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Books: Malcolm X by Manning Marable

4 February 2012

In Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (Viking, 2011), Manning Marable (1950–2011) presents what appears to be a thorough and meticulous account of his subject, the assassinated black Moslem leader known as Malcolm X. That Marable, who unfortunately died days before the book’s publication, brings impressive credentials to his work – he was a professor of African American studies, history and public affairs at Columbia University, served as founding director of Columbia’s Black History center and is the author of 15 books – underscores the question of why the press and their favored black intellectuals all but ignored this volume, which was published last year with hardly any coverage. Marable, who had taught The Autobiography of Malcolm X, written with, and arguably authored by, Alex Haley (Roots) during Marable’s seminar at Ohio State, had the audacity to approach his topic with real curiosity. So he sheds new light on the facts surrounding Malcolm X’s unsolved assassination, which he hints may have involved the FBI. He further enlightens readers about Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, whom he states advocated Malcolm X’s death. In one of Marable’s more trivial assertions, which has sadly tapped an anti-gay prejudice among blacks, he tells us in a brief passage that his subject had been a hustler who probably had sex with men.

There is much to learn here about Malcolm X, whose views are likely to shock many on the left and the right, tracing his origins as an East Coast vagabond through his conversion to Islam, the religion of submission to God, and his advocacy of racial segregation – so-called black separatism – his early alliances with Moslems in Africa and his affiliation with, and split from, the Nation of Islam, a group which continues to exist in the United States with connections to Islamists. It’s a fascinating story, based on interviews with Farrakhan and Malcolm X’s letters and diaries, tracing 20th century American politics and culture, and it is impossible not to make crucial connections to today’s news and events. Not only does one gain insights into the man born Malcolm Little and how he went from birth in Omaha to being arrested in Detroit and assassinated in 1965 by fellow Moslems at the Harlem place where Duke Ellington and Count Basie had played, one will become better acquainted with the sordid story of post-slavery black Americans, once known as Negroes, from Frederick Douglass to Marcus Garvey to Martin Luther King, Jr. (whom Malcolm X sought to differentiate himself from) to today’s entrenched black intellectuals.

We learn that Alex Haley was a liberal Republican. That the Islamic terrorist-supporting Rev. Farrakhan was raised as an Episcopalian and discovered Islam as a Calypso singer known as Louis Eugene Walcott in Chicago at a nightclub called the Blue Angel. That on the night when thousands of federal troops were occupying the University of Mississippi to ensure the enrollment of a Negro named James Meredith, Malcolm X was on talk radio denouncing interracial marriage. But above all in this apparently straightforward and honest biography by an intellectual who expresses gratitude for Malcolm X, one comes away with a spine-chilling report on the insidious spread of collectivism – and an inextricable black American link to Islamism – that haunts us still. That the man who mainstreamed anti-American Moslems in America was downed by Moslems in America is but one of several twists that make more sense in reading Manning Marable’s Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, an ambitious book with a glossary, notes, photographs, index and bibliography.

Permalink  |  Posted in Books, Culture, History, Viking

Happy 107th Birthday, Ayn Rand

2 February 2012

On this date in 1905, Ayn Rand was born. She escaped slavery in Soviet Russia, came to America – to New York City, then Chicago and Los Angeles and back to New York City, where she died in 1982 – and wrote screenplays, best-selling novels, newspaper columns and plays consumed by millions. She challenged the world and her philosophy, Objectivism, has since advanced throughout the West and among intellectuals, thanks to the efforts of the Ayn Rand Institute and, in particular, its founder, Leonard Peikoff.

I knew when I first read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged as a teen-ager that the world can be and ought to be as wonderful as Ayn Rand imagined and anyone who thinks her 1957 epic is strictly a dark prophecy of a nation in decline needs to think again. Atlas Shrugged is foremost an inspiring story of man at his best and it also offers an enriching philosophy for living on earth. Rand, who understood and fled Communism, saw that America was in deep trouble. Having seen the rise of the New Left first hand, and having been the recipient of its worst ideas, I also sensed, even 30 years ago, that the country was headed toward dictatorship. As I studied Objectivism, reading Dr. Peikoff’s philosophy books (The Ominous Parallels and Objectivism), attending lectures, courses and conferences, and engaged in what was really the first application of Objectivism to politics, a premature attempt to save medicine as a profession (in which some good was accomplished), I confirmed the worst. With the state-sponsored seizure of Elian Gonzalez, the Islamist attack on September 11, 2001, Black Tuesday, and today’s impending economic collapse, I must accept the fact that America is coming to an end, as Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff warned for decades.

But today brought good news. I’m not talking about the announcement that a second installment in a low-budget film series adaptation of Atlas Shrugged will be directed by Duncan Scott, who co-produced the restored film adaptation of We the Living, and released this fall (though with Scott on board, it may be an improvement over Atlas Shrugged, Part 1). Thanks to one of Objectivism’s new intellectuals, Tore Boeckmann (editor, The Art of Fiction by Ayn Rand), I learned that Leonard Peikoff’s forthcoming new book, The DIM Hypothesis: Why the Lights of the West are Going Out, is being published this fall and is available for pre-order on Amazon.com. Dr. Peikoff’s book is based on his final course, which I wrote about here, and I have every reason to think his third book will enlighten those who move the world. There are other reasons for encouragement, too many to mention, in several works – plays, exhibits, books, podcasts, movies, and I include my own work – by those influenced by the genius of Ayn Rand, including those who make no claim to be Objectivists. There isn’t much time to spare the United States of America, as far as I can tell, but her philosophy of reason, individual rights and egoism is making progress in changing the world. To which I can only say: Happy Birthday, Ayn Rand, in the name of the best within us.

Permalink  |  Posted in Ayn Rand, Books, Movies, Philosophy

Movie Review: Ayn Rand & the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged

18 January 2012

Surprisingly, there’s a lot I don’t like about the new Ayn Rand documentary, which I watched with a sold-out audience, including friends who worked on the 84-minute film, at a special screening at the ArcLight Hollywood last night. Because I know many of those who appear in or worked on it, I wanted to like every second of Ayn Rand & the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged and there is much to like in this movie, which I enjoyed as an experience of seeing Ayn Rand on the big screen again. By the time we see what relevance Rand’s epic novel has to today’s dark times, there are many good points, read directly from her 1957 Random House bestseller and contrasted with well-chosen works of art depicting opposing ideas. But the good points get bogged down in an overbearing movie.

With a booming male narrative, breakneck pace and incessant score, the independent documentary is better suited to the intimacy and immediacy of television. Writer and director Chris Mortensen achieves amazing results given the ground he has to cover in this short time frame. There’s just too much material crammed into the movie, which covers the truly prophetic Atlas Shrugged, set in what novelist and philosopher Rand called the day after tomorrow and dramatizing America collapsing under a corrupt establishment of government regulators and their favored businessmen who prey on individual achievement. Nothing wrong with being ambitious, but the unfortunately named Ayn Rand & the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged, which at its worst plays like a bombastic infomercial, delves into the book’s history at the expense of explaining key connections to today’s events.

The film relies too heavily upon two discredited Rand biographers, Jennifer Burns and Anne Heller, both of whom wrote deeply flawed accounts of Rand’s life in 2009, though they don’t repeat their worst errors or transgressions here. Presumably, they’re included for balance, the lack of which was a criticism of Michael Paxton‘s excellent Oscar-nominated 1997 documentary, Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life, but this effort is best when it sticks to people who know and grasp Rand’s life, art and ideas, such as former Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) director Mike Berliner (editor of Rand’s Russian Writings on Hollywood and Letters of Ayn Rand) and current ARI President Yaron Brook. What most Atlas Shrugged readers know, that reading Ayn Rand makes you feel awake and alive and achieves a sense of weightlessness, is left to Burns for observation. But neither Burns nor Heller has much credibility on the subject.

A steady stream of scholars and students and businessmen capably discuss Rand’s ideas and the students’ insights are most effective in demonstrating the relevance of Atlas Shrugged. The most prophetic points are in abundant evidence and the discussion of the tunnel scene is particularly clear and compelling. However, Objectivists will want to know where is English literature professor Shoshana Milgram, who has lectured extensively on Rand and her greatest literary influence, Victor Hugo, or philosophy professor Robert Mayhew, who has edited several volumes on Rand’s courses and writings, or Rand’s heir, Leonard Peikoff? Each of them has produced outstanding material about Atlas Shrugged. General fans of the book may simply wonder at the absence of literary scholars in a film about the power of a novel.

As propaganda for an exceptional book that runs over a thousand pages, contains larger-than-life themes that challenge the dominant ideas of our times and tells the unforgettable story of the mind on strike, Ayn Rand & the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged partially succeeds. Among the assets are images of Ayn Rand in rare footage, including the author at a press conference with the film’s comic relief, a colorful movie producer named Al Ruddy (The Godfather), who pitched a movie version of Atlas Shrugged to her until she pitched it back (and did he drop the ball). Other footage includes scenes from the first cinematic adaptation of Rand’s novel, last year’s unsuccessful Atlas Shrugged, Part 1, and a rarely seen clip from President Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell speech, in which Ike essentially warned about encroaching total government control of industry. So there is plenty of good, insightful material here, and Mortensen’s judgment can be impeccable, but there is too much of it, it is too imposing, and, as usual, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, which has remained in print, sold over a million copies and should be read and studied by every rational man and woman, deserves better. 

Permalink  |  Posted in Ayn Rand, Books, Movies, Philosophy, Random House

Movie Review: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

20 December 2011

Having neither read the books nor seen previous versions, I came into The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with limited advance knowledge of the story, so don’t look to this review for a series fan’s estimate. And, as most readers know, my tolerance for blood and gore is extremely low, much lower than most people’s in my experience. I am reminded of that fact with director David Fincher’s taut and disturbing new film.

This is the Sweden-based story of Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig, Cowboys & Aliens), a discredited journalist hired by a wealthy businessman (the always meticulous Christopher Plummer) to solve the dark, familial mystery of a woman who has been missing for 40 years, and a violent young hacker named Lisbeth (Rooney Mara) who figures into the mystery. That’s the upshot, with others in the cast filling in the blanks of a convoluted and mostly engrossing tale of a family that more or less eats its own. There’s Robin Wright as Mikael’s pragmatic, married lover and magazine publisher. There’s Joely Richardson as a London relative who seems to be the only happy and sane member of the industrialist’s Christian and Nazi-dominated family. And there’s the impeccable Stellan Skarsgaard (Thor, Angels and Demons) as one of Mikael’s few allies in solving the puzzle. They are all perfectly cast and directed in this cold, eerie movie about pain.

As the title implies, the emphasis is on damage, not on healing the wounded. I have nothing against tattoos as such, and the movie’s title, taken from the novel by the late Stieg Larsson, suggests the driving purpose of the story: to shock and titillate. After all, the female lead is not a girl at all, she is a woman and the character exists to express the theme about revenge of the damaged; about the cathartic empowerment of inflicting pain on others. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is all about watching it unfold. It is an exercise in voyeurism, plain and simple, the mark of Marin County native Fincher’s career, with deliberately distorted sound and images. The plot is difficult to track and, though it’s in English, the dialogue is at times hard to understand. In spite of this, most of it comes off well, playing masterfully with the senses to achieve the desired distortion.

So The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo begins with a loud, blaring hard rock music video (the score is by Trent Reznor of the nihilist rock band Nine Inch Nails) in which people are depicted covered in thick, dripping black paint and subjected to disgusting things. It’s not a nonstop assault on one’s senses, not at all, and the dark gray look pervades the film as Craig’s journalist goes from suspect to suspect and from old photo to old photo at the rich man’s island estate trying to piece together what happened to someone named Harriet. A cat enters the frigid, musty cottage where he writes as an old man makes an exit from Lisbeth’s life and slowly, calculatingly and effectively the pieces come together. That the finished piece is all utterly preposterous, making Silence of the Lambs (this movie’s godfather in every sense), look like an episode of something on the Disney Channel, is beside the point. What happened to Harriet is horrifying, gripping and sufficiently played out all at once, even if you see it coming, which I did, though that may be because I know firsthand that what happened to Harriet happens to more people than you think.

But there is a crucial sense in which The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is not really about what happened to Harriet or her depraved family or Mr. Plummer’s titan of industry or Mikael and his quest to get his name and reputation back. It is primarily about the woman whose uniquely devastated background, depicted here with graphic exactness, makes her perfectly matched to solving the riddle and avenging herself and the world’s Harriets. And they, the world’s Harriets, terrorized children, as we see from Saudi Arabia and Austria to Penn State and undoubtedly a church, college or house near you, possibly your own, are everywhere. That harsh reality is what’s supposed to make the pornography here, and gratuitous scenes of oral and anal rape, pet and human degradation and sado-masochism, acceptable. For all its moralizing about Old Testament Christians, Nazis and other faith-based followers of this or that including the welfare state (and does that get a well-deserved skewering), the neatly framed trains, bridges and wintry landscapes do not mask the fact that ogling a naked woman being raped, or Daniel Craig in his underwear, is really porn for the sake of porn.

Images of an emaciated person having sex or being raped may shock or titillate, but such scenes do not advance the plot, which you may realize only after the credits roll and it dawns on you that nothing much has moved you because nothing much has mattered but the blood and sex porn and the mystery was window dressing for the peeping. I see why the story and character are involving, I get it, and there’s no denying that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has potential to dramatize that damaged people hear and see depravity that the rest of us do not in a compelling form and much of David Fincher’s work here as elsewhere (Se7en, The Social Network, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) is well done. But, in the words of one character on what draws us to our doom in the film’s best scene, those who go willingly into darkness may live to regret what they experience.

Permalink  |  Posted in Books, Movies, Sony Pictures

Books: Catherine the Great

23 November 2011

Russian history readers will welcome Robert K. Massie’s new biography of Catherine the Great. The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Peter the Great, Nicholas and Alexandra, and The Romanovs accounts for the life of the young German princess who came to Russia at 14 and became its ruler for 34 years. Author Massie, who studied American history at Yale and European history at Oxford, reports in Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (Random House) that the empress had a brilliant mind and an insatiable curiosity, devouring the works of Enlightenment philosophers. When she assumed power, he writes, she made an effort to apply their principles to her rule of what the press release rightly describes as the vast and backward Russian empire. Massie notes that Catherine was “intellectually opposed to serfdom”. As grand duchess, she proposed that serfs be freed every time an estate was sold, though Rhodes scholar Massie is far less contextual about America’s founding fathers owning slaves than he is about a monarch’s interest in the Enlightenment.

Besides Voltaire, Frederick the Great and Marie Antoinette, Catherine also knew and corresponded with the founder of the American navy, John Paul Jones, whom she met and considered for admiralty in the Russian Navy. Jones, who had heard of the post through the American minister to France, Thomas Jefferson, wrote that he was “entirely captivated by her and I put myself into her hands without making any stipulation for my personal advantage.” Massie writes that Catherine was determined to become the embodiment of the “benevolent despot” idealized by Montesquieu.

Praised by Voltaire as the equal of the greatest of classical philosophers, Empress Catherine II ruled Russia from 1729 until 1796, during which time she endured her scheming mother, who considered her daughter, born Sophia Augusta Fredericka, arrogant and rebellious. Of course, Catherine’s mother had become pregnant at 16 and, when the child who would become Catherine was born, mother refused to hold or caress Catherine, handing her off to servants and wet nurses. Catherine married an equally inaccessible husband, Peter, and had a son and heir Paul—and she took in countless young men for sex and companionship. Massie also accounts for her relationship with Gregory Potemkin, her true love and equal, whom Massie asserts may have also been her husband.

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman is a crisply written, factual narrative about a compelling person in history. She founded a hospital with her own money in order to prevent infanticide, oversaw the building of the Russian navy and became the first royal in the world to be injected with the smallpox vaccine (Jefferson beat her to it) which was an example to mystical people with irrational fears of medicine. More than anything, Massie shows how her active mind worked throughout history, as in this excerpt about Catherine’s childhood lessons about God and religion, during which she dared to ask about circumcision and wondered: “How can the infinite goodness of God be reconciled with the terrors of the Last Judgment? [Her tutor] Wagner, shouting that there were no rational answers to such questions, and that what he told her must be accepted on faith, threatened his pupil with his cane. … Later Sophia wrote, “I am convinced in my inmost soul that Herr Wagner was a blockhead.” She added, “All my life I have had this inclination to yield only to gentleness and reason—and to resist all pressure.”

Permalink  |  Posted in Books, History, Random House

Interview: Jon Winokur

8 November 2011

Jon Winokur (pronounced winne-kuhr) is a writer’s writer and the author of numerous books on writing and other topics, including The Portable Curmudgeon, Advice to Writers and his newest book, The Garner Files: A Memoir, written with 83-year old actor James Garner. We talked about his books during a recent conversation.

Scott Holleran: How did you approach James Garner as a subject?

Jon Winokur: As the subject, he is there, bigger than life—the subject approaches you. You know that guy up there on the screen and you think he’s a nice guy. Well, he’s even better—and that’s after taking two years of researching his life. He was there. He writes the book for you. Much of The Garner Files writes itself.

Scott Holleran: Is it mostly based on interviews?

Jon Winokur: Yes, with him and with friends and colleagues and quite a few interviews with family members. It’s a wonderful clan, by the way; there’s a certain dignity and honesty about them.

Scott Holleran: So you created the narrative?

Jon Winokur: Yes. It was easy to do because I’ve known him for 25 years. With a lot of famous people, you think you know them and you don’t. But Jim pans out.

Scott Holleran: That’s impressive. You’ve got his tone down just right—

Jon Winokur: —sometimes, I’d find myself putting down a word and saying, ‘oh, no, that’s not a Garner word.’

Scott Holleran: Did you have an outline?

Jon Winokur: Yes, because I had put together an outline for the book proposal, which I had to tweak a little bit. But this is a departure [for me]. I’d never done a memoir or anything biographical. There’s autobiography, there’s biography and there’s memoir. The distinction I make is that autobiography has to cover all the details and a memoir is from the subject’s perspective. A memoir is subjective—and an autobiography strives to be objective.

Scott Holleran: Did you have a theme?

Jon Winokur: I think the theme emerged. I don’t think it’s helpful to say ‘insert scene here’; [the theme] will be organic. A couple of themes emerged. One is his sympathy for the underdog, which informs his work, his personal relationships and his politics. It’s probably unavoidable to point to his being abused as the source of at least some of that empathy.

Scott Holleran: How did you get the job?

Jon Winokur: I published The Portable Curmudgeon in 1987—it was a tiny first printing—and it came out and was doing OK. At that time, someone had suggested that I get an unlisted telephone number because sometimes a writer get some bizarre responses. So I said, ‘why? I’m lonely. Let them call me,’ and one day I got a call and heard, ‘this is Jim Garner. I’m an actor.’ And of course I knew who he was. Then he said, ‘What kind of a curmudgeon has a listed telephone number?’ Apparently, he had been in the hospital and he had been depressed. [Comedians] Bob Newhart and Dick Martin had sent him my book and he said he wanted to thank me because the book had cheered him up. That was that, until about a month later. The phone rings at 9 o’clock at night and a friend told me that [Mr. Garner] was reading from my book on The Tonight Show. It put my book on the map and sales shot through the roof. It in effect gave me a career. He and I kept in touch—he would send wine from his vineyard for Christmas—and about two years ago we were having lunch and I heard myself asking ‘how come you’ve never written a book?’ And he said because he thought no one would want to read it. I thought and thought about it and I wrote this letter and brought out all guns for writing a memoir. His manager called and said OK. I guess he felt safe with me.

Scott Holleran: What’s your favorite line in the book?

Jon Winokur: There’s a line he quotes from Murphy’s Romance, something like, ‘When I’m pushed, I shove.” He doesn’t go looking for a fight. But, by golly, if you wrong him…

Scott Holleran: How did you primarily relate to Mr. Garner—as his friend, observer, partner?

Jon Winokur: As the most extraordinary human I’ve encountered. The things he’s done anonymously for countless people—the endless goodwill—comes up whenever I mention his name. I always get the same response: “Oh, I love him.” In one of the TVQ categories [a measurement of a celebrity’s cultural influence] he’s still in the top ten. He’s wonderfully skilled. He could have been a pro golfer or a pro race car driver, and he has a great intelligence that I don’t think always comes through. Jim’s really good at whatever he chooses to do—the Grand Prix drivers [working on the movie] say he could have raced and beat some of the pro drivers. He’s just an amazingly quick study. He could sit in the makeup chair and learn the script right there. He learned how to memorize lines from his first acting job in [the stage production of] the Caine Mutiny Court-Martial. He played a judge and he had no lines but he was paid by the producer to run lines with Lloyd Nolan and Henry Fonda and he told me that he learned to use the lines as building blocks—building one line on top of the other—and he said the trick is that you don’t go from one to the next without learning the first line. ‘You don’t learn lines,’ he told me, ‘you learn thoughts’. He’s the most easygoing person I’ve ever worked with—he applies his work ethic—and he was always there. The only negative thing he ever said in our two years was when I brought him the [book jacket] cover. He didn’t say anything and, finally, he said, ‘I don’t like it.’ I asked why and he said ‘your name is too small.’ So they made it bigger.

Scott Holleran: Maverick or Rockford Files?

Jon Winokur: Maverick. Because I’m that old—I was ten [years old] when it came on. There was Mad magazine and there was Maverick.

Scott Holleran: What’s your favorite James Garner movie?

Jon Winokur: I’m going to agree with him—The Americanization of Emily [1964]. I love [screenwriter] Paddy Chayefsky’s work. The script and the way Garner handles it is amazing. But the role was a huge departure for him.

Scott Holleran: Did you watch any of the movies together?

Jon Winokur: Yes. We watched a few, such as Skin Game. He likes to watch Grand Prix for the racing. We were watching Support Your Local Sheriff and that’s when he told me he was imitating Henry Fonda in My Darling Clementine when he was sitting with his feet propped up.

Scott Holleran: Are you surprised by the media’s emphasis on the book’s salacious aspects?

Jon Winokur: No. [Pauses] Maybe a little bit.

Scott Holleran: Does it surprise you that Mr. Garner adores The Notebook?

Jon Winokur: Not at all. Because it’s his best work and I think he thinks so. He loved working with [director] Nick Cassavettes and Gena Rowlands and I think it was one of those shoots where everything fell into place. He cried in that movie; it’s one of the few movies he cries in, the others are The Children’s Hour and Promise. He hadn’t planned to do it. He said he was going to take his cue from [Ms. Rowlands]. I think he was a little out of control and it turned out OK.

Scott Holleran: Did you co-write the memoir’s “outtakes”, too?

Jon Winokur: Yes. Those are based on interviews, basically edited versions.

Scott Holleran: Did you meet and interview Doris Day?

Jon Winokur: I talked to her on the telephone. She was amazing. The most amazing was Lauren Bacall.

Scott Holleran: Do you have any other memoirs planned?

Jon Winokur: I have had some nice feedback from people in the [entertainment] industry, and from Simon and Schuster.

Scott Holleran: What is the impetus for Advice to Writers?

Jon Winokur: My first [non-self] published book, Writers on Writing, was a collection I had been amassing since I was 13. Advice to Writers [stems from] my attempt to try to figure out how to write.

Scott Holleran: Any new works in progress?

Jon Winokur: I don’t like to talk about it because when you talk about it, you discharge the energy. I am working on a pre-proposal. I can say it’s non-fiction.

Scott Holleran: Who are your favorite writers?

Jon Winokur: George Orwell. I like the essays on politics and the English language mostly and the short stories, especially Shooting an Elephant. He was on the right side of the Spanish Civil War [against the fascists] but he wasn’t taken in by [their enemies] the Communists. He was right about poverty and capitalism and he lived by his principles—he renounced his modest inheritance, which may be part of the reason he died at age 45. I also like Christopher Hitchens, Joan Didion—just her Zen-like brevity—Kurt Vonnegut, who’s the most magical, whimsical writer. Also Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac.

Scott Holleran: Any curmudgeonly thoughts on the late Andy Rooney?

Jon Winokur: I tried to interview him for one of the Curmudgeon books—and he refused, thereby verifying his curmudgeonliness. He served a great purpose—he was a gadfly and he was certainly a curmudgeon. He was 92. I’m sorry to see him go.

Scott Holleran: What’s the difference between a curmudgeon and a cynic?

Jon Winokur: That’s a good question. I think it was Oscar Wilde who said that a cynic knows the price of everything—and the value of nothing. A curmudgeon knows the value of everything. Curmudgeons are offended by the lack of value—they’re fighting the good fight for truth, justice and the American way; their crankiness comes from being disappointed from the lack of quality around them. They are hurt easily—they’re very fragile and they need the misanthropy to protect themselves. In [The Garner Files], Jim calls himself a Tootsie Pop. Hard on the outside, soft on the inside.

Permalink  |  Posted in Books, Interviews, Movies, Simon & Schuster, Television

Books: James Garner’s Memoir

1 November 2011

Tall, dark, handsome, accessible and humorous, actor James Garner (The Notebook) bridges the generational gap between classic and modern Hollywood and his memoir, The Garner Files, written by Mr. Garner with Jon Winokur (November, Simon & Schuster, $25.99), is a delightfully rich, short reading endeavor. After his Christian Scientist mother died from uremic poisoning in a botched, illegal abortion, the young Oklahoman suffered with his two brothers under his negligent, drunken father and the woman his father married: a brutal thug of a stepmother, who raped his grade school-aged brother and repeatedly beat Mr. Garner, making him wear dresses and go by the name “Louise.” He left home at the age of fourteen. One of the distinct qualities about this short, breezy account, which is warm and entertaining and told in Mr. Garner’s familiarly clipped tone, is his honesty. It is all too rare for a man in today’s anti-male culture, let alone a man’s man such as Mr. Garner, to call a woman out as his oppressor.

“Red was a nasty bitch,” he writes. “She enjoyed beating the bejesus out of us…she’d fly into a rage for no reason and hit us with whatever was handy, whether a stick or a board or a spatula.” Something snapped inside and, at that point, the child fought back. “I flattened her with one punch,” he writes. From there, the youngster fled that house, played football, dropped out of school, went back, and wound up as the first Oklahoman to be drafted into the U.S. Army for the Korean War. Combat against the Communist North Koreans and Chinese offers some of the most intense reading material in The Garner Files.

He was awarded with two Purple Hearts before returning to the United States and settling in Los Angeles to become an actor. Working in pictures and on television, he starred in the tongue-in-cheek Maverick television Western, which mocked heroism, which he admits, became a hit and took on Warner Bros. in a dispute that nearly cost him his film career. “The truth is, I wasn’t thinking about anybody but myself,” he writes. Another break came thereafter with The Great Escape, a classic, rousing World War 2 movie, and he built a solid track record of B-movie and genre success in a range of pics that played on his good looks and wry sense of humor. While filming The Great Escape in Munich, West Germany, he admits that he compared German cops to Nazis in an interview and writes that co-star, rival, friend and next-door neighbor Steve McQueen (The Thomas Crown Affair) used to race the movie’s swastika-emblazoned motorcycle all over Munich “just to annoy the Germans.”

James Garner pulls no punches, confessing that he is a conflicted liberal Democrat with anger issues, calling McQueen a Republican who wound up on Nixon‘s enemies list and was like a delinquent younger brother and adding that Charles Bronson (Death Wish) was a “bitter, belligerent SOB.” He expresses enormous respect for writers, particularly the late Paddy Chayefsky (Marty, Network), whom Mr. Garner says got his name in the Army when Chayefsky lied to an officer about being part Irish so he could say he was going to mass to get out of KP duty. Though James Garner is an unabashed liberal and environmentalist, he tells how the Democratic Party urged him to soften his position in favor of a woman’s right to an abortion in a bid to get him to run for governor of California in 1990.

Other highlights include exciting automotive racing stories of his epic film, Grand Prix, his astute business and production decisions and scars (seven knee operations) in making The Rockford Files for NBC, fighting Universal, and the Polaroid commercials with Mariette Hartley. On the business of Hollywood, which he calls dishonest, petty and ageist, he writes: “Late in his life, Fred Zinnemann, the Oscar-winning director who gave us From Here to Eternity, High Noon, and A Man for All Seasons, had a meeting with a young producer who didn’t know who Zinnemann was.” “‘Well, Mr. Zinnemann,’ said the young man, ‘What have you done?’ Zinnemann’s reply? ‘You first.’

For his part, Mr. Garner observes of today’s Hollywood moguls: “Most of them have been to business school or law school, sometimes both, but as far as film goes, they have no creative talent at all. Their opinions aren’t worth a damn, so they go with the numbers….In negotiations, their goal is to get the best of you, not to make a good deal for everybody involved. I’ve never understood that.” And this is from an actor and producer who’s made millions from smart, lucrative deals. Other tidbits include this and that about working with Julie Andrews, Marlon Brando, Clint Eastwood, Doris Day, Mel Gibson (“Mel and I got along fine. I didn’t know that he hates Jews and everybody else.”) and both Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine on his first serious dramatic role, an adaptation of Lillian Hellman’s stage play about teachers rumored to be lesbians, The Children’s Hour.

His thoughts on his least and most favored movies range from hilarious to poignant (he adores The Notebook) and his advice for Hollywood talent is spot on for everyone: “What’s yours is yours, and you should go after it.” But what’s fun is fun, too, and in The Garner Files: A Memoir, happily married father James Garner, whether remembering taking on his stepmother or the studios, writes that he’s had what seems like a helluva, hard-earned good time.

Permalink  |  Posted in Books, Movies, Simon & Schuster, Television

Books: I Want My MTV

26 October 2011

A new book, I Want My MTV, written by Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum and subtitled The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution, goes on sale tomorrow and it’s just plain fun for those of us who remember those songs and images in the early 1980s. Even for those who weren’t around or don’t like rock, TV or music videos, it’s fun and informative, strictly as silly, casual reading material, with quick, profanity-laced snippets about the cultural influence of Music Television, otherwise known as MTV. Most of the major videos, rock stars, 80s’ bands and personalities are here, and the book is an unstructured, disorganized mess without a single narrative, just short, compiled paragraphs of interspersed interview excerpts with executives, producers, artists and others, so I advise readers to just flip through it and make good use of the index (which lacks music video titles). But for all its flaws, one gets a sense of the early days of this remarkable cable television channel, created by media executive John Lack, who says here that he conceptualized MTV as “video radio”, an idea he pitched over and over.

Today, MTV bears no resemblance to its free airplay origins, which revived and/or propelled the careers of The Police, Stevie Nicks, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Olivia Newton-John, and Duran Duran, among others including comedian Denis Leary, choreographer, singer and ex-American Idol judge Paula Abdul and, notably, movie director David Fincher (The Social Network, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), who started in videos (see his innovative work on bringing The Motels’ Martha Davis to life in billboards in their video for “Shame”). MTV and those five original “veejays” tapped into and catapulted an exciting and energetic New Wave of rock and pop music and I Want My MTV (the free channel’s original slogan) shows it off here with delightful abandon. Much of the material amounts to gossip about sex and drugs, though Stevie Nicks talks openly about trying to kick the cocaine habit in Corona del Mar while shooting Fleetwood Mac’s classic 1982 video for their song “Gypsy”, and the candor and straight talk is striking about some of the most iconic and exceptional videos. For example, just after director Russell Mulcahy talks about Elton John’s “Im Still Standing” being “super, super, super gay”, he refers to the homoeroticism of Billy Joel’s “Allentown”.

The next entry is Billy Joel talking about “Allentown”: “I watched it the other day for the first time in a while. Now, Russell was a brilliant director. But I didn’t realize until I watched it again how gay that video was. It’s really gay! There’s a shower scene with all these good-looking, muscular young steel workers who are completely bare-assed. And then they’re all oiled up and twisting valves and knobs. I’d completely missed this when I was doing the video. I just thought it was like The Deer Hunter.” There are dozens of these tales, with Pat Benatar talking about learning the dance for “Love is a Battlefield”, Rod Stewart refusing to come out of his trailer, Christine McVie in her trailer for hours, and many more about classic tunes and videos. Among those interviewed: Journey, Cindy Crawford, Timothy Hutton (he directed “Drive” for The Cars), Janet Jackson on her late brother Michael, Chris Isaak, Guns N’ Roses, Conan O’Brien, Hall & Oates, Tom Petty, Phil Collins, Michael Mann and Jerry Bruckheimer. After an initial rummaging, I Want My MTV probably belongs in the bathroom for every adult (it’s definitely not the kids) to enjoy, but there are some hilarious and interesting facts here about the modern history of rock, television and our dumbed down culture, which is not entirely MTV’s fault. In those early days, the best music videos were original, enjoyable and occasionally inspiring pop and rock shorts.

Permalink  |  Posted in Books, Culture, Music, Penguin, Television, Visual Arts

Book Review: Alexander the Great

24 October 2011

A new biography by Philip Freeman (Julius Caesar, St. Patrick of Ireland), titled simply Alexander the Great, is now available in trade paperback. This version of Alexander’s story, written for the general reader, is complete and it is often compelling. With a timeline, bibliography, glossary, source notes, maps, illustrations and photographs and an index, the narrative moves briskly along, rarely repeating names, facts and events unless necessary, and it is mostly, if not always, a breathtaking journey. Dr. Freeman, a former classics professor at Washington University in St. Louis who lives and teaches classics in Iowa, presents Alexander’s historic life in essentials, from his birth to the exotic Olympias and his choosing to tame the horse Bucephalas and his studies under Aristotle to taking the Macedonian kingdom at the age of 19, conquering the world for years from Troy to Egypt, Iran, India and Afghanistan and his death at the age of 33.

Alexander’s father, King Philip, gets his due as an overlooked influence; Dr. Freeman writes about Philip’s “revolutionary innovations in warfare” including his creation of coordinated, integrated cavalry and foot soldiers and pioneering use of a corps of engineers. Relying on ancients, and careful throughout the book not to draw conclusions where there are conflicting accounts, he describes young Alexander as a fair-complexioned boy with a ruddy face and piercing eyes who greatly valued self-control and “had about him an air of seriousness well beyond his years.” After his father was assassinated, Alexander set out to begin his legendary military conquests and the author tracks every move, capturing Alexander’s brilliant and bold ideas and actions. Alexander’s “intimate companion,” Hephaestion, described here as Alexander’s “dearest love,” plays a minor role amid the great battles, politics and assassination plots, as Alexander the Great marches across Asia to conquer the Persian empire and beyond.

Breaking chapters into distant lands—Macedonia, Greece, Asia, Issus, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persepolis, Bactria, India, Babylon—Freeman infuses Greek mythology, superstition and historical figures, letting the facts largely speak for themselves, though occasionally he interprets. The best writing comes in the second half, and anywhere the author shares facts about Alexander’s military genius. About Alexander’s treatment of the Uxians, who had the nerve to demand from Alexander a toll to pass through the mountains on the way to Persepolis, Freeman writes that Alexander the Great crushed them in a surprise attack and then took their idea and inverted it: “He left their remaining villages intact with the provision that they would now pay to him as tribute one hundred horses each year along with five times that many transport animals and thirty thousand sheep. In mere days, Alexander and his men had done what the Persian Empire was unable to accomplish in two hundred years.” With such magnificent tales of the great Western warrior he calls “the king of the world,” Philip Freeman’s Alexander the Great contains abundant evidence of Alexander’s extraordinary military ability, concisely assembled and well told.

Permalink  |  Posted in Books, History, Simon & Schuster, War

Books: How to Win Friends & Influence People in the Digital Age

10 October 2011

On the 75th anniversary of a concise business book that’s sold more than 30 million copies, the New York-based Dale Carnegie and Associates has produced an updated version of Dale Carnegie’s book, How to Win Friends & Influence People, (Simon and Schuster, October 2011, $26/$13 on iBooks), which adds the phrase in the Digital Age to the title. Dale Carnegie (1888-1955), whom his father claimed was a distant cousin to steel industrialist Andrew Carnegie, may or may not have approved of this overhauled adaptation of his original work, written with Brent Cole, but he approached his topic, communication, with a kind of benevolent embrace of entrepreneurialism, and this version does too. Unfortunately, its theme confuses benevolence with self-sacrifice, asking in the introduction: “Aren’t we all moved by altruism?” No, we’re not.

The authors also mix up narcissism with self-interest, a common error, but if you can sift through these and other mistakes, there’s plenty of good advice, tips and encouragement for doing rational, honorable and productive business in today’s overwhelming information age. “Carnegie,” the intro asserts, “was the master of influence that is earned.” This seems at least partly true, with his simple, thoughtful insights intact, updated and integrated with today’s markets in mind. Among the gems are tales about President Lincoln and an unsent letter to General Meade in the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg during the Civil War, a good contrast between the story of The King’s Speech and a fallen, disgraced National Public Radio executive, and this ancient Jewish parable about a shepherd guarding 100 sheep who loses one, just one, and must decide what to do: “Does he say a prayer and hope the sheep shows up before a wolf nabs him? No, he pens the ninety-nine and goes looking. That one sheep is of such magnificent importance the shepherd cannot bear to see him left alone. Consider the message this sends to the sheep, not just the one but also the other ninety-nine who look to the shepherd for provision and protection. Now consider sending that same message to those you’d like to influence. Have you let them know just how valuable you think they are? There is great power in this simple principle, embodied regularly.”

Guiding readers through productive communications, including the use of social media, with anecdotes, tips and tools about the importance of providing encouragement, smiling, using names, listening, discussing what matters, leaving others a little better off, and other ideas, How to Win Friends & Influence People in the Digital Age blends success stories with certain notions (most, not all, of them good). Pointing to the late Steve Jobs, the book reminds us that, when he unveiled the iMac at the turn of the century, he predicted a future of the computer as a hub for video and digital cameras, music players, assorted productivity devices, and cellular phones, and he was ridiculed by critics and competitors alike. “Some of Apple’s longtime rivals,” Dale Carnegie Training writes, “called the [iMac] ‘clownish’ and ‘silly’ and the vision ‘far too grand’. The public? They embraced the vision and the life that it promised. And Apple Computer, now simply Apple, has seen its share price increase 4,856 percent. The closest competitor has increased approximately 14 percent…The difference is that Steve Jobs recognized something Dale Carnegie championed repeatedly: to influence others to act, you must first connect to a core desire within them.”

Except for bad advice about never saying “you’re wrong” to someone and the usual plea for humility, the authors generally encourage the reader to act in his self-interest and they partly define what they mean by the ability to earn trust and influence others: “…the pinnacle of this principle is not complete self-denial. Notice the principle does not read, ‘Replace your interests with others’ interests.’ It instead reads, ‘Take interest in others’ interests,’ and that is the secret of its application.” I’m not convinced that this edition is worth the price (the original version is available on Apple’s iBookstore for $5), but theirs is a decent and generally constructive lesson in positive thinking, and especially the idea of reciprocity, that people who want to succeed in today’s challenging business environment, including those who claim to live by the virtue of selfishness, should learn.

Permalink  |  Posted in Books, Business, Simon & Schuster

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