1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 84: The leading man

This movie, unfortunately, is less compelling as a story than as grist for speculation about the artists’ offscreen misdeeds. Which, in a way, is fitting, because it depicts the backstage scuzziness of a high-end theatrical production.

(The theatrical process itself is treated affectionately and accurately. This, I gather, is what critics like about the movie.)

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For nearly two decades, British-born Australian director John Duigan helmed acclaimed but smallish productions, including two longtime favorites of mine – wonderful coming-of-age movies – The Year My Voice Broke (1987) and Flirting (1991).

Alas, his relationship with Flirting’s leading actress, Thandie Newton, was … sinister.

(Allegedly. Newton denounced Duigan in several interviews, including this sobering one for Vulture.)

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Duigan gained international note for the fleshy Sirens (1994), which is about an English cleric and his wife whose mores are loosed when they visit a “liberated” artists’ colony in Australia.

Colonials 1, Mother Country 0.

The sides swap home fields but play similar games in Duigan’s The Leading Man (1996). Another colonial libertine – movie star Robin Grange (Jon Bon Jovi) – travels to London to headline a play. The movie’s opening scene shows Robin peering wolfishly across the Thames at the Houses of Parliament. This may not be enough to evoke Guy Fawkes, but soon Robin is talking of “blowing things up.” Hmm.

(I’m probably making too much of this association.)

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Anyway: Robin, with gusto, wreaks havoc on the production’s backstage intrigues.

One intrigue is conducted along typically dreary upper-middle-class British lines. Established playwright Felix (Lambert Wilson) is miserable in his affair with the ingénue lead, Hilary (Newton – at the time, allegedly, still in Duigan’s thrall). Felix spends evenings in the flat that Hilary shares with other young strugglers and returns late to his wife, Elena (Anna Galienna), for tongue-lashings.

Robin sizes things up and makes Felix an indecent proposal. Out of the goodness of his heart, he’ll seduce Elena: to take her off Felix’s hands, or at least to reduce her moral advantage over Felix.

So far, this is like an Iris Murdoch novel (A Fairly Honourable Defeat, perhaps). The difference is that the movie appears to side with the scheming Robin. It’s as if, in Othello, the patsy Roderigo were the tragic victim, Desdemona guilty, Iago worth cheering for.

This moral repulsiveness swamps whatever craftsmanship, style, and comedy the movie offers – which are not inconsiderable.

The movie is still better than what passes for urbane adult drama nowadays: e.g., The Undoing, with Duigan’s former actors, Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant.

And so it bolsters my claim for 1996.

P.S. Newton went on to become a star. Duigan went on to make the terrible, pointless Lawn Dogs.

Bon Jovi emerged untarnished.

On the “51st state”

Winter, for practical purposes, has ended.

Trump’s bizarre second term keeps lighting up the blogosphere. Will or won’t he annex Greenland and Canada? Is he serious? Who knows? Does he know if he’s serious?

What’s eye-opening, to me, is how seriously Canadians regard this bluster. But then Canadians have long feared annexation in one guise or another. There’s quite a literature on this. I never knew!

This book by George Grant is a notable example.

I’m tempted, now, to re-read Charles Taylor’s philosophy in light of the imperialist threat.

This list of Canada’s “most important” books (part one; part two) also is worth consulting. (Grant’s book is #41.) We may as well read what Canadians have to say, before we conquer them.

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In the hullabaloo I’d forgotten that outstanding YouTube channel, Un mundo inmenso. Its latest video is about Bangladesh. Speak of a neglected nation! Did you know that one of every twenty people on Earth is Bangladeshi? That the country is cricket- and soccer-mad? That Argentina’s soccer team has more fans in Bangladesh than in Argentina? (Big deal, cosmologists would say: the size of the universe guarantees that Argentina’s fans are many times more numerous on other planets …)

The Muses fail me

I also write fiction, most of which is stillborn.

Here are a few of last year’s false starts.

I’d had as much as I could stand of Art and Libby Tungsten and of Tungstens generally when “Brainy” Tungsten strode into the parlor.

You’re probably curious what the insufferable “Brainy” will do to ruin the narrator’s good temper. Alas, this character is a dead end. Having come upon the scene, “Brainy” just stands in place, tantalizing us with his name, refusing to confirm or discredit it.

Another passage:

It was rainy and bleak. I’d been crisscrossing the city for hours and didn’t know where to get off the bus. The neighborhoods looked rough. To dismount might be fatal. It would be wetting, at least.

“You can’t ride all night,” the driver said. “You must get down.”

“I don’t know where to.”

“Then do it here.”

The half-dozen other passengers were stony-faced.

Note the pared-downness of the Bulwer-Lyttonian opening. What to do when inspiration presents itself in the form of plagiarism? Make it more prosaic, e.g.:

Should I stay alive or not?

That time was both very bad and very good.

Political things

I receive unsolicited emails from an agency called “Conservative Direct.” The latest one announces an online course on “totalitarian” novels, taught by the president of Hillsdale College.

Texts: 1984, Brave New World, Darkness at Noon, That Hideous Strength.

Conservatives and liberals may inhabit different echo chambers, but at least they read some of the same books.

(Extracting different lessons from them, of course.)

What else is “common ground?” Johnny Cash, I’ve been told.

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I thought this sociological piece on Elon Musk was insightful.

Too often, I see people denouncing Musk as a numbskull. He’s not that. I see other people praising his management style to high heaven. That’s wrong, too.

He succeeds at cutting costs when (a) he understands the industry (especially, its technology) and (b) he owns the stakes and assumes the risks for certain key decisions. But that doesn’t make him a good person for deciding how to cut costs across something so multiform, with so many “stakeholders,” as the U.S. government.

(He may or may not be evil, but that’s not what the piece is about.)

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What does the government do? I look forward to reading these essays.

Body-text fonts, pt. 36: Gill Sans

A sans-serif typeface – rare in this series.

Designed by the wicked Eric Gill. Practically synonymous with Britain.

I don’t care for the regular weight, actually, but the lighter weight is very nice in certain settings, e.g. in this remarkable Lego-builders’ book that Samuel borrowed from the library. (I refer to the body text, not the heading.)

I made the caption easier to read:

(Echoes of Ian Fleming’s prose.)

Gill Sans Nova is a nice compromise, weight-wise.

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Ada and George, my little niece and nephew, visited today. They were eager to see their cousins but couldn’t keep their names straight.

Ada drew this card-brandishing soccer referee. Notice the microphone wrapped around his or her cheek.

February’s poems

Happy St. Valentine’s Day. Samuel and Daniel are with grandparents. Karin & I – accompanied by sleeping Abel – romantically gorged at the local diner (I ordered Mexican food and pancakes). We knew it’d be a quiet venue; there were just a handful of couples. But all races and persuasions were represented, including people with MAGA hats.

Afterward, I remarked to Karin how nicely everyone got along. “They all ignored each other,” she said.

Then I realized, not everyone shares my idea of “getting along.”

Back at home, we read love poems to each other.

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“Forget-Me-Not,” by William McGonagall:

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A gallant knight and his betroth’d bride,

Were walking one day by a river side,

They talk’d of love, and they talk’d of war,

And how very foolish lovers are.

At length the bride to the knight did say,

“There have been many young ladies led astray

By believing in all their lovers said,

And you are false to me I am afraid.”

“No, Ellen, I was never false to thee,

I never gave thee cause to doubt me;

I have always lov’d thee and do still,

And no other woman your place shall fill.”

“Dear Edwin, it may be true, but I am in doubt,

But there’s some beautiful flowers here about,

Growing on the other side of the river,

But how to get one, I cannot discover.”

“Dear Ellen, they seem beautiful indeed,

But of them, dear, take no heed;

Because they are on the other side,

Besides, the river is deep and wide.”

“Dear Edwin, as I doubt your love to be untrue,

I ask one favour now from you:

Go! fetch me a flower from across the river,

Which will prove you love me more than ever.”

“Dear Ellen! I will try and fetch you a flower

If it lies within my power

To prove that I am true to you,

And what more can your Edwin do?”

So he leap’d into the river wide,

And swam across to the other side,

To fetch a flower for his young bride,

Who watched him eagerly on the other side.

So he pluck’d a flower right merrily

Which seemed to fill his heart with glee,

That it would please his lovely bride;

But, alas! he never got to the other side.

For when he tried to swim across,

All power of his body he did loss,

But before he sank in the river wide,

He flung the flowers to his lovely bride.

And he cried, “Oh, heaven! hard is my lot,

My dearest Ellen! Forget me not:

For I was ever true to you,

My dearest Ellen! I bid thee adieu!”

Then she wrung her hands in wild despair,

Until her cries did rend the air;

And she cried, “Edwin, dear, hard is out lot,

But I’ll name this flower Forget-me-not.

“And I’ll remember thee while I live,

And to no other man my hand I’ll give,

And I will place my affection on this little flower,

And it will solace me in a lonely hour.”

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“May Colvin,” from The Oxford Book of Ballads (ed. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch):

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False Sir John a-wooing came

To a maid of beauty fair;

May Colvin was this lady’s name,

Her father’s only heir.

He woo’d her but, he woo’d her ben [Editor’s note: both in the outer and inner rooms],

He woo’d her in the ha’;

Until he got the lady’s consent

To mount and ride awa’.

“Go fetch me some of your father’s gold,

And some of your mother’s fee,

And I’ll carry you into the north land,

And there I’ll marry thee.”

She’s gane to her father’s coffers

Where all his money lay,

And she’s taken the red, and she’s left the white,

And so lightly she’s tripp’d away.

She’s gane to her father’s stable

Where all the steeds did stand,

And she’s taken the best, and she’s left the warst

That was in her father’s land.

She’s mounted on a milk-white steed,

And he on a dapple-grey,

And on they rade to a lonesome part,

A rock beside the sea.

“Loup [leap] off the steed,” says false Sir John,

“Your bridal bed you see;

Seven ladies I have drownèd here,

And the eight’ one you shall be.

“Cast off, cast off your silks so fine

And lay them on a stone,

For they are too fine and costly

To rot in the salt sea foam.

“Cast off, cast off your silken stays,

For and your broider’d shoon,

For they are too fine and costly

To rot in the salt sea foam.

“Cast off, cast off your Holland smock

That’s border’d with the lawn,

For it is too fine and costly

To rot in the salt sea foam,” –

“O turn about, thou false Sir John,

And look to the leaf o’ the tree;

For it never became a gentleman

A naked woman to see.”

He turn’d himself straight round about

To look to the leaf o’ the tree;

She’s twined her arms about his waist

And thrown him into the sea.

“O hold a grip o’ me, May Colvin,

For fear that I should drown;

I’ll take you home to your father’s bower

And safe I’ll set you down.”

“No help, no help, thou false Sir John,

No help, no pity thee!

For you lie not in a caulder bed

Than you thought to lay me.”

She mounted on her milk-white steed,

And led the dapple-grey,

And she rode till she reach’d her father’s gate,

At the breakin’ o’ the day.

Up then spake the pretty parrot,

“May Colvin, where have you been?

What has become o’ false Sir John

That went with you yestreen?” –

“O hold your tongue, my pretty parrot!

Nor tell no tales o’ me;

Your cage shall be made o’ the beaten gold

And the spokes o’ ivorie.”

Up then spake her father dear,

In the bed-chamber where he lay:

“What ails the pretty parrot,

That prattles so long ere day?” –

“There came a cat to my cage, master,

I thought ’t would have worried me;

And I was calling to May Colvin

To take the cat from me.”

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Sir Walter Scott

I’ve finished reading the “Little House” books and begun Caroline Fraser’s celebrated Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

This quotation is from LIW’s First Four Years – a posthumous publication, much sadder than the other books. (The quotation isn’t sad.)

In December Laura felt again the familiar sickness.

(Nicely put.)

The house felt close and hot and she was miserable. But the others must be kept warm and fed. The work must go on and she was the one who must do it.

On a day when she was particularly blue and unhappy, the neighbor to the west, a bachelor living alone, stopped as he was driving by and brought a partly filled grain sack to the house, and taking the sack by the bottom, poured the contents out on the floor. It was a paper-backed set of Waverley novels.

“Thought they might amuse you,” he said. “Don’t be in a hurry! Take your time reading them.” And as Laura exclaimed in delight, Mr. Sheldon opened the door, closed it behind him quickly, and was gone. And now the four walls of the close, overheated house opened wide, and Laura wandered with brave knights and ladies fair beside the lakes and streams of Scotland or in castles and towers, in noble halls or lady’s bower, all through the enchanting pages of Sir Walter Scott’s novels.

She forgot to feel ill at the sight or smell of food, in her hurry to be done with the cooking and follow her thoughts back into the book. When the books were all read and Laura came back to reality, she found herself feeling much better.

It was a long way from the scenes of Scott’s glamorous old tales to the little house on the bleak, wintry prairie, but Laura brought back from them some of their magic and music and the rest of the winter passed quite comfortably.

The drawing is by Robert Scott Moncrieff.

USPS tracking

Alert: Winter storms in the Midwest through the Northeast U.S. and the professional football championship game in New Orleans may delay final delivery of your mail and packages.

No kidding. Behold the shipping history of the package I ordered three weeks ago:

Mishawaka
Mishawaka
Mishawaka
Indianapolis
Indianapolis
“In transit”
“In transit” (1.5 weeks later)
South Bend 😀
Indianapolis 😑
Indianapolis

(Indianapolis is 2–2.5 hrs. from Mishawaka and South Bend, which are across the street from each other.)

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Tonight’s Super Bowl’ll be shown on Fox – and, for the first time, on Tubi, which appears to be struggling to handle the increase in viewership. I can’t access my queue or viewing history on the app. I keep putting on Tom & Jerry, for Daniel, but when I go away it switches to Dances with Wolves. Daniel has given up and fallen asleep.

I, too, slept through most of that movie when I saw it twenty-five years ago. I can only suspend judgment as to its quality.

I’m impressed with Mary McDonnell’s hair.

Also, I’m reminded of this amusing error on Facebook (it’s surely due to A.I.).

A story

“Of the Coming of John”: the only fictional chapter in Du Bois’s Souls of Black Folk, the book that my reading group discussed tonight.

There are similarities to Twain’s Puddin’head Wilson. What this means, I’m not sure.

I’m too tired to say more.

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Update (7 Feb): Good morning! Last night, I left the blogging until the last minute, and fell asleep.

’Tis the season! I bought Karin some roses. A week early, yes. But the opportunity presented itself, and I thought that this year I wouldn’t leave things until the deadline.

There was a table at the supermarket with bouquets and cute little buckets. I chose a bucket with roses because I knew those flowers wouldn’t poison the cats. I brought it home.

Uh, that’s a bush, for planting, said Karin.

Trouble is, we’d agreed to uproot an existing rosebush from our yard.

Could you have it on your desk, at work?, I asked.

Not enough sun.

The moral is, what matters isn’t to be early but to put thought into your gesture! It’s the thought that counts! (A corollary is, the supermarket pretends to be helpful by putting these displays near the checkout area, but it isn’t! It’s just rushing you! Beware!)

The Gulf of America, pt. 2

For the text of the executive order, click here.

Renaming the Gulf has one thing going for it, historian Greg Grandin comments.

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Re: oil spillage. This afternoon, while I was bottle-feeding Abel, Daniel got his mitts on our sesame oil. Let’s just say that the kitchen, hallway, and bathroom smell delicious now.

Actually, Daniel and Samuel were pretty good today. I’d worried because it was Karin’s first day back at work – my first full day alone with all three boys.

Daniel took a turn bottle-feeding Abel. He kept getting him to smile.

Abel has dimples.

Update: Samuel and Daniel both poured out the sesame oil. Samuel confessed.

They poured much of it onto Karin’s potted mint plant. That poor thing is subjected to unimaginable abuse. Yet it survives.