Catch-2008

November 20, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Cold War, Economic issues, Election 2008, Entertainment, Humor, Nixon Administration figures, Obama administration, Sarah Palin, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

Erica Heller is a New Yorker in her fifties.  In her twenties and thirties she worked in advertising. Then she dropped out of the field and wrote a novel, Splinters - a natural thing to do when one is the daughter of the late Joseph Heller, author of Something Happened, God Knows, Good As Gold, and that all-time bestselling antiwar novel Catch-22. 

Splinters was published in 1990 and, unlike most of her father’s books, was not well-received; Publishers Weekly called it “pretentious and self-indulgent.”  So Ms. Heller went back to advertising, where she remains.  Recently she began blogging on The Huffington Post.  Just before election day, she wrote there that her father - who, she acknowledged, never voted in any election in his life, because he was, by his own admission, “anti-political” - would surely have trooped down to the booth, were he still living, to choose Sen. Barack Obama. 

 (That strikes me as doubtful. Heller, a very shrewd fellow as his many interviews attest, would have likely foreseen that doing so would help bring about the situation this week where Dr. Henry Kissinger, the target of innumerable venomous barbs in Good As Gold, expressed his support for the President-elect’s choosing Sen. Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State.)

This week, Ms. Heller, perhaps like many another writer with an Amazon sales ranking in the low seven digits, is on the warpath about the book deals being rumored for Gov. Sarah Palin and secured by Joe the Plumber.  She seems convinced that S. J. Wurzelbacher is receiving a fortune from a small press for his book.  In fact, what Joe is earning is probably just a shade above the $1000 or so her dad got for what was then Catch-18 nearly a half-century ago, and far below the advances for every other book he wrote. 

 Ms Heller also fulminates about the $7 million that’s being tossed around where the Palin book is concerned, bemoaning all the trees that will fall to make it.  Well, President Clinton was paid considerably better for his memoirs.  And a lot of trees fell to get it to the stores.  And, most strikingly of all, that rather soporific tome was edited by none other than Robert Gottlieb, the brilliant editor who helped make Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 a classic.  (I should point out Mr. Gottlieb always has my admiration.  Imagine being in one’s late seventies and fielding 3 am calls from the man who remains the First Night Owl, not to mention trying to get Robert Caro to finish those last thousand pages of his LBJ saga.)

Most bizarre of all is an aside where Ms. Heller reminisces about the good old days when Catch-22 is published and in which the series Mad Men is set.  She reminds us that back when Roger Maris was earning his asterisk, gas was 33 cents a gallon and stamps were four cents.  Well, guess what?  If her liberal idols in Congress and the White House can’t figure out how to get us out of the recession and deflation sets in, prices may drop to those levels again.  The difference will be that you won’t see too many people wearing clothes as good as the ones in Mad Men.  On the bright side, there will be plenty of free grass, growing up from the sidewalks, and in some places from the floorboards.

Speaking of Robert Gottlieb, time for me to tell my favorite story about his many quirks.  A friend of mine - we’ll call him Hank, because his first name’s the same as Gottlieb’s - was in the early ’60s an up-and-coming editor, as Gottlieb was.  One day he got a call from his colleague.  “Come over for lunch,” quoth young Bob.  His habit, then as now, was always to eat a sandwich at his own desk at Simon & Schuster (and, later, Knopf), so Hank stopped at an Italian deli, got some antipasto, and proceeded to S&S’s offices.

This particular afternoon, incidentally, was a day or two after JFK’s speech announcing the presence of Russian missiles in Cuba.  Things were pretty weird in Manhattan all around. Even so, Hank was a bit surprised, when he arrived at Bob’s office, to find it unoccupied.  Assuming that the editor was in the restroom, he waited a while in the hallway.  Then he asked Gottlieb’s secretary where he was.  “In there - he hasn’t left all day,” she replied.

So Hank stepped in and approached his friend’s desk.  There came a whisper - from under it. “That you, Hank?”  Hank stepped around and found Gottlieb crouched underneath, sandwich in hand. “I talked to my shrink this morning - he sounded kinda worried,” Bob said by way of explanation. “There’s some space here - sit down.” So Hank squeezed in and took out the antipasto.  “Just a second,” said Bob. He then emerged from the desk, went to the window, lowered the blinds, and got back under.  Thus suitably protected from the threat of The Big One - in an office in the midsection of a skyscraper in midtown Manhattan - the two young editors dined and chatted as usual.

Ah, those wild, crazy days of Mad Men.

The Revolution Will Be Animated

November 18, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Culture, Entertainment | Leave a Comment 

Manga, literally, means “whimsical pictures.”   But whimsy isn’t the word that comes to mind for the latest incarnation of this historic Japanese form of cartoon and comic illustration.

While the most characteristic contemporary themes have involved sex, violence, and science fiction, the current rise in Communist Party membership has spawned a revival of anti-capitalist literature.  A manga version of Das Kapital will roll off the presses early next month.

As the Telegraph reports today:

The appearance of the famous economic treatise in the form of a comic is the latest sign of a resurgence of leftwing literature in Japan as the world’s second largest economy sinks into recession.

Sales of Kanikosen, the 1929 proletarian tale of factory workers rising up against evil capitalist oppressors, have surged from an annual trickle of 5,000 to more than 507,000 so far this year, as reported in the Telegraph last month.

East Press  the Tokyo-based publishing company which will publish the comic version Das Kapital on December 5  also released a manga version of Kanikosen last year, resulting in sales of more than 200,000.

Manga has long been elevated to an art form in Japan, with its most high-profile fans including the prime minister Taro Aso.

The Not So Fresh Prince

November 13, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy, Entertainment | Leave a Comment 

It strikes me that everything one needs to know about what’s wrong with Prince Charles —why he just hasn’t quite measured up— is conveyed in the official portrait commemorating his 60th birthday today. It was taken by photographer Philip Burnand, a royal favorite, during a photo session last last February at Clarence House, the Prince’s London residence.

He has all the trappings; that’s plain to see. And he is nothing if not committed to the several issues —such as organic agriculture and urban architecture— with which he has become increasingly associated over the last few decades. And there is no doubt that he works long and hard carrying out his official duties. The Prince’s Trust, which he founded in 1976, has become a model of philanthropic success and transparency. He is serious but he somehow seems to lack some element of what it takes to be taken seriously — which is doubly sad because that seems to be what he wants the most.

In fact, the equivocal message sent by his portrait, with its distinctive posture, has a pedigree. It is based on a 19th century portrait —by James Tissot— of Frederick Gustavus Burnaby. Capt. Burnaby was an officer in the Household Cavalry, a celebrated adventurer, a bestselling author, and, reputedly, the strongest man in the British Army (according to legend he once carried a pony under one arm).

But, as The Times adds:

The Prince could hardly have chosen a more colourful character for his inspiration. Educated at Harrow and Oswestry School and in Germany, 6ft 4in Burnaby entered the Royal Horse Guards in 1859 only to find himself frustrated by the lack of active service. Instead, he made the first solo balloon crossing of the English Channel, undertook a 3,000-mile horseback journey across the Russian steppe in winter (the subject of one of his bestselling books), travelled with General Gordon in the Sudan and, as a correspondent for The Times, accompanied the Carlist forces across Spain in 1874 during the Third Carlist War.

So: a damned interesting dude, sort of a Flashman but without the sex, and a man “…frustrated by the lack of active service…” Impressive and accomplished, but hardly a royal exemplar. To have a picture taken in this pose in this get up for private use would be amusing; to have a picture taken in this pose wearing a suit would be an appealing informal snap. But to release this one as the official birthday portrait is a passive-aggressive cry for help.

To be sure, the poor Prince, trapped in his cage —which, far from being gilded, is 24 carat— anxiously awaiting the moment he must dread, is more to be respected than censured.

And the measure of his mettle was tested one night last week when he attended the comedy concert that was part of his official birthday celebrations. The evening was called “We Are Most Amused” (a play on a diary entry made by Queen Victoria, the Prince’s great-great-great-grandmother) and the venue was the New Wimbledon theater.

Perhaps the Prince was lured there on false pretenses — as one of the comedians said, when he heard he was going to a big event at Wimbledon he may have thought of something else entirely.

The gig was headlined by Robin Williams. Much was made of the fact that this was his first major appearance in London since the time he was in Mork and Mindy twenty-seven years ago. In other words, when he was still funny.

These days his manic shtick has worn mighty thin and his material on this night was even thinner. He opened the show by greeting the Prince: “Yo, yo Wales - House of Windsor, keeping it real.” That was about the last of his remarks specifically suited to the event.

He joked about imagining Sarah Palin appearing topless on television and saying, “How do you like my northern slopes now, boys?”

Lacking even the respect to be timely, he joked about President Clinton: “Bill was so unlucky. He found the only Jewish girl who couldn’t get a stain out.”

“Obama,” he said, “is an old Kenyan word for ‘Kennedy’.” With President Bush’s defeat, he assured the audience, “America’s officially out of rehab,” and he added that “Bush can’t go on a speaking tour — that’s a given.”

Joan Rivers kept up this high standard by joking about age. “I hate old people and old people that are proud. ‘I’m 97 years old,’ they say. And you smell.” She said that sex is better when you are older because “we don’t have to change our sheets, the nurses do it for us”

John Clease, who was also on the bill, noted that Joan Rivers was one of the few American women with whom he hadn’t slept.

British comedy was also represented. Bill Bailey has been around for some time and is usually high up on lists of the best comedy acts in Britain. He works with an electric keyboard and incorporates music and sound effects into some of his routines.

The BBC reported that:

At one point Prince Charles nearly fell off his chair as Bailey imagined, on his keyboard, how the Belarussian national anthem might sound.

Here is the routine that all but had a 60 year old man (and the heir to the throne of England) rolling on the floor:

The Iranian comedian Omid Djalili drew laughs from xenophobic rants and ethnic stereotypes; at least he is actually funny:

And the piece de resistance was a “Birthday Blues” composed (in twenty minutes backstage) and performed by Robin Williams and Bill Baley:

Robin Williams and Bill Bailey sang “Birthday Blues,” a twelve-bar blues song improvised backstage…which depicted the Prince looking miserable while sitting in bed with the Duchess of Cornwall. The reason for his bad temper, they sang, was that “Your mother’s got two birthdays/ And you’ve only got one”.

They also imagined the Duke of Edinburgh speaking to his son about the Queen’s decision not to abdicate. “One day you’re going to rule the world/ But you have to hang around/ Because your mother’s not going anywhere/ She ain’t gonna give up that crown.” They also joked that “the one thing that ain’t on the money is that you ain’t even on the money”.

I have no problem with lese majeste —in fact I’m all for it— but this juvenile self-indulgence never even approaches that level.

The poor Prince. Let’s all wish him a very happy birthday.

UPDATE 11/16/08:

In today’s Telegraph there’s this article — which (a) if it’s true and (b) if he succeeds in doing it, will accomplish what all the anti-monarchists have failed at: the end of the British monarchy.

The Prince will break with the tradition which has seen monarchs, including the Queen, remain publicly silent on matters of national and international importance.

His friend and biographer Jonathan Dimbleby said: “There are now discreet moves afoot to redefine the future role of the sovereign so that it would allow King Charles III to speak out on matters of national and international importance in ways that at the moment would be unthinkable.”

The Queen has always ensured that her personal views are only voiced in private to the prime minister of the day and the privy council.

Mr Dimbleby said: “To breach this convention, however cautiously, would represent a seismic shift in the role of the sovereign. He told The Sunday Times it “has the potential to be constitutionally and politically explosive.”

The Prince’s official spokesman denied any knowledge of discussions about his role as king.

Art Imitates Life

November 11, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Culture, Entertainment, History, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

In honor of Veterans Day, New York Times film critic A. O. Scott devotes this week’s “Critic’s Choice” to Franklin N. Schaffner’s 1970 masterpiece Patton.

The film won seven Academy Awards — including the Best Actor Oscar for George C. Scott.

The canard widespread at the time —and which still exists in benighted quarters today— was that RN saw the film a few, dozens, or scores of times (depending on the credulity, superficiality, and/or bias of the author) and then, puffed up with macho vainglory, invaded Cambodia.

Of course, that reflected, and reflects, the easy and comfortable and totally inaccurate notion that RN was an unsophisticated man of a kind whose simplistic jingoism could be triggered by a movie.

It is true that RN saw the film shortly after it was released at the beginning of April; that he was deeply impressed and moved by it; and that he watched it several times at the White House and Camp David during and after the Cambodian campaign, which began on the 29th (and planning for which had begun long before the film arrived).

And it’s true that Patton, the film and the man, glorified and gloried in some of the aspects and elements of war.  

But the overall tone of the film was one of frustration and melancholy. Indeed, its conclusion is far more likely to lead a viewer to book a spiritual retreat than to order an invasion.   

Patton does, in fact, have some things (not that many, but some) to reveal about RN. But they are, typically, complex and contrary to the conventional wisdom.

I have long suggested to people who say that they want to understand Richard Nixon, that they might start with three things: read Charles DeGaulle’s The Edge of the Sword; listen to the music from the multi-episode award-winning 1952 about the Second World War, Victory at Sea; and watch Patton.

The good news is that The Edge of the Sword is available from Amazon; the bad news is that the prices currently start at $599.94.  So, at least until a new edition is published or you get very lucky in a used book store, you’ll just have to take my word on that one.

A. O. Scott’s video review of Patton in today’s Times online is a good introduction to a really great movie.

RN listened —often late at night in the Lincoln Sitting Room— to the first suite Robert Russell Bennet arranged (from his own arrangements)  Richard Rodgers’ score.

There are fourteen themes that roughly outline the history of the war — from “The Pacific Boils Over” to “Victory at Sea”.  The music is alternately sad, stirring, and inspiring.

Here’s the opening of the series.  The theme under the credits is “The Song of the High Seas.”

With All Due Respect, I Personally Disagree

November 10, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Entertainment | 6 Comments 

Researchers at the Oxford University have surveyed a vast database of books, newspapers, magazines, broadcast, and internet sources, and compiled a list of the “Top Ten Irritating Phrases” currently in popular use.

So —- drumroll, please, Anton — here they are:

The Top 10 Irritating Phrases

Number 10: It’s not rocket science.

9. 24/7

8. Shouldn’t of

7. It’s a nightmare

6. Absolutely

5. With all due respect

4. At this moment in time

3. I personally

2. Fairly unique

And the Number One Irritating Phrase is:

At the end of the day

I personally would have chosen “that said”.

I’m sure TNN readers have other candidates for the list and the Number One slot.

Getting In Touch With Your Inner Snake Plissken

November 10, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Entertainment, Lifestyle, Technology | Leave a Comment 

Washington is like women in the old vaudeville joke: you can’t live with it and you can’t live without it.* But for those who would like to try, and who have about 24 hours to spare, there’s Fallout 3, the new action role-playing video game from Bethesda Game Studios.

The setting is Washington, D.C. in the post-apocalyptic year of 2277 (that’s thirty years after the devastating nuclear war that was unleashed in 1998’s Fallout 2).

In today’s New York Times, Seth Schiesel describes some of his reactions to playing the game:

When I first ventured out of the dank Metro tunnel onto the ravaged National Mall — a snarl of trenches and barbed wire under the shadow of the shattered Washington Monument — I wasn’t thinking about politics. When I sneaked into the ruins of the Capitol and watched a band of mercenaries lob a Mini-Nuke at a raging 30-foot-tall mutant behemoth under the fractured dome of the Rotunda, I wasn’t thinking about filibuster-proof majorities.

Not until I finally battled my way up Pennsylvania Avenue — dispatching mutants with my plasma rifle at every turn to discover only a radioactive crater in the ground behind a twisted, warped yet familiar wrought-iron fence — did I see Fallout 3 in a real-world context. In this vision of the cost of hubris, the White House is not broken or burned. It is not the home of an evil mastermind. It is just gone.

It takes a lot of gumption to blow up the entire Washington area; render the wreckage in detailed yet almost painterly strokes; populate the wasteland with all manner of alternately deranged, endearing and frightening characters; weave a score of intersecting story lines; sprinkle on a thick layer of high-powered weaponry; and simply set the player loose. Yet that is what Bethesda Softworks accomplishes with Fallout 3, one of the most ambitious single-player role-playing games in recent years.

Fallout 3 can be almost intimidating, not in its difficulty (it is almost too easy) but in its scope. At first I basically put blinkers on and studiously ignored everything that was not directly related to the main story. In the game the player begins as a baby, and then picks up as a young adult who has grown up in a locked underground vault with other survivors of the atomic holocaust. You venture into the wasteland in search of your father, who has mysteriously taken off.

*Now you know why vaudeville died.

The New Day Dawns

November 9, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Culture, Election 2008, Entertainment, Media, Music, Public Opinion | Leave a Comment 

Polymathic musician, performer, songwriter, entrepreneur, designer, artist, activist, videomaker, etc., and Black Eyed Peas member will.i.am has produced a post-election video of a song he wrote : “It’s A New Day”. It premiered on Oprah’s show (as soon all things will that don’t already) on Friday.

This time the cast of thousands has been winnowed down to a happy few (including Fergie, Kanye West, and Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick).   Presumably that’s a function of availability on short notice; where is Ryan Philippe when you really need him?

His earlier videos — “Yes We Can” and ”We Are The Ones“— played no small part in reaching, inspiring, and activating young voters.  (And the former inspired and inspired parody: ”No, You Can’t“.)

If only on the principle that nothing succeeds like success, the new video demands respect.  And because it’s the shape of things to come it requires attention.

A Little Known Fact

November 5, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under Entertainment, Obama administration | Leave a Comment 

Left to right: Rep. Rahm Emanuel, Ari Emanuel, and Jeremy Piven

Rep. Rahm Emanuel has reportedly accepted Pres-elect Obama’s offer as chief of staff, but did you know his brother, Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel, is the inspiration of the Jeremy Piven played character Ari Gold on the HBO hit Entourage?

Dan Quayle’s Vindication

November 3, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Culture, Entertainment, Ethics, Lifestyle, Media | Leave a Comment 

When former Vice President Dan Quayle has been mentioned in the 2008 campaign, more often than not, it has been to compare the ridicule he suffered during the 1988 race and throughout his term in office to the mockery directed at Sarah Palin.  But this week comes news that a brouhaha which the media portrayed as a major gaffe at the time may have proven him to be far more prescient than anyone realized then.

On May 19, 1992, Quayle spoke at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.  His remarks decried the increased incidence of mothers choosing to bear children outside marriage.  In this context, he pointed to a storyline in the TV sitcom Murphy Brown in which the title character, portrayed by Candice Bergen, chose not to wed the father of her child-to-be, and said that this set an unfortunate example to younger viewers in particular.

Quayle’s speech attracted considerable controversy, and quite a number of printed and spoken words were devoted to ridiculing the idea that a mere TV show could have such an impact in real life. 

But, although the show itself made fun of Quayle’s argument, years later Ms. Bergen said she thought there was a point to what he said, and this week a study published in the estimable professional journal Pediatrics (which is already the subject of a Washington Post article and coverage in other newspapers) describes the results of a comprehensive survey of unwed and teenage mothers which appears to confirm the idea that adolescents are indeed encouraged to pursue promiscuity by what they see on television. 

So far none of the articles discussing the study have mentioned Quayle’s speech of 16 years ago.  But isn’t it time he got some credit for being right?

Roseanne’s Choice

October 29, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Comedy, Election 2008, Entertainment | Leave a Comment 

John Taylor’s reference below to 1990s sitcom star/cultural provocateuse Roseanne Barr Arnold Thomas (who nowadays goes simply by Roseanne, as she did at the start of her celebrity) may lead some TNN readers to wonder who she is supporting for President nowadays.  Unlike most of her Tinseltown brethren, she is not endorsing Obama.  And she isn’t even for Ralph Nader.

A recent Washington Post story about former Georgia congresswoman and current Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney provides the answer.   McKinney, despite being on the ballot in 34 states, has kept a low profile, according to the article, because she believes she is being tailed by FBI agents owing to her belief in 9/11 conspiracy theories.  But the story goes on to note that the candidate enjoys at least one (more or less) high-profiled supporter, and cites Roseanne’s words on her site that “since I will vote for a woman before I will vote for a man any day,” she’s with McKinney.  (Here it should be noted that the Green Party’s vice-presidential candidate is activist Rosa Clemente, so Roseanne is not forced to lend her support to a “mixed” ticket.)   Roseanne has even appeared with McKinney at events in California and Florida. 

There’s no telling how many fans of Roseanne’s series or her short-lived talk show have enlisted in the Green Party’s ranks because of her blessing (though, to be sure, most likely not enough to make her singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” on Jan. 20 a real threat) but if Sen. Barack Obama somehow loses next Tuesday, I have the feeling that sooner or later some pundit will recall this and include her in the list of culprits. 

But Have Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham Been Heard From?

October 23, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Comedy, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Entertainment, Frost/Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Yahoo’s news section has an article about the latest celebrity endorsements of Sen. Barack Obama, accompanied by two video clips. In one of these, paid for by the Obama campaign, actor Ed O’Neill, none too ably channeling his Al Bundy persona from the Married….With Children series, leans over a incongruous state-of-the-art laptop (an ancient desktop with Windows 95 and dialup would have been the right touch for his character) and figures out that he would do better under Obama’s tax plan than under Sen. John McCain’s.

The other clip, however (which also appears at funnyordie.com) may have a more substantial effect - depending on whether voters focus on its strengths or its flaws. In it, Ron Howard, director of Frost/Nixon, announces that he’s voting for Obama. He then puts on an adult-size version of his familiar T-shirt from almost a half-century ago, slaps on a toupee that makes him look like Elton John in the early days of the latter’s experiments with hair transplants, picks up some fish, and walks out of his trailer. Cut to a black-and-white scene in a forest (rather than by a lake, as the fish would suggest) and none other than Andy Griffith materializes to tell “Opie” that if he stays healthy and listens to his paw, he can grow up to vote for somebody like Mr. Obama. The very fact that an embodiment of mainstream rural America like Griffith is choosing Obama may have an impact in states such as his native North Carolina, Indiana and Virginia. Had Howard stopped there, the Obama camp might have had a strong piece of viral-video ammo.

But then Ron changes hairpieces to one very remotely approximating his Richie Cunningham hairdo and the scene cuts abruptly to him chatting with Henry Winkler, replete with leather jacket and graying pompadour. The Fonz owns up to having been “wahhh, rruuhhh” about Bush-Cheney (”Wrong, Fonz?” “Yeah, that word”) and tells his friend that after they vote they’ll go on a double date with a girl and her friend from Alaska, which provides an opening for a more or less tasteless joke. Cut to Howard, minus rug, urging voters to express their “hearts and minds,” in a burst of the usual Tinseltown-liberal rhetoric, leaving young Obama supporters to figure out just where to stop the clip when they’re playing it for the grandparents.

Speaking of older voters, the article also notes comedienne Sarah Silverman’s call to young Jewish voters to travel to Florida to enlist seniors in Obama’s cause. And it also mentions one endorsement the Obama campaign deflected - actress/singer Lindsay Lohan’s offer to emcee rallies.

“I’m Joe The Plumber”

October 22, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Democratic Party, Economic issues, Election 2008, Entertainment, Media, Public Opinion, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

One of the iconic moments of American cinema - one that still has the power to move audiences of any age - comes toward the conclusion of Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus when the chained followers of Kirk Douglas’s revolt against Roman power are called on to identify their leader, and instead rise, one after the other, to shout: I am Spartacus.

Today, the campaign of Sen. John McCain released a 30-second spot which, in its somewhat more low-key fashion, echoes that moment, and serves to epitomize the themes which, in the week since the final debate, have recharged the batteries of the GOP effort and helped bring about a situation where the gentleman from Arizona is now virtually tied with Sen. Barack Obama in some polls (such as the latest one from the AP).

To counter this, Obama is now running a spot in which he sternly tells the electorate about the things he believes in. His solemn tone in it is strangely reminiscent of an old Steve Martin routine. I have the feeling that sooner or later when I’m watching it the man from Chicago will finish with: “And I believe…that the ‘Battle of the Network Stars’….should be fought with guns.”

We’ve been told over and over again today that the early voting is running in Obama’s favor. But the election still has quite a way to go.

“Frost/Nixon” In D.C.

October 22, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, Frost/Nixon | Leave a Comment 

There’s good news for those in the Washington area who just can’t wait for the opening of the Frost/Nixon film. Peter Morgan’s original play, in its nationally touring production, opens at the Kennedy Center next month for a two-week run, with Alan Cox as Sir David Frost and Stacy Keach - yes, Mike Hammer himself - as President Nixon.  Keach is no stranger to the boards; early in his career he won two Obies (as Hamlet at the New York Public Theater and in the title role of another politically oriented play, Barbara Garson’s MacBird).  I have to wonder if Keach has shaven the facial hair before taking on this part, though.

She Who Laughs Last Laughs Best

October 22, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Election 2008, Entertainment | Leave a Comment 

Daily Beast foundress-proprietress Tina Brown predicts a promising future for the presently piled-upon put-upon Sarah Palin.  In the meantime she recounts SNL founder-producer Lorne Michaels’ assessment of the Palin performance on his show last Saturday night:

On Saturday Night Live last week Palin showed she had a key attribute for long-term political survival: the ability to pretend she finds humiliation amusing. The comedy-show ritual for politicians is a bit like humor in the 7th grade. Everyone wants to be in on the joke, but no one wants the joke to be on them. So Palin gritted her teeth and confronted Tina Fey’s devastating impersonation in the same red jacket and cottage loaf hairdo. Her newness to the game was reinforced by the way she pronounced Lorne Michaels’ name—“Loren.” America’s most famous comedy producer is part of the new crowd that Palin is learning how to conquer.

According to Michaels, Palin couldn’t have been more of a gracious pro. She got to the NBC studio punctually at 4 pm. “That’s the nice thing about Republicans,” he told me yesterday. “When they say they’re coming at four they arrive at four.” Then, says Michaels, she got down to work without any angst. “She absorbed changes very quickly. She could always ‘find her light.’ There was no attempt on anyone’s part to alter the moment, or change the tone of it.” She was actually more credible in the skit than her superstar co-actor Alec Baldwin who phoned in a weirdly perfunctory performance from cue cards. Michaels doesn’t agree with anything Palin believes but does think she’ll be continually underestimated just as “our end of the world” continually underestimated Ronald Reagan.

“There’s a real intelligence there,” he said. “She connects with people. She’s got a confidence. Whatever it means to be a star she is. Plus I think she will do the work. She has incredible discipline. There’s clearly not a lazy bone in her body. She has managed five kids for God’s sake. She has a very clear strength.” He regards the Katie Couric debacle as a hazard of political life rather than a Rosebud TV moment. “Nobody can control the first movie they’re in,” he noted.

Dennis Hopper Changes Teams

October 14, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Election 2008, Entertainment | Leave a Comment 

For more than a decade actor/director Dennis Hopper, once the personification of countercultural excess (both in such movies as Easy Rider and in his tumultuous private life),  has been a happily married family man and a vocal supporter of Republican candidates on the local and national level, while the roles he has recently undertaken have included LA policemen and military officers - quite a distance from biking through rural hippiedom alongside Peter Fonda.

But this year, even as Hopper turns in a cameo in the conservative-oriented comedy An American Carol, comes word that the siren song of the radical Sixties seems to have reached his ears once again.  During a trip to Paris to appear at a retrospective of his films at the Cinematheque Francaise, he informed reporters: “I pray God Barack Obama is elected,” explaining that he was dismayed at what he considered the “lies” of the Bush administration.

Speaking to the London Times, Hopper gave another explanation:

“I became a Republican because I believed in Thomas Jefferson, who said that if one party has been in too long then they have to be replaced, so that democracy can function. The Democrats had been in too long back then, and right now I have to acknowledge that the Republicans have been in too long and it’s time to go the other way, and to make Obama president.”

Life Imitates Art

October 14, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Election 2008, Entertainment, Media | Leave a Comment 

Here’s a blast from the relatively recent past — Slate’s produced piece about the similarities (likely soon to include their success) between the Barack Obama and Matthew Santos candidacies for POTUS.  I was struck by the fact that David Axelrod has been a consultant on both campaigns.  Back in February when this first appeared, the Windy City Svengali’s name —and talent— was not, perhaps, as widely known and appreciated.

“Nixon On The Boards” Quiz - The Answers

October 11, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Several weeks ago I presented a list of actors who had played President Nixon, and other historical figures whom they had portrayed, and invited readers to match the actor to the person from history.  Below is a list of the answers.

1-j.  Beau Bridges, who played RN in the TV movie Kissinger And Nixon (alongside Ron Silver as Dr. Henry Kissinger), also played Elvis Presley’s manager Tom Parker in another film for TV, Elvis And The Colonel (with Rob Youngblood as the King).

2-b.  Bob Gunton, who portrayed the President in the TV film Elvis Meets Nixon, played Hugh “Hughdie” Auchincloss, successively married to the mothers of Jacqueline Onassis and Gore Vidal, in the miniseries A Woman Named Jackie (which featured Roma Downey, not long before she attained stardom in Touched By An Angel, in the title role).

3-i.  Philip Baker Hall, who made his initial impact as a thespian portraying Nixon off-Broadway in Donald Freed’s play Silent Honor (and in its film adaptation directed by Robert Altman), later portrayed Aristotle Onassis in the TV movie Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, which starred Joanne Whalley as Jackie.

4-c.  It is probable that only one actor could portray both RN and Lenny Bruce, and that man has done so - Dan Hedaya.  He played the President in the 1999 film Dick, and the ill-fated comedian in a very obscure 1991 feature, Doubles.

5-k.  Besides his work as RN in Oliver Stone’s Nixon, Sir Anthony Hopkins played St. Paul in the 1981 TV movie Peter and Paul, opposite Robert Foxworth as St. Peter.

6-h.  In the 1989 musical Senator Joe (as in McCarthy, a show which closed after three previews on Broadway), Jeff Johnson played both Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong, as well as Edward R. Murrow and Joseph Welch.  Talk about versatility.

7-e.  Rich Little has often impersonated RN and Johnny Carson in his nightclub and TV appearances, and has played them in feature films as well: RN in the now-forgotten 1972 feature Another Fine Mess (written and directed by Bob Einstein, nowadays better known as Super Dave Osborne) and Carson in the 1996 HBO film The Late Shift.

8-a.  In a 1983 essay for Esquire Gore Vidal acknowledged that Nixon was the model for the character Joe Cantwell in his play The Best Man, and in its film version, released just a year after Cliff Robertson played JFK in PT-109, the actor played the role in such a way as to accentuate the resemblance to RN.  Years later, Robertson played Col. Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin in the TV movie Return to Earth.

9-d.  Jason Robards played President Richard Monckton, transparently based on Nixon, in the TV miniseries Washington: Behind Closed Doors, adapted from John Ehrlichman’s novel The Whole Truth (with Cliff Robertson as William Martin, an alias for Ehrlichman).  He also played gang boss Al Capone in the 1968 film The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

10-f.  The little-known stage actor Derek Smith topped Jeff Johnson in versatility when, in the play Jackie (which ran on Broadway for several months in 1997-1998), he played Nixon and Oleg Cassini - as well as Frank Sinatra, Abraham Zapruder and Jean Kennedy Smith!

11-m.  Lane Smith, who played Nixon in the miniseries The Final Days, also portrayed sportswriter Grantland Rice in the 2000 Will Smith film The Legend Of Bagger Vance.

12-n.  Rip Torn, who took the role of the President in the miniseries Blind Ambition based on John Dean’s book, also played Walt Whitman in the film Beautiful Dreamers.

13-o.  A few years before his premature death in 1998, noted character actor J.T. Walsh read the audiobook of the novelization of Oliver Stone’s film Nixon (and played John Ehrlichman in the film itself, opposite James Woods as H.R. Haldeman).  He also portrayed journalist Bob Woodward in the 1989 box-office disaster Wired, opposite future Shield and Fantastic Four star Michael Chiklis as John Belushi.  (Putting Walsh in this quiz, I admit, is stretching things a little, but I’m still treating his audiobook reading as a portrayal of RN.)

14-g.  Veteran voice actor Billy West, who counts among his hundreds of characters the disembodied head of Nixon on the cartoon series Futurama, also impersonated Roger Ebert on an episode of Pinky and the Brain.

And finally, as I said, one real-life figure in the quiz didn’t really belong in there.  In an episode of SCTV, a few seconds of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway To Heaven” was played, while an announcer solemnly informed viewers that the voice on the record was actually Rich LIttle, “sounding so much like Robert Plant that it’s scary.”  But it was Plant after all.  We do not yet live in a universe in which someone has played both Richard Nixon and the pre-eminent 1970s hard-rock vocalist.

Senator McCain Adds Insult To Injury

October 11, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Comedy, Election 2008, Entertainment, Media | Leave a Comment 

I’m sure that, when your entire campaign is in what appears to be an irreversible downward spiral, you have many things on your mind.

So it’s easy to put dealing with David Letterman at the end of that very long line.  

And I realize that there will always be obsessives like myself who insist on viewing the entire landscape through their own particular prisms.  

With that perspective in mind, allow me to suggest that, after having made a major mistake in the way he originally handled The Late Show and its famously tetchy host, Senator McCain is currently compounding that already unhappy situation by imposing a condition that is professionally insulting (or cluelessly cavalier), very difficult to meet and, therefore, contains the seeds of another self-made debacle.

Apparently the McCain campaign has said that the Senator will do the make up next Wednesday, and will even bring Governor Palin with him — presumably as a peace offering.  But…they will only do it at 5 p.m. instead of 5.30 when the show normally tapes.  That’s “normally” as in basically every night for the last eighteen years.  

Scores of people (many of them union members) are involved putting The Late Show together and then putting it on the air.  They all work on a schedule that has been very carefully timed backward and forward from 5.30.  

Moving things ahead by a mere thirty minutes may seem to be no big deal.  But in fact it will be about as easy for The Late Show’s producer to do that as it would be for the control tower if the captain of an airliner radioed that he has decided to bring his wheels up at 5 p.m. instead of 5.30 — so deal with it.

I’m guessing that the earlier time is required because of the third presidential debate that will be taking place a couple of hours later out on Long Island.   Whatever the reason, it’s another example of poor planning and bad psychology.

If Senator McCain wants to make up with Mr. Letterman —with whose show, remember, he has some history; indeed, on whose show he first announced his presidential candidacy— he should just do it.  With good humor and without any preconditions or pussyfooting.  

It’s crazy to try to cram it in before a presidential debate.  Why go into a delicate situation with something else —much less the last debate with your opponent for POTUS— on your mind?  Why not show up in order to apologize and then stay to play?  And what happens if the weather is bad or some other unexpected problem arises and neither cars nor choppers can guarantee a streamlined passage from midtown Manhattan to Hempstead?  Another cancelation?

Anything worth doing is worth doing well.  The meaningful gesture —that should have been made long before now to be truly effective— would have been to change the Senator’s schedule (or at least appear to change it) in order to make things up and make things right.

Here’s a sampler of the current —and, as you can see, still deteriorating— state of play:

For those devotees of Letterman exegesis (which is to say, I realize, only myself and Fr. Taylor), this clip contains much rich material.

First, I hadn’t realized that the original cancelation had taken place only one hour before the show was to begin.

In addition to being uncommonly discourteous (although, as Dave says, if the national interest is at stake, courtesy be damned) that was a truly bonehead move.  Did they think the Letterman folks would never find out that the reason they were lied to was so that the Senator could accept a “better” gig with the evening news anchor of the same network?  Or that, having found out only after the event, they would just grin and bear it? 

Second, although Dave’s delivery is characteristically ironic and the audience supplies some laughs, what he is saying is absolutely true and deeply felt. Only if you understand that he is being completely honest when he says that he hung up that phone feeling like a patriot, can you understand how much of a chump he must have felt like when they patched in the live feed from the Couric studio a couple of blocks away.  

 

The Cutting Room Floor

October 11, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Entertainment, Iraq War | Leave a Comment 

Who knew that Oliver Stone had such delicately refined sensibilities that he would decide to cut the theatrical version of his new film W. lest any bad language offend the ears of America’s families?

There’s a heckuva lot to see in “W,” Oliver Stone’s new George Bush biopic that portrays the president as a drunken lout in college and follows him all the way through his handling of the insurgency after the invasion of Iraq.

But there were many other parts Stone filmed that won’t make it to the big screen, including two dream sequences featuring Saddam Hussein, a take on Bush’s born-again conversion to Christianity, and even a scene in which he practices his wobbly pilot skills in a small plane and spins out of control in the desert.

The movie, which screened for critics this week and is receiving mixed reviews, has a final running time of 129 minutes. But Stone decided to save some of the more fantastic and surreal moments for the DVD director’s cut and possibly international versions of the film. Stone says the deleted scenes were cut to tighten the film and keep the action moving, but the actor who plays Hussein also blames it on harsh language, among other reasons.

According to Sayed Badreya, the Arab-American actor who portrays Hussein, Stone dropped two “over-the-top” fantasy sequences in which the Iraqi dictator confronts and cusses out the American president. At a press conference earlier this week, Stone said he had to lose the Hussein scenes because the movie was “too long.”

“When I first went to film the scenes, I knew there was a chance they could get cut because of the way they were written — they were very raw,” Badreya told Politico last weekend. The language, he added, was R-rated, while “W.” producers were aiming for — and eventually received — a PG-13 rating that allows younger audiences into theaters and can add millions more to the final box office tally.

It’s also interesting to learn what an auteur who manufactures assassination plots out of whole cloth and tailors historical figures to suit his conspiratorial obsessions considers “silly”:

One scene in “W.” has Bush watching television and seeing Hussein on the screen cursing at him before Bush chokes on that infamous pretzel. The other imagines Bush flying over Baghdad on a magic carpet while Hussein stands atop a hill, literally rattling a saber and screaming obscenities. 

“We talked about it, and I told Oliver I knew it would be trouble, but he said, ‘Let’s play it and we’ll see,’” recalled Badreya [the actor who plays Saddam Hussein]. “But recently he sent me an e-mail and said that I was right.” 

Badreya says that in his e-mail, Stone wrote that the dream sequences were ultimately deemed “too silly” to fit the movie’s overall tone, and he indicated to Badreya that both could later be included on the DVD or overseas versions. The actor said he put a lot of time into studying Hussein — “I had to get his voice, his style of walking and talking right,” he said. “My responsibility was to play him as a character, not a cartoon.”

The (Tina) Fey Effect

October 9, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Comedy, Election 2008, Entertainment, Public Opinion, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

It is hardly news that comedienne/writer Tina Fey’s visibility has gone nowhere but up since she started to take advantage of a separated-at-birth appearance and impersonate Gov. Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live. This week, following furious bidding among several publishers, she signed a contract with Little, Brown to write a book; her advance, according to several sources in the book industry, is in the region of $6 million, just a million bucks less than Jack Welch received for telling the story of his GE chairmanship and $2 million less than Bill Clinton got to write about his life and presidency.

But has the Republican vice-presidential candidate benefited in any way from Fey’s portrayal?

According to a new poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports in collaboration with The Washington Times and Fox TV’s DC station, such hasn’t been the case.  33 percent of independent voters polled stated that “the Tina Fey effect” is hurting the GOP ticket, as opposed to 9 percent who thought Fey’s sendups helped it.  43 percent of these independents also thought Palin’s presence was detrimental to Sen. John McCain’s chances for the White House, compared to 35 percent who thought it helped and 22 percent who thought it made no difference or were not sure.  These results must be troubling to Republican leaders, given the steady shift of independent voters to Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Joe Biden since the beginning of the economic crisis.

But in spite of this poll, speculation has continued to build that Gov. Palin might appear on SNL, either alongside Palin or on her own.  In recent days the show’s longtime producer Lorne Michaels and head writer/”Weekend Update” anchorman Seth Meyers have refused to confirm any definite plans, but have dropped hints that they think such an appearance might be possible before the election.

The process by which such speculation could happen is noteworthy.  During SNL’s first season, 33 years ago, White House press secretary Ron Nessen (who was a longtime NBC newsman before joining the Ford administration) was one of the guest hosts.  For that show, President Ford filmed two segments, saying “I’m Gerald Ford, and you’re not!” in the one that went into Chevy Chase’s “Weekend Update.”  The musical guest for that episode was Patti Smith, in those days about as extreme a rock’n'roll figure as there was.  As Nessen relates in his autobiography, he came in for considerable criticism among some GOP figures who thought that it was demeaning to the Presidency for him and Ford to appear on the show.

After that, no politicians of note appeared on SNL for more than a decade, but in the spring of 1988, Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois, seeking to distinguish himself from the pack in a tight Democratic primary season, went on the show, appearing alongside singer-songwriter Paul Simon.  And, a few years later, President George H.W. Bush made a brief filmed appearance on the show in connection with Dana Carvey’s famous impersonation of him.

But it was New York mayor Rudy Giuliani who really broke the ice during the 1990s, with several memorable and well-received appearances on the show.  And after his loss in the 1996 Presidential race, former Sen. Bob Dole showed up on “Weekend Update” to assure a somewhat flustered Norm Macdonald that he harbored no ill feeling about the comedian’s depiction of him.  (Indeed, I well remember Macdonald concluding the last “Update” sketch before election day by urging viewers to vote for Dole.)  Since then, an appearance on the show has become increasingly de rigeur for presidential aspirants in primary season.  But after the conventions it’s been a rather different story.  President George W. Bush, as far as I can recall, has never appeared on the show.

What will happen if Sarah meets Tina?  A good many Americans are wondering.

A Flick Like Its Subject: Neither Here Nor There

October 7, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Entertainment | Leave a Comment 

Variety today reviews W. — Oliver Stone’s latest presidential “bio”-pic. If I had to choose one word to characterize the show biz bible’s take on the film, it would be: comme si comme ca.

Oliver Stone’s unusual and inescapably interesting “W.” feels like a rough draft of a film it might behoove him to remake in 10 or 15 years. The director’s third feature to hinge on a modern-era presidency, after “JFK” and “Nixon,” offers a clear and plausible take on the current chief executive’s psychological makeup and, considering Stone’s reputation and Bush’s vast unpopularity, a relatively even-handed, restrained treatment of recent politics. For a film that could have been either a scorching satire or an outright tragedy, “W.” is, if anything, overly conventional, esp