Elizabeth Taylor

What have I seen with Elizabeth Taylor?

Suddenly Last Summer. Who's Afraid of Virginian Woolf. Cleopatra. The Mirror Crack'd.

The episode of The Simpsons where she was the voice of Maggie.

Divorce His - Divorce Hers. The Only Game in Town. A Place in the Sun. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Father of the Bride. Father's Little Dividend. Life with Father. Giant. Here's Lucy.

Didn't realize I'd seen so many.

A friend once told me that it was a celebrity look-alike in the episode of Here's Lucy, but imdb.com says otherwise. I was surprised to see that she appeared in General Hospital and All My Children.

Elizabeth Taylor died today, Wednesday, of congestive heart failure.

I'll tell you an Elizabeth Taylor joke. I can't remember who told it. Red Skelton? Morey Amsterdam?

"I got a job singing at Elizabeth Taylor's weddings. The pay's not good but the work's steady."

The Westboro Baptist Church

And finally, there is this. The Westboro Baptist Church announced their intention to picket her funeral.

The Westboro Baptist church consists mostly of members of its founder, Fred Phelps', family. They're the gay-haters who've been picketing the funerals of soldiers killed in the various wars we're in.

Phelps' has a son and daughter who are not in the church. They have said that Phelps has no religious beliefs but has a paraphilia. He is sexually excited by hatred. Which is the most logical explanation for them I've heard.

I do wonder. The Westboro Baptist Church has been able to get away with its stuff on free speech grounds. But if they made false or defamatory statements about Elizabeth Taylor whose name and image have a substantial monetary value, could her estate sue the crap out of them?

John Dean, Lizzie Borden

Quite a few years ago, someone tried to get files from the law firm that had represented accused ax murderer Lizzie Borden who was acquitted in 1892. They wanted to know if she confessed to her attorneys.

The law firm, which is still in business, refused to release the files. They had an obligation to protect their clients' confidences and a court agreed with them---people have a legal interest in protecting their privacy and reputations even after their deaths.

More recently, John Dean, counsel to the president during Watergate, wrote about Patricia Cornwell. Cornwell is a mystery writer. She claims to have solved the Jack the Ripper case---claims that the killer was the artist Walter Sickert. She continues to claim he was guilty even though it's been proven that Sickert was in France when some of the murders were committed.

Here is a link to Dean's essay. He discusses ways in which one might go after people who defame the dead:

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20021122.html

Justin Bieber should keep his hands to himself

Look with your eyes, not with your hands!

Teenagers touch each other more that regular people. I don't know why. They don't know any better.

The blog Shadow & Act (there's link to it to your right) a blog concerned with black cinema, posted a video of Bieber in front of reporters with Esperanza Spalding, the woman who beat him for the Grammy. He complimented her hair. Then he touched her hair.

Apparently this is a common problem. Black people have whites wanting to touch their hair all the time. It's terribly rude. Esperanza was a good sport about it. My impression was that Bieber was relating to her as if she were another teenager. She's ten years older than he is. She went to a conservatory, for God's sake. She doesn't need some sticky teenager pawing her hair.
But I just watched an episode of The Soup. We see Justin Bieber at a wax museum admiring a wax figure of himself. And what does he do? He starts touching the hair.

Reds, 30th anniversary

Has it been thirty years? I remember local members of the Communist Party, one of whom had known Louise Bryant, being excited about its release.

I also know some Maoists who thought there was way too much romance between Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton in the movie.

The Maoists may have had a point.

Hugh Iglarsh has an article on Counterpunch.com writes:

... the October Revolution is to Reds as the burning of Atlanta is to Gone with the Wind. It is an extravagant background, against which emerges a curiously off-kilter picture of John Reed. For all his flaws and limitations, Reed struggled mightily to become part of something bigger than himself, to find immortality not in his personal literary work, but in his cause, to which he indeed did give all. Yet the film de-emphasizes the milieu in which he was most truly himself, that of radical politics and journalism, and focuses on the domestic sphere, which, even by the evidence of the film, was not where his talents or inclinations lay.

Read the article here: http://www.counterpunch.com/iglarsh03182011.html

An interesting critique of the movie.

I’ve strung together some tales gathered from biographies of Warren Beatty and added some commentary. I hope to contextualize Reds on the 30th anniversary of its release by considering it in light of the concepts that define both the story itself and the man who made it: myth, history, celebrity, biography, politics, commodity, publicity, career. I argue that Reds is not the movie it sees itself as, nor that it could be; it is so closely bound to its creator that it cannot succeed in connecting us to the past.

Later in the article:

The movie could plausibly end with the fall of the Winter Palace in Petrograd and the rapturous union of Reed and Bryant, happy together at last as the triumphant revolution unfolds around them. Instead it tacks on another hour and a half, essentially replaying part one in a minor key, ending with Reed’s death amid squalor and futility. Made in a town built on the happy ending, the film goes out of its way to close sadly. It seems Beatty’s point is to bury John Reed’s culture and circle of acquaintance, not to praise it. “Reed chooses political commitment over personal commitment, and is punished by death, the ultimate disincentive,” pronounces biographer Biskind.

So what is Reds? I see it as one of those dreams in which the dreamer plays all the roles, the victim being chased as well as the monster at his heels. Warren Beatty is John Reed himself; but as the film’s creator, he is also the imaginative force behind the hack magazine editor in New York who chops up Reed’s story without his permission, and the Soviet commissar who deliberately mistranslates Reed’s speech to make it more accessible to the masses. Beatty is the difficult actor and the demanding director, the visionary artist and the philistine movie producer, the virile Hollywood lone eagle and the emasculating Hollywood system, all wrapped up in one handsome but somewhat vacant and self-negating package.

...

...Reds is the tale of a man of ability and intelligence who nevertheless fails to negotiate the boundary between outsider and insider and is torn apart by the conflict between the two roles. But whom are we now describing: John Reed or Warren Beatty?

One thing...

I knew an old Wobbly. He had been in the IWW, later in the Communist Party, until he was driven out by an undercover FBI agent who felt threatened by him. He was in his 80s when I met him, and he was still physically imposing.

One thing he talked about, which they showed in Reds, was parliamentary procedure. Anarchists, perhaps ironically, used proper parliamentary procedure back then.

This came to an end in the '60s. It wasn't the radicals, but the conservatives who stopped it. The Wall Street Journal and Newsweek, among others, called for an end to the teaching of parliamentary procedure because campus radicals were using it to conduct their meetings.

The old guy I knew was disgusted by the round robin discussions that political meeting had been reduced to.

Joan Rivers again

I was flipping through the channels. Stopped for a moment on E!. There was Joan Rivers. Making another Helen Keller joke.

"HER ASS HAS MORE DENTS IN IT THAN HELEN KELLER'S CAR," she wittily bellowed in her grating, raspy voice.

Here's Joan River's problem. All the plastic surgery. She's pushing 80. If she looked 80, her tired old act might be amusing. Watching an incredibly old woman bellowing rude comments into a microphone about historical figures people under 50 have barely heard of might have some freak appeal. She could have been a vulgar, un-cute George Burns.

Maybe this IS World War Three

I saw a promo for some British sketch comedy show. We see two men in Nazi Gestapo uniforms. One says, "We do have skulls on our caps. Are WE the baddies?"

Americans might now ask themselves the same question. We have drones flying over a number countries. One drone is called the "Predator", the other the "Reaper", as in Grim Reaper. The military gloats that people on the ground can be watched and followed for days with them and they never know it, and they can then be killed at will, all by remote control.

And now we're in war number four, just launched against Libya.

War in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya. Plus the US has been killing people in Yemen and has been bankrolling terrorists attacking Iran, not to mention the ongoing Israeli war against Palestinians and their continuing threats against Lebanon.

How many simultaneous wars against Muslim countries do we have to be in before they're all lumped together in one massive war against Islam? Obama felt free to do this without consulting Congress at all, and nobody seems troubled by this, which might give the impression that it was part of a larger war we're already in rather than a new war against another country.

There are people in the U.S. who are pointing to this as a threat against Syria and any other predominately Muslim country the U.S. doesn't like, that we'll attack them if they try to stop mobs of demonstrators from overthrowing their governments.

Tom Cruise, Kathy Lee Gifford, pacifiers

Suri Cruise is pushing five and still using a pacifier. Isn't she the reincarnation of L Ron Hubbard or somebody? Did L Ron Hubbard secretly wish to be reincarnated as a five-year-old girl? And did he use a pacifier?

According to Suri's "mother", the girl has picked out all her clothes since she was one-and-a-half-years old.

Now, by contrast, there was Kathy Lee Gifford and her book about motherhood. She threw away Cody's pacifier without telling him and was amused at how he ran around the house searching for it. A child psychologist commenting on the book in Spy magazine felt this was cruel and sadistic, watching a child running around looking for something when she knew it wasn't there.

Of course, Spy magazine was well known for its hatchet jobs.

What's next for Two and Half Men?

So, what should happen now on Two and a Half Men? How can they explain Charlie's absence? His actor uncle had been offering to appear on the show while Sheen went through treatment, but that wouldn't work now.

They could kill Sheen off. Or they could explain that he's been given a long prison sentence, but his brother would need to visit him in prison. Maybe they could say that Charlie was arrested while traveling abroad.

They could do what they did on the old Bewitched and simply have another guy replace Charlie Sheen without explanation.

If they replace him with a new character, should it be another Charlie Sheen-like character? Or should Jon Cryer advance in rank and take on Sheen's characteristics while the new character moves in and is horrified at his hedonistic lifestyle?

And here's an idea: The show is called Two and Half Men. The kid is considered a half-man. What if Charlie Sheen is gone and two more teenagers move into the house?

Or what if they move out of the house? Sheen has finally kicked out Alan and Jake and they move in with another wealthy relative with an objectionable lifestyle.

What if they did it as a dramatic spin-off, like the way the serious drama Lou Grant spun off from The Mary Tyler Moore Show? Jon Cryer helps Angus T Jones cope with teen difficulties.

Probably just time to call it quits.

They fired Charlie Sheen

Well, Charlie Sheen was fired. For "moral turpitude". They didn't fire him after he pleaded guilty to assaulting his wife, in fact they renegotiated his contract. But, of course, I can't really take Charlie Sheen's side in this.

I wonder how Angus T. Jones is coping. And what about Jon Cryer? What will he do now?

Anyway, this may help Sheen. Someone pointed out that his vast amount of money is keeping him from hitting rock bottom.

On the other hand, what do I know? Maybe he did cure himself through the power of his mind. Maybe all those things he's been saying are right. Maybe he does have tiger blood.

From Counterpunch

An interesting article on counterpunch.com about Charlie Sheen. Starts with a quote:

"I'm untouchable! I'm Charlie Sheen! I'm more famous than Obama!"

-- Charlie Sheen to his wife

It’s possible that Carlos Irwin Estevez, the actor known as ‘Charlie Sheen’, is ranting the simple truth when he claims to be invulnerable and indestructible because he’s fleetingly super-famous and has “tiger’s blood” running in his pharmaceutically-enhanced veins...

...

... Exposure is the ultra-violet ray that springs this hardy weed into life, without it he’d be dead or institutionalized. Look on the bright side: we keep Charlie alive.

He goes on to describe Charlie as

a sub-so-so actor of a string of rotten movies except for Oliver Stone’s Vietnam war masterpiece, Platoon, where Charlie superbly played a rookie grunt with divided loyalties.

http://www.counterpunch.com/sigal03072011.html

Nice that someone finally pointed out that Sheen is a sub-so-so actor. That's the thing that always amazed me. I know he's making a fortune on his TV show, but where did he get the $50,000 he blew on prostitutes several years ago, before the show?

Overnight, Troy Duffy, The Boondock Saints

I remember many years ago. It was the only episode of thirtysomething [sic] I ever saw. One of the guys in his thirties is given the task of directing a commercial. He runs the gamut of emotions. He starts out acting like some sort of cinematic genius until his son asks him what the first thing is he will do when they start filming. He realizes he had no idea what he's doing.

That thought crossed my mind watching the documentary, Overnight. If Harvey Weinstein handed you fifteen million dollars to make a movie, how would you go about it? What you probably wouldn't do is get drunk every night, stagger into meetings with your benefactor hung over wearing overalls, verbally abuse everyone around you, shout threats and obscenities over the phone....

When things start to go bad, Troy Duffy wonders, "Could we threaten people more?"

The documentary was going to be about the making of the movie Boondock Saints, but it ended up being about Troy Duffy's self-destruction.

Duffy was a loud obnoxious bartender/bouncer. He and members of a band he was in had moved to Los Angeles to pursue their musical career. He wrote the script, The Boondock Saints, a vigilante story. When another producer shows interest in it, Harvey Weinstein snatches it up without reading it. He offers Duffy a better deal which includes, among other things, a recording contract for the band.

From Roger Ebert's review:

[Duffy] is very full of himself. At one point he actually says that Harvey Weinstein would like to be him. He keeps all of the money, tells the guys in the band they will get paid later, later tells them they don't deserve a dime, and still later tells them, "You do deserve it, but you're not gonna get it." He is deeply satisfied with himself: "We got a deep cesspool of creativity here," he says, and boasts "this is the first time in history they've signed a band sight unseen." Also, he might have reflected, sound unheard. As he's acting out his ego trip, the camera shows the others in the room looking at him with what can only be described as extremely fed-up expressions. His family, we sense during one scene, has been listening to this blowhard for a lifetime, and although they are happy to share his success, they're sort of waiting to see how he screws up.

And screw up he does. Of course.

So, well. It's a pretty entertaining documentary. Far better than The Boondock Saints turned out to be. I guess I'm not giving anything away here. The movie does eventually get made at a fraction of the original budget.

According to the co-director of the documentary: "Troy seemed to revel in the attention of Hollywood's lights and our cameras. Only three times during the production did he ask not to be filmed. It was on those occasions that he threatened us."

Ray Carney, the Boston University prof, appears briefly in the movie. There's a link to his website on here. Duffy speaks to Carney's class with predictable results.

Well, even if Duffy had been a nice guy, it would probably have ended badly. Then the documentary would have been a cautionary tale about the dangers of being nice rather than the dangers of being a big obnoxious drunk.

Movie comedians used to be stupid

There were the Ritz Brothers. Starred in a few movies. They were on a train. Their agent was with them. He fell asleep. So the zany Ritz Brothers gave him a "hot foot". That's where you stick a match in the sole of a person's shoe and light it so that it burns his foot. They thought it was funny back then, which is sort of ironic because antibiotics hadn't been discovered yet and a blister caused by a burn could become infected and cause death by blood poisoning.

The Three Stooges got the idea for their eye gouging from an actual incident. They were performing somewhere. They were in a hotel. Larry went out. When he came back, Moe looked out the window and saw him on the sidewalk in front of the hotel and dropped a piece of pie on his head. Larry came up to the room and was so angry that he jabbed Moe in the eyes.

The Marx Brothers were left waiting for a long time in a studio head's office. So they took their clothes off and started cooking potatoes in the fireplace. I guess the idea was that they had been waiting so long that they had become feral. Which is sort of funny.

Another historical detail about The King's Speech

Alexander Cockburn mentioned this in his column on counterpunch.com:

The inhibitions that prompted the stutter extended to other regions of the King’s body, as Kitty Kelley narrates in her fine book The Royals. Sexual dysfunction plagued poor George VI. Elizabeth and Margaret were conceived (respectively in 1926 and 1930) with the help of artificial insemination, donor undisclosed. Actually, since the sisters did not resemble each other, we can assume two donors were involved.

Something like 40% of Americans have royal ancestry. Or do they? The current British Royal Family may not have any royal ancestors.

Guys filming something----but for what?

I saw two guys with Flip cameras. One was filming traffic with the camera down on the sidewalk. The other was standing, filming, standing on the safety island halfway across the street.

I kept looking at the camera, so I may have ruined the shot.

And something unrelated from Two and a Half Men

"Let me tell you about your Uncle Charlie. He puts on a happy face, but deep down, he is a sad, lonely person."

Jon Cryer to Angus T. Jones.

I don't know why I put that here. It doesn't really reflect anything about Charlie Sheen and his present difficulties. I don't know if he's sad or lonely, and I don't know that he ever tried to appear especially happy. He's not like, uh-----well, what famous person is there who went around trying to appear happy? Maurice Chevalier? Rosalind Russell?

People who look like Emilio Estevez

I don't know how I felt about Charlie Sheen. I'm not sure what I've ever seen him in other than his TV show.

And I'll tell you something weird about his brother, Emilio Estevez. I've know three guys over the years who looked and sounded just like him. One of them was in film school, and I thought he should give himself a stage name, like Emilio Sheen, and star in his own movies. But he never made any movies. He works as a photographer now. His bachelor's degree and his resemblance to Emilio Estevez both wasted.

I also knew a guy who looked and sounded like Neal Diamond and another guy who looked and sounded like Harry Reasoner.

I find it strange that they looked and sounded like them. Celebrity look-alikes are common enough. Do they usually sound like them, too?