6 Days of the Redford Madness

       When you hear the name Robert Redford, what comes to mind? Now, those born in the late 1980s and beyond will probably think he is some obscure guy who ran for President or even WAS President ( go with me on this one, I have had many a student who thought Martin Luther King Jr was a President as well). To folks in my generation (born 1972-75) know Robert Redford as a pretty fun actor to watch, even when he is trying to play darmatic.  Unlike Dick Clark (the guy who explored the Louisiana Territory with a guiy named Mary Weather), Redford let himself age gradually and still retain an air of youth.

   Redford's big time was in the late 1960s to about the mid 1980s before Adam Sandler redefined fun. His style was to either smile the pants of off his female audience (which he likely did often) or to look blank and baffled and still get the pants off. Thankfully for his SAG dues, he could also say his lines pretty well.

   I like a lot of his films. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, The Great Gatsby, All the President's Men, , Brubaker, The Natural  Legal Eagles, and his sleazy horny millionaire flick An Indecent Proposal. Some duds (in my eyes) were The Way We Were and The Horse Whisperer...but those were due to his female pairings, not Redford himself.

   However, there is one movie that stands out a little more to me....and that I didn't list above...and that was adapted from a book (CURSE YOU MOORE, YOU DID IT AGAIN!).

   Sneaky bastard, aren't I? 

   The movie was Three Days of the Condor (1975), where he plays Joe Turner, (codename Condor) a CIA researcher working with other researchers to find plot and character elements in books and magazines and see if the CIA has either used them or could use them. One day when he is out getting lunch for his colleagues, a hit squad led by a cold  master assassin named Joubert, played by a stoic Max Von Sydow (and he still shines here in his calmness). Turner tries to get the CIA to bring him in, but corrupt agent Wickes in the Agency intercedes and tries to kill him in an alley. Joe later takes pretty Kathy Hale (played by Faye Dunaway) hostage to find shelter and they eventually have a fairly awkward fling before she helps him to begin unraveling the truth. He meets Agent Higgins (Cliff Robertson) who plays ambiguous good guy well here. You don't know if Higgins wants to help Joe or set him up to see who is behind it all. Using what he knows, Joe learns of Leonard Atwood, Deputy Director of Operaitons for the Middle East and confronts him, learning that one of Joe's submissions was too like a plot to take over oil fiield that Atwood was in charge of, so Atwood had Joe's entire team killed to cover it up. Joubert intercedes and you think he will kill Joe (he tried once previously), but ends up shooting Atwood instead since he was an Agency "embarrassment". Joubert assures Joe that he no longer has a contract to kill Joe, but that Joe is also now an embarrassment, and that the Agency will try to kill him through a friend or trusted associate. In the final scene, you can see that setup in play when Joe meets Higgins in Times Square, but he has already planned for that.

   The movie appears to have been quickly adapted from its 1974 parent Six Days of the Condor. I really enjoyed the book, mostly because the print was large enough for these aging eyes and it was only 192 pages.

   What baffles me is that aside from a few minor characters, all of the major names were changed for the movie. Joe Turner evolved from Ronald Malcolm, Kathy Hale grew from Wendy Ross, Joubert was originally Maronick, Leonard Atwood was originally Robert Atwood, and there is no direct source evolving into Higgins, though a man named Powell who is working with the liaison group 54/12 comes close.

   Aside from names, the plot remains mostly the same except for the story motivation: instead of a book plot about oil being too close to the Agency's plans, it was about 2 missing book boxes that the new accountant couldn't find and he trtagically reported it. The missing boxes (as Maronick explains to Malcolm) contained hard drugs form southeast Asia. Also, Wendy Ross almost immediately (after her initial scare) befriends Malcolm and theyt have sex often. Unfortunately, when she aids Malcom in a game of disguise cat and mouse, Maronick spots her  Malcolm when her wig falls off and shoots hewr nearly fatally.

   Instead of Malcolm infiltrating Atwood's house, he is ambushed there, then drugged to get the truth out, then taken outside to be killed. However, Maronick on Agency orders kills Malcolm's would be killer and leaves Malcolm to do with Atwood what he likes. Maronick is much colder in the book than Joubert in the movie, and advises Malcolm to stay in research as his luck is running out. Malcolm, seeking revenge for Wendy's shooting, kills Maronick at Washington National Airport.

   What is so good about the book is that it was so easily adaptable into a movie. I can understand why the drugs in southeast Asia plot had to change, since Vietnam was a dirty subject when the movie was being made. I am baffled by the name changes. The parts where the 54/12 string pullers were trying to bring in Malcolm or set him up ran a bit long, but Malcolm's parts move fast. I can easily see Redford in the Malcolm role as I read it.

   When Bryan, oh when will you spare us these book/movie comparison-reviews? 

   Not as long as I can keep typing.

Uh, The 90s, Like, Suck, Dude! No Way!!

    

   I used to think the 90s sucked.

   This morning, I looked outside upon waking up and saw how rainy and gray it was. A perfect day to lounge about and stay off my feet. Since I had a toenail removed Friday, a healing day made sense. Then came in our daughter who complained that we never take her to our favorite breakfast place anymore. As I didn't feel like making eggs or anything else just yet, I acquiesced and put on my Beavis and Butthead pajamas...Lou's Diner workers know me, so nobody to impress today.

   Upon arrival, there was the usualy 15-20 minute wait since Lou's is quite popular these days. While I sat waiting and Natalie and Vickie went to the antique shop to wait in warmth, a guy sitting near me noticed my "trendy" pajama pants with admiration and I mentioned my recent acquisition of all episodes dating back to its 1992 pilot. I also mentioned us listening to Denis Leary's classic "Asshole" song from 1993. As the brief nostalgic dialogue ended, I sat for a few more minutes and thought a lot about that period of life as I saw it.

   I was, and am currently, generally not what people would consider hip or cool, at least not when it comes to crowds. Individuals will compliment me on a shirt I am wearing, but then I defer to Vickie's good sense of me and realize that if it weren't for her, I'd have probably 2 pairs of pants and a few solid polo shirts along with a month of underwear and socks. 

   In fact, I never was really cool as a person, definitely not in childhood, even less in high school, maybe a tad cooler in college in a place where nobody really knew me yet and I could fake them out temporarily. This was especially true when it came to music and the current trends. I didn't really watch MTV much, so I didn't get into the music video thing regularly. So if you were to ask me what the coolest songs of 1987 or 1988 were, I'd probably name songs from movies like Top Gun or Dirty Dancing. I was that way for some time, being several cars behind the cool pole position of life.

   Sometimes, though, there is a magical moment where one is suddenly caught up on a few things. This happened in late 1993 for me. I had just turned 21 and was looking for a brief respite from San Diego. I had just recently started back at school upon establishing a year of residency with a lot of go-nowhere part time jobs and a ton of loneliness. School helped a bit with that but I was looking forward to a "going back home" feeling so to speak.

   My high school buddy Tris said there was room at his house since his mom was out of town, so I had asked for my big Christmas present to be a trip back to good ol Reading, PA.

   Wait...where? some of you are asking. You wanted to go away from comfy-in-the-winter San Diego to visit wintry hell eastern Pennsylvania?

   In a word, yes! San Diego did not feel like home at all...and quite frankly it would never achieve that status, neither would Sonoma County for my 8 year residency up there, though I will say that in terms of scenery, I do have a place in my heart for Northern Cal. The problem is, aside from parents and aunt and some scattered family, I had no people in San Diego to speak of, no lasting memory to this day of peers who warmed my heart for a lifetime. I then think of Berks County and a flood of memories, good and bad, come to me, and that is where I will ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS think of as home, even though I know 30 plus years have passed since I moved away and things definitely changed.

   In late 1993, I know of a lot of people who were still there: Tris, Jeremy Bitz, Derek Coller and his then girl Kelly Beissel, Zach Hunchar, and several old classmates I had known for years. Not all of the classmates were precisely friends but I knew who they were and what they were about, and I felt safe with them. Even if they joshed around with me about my lack of with-it-ness at times, I felt I could be myself with them.

   Now, during this visit, I came into contact with some pop culture elements that I had heart faint rumblings about, but did not actually experience. Like I said, I hung out with about nobody except my parents, and they were not exactly people I wanted to be around much of the time, especially as their marriage was in the early stages of deterioration.

   These pop culture elements were Beavis and Butthead, Denis Leary, and The Jerky Boys. I would definitely get more into Beavis and Butthead when I went away to college at Sonoma State, since a lot of us would watch it at its 11:00 time slot nightly. On New Year's Eve at Rick Klingaman's house, I got a taste of Denis Leary's stand-up and The Jerky Boys' prank calls. I bought some when I got back to San Diego and my dad found The Jerky Boys absolutely hilarious. So did more than a few college friends later on. Somehow that kind of comedy was so east coast that many of the west coasters found it funny but also not their precise style. 

   I am still east coast and will remain so.

   Apart from that little awakening, I still missed out on a lot of 90s in terms of music. I was listening to a lot of classic rock and oldies for much of the decade. The Doors were and still are a major favorite. It actually was not until I met Vickie that I got more acquainted with Pearl Jam, 9 Inch Nails, Alice in Chains, Foo Fighters, Weezer, No Doubt, Metallica, and Stone Temple Pilots, among others. I am still behind the times, but after listening to what is out there now, I am quite glad to be stuck in the past, even if it is 30-40 years past. I can live with that easily.

   The 90s didn't really suck, they just had to wait a while for me to catch up.

A Shepherd's Pie Story

    Back in December, I saw that the classic film A Christmas Story was playing in one of our many smoke-filled local casino movie theatres, and Vickie was quite up for it. I did not get a chance to see it in 1983, opting for multiple viewings of  Return of the Jedi that year. 

   There is something about catching a movie one has seen a few thousand times on TV in the actual theatre, or seeing a classic you saw in the theatre years before (the original trilogy and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan come to mind. And as it was just a week before our greatly anticipated Christmas break, the timing could not have been better.

   There was a short documentary before the film started, with a bit on creator Jean Shepherd and his radio and writing career. And of course, in the opening credits, there was a "based on" notation about a book called In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash. Of course, I knew I wanted to read the book. I ALWAYS want to read the book!

BRYAN, you son of a sea jackal, you TRICKED us into reading another one of your book reviews!

Yes I did, and nobody forced you, so now that you are here...

   The book, published in 1966, tells a LOT of tales, some short, many long and extended. One thing I noticed was that despite the American movie classic taking place in 1943, Jean Shepherd as his semi-autobiographical character Ralphie, grew up in the Great Depression, and would have been 22 in the movie's setting.

   The setting itself is in fictional Hohman, Indiana, a substitute for Hammond, even though Shepherd openly writes that Hohman is in real-life Lake County, Hohman is a true industrial town where the air is congested with all sorts of chemical fumes and the local water from regional lakes to the southern tip of Lake Michigan are all quite unworthy of human touch even though the locals have nothing else so they partake in boating and fishing...both activities are excuses to get drunk on beer.

   As the book begins, adult Ralph Parker is returning to Hohman from New York after what is assumed to be more than a decade away on a writing assignment for work about "returning home"...a topic I visit many times myself. Ralph's first stop is Flick's Tavern, where his childhood friend Flick is owner, having taken over from his dad. The reader gets no sense of Flick ever being a gullible kid who gets his tongue stuck to a frozen pole. Rather, I got the idea that Flick is from Hohman and will die in Hohman when his time comes.

   I think we all know people like that, though. Just about every town in America (and around the world, too) have their characters who never leave the 20 mile radius of home for more than a week unless forced to. I know of a lot of my friends and classmates in Berks County who really never got out...and when you are in a place where all of the creature comforts and close people are near to you, why would one leave?

   It is apparent that Ralph has been out east for some time and has lost the slow easy way of the Midwest chatter, and somewhat rudely interrupts Flick on one occasion so he can say what he wants to say.

   A few tales from the classic movie are in the book, such as the Red Ryder BB gun pursuit, the Little Orphan Annie decoder ring/Ovaltine story, the infamous leg lamp, the fight with the yellow-eyed neighborhood bully, and a brief bit on the wax teeth that the teacher takes away from the class. Apart from that, there are other stories contained within that tell not only of Ralphie but of life in the Depression. Much of it is funny, but other parts are fairly sad...yet all well written. I learned a bit of narrative style from Shepherd these past few weeks (I generally read at night and often fall asleep mid chapter so it takes me a while).

   One sad part was a brief mention of Schwartz's plane going down over Italy during what is assumed to be World War 2 and Schwartz not being found. Another was a bit on the local assessor, who came into homes and took inventory of a home's furnishings and laid an overall tax value to be collected. Ralphie's family was spared, but another family, a close neighbor, had defaulted on his taxes and his complete furnishings from furniture to tools were auctioned off by the sheriff. The family moved away and never returned. I guess the eerie part of this is that during the Depression, the various local and state governments didin't care about the people. I also took from this part that it was during the Hoover era where nobody knew what was what just yet...just conjecture.

   I am glad that I requested this book as a Christmas present. As I said, it was a great lesson for me in narrative style and telling honest growing up stories with a twinkle of the eye. Shepherd seems to me a person who felt lucky to get out of the industrial life he would have been prisoner to if he had stayed in Indiana. As for me...I have other tales to tell, so don't be impatient.

 You are hereby released!