Double Feature: I go to the movies

Believe it or not, I haven't seen a first-run feature film in a theater since 2011, when my Mom and I (still dealing with the loss of my Dad) saw the massively disappointing Bridesmaids. Seriously, we both spent the whole time wondering when it was going to get funny. We needed cheering up, which is why we went to this movie. But I found it crass and unfunny, with an unsympathetic protagonist who's life was one big pity party.

Another thing that has kept me out of theaters is that so much of what Hollywood releases is crap, and even the good ones could usually stand to be 15-20 minutes trimmer. Not to say there haven't been a few I wish I'd caught in theaters - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and JoJo Rabbit immediately spring to mind. But there aren't too many others and over the years low quality, excessive runtime, and the high price of admission eased me out of the habit of seeing movies in theaters. Add to that how quickly they become available on cable and streaming, you have to be quick to catch them on the big screen. Blink and you'll miss. In fact, I first saw Once Upon a Time in Hollywood on an airplane, on the flight back from Bouchercon Dallas in 2019.

It's not like I haven't been in a theater, just not for first run films. So far this year I've seen Casablanca and The Big Lebowski on the big screen thanks to Fathom Events, and will be checking out A Christmas Story in theaters in December. The Brother and I also went to a very cool Twilight Zone screening shortly after returning from the aforementioned Dallas trip. 

So it was a bit of culture shock for me to go to the movie theater not just once, but twice in the past week. But there were two that I just had to see in person, on the big screen.

 

First up: Sound of Freedom. I had discovered Operation Underground Railroad online a couple years ago and have donated ever since. Their work echoes a situation I had heard about in a class at Writers' Police Academy when the instructor mentioned how human trafficking skyrockets during the Super Bowl. Apparently traffickers descend on host cities in droves. The instructor mentioned that rescuing victims is just the beginning, that they need a significant amount of aftercare. You can't just send them home and expect them to pick up where they left off. OUR not only assists in rescue operations, but also provides aftercare.

 

Tim Ballard was an agent with Homeland Security busting lowlife scum for possession of child pornography when a fellow agent pointed out that while nailing consumers was fine, they weren't rescuing the victims themselves. This prompted Ballard to do so, and it began a journey that saw him make a career out of it. 

This film is life-changing. It's terrifying - and not gonna lie, hideously depressing - to realize how easily man's inhumanity to man comes to some people, and not just a few, and not even when children are involved. I couldn't talk after the film ended; I had to go into the restroom to compose myself. Tim Ballard is a rare hero and the world could use many more like him. 

 

Jim Caviezel gives a quietly solid performance as the heroic, driven Ballard, and while all the performances are solid, special props go to child actors Cristal Aparicio and Lucas Avila as the abducted siblings who prompt Ballard's journey. The film does a great job of not showing actual abuse of children, but inferring how they are groomed and abused. It gets the point across without becoming unwatchable. It also, unfortunately, shows how easy it is for these animals to find and take their victims.

 

Sound of Freedom should be required viewing for every man, woman, and child, regardless of political or religious bent. The film also pointed out a couple of horrifying stats: One, that criminals are increasingly choosing trafficking over selling drugs because drugs can only be sold once, while trafficking victims can be sold five times a day for a period of years (also mentioned in the WPA class), and two, that more people are enslaved by traffickers today than were enslaved back when slavery was legal even in otherwise civilized parts of the world. It's mind-boggling how widespread it is. 

Oppenheimer: I was a huge fan of the 2014-2015 WGN series Manhattan, which unfortunately only lasted two seasons (and season two ended just as they were getting ready to explode the first bomb), so I was looking forward to this take on the subject. Also, based on what I saw last night, both Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor Oscars are locked up (Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey. Jr.)

 

Oppenheimer is the proverbial triumph of filmmaking. J. Robert Oppenheimer was a genius, a gifted physicist who was tasked with creating a weapon of horrifying power to be used against his fellow man. But any moral qualms (well represented in the film) he may have felt in creating the atom bomb were offset by the need to develop it before Nazi Germany did so. The film does a great job of balancing the need to outpace the Nazis with the decimating power of the weapons created by Oppenheimer and his fellow scientists in the Manhattan Project. The devastation the bombs inflicted was counted in the loss of thousands of lives, but had the Nazis triumphed and Oppenheimer and his team failed, one can only wonder what world we would be living in today.

In addition to the visual magic he's put onscreen to represent the science in creating the atom bomb and immense power behind it, Christopher Nolan has stacked this film with great actors. Murphy and Downey own the screen, melting into their characters, but there is an embarrassment of riches throughout the cast. Matt Damon shines as the Army general who recruits Oppenheimer to head the project. Others include Aiden Ehrenreich as a naive Senate aide who gets a sobering education in politics, a sinister Casey Affleck, Rami Malik in a deceptively important role, Tom Conti as Albert Einstein, Gary Oldman as President Harry Truman, Kenneth Branagh, Josh Harnett, David Dastmalchian, Dane DeHaan, James Remar, James D'Arcy, David Krumholtz and in a nicely ironic turn, Christopher Denham, who was in the cast of Manhattan, as an ominous member of Oppenheimer's staff.

Major female roles are sparse. Emily Blunt delivers an expectedly solid performance as Kitty Oppenheimer. Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock is only really required to get naked and simulate sex; one has to wonder why she bothered with this role. On the other hand, the film does show how many women populated the Manhattan Project, although none of them feature heavily in this version of the story.

 

One thing that really affected me about Oppenheimer's experience was how badly he was railroaded by his own government when he tried to renew his security clearance post-Manhattan Project. Vile corruption in our government is a sad fact these days, but it was depressing to realize that it isn't a recent development, that it goes back at least as far as the 1950's. That a genius who was hugely responsible for America coming out of World War II on the winning side was so horribly treated is inexcusable. I'd expect it today, but it was kind of a shock to see it back then. Power does indeed corrupt, and apparently always has.

I highly recommend both of these films. In fact, I may need to go see both of these one more time before eagerly awaiting the DVD releases. I'd like to see Oppenheimer in IMAX, but the only two theaters anywhere near me with IMAX are both located at malls (The Grove and Del Amo in Torrance) and given the mob looting that's been going on at Southern California malls these days, I'm trying to avoid those places. But both films were well worth returning to the world of first-run films in theaters.

 

Prayers for Maui

The beautiful island of Maui has been hammered by wildfires. Three, to be exact:

The West Maui wildfire tore through the historic town of Lahaina last week. Historic Front Street was decimated. The pictures I've seen online make the place look like a war zone. The body count is up to 100 as of today, making it the most lethal fire in the U.S. in a century. Many people were caught with little to no warning to evacuate, and many in Lahaina have lost both their homes and places of employment.

My Mom and Dad lived in Kailua-Kona on the Big Island for years, and would take trips to other parts of Hawaii. Their favorite destination was Hilo, on the other side of the island, but they also went to Kauai, Pearl Harbor, and in October 2009 they visited Maui. Here are some pictures from that trip:

Lahaina:

Mom in Lahaina Town.

One of three boats they saw on their trip that were sunk or run aground.

Haleakala Volcano:

Elevation 10,000' per my Dad's note on the back.

Makawao:

 

"Great shops!" according to Mom.

My Mom never met a fake cow she didn't like.

Note the cowboy boots.

 

Kahului Harbor:

 

Beautiful boat run aground in Kahului Harbor. Dad's note: "OOOPS again!"

Maui Ocean Center:

No note about where in Maui this was taken, but my Mom did note that it was the "Third ship we saw in trouble."

 

 Mom at what is described only as "a viewpoint":

There are not words to describe the devastation to this paradise. To make things worse, being an island, they're cut off from communications and assistance that people on the mainland could count on. I believe they did fly tourists off the island within the past couple of days. Right now we can donate and pray, and hope for the best for so many people who have lost everything through no fault of their own. And even if that's all you can do, it shows more care than some people have for this tragedy.

Quoth the Stooge, Nyuk Nyuk

 Snicked from Remembering the Good Ole Days on FB.

 

RIP Mark Margolis

 

RIP to the actor best known to me as Hector Salamanca on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Margolis died yesterday at the age of 83.

 

However, Margolis's career extended way beyond the Albuquerque crime world created by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould. He studied under Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg, and appeared in more than fifty Broadway and Off-Broadway shows. In the 1970's he began working in film and television and amassed an amazing resume over the years. Films he appeared in included Scarface, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, I Shot Andy Warhol, The Thomas Crown Affair, Requiem for a Dream, Hannibal, Gone Baby Gone, Black Swan, and My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2.

His television appearances are even more impressive and include Kojak, Crime Story, The Equalizer, Quantum Leap, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Law & Order, The Practice, Oz, Crossing Jordan, Californication, Blue Bloods, The Good Wife, American Horror Story, Elementary, Gotham, The Affair, The Blacklist, and most recently Bryan Cranston's series Your Honor. Seriously, scroll through this guy's imdb entry - it's really amazing. Hell of a career.

 

In his Emmy-nominated performance as former cartel kingpin Hector "Tio" Salamanca in Breaking Bad, Margolis was playing a once-powerful man now confined, speechless, to a wheelchair, communicating through the dings of a bell. Then, about five years later, he appeared on Better Call Saul as a younger, able-bodied version of himself (despite being well into his seventies) leading up to the explanation of how he ended up a shell of his former self. Having to perform so much of Hector's existence with nothing more than a bell and twisted, frustrated facial expressions, he still gave a compelling performance that was summed up by a comment on the Deadline article linked above: 

Rest in peace, sir.

 

Recent reading: "The Swans of Fifth Avenue: A Novel"

The Swans of Fifth Avenue by Melanie Benjamin

The Swans in the title are the New York socialites who befriended author Truman Capote back in the day and unfortunately trusted him enough to confide in him, especially Babe Paley, wife of CBS founder William Paley. The unfortunate part occurred when Capote published a short story in Esquire magazine that featured thinly disguised characters based on the Swans and even worse, the real-life dirty secrets they'd revealed to him.

This novelization of how this all could have played out is expertly portrayed by Melanie Benjamin. The lives and machinations of the socialites, Capote's bitchy takes on so many things, the hows and whys of the caricature he would become post-Swans, and the pain and unhappiness that was the underpinning of the lives of the Swans, who made an art of marrying and living well at the cost of their own happiness, is great fodder that Benjamin mines the heck out of.

Up front is Barbara "Babe" Paley, the daughter of a brain surgeon and a mother who trained her three daughters to marry up and marry well, which all three did. The unrelentingly glamorous Babe was the skilled artist of what today would be called her brand. After an unsuccessful first marriage, she married Paley and spent the rest of her life playing out the role of one-half of an elegant world-class power couple. This novel takes the tact that the great love that she didn't get from the chronically unfaithful Bill Paley was filled by her loving friendship with Capote. It doesn't necessarily sell in the novel, but does sell the idea that Babe's marriage to Paley was more of a partnership than love match, and therefore she could be driven to find a true love from a most unlikely person, even if it was a love that couldn't be consummated.

What Benjamin does really well is bring the period and everything about it to life. How it actually played out is anyone's guess, since - with the exception of the celebrity and publicity loving Capote - all the other people involved were never interested in the celebrity and notoriety that the story La Cote Basque 1967 spawned. 

After being shut down by New York society Capote went from being the heralded author of In Cold Blood to the Baby Jane Hudson version of Truman Capote that both I and Benjamin grew up with. He vastly underestimated how furious the women would be that he'd betrayed their trust. They cut him off from their lives, friendship, and society. In fact, although La Cote Basque 1967 was supposed to be part of a novel Capote claimed to be working on, he never finished or published another book after In Cold Blood.

Benjamin also does a great job of showing the world that the Swans inhabited in their heyday and also how America began changing in the late 1960's, making them relics of a society that no longer existed. It's just a terrific book and Benjamin does a fantastic job of bringing Capote, his Swans, and their world to vivid life.

July Words of Wisdom

The wildest and most moving dramas are not played in the theatre, but in the hearts of ordinary men and women who pass by without exciting attention. --Carl Jung

 

All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone. --Blaise Pascal 

 

Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it did not matter. --Roger Scruton

Be alone, that's where ideas are born. --Nicola Tesla

 

The Top 15 Things Money Can't Buy: Time. Happiness. Inner Peace. Integrity. Love. Character. Manners. Health. Respect. Morals. Trust. Patience. Class. Common Sense. Dignity. --Roy T. Bennett

It's easy to fool people, but it is almost impossible to convince people that they have been fooled. --Elon Musk

 

The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see. --Ayn Rand 

Tradition does not mean that you never do anything new, but that you will never fall below the standard of courage and conduct handed down to you. Then tradition, far from being handcuffs to cramp your action, will be a handrail to guide and steady you in rough places. --Sir William Slim

 

Ask and you shall receive: In-N-Out Burger Edition

A few months back I read a book on In-N-Out Burger that was published in 2010 and mentioned that I hoped for an update at some point. 

Lo and behold!

From the Amazon description:

Discover the official story of In-N-Out Burger––how three generations have created a thriving, family-owned company, why its fans are so wildly loyal, and what led to its explosive growth and evolution into an iconic part of American culture––as told by In-N-Out Burger’s president, Lynsi Snyder.

When Lynsi Snyder's grandparents founded In-N-Out Burger in 1948, they built it with a passion for quality and service that Lynsi embraced at a young age. After starting as a store associate at age seventeen, she then worked in other departments, gaining first-hand experience with almost every aspect of the family business until she became president in 2010. She has led the company through explosive growth––today, there are three-hundred and eighty stores and counting––and is deeply committed to the well-being of the In-N-Out Burger family.

 

I am really looking forward to this book. It will be interesting to see if there's a difference between the previous book and this one, written by a family member, plus it will be up-to-date. The book will be released in October and is available for pre-order now.

Usually I try to avoid housework, but...

Adopt, don't shop!

H/T to page awards on IG.

Loving the new Twitter, but there's still room for improvement

I'm one of those people who returned to Twitter after Elon Musk bought it last year. Regardless of what you think of Musk (or why) my personal experience since returning is  that it's a better, freer place since it came under new ownership.

 

I had actually been off Twitter for about a year and a half when I decided to give version 2.0 a shot. I had previously been on Twitter (and pretty much addicted to it) for more than ten years when I finally gave up on it in early 2021. It had turned from an amazingly open, informative and enjoyable experience into a slanted, toxic pit that just wasn't fun anymore. At all. Even more telling, I never felt like I was missing out on anything during the period I was gone. But Twitter is fun, interesting, and informational again.

However, there are still signs of the old, fun-adverse, truth-adverse Twitter. Somewhere along the line someone thought it was a good idea to give users a condescending "warning" when they post what some clearly objective (*sarcasm*) bonehead has decided is "potentially harmful or offensive language".

"Most Tweeters don't post replies like this" - Yeah, they post worse. Also, condescending much?

This was my response to a Tweet criticizing a protest outside of a McDonald's that had been organized to lambast the fast-food behemoth for not paying "living" wages. The original tweet pointed out the obvious, that burger-flipping is a job for unskilled teenagers (as I was when I worked there back in the day) and basically, I agreed. And yes, any idiot can be taught to do it. There's nothing harmful or offensive about pointing that out. It's the truth. McDonald's was designed that way. Unless you're the manager or franchisee, it's not meant to be a living wage career. It's a starter job, a pocket money job, it's not something you raise a family on. 

 

Expecting McDonald's to throw money at unskilled labor is like starting your career in a bottom rung, foot in the door job and never rising above that level, but expecting your salary to rise to the same level as someone who is actually moving up in the world. Basically, the protest is that McDonald's isn't paying high-skilled wages for menial, entry-level jobs. And that doesn't make sense. All that I and the original poster did was point out that obvious fact.

And in terms of the content of my tweet, there's the issue that you don't have to spend much time on Twitter to see much worse, to see posts that are genuinely vile, vicious, and at times even threatening. My tweet is one of the milder things you'll see on Twitter, which is much more open to a variety of opinions these days, but still retains some of its crazy, wild-west aspects from the old days. And I got a warning about (I assume) using the word "idiot"?

In case you're wondering, yes, I did hit the edit button, but not to edit my tweet. I added that the tweet had gotten the stupid Twitter warning and then posted it as originally written because no, there was nothing harmful or offensive about it.

And if you think that burger-flippers and other low-skilled workers deserve big bucks, there's these shining examples of the law of unintended consequences, but that's a conversation for another day.

As for Twitter, it's great to have it back, but there's still a little tweaking to do.

I, Panelist

Hey, I got on a panel at Bouchercon!!! That's one I can check off the writing career bucket list!

 

Click to get a readable-sized version.

Looking forward to a great, fun panel. The complete lineup can be found here.

 

Showbiz roundup

In no particular order:

 

Dear Harry and Meghan: It's not an Emmy "snub" if your program was trash, a chunk of the viewership only subjected themselves to it to rip it in YouTube videos, and you're going broke because you really have nothing to offer to the world other than an accident of birth and shameless (albeit admittedly impressive) gold-digging/social climbing skills. The podcast sucked too, oh, and the word you were looking for was stereotypes, not archetypes. Maybe you shouldn't have tried to make a career out of trashing your families. Neither of you are special. Now go away. Also, future Queen Catherine is a goddess.

 

How to not read the room: After losing hundreds of millions of dollars and millions of viewers on woke flicks like Lightyear, Elemental, The Little Mermaid, and Indiana Jones 5 you would think Disney might have learned something about what audiences want and even more importantly, don't want. Nope! YellowFlash 2 on YouTube breaks it down.

As seen on DailyMail.com:

Snow Something.

1 Dwarf and 6 Somethings.

"The Multi-ethnic Portland Hipsters" (at 1:15). 🤣

The actors are on strike too!!! Where oh where will we get our crappy reboots/reimaginings? I'm not saying the studios aren't making ridiculous amounts of money off writers and actors and I'm also not saying that as co-creators they (especially writers) don't deserve a significant piece of that pie. In fact, even with its huge box office losses, Disney has extended Bob Iger's tenure as CEO (WHY???), so studios clearly have money to burn. But these things never seem to go well for the people put out of work for an extended period of time. I guess we'll see, but I think this is just going to be really ugly.
 

How about some good news for a change? It appears Oppenheimer, which opens July 21, is every bit as great as I was hoping. I've been eagerly awaiting this film since the first trailer dropped. To get an idea of just what amazing filmmaking this is, check out this video, which explains not only some of the technical aspects, but also the one hundred day theatrical window that director Christopher Nolan demanded - and got - from Universal. I hadn't heard about this and think it's fantastic. Things need to change in Hollywood and hopefully this will be the start of it.

I wondered where this came from...

So this turned up in my email yesterday:

I didn't know who "AIscreenplaycompetition.com" was or how they got my email address, but I found out this morning: it's good old Scriptapalooza. And boy oh boy, was the blowback quick: Artificial Intelligence Screenplay Competition Opens & Quickly Closes. They've also already taken their website down.

That didn't take long.

With the WGA embroiled in a lengthy strike where one of the key issues is AI, I'm kind of surprised anyone thought this was a good idea. I've already seen a couple of calls for submissions in the short story market where the rules include "NO AI", including one where they mentioned that not only can they spot a story written in AI, but if you submit one they will never consider another submission from you again, ever. So yeah, AI is a sore subject among writers, so again, not sure why this was even considered. 

I haven't played around with AI, ChatGPT, or anything like this (in fact, I'd completely forgotten about this and I wrote a blog post about it), but from a writer's POV it doesn't seem like this is something we want to embrace. Time will tell, but if nothing else, this was really bad timing given the WGA strike. I still think highly of Scriptapalooza - they've been around forever and I've never heard anything negative about them before this debacle - but they really bungled this. That black eye may take some time to heal.

Update 7/8/23: Got this in the email, this time clearly from Scriptapalooza, not AIscreenplaycompetition.com: