The Conversation (1974)
“We know that you know, Mr. Caul.”
Favorite Things
Twentieth century television static.
I miss the static, or “snow” that analog televisions displayed in the absence of a signal. The Wikipedia tells me Indonesians call it semut bertengkar, the “war of the ants,” and that it was made up of a mix of “cosmic microwave background radiation, or more localized radio wave noise from nearby electronic devices.”
I liked it because it was what it was: noise. As television evolved, circuits came along to hide the noise behind placid blue screens, and honest noise gave way to a different kind of noise masquerading as signal, a pervasive, inescapable noise that exhausts me. I miss the noise of my youth.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
In 1992, owning a live animal—or the finest imitation thereof—is an emblem of status among those too gene-damaged to flee Earth’s prosperous off-world colonies, where every citizen gets an android slave. The earthbound spend their time empathizing with Wilbur Mercer to prove their humanity while escaped androids attempt to hide among the refuse of humanity, evading bounty hunters like Rick Deckard.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) by Philip K. Dick, relates to the movie Blade Runner (1982) as Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (1962) relates to world history—recognizably the same place populated by similar characters, but seen from an entirely different perspective, informed by different parade of facts.
The Art of Stuart Sutcliffe
“There goes Stuart Sutcliffe. He could have been one of the Beatles.”
dialogue from Backbeat by Iain Softley, Michael Thomas & Stephen Ward
Stuart Sutcliffe (1940–62) accomplished so much in so short a time. Sometimes, the images are stronger than the sounds.
“Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses” by Mark Twain
I have not read as much of Mark Twain’s œuvre as I should, A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR’S COURT when I first dove into Arthurian mythology, THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN in school, “The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg” at the behest of a friend, and others here and there.
But my favorite of Mr. Clemens’s works—thus far, at least—is:
“Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offesnes,” which opens thus:
It seems to me that it was far from right for the Professor of English Literature in Yale, the Professor of English Literature in Columbia, and Wilkie Collins to deliver opinions on Cooper’s literature without having read some of it. It would have been much more decorous to keep silent and let persons talk who have read Cooper.
Cooper’s art has some defects. In one place in ‘Deerslayer,’ and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offences against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.
There are nineteen rules governing literary art in the domain of romantic fiction—some say twenty-two. In Deerslayer Cooper violated eighteen of them. These eighteen require:
1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the Deerslayer tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in the air.
2. They require that the episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it. But as the Deerslayer tale is not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes have no rightful place in the work, since there was nothing for them to develop.
3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in the Deerslayer tale.
4. They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. But this detail also has been overlooked in the Deerslayer tale.
5. They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say. But this requirement has been ignored from the beginning of the Deerslayer tale to the end of it.
You can read the rest here: https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/3172
El club Dumas (1993) by Arturo Pérez-Reverte
Had the trailer featured even one note of Wojciech Kilar’s score or a scintilla of the mood that pervades the film, I could tell you why I went to see The Ninth Gate in early 2000. I went alone, to a pre-noon screening, and I’m pretty sure I drove straight from the theater to Barnes & Noble where I bought the book it was ostensibly based upon.
EL CLUB DUMAS (1993) by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, translated by Sonio Soto is a Favorite. As much as I loved the movie, I was astonished to discover that the screenplay by John Brownjohn & Enrique Urbizu and Roman Polanski had effectively omitted half the story—the better half, in my opinion—dealing with the works of Alexandre Dumas, père, and supplying the title to the novel. Thus began my love for literary mysteries. I’d read Umberto Eco’s IL NOME DELLA ROSA (1980) for a grad school class the next year and Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s LA SOMBRA DEL VIENTO (2001) four years later. And, if I can ever achieve some degree of momentary stability again, I’ll finish my own long-gestating entry in the genre, put off time and again to look after other people’s books.
United Artists Hulen 6
My friend recently told me of a notion he had, perhaps inspired by these Favorites of mine, so today’s Favorite is dedicated to Eric, incorporating his Dodo concept back into mine.
Despite being only five, I know precisely where I was on the morning of 26 May 1983: the parking lot of the United Artists Hulen 6. I’d previously seen E.T. The Extraterrestrial (1982) in that multiplex, and now—thanks to my babysitter’s boyfriend, who camped out for tickets—I was going to see Return of the Jedi (1983) on the second day of its release.
I loved that theater, and saw most of my early movies there until 1988, when I moved away. (I somehow never noticed it became the UA 8 in 1986.) When I came back in ’92, the place was somewhat rundown, but it had become the art house cinema of Fort Worth, TX. Seemingly operated entirely by a staff of octogenarians and boasting the unique tactile experience of a floor stained by so many soft drinks that it took a significant act of will (and leg strength) to walk to your seat, I split my affections between it and its sibling on Bowen Road in Arlington (where worked the much-admired Karl), briefly forsaking them for the glitz of the extravagant new Eastchase location in ’97 before reaffirming my allegiance to my first love with a movie every Monday during the superlatively scheduled fall semester of my sophomore year in college. I remember standing alone in the theater for The Green Mile (1999), the chairs too rickety and uncomfortable for the length of the film in its last week of exhibition.
The Eastchase location is now operated by AMC, the Hulen is a Movie Tavern, and Bowen…is a self-storage place. I wonder what Karl’s up to.
Historical Note: According to the Digital Bits, I’d have seen a 70mm Six-Track Dolby Stereo presentation of Return of the Jedi, which is nice to know.
LaserDisc
LaserDisc was no medium for seventeen-year-old working part-time at Winn-Dixie in Texas. It was too expensive, the software was hard to find, and a 13″ CRT plugged into a free sharp stereo was no way to appreciate its powers.
Nevertheless, I was devoted to the format. The cost forced me to be more selective in what I bought, encouraging an interest in criticism (and get better jobs), the scarcity eventually drove me to online commerce—specifically eBay and Ken Crane’s—and—after replacing my monitor with a 25″ model—I got a job at Best Buy to upgrade the rest of the system. (I met my first love there, but that’s another story.)
Once again, thanks are due to Mr. Rogers, who introduced me to the format in my ninth grade history class—“We’re all Spartacus!”—and also to Charlie, who took the plunge just ahead of me. For a format that never enjoyed the dominance of VHS or DVD, it illustrated just how little the former had to offer and pioneered almost everything the latter would build its reputation upon.
It was a short but passionate affair.
You Can’t Do That on Television (1979–90)
Periodically, people asked what happened to me. Very often, I point at Gigglesnort Hotel (1975–8), but I suspect a lot of the blame could also be attributed to You Can’t Do That on Television (1979–90).
Created by Roger Price, also responsible for The Tomorrow People (1973–9), it partnered with Gigglesnort Hotel and the books of Roald Dahl—and their cinematic adaptions—to ensure I ended up with a black sense of humor and a fatalistic outlook.
Might I have been happier had I been plopped down in front of the Disney Channel all day like my wife? I don’t know…
The Queen Is Dead (1986) by The Smiths
Karl had an array of black audiocassettes in his VW bug, a self-sequenced assemblage of upbeat melancholia that first introduced me to the miserablism of Morrissey, but it didn’t take until I was house sitting in grad school and popped my friend’s copy of The Queen Is Dead (1986) into the tape deck and became properly acquainted with the Smiths (and, tangentially, Alain Delon and Hubert Selby, Jr.).
The entire album is a masterpiece, but “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” could be played on repeat for the rest of my life, and there would be no complaints.