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A couple months back, I dreamed I went to my high school prom. This was rather amazing because I never attended any school dance in my life. The one year I actually had a girlfriend, it turned out that she did not go to dances for religion reasons. She said I could go with someone else if I wanted to. But she said it in that “girlfriend voice” that hinted, “Sure, you can go with someone else but don’t even think of giving me a call afterward if you do.” I opted not to go. So imagine my surprise to find myself dreaming about being at the prom. The gymnasium was decorated and beautiful. The lights were low. The disco ball was turning. Everyone was there in their finest 1970s fashions. The band played all the required dance tunes of the decade: “Stairway To Heaven” and “Freebird” and “Show Me The Way” and “Sweet Talkin’ Woman.” I was having a really amazing time. My date was having a fun time. We laughed. We joked. We slow danced. We discoed. We sat at the table and chatted and laughed. We drank punch. It was really a LOT of fun. And I remember thinking that I was really dumb back then. I SHOULD have gone to the prom. Then they announced the winners for Homecoming Queen and King. And as we all stood and applauded, and as the happy couple took the stage (she in her stunning pink dress and he with his blonde shoulder length locks) I suddenly realized in petrified horror: “Damn, I’m not at my high school prom. I’m in CARRIE!” Without looking back, I grabbed my date’s hand and led her straight out the nearest exit door. The first screams of horror were just starting to sound as the doors swung shut behind us.
And then I woke myself up. Can’t wait for the remake in October!
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Weary Sloth
Last Thursday, I was literally sitting down to write today’s blog when I read the news that Karen Black had died. Once the shock wore off, my initial thoughts were: --Sadness. For me, Karen was one of the major stars of the 1970s. She may not have always played the lead in her films but, for me, she always stood out and raised the level of every film she was in. Her early roles in YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW (1967) and EASY RIDER (1969) personified the feelings of the age and the young people looking to make some noise and shake things up. I feel like another part of my youth just died. Other thoughts: --Some day I finally need to watch FIVE EASY PIECES (1970). Karen’s breakthrough role and the only one she received an Oscar nomination for. Very sad because she deserved at least three more noms, if not wins. --She was the only good thing in AIRPORT 1975 (1974). She played a stewardess who finds herself flying a 747 after the crew is killed in a mid-air collision. An outlandish situation in an over the top film (most of AIRPLANE’s satire was making fun of this movie) and yet Black made her character believable and relatable. “Salt Lake…This is Columbia 409!...Something hit us! All the flight crew is dead or badly injured! There's no one left to fly the plane! Help us! Oh my God, help us!” -- TRILOGY OF TERROR (1975) When I was a teenager, this TV movie with its rampaging doll scared the hell out of all of us and was the source of many a nightmare. Karen played four roles in it, each one different and amazing. Still creepy today. --NASHVILLE (1975) Amdst its all-star cast, I remember being blown away by the actress playing country singer Connie White, especially her amazing singing voice. It wasn’t until I saw the end credits that I realized it was Karen Black. -- BURNT OFFERINGS (1976) She personally scared the SH*T out of me in in this film. I STILL have nightmares about the ending. “I've been waiting for you, Ben!” --FAMILY PLOT (1976) She got to star in Alfred Hitchcock’s final movie. How lucky is that? Her co-star was the amazing Bruce Dern who will probably win a long overdue Oscar this year for NEBRASKA (2013). --THE GREAT GATSBY (1974) Sorry Isla Fisher and Shelley Winters. For me, Karen will always be the perfect Myrtle Wilson. However you feel about the Robert Redford version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic, pretty much everyone agreed that Karen was the best thing in it. She deservedly won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress then was not even nominated for the Oscar. I still don’t understand it. She should have won, hands down. --She was 74??????? For me, Karen was forever young, ever the embodiment of LIFE in all of its explosive, eternal glory. There was always so much life running through her and her characters it made me believe her life force would be impossible to extinguish. And now she is gone. Of course, it hasn’t been extinguished. It has merely passed on from earth to the ephemeral where it will live forever. Forever in our hearts, and forever in the movies. Godspeed, Karen. Her beautiful monologue from THE GREAT GATSBY (1974). Worth an Oscar nomination for this scene alone. Like Nick (Sam Waterston), each time I see her, I am entranced all over again. Watch this scene from SIGNS (2002). What type of person are you? Can you guess what type of person am I?
Every morning I wake up, stagger out of bed, and log into email. I do that even before I have a cup of coffee in my hand. And every morning, I find that my inbox has been infested overnight again by spam. No, not the tasty “meat” manufactured by Hormel for years (and a favorite of GI’s in World War II). This is 21st century spam also known as junk email: messages promising the moon and the stars and the clovers for just one simple click on their link. Never mind that the link’s URL contains abbreviations for countries like Rumania or Nigeria or Jamaica, man. Stop thinking, Richard! The sky is the limit and my ship has come in! I’ve been approved for loans that I didn’t apply for. I have won overseas lotteries that I did not enter. Russian and Asian women I have not met can’t wait to see me again. A simple click of the “Delete All” button and all that good fortune is gone, thrown in the trash until tomorrow morning when my inbox will be full of it again. It is a never-ending cycle that we have come to accept in today’s cyber world but I wonder if we have ever taken a moment to think about all the spam still rolling around the inbox of our minds. You know, all those useless moments and songs and facts that we have picked up through the years and somehow retained even when we don’t want to. They come in all shapes and sizes. There are TV commercials from my youth. Let’s see if any of them ring a bell for you (click on the link for the answer): “Mamma Mia, that is a spicy meatball!” “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature!” “Tastes like wild hickory nuts.” I’m particularly troubled that I’ve hung onto this Levi’s jingle from the early 1970s: “Good morning, world! Good morning to you hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo. I’m a wearing my Le-he-he-he-he-he-vi’s!” (I can do the whole song upon request). Or this Wyler drink commercial from 1970: Or “I’m a Pepper. She’s a Pepper. He’s a Pepper. We’re a Pepper. Wouldn’t you like to be a Pepper too?” (Dr. Pepper) Tell me truthfully, can’t you recite the entire theme song to the following TV shows: The Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan’s Island, Green Acres, or Petticoat Junction? Others of you can sing along to the closing tunes for The Lawrence Welk Show or Hee Haw. It makes me wonder why we just don’t have a “Delete All” button on the side of our heads. Pop songs linger on in my head long after we’ve ceased hearing them on the radio. That’s not so bad if it is a classic like “Hey Jude” or “Don’t Be Cruel” or “Stardust.” But why in the world is my brain hanging onto “Indiana Wants Me” (“Lord, I can’t go back there”), “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero”, or “Dizzy”? My head is spinning……. And yet there is much that is good about our brains retaining all this spam of daily life. Because if we didn’t retain that stuff then we would not retain other things like: that Christmas when you got that gift you never thought you were going to get. Or the first time your baby looked at you and smiled. Or that night when the person of your dreams said they loved you. Shared memories of past cultural events are also the way we make connections with those of our own generation. Like when I start humming the “T-Berry shuffle”, or start flailing my arms around while shouting, “Warning! Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!” Phrases like that are all part of each generation’s collective past and we use them as verbal shorthand to show others our age that we have share the same path. We have walked the same road. Experienced many of the same highs and lows. It is also the way we hang onto ourselves by remembering all the things that have gone into making us the person we are today. Remember that the next time you open your inbox and stare at all the spam sent to you from halfway around the world. Look how far we’ve come……… THE ORIGINS OF SPAM The Monty Python sketch that started it all. Following along the West Virginia theme from yesterday, today I am sharing my favorite WV author. Mary Lee Settle (1918-2005) is arguably the most acclaimed and yet least known West Virginia writer. Between 1954 and 2007, she published 23 books ranging from fiction to travelogue to memoir. Pearl S. Buck is probably West Virginia’s most famous author but I have always preferred the works of Settle. Though known in literary circles, Settle remains largely unknown by the general public and that is too bad. E.L. Doctorow (another of my all-time favorite authors) once remarked that even though Settle “has had her champions and her honors, she has experienced the peculiar lack of recognition sometimes suffered by strong-willed writers no matter how good or voluminous their work.” I first heard of Mary Lee Settle during my freshman year of college. My family had recently relocated to Michigan and I was missing both West Virginia and my WV friends in a big way. One day, I picked up the latest issue of the New York Times Book Review and there on the front page was Doctorow’s glowing review of Settle’s new novel The Scapegoat (“Mother Jones Had Some Advice”). He described it as a major new work and Doctorow’s opinion was good enough for me. As soon as I could, I drove up to my favorite bookstore, the Creative Bookstore in Clarkston. They only had one copy. I bought it, took it home, and devoured it in two days. I have been a Settle fan ever since and am proud to say that I own everything she wrote (some not so easy to find). Her primary literary opus remains The Beulah Quintet: five novels chronicling succeeding generations of 3 WV families – the Laceys, Catletts, and Neills - from the American Revolution to present day. It started out as The Beulah Trilogy consisting of O Beulah Land (1956), Know Nothing (1960), and Fight Night on a Sweet Saturday (1964). Love that title! But in the 1970s Settle decided to expand the series to encompass the full gamut of West Virginia history. The trilogy became a quintet and now consists of: Prisons (1973) – chronicling the ancestors of the families during the English Civil War and how they were forced to flee England for America. O Beulah Land (1956) – finds the first generations of the families arriving in western Virginia during the Revolutionary War. Know Nothing (1960) – Three generations later, the family descendants wrestle with the American Civil War while West Virginia breaks away from the South and becomes its own state. The Scapegoat (1980) – Chronicles the brutal mining wars of 1912. The United Mine Workers under the didactic arm of Mother Jones began to organize the WV coal mines and the owners fought back. The Killing Ground (1982) – an expanded version of Fight Night on a Sweet Saturday finds the present day family members dealing with unresolved issues from the past. Besides the Quintet, Settle authored a series of novels set in Canona (a fictionalized Charleston) revolving around three couples and their changing marriages. They are The Love-Eaters (1954), The Kiss of Kin (1955), The Clam Shell (1971), and Charley Bland (1989). Some of the characters also appear in The Killing Ground. Settle’s series of memoirs should be required reading for aspiring writers. Addie (1998) chronicles her childhood and the grandmother who raised her. All the Brave Promises (1966) covers her World War II service while the posthumous Learning To Fly (2007) details her adult life and writing career. Other Major Works: The Scopes Trial (1972) remains the best retelling of that pivotal American episode. Blood Tie (1977) is her National Book Award winner about American expatriates living in Turkey (Settle exiled herself there after Richard Nixon became president). Her writing style is intense, almost stream of consciousness, as she gets inside the heads of her characters. It is the closest thing to William Faulkner that I can think of. Doctorow rightly pointed out: “Miss Settle's large ambition, her sense of scale, her capacity to take in the whole of life, from the specific feeling of a moment to the vast historic forces in social conflict, are her great gift. The sense of the individual as a member of a family and as a political being in history is hers without question.” Mary Lee Settle remains a hidden gem of American literature just waiting to be discovered. Better than anyone else, she captured the essence of the West Virginia character; the sad and often tragic history of the Mountain State; and the evolving nature of what it meant to be a woman in 20th century America. To understand all of these is to understand what it means to be an American. Hello, Everybody. Sorry for the lack of updates in July. I spent a week accompanying our church’s youth group to one of my hometowns: Charleston, West Virginia. Then another week shuttling my son back and forth to film camp. And then the week after that catching up from being gone the previous two weeks. Which means it is time to get back on the horse and update the blog! As you could tell from the West Virginia-themed clips I left up while away, I was off visiting the state where I spent most of my childhood. This was only my second time back in Charleston since graduating from high school in 1980. I am a proud graduate of George Washington High School, a distinction I share with Jennifer Garner and thousands of others. (No, I don’t know Jennifer. She graduated ten years after me. Though based on her GW reminiscences, we had several of the same teachers). Though I was born in Indiana, I have to admit that my Hoosier roots don’t run very deep. My family moved out of the state when I was three and I never returned except to visit relatives. Most of my Hoosier empathy gets conjured by the Indianapolis 500 and, yes, I do blink back a tear when I hear Jim Nabors’ sing “Back Home Again In Indiana” every year. But truthfully I am more Mountaineer than Hoosier. I lived in West Virginia from age 6 to age 17. I grew from a small boy to a young man while living in the Mountain State. It is where I went to school. It is where I made my first friends. It is where I experience my first love. It is where I started writing. It is where I had all those formative experiences that made me who I am today. For the first six years, I lived in WV’s northern panhandle in the town of Weirton which used to be part of the industrial backbone of America. The steel mill was the heartbeat of the town. If you didn’t work at the mill, you worked at something that supported the mill. The furnaces ran 24/7 giving the town its distinctive look and smell. My cousins still remember us showing them piles of spent coke still glowing in the night. Weirton would not be a town that readily came to mind as a movie location but it certainly has been immortalized in several great American films. It was one of the towns that made up Clairton, Pennsylvania in the Oscar-winning THE DEER HUNTER (1978). It was the setting for RECKLESS (1984) starring Aiden Quinn and Darryl Hannah. Most recently, it masqueraded as Lillian, Ohio in SUPER 8 (2011). The school the kids attend in that film is my old Marland Heights elementary school. It is like watching my childhood come back to life. For my teen years, we moved to the state capital of Charleston. If northern WV was all about steel, southern West Virginia is all about coal and chemicals. Union Carbide operated the plants in nearby Dunbar and Nitro and South Charleston. And coal mines drove the countryside economy. I learned to drive in Charleston. I drank my first beer there (no moonshine for me). My first date, my first kiss, and my first broken heart all happened in Charleston. Being back in the state this month was like being back home. My only regret is that I could not stay longer than I did. Some basic West Virginia facts: The state sport is football. The state cathedral is Mountaineer Stadium. The state recreation is hunting. The first battle of the American Revolution happened in Point Pleasant (maybe). John Brown’s 1859 raid on Harper’s Ferry helped ignite the War Between the States two years later. The first land battle of the Civil War happened in Philippi. Northerners think the state belongs in the south. Southerners believe it belongs in the north. Easterners believe it belongs in the west. Westerners think it is part of the east. West Virginians like it this way because they prefer to belong to nobody but themselves. Their roots run deep into the heart of the Appalachians. Family is important above all. It is the state that gave us Jerry West and Pearl S. Buck, Brad Paisley and Mother’s Day. But it is also the state that gave us Mothman and the Hatfields and McCoys.
Quite simply, if you want to understand America, you have to understand West Virginia. The state is a part of me and I am a part of it. And I am more than happy to feel its Appalachian heritage coursing through my veins each time I write. Sorry for the lack of updates this week. I got felled by a summer cold. And now I am stepping away for a week to tackle a necessary project. But will be back with updates and lots of other stuff on July 22. In the meantime......here are two favorite movie moments from one of my home states: West Virginia. The Night of the Hunter (1955) Orphans John and Pearl flee their murderous stepfather (Robert Mitchum) by taking a boat down the Ohio River. One of the loveliest and scariest movies I know based on the novel by West Virginia writer Davis Grubb. Fool's Parade (1971) Mattie Appleyard (James Stewart) gets paroled from the Moundsville, WV penitentiary but no one will cash his check for $25,000 he's earned for 35 years of labor in prison. Appleyard decides to take matters into his own hands (I do not recommend this method!). Also based on a novel by West Virginia's Davis Grubb. More questions from my faithful readers are the subject of Tuesday Questions. Here we go! Lisa asks: Do you have any favorite drive in movie memories? Not too many. I’ve been to the drive in less than a handful of times in my life. I mostly remember them for being hot and sticky affairs (get your minds out of the gutter, people!!!!). It was usually summertime, the car’s A/C was off, and it quickly became hot and humid inside. I should also say that I never went on a date to a drive in movie. My opinion might be different in that case. Probably my favorite drive in experience was my first. In 1972, my family went to a drive in triple feature: SNOOPY, COME HOME (1972), LE MANS (1971) with Steve McQueen, and BIG JAKE (1971) with John Wayne. BIG JAKE was the first PG movie I ever saw. I also remember that the only people who stayed awake for the whole thing were my dad and myself. I don’t know what time we got home but it was LATE. John asks:
Do you think the demise of the classic old studio system (think the 30's, 40's and 50's) resulted in better films, worse films or neither? Thanks, John! Like all things, I think there were good and bad results when the studio system went under. In general, I think it resulted in better films, especially in the 1950’s, 1960’s, and 1970’s. Filmmakers were freed to explore subjects they would not have been able to under the old studio system. They pushed the boundaries and broke away from the old Production Code which meant movies seemed more like real life. Also, actors and directors started getting paid what they were truly worth. So overall I would say they were better films. The downside was that it made it more expensive to make movies. Rather than having all your resources in house at the studio, producers had to go out and assemble their crews and casts on a film-by-film basis. Once corporations started reinserting themselves into the creative process in the early 1980s, the variety and types of films began decreasing. Today, I think the range of subject matter is worse than in the studio days. Back then, a studio consciously tried to make films in all genres aimed at all segments of the audience. Now, the studios aim everything at the most reliable audience demographic going the movies: young males aged 15-25. I miss the days when CHINATOWN and THE LAST PICTURE SHOW were summer releases. Pat writes: It may not be the film with his best acting, but my all-time favorite John Wayne movie is "McLintock". I have lost track of how many times I have seen it but it never fails to make me laugh out loud each & every time. And what a cast it had... too many to mention. It's a film still watching. Thanks, Pat! I agree. I watched MCLINTOCK (1963) a lot when I was a boy but have not watched it in probably 40 years. Barely remember it now except that Wayne falling down the stairs was a running gag. I’ll have to check it out again soon. Do you have a question????? Please send it in!!!!!! I have wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. Here is one of the reasons why: Back in 2001 when my mother was dying of lung cancer, I traveled down to her home in Florida to chat and start sorting things out and making sure things were in order (she subsequently passed away in 2002). Mom has lived alone since she and Dad divorced back in the 1980s. On my last day there, Mom and I spent the morning talking about what I was supposed to do with everything once she was gone. I was the executor of her will so she wanted me to be sure to know where "all the bodies are buried." She pulled out boxes that she had carefully prepared for each of us children. There are three of us in my family: my oldest sister Pat, middle sister Pam, and me, baby Richard. Each box contained old mementoes and memories from our childhood. Stuff that each of us had cast aside years ago as insignificant yet Mom had somehow kept and was now giving back to us. Imagine suddenly being confronted with almost every homework assignment you’d ever done or every card or present you’d ever given your mother. That’s what was in these boxes. I open up my box to see what it could possibly hold. The envelope on top grabs my attention right away. I recognize it because I'd been thinking about that very same envelope for decades and wondering where it could be. The day after I left on this trip was my young son Ben's first picture day at his elementary school. When I'd left home, he had infections in both of his ears and my wife Betsy was driving him to the doctor but Ben was bound and determined that, no matter how he felt, he was going to be at his first school picture day the next morning. Ben was in Young 5's then (the 21st century equivalent of our old kindergarten). His eagerness to get his picture immortalized made me recall my own first kindergarten picture day and the class portrait we'd taken at the time. And I knew that was the picture inside the envelope I now held in my hands. I opened the manila envelope and pulled out the baby blue folder. I flipped it open. And there we were: the kindergarten class of Harrington Elementary School, 1967-68. There were all our fresh faces surrounding our teacher Mrs. Seward as we began our first foray into public education and life outside our homes. I located myself at the end of the upper left hand row and smiled to realize there was more than a little Ben in my features (even though I know it was vice versa). I have lots of memories from kindergarten: coloring, show and tell, and the field trip to a local farm to see a young horse that had just been born. The day we had a cookout in the classroom and sat around eating beans and singing cowboy songs like we were out on the range. Staring at that class photo in my hand, I searched for a particular child. I did not remember her name but I remembered her face. And there she was in the lower right hand corner of the photo. She's almost as far away from me as you can get in the class grouping, but I've never forgotten her. To my knowledge, we never had a conversation. I am somewhat surprised to see that she is wearing a red and white checked gingham dress. That was the exact same color and pattern of my favorite stuffed animal Puppy who I spent many a night sleeping with in my childhood (and who still carefully rests in the head board of my present bed). I find the girl's name: Jennie Emmons. Yes, that was her name all right. My family moved away after my kindergarten year so I never saw any of these children again. Yet I never forgot Jennie. A few weeks after this picture was taken, Jennie's mother was in a car accident coming home from the grocery store and Jennie Emmons died. Richard, the wide-eyed little boy in the upper left of the picture, has gone on to experience most of the highs and lows of life. He's had some of his fondest dreams come true and some of them dashed. Jennie Emmons never got out of Kindergarten. As I stared at the photo, I was now an adult with gray hair and a son who himself was now five years old. Jennie Emmons is forever a young five. Jennie Emmons is one of the reasons why I am a writer today. Every day, people wander in and out of our lives. A lot of times they are soon gone for no good reason. But they linger in my mind and often transform into fictional characters and stories that work their way down my arm, out of the tips of my fingers, and onto the page. They are part of how I remember and keep them alive. At heart, these fictional creations have their origin in real life people and places that I have known. And yet I feel the deepest, most profound necessity to put them down on paper and pass them on to you. It has nothing to do with fame. It has nothing to with money. It has everything to do with preserving today and yesterday for those still here and those yet to come. It is a commitment I keep for the Jennie Emmons of the world. Why do YOU write? Please share. Happy Independence Day, everyone! Get out there and water ski and eat hot dogs and light sparklers and watch the fireworks! But only after taking in these two patriotic movies that get to the heart of the American character. A MORE PERFECT UNION (1988) ***stars Commissioned by the U.S. government to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the U.S. constitution, Perfect Union works as an unofficial sequel to 1776. Many of the same historical players from the first movie are back again (Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, John Dickinson, James Wilson). John Adams and Thomas Jefferson are relegated to the edges – they were the USA’s ambassadors to England and France at the time – but in their place we get James Madison (Craig Wasson) and George Washington (Michael McGuire). Both are statesmen who see the United States falling apart and know that only a new form of government can save the country. The movie accurately depicts what a tough job it was to pull all the states together and create this working constitution which has somehow managed to survive into the 21st century. And how the issues debated at the constitutional convention are still getting debated and reinterpreted today. Yes, it is a bit talky but it is a civics lesson all us citizens should watch at least once to better understand who we are as a nation and as a people. The film is a bit hard to find these days but you can watch it on YouTube HERE. TRIVIA: Because it is a government production, the film was shot in the actual Independence Hall where it all originally went down. NASHVILLE (1975) ****stars
Robert Altman’s American kaleidoscope follows 24 characters over the 4th of July holiday in the country music capital of the world. All of them have something to do with the country music industry. They are either stars or they want to be stars or they want to be connected to the stars. Over the course of 3 days, stars rise, stars fall. People meet, people say goodbye. Friendships are formed, relationships fall apart. It all comes to a head at a big political rally at the Nashville Parthenon for never seen third party presidential candidate Hal Phillip Walker. We never see Walker but we do here him on the radio spouting the same meaningless populist phrases that politicians still use today. Though it is almost 40 years old, the movie perfectly captures the wide-ranging American character: our fascination with family and music and celebrity and making money and guns. It is all on display here: the good, the bad, and the ugly. And yet it ends up making you appreciate and love being an American even more despite all our flaws. And it is all set to a collection of original Oscar-winning country songs written by the stars themselves including Keith Carradine's classic "I'm Easy". See it if you love country music. See it if you want to better understand the wide-ranging beauty of what it means to be an American. How the melting pot comes together, doesn’t always work out, but somehow we manage to keep on keeping on. Have a happy and safe 4th of July, everyone! I’ll chat with you on Monday. |
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