RIP David Bowie – The Man Who Sold the World

I don't normally do this sort of thing, write a tribute to a celebrity when they pass away. I think it's that if I don't know someone personally, it's hard to claim a claim a personal connection to them beyond the obvious connection between artist and audience. Maybe, it's that I spend so much time watching old movies, whenever someone from classic film dies, it's hard to feel bad to hear someone died who was blessed with a very long life. The only thing I know for sure is that the death of David Bowie has hit me a lot harder than these things normally do. 

Looking at Facebook and Twitter, the thing that jumps out at me is that people who are half my age or 20 years older are all feeling the same thing. I think what made David Bowie unique is that he was something of a chameleon. He always managed to stay relevant. Other artists re-invent themselves. Sometimes this is good, sometimes this bad, but it almost always seems contrived. With David Bowie, it was more like he was continually evolving. No matter what he did, he could tap into whatever was happening musically and put out something that was uniquely his but still perfectly at home with what was going on at that moment.

I saw the news in a Facebook post over breakfast. What immediately went through my mind was something that happened on Saturday. My wife and I go to a dance club called, Club Sabbat. The music leans toward industrial, goth, and synth pop. In the back room (on nights when they have a back room), the DJs skew more retro with a mix of 80s music, things like Depeche Mode, The Cure, and Siouxsie and the Banshees, along with older stuff from bands like Convenant, Wolfscheim, and Nine Inch Nails. It's very mixed crowd, gay, straight, whatever falls in between, kids barely old enough get in the bar to people our age, 40s and 50s.

Anyway, it was late Saturday, after 1 am. We were getting ready to leave, when the DJ, put on Fame. What struck me was how well this song held up. Here was a song that was released 40 years ago, older than probably two thirds of the people in the club, yet everybody was digging on it, not because it was old, but because it was good, timeless.

17 Days and Counting ...

As of today, I have 17 days left of work. My company called it right-sizing. The truth of the matter is it's a combination of downsizing and outsourcing. About half of the technical writers in the office have been let go. In our old group about three quarters of the people will be gone (they had reorganized and our group didn't really have enough work to keep us busy despite other groups drowning). I've let friends know but that's about it. This is my first public post on the matter.

One of my favorite pieces

I woke up yesterday, and for the first time in weeks, I wasn't freaked out. Oh, I'm still a little worried that the family will go destitute, but I figure that I've got about 6 months before I really have to stress about not having a job. What changed? I now know what I'm doing on February 2, and I'm psyched to get started. Years ago, I used to do mosaics mostly out of broken dishes, and I'm starting that up again. My first project is a fireplace surround.

I've been thinking about different design ideas for a couple of weeks now, but it didn't really come together until the last few days. Our house was built in the 19-teens, so I was shooting for Art Deco, in keeping with the age of the house. My original idea was to have two pillars on the fireplace topped with something really cool like a woman's face or the figure of a gazelle or something. I spent a lot of time online looking at pottery, Art Deco reliefs, and anything I could think of. I went to thrift and antique malls looking for inspiration and nothing really jumped out at me. The problem is I needed two things that either matched or at least looked like they went together.

On Sunday, I decided that I should do something with ceramic masks. I went to Party City and got a cheap plastic mask so I could play around with designs. Then I happened on the idea that maybe I should do something Art Deco science fiction, like something out of Flash Gordon. It was with that in mind when I headed to another couple antique stores. The first I knew was mostly furniture, and I didn't expect to find anything there. The second had moved, but there was an architectural salvage place on the same block. There I found my inspiration below.

My inspiration piece

I imagined it as a the top of a space helmet or the head of a robot. I knew right away that this was something I could work with. The idea coalesced over the next day or two with the finishing touches hitting me yesterday morning in the shower. 

In the center of the hearth is a sun. Below it a floating city. On both sides are giant robot guardians. Their outside arms are at their sides; their inside are arms holding tall staffs. At the tops of the staffs are some sort of device pointing at the sun. I haven't decided yet whether it is an artificial sun being powered by the staffs, or a real sun that the staffs are drawing the sun's energy to power the city. The robot guardians are standing on pedestals in a stormy sea. Yes, that's right, ladies and gentlemen, global warming is real. The once fertile world has been transformed into a violent ocean covered planet where the inhabitants only recourse is to live in the clouds. Yes, Mom, I swear, I stopped doing drugs a long long time ago.

Artist rendition

I'm psyched. It's gonna be so cool. Still a bit freaked out about the job thing and the possibility of the family going destitute, but things usually have a way of working out. Toward that end, if you happen to see a Linked-In connection request from me, that would be why.

The Front Page (1974) – Cinematic Cover Song

Back in November, I took the train up to Hollywood to see the preview of the TCM/Bonhams classic movie auction. I was only in town for about 4 or 5 hours before I had to jump the train back to San Diego. Whenever I'm up there I like to stop at Amoeba Records, a huge music store. Normally, when I'm there, I spend the entire time looking for music, but they also have movies upstairs. This was the first time I'd ever gone upstairs. 

I ended up buy six DVDs, three of which were from one my favorite directors, Billy Wilder. Of the three, two were later films that they rarely show these days, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) and the subject of this post, The Front Page (1974). I just got around to watching The Front Page about a week ago.

Before I go on, I want to cover the genealogy of The Front Page. The Front Page was originally a hit play on Broadway, co-written by  Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. It was considered one of the better plays of 1928 and has been adapted to film four times:

• The Front Page (1931) – Though not extremely well-known today, this version, directed by Lewis Milestone and starring Adolphe Menjou and Pat O'Brien, was nominated for three Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director and one nomination for Adolphe Menjou as Best Actor (lost all three)
• His Girl Friday (1940) –  Easily the best known of the remakes today, with the key difference being having the reporter Hildy Johnson be a woman (Rosalind Russell) and the ex-wife of the editor Walter Burns (Cary Grant).
• The Front Page (1974) – This version directed by Billy Wilder and starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in the lead roles goes back to the original play with Lemmon as the reporter and Matthau as the editor.
• Switching Channels (1988) – This version draws from both The Front Page and His Girl Friday and stars Kathleen Turner, Burt Reynolds, and Christopher Reeve. I haven't seen this version and didn't even know it existed until I started researching for this post. The film was considered a failure, and was nominated for two Golden Raspberry Awards, Burt Reynolds (Worst Actor) and Christopher Reeve (Worst Supporting Actor). Now, that I know of it, I really want to see it despite it likely being very bad.

Of these adaptations, there's only one I really know well, His Girl Friday. I'm sure I've seen it easy fifty to a hundred times. I can recite bits of the dialog word-for-word. Before last week, I can't say for sure whether I had seen 1931 version of The Front Page. I probably saw the 1974 version as a kid, when it was shown on TV a year or two after it was released, but if I did, it didn't make a big impression on me, at least, not like other Jack Lemmon/Walter Matthau movies, anyway.

About a week ago, I sat down and watched the 1974 Billy Wilder remake of The Front Page (I also watched the 1931 version as well). Wilder didn't consider it one of his better films and is probably right. For me though, as I watched it (either for the first time as an adult or possibly the first time period), it struck me that this was like listening to a really cool cover version of a song you really like.

I love cover songs. I have hundreds and hundreds of them. In the days of dollar used CDs bins, I often buy albums by a band I barely know because I notice a cover of a song I really like. I think the problem with cover songs, when they go awry, is that they fail to distinguish themselves from the original. Who wants to hear the song played with the same arrangement with only a different singer or more distortion on the guitar solo that is note-for-note the same as the original. Sometimes, it doesn't take very much to make it work, like a singer with a different timber to his voice or female vocals on a song you know from a male singer. My favorite covers are always the ones where the artist takes the song in a completely different direction, like Joey Ramone's version or the Louis Armstrong hit, "What a Wonderful World."

The dialog in the two versions of The Front Page and His Girl Friday is 80% to 90% the same, so seeing the 1974 Billy Wilder version, where I can recite the lines from His Girl Friday by heart, was like hearing a song I love with a different singer who just nails it. 

Billy Wilder didn't like remakes of films, saying "... if a picture is good, you shouldn't remake it, and if it's lousy, why remake it?" It appears that he agreed to do the remake because he had once been a newspaper man himself and thought it was a glamorous profession. Personally, I have a feeling that he went back to the original play rather than His Girl Friday, because he wanted to distinguish his film from the better known version. In that respect, it really works. Knowing Hildy Johnson, as tough dame, hearing her words from a man works in the same way hearing the lyrics from a song you love coming from a singer of the opposite gender.

The cast is awesome. Screen teams just don't get much better than Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Is it their best work together?  Frankly, no, but some of it comes across brilliantly. Seeing Susan Sarandon in only her fifth film role as Hildy's love interest (remember, Hildy is a man in this version) is a treat. The part of Mollie Malloy is played by none other than Carol Burnett, and it was great to see her in something real and not just a 10-minute bit from her TV show, though the part consists of about the same screen time as one or two of her TV sketches. 

Left to right: Dick O'Neill, David Wayne, Charles Durning, and Allen Garfield

The rest of the cast is almost a who's who of 1970s character actors, Vincent Gardenia as the Sheriff, Harold Gould as The Mayor, and Charles Durning, Herb Edelman, Lou Frizzell, Dick O'Neill, and Allen Garfield as reporters. If you don't know these names, you will surely recognize the faces. Rounding out the cast is David Wayne as Roy Bensinger (the reporter whose desk murderer Earl Williams hides for much of the third act). Aside from the gender switch or switchback if you prefer, one of the few changes is to make the character of Bensinger, gay. Possibly this is in the original stage play, but unless I missed it wasn't even hinted at in The Front Page (1931) or His Girl Friday.

In retrospect, is Billy Wilder's 1974 The Front Page as good as His Girl Friday? No, not even close. Is it as good as one of Wilder's other better films (I can rattle off about a dozen without cheating)? Again, no, not even close. But here's the thing with really great artists, even their bad stuff is well worth a look. That's definitely the case here.

2015, My Year in Classic Film – I Wish I Had Done the Math

I don't see a lot of movies in the theater. Scratch that, I don't see a lot of new movies in the theater. This year, I saw a total of six new films in the theater:

• Mad Max: Fury Road
• Avengers: Age Of Ultron
• Jurassic World
• Trumbo
• Hitchcock Truffaut
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens 

It's almost new year, and unless I make it to The Hateful Eight before the 1st, I assume that number is going to hold. This is pretty typical for me. Seeing about six new movies in the theater in a year is probably what I've done every year for the last 10 or more years.

I actually saw over over 64 movies in the theater in 2015. The six new ones account for about 10% of the total. The rest (58) were classic films. I know the number 58 is not correct. I know that there are a few that I'm not thinking of. Hence, I wish I had done the math. My New Year's resolution is to write down all of the movies I see in the theater in 2016. That way, if I decide to do this silliness next year, I won't have to dredge through old schedules, tweets, and blog posts to figure it out. I did attend three classic film festivals in 2015, Universal Suspects, a year long festival showing 31 Universal Monster movies once a month (I saw 11 of them),  the TCM Classic Film Festival (TCMFF, saw 13), and the Palm Springs Classic Science Fiction Film Festival (saw all 8).

If you exclude the films I saw at festivals, there were still 26 classics to 6 new films, not bad, considering I live in San Diego, not New York or Los Angeles. The 26 films were spread out over 9 venues. 

Four were traditional theaters, showing Fathom Events screenings, or one of their own special screenings where they show an old movie one or two times only. Three were Indy theaters, where they mostly show foreign and Indy films, and only have limited offerings of classic films. One is a tiny outside theater in the back of a restaurant, where you sit on reclining chairs patio chairs with blankets and heaters. This is the only one where they show mostly classics, but they are only open four nights a week during the summer, two or three nights the rest of the year. The last couple of months they switched to showing new movies and have yet to post a schedule for January. The last venue was the Balboa Park Organ Pavilion, The Phantom of the Opera (silent with live organ accompaniment) on Halloween night.

So you're probably wondering why I writing this. Is it just to brag about the movies I've seen? Well, partly. But the other reason is that I want people to know that even if you don't live in a town where they don't have a lot of theaters that show old movies, you should have access to some. I live in San Diego. I'm sure it's better than some cities, but I know for a fact that it is worse than others. 

Fathom Events brings classic films to theaters across the nation. I just checked half a dozen cities, Des Moine, IA, Mobile, AL, Hartford, CT, Omaha, NB, Anchorage, AK, and Medford, OR, and all had screenings scheduled for January. Their web site currently list the classics they will be showing through November 2016:

• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Jan 17 and 20)
• The Maltese Falcon (Feb 21 and 24)
• The Ten Commandments (Mar 20 and 23)
• On the Waterfront (Apr 24 and 27)
• Ferris Bueller's Day Off (May 15 and 18)
• Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Jun 26 and 29)
• The Planet of the Apes (Jul 24 and 27)
• The King and I (Aug 28 and 31)
• Dr. Strangelove (Sep 18 and 21)
• The Shining (Oct 23 and 26)
• Breakfast at Tiffany's (Nov 27 and 30)

Some pretty good stuff there. I'm most psyched on The Maltese Falcon, On the Waterfront, and The Planet of the Apes. The folks who did the Universal Suspects festival are planning a year-long Hammer Horror festival. And I have already bought my passes to TCMFF, so 2016 is looking pretty good.

About three months ago, I started keeping a calendar of all classic films I can find showing in San Diego. I update it once a month. It forces me to scour the internet for screenings. I made it public, but as far as I know I'm the only one using it. There's a link at the top of the page. Just knowing that something is coming up makes me more likely to go out and see it. I now have a number of places I know to look and occasionally I stumble on new ones. The Coronado Island Film Festival is coming up in January, and they will be showing at least some classics including Some Like It Hot. 

Seeing great old films in the theater is wonderful. I know that film festivals are expensive, TCMFF especially so. The cost of travel, hotel, and the festival itself might not be doable for a lot of people. I consider myself very lucky that I can do some. Still, you should be able to take in the Fathom Events screenings unless you live in the middle of nowhere. I can't help you with that. 

Look around, you never know what you may find. October tends to be a good month as a lot of places will show horror movies for Halloween. Summers you might be able to find movies in the park. The local library might show film noir or a university might show schlocky science fiction. It's worth the effort to see these films the way they were meant to be seen on the big screen with an audience. Even films, you don't like all that well tend to be better, and by supporting those who show them, you encourage them to do more.

In case you're wondering, the 26 films are listed below. Two are from the 1990s (The Iron Giant, 1999, is the newest, a classic in my book), four are from the 1980s, and two are from the 1970s. The rest are all 1960s or older:

• Roman Holiday
• The Good The Bad and The Ugly
• Dr. Zhivago
• All About Eve
• The Phantom Of the Opera
• Dracula
• Dracula [Spanish Language version]
• Duel
• The Black Cat
• Dial M for Murder
• An American Werewolf in London
• Rafifi
• Dead Ringer
• Strait Jacket
• Duck Soup
• Iron Giant
• The Third Man
• Jaws
• Double Indemnity
• Top Gun
• Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan
• The Sound Of Music
• Sunset Blvd.
• Once Upon a Time in the West
• Blade Runner: The Final Cut
• The Shawshank Redemption

Prime Rib and Joan Crawford

Last night we went to dinner at a place I had never been to, despite having driven past hundreds of times. We used to live with my wife's mother in Southeast San Diego. This is a predominantly black and Latino area, and there really isn't much there other than the mom and pop liquor stores and taco shops (actually marginally better now than it used to be in that respect).

When we went shopping or wanted takeout food, we almost always went to National City, which borders San Diego to the south and was only about 8 blocks from where we lived.  The main north-south street in that part of National City is Highland Avenue. We used to call it eater's row, because it has every fast food known to man on it. About where all of the fast-food places start of give way to more normal businesses, there is a restaurant called Cafe La Maze, a place that looks like it's been there forever, because, well, it kinda has, at least by San Diego standards. 

I always assumed it was a sit-down Mexican place. La Maze to me sounds vaguely Spanish, and in San Diego, that usually means Mexican food. I would have never guessed that it was a steakhouse, nor that it was a haunt for old guard Hollywood. Cafe La Maze opened in 1940 and catered to Hollywood, stars such as  Bing Crosby, Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, and Johnny Weissmuller. Back then, that stretch of Highland Avenue would have been the road you took south to the horse races at Agua Calliente in Tijuana. According to the web site, they even had a secret gambling room upstairs.

Our friend Anastasia suggested we go when she found out the place was classic film related. The place is definitely old school, red velvet wallpaper and pictures of classic film stars above each booth. The food was excellent. I had a rib eye and everyone else had prime rib in a booth with a young Joan Crawford watching us eat. Not a bad way to spend a Tuesday night three days before Christmas. 

Five Things I'm Expecting from Star Wars: The Force Awakens

I haven't seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens yet, so don't worry about spoilers. It's been out in theaters for about 48 hours now. Yeah, I know, what's wrong with me. I'm planning on seeing it in the next couple of weeks, and I'll do my best to avoid spoilers in that time. I spend way more time on Twitter than Facebook, so I kinda figure how bad can a spoiler be at 140 characters. I am not a huge fan of Star Wars, so if a spoiler or two sneak through my poorly constructed net, I'm probably not going to open any veins.

There are five things I'm expecting from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and I honestly don't think I'm going to be disappointed:

1. Fun. At their best, Star Wars films are fun. I'm sure the J.J. Abrams understands this, has shot for that, and likely hit the mark.

2. Kind of a Stupid Story. This is the main reason I don't consider myself a fan of the franchise. At 14, when I saw the first film, Episode IV, Star Wars. I flatly refuse to use those three words to describe it. I came out of the theater pumped like the rest of the audience. The special effects were like nothing you had ever and still hold up almost 40 years later. But I was also kind of disappointed. I couldn't help comparing the story of Star Wars to other great films I had seen at that point in my life, and storywise it wasn't even close. Face it, Star Wars is only Science Fiction because it's set in space. The story could just as easily be a Western or Sword and Sorcery film. You really wouldn't have to change much. I guess If you want  Science Fiction, you should read a book. Or watch Twelve Monkeys, or any of a dozen other movies that have way better science fiction plots than Star Wars.

3. Cool Stuff. This is main reason I have what little affection I have for Star Wars. The films abound with cool stuff. Light sabers are cool. Blasters are cool. Force choke is cool. X-wing and Tie fighters are cool. The Millennium Falcon, way cool. I fully expect Star Wars: The Force Awakens to be full of cool stuff. That's the main reason I'm going to see it, and the only reason I'm even sort of worried about spoilers.

4. Annoying Characters.  In Star Wars, cool stuff and annoying characters walk hand in hand. I guess it's like the light and dark side of the Force. Do I need to explain? Whiny characters, Luke, Princess Leia, Anakin, .... Annoyingly cute characters, C-3PO, wookies, Jar-Jar, .... Lame villains, Darth Maul, General Grievous, I'm looking at you. Or cool villians, who evolve into lame. Yes, Darth, that would be you. It's too late to become a good dad. You have to do what all bad dads have done throughout history: remarry and screw up a new batch of kid. In any Star Wars movie, there's usually a small handful of characters who are not annoying, Han Solo, Chewy, Obie-Wan, the rest, forget about it.

5. A Movie Better Than the George Lucas Films. I know this is not setting the bar very high, but I do like to end on a positive note.

µ-Blog – Breaking Bad Parenting

µ-Blog – Too long to tweet, too short to call a real post

My 15-year-old daughter and I started binge watching Breaking Bad together. I've already seen the whole series all the way through. I'd watched every episode as they came out from the very beginning as they came out, back when hardly anyone was watching the show.

Going through the series again like this, there are a ton of things that you don't remember. Last night, my wife and I were talking, and I was telling her about one of those minor but really cool plot points (Walter making batteries to jump start the RV when it had died in the middle of nowhere).

My wife says, "You know, we really should have that girl watch something nice every now and then."

"Hey," I replied. "I had her watch Casablanca." My wife gives me a look. "Then, again I also had her watch Night of the Hunter."