Who Asked Me?

One of the better moments in Oscar history came in 1993 when Barbra Streisand stepped to the podium to present the award for best director. The theme for that year’s ceremony was “The Year of the Woman” and Streisand was introduced as the “woman who directed The Prince of Tides.” Before opening the envelope, she said she looked forward to the day when such distinctions (‘woman director’) would not be necessary. And then, tentatively, she read Clint Eastwood’s name. The still formidable sixty-two year old star accepted the award gracefully and with his trademark squint. “Seein’ as it’s the year of the woman and all,” he said, “I’d like to thank some of the gals who worked on the film.” Clint’s film “Unforgiven” also won in the categories of editing, supporting actor, and best picture and, had there been a category for “Most Effective Use of the Word ‘Gal,’ ” he would have taken that too.

I received the Dirty Harry Collector’s Edition box set for my birthday last weekend and watched them in sequence. The original film can’t be properly evaluated without taking the setting and time in to consideration — San Francisco in 1971. Despite its somewhat effete reputation, San Francisco’s roots are in the Gold Rush and Barbary Coast. By ’71 the Summer of Love had taken on a darker incarnation. Speed and pushers usurped grass and dealers. A decidedly un-flowery vibe pervaded the Haight with the return of war-hardened Vietnam vets. The Zodiac killer was the Chronicle’s favorite new pen pal. And in stepped Clint with wrap around Ray Bans, elbow-patched sports jacket and a big gun. A very big gun.

The term “fascist” was bandied about in reference to the first Dirty Harry film, but “unapologetic” might be a better choice. Harry Callahan offered a mythologized version of the American Hero, and one subconsciously embraced by varied persuasions. What some took as a regressed, archaic version of suppressed male fantasy was actually an emerging archetype. Eastwood never had to speak more than a few lines to define a part; his mere presence did the talking. Whether best attributed to luck, timing or talent, it’s hard to deny that the man has possessed vision and star power.

The climax to the original film was shot across the bay from San Francisco, in Marin County. If you freeze the frame in one of the shots of Highway 101, you can make out my parents’ home in the distance, tucked into the dry, summer-brown grass hills of California. Nordstroms had yet to lay claim to valuable Marin real estate and the climactic shoot-out scenes utilize the old Hutchinson Quarry in Greenbrae. This was my backyard. My older brother’s friends bragged of being there when Clint jumped from the train trestle to the top of the speeding school bus. Some even exaggerated braving the murky waters of the quarry lake to retrieve the SFPD badge that he chucks away in a final show of contempt for The System.

It probably isn’t difficult to anticipate my take in regard to the recent exchange of words between Eastwood and director Spike Lee. For those unfamiliar, Lee criticized the lack of black actors in Clint’s two Iwo Jima film, Eastwood suggested that Lee ‘shut his face’ and Spike intoned that Clint retains a “plantation mentality.” This seems less a black and white thing than a generational divide. There are plenty of less accomplished directors more deserving of Spike’s words. Calling Clint “old man” was as classless and ill-placed as any racial epithet. “Shut your face” isn’t the most subtle response, but it wasn’t racially-fueled either. Clint’s twenty-six years on Lee perhaps allow for not mincing his words.

As to racial representation, there are a few Italian Americans who would have preferred exclusion from Lee’s “Do The Right Thing” to Danny Aiello’s portrayal of a Brooklyn pizza parlor owner. Even as a caricature devised to make a point it lacks subtlety. The vision of Black America eighteen years earlier in Dirty Harry was indeed retrograde, but so is much of the film’s 1971 subtext. Even as a ‘fascist’ statement the film seems dated and Harry is referred to as a ‘neanderthal’ and dinosaur.’ And yet the film still holds up. Acknowledgement is due for Eastwood’s consistency and body of work, if not for the sheer number of years he’s been at it. He’s come a long way from Dirty Harry to “Letters from Iwo Jima” and “Flags of Our Fathers.” Spike might consider giving it a few more years on the trail before weighing in the next time.

I was seven when George Carlin’s “Class Clown” came out. I remember being at a party at the Picetti’s house and being sent to another room with the rest of the kids while the adults listened to the album in the living room. The next weekend, my older brother procured the LP at Tower in San Francisco (a fact that raised a few parental eyebrows) and within a few weeks I had the whole thing memorized. There was something about his intonation and rhythm that made it like memorizing a song for me. All these years later I can jump to any part of the record in my mind and do it word for word. Interestingly, I bought a record that day myself – Johnny Cash at San Quentin. It was the first music I ever bought on my own, and I committed that to memory too .. not just the songs, but every bit of dialogue in between. It would be easy to hang this memorization trick on some sort of fascination with early vinyl impressions, but it was much more than this. To this day I’d assert that there’s something special in those two recordings.

Class Clown presents Carlin at a potent juncture: He’s at the top of his game after honing his talents with his earlier, more conventional act, and he has the energy of a man unchained and venturing into riskier territory. There’s a political element to his material, but he never descends into blatant posturing. Instead he focuses on universal and semi universal curiosities; language in particular. On a later album he muses about the expression “at any rate.” ‘At any rate‘ .. what does that mean? And then in another voice: what about four and a half percent? He seemed attuned to the idea that, if we can’t trust the basic building blocks of communication, how can we put much weight in anything? And indeed, as he got older his humor became darker and defiantly fatalistic.There seemed to be a more antagonizing motivation behind his shtick – he became less concerned with eliciting laughter and more focused on driving home the realization that we’re all screwed.

My friend Heather sent me the preface to Carlin’s 1997 book “Brain Droppings” in acknowledgment of his death yesterday. For anyone interested, it can be found here. He makes some valid points and edges into some areas that, frankly, hit a bit too close to home with me. I prefer to remember him a decade or so past his prime but before this dark period, when he was still musing about such things as the flame thrower. As Bob Dylan might have put it, it wasn’t dark yet but he was getting there. (6.24.08)

you got a heart so big
it could crush this town
-Petty

I think I used that tune as a lead in about five years ago, and wrote something about the heart .. how some claim that it has intuitive properties much like the brain and is capable of influencing reason, spirit and behavior. Most doctors would point out that it’s really just pumping blood, but don’t get me started on them. There must be a reason all those old sayings came to be. How you’ve got to follow it and be true to it. Heck, how you’ve just got to have it. The kids use it in their language today as a literal and mocking translation for the annoying emoticon symbols that crept up years ago. They’ll say “I heart cupcakes” using the “heart” effectively in place of “love” and as a slap in the face to the whole lol, brb, and lmao text culture (as well as NYC shopping bags and countless bumper stickers.) Most people over the age of thirty probably wouldn’t even get this, but fortunately I’ve regressed. And I hold it as singular proof of hope for this generation – a one word “f*ck you” to cutesy computer shorthand and powerful affirmation of this heavyweight vital organ.

The tune is “Walls (No. 3)” from the “She’s The One” soundtrack ..an interesting example of something I wrote below; that the observer often brings more to the table than the creator. In this case the observer was Tom Petty, and the creator Ed Burns, who asked Petty to do the soundtrack for his film. The film was a colossal piece of sh*t, but Petty wrote at least a few accompanying tunes that were as good as anything he’s ever done. The opening lines alone are fairly brilliant: some days are diamonds / some days are rocks / some doors are open / some roads are blocked. He keeps it simple, uses an unexpected rhyme scheme, and transitions into sundowns are golden / then fade away. It’s as if Rainman got in Nick Drake’s head and made everything all right. But what I really like about the tune is the power that the protagonist attributes to his object of affection’s heart; that it could crush this town. Don’t always assume that just because you’re dealing with a big heart, it will rule in your favor. And like the boy says, even walls fall down.

Well they raised that horse to be a jumper ..

Tom Myers once told me that he heard the “I was flyin'” line in Tom Petty’s Runnin’ Down A Dream song as “I was sublime.” I myself once thought the “how my poor heart aches” line in Sting’s Every Breath You Take was “I’m a pool hall ace.” This just goes to show that the observer often brings more to the table than the creator. Which brings me to Torrance, California.

Dirk Diggler was from Torrance, but he was a fictional character. The city has one of the highest concentrations of Japanese Americans in the United States. Quentin Tarantino is a Torrance High drop out. What I’ve noticed about Torrance is the abundance of strip mall restaurants with partially burnt out neon signs. “Red obsters” abound. Dad and I have been eating at the Elephant Bar, currently going by the “lent Bar,” with a few gaps between and not too far past Easter. We’ve come to the conclusion that they have a decent menu and pour a good glass of wine. We’ve also agreed that the best thing about the digital age is that it allows less latitude for poseur auteur filmmakers to blame their creative shortcomings on the film laboratory.

At some point I think I figured that my assumption that I had the best mom in the world was likely based partially on subjective reasoning. But along the way I’ve met a lot of people, many of whom have or have had mothers of their own, who’ve affirmed my opinion of her.

None of this relates much to the Marriott Residence Inn, which sits semi majestically on Torrance Boulevard at Hawthorne, fitting the So Cal landscape like words from a Petty Song. Sometimes you got to trust yourself .. it ain’t like anywhere else.

rip ‘n’ run

Both Davids – Simon and Chase – should take heart in the amount of critical attention given to the final acts of their respective creations. While The Wire may have ended a bit too neatly and The Sopranos a bit too obscurely for some, it was only because they both left the audience wanting more. There was some talk that HBO would have to develop a strong replacement series for their Jersey mob epic, but they already had it in The Wire. That the public at large never caught on was just an unfortunate side note. If anything, The Wire was more ambitious than the Sopranos. It was also a bit less comical and substantially less white. This isn’t a knock on Chase and company – I actually preferred his show. But at its peak The Wire was strong stuff.

As screwed as HBO would now appear to be, I have a solution for them: coax David Chase out of retirement and talk him in to expanding the upcoming John Adams mini series starring Paul Giamatti into a full blown series. While Giamatti may seem the most unlikely of leading men, Chase has a reputation for turning less than dashing Italian actors into national icons. He could delve into the psyche of one of America’s forefathers and mix fiction with reality by foreshadowing the actor’s real life father becoming commissioner of our national pastime. If anyone could pull this off it would be Chase, and at the very least it would have to be better than the colossal piece of crap that was John From Cincinatti.

I have to give props again to my buddy and George Lucas’ most valuable sound designer, Tom Myers, for getting me hooked on The Wire. I didn’t have the same personal connection with the show that I did with The Sopranos, and were it not for Tom I likely would not have persisted. But it was worth it if for only seeing the way that Cheese was taken out by Slim in the final episode. It might have been the most concise and punctuated example of poetic justice in television history. And unlike Tony Soprano’s fade to black, it left nobody wondering what happened. (3/10/08)