What's your stories?

I’ve gotten tired of narrative - not the concept, just the use of the word. People talk about how facts fit into a narrative of this or that. Sometimes, I think they mean theory in its literal sense - a system of ideas that help us organize observations.

Sometimes, they just mean story.

In 2007, Susan Faludi wrote a book called The Terror Dream about the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in 2001. She argued that our reaction as a country followed from one of our stories, the kidnapping of a white woman from under the nose of her menfolk.

You know - The Searchers.

The story of Comanche Station, this week’s feature, is Mr. Cody - and his wife. We first meet him when he rides up to some Comanche with a mule-load of trade goods. He has to sweeten the deal for the chief, throwing in his rifle, but for that princely sum, he receives a woman that he didn’t want.

But he saves her, anyway.

And they meet up with some other cowboys at Comanche Station. The party has to make its way to safety, through Comanche country - because the stage isn’t coming and the cowboys are on their own.

This movie was made before political correctness and before we treated Indians as people, but the Comanche don’t play a big role in this movie. They’re a danger, out there, picking off a cowboy and forming into raiding parties.

The real villain of the movie is another cowboy. He’s after the woman for the reward that her husband put out for her return. Him and Cody pace around each other, metaphorically, building alliances or testing them between the others in the group, waiting for the blow.

It’s a lot about what a man does, in the old west. The bad guy tells the woman, yeah, a big reward shows that her husband loves her, in a way, but he should have come after her, himself, if he was man enough to be her man.

The movie ends up being about two stories, Mr. Cody’s and the woman’s husband. The husband made the reward of five thousand dollars unconditional - whether they brought back his wife dead or alive. One of the cowboys asks why he would do a dumb thing like that, making it just as easy for somebody to bring her back dead.

Mr. Cody understands, though, because he’s been looking for his wife for ten years, now, trading drygoods and rifles for any white woman he hears of in the hope that it was her - hence, his disappointment when he first saw her. Mr. Cody won’t ever know, for sure, but he would gladly pay just to find out whether she’s dead.

Of course, the woman’s husband will never see her again, no matter what. He’s blind, so going after her himself is out of the question. He doesn’t see Cody, either, while the stoic cowboy rides off, without his reward.

Remember, ah, you know

This week’s feature was The Man From the Alamo, starring Glen Ford as John Stroud as the man who was called a coward. Stroud was at the Alamo, but his heart is back with his wife and son, on their ranch, up near Oxbow. Him and five other fellows make a pact for one of them to go back up north to get their families safe, ahead of the Mexican troops. Stroud draws the bad lot and heads north.

But the Alamo falls and everyone thinks Stroud just took off to save his own skin.

Ford plays Stroud as one cool cucumber, letting charges of cowardice and threats of hanging roll off his back. From the moment that he finds that his family is dead and his home destroyed, he sets on killing the men who did it.

This is a good looking movie, by the by. It’s shot in warm tones and it captures the wide open range. The shelling of the Alamo is convincing. A movie should be easy on the eyes.

In the end, Stroud does kill the turncoats who killed his family, saves the townfork, and goes to fight for Texan independence. More importantly, he convinces all the Texans that he isn’t a coward. In the old west honor society, it isn’t enough to not be a coward. You have to have a good name, as well.

So, is John Stroud a coward? The movie goes out of its way to say that he isn’t. First, he was leaving to protect his family and the families of others. Second, he was given permission by his commander to leave. Finally, he meant to go back, as soon as the families were safe.

It doesn’t wash, for me. Stroud knew that his family would face hardship without him. The battle of the Alamo was not a sterile feat of glory, fighting simply to fight. The longer they held that mission, the longer that the Texans had to get a force ready to fight. Putting his own judgement ahead of that of the commanders is not the same kind of act of bravery that fighting is.

The Elephant on the Table

I don't mind cliches. They seem to bother lots of people something fierce.

It does bother me, though, when people get them wrong.

For instance, “That’s the million dollar question!”

Well, the quiz show that spawned that expression was The 64,000 Dollar Question. The highest prize, if you answered all the questions correctly, was $556,315 in 2013 dollars.

But the cliche mutated.

In some usages, it was a benign mutation. If you wondered whether to buy a house, you might say, "Well, that's the $229,000 question."

More commonly, though, people just upped the amount to a million dollars.

Here's another one - where does a four hundred pound gorilla sleep? Wherever he wants to.

So, just reference a four hundred pound gorilla to suggest someone so powerful or important that he always gets his way.

Until cliche inflation strikes again. It's pretty common to hear about a five hundred pound gorilla or an eight hundred pound gorilla. Gorillas do grow to four hundred pounds (thank you, Wikipedia), and I guess that a five hundred pound gorilla isn't out of the question, but where does an 800 pound gorilla sleep?

Right where he is, because I don't think he'd be able to stand up.

And the gorilla cliche cross-pollinates with another cliche, and suddenly there’s a four thousand pound elephant in the room.

This week’s matinee feature had an elephant in the room. The film was Public Enemy starring Jimmy Cagney as Tom Powers, a prohibition era gangster. His war-hero brother, Mike, doesn’t approve of him being a violent thug, and let’s him know it.

When their mother has the family around for a welcome home dinner, Tom and his sidekick bring a barrel of beer - and set it up on the dining room table.

You would not do it this way. First, it is on a stand, so it’s a little precarious. One person bumps the table and Ma Powers gets barrel in the lap. Also, it takes up a good chunk of the modest dining table, forcing everybody to talk around the barrel.

And that is the elephant in the room.

For the rest of the scene, the barrel is in every shot. Mike leans to his right to see his mother, leans to his left to talk to his sister. Tom’s bootlegging is tearing their family apart!

It’s obvious storytelling, but it isn’t bad. Movies should make use of visuals - and here one is, in the middle of the table. Tom and the family do try to ignore it, at first, and just talk around it.

The film had some other fun bits - when Tom Powers is getting ready to charge into a meeting of the enemy mob, Cagney treats us to performance of malevolent glee that Joe Pesci has not yet equaled.

Most of it, though, required a suspension of disbelief that might sprain your hip. Their first big caper, as bootleggers, was to rob the booze warehouse, draining the “booze” into a gasoline truck. What do gasoline trucks smell like? That's what their booze going to smell like.

There was a fun scene when Prohibition set it, Apparently, they only announced the Volstead act a few hours in advance, so everybody ran to well-stocked liquor stores that had to be empty at midnight. People filled their baby strollers, passed armfuls of bags into waiting taxis, threw away all the flowers in a flower truck to fill it with booze. They just threw the flowers on the ground! To make room for BOOZE!

Tom Powers came to a bad end, just like all Public Enemies. The movie is a morality tale about How Awful Gangsters Are!

That’s the million dollar elephant sleeping in the room.

Sorry, Fritz

Last week's matinee was Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler - or a very much shortened version of his two part movie.

I have nothing to say about Dr. Mabuse.

Oh, wait - Fritz Lang is an important director. He made awesome use of visuals through out the mov-

No, still nothing to say about Dr. Mabuse.

Oh, wait - I don't care for anti-heroes and super-villains as heroes. It leads to several sloppy -

No, still nothing to say about Dr. Mabuse.

I could talk about -

No, still nothing to say about Dr. Mabuse.

Did you know that it takes the earth 23 hours and 56 minutes to rotate around its axis?

No, still nothing to say about Dr. Mabuse.

Sigh.

Saturday Matinee: There and Back Again, with Martinis

Here’s a trick question for you - how long does it take for the earth to rotate once around its axis? The answer is about 23 hours 56 minutes.

Like me, you might think, whoa, dude, doesn’t it take, like, 24 hours from noon to noon? Yes, I say the word “dude” that way.

It does take 24 hours from noon to noon, and we’re used to thinking of it that way. The earth revolves around the sun, right? So, like, the sun is fixed, right?

Right - except we’re revolving around it - at a rate of about four minutes per day.

I don’t think it would be so much of a trick question before the telegraph and the railroad, back when every town would have something like this.

This is a sundial that I walked by on my way to the Secret Saturday Matinee on Saturday. It’s in playground in a park by Ravenna ave. A hundred and fifty years ago, every town would have had one of these to tell local time. Inevitably, there would have been a time-nerd who would explain to you, if you couldn’t get away, how, if you measured according to the stars, a day is really only 23 hours and 56 minutes long.

So, I got off the bus and headed south toward the Grand Illusion. It was a sunny day, and I wanted to walk. As I went down University Way (“the Ave” to those of us who remember Mr. Nose). I walked through the Saturday farmer’s market (which is not a secret) to the theater to buy my series pass and popcorn. A few years back, when I bought a series pass, there was an actual series pass - a bit of paper that said “Series Pass” on it.

Now, they just take your name and write it down - and they kind of recognize me, anyway.

And sat down and took my picture.

I’ve already talked about Doctor Satan’s Robot, so let me say a bit about the serial for this series. Last year was a Zorro serial and the year before was Buck Rogers and the Planet Outlaws.

This year, it is Batman and Robin - this week, Episode 4, in a sprint:

Batman is electrocuted twice and falls down a hill. Robin infiltrates the enemy’s, er, cabin, and sees The Wizard, a masked villain who wants the formula for an explosive to use as an industrial energy supply. The local news media spills secret information about the location of the formula and the duo fights guys in suits to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.

There is a photographer in this episode named Vicky Vale. Kim Basinger was nowhere to be seen.

But who is The Wizard?

So, the film is out and - I went over to the District for a martini. The District is an agreeable martini bar in an art deco hotel. Unfortunately, it doesn’t open until 5:00. I should have consulted my sundial.

Instead, I met my wife at Kai’s Bistro, a fun place with a friendly bartender a few blocks away. We’ve only ever had drinks and appetizers there, but it is always a hit.

I had this and my wife had a gin drink with a cherry.

So ends my first week of this year’s series. Next week, a Fritz Lang movie that isn’t Metropolis. Yeah, surprised me, too.

Who is The Copperhead? And why is it a secret?

Near the end of Kill Bill, Kwai Chang Caine delivers a mini-lecture about Superman and his secret identity. Clark Kent, he expounds, is Superman’s commentary on humanity: weak, indecisive, cowardly. I think he had it wrong, though.

Superman likes being Clark Kent. He likes being a reporter.  After all, being a reporter is something he chose to do and something that can challenge him. If he can lift thousands of tons, it’s not because he studied hard and paid attention. He seems to like his family and friends - although he has only work friends.

And to do all this, he has to keep his identity a secret, since his mother would be in danger if people knew he was Superman, plus everybody at the Daily Planet would be asking him to open jars and stuff.

Batman has a different problem. After he puts on the cowl, he breaks the law a dozen times in a quiet night. We’ve seen Batman, in various incarnations, threaten suspects with grave bodily harm. No matter how strong your Stand Your Ground Law is, Batman entering private property without permission to beat up bad guys can’t be legal.

And the Batmobile does not have a license plate.

In this week’s matinee, Doctor Satan’s Robot, we meet Bob Wayne (no relation to Bruce), who is, secretly, The Copperhead. To hide his secret identity, he wears a sky mask that we are to pretend is chainmail.

As The Copperhead, Wayne fights Dr. Satan, who turns out to not be a good guy. Dr. Satan forces his henchmen to kill for him by using control disks that monitor and can kill them. He drugs his prisoners and turns them against their friends.

His most dastardly plot is use the terrifying robot he created to take over the country. I’m trying to only use pictures that I take for this blog, instead of just swiping them from the internet, and I don’t have one of the robot. Instead, imagine that the pans I’ve stacked are taller and have arms and legs.

Only one things stands in Dr. Satan's way - he can’t control the robot at a distance. Instead of inventing a way to do so, which he seems like he would be able to, based on everything else he invented, he spends the movie trying to steal a remote control cell from the good guys.

But The Copperhead is on the case, thwarting him at every turn. He punches Dr. Satan’s henchmen. He saves the good guys from Dr. Satan’s traps. He warns the good guys of Dr. Satan’s plans.

What I can’t figure out is why Wayne needed a secret identity in the first place. He’s not doing anything illegal, like Batman. As Wayne, he works with the DA and the police. They’re happy to have him around. They even take orders from him, although he doesn’t have a job, exactly.

He’s not protecting his family, since he has no family. The only friends he makes are they guys from the DA’s office. Sure, Dr. Satan might threaten these guys, including Wayne, but he already knows that they work with The Copperhead.

This movie was a re-cut of a serial from the 1940s, making 100 minute film out of a 12 episode series, which meant there were a few too many set pieces for a movie of this length.

One thing that this movie has was a room with a wall that closes in to crush Our Hero. This showed up in the Zorro serial from last year, making even less sense there than it did here.  I wonder if this is a serial trope - the audience wouldn't be happy at all if they didn't get the trap room where the wall crushed somebody.

The robot in Forbidden Planet can still look cool today, and Gort can be kind of scary, but the walking hot water heater in this flick was only good for a laugh. At least it could install itself, I guess.

The Secret Matinee in Exile: Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto, domo, domo

Here's a picture of a salt shaker:

No, this isn't a Jimmy Buffett reference or some kind of coded message. It is a picture of a salt shaker that I took at the Blue Water Bar and Grill in Friday Harbor. My family met up for a day out, yesterday, and I joined in - 

Which means that the Secret Saturday Matinee is still in exile - so back to
the Science Fiction + Fantasy Short Film Festival. 

Today, a robot.

Movies have always liked robots. A robot can be whatever you want it to be -

In Metropolis, a mad scientist creates a female art-deco robot. We know its female because it has boobs and a feminine face and boobs. He then animates it by using the soul of a woman, Maria, a school teacher from the morlocks. The scene is still one of the most famous and enduring of the cinema in the twentieth. After they boot up the robot with Soul OS 1.0, it goes wild, fornicating left and right.

In Forbidden Planet, Robbie the robot provides all the characters’ needs so we don’t have to ask what Walter Pidgeon eats on an otherwise desolate planet.

In 2001: A Space Odyssey, Hal is the implacable adversary and the only character that we can feel anything for. Hal is the last obstacle for mankind before they go beyond the infinite: mankind’s own technology, turned on it.

In Short Circuit, Number 5 is struck by lightening - and that makes it more than just circuit boards. The line between human and robot seems like an important line to cross.

So, what are we to make of Robota?

A woman lives in a room, white, featureless, except for the technology she lives with and the large fish tank that dominates the room. Every morning, she feeds her carp and then goes about her day in her modest room.

An R2 D2 style robot sees to her needs through the day, feeding her, giving her pills, providing entertainment. At night, the robot monitors her dreams and tries to make them come true the next day.

When she dreams of light bulbs, the robot gives her light bulbs for breakfast. When she dreams of the carp, the robot gives her her pet carp for breakfast.

It’s never clear whether she is a guest, a prisoner, or a pet, and whether the robot is her servant or her keeper.

But taking away her pet, the carp, is the last straw. In a fit of rage, she destroys the monitor over her bed and, I think, the robot, itself.