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Monday, June 12, 2006

True things

I got in from Washington last night, and I’m happy to report that I still have the same number of children I had when I left on Friday.  Thanks to Nick for taking care of Jamie all weekend!  And also for taking care of Lucy the Dog, who needed (apart from her ordinary diurnal needs) twice-day pills and four-times-a-day eyedrops.  About the whole “keeping the house clean” thing, well, we will talk.  But not here!  Here’s not a good place.

As you may or may not know, I spent some of my time in D.C. giving a lunchtime talk at the annual meeting of the American Association of University Professors.  The slot was noon to 1:15 on Saturday, so I prepared a version of this talk on academic freedom (which, as you may or may not know, I delivered at Penn State back in January).  Around 10 that morning, I went to case the joint: maybe it’s just my former-musician thing, but whenever I have a speaking gig, I like to check out the room and the acoustics beforehand.  In the course of doing so, I chatted for a few minutes with an AAUP staffer, who asked me whether I would be eating before I spoke.  No, I said, that always crosses me up.  I get up to the podium and I’m convinced that there’s a piece of chicken wedged in between my teeth, usually because there’s a piece of chicken wedged in between my teeth.  But then I realized that the talk wouldn’t start until people were mostly done with lunch.  My stars!  I’d prepared a 40-minute lecture. “Um,” I said, “about how long are these talks supposed to run?”

“Oh, about twenty minutes,” said the staffer.  “And maybe there will be some questions afterward.  But we have to stop promptly at 1:15.”

“Okay!” I said, gathering up my stuff.  “I’ll just be in my room . . . ah . . . working.”

I got it down to 25 minutes, I’m glad to say, and I’ll post the transcript tomorrow.  It’s revised from January’s talk, not only for length but also to acknowledge the fact that one of our luncheon guests was none other than the president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

But I don’t have the energy to post it today, because of a Curious Coincidence that befell me last night.

After I was done putting Jamie to bed and cleaning up the house, I was exhausted.  I got ready for bed around 11, badly needing the seven and a half hours of sleep before I would have to start the morning ritual and get Jamie off to school, but I made two critical mistakes.  The first was that I checked in on this very blog, and found Saltydog, in comment 59 on this thread, saying

I think in time, we will look upon Walken’s so-called ‘performances’ as one big seamless and extended performance stretched over many decades. The same could be said for Hopper, who is kind of his spiritual twin.

Then, fifteen minutes later, I made my second mistake: I turned on the TV as I turned off the light on the nighttable, and discovered that True Romance had just started on a cable channel even more obscure than the Outdoor Living Network.

Now, True Romance happens to be one of my guilty pleasures.  Directed by Tony Scott and written by Quentin Tarantino, it’s basically (as I read it, ahem, ahem, this is a Theory by Me) a fantasy version of Tarantino’s own journey to fame and fortune, in which a geek who works in a comic-book store and watches Sonny Chiba movies gets caught up in a plot involving a call girl and a suitcase full of cocaine (Tarantino worked in a movie-rental joint, watched Sonny Chiba movies, and eventually sold the script of True Romance . . . you get the idea).  Christian Slater serves as Tarantino’s alter ego, chomping into cheeseburgers and immersing himself in Elvis and Japanese pop culture until he gets his big break in L.A.  Seriously:  when Clarence (Slater) tries to unload the coke on Hollywood producer Lee Donowitz (Saul Rubinek), he pitches it as a film, telling Donowitz via car phone that he’s giving him a shot at the release of Doctor Zhivago.  Later, as the final scene unfolds, Donowitz initially rejects the deal, believing (with reason) that $200,000 for a suitcase of uncut coke is a bargain so good that something must be wrong with it.  He pulls Clarence aside and challenges him to prove he’s on the level.  Clarence replies with a bullshit story about how a bad cop has been keeping the coke after a bust and needs to unload it, and that Clarence is getting rid of it cheap because he doesn’t know what he’s doing.  So how come the cop gave it to you, Donowitz asks, if you’re such an amateur?  “I bullshitted him,” replies Clarence, in a cheeky meta- moment that seals the deal.  The entire movie is meta- by that point, though, because Donowitz’s assistant, Elliott (Bronson Pinchot), a struggling actor, has been picked up by the feds and is wearing a wire in the hope of ratting on his boss.  “Your motivation,” he tells himself before his big scene, “is to stay out of jail.” “You’re an actor!” yell the feds as Elliott appears to crack on the pressure.  “Act, dammit!” And as the actors act, Clarence bullshits his way through the film, armed only with his wit and his inspirational meetings with Elvis (Val Kilmer) in the bathroom.

So I told myself, look.  One of your commenters has just named Hopper as Walken’s spiritual twin, and here at 11:30 you’re watching a movie that includes the positively dangeral “Sicilian scene” featuring the twins themselves.  The scene is kind of moving, in its way: once Clarence’s estranged father (Hopper) realizes that he will not survive this interview with the Mafia boss (Walken) who’s chasing the cocaine Slater inadvertently stole from his new wife (Patricia Arquette)’s former pimp (Gary Oldman), he decides to insult Walken in the most graphic possible manner, hoping that he will be killed quickly and spared hours of torture (his gambit pays off when Walken shoots him repeatedly, remarking that he hadn’t killed someone since 1984).  And so he dies rather than give the mob any information on his son, even though he hadn’t seen his son in three years before the previous morning.  You really have to see it.  And if you’ve already seen it, you have to see it again.  “I’ll just stay awake until that scene,” I said.  “Just for Walken and Hopper.  Then I’ll sleep, I promise.”

Yes, well.  Two hours later, as the movie ended and I finally closed my eyes for the night, I knew I had shot my Monday to hell.  And so I have.  But not before enjoying yet again one of the most awesome supporting casts ever assembled in one place: Walken and Hopper and Oldman and Pinchot and Rubinek, of course, but also a very entertaining Brad Pitt as a stoner and a kind of svelte James Gandolfini as a brutal thug.  Even Samuel L. Jackson appears for about ten seconds.  (I don’t know what to make of Arquette’s performance.  I wonder whether Tony Scott specifically asked her to be unconvincing, and if he did, she was most convincingly unconvincing.) I have to say I deplore the violence at the end of the film, however, and I fear that it might have a terrible effect on our children, by making them want to try to sell a suitcase full of cocaine to a Hollywood producer despite the fact that the producer’s assistant is wearing a wire for the feds and the Mafia has learned (from Brad Pitt) where the sale will be taking place, and by leading them to believe that they can escape to Mexico with $200,000 and the girl in the end even though three FBI men, four Mafia goons, and two of the producer’s bodyguards are shooting each other to death across a hotel suite.  I don’t think that’s the kind of message Hollywood should be sending our kids, which is why, when I think of wholesome family entertainment, I recommend True Lies instead.

Posted by Michael on 06/12 at 03:34 PM
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