more convincing as a Russian peasant than Anna Sten was, and John Boles was far more sexy bare-faced, mustached, and bearded (at three different times) than old Frederic March was. Many of the scenes were ludicrous on their own account, but the final process shot of the line wending away into the Siberian mountains was unforgettable, though why they'd choose to go on quite escaped me. Can't wait to read the book to see all the extra characters, the descriptions of outside and army life, and the morality that would force them to act as they did. But I'm glad I saw the movies: both would have been awfully chewed up and flattened if seen only on commercial television.
DIARY 11217
8/30/76
"BAMBI"
This 1942 film has beautiful artistry in the backgrounds, beautiful use of the multilevel camera, and the smoothest and most graceful animations I can recall: it may be the most beautiful of the Disney cartoons! It starts with a fabulous 3-D dawn, with the owl flying home to rest: he appears throughout, and NO humans appear at all. After Bambi's birth, the high lonely stag appears as the father. Then there's the learning to walk, the getting caught up on the log, and the skunk sounding suspiciously black as he says "Das a'right" when Bambi calls him Flower. He meets Filene, who teases him unmercifully, and then the stags go bouncing along the meadow in one of the poorer scenes, all leaping at once, and then there's rain and lightning that frightens him. Just before the autumn leaves, his mother says "MAN was in the forest," as the father steers Bambi to his mother as they flee the meadow for the first time. Then there's snow, and the lovely scene with Thumper on the ice; this is a PERFECT print, and the voices are great throughout. Then the mother is killed, and the Great Prince of the Forest rumbles out "Never, my son," when Bambi asks when his mother will return. There are ripple-effects and fire-shimmers for great extra-cartooning beauty. Don't forget about the eating of the bark and near-starvation in the winter. At the killing, a kid, annoyed, "Is this true?" Some crying, but the scene shifts QUICKLY to spring song, twitterpated birds, and antlers on Bambi. First the skunk, then the rabbit, then Bambi have lovers' idylls, his with leaves and falls: kiss and cloud forest; RIVAL for GREAT fight in shadows. Then the fire, Filene lost, the Father: "It is MAN; follow me." The hunters chase unseen; we only see the DOGS cornering Filene, Bambi to the rescue, fights dogs to save Filene, he's SHOT over a leap, then the Father commands "GET UP" and they leap through the flaming forest, trees falling about them, finally at the top of a falls, then everyone swims to island, re-meets Filene, the Father wanders off. Then ANOTHER spring, twins for Filene "Love Is a Song that Never Ends," as they BOTH stand on the crag, then father walks away and Bambi poses in final top-and-bottom cut shot, which is a pity through the whole showing, the only thing (besides kids screaming) that mars the showing of the film.
DIARY 11322
9/29/76
"HAMARS OF SOUTHWESTERN ETHIOPIA"
Search EB, my African file, and finally one of my new books "East Africa: A Travel Guide," on page 531 speaks of Omo National Park with its "fascinating lowland tribes (Hamar, Geleb, Bume, Caro, and Surma)" NONE of which are mentioned in EB, and which appears to be in the Gemu-Gofa province on the Michelin map. BUT the program impressed me most of all in that they devised SO many ways of torturing their women (having them wear neck, ankle, and wrist "ornaments" of iron rings which must be hammered into place; scarring for "beauty"; and "not necessarily, but to show your courage" to have their lower front teeth knocked out) AND they seem to be one of the most lively and cheerful of many peoples of Africa I've seen on various programs. The fact that the men go nude most of the time, and have long attenuated cocks to match their long, thin arms and legs, might help in the attraction their tribe holds for me. But drinking blood from newly killed antelopes and ostriches, whose legs they break and prod marrow with sticks that they smack their lips in savoring; whipping their women as a matter of course to train them; valuing their women only for their degradation; COUPLED with their vivacity, beauty, vigor, enthusiasm, and general feeling of LIFE, produces a feeling in me that I have to communicate to Dennis. We'd been talking about the idea that man may be BORN cruel, and I said I had troubles thinking how easily children torture insects, spiders, and small pets while maintaining my theory that humans are basically loving and peaceful and tolerant, unless taught differently by parents. But can I say that I delighted in watching ants burn BECAUSE I'd been titillated by ads of burning houses for insurance companies, films of destruction at Saturday matinees, and urges for excitement because of comic books? The lazy homosexual South Americans in Schneeman's books seem uninteresting by comparison with the LIFE in this marvelous film in the series on Channel 13 entitled "The Real World." The female narrator from the tribe seemed to think women should be happy "attacking" lice, "raiding" the river for water, and continually grinding sorghum because they "couldn't get an erection, attack, and raid like the men." So I should be happy for this opportunity for me to rethink long-held thoughts?
DIARY 11326
9/30/76
CHEKHOV'S "THE SEAGULL"
It's quite a bit of "La Ronde," with Arkadina (ugly, as played by Lee Grant) loving Trigorin (Kevin McCarthy with a poncho to cover his paunch, oh), who starts loving Nina (fey Blythe Danner) who loved Konstantin (wiggly-eyed Frank Langella) who is loved by Masha (whom I didn't know as Marian Mercer) who doesn't love Medvedenko (which would be a good part for Dennis). There's a sub-circle around Doctor Dorn, loved by Polina, wife of Shamraev, the manager, who doesn't like Sorin, Arkadina's brother, and we've completed the round. The outdoor production by the Williamstown Theater Group is properly birchy, even allowing the workmen on the stage to go swimming in the stream that is pantingly crossed by Nina as she runs around her lake. I was most impressed by some of the speeches of Trigorin about the NECESSITY of writing and the by-product of being read, with the curse of mentally (or physically) jotting down ideas that occur NOT for what they ARE but for what they could be in a story or poem or book. The stage-play scene was rather manic, with Arkadina rather overacting to get attention away from her too-old son, and then it went downhill until the TRUE madness of the last scene, where Nina's obviously crazy, mixing up sentences about the seagull and her new career as an actress and Konstantin's love---and then Konstantin goes out and shoots himself, which is rather confusing the simile, because NINA is supposed to be the gull, attracted to the lake, and she keeps SAYING that she is, yet it's KONSTANTIN who says that he'll die if Nina doesn't love him, and maybe SHE has him stuffed as Trigorin has had the ORIGINAL seagull stuffed. Confused. As Dennis would say, "Deranged!" At least the intricacies of who likes whom when and why seem clear the third or fourth time around (the Redgrave-Warner film from 1969, I'd THOUGHT a play on a stage somewhere, and the bit that I'd seen of this filming last year sometime). But I couldn't help think that some of the comments in the play are self-criticizing "Nothing ever happens," "There's no one LIVING in this play," "It's all so boring," "Why does everyone sit around and TALK all the time?" and others that I could make up as having come from the play. But what a GREAT opening: "I'm in mourning, for my life," and closing "Konstantin has just shot himself." With THOSE, who CARES what comes in the middle?
DIARY 11369
10/21/76
TV VERSION OF "MADAME BUTTERFLY"
Mirella Freni has impossibly occidental eyes and too-puffy lips and a decidedly indelicate way of moving as Cio-Cio-San, while Placido Domingo fits in better with his flabbiness, his self-indulgent good looks, and his clumsy acting and moving. Crista Ludwig looks, as Dennis says, like a German hausfrau, but her intensity and concentration redeem whatever she does. The worst pity is that the filming is dubbed, which means that the lips hardly ever agree with what's being sung; Paul had said it was mainly HER, but I seemed to notice it with EVERYONE. The secondary pity was that it was in Italian: with the close-ups and the rather sensitive changes in the faces at each line, it would have been nice to know exactly what they were reacting to. The plot synopsis during the film didn't tell nearly as much as the book that Dennis and I read along with. A slighter pity was that I didn't know it was Michel Senechal as Goro, looking so bizarre that Dennis was impelled to ask, "What is he supposed to BE, anyway?" But all the production values were good: the wheat-tassels surrounding the somewhat scruffily-gardened house on a hilltop, the misty lights both inside and out, and the effective use of slow motion in the let-us-strew-the-house-with-flower-petals scene. Dennis was bothered by the big kid being carried around, but he was so innocent and trusting that it seemed to fit. The singing seemed above reproach, and I even thought the floating serene high note at the end of Butterfly's entrance was something that I hadn't heard to such effect before. Some of the shots were striking: the aerial shot for the love scene, the VERY high view for the patterns of visitors on the dusty paths, the retreating through panel after panel to show her isolation and separateness from others, and the final switch from front, showing the knife at her throat; to back, showing her pushing it in, was brilliant, though I really didn't care too much for the final freeze-frame of him bursting out through the wall-panel. Kate was absurdly prudish, Butterfly's fantasies of life in the United States charmingly childish, and her wearing of American clothing in the second act, I think, unprecedented, as was the final serving of the dagger by Suzuki, which seemed to finish it off nicely.
DIARY 11427
11/11/76
"THE TAMING OF THE SHREW"
Marc Singer, with his Bobby Morse face, smoothly muscular body, adequate command of language, and fetchingly boyish mode of acting exuberant, is by all odds the best thing in the American Conservatory Theater's presentation, though Fredi Olster seemed good enough as Kate until her final speech of the subservience of woman, which is probably impossible to do straight and convincing at this point in time. William Ball was interviewed by Harold Clurman at the final 20 minutes (I just couldn't say to Dennis that Clurman came off sounding intelligent at all) and was certainly gay, but the idea of having SUCH a sexy performance, I hope, would supersede any thought of sexual perversion. The silk tights and jutting codpieces were always a joy to look at, whether they were on an almost-equally muscular Grumio by a Joel Grey with a body, an almost-pretty Lucentio with a HUGE basket, a very tall thin Hortensio with impossibly stick-like legs and a nice narrow crotch, or even the haberdasher. The chorus of masked commedia dell-arte players was effective, and the live audience reacted marvelously to all the pratfalls and whacks, even the double-stick whack on the codpiece that had the hero looking QUITE dismayed, even to talking with a high-pitched voice. Watching "Great Waldo Pepper" meant that I cut out a lot of the subplot with Bianca, who was the most unattractive of the lot, which was to the good, per Arnie. Even the modern additions of laughs and pointed references didn't deny the marvels of the production, and I couldn't see HOW these two leads could possibly subsume themselves in another production, and I predicted that Marc Singer would be embarking on a VERY visible career. Talked to Art to find that Lee Hoiby did the music BEFORE I saw the credits at the end, so that I paid attention to the percussion and songs and other music with greater interest. The loving scenes at the end were so well done that I found tears flowing down my cheeks, and again I wondered about the casual throwing-together of two people on the stage LOOKING like they fall in love, wondering how many times they actually DO fall in love, except that if Marc Singer isn't gay, the world has lost a MARVELOUS source of beautiful images!
DIARY 11430
11/15/76
MOVIES SEEN AND RE-SEEN
Enjoy "Trio" and "Quartet" and find that I'd seen "Encore" in 1962, but I couldn't remember anything from it, even with the TV section blurb about a "Winter Cruise." Watch the movie and can't remember ANYTHING from it, not even the highly melodramatic final episode "Gigolo and Gigolette" with Glynis Johns and her lover agitating about whether she's going to make a high-dive. It may have been that I saw only part of it, but that part would have been the end, and I didn't remember a THING. Now if I hadn't written down the names of the stories as they occurred, I probably wouldn't remember THEM, either, but I would hope to remember SOMETHING. It's also true that it WAS 14 years ago (and I check to find that I MISSED the 10th anniversary of my LSD experience on September 16, 1976!), and I muse that if I'd seen something from my movie list in 1957, when I was 21, it's only about a year to 1978, when I'd say I saw it MORE THAN HALF MY LIFETIME AGO. However, these are hardly GREAT movies, though they're very well done. Back there, I was far more impressed with spectacle and with stars and with famous writers and directors than I was with low-key English productions with the stories of Somerset Maugham, whom I've always disliked after reading "Summing Up" and finding him impossible to feel affection for. But now I'm somewhat more oriented toward people and the QUALITIES of an actor, no matter how well-known he might be, and that would put a different slant on things. But if it's a movie that I wouldn't want to see again and again, I really shouldn't worry about not remembering much from it: if I REMEMBER it, it's good and I can tell whether to see it again. If I DON'T remember it, and I have no time and know I've seen it before, I can pass it up as something of lesser value. If I have the time, as I did here, I can look at it and see how much my changing point of view over the years might result in changing my opinion about whether the movie is good or not, as I did here, and I suppose I should be happy to find I think the movies rather well done, proving that I CAN change within myself, something that seems to be among the harder things for anyone in the world to actually DO for themselves.
DIARY 11585
1/31/77
SOREN KIERKEGAARD ON "THIRD TESTAMENT"
He was only 42 when he died, living 1813-1855. His life, so says the ubiquitous Malcolm Muggeridge, is the "Quest for the Father," but it says NOTHING about whatever mystical experience he may have had which would lead to "Either/Or." Father: strong sense of sin, cursed god; seduced his maid, had child, Soren. At 22, SK asked" What is GOD'S will that I do? (which he pondered on Gilberg, the highest point in Jutland). "Strip ALL away until he's found his place." "The daily press is opposed to Christianity: the press says that the masses count, Christ says that ONE counts." "To become a Christian is the greatest human sacrifice." He thought of life as "crisis after crisis" in Christianity. Aside from "Either/or" he wrote "The Seducer's Diary," and short stories. Every place that Kierkegaard sat appears now to have his name engraved on it: his house, his church, the place he sat in the woods. But I don't care for the SERIES (and I tuned in on the last five minutes of "Tolstoi" the FOLLOWING Sunday and was AGAIN put off, for the same reasons below) for many of the reasons I don't care for ANY of these things, whether it's with Bronowski, Clarke, Cooke, or the fellow with the zoos and national parks: THEY insist on staying on-camera much too long: I'm not interested in watching THEIR heads talking, I'm wanting to see what they'd intended to SHOW us. It's perfectly predictable to see a marvelous view or stretch of countryside and then see the moderator striding "casually" through the fields, paths, or seeing HIM gazing at a view that WE see only LATER. Not only do I ENVY them their view and their getting on TV, but I have to LOOK at them before I'm permitted to catch a BRIEFER glimpse of what they're LOOKING at. And I hate the TONE of Muggeridge's voice; even DENNIS said "Oh, it's him again," when his lisping sonorities started coming from the still-black screen. So I can't think that I'll be watching, unless he comes up with someone REALLY spectacular, so many of the series, even though I DO rather want to see the surroundings and hear something of the backgrounds of these people that he's covering, but HE COVERS THEM SO WELL WE CAN HARDLY SEE THEM FOR HIS BLOCKING OUR VIEW OF THEM WITH HIS OWN GARRULOUS PRESENCE.
DIARY 11610
2/4/77
"SALOME" STONED ON TV
The music of the Vienna Philharmonic is so lush and overripe that I can't resist getting a pipe. Stratas plays Salome like a grasping greedy girl, which works very well with her small stature and big eyes, but her concentration on his stubby fingers didn't quite work as well. In fact, the whole production seemed an exercise in making the ugly look attractive: Weikl or someone was Johannon, and though he was grossly overweight they managed to frame one part of his leg so that it looked vaguely tempting, left his arms bared because I guess they thought they looked sexy rather than sausagely-plump, and gave trembling close-ups of his lips with WERE, indeed, red and quivering. But my yearnings for great physical beauty weren't to be satisfied on that screen: Astrid Varnay as Herodiade was every faggot's version of camp, even to the haggish cackle of laughter; Herod was dressed as if he were a woman with sagging dugs outlined in glistering blacks, and the dance of the seven veils didn't really get started until she took the FOURTH one away from her FACE! But then they indicated that she took all the rest off, and she fell to the floor so quickly it DID look effectively as if she had nothing on. Who the pixy-faced woman-retainer of the main guard was wasn't clear, but she was one of the nicer faces in the group. But the direction of Stratas was admirable: doing orgasmic clutches at the top of the cistern, rolling about on the floor in her ecstasy, crying and groveling and screaming like a maddened Barbra Streisand as she flung herself about the stage, it showed fruit of long rehearsal and possibly live-recording of the voices, which alone makes an opera look REAL---except that the synchronization appeared to be off for a fraction of a second. The music remained lush throughout, lavishly conducted by Karl Boehm, and some of the climaxes sounded as if they'd never end. Indeed, the whole thing lasted about 105 minutes, and I'm sure the recorded version fits on two records easily. Dennis listened to fragments, but he had to work, poor fellow. I felt a great wash of good feeling toward TV: this might be the BEST time to watch, before something like some version of pay-TV makes things BETTER but comparably expensiver.
DIARY 11637
2/12/77
"NETWORK" A DYNAMITE MOVIE
Didn't realize that Peter Finch was into a MYSTICAL kick with his "We are all one," but couldn't figure why Chayevsky ameliorated his impact by causing him to FAINT after each spasm. Terribly funny scenes with the head of the Communist Party and the E-whatever Liberation Army, but I thought the marvelous character played to perfection by Faye Dunaway would inadvertently say "Then don't leave me" to William Holden, rattle her teacup, and then instantly be all cool as she recommends the death of Peter Finch, who's outlived his usefulness but won't be released by the head of the corporation, an enigmatic fellow who can't see that he's bad for the ratings yet has made billions of dollars. Also can't see the audience being such bovines and applauding when he falls in a faint; loved the use of the huge vacant building at 55th and 6th for the "I'm damn mad" out the window scene; and can't see the tie-in with Sybil the Clairvoyant and the key-in-lock lady. William Holden also marvelous, particularly in the scene with his wife Beatrice Straight when she drives him from the house---and how could he live with Faye Dunaway for 6 whole months without being tired of her? Great sex scene where she talks of her ratings, sits on his cock and comes, and then lays down, speechless, as a woman in the audience laughs, "So THAT'S what it takes to quiet her down." The television-killing is also rather unbelievable (since the killers would OBVIOUSLY be caught), the poignancy that that's Peter Finch's last movie is touching, and I was offended because they kept saying that EVERYONE was a boob who watched TV, and wondered of the source of their statistics that only 3% of the people read books and only 15% read newspapers. Sounds VERY low, though of course they include children, mental patients, and blind people in their figures. But the ambiance of a large TV network, then Public Library scenes in the board room, the TV control rooms were perfect. And the VIEW of the head of the corporation that the world is destined to become one vast holding company, controlling everything by dollars, entertaining everyone's boredom and giving everyone what they need, is a marvelous adjunct to Omega Man and the Noosphere, with comments about loss of individuality to boot. Good flick, and I hope it wins LOTS of Oscars so I won't have to see those OTHER movies, too.
DIARY 11650
2/24/77
BETTE MIDLER ON TV
Dana had said that it didn't take too much from "Clams on the Half Shell," and I remembered only about one or two of the songs, though they kept Kong on the Chrysler Building (sic) and "no tits and tight box? Get off my back." The humor that it was filmed in CLEVELAND ("I just wanted to see the Terminal Tower one more time"---avoiding the obvious joke about LAST time) with a groovy audience (with a noticeable box in the first upstanding row) added to the evening. But WHAT is she trying to DO? Comes out in a LUDICROUS outfit: bloomers to her tits, essentially, followed by dirty-kneed pedal-pushers and a tee-shirt. When she DOES graduate to glitz, she wears awful shoes ("Fredericks," she smirks) that destroy the picture. She jokes about anything "The white girl" of the Harlettes, gives people the finger, talks about how much it would cost to get her to show everything, and about how she almost died in the hospital with appendicitis, or something, which is how she got the opening idea of appearing in a hospital bed while the Harlettes ran around with stethoscopes, enema bags, and various other transfusional appurtenances. She seemed not to be in such good voice: I remember at the Minskoff she really BELTED out songs with GREAT gusto---now she just screamed a bit and used the microphone as if it were a tasty lollipop. And her only dance step (as opposed to the fabulous finale on the different levels surrounding the Lionel Hampton orchestra) was a quick-step jiggle that wiggled her tits. Though her best camera distance is about three feet, at times it seemed to vie with the microphone in climbing down her throat, giving a great look at the sweat, tears oozing out under her mascara, glitches and smitches and smirches on her face, and teeth that made her a member of Jimmy Carter's family. She did the bar number without the dummies that made it so effective, joked about the people in the front row---BUT she gave the same "Specialized" show so that THIS audience felt that this was a SPECIAL show for her, that she was at her BEST, that this was a GRAND performance, and that she'd REALLY remember what a great audience we were. THAT, at least, still makes her a dynamite performer; no silly costumes can take that from her.
DIARY 11700
3/6/77
"FLASH GORDON CONQUERS THE UNIVERSE"
Since Ming the Merciless announced that HE was the universe, and Flash Gordon conquered him by sending an explosive into the castle-tower where he was locked, Zarkov said that "Flash Gordon conquered the universe." But with some of the ridiculous---totally unexplained---saves of Flash, there would have been no trouble for him to come back if they'd WANTED him to. This was the last, however, in 1940, and it seems that (1) they WANTED it to seem somewhat silly and under-rehearsed, and (2) the casting director must have been gay, since there were a lot of cute sidekicks who couldn't act worth anything, but filled out a set of tights nicely and had nice names and kept going along with Flash. They'd cut off the chapter titles, but I kept track of the chapter-end disasters: 1. Falls into pit, hangs on rung on side. 2. Caught in avalanche, simply survives. 3. (with the Leni Riefenstall skiing sequence, which I saw before, but I'm not sure how, without seeing the rest of the series) Anihilatant explodes with him, but he rolls aside. 4. Heat ray, Roka blasts clock that controls it. 5. Ship shot down, but he sends a magic code and they stop firing at him. 6. Falls into flaming pit, which then explodes, and he merely climbs out. 7. Explosion, but gas revives them. 8. Dale into blazing pit, but she didn't really go. 9. Water-filled tunnel, water redirected. 10. Falls off high tower, but into water. 11. Electrocuted by rug, but lives. 12. Conquers the universe. ONE of the problems of the excessive editing, however, was that they cut out the repetition of the sequence leading UP to the cliffhanger, where the shield, the side-tunnel, the protecting rock, the handhold, the probe with the sword, was shown to have saved them. But the audience just hadn't been shown. With the CUTS, it merely looked ridiculous, making the SERIES look even worse. I may have gotten woozy about 3 am, but it DID seem that the acting tended to get better: they even risked close-ups without showing a perfectly dead pan, except for Middleton. But it was charming, the tights were nice to watch, and it's so bad there's hardly a chance I'll see it any other way, so that's the only way I could have seen it at this time: to DO it. Quotes: "Earth will burn to ashes." "Not only that, all the oxygen will be gone." They had Polarite antidote to Purple Death, the cold continent of Frigea, Zotranillium weapons that burn, and the explosive iron men called Anihilatants, plus the rock men who talk backwards and only WEAR their rock costumes to protect themselves from the dryness of the climate. So it's the worst of the three series.
DIARY 11731
3/16/77
"LA BOHEME" ON TELEVISION FROM THE MET
Admittedly I watch it as MUCH for the historicality of the first live TV performance from the Met (as I enjoyed the first photos of the moon and Mars AS they came in, the first step on the moon (sorry I missed the shooting of Oswald), the first performance from the City Opera at the New York State Theater, the first live performance from the Bolshoi Ballet, and now from the Metropolitan Opera House), but I thought the singing of Pavarotti MIGHT come through, but the microphones were so placed that the ORCHESTRA seemed to have more priority than the voices, though there was SOMEWHAT of a balance. What there was NOT was the stirring CONTRAST between the orchestra almost overwhelming the voice in soft sections, but the capabilities of the voice to SING OUT (Louise) over the MASSED orchestra and chorus with an electric shock that, with Nilssen, for example, is truly visceral. Then Pavarotti is NOT the most gifted actor: sometimes his face really went into a funny mask when he'd be clearing his lips or throat for his next high note, and sometimes he was OBVIOUSLY working with his mouth and face while seeming to be totally involved with his Mimi. Renata Scotto really got into her part, as she said, and her intensity was pleasant UNTIL I looked at her round healthy body and THOUGHT of the incongruity of this robust woman singing at the top of her lungs dying from tuberculosis. The production was quite sparse except for a nice cafe in the second act (with some sexy tumblers in the background). Ingvar Wixell wasn't terribly handsome as Marcello and Maralin Niska looked VERY hard and brittle as Musetta, but Allan Monk made a VERY handsome Schaunard and Dale Caldwell was a sexy-looking toy-seller. BUT THE OPERA IS A BORE. The "melodies" aren't really things that can be hummed, though there were a FEW moments in the first and third acts where the voices blended with a pleasing, stirring intensity with the emotionalism of the music to give a slight thrill of excellence. But the acting was stage-hammy, the "two dumplings" were obviously not interested in each other except in their final embrace, and the round faces got rather tiring to look at---and the lines of Niska's gaunt mask didn't help that any. Can't even look forward to seeing it again with Dennis on its rerun on Sunday.
DIARY 11800
4/6/77
"MOHAMMAD, MESSENGER OF GOD"
The film, as criticized, is long, drawn-out, and boring in spots, but it has the advantage that all these religious films have: it's filled with the most handsome men that can be found. It's a bit of "Oh, Edison is just GOING to be famous," and all the legends of the spider-spinning-across-cave, "I can't read," and at the end EVERYONE is converted, including the sour-faced Irene Pappas who says, "Were we REALLY so evil?" and Michael Ansara assures her it was a sign of the times. Re-read Shah's relation of his trip to the Kaaba and HE made no note that it's HOLLOW, and used to contain the false images that Mohammad fought to throw out. It devoted HOURS to obvious battles and only a MINUTE to the turning point: the quarrels in Medina that he judged in return for his people being given sanctuary there, and it's a marvelous parallel that their dates are from the Hegirah, the 250-mile walk from Mecca to Medina, just as the Chinese Reds date their time from the Long Walk and Christ, in a way, dates from the Flight into Egypt. To stretch a point, Buddha dates from his flight out of his sheltered childhood to see the dying man. Read that the "fierce Wahabi law" prohibits ANY photography of the Kaaba precincts, which was what the clan was fighting against, I suppose, though Dennis thought it was funny that it was a film without a title role. Arnold reminded me that Robert Montgomery's film "The Lady of the Lake" was filmed like that at HIS choice because he was the DIRECTOR and it made it better for him to direct AND star. The scene of the thousands of white turbans milling counterclockwise around the Kaaba was vortextually thrilling, and the shots of the final mosques were a travelogue in itself. The audience was very partisan, discussing the religious points, applauding when someone won a battle or an enemy was killed or converted, but it was a VERY opportunistic film for the Holy Week in which we saw "Mefistofeles," "Faust," and "Jesus of Nazareth!" Also remarked that here's an example of the ethnic culture that Dennis has so missed seeing in New York, and he thought better of me because he thought I never paid for a first-run movie, so he won't think I'm so cheap. Also, it was grand with the Maurice Jarre music which ALSO pervades "Jesus," and the sweep of the large-screen was impressive.
DIARY 11809
4/9/77
IBSEN'S "THE WILD DUCK"
What a piece of negative trash THIS is! Though "Masterplots" says that the household is a "happy" one, the father has been broken by being in jail by the town's rich baddie, the husband works on some unspecified "invention" in photography, though he's having trouble because "everything's already been invented"; a wife who was a servant and has to know that her daughter is the offspring of her former employer rather than her husband; and a daughter who's going blind. Into this lovely household comes roomers: a doctor who "diagnoses diseases for people so they have something to live for: if I hadn't labeled him a Demoniac, he would have done away with himself long ago," the Demoniac, and the son of the rich villain, who thinks he knows what's best for people: honesty, in telling the husband that the daughter is not his own, and sacrifice, "the fine, noble, free spirit of sacrifice which is the best of man," telling the daughter to shoot the wild duck to prove to her father that she loves him. The grandfather shoots hares in an attic, thinking it is a forest, the father leaves loaded pistols atop bookcases with an uncaring, "Don't touch it, it's loaded," and the son has nothing better to do than meddle in other people's affairs with a religious intensity that was hopefully outdated even then. I search through the plays of Chekhov and Ibsen and find the same tragedies everywhere: well-meaning people who can't do anything, yet they look in amazement at people who CAN: the servant-wife of "Duck" who keeps everyone together, the peasant who finally buys the Cherry Orchard in that play, the brother's wife in "Three Sisters" who takes over the best part of the household: they have these EXAMPLES of the good coming to those who take their opportunities and make the best of them (including the actress and writer in "Seagull"), but keep thinking that they can't do it THEMSELVES. Maybe the authors thought that THEY couldn't DO anything good in the world, so they'd only WRITE about the frustrations of not doing them in the hopes that (NO, even THAT'S not needed) people will see how SILLY it is to drift from day to day (look who's WRITING?!) and not take things FORCEFULLY, even if they aren't OFFERED to them by the world.
DIARY 11800
Also 4/9/77
TWO MOVIES WITH DIVINE
"PINK FLAMINGOS" is a contest for the "filthiest people in the world," between Divine (living under an assumed name) and a woman of the most horrific intensity who plays a red-haired, tiny-breasted witch in the first and one of the most unpleasantly REAL children in the second movie and her husband, who COULD be handsome, but he mars his performances by having a BAD acting talent, as opposed to a NONEXISTENT acting talent. Obviously John Waters was more interested in the burning of the trailer than anything else: the footage devoted to that was almost more than the footage devoted to Divine, who interestingly is never shown making up, though she changes clothes a lot. An enormously fat woman plays her mother, living in a pigpen and adoring eating eggs, eating about a dozen of them at a party which is highlighted by a guy taking down his pants, semi-hard, and rolling his ass into the air to show that it can suck in and blow out in a grotesque caricature of a mouth. They don't even care for lesbians, running a baby ring to give them kids, and interpreting them in the grossest platitudes: the man in a black suit.
"FEMALE TROUBLE" has flashes of insight: Dawn Davenport DOES capture the flavor of high school students in the 60s with their teased hair and chewing gum (and a couple in front of me necks even during the dog-shit eating scene, and it could HARDLY have been faked: the dog SHIT right there and Divine just scooped it and put it in her mouth and then got a disgusted look, spit it out, and then showed the remains on her tongue; AND during take-offs of a disgusting love scene between the man and women "who love them even more than the color of their hair, including blue pubic hair for the guy" and Divine goes down on her "son," who refuses to get hard though he pants a lot. As an example of the funniest line, the daughter says "Daddy, I wouldn't suck you off if you were suffocating and your balls were full of oxygen." Divine hits a chord when she says she wants to make "hard-core art." And there's a funny scene with Divine's mother-in-law, played by the grandmother in leather drag, pleading with her son to become a fag, so she'd feel better. But the gunning down of the audience at the end does NOT redeem the actual pleasure it appears Divine is having on the trampoline, and then falling flat on her ass on the floor in her heels, and the non-makeup scenes were credible, as were the scenes of Divine "fucking herself" in her male and female parts: AND ALL THE AUDIENCE CHEWED GUM!
DIARY 11844
4/20/77
"UNCLE VANYA" BY CHEKHOV, and "The Caretaker"
I may have seen it before on TV, but the play itself is so dreadful that to even Laurence Oliver's genteel joking (that made the young audience laugh more than it warranted, I thought) couldn't make Astrov, the Doctor, a worthy man; nor could Rosemary Harris's stageworthy languidity, prompting the remark that she was so indolent she staggered as she walked, redeem her bored character who steadfastly refused to do ANYTHING to lift herself from her boredom. There was an interesting contrast: in the movie, she and the doctor seem to be SURPRISED when Vanya enters; in Masterplots, she kisses the doctor ONLY after she sees Vanya coming---quite a difference! There are LOTS of characters like those in "Cherry Orchard": the old retainer playing a guitar like old Firs; the daughter who's plain, runs everything, and isn't able to get either appreciation or the man she loves; worthless scholars, though in Vanya it's an old retired man and in Cherry it's a man not yet 30. But everyone says how BORED they are, how TIRED they are (yet they continue to talk), one minute saying how HAPPY they are the next minute moaning how MISERABLE they are. In a tragedy, you could at least FEEL SORRY for the people; doesn't it degrade them MORE to LAUGH at them, since they're so incapable of laughing at themselves? Or should that exorcise their moodiness? Vanya (Michael Redgrave) takes a shot at the scholar (Michael Casson) and misses twice, which is a pity. I repeat my "Quantity makes seeming Quality" to Dennis, but it seems too easy: something to say when I don't like ANYTHING that appears to be a classic. Though the production was DECENT, it's just not a play that I'd like to see again, though Dennis talks of the double of Vanya and Sisters at the Carnegie Hall. "The Caretaker," by contrast, seemed a model of productivity: an electric-shocked dunce played by Robert Shaw who at least keeps his house from falling down, a bum of Donald Pleasence who at least finds a roof for a few nights, and a joker played by Alan Bates who delights in playing his jokes: they must be rich, since they don't seem to do ANY working, and the filming is CERTAINLY a LOT better than ANY stage production could be, with its consummately convincing acting blown up and pre-edited on the screen, it appears to have FAR more movement and activity than ANY production of the play could have: the agitation that makes it at least ENTERTAINING if you MUST see it.
DIARY 11881
4/28/77
KLEIST'S "PRINCE OF HOMBURG"
Book Digests implies a straight-forward narrative: the Prince attacks early, is sentenced to death, begs miserably for his life, is forgiven since HE wants it, he "sees the error" of his begging and says the Elector must do as he must, and when the Elector sees his regained "humanity" (and obeys him in declaring war on the Swedes, who wanted to sue for peace), he forgives him. In this Chelsea Theater Center production (not saying where it was filmed), he starts in a moon-staring dream, grabs a glove from his cousin, falls in love with her (though she looks like an ugly Carol Burnett), "wakes" in prison to find himself back in the garden a couple of times, and then follows HIMSELF as he's being carried in triumph into the hall, wheels to find HIMSELF still mooning on the moon-drenched bench, and stares into the camera for the final fadeout. Neat anomalousness, but seemingly not Kleist. But what HIT me was the way the plan of the play DEMANDED to be carried out: the Elector HAD to kill him for disobeying (he's ALREADY lost them three battles, and it was silly for his men to say "Yeah" when he said "Would you follow him into battle a FOURTH time?" And the way Langella acted him he REALLY was a dolt: mooning into the moon, not listening to orders in watching his cousin, not listening to advice and attacking, saying "the penalty being on my head," and then begging his foster-mother and his lover to plead for his life from the Elector), even if HE would have been killed by the petitioning armies, who would THEN wake to their crime and decide he had to be killed "for the military" ANYWAY. And the machinations of the daughter were ludicrous: SHE has a pardon, but brings HER army to bear in signing a PETITION that could overthrow her foster-FATHER. Then I go into a whole train of thought after reading about Kleist and perusing the plot of "Pentisilea" where the Amazon tears out the heart of he whom she loves, then kills herself with a pure act of will (oh, of course the DAUGHTER in Homburg would have then killed herself to be with her dead lover, and EVERYONE would have been happy!), the thought that humanity MUST have changed in the intervening years toward being less bloodthirsty and more HUMANE in living (see DIARY 11882).
DIARY 11887
4/30/77
"THE THREE SISTERS" BY CHEKHOV
Janet Suzman is modish and bored as Masha, trying to read poetry while the name's-day party is going on about her, which typifies her masochism through the play: falling in love with a soldier who's already married and who MUST leave eventually, she must SEE that. Ellen Atkins is washed out and dreary as Olga, the drudge of a school teacher who has to act as mother now that both parents have died, quite a change from the Duchess of Malfi, and you believe her when she says she'll marry ANYONE who asks her, but no one asks her. Michelle Dotrice is baby faced as Irina, and I really DON'T remember her going from such an optimist to such desperation in other times I'd seen the play. Anthony Hopkins plays a fat vacillating brother who marries Natasha, who changes instantly from the first scene to the second with a child, and she eventually rules the house to prove that if you WANT to get somewhere, you CAN, so they SHOULD have gone to Moscow if they wanted it so much. The gotch-eyed courtier from Duchess plays the Baron who wants to marry Irina, who gets killed by Saloni the day before the wedding, and Saloni is played not so much of a BULLY as a FAG, with the enigmatic line about having to use perfume to get the smell away from his hands, and the way he PLAYS him, he just must jerk off a lot, though he talks about DECAY (maybe the decay of the living semen into slime?). Olga ends up keeping her Nurse herself when Natasha practically throws her out, so she ends up with her own room, almost the only happy one of the lot, though the implication is that Natasha tolerates the Doctor's living there, drunkard though he is. I don't remember the fire sequence from the play at the Little Theater at ALL. It seems to have been filmed outdoors, so the colors and FEELS of the sun are good, but the INNER play is SO drab: Masha insisting on her boredom, Irina finding a simple job so HARD, the brother losing the house in gambling, which is so SILLY, and duels being fought SO recently. All the talk about how people in the future will look back on them with horror seems to be PREACHY of Chekhov, and I check EB to find that it leaves only "Ivanov" to be assimilated, though Ibsen wrote 25 plays, so there'll always be a new IBSEN to be seen.
DIARY 11888
Also 4/30/77
MIDNIGHT SPECIAL WITH 6 ENGLISH GROUPS
1) FLEETWOOD MAC has a long lean lithe sexy leader with lush curls and a beard who wears a crotch-covering tunic, but that's about the best of the group. Lots of girls who can't sing, and a guitarist in cutoff jeans could be sexy but isn't. "You Can Go Your Own Way" and "Believe in Miracles" are mediocre.
2) QUEEN has a smoky explosion at the start, with two skinny guys and a lot of makeup on the face of the lead singer, who doesn't even look sexy in a white LEOTARD that bares most of his chest and all his back, though one of the guitarists might be cute. Only 4 guys, formed in 1974, and "Tie Your Mother Down" features a kinky leather drummer, but "Find Me Somebody to Love" and "Mama, I Just Killed a Man" don't help at all with a great production effect of their faces staring up into the light, but they're UGH.
3) ELTON JOHN did excerpts from "Soul Train" in 1975, is a GOOD pianist when you can hear him, did the "Pinball Wizard" film clip from "Tommy" and has had 12 albums, though "Island Girl" and "How Wonderful Life Is When You're in the World" don't communicate any magic, and some of his costumes are outrageous, but he's too flabby to be sexy, even with his myriad glasses and tight pants.
4) ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA is called a classical rock group, but "I Never Seen Nothin' Like You" or "Do Ya Want My Love?" are more country-western than they are classical. They have GOOD light effects in their spots, and two cellos and a crotchy violinist doth not a classical group make. They have an ugly lead guitarist and a fairly cute second one who's not on-camera much, and "Rock and Roll Tonight" and "I'm Living in Twilight" don't turn me on.
5) GENESIS, formed in 1969, are spieled for their "mystical journeys through time," and "Assault and Battery" has a bank robber killing a guard and being chased by cops through a foggy city, but SOME of the sounds are good in the trippy way of Moody Blues, and it's the ONLY group on the show that has POSSIBILITIES.
6) ROD STEWART started in 1963, so he's the oldest of the groups and looks it, seeming to make a thing about scarves. "Maggie May" and "Sweet Angel" are good driving numbers, and he's ugly to look at, but knows how to use his body so that it appears sexy, so unless Genesis does the strip, he wins the sex award, unless the leader of Fleetwood Mac would show a crotch, which could be a winner.
DIARY 11927
5/11/77
FASSBINDER FILMS "FOX" AND "TEARS"
"FOX AND HIS FRIENDS" is so TERRIBLY negative: Fox himself is creepy (Fassbinder himself, giving me a VERY poor picture of him with his flaggy, potty body, his crowing about his cock, which seems QUITE small, and his lopsided surly face, perfectly suited for the doltish Fox), his friends are handsome but SO taken with "darling, Liebschen, She, Lovey" that it really turns me off, and I wonder if the critics LIKE his films because he puts such a NEGATIVE picture of the gay life for their view, and the board outside heralds the TRUTH of his vision, which is just about as true as that of "Boys in the Band." Dennis said it wasn't sexy, but the bodies and faces in the mud bath sequence were VERY nice. Fox's acceptance of the apartment's being signed over to the company, his lover's lover moving into the apartment in his place, his ruining of 100,000 marks by cutting, his lover's dismissing of the furniture that everyone had said was so GOOD (though it WAS awful, but not to one of FASSBINDER'S gays), and the group in the bar, his ripping off the flower man of 10 marks, ALL made it so AWFUL that one was GLAD he overdosed with Valium.
"THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT" was even worse in the start: black-dressed Marlene (dedicated to a friend who became Marlene as the film was), saying not a word, loving Petra, but putting up with her affair with Karin that turned out badly, then her unplayable scene of petulance wanting her back, loving her, vilifying her, and then the REMARKABLE reappearance of the bed, forgiveness of her mother and daughter for existing, acceptance and REASON on the phone when Karin finally calls, and her apologizing "for everything" to Marlene, and then the EXTRAORDINARY final minute in which Marlene packs, takes the mother's childish gift of the doll for Petra, while Petra lies on the bed and SMILES, and then Marlene LEAVES, giving ME the idea that Marlene was ONLY there, loving, protecting, while Petra NEEDED her and the minute she PROVED she didn't need her (with a beautiful face without the makeup at last), she simply packed up and left, to the tune of the Platters' "The Great Pretender," turning the whole thing into a MYSTICAL movie of such extraordinariness that I can't really say that Fassbinder isn't a MAGICIAN with film, provided he INTENDED it to mean something of that sort, and that I'M not creating it that way.
DIARY 11973
6/4/77
"STAR WARS"
This flick wouldn't be worth the notice, but Time and Newsweek seemed to say ("with banners, which they hardly ever do," crowed Arnie) that it was the best movie of the year. Dennis didn't quite think THAT, but said that if "Rocky" could win it last year, THIS should win it for this year. The lines were growing and I wanted to see it fresh, but the FIRST startling effect was SO well calculated that the OTHERS paled beside it: Princess Leia was escaping in her little ship pursued by the Battleship of the Empire (and WASN'T that rolling script PERFECT to talk about the princess in white and evil empire-supporters in black?), which roared in (and I DID NOT notice that it shouldn't have had a sound in the vacuum of space) overhead, appearing large, then larger, then HUGE as it kept going past, ENORMOUS as it slipped by overhead, and I was hoping the rest of the film would be AT LEAST up to it, but it wasn't at ALL. But there were nice throwaways: the beasties on the chessboard clobbering each other, the bar with the creatures drinking and staring around with various eyes, and, again, the SIZE of the armored carrier. But R2D2 was SO calculated, down to the fear in his noise as the light-eyed monsters stalked him, firing a jet that ran around his resistors until he clunked to the ground to the laughter of the audience, and the Britishness of CP30. And I DID NOT guess that the monsters which were ridden were merely carpet-covered elephants ("with their trunks in their mouths," as the praising SohoWN told me. But the ONLY sop to the thinking was "the Force" of life that united everything in the universe, so that when Guinness "left" (he certainly didn't die, and since the main meanie escaped, and the Princess didn't even choose between her two handsome swains; the whole things just BEGS for a sequel!) he passed it on to Luke (WHY, Luke?, in such loaded names?) who used it much as Zen in the art of Archery to "get" the destroyer station. But there were no noticeable dead parts as in "2001" to be skipped on re-seeing, it WOULD diminish greatly on TV, and it WILL start a new surge of adventure films, so it's a good thing to have seen at its earliest, and NOW reported on, before it becomes a CLASSIC.
DIARY 11974
Also 6/4/77
"THE KEY TO THE UNIVERSE"
Nigel Calder appears on a bridge between (suspended between) models of the basic particles below and images of galaxies above. He mentioned gravity, then speaks of the electrical forces that make TV possible, and goes right to Fermilab near Chicago, Illinois, with its 4-mile ring, where protons are accelerated by RADIO energy and get HUNDREDS of times heavier, up to 400 Bev. Neutrinos described as "electrons without electricity." Bubble chambers for detecting. Neutrino changes to "heavy electron." In 1976 neutrinos detected down to one-million-millionth of a second, when it leaves a 1/100" track. By the end of 1976, they'd seen charmed particles. He then lists the four cosmic forces: 1) gravity; 2) Strong nuclear force (that powers the suns); 3) Weak nuclear force; and 4) Electricity, the atoms of body and of LIFE. Clark-Maxwell found that electricity was related to magnetism and discovered radio waves. Statement that I hadn't heard quite that way before: "an electron is surrounded by short-lived particles of light." Diagrams of Gauge theories, which combine relativity and quantum dynamics, use Feynman diagrams, from California Institute of Technology. GRAVITY also represented by gauge theories. There's an element of interaction between planet AND graviton. Weak force and electricity united by Abdus Salam from Pakistan at Imperial College, in London, where the weak force deals with particles passive as iron atoms, while electricity deals with particles light as photons, and the problem is how to resolve these weight differences. Steven Weinberg and Salam produced the gauge theory for weak and electric forces, and the Feynman diagram helped. Gerard 't Hooft (24-year-old) from State University of Utrecht, ADDED a particle that united the forces, which was found at a 1973 experiment at Cern, with Gargamel bubble chamber for neutrinos, worked by the inter-university institute of high-energy physics. People could COUNT and MEASURE reactions in bubble chamber and produce data as the planetary counts and observations permitted NEWTON to formulate HIS theory of gravity. They found that neutrinos interacted but remained unchanged, something never seen before Starbreaker: "Weak interaction via neutral currents; this BREAKS stars to form clouds enriched with heavy elements that permit life to form on planets around NEW stars." Firemaker: "Strong nuclear force that clenches energy to form stars, that also supplies the energy of nuclear bombs and reactors." CERN: Centre European pour Research Nuclear. Moscow and Peking scientists at CERN, also. Protons shooting SIDEWAYS proved quarks, the sounds made by gulls in Finnegan's Wake by Joyce, which Joyce meant to be a pun on "quarts of beer." Jorgen Peterson of Niels Bohr Institute of Copenhagen talks of strange particles, which last longer than expected, and "double strange" led to "super strange" omega particle (3-stranges) at Brookhaven. Murray Gell-Man of CIT came up with the multiplets, incorporating the omega. Quarks are now ACCEPTED, known as "up," "down," and "strange" and later "charm." Gluons glue quarks together and carry coloring force. Sheldon Glashow of Harvard proposed the unisolatability of quarks, and David Politzer of Harvard talked of the colors of quarks, where red and green and blue make white. Quarks and gluons FIT INTO the gauge theories. But the color force is strange in that the CLOSER the particles the LESS the force affects them, and the FARTHER APART the particles the MORE the force affects them (though, it must be, within certain LIMITS?). Kenneth Wilson of Cornell came up with the theory of STRINGS of gluons, in which the "colors cancel" and make indivisibility. Energy to break the strings only EXTENDS them, and a piece of string ALWAYS has two ends. "If they isolate a quark, I will be unhappy." Forces all carried by other forces. Dirac proposed antimatter and matter colliding to form energy. There's an antiparticle for EVERYTHING, even an antiuniverse for this one (though they don't SAY this!). Nature creates particles/antiparticles by freezing amounts of energy. ALL the force-carrying particles are mixtures of matter and antimatter (?). The PHOTON is an electron plus an antielectron. There are anti-quarks and anti-colors. The 15-billion-year-ago big-bang is "proved" by radio background from the explosion. Then into astronomy (and I think of the idea of an "event horizon" being an ACTUAL horizon of a vortex into ANOTHER space, going into an ANTIUNIVERSE) which found that our galaxy moves 200 miles/second toward Virgo. VERY early in the big bang, matter was annihilated. In the first 10 minutes, there was a lot of helium, Only ONE kind of force would produce a PERFECT universe, in which NO LIFE could be possible. Steven Weinberg (Harvard) scenario:
1) Gravity = Weak force = Strong force = Electrical force in strength and range.
After an "instant"
2) Gravity "froze out," but WF = SF = EF in strength and range.
3) Weak force (W-particle) "froze out," at about 1012°.
4) Strong force "froze out" and forced quarks into threes (1/10,000 second after Zero).
5) Electrical force (photons) "froze out," but "matter NOW, smaller than quarks, is AS symmetrical as in step ONE."
6) "At range of ORDINARY life, symmetry is BROKEN. Most exciting idea I know. Key now needed to tell why the universe is logically inevitable."
Samuel Teng (MIT) found charm at Brookhaven AND at SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center), and in August, 1974, saw Anti-electron Electron formed from the "three-times-heavier-than-proton" 3 Bev J-particle, which was named the Psi particle in November, 1974, and then they found the HEAVIER psi' particle with CHARM. SPEAR is an electroannihilator to form energies to create NEW particles. And THESE particles last less than a billion-billionth of a second, yet 1000's of times LONGER than expected. Sheldon Glashow said charm existed back in 1964. The charmed quark "pleased and fascinated them." In 1970, the 3-quark theory was troubled, but then a 4th quark unified WF and EF. There's now charm and anti-charm. Then began the search for heavy NAKED charm. Weak force is the cosmic Alchemist, which slowly breaks charm into strangeness, unifying quarks and cosmic forces. When they didn't find charm, there was "doubt in physics and doubt on this program." Then the idea that the psi has HIDDEN charm. In summer, 1976, they found what might have been the psi in OLD photos, found the right ENERGY for "freezing them out," and by the end of 1976 they'd PROVED many EXAMPLES OF NAKED CHARM, AND Richter and Teng got the 1974 Nobel Prize. Burton Richter (SLAC): "We MUST be skeptical of what we find, we must PROVE it." 1977 found charmed antiproton, and there was LOTS of charm in the big bang. Charm is present in ALL matter: "An ounce of charm and an ounce of anticharm in each body." Gellmann says there's evidence of MORE particles. Tu-Tung Sheng (Peking) says there are STRATA of particles in levels. Salam got a theory with 4 electrons and 12 quarks:
Blue Green Red
U U U
D D D
S S S
C C C
And suggested that the quark CHARGES were 1/3 or 2/3, which, only because they have not been found, suggests confinement. Yogash Patti and Salam formed the Quark Liberation Front, saying electrons are quarks TOO, and quarks change back and forth from electrons, so they're hard to FIND and PROVE. They postulate 8 units: Prequarks: 4 colors: Electron, B, G, R, and 4 attributes, U, D, S, C, which can be COMBINED EXHAUSTIVELY to the 16 entities. Gellmann says there's no EVIDENCE of "parts of quarks." SPEAR seems to have found a HEAVY lepton, a SUPER-HEAVY electron, possibly a 5th electron force. Possible new names? Truth and beauty! Robert Wilson talks about the new 500 Bev energies for protons at Fermilab: "You have to work at the edge of failure to get to the edge of success." W particle carries the WEAK force, and it may be detected by ISABELLE. Gellmann say now the problem is to connect all the forces, particles, gravity, and the geometry of space and time. Feynman talks of "new theories but no new understanding, the Weinberg-Salam theories are SLOPPY, Einstein never believed the Quantum Theory, and I may be a crabby old man not even able to see new truth. 'T Hooft says that symmetry demands MORE heavy particles (magnetic monopole is 1000 times heavier than a proton). VERY large units will begin to involve GRAVITY, and THEN we can unify the whole thing. BLACK HOLES MAY BE NEW ELEMENTARY PARTICLES, VERY HEAVY, which remains me of Wheeler's Geons. Gravitons THEMSELVES affected by gravity. "Time stands still at the edge of a black hole," and new X-ray probes find X-ray sources and black holes. Kenneth Pounds of Leicester University says the matter falling into black holes produces X-rays, and that matter pours into black holes "like water down a drain"---but doesn't say WHERE the drain empties! Theory: Massive black holes at EACH galaxy-center, where "nature is testing the laws of gravity for us." Stephen Hawking, the youngest member of the Royal Society, with a wasting disease that confines him to a wheelchair and makes his speech slurred, says that black holes contain singularity where gravity crushes particles out of existence. He talks of the uncertainty principle, and that particles and antiparticles lose PARTNERS near a black hole, and halves "tunnel out of black holes." Gravity, heat, and creation of matter. Black holes become smaller and hotter and eventually EXPLODE. Millions of tons of matter into a particle smaller than an atom! Smaller black holes survive, and the "size of Mt. Everest" black holes due to explode now. "How did the big bang produce matter?" "Weak feeble creatures (Hawking?) become masters of the universe through understanding" "Energy resurrected from singularity." "Miniature big bangs," and the end of the program ended with a flurry of cosmological talk that verged on Actualism, est, TM, and Alice in Wonderland.
DIARY 12015
6/13/77
"THE ADDING MACHINE" BY ELMER RICE
Had really forgotten how the play went, but the movie version sure emphasized the after-life sequence in which the message is loud and clear: do what you want to; you've been born again and again, won't remember what happened to you before unless you're blessed, and should take every opportunity for joy-filled living that you can. I felt teary and very sentimental watching it, but again felt that I HAD to get to the typewriter and make my feelings known. But they're the same feelings, all I can do is hope to find the right combination of words to make them more lasting: but that last thought takes the thought away: the combination of WORDS won't make the feeling more lasting, and it's the feeling FOR MYSELF that's the MOST important thing, though the ability to communicate it to others seems important to me, so I should follow it. The play so turned on the idea that "he thought she wanted him to stay away while she wanted to kiss him" and "she thought he didn't care for her when he wanted to get close to her." If they'd only been able to SAY something about it, it might have been so much better. Then they profess their love to each other openly, which brings the tears to my eyes, so I start making notes of what'll have to be included in "Grandma's Band." But it's also the feeling of DO SOMETHING, and I turn off the TV to get a phone call from Bob Rosinek, after which I phone Mark Elliott, invite him to Jeff's, and he'll tell his boss, Ed Finch, about "my pilot." Then Arnold calls and has had a call from EGR for a $100 two-day job with a bunch of 100-130 people from Cincinnati for the All-Star Baseball Game at Yankee Stadium who'll be staying at the Plaza and have to be shuttled on and off busses during their stay. I'd jerked off, so that cleared THAT away, and I felt galvanized to do SOMETHING, and at this MOMENT I sit in somewhat blurred amazement, thinking of working on an index, writing to Bill, or doing Actualism, and THAT'S what I should do to get galvanized into the EVENING---except that Dennis is supposed to call back, so I'll continue typing, which will at least catch me up on the JOURNAL, which is something that I still feel good enough about to keep up to date completely.
DIARY 12068
6/28/77
DOCUMENTA 6
NAM JUNE PAIK is setting up gutted TV sets, biting into an apple, and sticking his head inside, then saying that TV is "stupid and empty," but without even THAT much apposite humor, while Charlotte Moorman saws away on her cello with TV sets strapped to her breasts, reminding that when they did that last year in the Solomon Islands, it had been the first time they had seen TV in the Solomon Islands. A pretentious commentator from Kassel, West Germany, said that art was, by means of programs like this, via satellite live to millions of viewers (which was second in art importance only to the Venice Biennale), would impress people regardless of their political viewpoints. Which was RIDICULOUS, because this would be PRECISELY the type of program that Russian and Chinese commentators would rightly brand as examples of the most decadent, destructive, pointless exercise of the capitalist nations, and in THIS case they'd be absolutely correct. She later stroked steel strings over a TV set as a cello-body, and climbed into bed, exclaiming "This is the most comfortable I've been in a week" as she lay on a Plexiglas sheet covering 6 TV sets recording what we were seeing. The crowds milled around outside trying to wave to relatives who might be watching, totally oblivious (except to laugh) at the "art" going on. Joseph Beuys chose not to do anything artistically, but engaged in some socialist polemic about the nature of art and the usefulness of people, sort of saying that all governments should sponsor free schools so that the artists could participate in such marvelous earth-breaking programs as these all the time, and without any difficulty in making a living on the artists' part. Douglas Davie did a think piece about finding the viewer in his room, ending by crashing into a Plexiglas sheet that he had marked up AS IF marking up the inside of the TV screen, but then expostulating that "how marvelous it was that I was here, the hands on the screen had been taped in Venezuela in a studio a number of weeks ago (and Paik kept talking about Maya Prisetskaya watching from Moscor), while WE were watching it from where WE were NOW. The most total pretentious drivel, a complete waste of NO talent whatsoever.
DIARY 12089
7/1/77
"FACE TO FACE" and "The Touch"
No doubt but that Liv Ullman does an incredible job, but there seemed to be such a strength about her character (and the dream sequences were SO clearly demarked by her embroidered red cap and red gown and cape) that I didn't really feel that she was as VULNERABLE as Catherine Deneuve in "Repulsion" and Susannah York in "Images," the two movies that this would have to be compared with in the vision of the "other person" who causes such panic because they're known not to be there. Also, the INCESSANT use of images from the past to excuse present difficulties got a bit tiring: grandmother locked her in wardrobe, looked at her with a different face, mother and father killed in an accident when she was 9, and they cowered and became children when she blamed them. Erland Josephesson was so good because he seemed sincerely to CARE without being omniscient enough to know what to DO except just hold her and try to keep one step ahead of her. But I'm again impressed with Bergman's THOUGHTFULNESS, epitomized in the scene where Erland gets Liv to his house, and then she says "and how are we going to go through the absurdity of undressing, what will you do to arouse me and how much will you allow me to do in arousing you, and what will we talk about afterward, just small talk while exchanging phone numbers?" It's so PERCEPTIVE, so TRUE. And now he seems concerned with the problems of old age, starting out that "Old age is HELL!" as bemoaned by her weakening father and going to "love accepts everything" when the old couple stare at each other, the grandmother knowing that her husband is dying, the man knowing that the woman loves him completely enough to ACCEPT his dying, seeming to come to a new synthesis of understanding. "The Touch" seemed so puerile by comparison, the bull-headed cruelty and senselessness of Elliott Gould, the masochism and unthinking love of Bibi Anderson, the self-righteousness of Max von Sydow, and the ludicrousness of ALL these intelligent people destroying themselves simply because they SAY they are caught up in a love that they simply can't do anything to stop. Her observation that he didn't LIKE himself was the core of the film, so how could SHE love HIM unless, at a certain level, SHE didn't like HERSELF, either?
DIARY 12211
8/13/77
TV MARATHON FOR EIGHT AND ONE-HALF HOURS
FINIAN'S RAINBOW might be directed by Francis Ford Coppola, have a dancy Fred Astaire who keeps looking like Art Ostrin, an Og by Tommy Steele who's not very cute or sexy, a Petula Clark who sings "Follow the Felllllow" as if she were a liquid-lucid Julie Andrews, and some dancing choruses, but from 1968 it's terribly old-fashioned and stagy and not terribly captivating.
ENDLESS SUMMER, however, is caught for its marvelous "Cape St. Francis" episodes and its flashback to Makaha Beach and the incredible surfs there, and bits of its humor and pretty-boy bodies-with-not-a-brain, so it's still great.
PYGMIES is disappointing because they never look SHORT, shown by themselves, and the men aren't nude, they're reasonably happy, they don't fight, so there's nothing much to watch except the narrator bemoaning their cultural loss when the vanishing forest causes them to die out of their "natural habitat."
FAWLTY TOWERS has Cleese uglier than ever, but if everyone just WALKED OUT there wouldn't be any chance of development or further humor, would there?
THE TRANSPLANT EXPERIENCE is incredible for the barrel of medications the people have to take from 6 am to midnight, the shots of sheep transplants, and the extra years on these people's lives, and the experiments with artificial valves that the cells GROW OVER to incorporate into the body itself, having no immunologic reaction against plastic: now if they can only make plastic that won't wear out in many years of use. Fabulous science show.
MONSTER BEACH PARTY has Godzilla as special guest, not much of the horror or terror, and lots of Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon, who's gay-looking but married with 8 kids, and then Geraldo Rivera opens his shirt and puts on chest hair to act as a cycle bum effectively.
INVITATION TO THE DANCE is VERY commedia del-arte in CIRCUS, with Kelly as a wan, washed-out long-white-sleeved character, with Youskevitch as a ropewalker in such black that you can't see his crotch, and at the end it LOOKS as if Kelly walks the rope, then falls TERRIBLY theatrically onto his red scarf. Clair Sombert is his unknown love. The second is LA RONDE with a bracelet, with a cute thing of the husband giving it to the VALET who gives it to the wife to let her know he's home (HA for the lues), and SINBAD has the sort-of-sexy henchmen cartooned dancing Kelly's dances, but the Hanna-Barbera girl ballerina just looks hokey, and it's not really imaginative enough. ENOUGH!