Somebody Named Brando

Somebody is the name of another book about Marlon Brando, a title taken from his famous “I could have been a contender…a somebody” speech in the backseat of the taxi in “On the Waterfront.” The author is Stefan Kanfer who has written several books on theater and film. The best know is a biography on Groucho Marx. The publisher thinks it is “the final word” about Brando’s “dazzling highs and such abysmal lows.” That’s quite a claim, and after reading the book, although I did learn a few new things, mostly about lovers not yet outed, male as well as female, there were not that many new insights. But there were some amusing tidbits along the way, like, for example, when he was filling out papers for his draft card on the line marked COLOR he wrote: Seasonal—oyster white and beige. He was well known for cracking wise. Like for example in “The Wild One,” when Mary Murphy says to him, “Johnny what are you rebelling against?” he answers: “Whaddya got?”

His story begins, like it does with all of us, with the parents, with Dodie his alcoholic mother, and Marlon Senior, his traveling salesman father, a drinker, brawler, and philanderer, who put down Marlon Junior every chance he got. It was a dysfunctional family and Marlon never achieved the closeness or approval he sought and needed from his parents, with his two older sisters providing that instead of the mother and father. His name as a kid was Bud, a name that separated him from the father; perhaps it was even a kind of neutral, non-specific identity, as Marlon was for the exclusive possession and use of the bully father. His mother was a sometime actress in local theater in Omaha, Nebraska, but basically she existed in an alcoholic haze, to dull the pain of a bad marriage. Brando Senior, when he did come home, beat his wife and never had anything good to say about Marlon Junior. He kept dumping on him with harmful crap like “You’ll never amount to anything but a bum.” Coming from a father he rarely saw, such comments had to cut deep. His parents did not create for him what some psychologists call “a precious deposit,” a core element of love and self-esteem, something internal and substantial for him to build on, so that he had something positive to work with in order to be a balanced personality that could roll with the punches that life was bound throw his way, while striving toward worthwhile goals. But shinning through that knot of parental abuse and neglect was the innate transcendent talent that quickly became evident when he went to New York City as a young man. He arrived on the scene there looking like God’s gift to women, and Kanfer wrote, “He was like catnip to dozens of women,” and he did his best to have sex with as many of them as possible. Meanwhile, he was a sensation in a bad play called “Truckline Café,” and from that he went to “Streetcar Named Desire,” by Tennessee Williams, playing the brute, Stanley Kowalski, with his thrilling performance causing volcanic reactions among the theater crowd; that in turn led to a movie of the play that established his reputation once and for all. He repeated the role in his second movie in Hollywood, with Elia Kazan once again the director.

Stella Adler had been his teacher when he arrived in New York. She was a passionate advocate of what came to be called “Method Acting.” His mastery of this mode of acting made him into the role model of his generation. It was a method of internalizing character, becoming the character, and then emoting from that inner center, out of your own inner resources. He followed “Streetcar Named Desire” with another powerful role, as ex-boxer and longshoreman Terry Malloy in “On the Waterfront,” a story of corruption and the lone individual standing up to it. It was his fifth movie and it was another electrifying performance that set the world on fire. He won an Academy Award as Best Actor. No other performer had gone from stage to screen with such dramatic results in such a short period of time. Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Jimmy Dean, and Robert DiNero, all looked to Marlon Brando for guidance and example. They measured themselves against his innovation and brilliance.

But from 1955 to 1970 the quality of the movies dipped a bit and his attitude about acting dipped as well. A few were interesting (“Reflections in a Golden Eye,” “The Fugitive Kind,” “Mutiny on the Bounty”) but fell short of the dynamism and coherence of two early masterpieces. Some others were stinkers (“Bedtime Story,” “The Countess from Hong Kong,” and “The Night of the Following Day.”) Some were not worthy of his talent, and as a consequence there was an erosion of his interest in the craft of acting. He began to echo his father’s attitude, disparaging the profession as not a serious endeavor. He got involved with civil rights and Native American issues, while his love life became more complicated, as he married a couple of times, both times to exotic women while still bedding as many women as he could. Children began arriving and he ended up with 9 at home in the L.A. Hills.

But then in the early seventies along came the role of Don Corleone, the Godfather, a character created by a novelist but brought to vivid life by Brando in cahoots with Francis Ford Coppola in a film to rival Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane,” the picture that before “The Godfather” always claimed the top spot as the best all-time American film. Brando’s extraordinary performance has contributed greatly to the film’s reputation. Talent and character came together as if it was destiny. In the opening scene Brando on a whim picked up a cat on the set and sat tenderly playing with it, in a spontaneous and off-hand manner, while conducting business as crime boss. Fondling the cat was not in the script, but it made a small miracle out of the scene. I can also recall that scene where he crinkles his forehead in crushing grief as he stands over Sonny’s dead body. That went beyond mere technique to feel with that depth. There were other innovations and ad-libs that Coppola had no trouble including. After the film’s great success he was back on top and could from that point on charge outlandish amounts of money for his services.

(Dear Reader: I have just decided to write this review of Somebody in two parts, something I have done twice before. But before I stop this first part I must include a personal note. I was a senior in high school when “The Wild One” was released and several buddies and I were so impressed with Brando’s rebellious image and performance in the movie we came to school dressed in leather jackets or with white t-shirts with BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB written on the back, which was the name of the biker gang that Johnny (Brando) led. The school I was attending, a strict catholic institution, booted us all out of school for a week. But it was era even more conservative than today, and rebellion was in the air, at least for a certain kind of student.)

Cross Mandala

The Visitor and The Lazarus Project

Years ago there was a movie named “Marty” that turned an actor who had always played the heavy into an Oscar winner. That would be Ernest Borgnine and the year was 1955. Marty was Joe Blow, an unattractive butcher from Brooklyn living with his mother with no prospects of an interesting life, still less for a good marriage. Borgnine made the ugly butcher a character to be remembered; it was the star performance of his long career. I thought of “Marty” when I saw “The Visitor,” which similarly seems to be elevating another character actor, Richard Jenkins, to a new level of performance, indeed, several film critics have put him on their list for a Best Actor Award. I was familiar with Jenkins largely through HBO’s series “Six Feet Under,” in which he played the father of the oddball family that ran a California Funeral Home, although I know I have seen him in a slew of movies as a secondary character. “The Visitor” is sleeper of a movie, and so is Jenkins performance as a widowed professor, Walter Vale, who has lost his zest for life. Who knew Jenkins had it in him? I suspect the writer and director, Thomas McCarthy deserves a lot of credit for, first of all, having the confidence in him as an actor, and secondly, he probably helped coax him along as director. Walter is a man who has lost his way and goes through the motions of his academic career at a Connecticut college, but his heart and soul are no longer in it. Clinically speaking, you’d say he was depressed. But them he meets some squatters who have been living in an apartment he maintains in New York City. It is man named Tarek from Syria, a musician, and his girl friend, Zainab from Senegal. They are both illegal aliens and have limited options, so, feeling sorry for their plight, he lets them stay in his apartment. They become friends and then Tarek, as a gesture of appreciation, teaches the professor to play the African drums, which he eventually becomes proficient at, good enough to play with street musicians in the Central Park. But then there is trouble with Immigration authorities, with the Syrian being arrested. The multicultural context increases when the Tarek’s mother arrives from Detroit and she stays with the professor. They become close and have a quite touching relationship. In any event, the three foreigners help the stifled professor crawl out of his withered state, and his transformation into an active and expressive member of the human race is a joy to watch happen.

“The Lazarus Project” is, so to speak, Dead Man Walking, or maybe not. It stars Paul Walker, from “Fast and Furious” fame, a lean, handsome young man who is Ben Garvey, an ex-con with a family and a good job at a brewery. His criminal past is behind him and things are looking up. But then his employers find out about his past and dismiss him, which encourages him to make another bad decision. His brother shows up and talks him into a sure bet of a robbery, which of course goes haywire, and his brother and a guard are killed. In Texas any participant in a capital crime can be executed, as if they pulled the trigger. We see Ben pin down on a gurney, which is shaped like a cross, receiving the death-dealing chemicals. And like Christ he seems to be reborn, for in the very next scene we see Ben walking down a country road in a rainstorm. He is on his way to a job as groundskeeper at a Psychiatric Hospital in the boonies. A priest driving a old truck picks him up; he turns out to be the man in charge where he is going to work. Ben doesn’t know why he is there and how he got there; and he is tormented by memories of being on the gurney and of his longing for his wife and little girl. Strange things begin to happen. When he tries to leave a ‘Guardian Angel’ shows up to persuade him to stay because “death is looking for you out there.” He has dealings with two inmates and a woman who works there, and he has persistent feelings that he is being watched. Being troubled and confused, the priest tells him his family is dead and he caused their death by smoking in bed, and at the heart of his trauma is guilt. He doesn’t believe it but can’t prove it. The plot is a maze of deception and misdirection; much is never explained. At the center of the plot is a wrongheaded experiment that is one man’s idea of what rehabilitation means. There are gaps in the story and the ending is much too soft, but there is enough mystery to keep you wondering what was going to happen next.

Corruption Crime Spree

OJ Simpson and Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois are men of prodigious self-delusion. Their grip on reality really must be question. One wonders if celebrity status has a corrosive effect on people suffering from ego inflation and prone to mental imbalance. Fame can push such people over the edge. Both men are poster boys for the ill effects of narcissism.

OJ, for example: It never seemed to occur to him that breaking into that Vegas hotel room with a couple of guys with guns was an unlawful act, as hard as that is to believe. To him it was simply a matter of “getting my stuff back.” The guns were incidental to the valid purpose of the group action. His overriding focus blurred the importance of the weapons, and this misjudgment would cost him dearly at trial. As for Governor Blagojevich, his stupidity was embedded in narcissism too, with self-centeredness, vanity, and a bravado that ignored the questionable nature of what he was doing, which to him was no more than business as usual in Illinois, where apparently the line between politics and crime can become confused for certain high officials. (Three of the last six Illinois governors have served time in prison.)

Patrick Fitzgerald, the same prosecutor that nailed Scooter Libby a few years ago, brought the basic facts of the case against Blagojevich to the public’s attention Tuesday morning, December 9. The FBI investigation of the Democratic Governor’s activity was years old but intensified 8 weeks ago when the team got the okay from a judge to tap Blagojevich’s phones, and they then decided they had to go public now to prevent him from naming a replacement for Barack Obama’s Senate seat. The reason for that was they had discovered via the phone taps that he had put a For Sale sign on the selection process, as according to Illinois law the Governor was the only official to chose the replacement. On the phone he had called it, “a (bleeping) golden opportunity” to make some big bucks. “I’m sure not giving it away for nothing.” But this was only the glamour crime in his bag of misdeeds. In what Fitzgerald characterized as a “Corruption crime spree” he accused the Governor of shakedowns, kickback, bribes, mail fraud, solicitations and corruption. He tried to strong arm the Tribune Company for writing critical things about him and he withheld $8 million for a children’s hospital until they contributed $50,000 to his campaign. Along the way he even called Obama a “motherfucker,” which I am sure the president elect was glad to hear, as he has distanced himself from the Governor for a number of years. Fitzgerald also made it clear that Obama‘s name never came up during their investigation and his name does not appear in the 76 page Criminal Complaint filed against the Governor. However, the Huffington Post yesterday said that Rahm Emanuel was the Chicago politician who replaced Blagojevich in the House of Representatives when he became the Governor. They also reported it was Emanuel who fingered the Governor, a claim that so far has not been corroborated. Other commentaries through the day Tuesday pointed out that there were bound to be some interconnections between the Obama camp and the Governor’s network over the last decade or so. What they were like remains to be seen. In fact, I suspect what we know about Blagojevich so far is the tip of the iceberg.

NEWS BULLETIN: On Wednesday morning Obama called for Rod Blagojevich to resign.

Automagically in Cash

I watched the Hearings in the Senate and the House last week, with the CEOs of the Detroit Three, the UAW President, and other interested parties.

From the beginning of the automaker’s plea for a loan or bailout from the government, which currently is like a huge tit that multiple parties in this crippled nation wish to suckle for their own financial resuscitation, I have found it hard to be sympathetic to the dilemma of the companies who should have seen the handwriting on the wall ages ago. Their desperation is the consequence of their own dereliction of vision. . Management kept on making big vehicles and gas-guzzlers when their competitors in Europe and Asia were building smaller cars with better fuel-efficiency. Those smaller vehicles are going to be the wave of a more sensible driving future. But the Big Three were reluctant to transform themselves and are now paying the price. They are in the soup and they now want to pull us taxpayers in it with them.

Their management seemed to have forgotten the iron law of Capitalism: That states that failure is part of the dynamic of Capitalism and those that fall by the wayside will be replaced by a better idea. It’s called “Creative Destruction.” But, so the argument goes, we should make an exception in this case. Why? Because the Detroit Automakers are more than just a business; they are “Cultural Icons,” and thus loom large over the Industrial History of the Western World. And according to some, they have plenty of juice and innovation left, if only they can get back on their feet and push the makeover process. In addition, if they were to go under it would throw between 3 to 5 million people out of work, not only UAW workers, but also dealers and suppliers. The domino effect would be devastating. It would cut the heart out of our manufacturing base. It’s a strong argument, especially when you consider the nation’s unemployment figures are approaching 7% and 533,000 people lost their jobs in November. Besides, it looks discriminatory to see Congress quickly come to the aid of Wall Street and the its financial crisis, while short-changing a blue-collar industry in Michigan where the unemployment rate is above 10% already. Main Street needs help every bit as much as Wall Street—perhaps more because resources would be lesser and fewer.

In sum, since Bush and Paulson are busy sitting on their hands till they leave town, I am persuaded Congress or the Fed will have to do something, as the above facts are too scary to ignore. I would be in favor of a “bridge loan,” adding $10 or $15 billion to the $25 billion already allocated for the makeover. That would take them to March, at which time the Obama’s Brain Trust will have gotten their bearings in the new government and should be ready to tackle the problem. We just have to cross our fingers that we can make it through 40+ days without a total collapse.

Australia: Walkabout in Dream Time

While you watch “Australia” it is easy to be swept up in its movie magic: The action and energy of the film, the travelogue aspect of the Outback scenery, in the romantic relationships, the mysticism of the Aborigine culture, and the sheer forward momentum of the narrative. But then you drive home and your critical faculties come into play. After dinner you have a different view of the film. You end up thinking, I was wowed by it in the theater, but I feel underwhelmed now. On second thought, there are holes galore in “Australia” when you take a hard look at it; and a lot of borrowings from other films.

First of all, the film starts out as if was going to be a Romantic Comedy dressed as an offbeat Western. Nicole Kidman is Lady Sarah Ashley, a prim, aristocratic British woman who is a caricature of her class. She’s brittle, uppity, herky-jerky in movement, and there’s a comic twang to her accent. Her husband, for some damn reason, has gone to Australia to make a fortune raising beef for the Army. It is 1939 and everyone has some sense that a war is coming. But some local cattle baron named King Carney (Bryan Brown) wants to buy him out for a fraction of what the ranch and cattle are worth, so she decides to fly down under to see if she can settle matters more equitably. When she arrives she’s met by a ruffian named Drover (Hugh Jackman) who is fighting some local blokes, all in fun actually, like John Wayne used to do it. This broad tone is maintained as he drives her to the ranch named “Faraway Downs.” They banter back and forth like Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn in the early part of “The African Queen.” They say they don’t like each other, but we know better. It’s The Incredible Hunk vs. Lady Chatterley. There are a number of ostentatious displays of Jackman’s massive torso, as much for the enjoyment of the audience as for Lady C.

But the light-hearted tone disappears when they reach the ranch, for her husband has been killed and the foreman, who is an agent of King Carney’s, blames an Abo named King George (David Gupilli) who hangs around the ranch because his grandson lives there with his Abo mother. His name is Nallah (Brandon Walters) and he is biracial. (Later we learn the foreman is his father and the killer of Lady Ashley’s husband.) There is a racial element throughout the story involving how the whites feel about the Aborigines. Suddenly, we are in the middle of a serious drama. And in no time at all Kidman drops the playful accent and the silly mannerism she had when she arrived in Australia. She becomes just plain Sarah. She decides to battle King Carney and hires Drover to play John Wayne again, this time the driver of 1500 cattle across god-forsaken country to Darwin, where they can sell the herd to the Army. I thought of both “Red River” and “Lawrence of Arabia” in this longish section of the film. There is a set-piece stampede that is exciting to see and the boy, Nallah, shows some of his magic, which he has inherited from his grandfather. The cattle drive is fraught with incredible difficulties, like crossing a stretch of desert that rivals “God’s anvil” in “Lawrence of Arabia.” One night the Hunk and The Lady find themselves kissing, but it generates little heat. When they make it to Darwin Drover takes the joyous Sarah into a bar for a drink, and just like the scene at the end of “Out of Africa,” this male domain lets her have one because she has proved her mettle on the drive to Darwin. They eventually make love too, which is when we find out this is really a family film. They grope each other in the semi-dark, but it’s a lollipop of a sex scene. The two may be good friends in real life, and have been for years, but they displayed little chemistry in bed. Or perhaps the best part of the scene was cut because the director wanted to keep the film Disney-like.

The last third of the movie deals with the prelude to a surprise attack by the Japanese and its aftermath for the population of Darwin. The bombing scene looks like it was lifted right out of “Pearl Harbor,” with many CGI effects. All three of the major characters get separated and the melodrama of the three of them getting back together—well, the director, Baz Luhrmann, pulls out all the stops, like he was Cecil B. De Mille making one of his extravaganzas. “Somewhere over the Rainbow” unites them and the three, now a family, go back to Faraway Downs to live happily ever after.

Except for one thing. Nallah has to do a ‘Walkabout’ with his grandfather first, and then he can return home a man. Drover and Sarah understand he needs to do this and do not try to stop him.

Finally, I should tell you the movie is two and a half hours long.

Mumbai Massacre

Ten young men armed with AK 47s and grenades, approaching the city of Mumbai by sea and looking like college backpackers, brought the city to a standstill for three days, when a tableau of death and destruction, mayhem and bloodshed, grabbed the attention of the 19 million Indians who live in Mumbai and the rest of the world through television and phone cameras. That of course was what whoever sent them there were seeking, publicity, to scare the hell out a wide range of people, to let them know that “soft targets” were now not only fair game, but preferred targets. The ten broke into pairs and hit several targets in a close cluster of buildings, sometimes killing randomly, mowing down dozens in a railroad station, and other times trying to round up as many Brits and Americans as they could find. They killed 9 people at a Jewish Center, including an American Rabbi and his wife. In another location they killed 53 people. Two Hotels were hit. The Taj Mahal Hotel, a beautiful ornate structure that was built 105 years ago, became the focus of much gunfire and numerous interior fires; it was where the last two terrorists died. At last count there were 190 people who lost their lives and 350 who were wounded. One terrorist was captured alive, a Pakistani, who was a member of a well-known extremist fringe group in Pakistan. All Indians looked toward Pakistan as the source of the attack.

The Pakistan Government spoke up immediately, saying they had nothing to do with the incident; and in a show of good faith they are sending an official to help with the investigation. On the other hand, it is a well-known fact that the Pakistani Intelligence organization has rogue elements in it that could easily be part of the event in Mumbai. The ten zealots called themselves the Deccan Mujahidin, as if they came from the sub-continent of India. Most observers think it was made up to throw authorities off the scent of the real origins of the group. In any case, outside parties, including our government, are concerned about any rise in tension between the two nuclear nations that hardly trust each other.

This well planned and vicious attack on innocent people was a killing spree that graphically and definitively illustrates that Islamic terrorism is a species of blatant and vile nihilism, and whatever religious or political gloss supporters give to it is a thin veneer over a passion to kill, not only infidels, but whoever by chance gets in their sights. Hindu, Muslim, American, British, Catholic or Jew, whoever, they are all fair game; it doesn’t make any difference to the cold-blooded fanatic. Anyone unlike who they see in a mirror is a valid target. The source of their hate and resentment is, broadly speaking, modernity, the world as it is in the West, which is the preferred model for many other countries, including such adversaries as China. The extremists have no matching program to appeal to other aspiring peoples, just a Faith distorted beyond recognition. There is only scattershot violence and a heaping up of bodies for its own sake. Their brand of Islam has become a soulless snuff act from a group of people who have totally lost their bearings.