I am never unsure about what to read next, even with the hundreds of books stacked in my room. My mind goes wherever it wants and is strict about it, so I just finished reading On the Road with Charles Kuralt by Charles Kuralt, who also inspires me in my writing by his warm, easygoing style, also prevalent on camera in his "On the Road" series for CBS Evening News all those years ago, as well as host of CBS Sunday Morning. Charles Osgood, the current host, seems inspired by him, just as gentle as he was.
On the Road with Charles Kuralt contains transcripts of 91 of his "On the Road" segments, nicely laid out with images from the broadcasts included.
One chapter is called "Busted Flat in Baker" and the accompanying image is of two guitars, a clock, a model of a horse, a bowling ball, and a rifle resting on a floor. I've transcribed the chapter below, because it's exactly what Baker feels like, even today, and it's how I want to write it in my eventual play to be set there.:
Let's say you're driving home to California from Las Vegas. And let's say you're broke. And let's say you've been driving ninety miles through the desert with nothing to look at but that hot sand and the gas gauge, which is riding on empty. Well, when you see the sign that says BAKER, naturally you take the exit. Baker is at least somewhere in the middle of nowhere: a hot, dusty string of gas stations where a busted gambler might figure if he can talk fast enough he can talk himself into a tank of gas. It turns out that this is exactly what thousands of busted gamblers figure every year.
Bob Kennedy, who works in one of the filling stations, says Baker must be the fast-talking capital of America.
KURALT: What sort of things have you been offered down the years?
BOB KENNEDY: Oh, watches, rings, all sorts of jewelry. Clothing, tires, tools---you name it. If it's been made, it's been offered. They come out with some ridiculous things.
KURALT: But they get you to pump that gas first---
KENNEDY: Oh, yeah.
KURALT: ---before they admit they're broke.
KENNEDY: Oh, yeah.
Bob Kennedy has lost track of the number of old cars he has taken possession of in return for a bus ticket to Los Angeles. And gas station owner Ken George has a gaudy collection of clocks and watches and guns and radios that used to belong to motorists headed home from Vegas.
KEN GEORGE: Stories change from gettin' robbed, losin' their wallet or people just come out and tell you the truth. "Look, mister, I've lost my money in Vegas. Could you loan me two dollars and somethin' worth of gas?" You know, and of course, you get so many of these people comin' through, pretty soon you start asking for collateral.
KURALT: What kinds of collateral have you been offered?
GEORGE: Huh! Well, there's been cases where even people's kids have been offered as collateral.
KURALT: It strikes me that, living in Baker, you could pick up a bargain from time to time.
GEORGE: Well, yeah, you can pick up a bargain from time to time, but what is a guy gonna do with six or eight bowling balls when we don't have a bowling alley? Heh!
To operate a gas station here, as Bob Kennedy and Ken George and all the others will tell you, is to run a hockshop in the desert. The Las Vegas winners, of course, never slow down. They zip past the exist on the Interstate, humming a happy tune.
The losers stop at Baker.
Baker still doesn't have a bowling alley. No money in it. It's just a temporary stop for those who are Vegas-bound and heading back to wherever they live in the L.A. region. I still don't know how people can live in Baker, but they do, and those are two. I'm fascinated by it every time.
Friday, March 9, 2012
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Lent: My Favorite Unaffiliated Holiday of the Year
With Manheim Steamroller's Deck the Halls, A Charlie Brown Christmas, egg nog, and actually watching A Space Ghost Christmas in season, you'd think Christmas would be my favorite unaffiliated holiday. Surprisingly, it's not. Lent is my favorite, for one reason: Fish.
On Fridays, the Christians that observe Lent don't eat meat. Therefore, there's fish. My mom likes the Filet-O-Fish at McDonald's, and they lower the price that day, and also offer a double Filet-O-Fish, two patties on one bun.
I eat as little red meat as I can nowadays (it's part of what caused me to gain a lot of weight over the years before I finally decided to do something about it late in 2010), and I like chicken well enough, but if there's the chance to have fish, I grab it. I love the light, clear taste of most fish, getting closer to the water in a way. I've no fear of it, but I could never do what fishermen do. I'm always in awe, and appreciative, of their efforts. But most of all, I love the variety of it. Haddock. Salmon. Cod. Pollock. Tuna. And I'm sure there's a lot of others I haven't tried yet.
Lent works for me because of such offerings as the one I found in the Vons/Pavlions ad for this week of what's on sale, and what's items are their $5 Friday deals. Last week's $5 Friday listings included five-piece battered fish. Alaska pollock, I'm sure. I like it, though, and don't mind having it more often than other fish (I do miss the salmon at Sprouts Farmers Market, which was salmon at its best, but I guess that store in Valencia isn't making as much profit, because the latest salmon pieces look worse than what there was before). We didn't go to Pavilions last week because Dad and Meridith got home late after a phone interview Dad had to do from school, since the company interviewing him rescheduled it on the day and he couldn't get home in time to do it from here. It was ridiculous for him to come home and then go back out about half an hour later. The battered fish, if it was there next week, could wait.
It's in the $5 Friday listings again this week, thanks to Lent, and we're going to pick up a few things from Pavilions, including spare quarts of Silk Very Vanilla soymilk, Silk dark chocolate almondmilk, and Silk Mixed Berry Fruit & Protein. I haven't had the latter in two months because of the outrageous price at Walmart, and there's a coupon in the Pavilions circular for three quarts of any Silks, and hopefully we can use the separate Vons coupon that gives $1 off any Fruit & Protein.
So I get to try that battered fish, and Meridith gets what she wants too: 8-piece dark meat fried chicken for $4.99. She doesn't have fried chicken very often, but when she does, she loves dark meat the most.
In Las Vegas and Henderson, I want to find, so far, a decent marinara sauce, the best covered fries, and an oh-my-god-I-can't-believe-I'm-alive-for-this! butterscotch sauce. I'm adding fish to that list, more fish to try. I can't wait to see what Lent is like over there.
On Fridays, the Christians that observe Lent don't eat meat. Therefore, there's fish. My mom likes the Filet-O-Fish at McDonald's, and they lower the price that day, and also offer a double Filet-O-Fish, two patties on one bun.
I eat as little red meat as I can nowadays (it's part of what caused me to gain a lot of weight over the years before I finally decided to do something about it late in 2010), and I like chicken well enough, but if there's the chance to have fish, I grab it. I love the light, clear taste of most fish, getting closer to the water in a way. I've no fear of it, but I could never do what fishermen do. I'm always in awe, and appreciative, of their efforts. But most of all, I love the variety of it. Haddock. Salmon. Cod. Pollock. Tuna. And I'm sure there's a lot of others I haven't tried yet.
Lent works for me because of such offerings as the one I found in the Vons/Pavlions ad for this week of what's on sale, and what's items are their $5 Friday deals. Last week's $5 Friday listings included five-piece battered fish. Alaska pollock, I'm sure. I like it, though, and don't mind having it more often than other fish (I do miss the salmon at Sprouts Farmers Market, which was salmon at its best, but I guess that store in Valencia isn't making as much profit, because the latest salmon pieces look worse than what there was before). We didn't go to Pavilions last week because Dad and Meridith got home late after a phone interview Dad had to do from school, since the company interviewing him rescheduled it on the day and he couldn't get home in time to do it from here. It was ridiculous for him to come home and then go back out about half an hour later. The battered fish, if it was there next week, could wait.
It's in the $5 Friday listings again this week, thanks to Lent, and we're going to pick up a few things from Pavilions, including spare quarts of Silk Very Vanilla soymilk, Silk dark chocolate almondmilk, and Silk Mixed Berry Fruit & Protein. I haven't had the latter in two months because of the outrageous price at Walmart, and there's a coupon in the Pavilions circular for three quarts of any Silks, and hopefully we can use the separate Vons coupon that gives $1 off any Fruit & Protein.
So I get to try that battered fish, and Meridith gets what she wants too: 8-piece dark meat fried chicken for $4.99. She doesn't have fried chicken very often, but when she does, she loves dark meat the most.
In Las Vegas and Henderson, I want to find, so far, a decent marinara sauce, the best covered fries, and an oh-my-god-I-can't-believe-I'm-alive-for-this! butterscotch sauce. I'm adding fish to that list, more fish to try. I can't wait to see what Lent is like over there.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
The Family-Without-Electricity Club Forms and Disbands in the Same Day
I don't wanna get up. Maybe she won't call, like last time.
I went to bed a few minutes before 3:30 this morning. I have to be in front of the computer by 8 for a phone interview with actress/singer Andrea Marcovicci, who played Russian Olympian Alicia Rogov in The Concorde: Airport '79. It's 7:45. Her assistant originally set up the interview for this past Monday morning at 9. Ms. Marcovicci didn't call, and her assistant apologized by e-mail later.
I actually wouldn't mind if she didn't call this time either because I want to get back to sleep. But I have to do this because her assistant offered no other time in the forseeable future, citing a tight schedule. I learn later that that's not Hollywoodspeak. It's actually a tight schedule.
I should have gone to bed earlier. I wish I didn't feel like I'm trying to pull my face from a puddle of glue. But last week, Southern California Edison sent a notice that the power would be shut off from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., to ease the load on the system and to hopefully prevent rolling blackouts during the summer. Or something like that. An electric company's reasoning is like trying to figure out the true motivation behind Scientology.
Therefore, the 9 a.m. time I requested for this interview, which was rejected, would not have worked anyway. Mom suggested last night that I print out my questions and have a notepad handy just in case the power cuts out during the interview. I took that precaution, but hope I won't need it because I can type interview answers much faster than writing them.
I finally get out of bed. Bathroom. Teeth. I'm still a little tired, but I know I'll feel the effect of a little over four hours' sleep later. I wanted Cheerios soaked in Silk Very Vanilla soymilk as usual, but it's 7:56. No time. Just a banana. At least it's hefty in the stomach.
I sit down at the computer, with printed questions, notepad and pen in front of me. I stick my flash drive into a port at the bottom of the computer, open my "Questions for Andrea Marcovicci" Word file, and make sure I have all the questions I want to ask her, especially about filming in the Concorde set on stage 12 at Universal.
The phone rings. It's 8:06.
"Rory?"
"Yes, that's me."
"It's Andrea Marcovicci."
"Yes; I know that very well." (I don't tell her that her name appeared on the Caller ID at the computer, but I know the voice well enough to be able to recognize it without a Caller ID, before she said her name.)
Regretting McCambridge
When Ms. Marcovicci didn't call that Monday morning, I was worried that I was going to interview someone who was full of herself, only giving time to me because she ought to throw some peanuts sometimes. Her assistant gave me the impression that that's who I might be talking to, because she was firm in her approach, and I worried that requesting another time, if I had to, would make me persona non grata. You form your impressions, right or wrong, from the experience you have at the start.
I was totally wrong.
Ms. Marcovicci begins the conversation with an apology for not calling on Monday morning, telling me that she was involved with something else, and said I probably wouldn't want to know about why she hadn't called. Yeah, I would like to know. After all, I don't interview singers every day. But I don't press. I don't think it would be polite.
For 20 minutes, Ms. Marcovicci is as I imagine her singing must be. She's playful, laughing many times throughout while remembering what she deems "the worst Airport movie." She had hoped The Concorde: Airport '79 would make her a more well-known actress, just like director David Lowell Rich hoped that this would lead to more features for him. Neither happened.
Her biggest regret of '79 is not paying attention to Mercedes McCambridge, who played Nelli, Alicia's minder. She says she was a "young pup," "and kind of scatterbrained at the time and not as appreciative of her as I should have been." She understands now that that's why McCambridge was "relatively impatient with me and harsh to me."
Then, Ms. Marcovicci gives me the information I was jonesing for, about the Concorde set itself, and what the crew did to help simulate the plane being upside down and depressurized. I'm saving all that for the book, but it represents fully what I'm looking to do with this book. Ms. Marcovicci also expresses great pleasure at my idea, saying that fans of these movies would certainly want to know all about them, as well as disaster movie fans and others. Genuine delight.
At the end of the interview, she has time for only one or two more questions. I skip the one asking about her on the set at the end of the movie after the Concorde lands under snow in the mountains because in describing the scene to her before, despite appearing onscreen, she says she doesn't remember it. She trusts me, a fan, though. I ask her about working with indie director Henry Jaglom on two films, admiring his tenaciousness in filmmaking, and I ask about her experience working with the late Martin Ritt on The Front, Ritt being one of my favorite directors. Great admiration for him.
Earlier in the interview, she reveals something stunning to me in passing while talking about the filming: She's great friends with Susan Blakely, who played Maggie Whelan. My final question to her is a request for her to pass along my contact information to Blakely, since I couldn't find any contact information on her online, nor an agent's contact information, and an e-mail to her husband's PR firm bounced back with "unauthorized mail is prohibited." I was going to call the firm directly, but available interviews come first, and I've got a few more to do at the moment.
Ms. Marcovicci tells me she'll let Ms. Blakely know about me and my project right away. How she does it, I don't know, but I trust she will. She warns me that once Blakely gets on the phone, she doesn't stop talking. It suits me. Blakely was on the Concorde set and filmed scenes in Paris and Washington, D.C., so she could be one of the greatest resources I'll have about the making of '79, besides Peter Rich, the son of the late David Lowell Rich. Plus, on the Concorde after the final depressurization from the device that opened the cargo door in flight, she was involved in one of the main special effects, in a section of the floor bursting below her, creating a hole through which shots of the snow-covered mountain can be seen. I want to know how they did that and what they told her it would involve. I hope she contacts me. With the backing of Ms. Marcovicci, how could she not? I've no doubt she'll play up the uniqueness of this project to Ms. Blakely.
That was the end of the interview, and after saying goodbye and hanging up, I look up Ms. Marcovicci's tour schedule, finding that she's performing on March 14 and 15 in West Hollywood, and for two dates in April at the brand-new Smith Center in Las Vegas. I immediately e-mail her assistant, mentioning that my family and I are planning to move to Henderson, expressing my disappointment that I probably won't be able to go to either show, and asking her to convey my sincerest hope to Ms. Marcovicci that she'll return to the Smith Center in the years to come. Also in April, I'm missing a Gershwin concert performed by the Las Vegas Philharmonic at Smith Center, so I'm hoping that the Philharmonic will have another concert of that next season.
One Book Out, Another Book In
A few minutes after 9:30, the power goes out. Expected, but it means that we can't open the fridge. Therefore, warm water bottles and lunch will have to come from whatever's in the cabinets and on the counter near the stove. I still need to eat more for breakfast, but since I don't want to open the fridge to get the Silk milk, I settle for another banana and a Quaker oatmeal raisin granola bar. It's lucky I made Mom some tea before the power went out, because our hot water dispenser in the kitchen runs on electricity.
Suppose I had a Kindle that needed to be charged and I forgot to do it the night before, remembering to do it today, but the power being out, I can't for all of the morning and most of the afternoon. This is one reason I will never get one, but also because I love real books. And it's better just to open one up instead of waiting for a Kindle to turn on (which I imagine doesn't take long), and then going through the menu, finding what I want to read, and there's the book, but flat on that screen. Too impersonal for me.
Yesterday, I received a book in the mail called How Pleasure Works by Paul Bloom, positing that pleasure goes much deeper than simply having favorite foods and favorite music and favorite activities, and setting out to explain it. I had been thinking of other books in my room that I wanted to read, but with a title like that, and my love of pleasure, I opened it right away. But
Today, I read it more slowly than I usually read, which is a sign that it wasn't as interesting to me as I had hoped. Bloom presents many timely examples and shows that he's hip to pop culture without sounding like he's overreaching, but the apparent science he explains began to bore me. I make it to page 93 and put it in the Goodwill box. With how many books I have in my room, and how much I want to read throughout my life, I can't waste time on a book that isn't working for me. I don't have a set number of pages I adhere to before I give up on a book, but I try to give more of a chance to a book that has a topic that interests me, such as this one.
I go back to my room to look for my next book, remembering the Charles Kuralt books I want to read, including his memoir, A Life on the Road. But then, On Gratitude shoves the Kuralt books out of my thoughts. It's interviews Todd Aaron Jensen conducted with celebrities about what they're grateful for in life, what gratitude means to them, and it delves into parts of their careers and what they love in their lives. The list includes Jeff Bridges, Ray Bradbury, Elmore Leonard, Morgan Freeman, Hugh Laurie, Ben Kingsley, and Francis Ford Coppola. Some interviews were conducted by phone, others in person, and you can easily tell which were which. It's also my kind of book because it delves into pleasure in different ways, and I open it up, and judging by the speed at which I'm reading, I know I'm devouring it gleefully. It works for me.
While reading, I find such peacefulness without the humming of electricity, the refrigerator keeping cool, the TV on, and I know the refrigerator's functions are necessary, but I really like this for today. Meridith pulls out the radio that Mom has on when she takes a shower and tunes it to KUSC 91.5, Los Angeles' classical music station. I can listen to classical music like this, and did when I was a kid. But put me in an auditorium with an orchestra performing pieces from various composers, and I am deathly bored. I can't sit there and listen to it like that. I would make an exception for Gershwin, but I generally can't do it for other composers. Maybe I should, though, just to see if anything's changed since I attended a classical music concert as extra credit for a music class at the Pembroke Pines campus of Broward Community College. I could imagine it in my mind as my own Fantasia, thinking up my own images. It might help. I want to support the Las Vegas Philharmonic after I become a resident, and actually, if they have a Schubert concert, I would go to that. The sitcom Wings uses a piece of his in the opening credits, and that's how I first heard of him and wanted to hear more of his music, because I love that fluttering piano sound.
This works so wonderfully: A book and classical music on the radio. No TV. No Internet. I can't keep myself from spending hours on the computer, since I'm working on my book, but I want to scale back the hours and do things like this. I am, in some respect, reading a lot more in past months. But more, more, more. I do have a radio in my room, and I'm sure I can get 91.5 on there. Mom can't get any radio stations in her room; such is the injustice of hillsides and mountains. She's excited about moving to Henderson for many reasons, the greatest being moving out of Santa Clarita, but the second reason would be that she can have radio stations again. Complete flatlands in Las Vegas and Henderson. None of the seven or eight different climate zones that Southern California is known for, separated by mountains. And no radio signals getting cut off because of the mountains.
The First Time in a Long Time for Lunchtime
At 1:07, Mom, Meridith and I decide to have lunch, which is most unusual because while Meridith has been at work since the beginning of the new school semester, I eat at about 1:30, and Mom eats after she gets off the computer. Quick, simple, and after, I can get back to reading.
Since Bella, the woman Meridith was subbing for in the school kitchen, came back, and Meridith's home, it's back to eating together at lunch, at least this time. Otherwise, if the electricity had been on, I think Mom would have been on the computer a bit longer.
Lunch is for peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches for Mom and Meridith, a peanut butter and honey sandwich for me (My first time trying one, since I usually have peanut butter and honey on a Quaker rice cake (there is a difference. Store brands of rice cakes are never as good)), bagged movie theater-style popcorn, Andy Capp hot fries (made of corn and potato), and then for dessert, a banana for me and a banana for Mom, a Rice Krispies Treat for me, and apple slices for Meridith with honey. As simple a lunch as you can find with a power outage.
I always enjoy the company. And the cordless radio sits in a pottery bowl Meridith made in high school, still tuned to the classical music station, so it's my kind of afternoon. I'm not sure why I stopped listening to classical music, but it might have been that concert for extra credit that caused my interest to waver. It shouldn't have. Listening to classical music on the radio, you can read and do other things while it's playing. Nothing stops you. I do listen to ambient and chill music, so maybe it's an evolution for me since those kinds of music involve instrumentals as well. Perhaps it was an evolution of my interest in classical music. But rediscovering Gershwin, and developing an interest in Schubert, I think I'm going to go back to it and try again. I fondly remember listening to 93.1 in South Florida when it was a classical music station. It shouldn't be difficult to get back into it. I'm going to need a lot of music when I finally begin writing this book, so I'll explore now and see what suits me besides Gershwin and Schubert, but giving more attention to them because I haven't heard all their works yet.
This works. Not all the time, but these hours without electricity, this book, this music, this company, and the wisps of good feeling from that interview with Andrea Marcovicci, it all comes together to provide an afternoon that usually only happens on Friday, a feeling of contentment, of the universe having aligned. You might think a feeling of contentment couldn't happen here in the Santa Clarita Valley what with how many times I've railed against various facets of it, but I mean internal contentment. I have books, and music, and there was lunch with Mom and Meridith, so I'm feeling good. External contentment will come after we move, but as long as I have books and exploration of music, I can exist well here until we move, because I know that day will be coming soon.
Lunch is over and I go back to the couch to continue reading On Gratitude. Near 2:30, the power comes back on, and I'm on page 126. 235 pages are in this book, not counting the index. 109 pages to go. This book works for me.
I go on the computer to see if anything interesting has come to my inbox, if Ms. Marcovicci's assistant has replied to my e-mail of deepest thanks, and if Rebecca Wright of Movie Gazette Online has forwarded any new press releases, asking us three writers if any of the titles in those press releases interest us. Nothing new. Since I can be choosier about what I review, I wasn't disappointed. This time, I've got to really feel that I want to review something, that I can write something hopefully worthwhile. I've got ideas for my first three reviews, now including the final season of Adam-12, that I want to try, and see where they go. It's quite different from when I wrote review after review of completely independent movies and inevitably wasn't interested in a few of them but I reviewed them anyway.
With nothing else to do on the computer for now, I give it to Meridith, who hasn't had the chance to use it during the day because she's been at work. I turn on the Tivo and play one of the episodes she has of The Chew, four days' worth built up, without today's episode because it didn't record. Power outages do that.
Every Friday, with that feeling of contentment, I tell myself that I want to feel that all the time. I don't want it to be limited to Fridays. I want this feeling all the time, too, of being at peace, of enjoying myself like this, with books and classical music and all the other music I love. I'm going to lasso this feeling and have it with me all the time. A continuous atmosphere like this would lend itself to much creativity. That's what I need when I begin writing this book, and I'm going to have it. This is the type of day to have every day, interviews with singers or not.
I went to bed a few minutes before 3:30 this morning. I have to be in front of the computer by 8 for a phone interview with actress/singer Andrea Marcovicci, who played Russian Olympian Alicia Rogov in The Concorde: Airport '79. It's 7:45. Her assistant originally set up the interview for this past Monday morning at 9. Ms. Marcovicci didn't call, and her assistant apologized by e-mail later.
I actually wouldn't mind if she didn't call this time either because I want to get back to sleep. But I have to do this because her assistant offered no other time in the forseeable future, citing a tight schedule. I learn later that that's not Hollywoodspeak. It's actually a tight schedule.
I should have gone to bed earlier. I wish I didn't feel like I'm trying to pull my face from a puddle of glue. But last week, Southern California Edison sent a notice that the power would be shut off from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., to ease the load on the system and to hopefully prevent rolling blackouts during the summer. Or something like that. An electric company's reasoning is like trying to figure out the true motivation behind Scientology.
Therefore, the 9 a.m. time I requested for this interview, which was rejected, would not have worked anyway. Mom suggested last night that I print out my questions and have a notepad handy just in case the power cuts out during the interview. I took that precaution, but hope I won't need it because I can type interview answers much faster than writing them.
I finally get out of bed. Bathroom. Teeth. I'm still a little tired, but I know I'll feel the effect of a little over four hours' sleep later. I wanted Cheerios soaked in Silk Very Vanilla soymilk as usual, but it's 7:56. No time. Just a banana. At least it's hefty in the stomach.
I sit down at the computer, with printed questions, notepad and pen in front of me. I stick my flash drive into a port at the bottom of the computer, open my "Questions for Andrea Marcovicci" Word file, and make sure I have all the questions I want to ask her, especially about filming in the Concorde set on stage 12 at Universal.
The phone rings. It's 8:06.
"Rory?"
"Yes, that's me."
"It's Andrea Marcovicci."
"Yes; I know that very well." (I don't tell her that her name appeared on the Caller ID at the computer, but I know the voice well enough to be able to recognize it without a Caller ID, before she said her name.)
Regretting McCambridge
When Ms. Marcovicci didn't call that Monday morning, I was worried that I was going to interview someone who was full of herself, only giving time to me because she ought to throw some peanuts sometimes. Her assistant gave me the impression that that's who I might be talking to, because she was firm in her approach, and I worried that requesting another time, if I had to, would make me persona non grata. You form your impressions, right or wrong, from the experience you have at the start.
I was totally wrong.
Ms. Marcovicci begins the conversation with an apology for not calling on Monday morning, telling me that she was involved with something else, and said I probably wouldn't want to know about why she hadn't called. Yeah, I would like to know. After all, I don't interview singers every day. But I don't press. I don't think it would be polite.
For 20 minutes, Ms. Marcovicci is as I imagine her singing must be. She's playful, laughing many times throughout while remembering what she deems "the worst Airport movie." She had hoped The Concorde: Airport '79 would make her a more well-known actress, just like director David Lowell Rich hoped that this would lead to more features for him. Neither happened.
Her biggest regret of '79 is not paying attention to Mercedes McCambridge, who played Nelli, Alicia's minder. She says she was a "young pup," "and kind of scatterbrained at the time and not as appreciative of her as I should have been." She understands now that that's why McCambridge was "relatively impatient with me and harsh to me."
Then, Ms. Marcovicci gives me the information I was jonesing for, about the Concorde set itself, and what the crew did to help simulate the plane being upside down and depressurized. I'm saving all that for the book, but it represents fully what I'm looking to do with this book. Ms. Marcovicci also expresses great pleasure at my idea, saying that fans of these movies would certainly want to know all about them, as well as disaster movie fans and others. Genuine delight.
At the end of the interview, she has time for only one or two more questions. I skip the one asking about her on the set at the end of the movie after the Concorde lands under snow in the mountains because in describing the scene to her before, despite appearing onscreen, she says she doesn't remember it. She trusts me, a fan, though. I ask her about working with indie director Henry Jaglom on two films, admiring his tenaciousness in filmmaking, and I ask about her experience working with the late Martin Ritt on The Front, Ritt being one of my favorite directors. Great admiration for him.
Earlier in the interview, she reveals something stunning to me in passing while talking about the filming: She's great friends with Susan Blakely, who played Maggie Whelan. My final question to her is a request for her to pass along my contact information to Blakely, since I couldn't find any contact information on her online, nor an agent's contact information, and an e-mail to her husband's PR firm bounced back with "unauthorized mail is prohibited." I was going to call the firm directly, but available interviews come first, and I've got a few more to do at the moment.
Ms. Marcovicci tells me she'll let Ms. Blakely know about me and my project right away. How she does it, I don't know, but I trust she will. She warns me that once Blakely gets on the phone, she doesn't stop talking. It suits me. Blakely was on the Concorde set and filmed scenes in Paris and Washington, D.C., so she could be one of the greatest resources I'll have about the making of '79, besides Peter Rich, the son of the late David Lowell Rich. Plus, on the Concorde after the final depressurization from the device that opened the cargo door in flight, she was involved in one of the main special effects, in a section of the floor bursting below her, creating a hole through which shots of the snow-covered mountain can be seen. I want to know how they did that and what they told her it would involve. I hope she contacts me. With the backing of Ms. Marcovicci, how could she not? I've no doubt she'll play up the uniqueness of this project to Ms. Blakely.
That was the end of the interview, and after saying goodbye and hanging up, I look up Ms. Marcovicci's tour schedule, finding that she's performing on March 14 and 15 in West Hollywood, and for two dates in April at the brand-new Smith Center in Las Vegas. I immediately e-mail her assistant, mentioning that my family and I are planning to move to Henderson, expressing my disappointment that I probably won't be able to go to either show, and asking her to convey my sincerest hope to Ms. Marcovicci that she'll return to the Smith Center in the years to come. Also in April, I'm missing a Gershwin concert performed by the Las Vegas Philharmonic at Smith Center, so I'm hoping that the Philharmonic will have another concert of that next season.
One Book Out, Another Book In
A few minutes after 9:30, the power goes out. Expected, but it means that we can't open the fridge. Therefore, warm water bottles and lunch will have to come from whatever's in the cabinets and on the counter near the stove. I still need to eat more for breakfast, but since I don't want to open the fridge to get the Silk milk, I settle for another banana and a Quaker oatmeal raisin granola bar. It's lucky I made Mom some tea before the power went out, because our hot water dispenser in the kitchen runs on electricity.
Suppose I had a Kindle that needed to be charged and I forgot to do it the night before, remembering to do it today, but the power being out, I can't for all of the morning and most of the afternoon. This is one reason I will never get one, but also because I love real books. And it's better just to open one up instead of waiting for a Kindle to turn on (which I imagine doesn't take long), and then going through the menu, finding what I want to read, and there's the book, but flat on that screen. Too impersonal for me.
Yesterday, I received a book in the mail called How Pleasure Works by Paul Bloom, positing that pleasure goes much deeper than simply having favorite foods and favorite music and favorite activities, and setting out to explain it. I had been thinking of other books in my room that I wanted to read, but with a title like that, and my love of pleasure, I opened it right away. But
Today, I read it more slowly than I usually read, which is a sign that it wasn't as interesting to me as I had hoped. Bloom presents many timely examples and shows that he's hip to pop culture without sounding like he's overreaching, but the apparent science he explains began to bore me. I make it to page 93 and put it in the Goodwill box. With how many books I have in my room, and how much I want to read throughout my life, I can't waste time on a book that isn't working for me. I don't have a set number of pages I adhere to before I give up on a book, but I try to give more of a chance to a book that has a topic that interests me, such as this one.
I go back to my room to look for my next book, remembering the Charles Kuralt books I want to read, including his memoir, A Life on the Road. But then, On Gratitude shoves the Kuralt books out of my thoughts. It's interviews Todd Aaron Jensen conducted with celebrities about what they're grateful for in life, what gratitude means to them, and it delves into parts of their careers and what they love in their lives. The list includes Jeff Bridges, Ray Bradbury, Elmore Leonard, Morgan Freeman, Hugh Laurie, Ben Kingsley, and Francis Ford Coppola. Some interviews were conducted by phone, others in person, and you can easily tell which were which. It's also my kind of book because it delves into pleasure in different ways, and I open it up, and judging by the speed at which I'm reading, I know I'm devouring it gleefully. It works for me.
While reading, I find such peacefulness without the humming of electricity, the refrigerator keeping cool, the TV on, and I know the refrigerator's functions are necessary, but I really like this for today. Meridith pulls out the radio that Mom has on when she takes a shower and tunes it to KUSC 91.5, Los Angeles' classical music station. I can listen to classical music like this, and did when I was a kid. But put me in an auditorium with an orchestra performing pieces from various composers, and I am deathly bored. I can't sit there and listen to it like that. I would make an exception for Gershwin, but I generally can't do it for other composers. Maybe I should, though, just to see if anything's changed since I attended a classical music concert as extra credit for a music class at the Pembroke Pines campus of Broward Community College. I could imagine it in my mind as my own Fantasia, thinking up my own images. It might help. I want to support the Las Vegas Philharmonic after I become a resident, and actually, if they have a Schubert concert, I would go to that. The sitcom Wings uses a piece of his in the opening credits, and that's how I first heard of him and wanted to hear more of his music, because I love that fluttering piano sound.
This works so wonderfully: A book and classical music on the radio. No TV. No Internet. I can't keep myself from spending hours on the computer, since I'm working on my book, but I want to scale back the hours and do things like this. I am, in some respect, reading a lot more in past months. But more, more, more. I do have a radio in my room, and I'm sure I can get 91.5 on there. Mom can't get any radio stations in her room; such is the injustice of hillsides and mountains. She's excited about moving to Henderson for many reasons, the greatest being moving out of Santa Clarita, but the second reason would be that she can have radio stations again. Complete flatlands in Las Vegas and Henderson. None of the seven or eight different climate zones that Southern California is known for, separated by mountains. And no radio signals getting cut off because of the mountains.
The First Time in a Long Time for Lunchtime
At 1:07, Mom, Meridith and I decide to have lunch, which is most unusual because while Meridith has been at work since the beginning of the new school semester, I eat at about 1:30, and Mom eats after she gets off the computer. Quick, simple, and after, I can get back to reading.
Since Bella, the woman Meridith was subbing for in the school kitchen, came back, and Meridith's home, it's back to eating together at lunch, at least this time. Otherwise, if the electricity had been on, I think Mom would have been on the computer a bit longer.
Lunch is for peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches for Mom and Meridith, a peanut butter and honey sandwich for me (My first time trying one, since I usually have peanut butter and honey on a Quaker rice cake (there is a difference. Store brands of rice cakes are never as good)), bagged movie theater-style popcorn, Andy Capp hot fries (made of corn and potato), and then for dessert, a banana for me and a banana for Mom, a Rice Krispies Treat for me, and apple slices for Meridith with honey. As simple a lunch as you can find with a power outage.
I always enjoy the company. And the cordless radio sits in a pottery bowl Meridith made in high school, still tuned to the classical music station, so it's my kind of afternoon. I'm not sure why I stopped listening to classical music, but it might have been that concert for extra credit that caused my interest to waver. It shouldn't have. Listening to classical music on the radio, you can read and do other things while it's playing. Nothing stops you. I do listen to ambient and chill music, so maybe it's an evolution for me since those kinds of music involve instrumentals as well. Perhaps it was an evolution of my interest in classical music. But rediscovering Gershwin, and developing an interest in Schubert, I think I'm going to go back to it and try again. I fondly remember listening to 93.1 in South Florida when it was a classical music station. It shouldn't be difficult to get back into it. I'm going to need a lot of music when I finally begin writing this book, so I'll explore now and see what suits me besides Gershwin and Schubert, but giving more attention to them because I haven't heard all their works yet.
This works. Not all the time, but these hours without electricity, this book, this music, this company, and the wisps of good feeling from that interview with Andrea Marcovicci, it all comes together to provide an afternoon that usually only happens on Friday, a feeling of contentment, of the universe having aligned. You might think a feeling of contentment couldn't happen here in the Santa Clarita Valley what with how many times I've railed against various facets of it, but I mean internal contentment. I have books, and music, and there was lunch with Mom and Meridith, so I'm feeling good. External contentment will come after we move, but as long as I have books and exploration of music, I can exist well here until we move, because I know that day will be coming soon.
Lunch is over and I go back to the couch to continue reading On Gratitude. Near 2:30, the power comes back on, and I'm on page 126. 235 pages are in this book, not counting the index. 109 pages to go. This book works for me.
I go on the computer to see if anything interesting has come to my inbox, if Ms. Marcovicci's assistant has replied to my e-mail of deepest thanks, and if Rebecca Wright of Movie Gazette Online has forwarded any new press releases, asking us three writers if any of the titles in those press releases interest us. Nothing new. Since I can be choosier about what I review, I wasn't disappointed. This time, I've got to really feel that I want to review something, that I can write something hopefully worthwhile. I've got ideas for my first three reviews, now including the final season of Adam-12, that I want to try, and see where they go. It's quite different from when I wrote review after review of completely independent movies and inevitably wasn't interested in a few of them but I reviewed them anyway.
With nothing else to do on the computer for now, I give it to Meridith, who hasn't had the chance to use it during the day because she's been at work. I turn on the Tivo and play one of the episodes she has of The Chew, four days' worth built up, without today's episode because it didn't record. Power outages do that.
Every Friday, with that feeling of contentment, I tell myself that I want to feel that all the time. I don't want it to be limited to Fridays. I want this feeling all the time, too, of being at peace, of enjoying myself like this, with books and classical music and all the other music I love. I'm going to lasso this feeling and have it with me all the time. A continuous atmosphere like this would lend itself to much creativity. That's what I need when I begin writing this book, and I'm going to have it. This is the type of day to have every day, interviews with singers or not.
Monday, March 5, 2012
DVDs at Big Lots = My Kind of Collection
The only use I've ever gotten out of the DVD aisles at Best Buy was last Thanksgiving Eve, when tents had sprouted next to the store in Valencia for Black Friday. In the ad of what was on sale, only valid until that evening I was there, I found that they were selling the DVD set of Married with Children: The Complete Series for $29.99. I despise the majority of those DVDs because Sony wasn't able to get the music rights to Frank Sinatra's "Love and Marriage" for the entire run of the series, so there's a crappy instrumental ditty in place of that, which has no relation to the twisted spirit of the show. "Love and Marriage" did because it was used ironically. I considered this for about 10 seconds and decided to buy it because first, it's never that cheap, and second, I'd rather have my favorite episode, season 7's "Movie Show," available to me whenever I want, and not only on the Tivo, where I had it until mid-January when I deleted it to make room for other shows.
Otherwise, Best Buy's DVD offerings are too slick for me. It doesn't have the feeling of discovering new movies to watch. There's no sense of excitement in seeing what they have. The same goes with Walmart, although it's a little more comfortable than Best Buy, but not by much. They've got those $5 DVD bins, which I've lately only found useful to skim the top, see what's there, dig a little bit below, and then give up. My last great find in one of those bins was Clerks II, nearly two years ago.
Yesterday afternoon, we went to Big Lots because for that day only: 20% off whatever you buy. Dad had collected five "20% off" coupons from school (Four for us and one extra in case we lost one), but it was apparently not needed because at the register, everything scanned 20% off. Dad wanted to find a well-fitting cell phone case, Mom and Meridith came to look around and see if there was anything I wanted, and I was of course there for the books and DVDs.
I love shopping for DVDs at Big Lots, even when I don't need them, even though I'm much more into books than DVDs now. But I still love movies. I always will, and eventually getting tired of writing reviews will never sour me on them.
At Big Lots, there's very few horror movies on DVD, which matches me, because I don't like horror movies, and I can submerge myself in memories by what I find. For example, there's still copies of Ringers: Lord of the Fans, of which I'm quoted on the front, the first and only DVD release by a major company that I was quoted on. I freaked out when I found that I was quoted on the front of the DVD box of the documentary Cinemania, my first one, but I'm especially proud of Ringers: Lord of the Fans, because I'd never, ever imagined being quoted on a Sony DVD release, and it kept to what I always hoped with being quoted on DVDs, that I would only be quoted on movies I passionately supported. That was one of them.
Big Lots also holds part of my own DVD collection. On one of the shelves of a four-sided display rack, I spotted Swing Vote, which I proudly own, and on one of the $5 two-sided display racks, I saw Brick, a modern-day high school-flavored film noir starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, that I bought again for my collection last year. But DVDs I wasn't even thinking of when I walked in are the ones that bring me further back in memory, and even further back still.
After I had an anxiety attack at a mall in Henderson in May 2010 that wasn't Galleria at Sunset (though I had one there too), brought on by being vastly overweight and having consumed far too much caffeine and not eating at all well while on that trip (Little sleep doesn't help either), I spent months over that summer not even trying to figure out what was wrong with me and what I needed to do to fix myself. I didn't even think of being overweight as being the trouble. Well, that and the caffeine. There were many, many days in which I watched endless hours of TV with no discernible goal toward anything. And I remember watching Star Trek: Generations on BBC America one Saturday in late summer, with no idea why. I had never been into Star Trek before, and I wonder if my brain had been twisted around during those anxiety attacks. Me and Star Trek? No. It didn't make any sense.
But I suppose it had to happen eventually. My favorite childhood movie was Flight of the Navigator, with that shiny, shape-shifting spaceship, and, living in Casselberry, we used to run out to the backyard whenever we heard on the radio that the space shuttle was lifting off, and it was so close to us that we could see clearly the American flag on the left wing, and "U.S.A." on the right.
During those listless months in which I felt like I was in a prison inside my head, I also watched a few episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, not paying much attention to them because neither my body nor my head felt right. I spent a lot of time in self-pity.
Late last year, I decided to try a few episodes of TNG again, and I like it. My answer to the question of Star Wars or Star Trek is Star Trek, because it seems to encompass an expansive universe that has a lot to explore. I also saw the new Star Trek movie when it was theaters, after going nuts over the trailer and watching it close to 70 times, and I loved it, so that must have triggered something.
I don't think I could ever be an out-and-out Trekkie, though, arguing the fine points of Star Trek lore, debating characters, loudly proclaiming a certain episode or movie to be the best one. I wander around in my own good time, seeing what I like, what more I want to explore.
I found Star Trek: Generations on DVD at Big Lots. $5. The last time we were at Big Lots, I found Star Trek: Insurrection and bought that, disappointed to find that the special collector's edition of Star Trek: First Contact was gone, which I was thinking of buying on the visit before the purchase of Insurrection, but decided to hold off until I learned more about the Star Trek universe. I should have snapped it up.
I seem to want to know more and more about science fiction now, especially in light of a time-travel idea I have for a novel. I want to explore these different worlds, see what fits me, and keep following that path. Star Trek might very well be one, and it's fortunate I found both those movies for cheap at Big Lots so there's no pricey regret if I decide not to keep them. I still regret not buying First Contact. $5 for that double-disc set was a lot better than $11.75 on Amazon. And I would have had it right away.
In one of the $5 racks, I found In the Line of Fire, which will forever have John Malkovich's creepy, disturbing performance as its main attraction. If the space shuttle launches and Flight of the Navigator were what propelled me to exploration of all things Star Trek, then there are so many explanations for why we are the way we are, in everything we do. In the Line of Fire has been with me since July 1993, when I was 9 years old. Every summer, my mom, my sister and I went every week to the morning summer movie program GCC Coral Square 8 had. I think admission cost a few dollars, but not as much as regular admission. I don't remember the movie we saw that week after In the Line of Fire, but when we walked out of the theater, I looked at the lighted paper sign between both doors of that theater, which had the In the Line of Fire logo to indicate that that's what was playing inside that theater, and I wondered what it was about. But since I was 9, and it was rated "R," there was no way I was going to be able to see it. I had no idea who John Malkovich was, then, and it was only after I saw him in Of Mice and Men in 10th grade English class, when he had become one of my favorite actors, that I finally saw In the Line of Fire. I really like it on its own merits, and I bought it at Big Lots for my collection.
I also bought That Championship Season (curious to see how another play is adapted into a movie), Lonely Hearts (Australian movie that I've always been curious about), Shaft (1971) (It may go into my collection because I admire how director Gordon Parks keeps everything street-level and real enough, a product of his masterful, stunning photography decades before), and That's Entertainment (I love the contrast of clips of beautifully-designed movie musicals, and introductions by actors against backdrops of a crumbling MGM that had already been sold at the time of filming), which went into my collection because I love a great many of those musical sequences.
I like Big Lots because it's open to everyone. Best Buy feels like you have to have at least $200 in your checking account and if you don't, all the flatscreen TVs are going to glare at you. Whereas in Big Lots, you just walk in, see what suits you, and most of the time, you'll find something you want. What you find feels like it had been waiting for you, like the diecast model of the presidential limo that I found for $9. There's always something there that is uniquely you.
Otherwise, Best Buy's DVD offerings are too slick for me. It doesn't have the feeling of discovering new movies to watch. There's no sense of excitement in seeing what they have. The same goes with Walmart, although it's a little more comfortable than Best Buy, but not by much. They've got those $5 DVD bins, which I've lately only found useful to skim the top, see what's there, dig a little bit below, and then give up. My last great find in one of those bins was Clerks II, nearly two years ago.
Yesterday afternoon, we went to Big Lots because for that day only: 20% off whatever you buy. Dad had collected five "20% off" coupons from school (Four for us and one extra in case we lost one), but it was apparently not needed because at the register, everything scanned 20% off. Dad wanted to find a well-fitting cell phone case, Mom and Meridith came to look around and see if there was anything I wanted, and I was of course there for the books and DVDs.
I love shopping for DVDs at Big Lots, even when I don't need them, even though I'm much more into books than DVDs now. But I still love movies. I always will, and eventually getting tired of writing reviews will never sour me on them.
At Big Lots, there's very few horror movies on DVD, which matches me, because I don't like horror movies, and I can submerge myself in memories by what I find. For example, there's still copies of Ringers: Lord of the Fans, of which I'm quoted on the front, the first and only DVD release by a major company that I was quoted on. I freaked out when I found that I was quoted on the front of the DVD box of the documentary Cinemania, my first one, but I'm especially proud of Ringers: Lord of the Fans, because I'd never, ever imagined being quoted on a Sony DVD release, and it kept to what I always hoped with being quoted on DVDs, that I would only be quoted on movies I passionately supported. That was one of them.
Big Lots also holds part of my own DVD collection. On one of the shelves of a four-sided display rack, I spotted Swing Vote, which I proudly own, and on one of the $5 two-sided display racks, I saw Brick, a modern-day high school-flavored film noir starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, that I bought again for my collection last year. But DVDs I wasn't even thinking of when I walked in are the ones that bring me further back in memory, and even further back still.
After I had an anxiety attack at a mall in Henderson in May 2010 that wasn't Galleria at Sunset (though I had one there too), brought on by being vastly overweight and having consumed far too much caffeine and not eating at all well while on that trip (Little sleep doesn't help either), I spent months over that summer not even trying to figure out what was wrong with me and what I needed to do to fix myself. I didn't even think of being overweight as being the trouble. Well, that and the caffeine. There were many, many days in which I watched endless hours of TV with no discernible goal toward anything. And I remember watching Star Trek: Generations on BBC America one Saturday in late summer, with no idea why. I had never been into Star Trek before, and I wonder if my brain had been twisted around during those anxiety attacks. Me and Star Trek? No. It didn't make any sense.
But I suppose it had to happen eventually. My favorite childhood movie was Flight of the Navigator, with that shiny, shape-shifting spaceship, and, living in Casselberry, we used to run out to the backyard whenever we heard on the radio that the space shuttle was lifting off, and it was so close to us that we could see clearly the American flag on the left wing, and "U.S.A." on the right.
During those listless months in which I felt like I was in a prison inside my head, I also watched a few episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, not paying much attention to them because neither my body nor my head felt right. I spent a lot of time in self-pity.
Late last year, I decided to try a few episodes of TNG again, and I like it. My answer to the question of Star Wars or Star Trek is Star Trek, because it seems to encompass an expansive universe that has a lot to explore. I also saw the new Star Trek movie when it was theaters, after going nuts over the trailer and watching it close to 70 times, and I loved it, so that must have triggered something.
I don't think I could ever be an out-and-out Trekkie, though, arguing the fine points of Star Trek lore, debating characters, loudly proclaiming a certain episode or movie to be the best one. I wander around in my own good time, seeing what I like, what more I want to explore.
I found Star Trek: Generations on DVD at Big Lots. $5. The last time we were at Big Lots, I found Star Trek: Insurrection and bought that, disappointed to find that the special collector's edition of Star Trek: First Contact was gone, which I was thinking of buying on the visit before the purchase of Insurrection, but decided to hold off until I learned more about the Star Trek universe. I should have snapped it up.
I seem to want to know more and more about science fiction now, especially in light of a time-travel idea I have for a novel. I want to explore these different worlds, see what fits me, and keep following that path. Star Trek might very well be one, and it's fortunate I found both those movies for cheap at Big Lots so there's no pricey regret if I decide not to keep them. I still regret not buying First Contact. $5 for that double-disc set was a lot better than $11.75 on Amazon. And I would have had it right away.
In one of the $5 racks, I found In the Line of Fire, which will forever have John Malkovich's creepy, disturbing performance as its main attraction. If the space shuttle launches and Flight of the Navigator were what propelled me to exploration of all things Star Trek, then there are so many explanations for why we are the way we are, in everything we do. In the Line of Fire has been with me since July 1993, when I was 9 years old. Every summer, my mom, my sister and I went every week to the morning summer movie program GCC Coral Square 8 had. I think admission cost a few dollars, but not as much as regular admission. I don't remember the movie we saw that week after In the Line of Fire, but when we walked out of the theater, I looked at the lighted paper sign between both doors of that theater, which had the In the Line of Fire logo to indicate that that's what was playing inside that theater, and I wondered what it was about. But since I was 9, and it was rated "R," there was no way I was going to be able to see it. I had no idea who John Malkovich was, then, and it was only after I saw him in Of Mice and Men in 10th grade English class, when he had become one of my favorite actors, that I finally saw In the Line of Fire. I really like it on its own merits, and I bought it at Big Lots for my collection.
I also bought That Championship Season (curious to see how another play is adapted into a movie), Lonely Hearts (Australian movie that I've always been curious about), Shaft (1971) (It may go into my collection because I admire how director Gordon Parks keeps everything street-level and real enough, a product of his masterful, stunning photography decades before), and That's Entertainment (I love the contrast of clips of beautifully-designed movie musicals, and introductions by actors against backdrops of a crumbling MGM that had already been sold at the time of filming), which went into my collection because I love a great many of those musical sequences.
I like Big Lots because it's open to everyone. Best Buy feels like you have to have at least $200 in your checking account and if you don't, all the flatscreen TVs are going to glare at you. Whereas in Big Lots, you just walk in, see what suits you, and most of the time, you'll find something you want. What you find feels like it had been waiting for you, like the diecast model of the presidential limo that I found for $9. There's always something there that is uniquely you.
How Will It Feel This Time?
I became a former film critic in 2009 because I was tired of the hamster-wheel feeling, such as Hollywood's release schedule, reliably awards contention-heavy at the end of the year, and the summer movie season having a lot of loud noise and empty vessels. That was only part of it, the other part being that as a member of the Online Film Critics Society, I had to participate in the year-end voting of which movies and actors and others we deemed to be the best of the year. We received awards screeners in the mail, and I always felt compelled to watch everything I got because I wanted to feel at least 10% well-informed, and I didn't review mainstream releases like other critics do, including attending press screenings. I did when I wrote for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel's now-defunct Teentime pages, but it was a novelty to me back then, just like receiving awards screeners were in my first and second years as a member of the OFCS. Back then, writing for Teentime, I wanted to be a full-time film critic some day.
In my third year of receiving awards screeners, I began to feel like I was on a hamster wheel. The same activities the same time every year. I was having some fun with it, but not as much as I should have if I was really into it. And there was no way to become a full-time film critic like Ebert or Anthony Lane of The New Yorker, or Josh Bell of Las Vegas Weekly, because those jobs weren't there anymore. Journalism had caved in on itself. There was no way to receive a paycheck and medical benefits for writing movie reviews. I didn't want it anymore anyway. I wanted to write books, to explore other topics that fascinate me, and then came What If They Lived?, with its crash course in research. And here I am now, working on my second book, and thinking of the books and novels and plays to come. This is what I want to do. This is where I belong. But what if I could review movies as I probably should have during those 10 years, not taking it as deadly serious as I did, and having more fun with it?
On Saturday, I received a message on Facebook from Rebecca Wright, who I talk with occasionally. She runs a DVD and Blu-Ray review site called Movie Gazette Online, posting links to her reviews on her Facebook account, which I see. I don't think a great deal about it because I've got my own work to do and I'm more deeply into books nowadays.
She asked if I wanted to contribute the occasional DVD review to her site, being that she gets a lot of DVDs and Blu-Rays now, and is adding more writers. She's read my past reviews, which I assume is why she contacted me.
I thought about it for a bit. I didn't want to get tied up in reviewing again. There was a lot of work to do for Film Threat, and I wasn't even getting paid for that. I wanted the experience and the clips so I could possibly parlay that into finding a full-time position as a film critic, which never happened. I'm not disappointed about that, since it led to What If They Lived?. But now, I'm busy writing books.
It might be good, though. Rebecca's site reminds me of the five reviews I wrote in 2005 for a site called The DVD Insider. I decided to be totally uninhibited in those reviews because I had nothing at stake. I looked at those reviews while I considered Rebecca's offer, and while the writing is embarassingly rough in spots, I clearly had fun writing those. That's what I should have been doing all 10 years, and also not putting all of my energy in those reviews like I did, because eventually, no one at Film Threat really did anything for me like I did for them, save for Phil Hall and my first book. That's what made it worth it.
Despite the Movie Gazette Online writer's agreement stating a requirement of 4-6 reviews per month, Rebecca told me that I could contribute as much or as little as I wanted. The number didn't matter, but she hoped I would feel comfortable enough to contribute something on a monthly basis. That's markedly different from the pressure I felt throughout those 10 years, pressure that I should have realized I was bringing on myself, but was too ambitious to notice.
There was another difference between this offer and my 10 years' worth of work: I'm not greedy anymore about DVDs. When I began writing for Film Threat, and requested DVDs from various PR firms while writing reviews of totally independent movies (Movies that not even the smallest label in Hollywood knew about), I was so impressed at just being able to get any DVD so easily. I overused this benefit with such zeal, that I got many DVDs every single day from UPS and FedEx and in the mail. The house filled up with them. Of course, where the DVDs used to be, books now reside, but I'm happier with the books.
I don't want DVDs anymore like I used to, so there's that benefit of writing for Movie Gazette Online. Plus, the site feels as comfortable as The DVD Insider was to me, and as if Rebecca wasn't already doing her best to try to reel me in, the writer's agreement states that "submissions must be 500-1,000 words." Oh god, what a relief! For me, it's like the hour or two I spent writing guest posts for Janie Junebug and Bloggerati, followed by careful, focused editing. Not only can I do this, I can use it as relaxation while working on my books! I can finally relax while writing reviews!
I accepted Rebecca's offer, promising her an up-to-150-word biography for my staff page, as well as signing up for an account on Gravatar, in order to produce a photo that can accompany my reviews. She then sent me press releases announcing forthcoming DVDs from Lionsgate and A&E, and told me to let her know if I wanted to review any of them.
The first press release announced Lionsgate's release of Gwyneth Paltrow, Nicole Kidman, and Renee Zellweger 4-Film Collections, coming out April 3. Re-releases of movies previously released on DVD, this time under the Lionsgate banner. I immediately scrolled down to the listing for the Renee Zellweger Collection, since she's one of my favorite actresses for various reasons (including being one of the leggiest actresses in Hollywood), and I had seen Bridget Jones's Diary and Chicago, both of which are included in this collection. Cold Mountain and New in Town are also here, neither of which I've seen, but I was already forming a review in my head, analyzing Zellweger's career choices, not how good or bad they are, but how she seems willing to do what other Hollywood actresses would probably be horrified about, such as the granny panties bit in Bridget Jones's Diary. She's adventurous, and willing to explore. I e-mailed Rebecca with my request, and it was done. This one's mine to review. And I think I want Chicago in my DVD collection again.
Next, a press release from A&E announcing its April releases. Rebecca sent me a separate e-mail with a list of DVDs she has right now, and not even Titanic: The Complete Story interested me. Quite different from when I also wrote reviews for NP2K, and was maniacally excited about the DVDs to be split up amongst us three reviewers. That was how I got the Clerks X DVD set that's in my collection next to Clerks II.
I scrolled through the A&E press release, stopping dead at The Presidents DVD set, which is merely being re-released in thinner packaging, but is still available for review. With my passion for the history of the presidency, this one's MINE! And Rebecca acknowledged it.
When I wrote for Screen It, Jim Judy, the owner, lived, and still does, in Germantown, Maryland. Rebecca lives in Vermont. I seem to have a great deal of luck with movie reviewers on the east coast from all the way over here. It's even more fortunate that I can write about what interests me, since I don't see movie reviewing as a potential future anymore. Renee Zellweger movies and an eight-part documentary about the presidents is an auspicious start. Plus, since I've ended my obsession with free DVDs, I have far less work to do now! I can finally have fun with this.
In my third year of receiving awards screeners, I began to feel like I was on a hamster wheel. The same activities the same time every year. I was having some fun with it, but not as much as I should have if I was really into it. And there was no way to become a full-time film critic like Ebert or Anthony Lane of The New Yorker, or Josh Bell of Las Vegas Weekly, because those jobs weren't there anymore. Journalism had caved in on itself. There was no way to receive a paycheck and medical benefits for writing movie reviews. I didn't want it anymore anyway. I wanted to write books, to explore other topics that fascinate me, and then came What If They Lived?, with its crash course in research. And here I am now, working on my second book, and thinking of the books and novels and plays to come. This is what I want to do. This is where I belong. But what if I could review movies as I probably should have during those 10 years, not taking it as deadly serious as I did, and having more fun with it?
On Saturday, I received a message on Facebook from Rebecca Wright, who I talk with occasionally. She runs a DVD and Blu-Ray review site called Movie Gazette Online, posting links to her reviews on her Facebook account, which I see. I don't think a great deal about it because I've got my own work to do and I'm more deeply into books nowadays.
She asked if I wanted to contribute the occasional DVD review to her site, being that she gets a lot of DVDs and Blu-Rays now, and is adding more writers. She's read my past reviews, which I assume is why she contacted me.
I thought about it for a bit. I didn't want to get tied up in reviewing again. There was a lot of work to do for Film Threat, and I wasn't even getting paid for that. I wanted the experience and the clips so I could possibly parlay that into finding a full-time position as a film critic, which never happened. I'm not disappointed about that, since it led to What If They Lived?. But now, I'm busy writing books.
It might be good, though. Rebecca's site reminds me of the five reviews I wrote in 2005 for a site called The DVD Insider. I decided to be totally uninhibited in those reviews because I had nothing at stake. I looked at those reviews while I considered Rebecca's offer, and while the writing is embarassingly rough in spots, I clearly had fun writing those. That's what I should have been doing all 10 years, and also not putting all of my energy in those reviews like I did, because eventually, no one at Film Threat really did anything for me like I did for them, save for Phil Hall and my first book. That's what made it worth it.
Despite the Movie Gazette Online writer's agreement stating a requirement of 4-6 reviews per month, Rebecca told me that I could contribute as much or as little as I wanted. The number didn't matter, but she hoped I would feel comfortable enough to contribute something on a monthly basis. That's markedly different from the pressure I felt throughout those 10 years, pressure that I should have realized I was bringing on myself, but was too ambitious to notice.
There was another difference between this offer and my 10 years' worth of work: I'm not greedy anymore about DVDs. When I began writing for Film Threat, and requested DVDs from various PR firms while writing reviews of totally independent movies (Movies that not even the smallest label in Hollywood knew about), I was so impressed at just being able to get any DVD so easily. I overused this benefit with such zeal, that I got many DVDs every single day from UPS and FedEx and in the mail. The house filled up with them. Of course, where the DVDs used to be, books now reside, but I'm happier with the books.
I don't want DVDs anymore like I used to, so there's that benefit of writing for Movie Gazette Online. Plus, the site feels as comfortable as The DVD Insider was to me, and as if Rebecca wasn't already doing her best to try to reel me in, the writer's agreement states that "submissions must be 500-1,000 words." Oh god, what a relief! For me, it's like the hour or two I spent writing guest posts for Janie Junebug and Bloggerati, followed by careful, focused editing. Not only can I do this, I can use it as relaxation while working on my books! I can finally relax while writing reviews!
I accepted Rebecca's offer, promising her an up-to-150-word biography for my staff page, as well as signing up for an account on Gravatar, in order to produce a photo that can accompany my reviews. She then sent me press releases announcing forthcoming DVDs from Lionsgate and A&E, and told me to let her know if I wanted to review any of them.
The first press release announced Lionsgate's release of Gwyneth Paltrow, Nicole Kidman, and Renee Zellweger 4-Film Collections, coming out April 3. Re-releases of movies previously released on DVD, this time under the Lionsgate banner. I immediately scrolled down to the listing for the Renee Zellweger Collection, since she's one of my favorite actresses for various reasons (including being one of the leggiest actresses in Hollywood), and I had seen Bridget Jones's Diary and Chicago, both of which are included in this collection. Cold Mountain and New in Town are also here, neither of which I've seen, but I was already forming a review in my head, analyzing Zellweger's career choices, not how good or bad they are, but how she seems willing to do what other Hollywood actresses would probably be horrified about, such as the granny panties bit in Bridget Jones's Diary. She's adventurous, and willing to explore. I e-mailed Rebecca with my request, and it was done. This one's mine to review. And I think I want Chicago in my DVD collection again.
Next, a press release from A&E announcing its April releases. Rebecca sent me a separate e-mail with a list of DVDs she has right now, and not even Titanic: The Complete Story interested me. Quite different from when I also wrote reviews for NP2K, and was maniacally excited about the DVDs to be split up amongst us three reviewers. That was how I got the Clerks X DVD set that's in my collection next to Clerks II.
I scrolled through the A&E press release, stopping dead at The Presidents DVD set, which is merely being re-released in thinner packaging, but is still available for review. With my passion for the history of the presidency, this one's MINE! And Rebecca acknowledged it.
When I wrote for Screen It, Jim Judy, the owner, lived, and still does, in Germantown, Maryland. Rebecca lives in Vermont. I seem to have a great deal of luck with movie reviewers on the east coast from all the way over here. It's even more fortunate that I can write about what interests me, since I don't see movie reviewing as a potential future anymore. Renee Zellweger movies and an eight-part documentary about the presidents is an auspicious start. Plus, since I've ended my obsession with free DVDs, I have far less work to do now! I can finally have fun with this.
Friday, March 2, 2012
I Don't Agree with the Academy
I told Mom today that I am done with Hollywood for a very long time after I write Mayday! Mayday!: The Making of the Airport Movies. Even though I stopped writing movie reviews in 2009, after 10 years, I was still connected to it, its history at least, through What If They Lived?, and now this. I don't mind its history so much, but rather how its history is treated nowadays. Not by the public at large, but by the industry, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
I loved visiting the Academy's Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills. It is a marvelous temple devoted to movie history, and treats the books and papers of that history with the same respect afforded a church or temple, as it should, because those papers age, and great care needs to be taken to be sure they don't crumble from age and remain accessible to those who are interested in the inner workings of Hollywood.
But I don't believe that history should be limited only to researchers or students or authors or whatever the standards are by which people are deemed worthy to examine that history. I think of that recent Los Angeles Times article that says membership in the Academy is overwhelmingly white and skewed toward old (click here), and it's not so much the statistics that bother me, although it is a factor, but rather what those statistics represent: A closed-off members-only club that's hard to get into and even harder for it to bloom with good ideas. I understand membership being relegated to those who work in the industry. That's fine. Those people work hard enough as it is. But what about the outsiders? What about those who love movies, who want to know more about their favorite movies beyond the audio commentaries and documentaries on DVDs, if there even are any for some favorite movies?
I think the Margaret Herrick Library should be opened up to the public, but with a few caveats. First, visitors should be 18 years of age or older. No teens. There are important papers in that library and while reaching 18 doesn't guarantee maturity, it does set the possibility of it. Secondly, the same rules should remain, such as only pencils, paper of some kind (Legal pads, notepads, etc.), and/or laptops being permitted in the reading rooms. And drivers' licenses should be given at the desk as well in exchange for that one-day library card, given back when one is finished, just as they are now. That is a necessary level of accountability.
This may trigger some consternation among those who work there, but there should be increased supervision until this idea pans out. Not walking around like guards in a prison, but just glancing, making sure everything's calm, that papers aren't being squirreled away in pockets, nor bent, nor crumpled. I think that those who come to this library have a vested interest in movies, and would display a certain reverence toward being in that library.
I could be totally wrong. Perhaps the public is allowed to visit in some respect. But when I filled out the required form at the Special Collections desk, one of the questions was about the purpose of your research, and I had a purpose: I was doing research for my book. If there's not a sufficient purpose written, would the staff still allow access to those materials? I'm not sure, and even though I was grateful for the opportunity to be in that library and to read Charlton Heston's copy of the Airport 1975 script, and see one day's shooting schedule of The Concorde: Airport '79, I didn't feel a sense of openness. In my entry from January about my visit, I called the Library an American monastery, and that's true. There is total silence in that library and fierce concentration all around, but there isn't that sense of joy about movies, about what they bring to us. This is just work for us researchers. It's not how I felt when I got the folder containing that shooting schedule, but looking around me, it seemed so. There were probably many goals developing around me, such as writing a bestselling movie history book that could help its author dominate the movie world (Not me. I got that sense from others. I just want my books to be published, first of all, and then sell well enough so I can make some money from them, perhaps enough for some travel), but amazement about the movies seemed to be at a minimum.
Mind you, I didn't expect anyone to jump out of their chairs in excitement or start dancing like they were in a Busby Berkeley musical, but there was never that buzz in either reading room that we were looking at history that many giants had created. Here was proof that they had roamed the earth. I think if there was more of an effort to be more open to the general public, to invite them in, more excitement could be injected into that library. Keep to the same rules as necessary, but let everyone see what exists. The big excitement among the staff when I was there was the library's acquisition of director Hal Ashby's papers. Ashby had made Shampoo, Coming Home, and Being There. Why should the excitement be limited to the staff? Surely Hal Ashby fans across the country, those with travel plans, might want to see all that. 1930s movie fans would have a field day at this library too.
The Library is open Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, with the longest hours being from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, two hours longer than the other days, which also begin at 10 a.m. In a little room across from, and to the right of, the security desk, there's a set of lockers to store bags and other items that aren't allowed in the Library, including cell phones. If you need to call anyone, you either have to go outside, or you could call from that room like I did when I was checking up with Mom, Dad, and Meridith, who were at Universal CityWalk. There's not a lot of lockers because they don't expect a lot of people at the library. And they've got that down accurately. But this is the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. They have the history. They should be more open with it. Is it just because the general public doesn't work in the industry, but pays exorbitant prices to see a movie, that the Academy looks down on them in so many ways, that they don't believe the Great Unwashed is worthy of knowing what they know? I'm not talking corporate dealings, but just more openness. Most people love movies and if they want to know more, they should have the opportunity to find out whenever they want. It shouldn't only be limited to audio commentaries and documentaries on DVDs.
I was raised with the belief that everyone has an even chance. I live with the firm conviction that no one is above me and no one is below me. When I moved to Southern California, and got closer to Hollywood, I got the sense that it was cliquish, but it's not. It's incredibly cliquish. If you're not in the industry, you don't deserve to breathe the same air as them. Now, in light of this, it may be odd that I'm writing a book about a piece of Hollywood history that gave birth to the disaster movies that we know today, but this was also not long before a time when Hollywood was actually open to ideas, which led to some of the greatest movies ever made. They were willing to take risks in the '70s. I don't know what the politics of the industry were like during that time, but they sure were willing to give audiences what they believed they wanted, and it paid off enormously for them.
I want this book to be the last time I write about Hollywood for a very long time (despite thinking about a biography of an actor who's not one of my favorites, but who I very much admire, and a book about people in the 1930s who weren't as famous as the names we know, but who still helped Hollywood run, such as the makeup departments, research departments, commissaries, clothing departments, secretaries, etc.) because I can't give more attention to an industry that doesn't share my ideals. I hate hierarchical systems. If you come in every day and do your job well, why should office politics matter?
I figure that I'm not speaking in tandem with the reality of the times, but I believe in equality. I also believe in the saying, "You pays your money and you takes your chances." Everyone should have the same chance, but it's up to each person what they want to do with it. If someone squanders it, that's their choice.
I'm not exactly sure how much sense I make with this. I worry about being yanked into a philosophical discussion that finds me woefully unprepared to explain my ideals coherently. But I do know that I do not want to continue to write about the history of an industry that isn't open more to public perusal. They can position it any way they like, play up their strengths, play down their weaknesses. Universal is already doing that with their 100th Anniversary, conveniently forgetting that Airport single-handedly pulled the studio from the brink of bankruptcy. Or maybe the current executives have no idea. Why on earth should they study the history of their own company in order to be better informed? Undercover Boss is a prime example of this cluelessness. But if people want to know more about movies beyond the DVDs and books offered in local libraries, they should be more open to it. It could produce more profits if inclined to go that way. Possibly not a high number in comparison to the corporations that own these studios, but it would still be a worthy endeavor. Maybe it's a matter of a better-educated public being a danger to the aims of a corporation. I don't know.
I just figure that we're all on the same planet, we're all going to meet the same end one day, so what's so bad about opening up movie history more to a public that puts so much money into it as it is? Art should have no hierarchy.
My next books are going to be about, I think, more accessible histories, though one may be dicey at first. I've got some maneuvering to do on that one. I want people to know what I've learned, and not to make them jump through so many hoops to find out. I think maybe all this stems from elementary school, when I had enough of an interest in vending machines to stay after school at Riverside Elementary to page through encyclopedias to learn more, and to see if there were any other books about them (this was before the Internet came along, kids). One day was fine, two days was fine, but the third day, it was either the librarian or someone else who questioned why I was there, and said that I couldn't be there after school. First off, it's a library. Wouldn't those working in a library normally be pleased that a kid is there, curious enough about something to take books off the shelf to read? (Rhetorical question. I know the truth of it by other examples as well.) And I wasn't defacing books, and had asked my mom to pick me up a little later. That's all. Plus, I obviously couldn't go while I was in class. Knowledge shouldn't be locked up like that.
I would have liked to see more people at the Margaret Herrick Library. There should be more people there. I doubt the Academy would open part of itself up like that, but I will never stop believing that everything should be accessible to everyone. I got tired of movie reviewing not only because of the hamster-wheel feeling of the same things happening at the same times throughout the year, but because it felt like a hierarchy, of fellow film critics scrambling to try to get to the top. Of what, I really don't know. They all want to be Ebert, and they don't realize that that's not going to happen. Ebert was in the right place at the right time (upon the retirement of his predecessor at the Chicago Sun-Times in 1967) and he parlayed it into what he is today.
I can't stand all that. You and I are human. We have that in common, and therefore we should have the same chances. I'm probably repeating myself, so I'll stop here. But I will say, again, that it's what I've always been and what I always will be.
I loved visiting the Academy's Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills. It is a marvelous temple devoted to movie history, and treats the books and papers of that history with the same respect afforded a church or temple, as it should, because those papers age, and great care needs to be taken to be sure they don't crumble from age and remain accessible to those who are interested in the inner workings of Hollywood.
But I don't believe that history should be limited only to researchers or students or authors or whatever the standards are by which people are deemed worthy to examine that history. I think of that recent Los Angeles Times article that says membership in the Academy is overwhelmingly white and skewed toward old (click here), and it's not so much the statistics that bother me, although it is a factor, but rather what those statistics represent: A closed-off members-only club that's hard to get into and even harder for it to bloom with good ideas. I understand membership being relegated to those who work in the industry. That's fine. Those people work hard enough as it is. But what about the outsiders? What about those who love movies, who want to know more about their favorite movies beyond the audio commentaries and documentaries on DVDs, if there even are any for some favorite movies?
I think the Margaret Herrick Library should be opened up to the public, but with a few caveats. First, visitors should be 18 years of age or older. No teens. There are important papers in that library and while reaching 18 doesn't guarantee maturity, it does set the possibility of it. Secondly, the same rules should remain, such as only pencils, paper of some kind (Legal pads, notepads, etc.), and/or laptops being permitted in the reading rooms. And drivers' licenses should be given at the desk as well in exchange for that one-day library card, given back when one is finished, just as they are now. That is a necessary level of accountability.
This may trigger some consternation among those who work there, but there should be increased supervision until this idea pans out. Not walking around like guards in a prison, but just glancing, making sure everything's calm, that papers aren't being squirreled away in pockets, nor bent, nor crumpled. I think that those who come to this library have a vested interest in movies, and would display a certain reverence toward being in that library.
I could be totally wrong. Perhaps the public is allowed to visit in some respect. But when I filled out the required form at the Special Collections desk, one of the questions was about the purpose of your research, and I had a purpose: I was doing research for my book. If there's not a sufficient purpose written, would the staff still allow access to those materials? I'm not sure, and even though I was grateful for the opportunity to be in that library and to read Charlton Heston's copy of the Airport 1975 script, and see one day's shooting schedule of The Concorde: Airport '79, I didn't feel a sense of openness. In my entry from January about my visit, I called the Library an American monastery, and that's true. There is total silence in that library and fierce concentration all around, but there isn't that sense of joy about movies, about what they bring to us. This is just work for us researchers. It's not how I felt when I got the folder containing that shooting schedule, but looking around me, it seemed so. There were probably many goals developing around me, such as writing a bestselling movie history book that could help its author dominate the movie world (Not me. I got that sense from others. I just want my books to be published, first of all, and then sell well enough so I can make some money from them, perhaps enough for some travel), but amazement about the movies seemed to be at a minimum.
Mind you, I didn't expect anyone to jump out of their chairs in excitement or start dancing like they were in a Busby Berkeley musical, but there was never that buzz in either reading room that we were looking at history that many giants had created. Here was proof that they had roamed the earth. I think if there was more of an effort to be more open to the general public, to invite them in, more excitement could be injected into that library. Keep to the same rules as necessary, but let everyone see what exists. The big excitement among the staff when I was there was the library's acquisition of director Hal Ashby's papers. Ashby had made Shampoo, Coming Home, and Being There. Why should the excitement be limited to the staff? Surely Hal Ashby fans across the country, those with travel plans, might want to see all that. 1930s movie fans would have a field day at this library too.
The Library is open Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, with the longest hours being from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, two hours longer than the other days, which also begin at 10 a.m. In a little room across from, and to the right of, the security desk, there's a set of lockers to store bags and other items that aren't allowed in the Library, including cell phones. If you need to call anyone, you either have to go outside, or you could call from that room like I did when I was checking up with Mom, Dad, and Meridith, who were at Universal CityWalk. There's not a lot of lockers because they don't expect a lot of people at the library. And they've got that down accurately. But this is the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. They have the history. They should be more open with it. Is it just because the general public doesn't work in the industry, but pays exorbitant prices to see a movie, that the Academy looks down on them in so many ways, that they don't believe the Great Unwashed is worthy of knowing what they know? I'm not talking corporate dealings, but just more openness. Most people love movies and if they want to know more, they should have the opportunity to find out whenever they want. It shouldn't only be limited to audio commentaries and documentaries on DVDs.
I was raised with the belief that everyone has an even chance. I live with the firm conviction that no one is above me and no one is below me. When I moved to Southern California, and got closer to Hollywood, I got the sense that it was cliquish, but it's not. It's incredibly cliquish. If you're not in the industry, you don't deserve to breathe the same air as them. Now, in light of this, it may be odd that I'm writing a book about a piece of Hollywood history that gave birth to the disaster movies that we know today, but this was also not long before a time when Hollywood was actually open to ideas, which led to some of the greatest movies ever made. They were willing to take risks in the '70s. I don't know what the politics of the industry were like during that time, but they sure were willing to give audiences what they believed they wanted, and it paid off enormously for them.
I want this book to be the last time I write about Hollywood for a very long time (despite thinking about a biography of an actor who's not one of my favorites, but who I very much admire, and a book about people in the 1930s who weren't as famous as the names we know, but who still helped Hollywood run, such as the makeup departments, research departments, commissaries, clothing departments, secretaries, etc.) because I can't give more attention to an industry that doesn't share my ideals. I hate hierarchical systems. If you come in every day and do your job well, why should office politics matter?
I figure that I'm not speaking in tandem with the reality of the times, but I believe in equality. I also believe in the saying, "You pays your money and you takes your chances." Everyone should have the same chance, but it's up to each person what they want to do with it. If someone squanders it, that's their choice.
I'm not exactly sure how much sense I make with this. I worry about being yanked into a philosophical discussion that finds me woefully unprepared to explain my ideals coherently. But I do know that I do not want to continue to write about the history of an industry that isn't open more to public perusal. They can position it any way they like, play up their strengths, play down their weaknesses. Universal is already doing that with their 100th Anniversary, conveniently forgetting that Airport single-handedly pulled the studio from the brink of bankruptcy. Or maybe the current executives have no idea. Why on earth should they study the history of their own company in order to be better informed? Undercover Boss is a prime example of this cluelessness. But if people want to know more about movies beyond the DVDs and books offered in local libraries, they should be more open to it. It could produce more profits if inclined to go that way. Possibly not a high number in comparison to the corporations that own these studios, but it would still be a worthy endeavor. Maybe it's a matter of a better-educated public being a danger to the aims of a corporation. I don't know.
I just figure that we're all on the same planet, we're all going to meet the same end one day, so what's so bad about opening up movie history more to a public that puts so much money into it as it is? Art should have no hierarchy.
My next books are going to be about, I think, more accessible histories, though one may be dicey at first. I've got some maneuvering to do on that one. I want people to know what I've learned, and not to make them jump through so many hoops to find out. I think maybe all this stems from elementary school, when I had enough of an interest in vending machines to stay after school at Riverside Elementary to page through encyclopedias to learn more, and to see if there were any other books about them (this was before the Internet came along, kids). One day was fine, two days was fine, but the third day, it was either the librarian or someone else who questioned why I was there, and said that I couldn't be there after school. First off, it's a library. Wouldn't those working in a library normally be pleased that a kid is there, curious enough about something to take books off the shelf to read? (Rhetorical question. I know the truth of it by other examples as well.) And I wasn't defacing books, and had asked my mom to pick me up a little later. That's all. Plus, I obviously couldn't go while I was in class. Knowledge shouldn't be locked up like that.
I would have liked to see more people at the Margaret Herrick Library. There should be more people there. I doubt the Academy would open part of itself up like that, but I will never stop believing that everything should be accessible to everyone. I got tired of movie reviewing not only because of the hamster-wheel feeling of the same things happening at the same times throughout the year, but because it felt like a hierarchy, of fellow film critics scrambling to try to get to the top. Of what, I really don't know. They all want to be Ebert, and they don't realize that that's not going to happen. Ebert was in the right place at the right time (upon the retirement of his predecessor at the Chicago Sun-Times in 1967) and he parlayed it into what he is today.
I can't stand all that. You and I are human. We have that in common, and therefore we should have the same chances. I'm probably repeating myself, so I'll stop here. But I will say, again, that it's what I've always been and what I always will be.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
One of the Best Chapters I've Ever Read
My permanent book collection has 14 nonfiction titles. The rest are fiction. I always home in on great word usage, sentences, descriptions that pinpoint a place or a feeling in a way I'd never considered, having experienced the same thing sometimes. Never chapters. With the novels, one chapter folds into another, eventually revealing a full story. One chapter alone doesn't work.
My most treasured nonfiction book in my collection is Subways are for Sleeping by Edmund G. Love, published in 1957. Love's focus is entirely on the homeless population in New York, profiling a few remarkable personalities, never chiming in about what he personally experienced or felt while spending time with these people, since he was homeless at one time. I admire that kind of writing because, while thinking about how to write my second book, I would like to express in large letters what the Airport series has meant to me all these years, but I fear it would devolve into gushing. And who wants to read that? When I write the chapters about the making of each movie, they have to be about the movies only, not about me, not my opinions about certain scenes, not about why Airport '77 is my favorite of the series.
Reading Brimfield Rush, about the largest antique market in the United States, I want to write like Bob Wyss, a journalism professor at the University of Connecticut who wrote about energy, environment and business issues for the Providence Journal. Wyss knows how to remain detached. He knows that it's about the people and items that populate Brimfield, not about himself, not about why he decided to write a book about them. Yes, he had to form the story, but all you'll find about him is in the acknowledgements and his author bio.
Brimfield Rush has one of the best chapters I've ever read in any book. So much so that I've transcribed the entire chapter below. It's easier to pick out individual chapters in nonfiction books once the context has been established, and this one, about Joel Schiff, a one-legged devoted searcher for cast-iron cookware, is truly extraordinary. It's Chapter 10, "The Collector":
JOEL SCHIFF is perched on the edge of the open side door of a Navigator van, carefully studying a large cast-iron pot. It is about two feet long and one foot wide, with three legs each about six inches high. On the side is the date 1785 and inscribed is the word “iohaniflack.” “It’s a wild piece,” says Schiff. “I’m trying to find out how much wear there is on it. He turns it over. The bottom is black with carbon. He nods and says, “It certainly looks like it is the right age.”
Still, Schiff worries that the piece is a fake, and that’s a significant concern because the dealer is asking $1,400. The handles do not seem worn enough and there are marks that could have been left from a casting procedure that was not used until the nineteenth century. Another collector passes by and Schiff shows him what he has found.
“What do you think, Paul?” Schiff finally asks.
“I don’t know, Joel. It makes me a bit nervous,” Paul replies.
“What do you mean?”
Paul points to where the handle touches the lid. “There should be a lot more wear there,” he says.
Schiff nods. As he does, he wonders if Paul’s criticism is valid or self-serving. Is he denigrating the pot so that Schiff will not buy the piece, possibly opening the way to acquire it himself? They look some more and then Paul leaves. Afterward, Schiff continues his examination, clearly torn.
This would be his first and probably only major purchase at the show. Schiff drove up from New York to Brimfield on a Saturday, stopping at a modest flea market in nearby Palmer. It was awful, nothing but junk for sale. On Sunday he drove thirty miles from Brimfield to Putnam, Connecticut, an aging mill town like hundreds of others in New England struggling to discover a revival. For Putnam it is antiques, shop after shop after shop of consignments. A friend has told Schiff about a particular piece, and while he could not find it, he was impressed by the number and variety of antiques shops.
As Schiff was getting back into his van, two pimply-faced youths stopped him. They told him how much they admired his van. Once white, it is decorated in graffiti. Schiff lives in New York City, where anything white is an open invitation to the city’s graffiti artists. The work the youths were admiring came from one particular artist who called himself the best graffiti artist in New York. Schiff thanked the admirers and said that while he agreed that some of the scrawls were quite good, others he wished he could get rid of. The kids said they would love to have a chance to work on his van someday.
“Well, how about right now?” asked Schiff, who had nothing else planned.
The kids looked surprised but they quickly warmed to the idea. They directed Schiff to a body shop in a dead part of town. A biker dude, the owner or manager, supervised for a while, clearly worried. Eventually he left the kids to their work because it was clear that they knew what they were doing. Later, other aging bikers, guys in their forties, fifties, and sixties, wandered in from the bar next door. Graffiti was not quite their thing. However, the kids were carrying out an antiestablishment act of some kind, and that was cool. The kids spent five hours and used countless cans of paint. They retained the best designs while adding new featured in the gaps. It was an ever-evolving process. Schiff drove back to Brimfield.
Joel Schiff is considered a little different, though not because of the van or his pirate-parrot outfit that goes along with his hobbling on one leg. No, there are a lot of colorful characters at Brimfield; one almost cannot have an identity here without taking on a touch of eccentricity, and Schiff fits right in. It also isn’t his obsession with collecting cast-iron cookware that makes him different. That pastime seems exceedingly pedestrian in comparison to collecting such oddities as the wrappers around Chinese firecrackers, tea bags, wooden nickels, coat hangers, smiley faces, air sickness bags, RCA Nippers, menus, and nude-woman lamps. It is not even his drive, his intensity to get out in the fields—he is no different from hundreds of others in that respect.
What makes Schiff stand out is that he is a pure collector. He buys, but he does not sell. Most dealers start collecting, and when they accumulate an excessive supply they begin selling, partly out of necessity. Selling also produces cash to buy ever more expensive, rarer items. Schiff is not opposed to selling or dealing, he just is not interested. Once in a great while he will sell something, but he prefers to trade. The problem is, hardly anyone has anything he needs, so stacks of extras keep piling up in his apartment.
Brimfield cannot survive without collectors and collectors-turned-dealers. Fortunately for Brimfield, the trait, if not universal, is certainly dominant. While certain animals—magpies, pack rats, and monkeys—are notorious for collecting, the characteristic is even more ingrained in humans. Collections of pebbles have been found in caves in France populated eighty thousand years ago. Cave paintings, sculptures, and ornaments were common thirty thousand years ago. History shows a relationship between power and collections. In Rome two thousand years ago the emperors held the great collections, in the Middle Ages it was the church, and a century ago it was the American robber barons. Morgan, Hearst, Mellon, Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Frick looted great collections, amassing piles of art, pottery, glass, furniture, stamps, and coins. But the Industrial Age they created also produced a middle class that has brought a degree of egalitarianism to the pastime.
Diversity has also led to varying views of what is valuable and worth saving. Today, the list of collectors and collector organizations would be as long as this book. Collectors devote countless hours not just to their collections but to writing and exchanging ideas in newsletters, annual meetings, Internet discussion groups, and price guides. Fred Dole, who for years now has been helping out at J&J, says he was working at the information desk at the field one day when a woman came up and began asking him about toilet paper. He thought she was complaining that one of the temporary toilets had run out. “No, you don’t understand,” she said. “I collect antique toilet paper. I wonder where I can get some.” Dole says, “That pretty much says more about the world of collecting than anything else.”
Why do we collect? Experts, from self-styled collecting gurus to psychologists, say it can be for the beauty of the object, its current or future monetary value, or for nostalgia, as a remembrance of a time past. Or, say the Freudians, it is “a redirection of surplus libido onto inanimate objects.”
Schiff is not a wealthy collector, although he devotes most of his energy and resources to his collection. He grew up as an Army brat, moving from military base to military base as his father pursued his career. He lost his leg in a childhood accident, when he fell into a creek one day and his leg became trapped under a rock. He was lucky to escape. Now living in New York, he has worked driving a cab and doing other jobs, but mostly he has just lived off his leg. That’s the way he described it, living off the huge settlement his parents had invested after the accident. His collecting began more than thirty years ago.
In the late 1960s Schiff was living on an old barge that had been owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad before the company went broke. A river rat named Casey helped Schiff and others buy a string of barges that lined the New Jersey side of the Hudson across from New York. Schiff paid $2,000 for his barge. For a while he paid a dockage fee, but then ownership changed. Local authorities wanted to get rid of the colony of barge owners; soon they were squatters, unwelcome residents of a city that could not figure out how to banish them. It was an interesting community.
“There was a lab tech, soap opera actors, an auxiliary policeman, and there was Henny,” recalls Schiff. “Henny had provided a refuge to people for more than thirty years. If your marriage broke up, if you were down on your luck, if you were just slightly on the wrong side of the law, and it had to be just a little bit and not a lot, Henny would take you in, no questions asked. He would share his home with you, share his food, not asking anything in return and not questioning how long you needed to stay. Eventually most people did get back on their feet, and that’s when it was payback for Henny. If they were in the restaurant business, as many of them were, they would bring him food, sacks of food, which he would share with others. Or if they were in the haberdashery business, they would bring him clothes. Whatever they had, they would share with Henny just like he had shared with them.”
Henny lived in a barge at the end of the causeway. Once a machinist, he rarely worked and he was often into his cups at the gin mills. When that happened, sometimes he would literally crawl his way home on his hands and knees. Sometimes he would be so drunk that he would fall into the drink. At high tide that wasn’t particularly dire, because the water would often come within an inch of the causeway decking, and, says Schiff, “People would hear him and they would come running and pull him out. But when it was low tide, that drop could be as much as twelve feet down into water that was so foul as to be almost indescribable.”
One day Schiff was using a torch to burn off paint in one of the bathrooms on his barge. A spark landed on nearby foam insulation. It flamed quickly and the fire moved up and climbed to the roof of the deck, which was covered with flammable tar paper and lathing. Schiff fought unsuccessfully to extinguish the fire. Eventually he realized he was not going to be able to douse it, or even contain it. The barges were tied in tandem, one to another, creating the possibility that the fire could leap from Schiff’s to others. He called the fire department. In the past he and the other barge owners had offered to pay for fire service. The city had ignored the squatters on their request. When firefighters arrived, they quickly sized up the situation. First they made sure everyone was off all the barges. Then they monitored the fire, keeping it from destroying the causeway but allowing the blaze to leap from barge to barge. The authorities no longer had to resolve their squatter dilemma. Only two barges were able to untangle their tethers and flee. The remaining barges, including Schiff’s, were destroyed.
Henny continued to live on the river, although his barge and most of his possessions were destroyed by the fire. He found a place to live in a scow tied up nearby. Everyone said Henny was lucky, until the day a few months later when he came home drunk and fell, yet once again, into the river. This time there was no one to hear his cries or pull him out. He wasn’t found until days later.
Afterward, Henny’s friends held a wake. Many talked of a man who had always been there when they needed help. His ashes were scattered on the river. Friends were invited to take a remembrance of Henny. Schiff found in the scow two pieces of cast iron, a saucepan and a broiler, which had survived the fire. He marveled at Henny’s two relics. At its height the fire had burned at white-hot temperatures, fed by ancient yellow pine planking, lathing, and tar paper that had marinated in petroleum for a century. It was a miracle that the pots had survived. “It seemed to me that the fire could not destroy the cast iron,” says Schiff. “Even though I am an atheist, it seemed as if this was almost the hand of God shining down. It also seemed to me that this material was something that could make a difference.” It was as close to immortality as Schiff was going to find.
A year later Schiff was in an antiques shop in Sturbridge, looking for more cast iron. He was intrigued by a technology first discovered in China nearly two millennia ago, one that transformed social history, beginning in the seventeenth century, by making the task of cooking meals and sustaining a family far easier. It was at Sturbridge that he learned about Brimfield, ten miles to the west. Like everyone else, he was amazed. He began to ask dealers if they had any cast iron. “I would be asking people if they had cast-iron cookware and they looked at me like I was crazy,” he recalls. “The problem with cast iron was that in most situations people could get only one or two dollars for each piece, and it just wasn’t worth it for them to bring the goods. For the first fifteen years, even when I guaranteed I would buy everything they would bring, I still had difficulty convincing dealers to bring things.” Part of the dilemma may have been that cast iron was so plentiful that it became invisible to dealers searching for antiques to sell. Cast iron had been such a staple until the 1940s, when finally it was supplanted by aluminum and stainless steel.
That attitude changed in the mid-1980s. Schiff pins the date to 1984, when the first price guide was published. It was not a very good one. But it told collectors and dealers who had cast-iron pieces not only what they had but also what they might be able to get for it. Collectors already knew that some of the best cast-iron pieces had been made by the Griswold Manufacturing Company. From the end of the Civil War until 1957 the firm had produced hundreds of different pieces, from skillets to pots to muffin cups, from a shop at 12th and Raspberry Streets in Erie, Pennsylvania. Collectors created the Griswold and Cast Iron Cookware Association (GCICA). The organization provided support through everything from holding annual conferences to selling distinctive yellow-colored t-shirts with the groups’ emblem, which features its initials. (A curious dealer asked Schiff, who often wears a GCICA t-shirt, how many he owns. “Not as many as you or I would like,” he replied.)
The organization had its share of petty fights and mini-scandals, from the insistence of some members that the world of cast iron is centered in Erie to attempts by dissidents to stuff the ballot boxes during officer elections. That eventually led to a rival organization, the Wagner and Griswold Society (WAGS). With the two organizations boasting more than a thousand members between them, cast-iron prices began to climb. A Griswold muffin pan could go for $25 and a skillet for $30 while a Griswold No. 1 would fetch $3,500. A few rarer items were selling for anywhere from $6,000 to $9,000.
Schiff belongs to both organizations and tries to remain clear of most of the politics. He views anyone else who buys cast-iron cookware as the “noble competition.” He explains: “I’m always telling people it is important to know that the competitor is not your enemy. If you form a good relationship, over time you will make deals with other people, you will be able to help each other out.” He worries that it is not his fellow collectors but the tens of thousands of designers out there who are a greater threat, finding a rare piece and selling it to a client interested in tacking it to the fireplace to complete “the country look” design for his or her living room.
Schiff’s apartment in New York is a two-story walk-up with one difference—space is exceedingly tight because of an overwhelming volume of cast iron. Cookware hangs everywhere, except in the bathroom, where Schiff worries the moisture could make the pieces rust. “Well, my ex had this totally unreasonable demand that nothing should come into the bedroom, which I thought made no sense at all,” explains Schiff. “And then she said, ‘Either it goes or I go,’ so I brought in another hundred pieces in case it was not clear. We have a good relationship now that she is not in the house.” The kitchen contains a black cast-iron stove on one side, a white porcelain sink on the other. From the ceiling hang cast-iron pans, pots, and molds, and directly over the stove is a large four-foot-diameter ship’s wheel from an ice ship that once plied the Hudson. A grappling line stands on the wall about waist high. Visitors sidle into the living room, which contains a small daybed, literally the only place to sit. On the opposite wall, against an unfinished brick wall, shelves hold more molds, waffle irons, and a large metal “Griswold” sign. By the daybed stands an amateur miniature photo studio. The back bedroom contains a platform bed with walls lined with shelves with even more cast iron. A small alcove holds some books, and yet more iron.
One of Schiff’s favorite pieces is a Japanese teapot with detailing on the body resembling the strokes one sees in brush paintings. It begins on one side with a tree whose branches are in full bloom and as the pot is moved clockwise the branches become increasingly sparse, a movement from summer to winter. “This is an artistic calligraphy,” says Schiff. “I think what is being said here is, tacitly, that in addition to the art of life residing in the brush painting and calligraphy, we who do iron are no less artistic. This is more than a piece of craft. It is also a piece of art. It has the same spirit as in brush painting. That’s why I like it so much.” Other favored pieces include tiny toy tea pots, a Russian water pot, bean pots, a Spoors square-bottom tea pot, an English water kettle, an Azerbaijan coffee roaster, cookie/biscuit muffin molds, acorn penis pans (originally called acorn pans but Schiff added the middle name because of their shape), corn cob pans, corn dog makers, a cornbread maker, three-cup molds (totally impractical and clearly designed by a man who did not cook, says Schiff, because who would go to all the trouble of making batter for only three muffin cups?), a Chinese incense burner, long-handled, short-handled, and flexible-handled waffle irons, communion waffle irons, square-mold waffle irons, wavy-mold waffle irons, waffle irons with the design of a cross, an anchor, fish, waves, scales, and a lily, and cast-iron molds in the shape of a rabbit, a fish, a lobster, and a pig’s head. He also collects thousands of antique postcards that depict scenes featuring one or more pieces of cast-iron cookware. Schiff says he has only a third of his collection in the apartment; the rest is in storage elsewhere. How many pieces does he have? Replies Schiff: “I stopped counting five years ago when I had five thousand pieces.”
Some collectors overindulge. A nineteenth-century British nobleman, Thomas Phillips, sought to acquire one copy of every book in the world. Phillips was said to have allowed his wife and children to live in squalor, but he left a collection so vast that Sotheby’s held more than sixty auctions. Newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst bought so many treasures that he had difficulty finding places for them or finding them after he had found places for them. According to one biographer, Hearst, beginning in the 1920s, created his own holding company to buy art and stored it in garages and warehouses in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and at his mansion in San Simeon. At one point the inventory was managed by thirty employees and included 10,700 crates of goods and tens of thousands of books.
Two brothers, Langley and Homer Collyer, of New York City, in 1947 showed just how dangerous collecting can be. Police received an anonymous phone call informing them that a man had died at the Collyers’ Fifth Avenue brownstone. Police had to force the door open and shovel through mounds of trash before they eventually found Langley Collyer, dead in his bed. They assumed that his brother, Homer, had made the call, but they could not find Homer. They spent nineteen days emptying the house of the reeking piles of garbage and trash, the vestiges of a lifetime of collecting. That’s when they found Homer Collyer, in the same room as his brother. The best guess was that Homer was digging his way toward his brother when huge piles of refuse toppled onto him, pinning him to the floor.
Obsession can be scary. Bill Heuring, a New York dealer who reconditions and sells antique cash registers, says he has seen collectors spend their savings and lose their wives and children over their quests to buy just one more piece. Marilyn Gehman, who runs a market in Adamstown, Pennsylvania, says she often sees people who appear to be living out of their cars, who use the market’s restroom and showers. “We see a lot of homeless people, people who are homeless because they have an addiction, similar to what one has for alcohol or drugs, for collecting,” she says. “Many of the people are very intelligent. They can speak two or three languages, they have multiple college degrees, yet they are living out of their cars and they are fixated with buying antiques and collectibles.”
Schiff’s collecting is restrained by his economics, and he tries to balance what he can do on his income. He says that his income is directed to three areas: food, transportation, and cast iron. Schiff has a long-term plan for the collection: he wants to turn it over to a museum. Such aspirations are not unusual. Entire museums have been structured around collections. J.P. Morgan’s collection of Egyptian art, Chinese porcelain, and early manuscripts is displayed in the tycoon’s former palatial mansion in New York. A museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut, was created by another collector who specialized in nuts, nutcrackers, and anything else related to nuts.
Schiff was long wanted his collection to be part of a museum of the kitchen or hearth. His vision for the museum is centered on not just the objects but what they have meant for society. “People look at objects such as jewelry as to the thing itself,” he explains. “It becomes a suspended object, something to be approved of, to admire, solely for its beauty or for the nature of what it is. That, and also for its investment value. I don’t look at things that way. I like to look at objects, especially what I have been collecting, as texts, as anthropology, as something that tells us something of life. What I think these objects do is that they tell many stories.”
He is convinced that the story of the hearth goes to the heart of understanding social history, especially the role women have played. The development of the cast-iron stove, to a considerable extent, first emancipated women from both the drudgery and dangers of working over open kitchen fires. As early as 1640, cast iron was being forged in Saugus, Massachusetts, although it would be more than another century before stoves arrived. Cookware’s arrival preceded the other great development in the home, indoor plumbing, by another century. Cast-iron appliances also became indispensable. For example, George Washington’s mother bequeathed her cast iron in her will, and the members of Lewis and Clark’s expedition found that a cast-iron Dutch oven was one of their most essential tools. Over time, cast-iron appliances led to the mass production of food products, moving the country toward greater urbanization and greater freedom for women. Schiff does not aim to create a stand-alone museum but perhaps to have his collection mixed with others in an interactive museum. Patrons might not only learn but even use his pieces to cook food they would then eat. He even would like to use his life insurance policy and whatever is left of his assets after he dies to help the museum’s endowment. The only problem is that he has yet to find anyone interested enough. He’s talked to a number of regional museums, universities, and culinary schools, but so far he has found no takers.
These days Schiff spends long hours online and at shows searching to buy something new. It rarely happens anymore. When it does, he is surprised, puzzled, and a little fearful. That’s the situation with the $1,400 pot he has found here at Brimfield.
“It’s quite a spectacular piece,” he says, after his friend Paul has left. “It’s definitely one of a kind.”
Schiff wants the pot to be authentic, but he wishes he could do a strike test to determine the type of metal. He is also worried that the 7 in the date does not look the way the numeral did in Europe in the 1780s. He knows he has to make a decision. Finally, he approaches the owner, Mario Pollo of Woodstock, New York. Pollo tells Schiff he just bought the pot a few hours earlier from a dealer who said it used to be in a museum in Vienna.
“I bought it and I really did not want to sell it,” says Pollo. “But someone said I had to at least let Joel see it.”
Schiff makes a decision. He dickers, but buys it for $1,300. As he writes the check he asks Pollo to hold it until next week when he can transfer money into the account. With his fixed income, that’s a lot of money. He really has no choice. Joel Schiff is on a quest to build the most complete collection of cast-iron cookware that he can. He just can’t stop now.
My most treasured nonfiction book in my collection is Subways are for Sleeping by Edmund G. Love, published in 1957. Love's focus is entirely on the homeless population in New York, profiling a few remarkable personalities, never chiming in about what he personally experienced or felt while spending time with these people, since he was homeless at one time. I admire that kind of writing because, while thinking about how to write my second book, I would like to express in large letters what the Airport series has meant to me all these years, but I fear it would devolve into gushing. And who wants to read that? When I write the chapters about the making of each movie, they have to be about the movies only, not about me, not my opinions about certain scenes, not about why Airport '77 is my favorite of the series.
Reading Brimfield Rush, about the largest antique market in the United States, I want to write like Bob Wyss, a journalism professor at the University of Connecticut who wrote about energy, environment and business issues for the Providence Journal. Wyss knows how to remain detached. He knows that it's about the people and items that populate Brimfield, not about himself, not about why he decided to write a book about them. Yes, he had to form the story, but all you'll find about him is in the acknowledgements and his author bio.
Brimfield Rush has one of the best chapters I've ever read in any book. So much so that I've transcribed the entire chapter below. It's easier to pick out individual chapters in nonfiction books once the context has been established, and this one, about Joel Schiff, a one-legged devoted searcher for cast-iron cookware, is truly extraordinary. It's Chapter 10, "The Collector":
JOEL SCHIFF is perched on the edge of the open side door of a Navigator van, carefully studying a large cast-iron pot. It is about two feet long and one foot wide, with three legs each about six inches high. On the side is the date 1785 and inscribed is the word “iohaniflack.” “It’s a wild piece,” says Schiff. “I’m trying to find out how much wear there is on it. He turns it over. The bottom is black with carbon. He nods and says, “It certainly looks like it is the right age.”
Still, Schiff worries that the piece is a fake, and that’s a significant concern because the dealer is asking $1,400. The handles do not seem worn enough and there are marks that could have been left from a casting procedure that was not used until the nineteenth century. Another collector passes by and Schiff shows him what he has found.
“What do you think, Paul?” Schiff finally asks.
“I don’t know, Joel. It makes me a bit nervous,” Paul replies.
“What do you mean?”
Paul points to where the handle touches the lid. “There should be a lot more wear there,” he says.
Schiff nods. As he does, he wonders if Paul’s criticism is valid or self-serving. Is he denigrating the pot so that Schiff will not buy the piece, possibly opening the way to acquire it himself? They look some more and then Paul leaves. Afterward, Schiff continues his examination, clearly torn.
This would be his first and probably only major purchase at the show. Schiff drove up from New York to Brimfield on a Saturday, stopping at a modest flea market in nearby Palmer. It was awful, nothing but junk for sale. On Sunday he drove thirty miles from Brimfield to Putnam, Connecticut, an aging mill town like hundreds of others in New England struggling to discover a revival. For Putnam it is antiques, shop after shop after shop of consignments. A friend has told Schiff about a particular piece, and while he could not find it, he was impressed by the number and variety of antiques shops.
As Schiff was getting back into his van, two pimply-faced youths stopped him. They told him how much they admired his van. Once white, it is decorated in graffiti. Schiff lives in New York City, where anything white is an open invitation to the city’s graffiti artists. The work the youths were admiring came from one particular artist who called himself the best graffiti artist in New York. Schiff thanked the admirers and said that while he agreed that some of the scrawls were quite good, others he wished he could get rid of. The kids said they would love to have a chance to work on his van someday.
“Well, how about right now?” asked Schiff, who had nothing else planned.
The kids looked surprised but they quickly warmed to the idea. They directed Schiff to a body shop in a dead part of town. A biker dude, the owner or manager, supervised for a while, clearly worried. Eventually he left the kids to their work because it was clear that they knew what they were doing. Later, other aging bikers, guys in their forties, fifties, and sixties, wandered in from the bar next door. Graffiti was not quite their thing. However, the kids were carrying out an antiestablishment act of some kind, and that was cool. The kids spent five hours and used countless cans of paint. They retained the best designs while adding new featured in the gaps. It was an ever-evolving process. Schiff drove back to Brimfield.
Joel Schiff is considered a little different, though not because of the van or his pirate-parrot outfit that goes along with his hobbling on one leg. No, there are a lot of colorful characters at Brimfield; one almost cannot have an identity here without taking on a touch of eccentricity, and Schiff fits right in. It also isn’t his obsession with collecting cast-iron cookware that makes him different. That pastime seems exceedingly pedestrian in comparison to collecting such oddities as the wrappers around Chinese firecrackers, tea bags, wooden nickels, coat hangers, smiley faces, air sickness bags, RCA Nippers, menus, and nude-woman lamps. It is not even his drive, his intensity to get out in the fields—he is no different from hundreds of others in that respect.
What makes Schiff stand out is that he is a pure collector. He buys, but he does not sell. Most dealers start collecting, and when they accumulate an excessive supply they begin selling, partly out of necessity. Selling also produces cash to buy ever more expensive, rarer items. Schiff is not opposed to selling or dealing, he just is not interested. Once in a great while he will sell something, but he prefers to trade. The problem is, hardly anyone has anything he needs, so stacks of extras keep piling up in his apartment.
Brimfield cannot survive without collectors and collectors-turned-dealers. Fortunately for Brimfield, the trait, if not universal, is certainly dominant. While certain animals—magpies, pack rats, and monkeys—are notorious for collecting, the characteristic is even more ingrained in humans. Collections of pebbles have been found in caves in France populated eighty thousand years ago. Cave paintings, sculptures, and ornaments were common thirty thousand years ago. History shows a relationship between power and collections. In Rome two thousand years ago the emperors held the great collections, in the Middle Ages it was the church, and a century ago it was the American robber barons. Morgan, Hearst, Mellon, Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Frick looted great collections, amassing piles of art, pottery, glass, furniture, stamps, and coins. But the Industrial Age they created also produced a middle class that has brought a degree of egalitarianism to the pastime.
Diversity has also led to varying views of what is valuable and worth saving. Today, the list of collectors and collector organizations would be as long as this book. Collectors devote countless hours not just to their collections but to writing and exchanging ideas in newsletters, annual meetings, Internet discussion groups, and price guides. Fred Dole, who for years now has been helping out at J&J, says he was working at the information desk at the field one day when a woman came up and began asking him about toilet paper. He thought she was complaining that one of the temporary toilets had run out. “No, you don’t understand,” she said. “I collect antique toilet paper. I wonder where I can get some.” Dole says, “That pretty much says more about the world of collecting than anything else.”
Why do we collect? Experts, from self-styled collecting gurus to psychologists, say it can be for the beauty of the object, its current or future monetary value, or for nostalgia, as a remembrance of a time past. Or, say the Freudians, it is “a redirection of surplus libido onto inanimate objects.”
Schiff is not a wealthy collector, although he devotes most of his energy and resources to his collection. He grew up as an Army brat, moving from military base to military base as his father pursued his career. He lost his leg in a childhood accident, when he fell into a creek one day and his leg became trapped under a rock. He was lucky to escape. Now living in New York, he has worked driving a cab and doing other jobs, but mostly he has just lived off his leg. That’s the way he described it, living off the huge settlement his parents had invested after the accident. His collecting began more than thirty years ago.
In the late 1960s Schiff was living on an old barge that had been owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad before the company went broke. A river rat named Casey helped Schiff and others buy a string of barges that lined the New Jersey side of the Hudson across from New York. Schiff paid $2,000 for his barge. For a while he paid a dockage fee, but then ownership changed. Local authorities wanted to get rid of the colony of barge owners; soon they were squatters, unwelcome residents of a city that could not figure out how to banish them. It was an interesting community.
“There was a lab tech, soap opera actors, an auxiliary policeman, and there was Henny,” recalls Schiff. “Henny had provided a refuge to people for more than thirty years. If your marriage broke up, if you were down on your luck, if you were just slightly on the wrong side of the law, and it had to be just a little bit and not a lot, Henny would take you in, no questions asked. He would share his home with you, share his food, not asking anything in return and not questioning how long you needed to stay. Eventually most people did get back on their feet, and that’s when it was payback for Henny. If they were in the restaurant business, as many of them were, they would bring him food, sacks of food, which he would share with others. Or if they were in the haberdashery business, they would bring him clothes. Whatever they had, they would share with Henny just like he had shared with them.”
Henny lived in a barge at the end of the causeway. Once a machinist, he rarely worked and he was often into his cups at the gin mills. When that happened, sometimes he would literally crawl his way home on his hands and knees. Sometimes he would be so drunk that he would fall into the drink. At high tide that wasn’t particularly dire, because the water would often come within an inch of the causeway decking, and, says Schiff, “People would hear him and they would come running and pull him out. But when it was low tide, that drop could be as much as twelve feet down into water that was so foul as to be almost indescribable.”
One day Schiff was using a torch to burn off paint in one of the bathrooms on his barge. A spark landed on nearby foam insulation. It flamed quickly and the fire moved up and climbed to the roof of the deck, which was covered with flammable tar paper and lathing. Schiff fought unsuccessfully to extinguish the fire. Eventually he realized he was not going to be able to douse it, or even contain it. The barges were tied in tandem, one to another, creating the possibility that the fire could leap from Schiff’s to others. He called the fire department. In the past he and the other barge owners had offered to pay for fire service. The city had ignored the squatters on their request. When firefighters arrived, they quickly sized up the situation. First they made sure everyone was off all the barges. Then they monitored the fire, keeping it from destroying the causeway but allowing the blaze to leap from barge to barge. The authorities no longer had to resolve their squatter dilemma. Only two barges were able to untangle their tethers and flee. The remaining barges, including Schiff’s, were destroyed.
Henny continued to live on the river, although his barge and most of his possessions were destroyed by the fire. He found a place to live in a scow tied up nearby. Everyone said Henny was lucky, until the day a few months later when he came home drunk and fell, yet once again, into the river. This time there was no one to hear his cries or pull him out. He wasn’t found until days later.
Afterward, Henny’s friends held a wake. Many talked of a man who had always been there when they needed help. His ashes were scattered on the river. Friends were invited to take a remembrance of Henny. Schiff found in the scow two pieces of cast iron, a saucepan and a broiler, which had survived the fire. He marveled at Henny’s two relics. At its height the fire had burned at white-hot temperatures, fed by ancient yellow pine planking, lathing, and tar paper that had marinated in petroleum for a century. It was a miracle that the pots had survived. “It seemed to me that the fire could not destroy the cast iron,” says Schiff. “Even though I am an atheist, it seemed as if this was almost the hand of God shining down. It also seemed to me that this material was something that could make a difference.” It was as close to immortality as Schiff was going to find.
A year later Schiff was in an antiques shop in Sturbridge, looking for more cast iron. He was intrigued by a technology first discovered in China nearly two millennia ago, one that transformed social history, beginning in the seventeenth century, by making the task of cooking meals and sustaining a family far easier. It was at Sturbridge that he learned about Brimfield, ten miles to the west. Like everyone else, he was amazed. He began to ask dealers if they had any cast iron. “I would be asking people if they had cast-iron cookware and they looked at me like I was crazy,” he recalls. “The problem with cast iron was that in most situations people could get only one or two dollars for each piece, and it just wasn’t worth it for them to bring the goods. For the first fifteen years, even when I guaranteed I would buy everything they would bring, I still had difficulty convincing dealers to bring things.” Part of the dilemma may have been that cast iron was so plentiful that it became invisible to dealers searching for antiques to sell. Cast iron had been such a staple until the 1940s, when finally it was supplanted by aluminum and stainless steel.
That attitude changed in the mid-1980s. Schiff pins the date to 1984, when the first price guide was published. It was not a very good one. But it told collectors and dealers who had cast-iron pieces not only what they had but also what they might be able to get for it. Collectors already knew that some of the best cast-iron pieces had been made by the Griswold Manufacturing Company. From the end of the Civil War until 1957 the firm had produced hundreds of different pieces, from skillets to pots to muffin cups, from a shop at 12th and Raspberry Streets in Erie, Pennsylvania. Collectors created the Griswold and Cast Iron Cookware Association (GCICA). The organization provided support through everything from holding annual conferences to selling distinctive yellow-colored t-shirts with the groups’ emblem, which features its initials. (A curious dealer asked Schiff, who often wears a GCICA t-shirt, how many he owns. “Not as many as you or I would like,” he replied.)
The organization had its share of petty fights and mini-scandals, from the insistence of some members that the world of cast iron is centered in Erie to attempts by dissidents to stuff the ballot boxes during officer elections. That eventually led to a rival organization, the Wagner and Griswold Society (WAGS). With the two organizations boasting more than a thousand members between them, cast-iron prices began to climb. A Griswold muffin pan could go for $25 and a skillet for $30 while a Griswold No. 1 would fetch $3,500. A few rarer items were selling for anywhere from $6,000 to $9,000.
Schiff belongs to both organizations and tries to remain clear of most of the politics. He views anyone else who buys cast-iron cookware as the “noble competition.” He explains: “I’m always telling people it is important to know that the competitor is not your enemy. If you form a good relationship, over time you will make deals with other people, you will be able to help each other out.” He worries that it is not his fellow collectors but the tens of thousands of designers out there who are a greater threat, finding a rare piece and selling it to a client interested in tacking it to the fireplace to complete “the country look” design for his or her living room.
Schiff’s apartment in New York is a two-story walk-up with one difference—space is exceedingly tight because of an overwhelming volume of cast iron. Cookware hangs everywhere, except in the bathroom, where Schiff worries the moisture could make the pieces rust. “Well, my ex had this totally unreasonable demand that nothing should come into the bedroom, which I thought made no sense at all,” explains Schiff. “And then she said, ‘Either it goes or I go,’ so I brought in another hundred pieces in case it was not clear. We have a good relationship now that she is not in the house.” The kitchen contains a black cast-iron stove on one side, a white porcelain sink on the other. From the ceiling hang cast-iron pans, pots, and molds, and directly over the stove is a large four-foot-diameter ship’s wheel from an ice ship that once plied the Hudson. A grappling line stands on the wall about waist high. Visitors sidle into the living room, which contains a small daybed, literally the only place to sit. On the opposite wall, against an unfinished brick wall, shelves hold more molds, waffle irons, and a large metal “Griswold” sign. By the daybed stands an amateur miniature photo studio. The back bedroom contains a platform bed with walls lined with shelves with even more cast iron. A small alcove holds some books, and yet more iron.
One of Schiff’s favorite pieces is a Japanese teapot with detailing on the body resembling the strokes one sees in brush paintings. It begins on one side with a tree whose branches are in full bloom and as the pot is moved clockwise the branches become increasingly sparse, a movement from summer to winter. “This is an artistic calligraphy,” says Schiff. “I think what is being said here is, tacitly, that in addition to the art of life residing in the brush painting and calligraphy, we who do iron are no less artistic. This is more than a piece of craft. It is also a piece of art. It has the same spirit as in brush painting. That’s why I like it so much.” Other favored pieces include tiny toy tea pots, a Russian water pot, bean pots, a Spoors square-bottom tea pot, an English water kettle, an Azerbaijan coffee roaster, cookie/biscuit muffin molds, acorn penis pans (originally called acorn pans but Schiff added the middle name because of their shape), corn cob pans, corn dog makers, a cornbread maker, three-cup molds (totally impractical and clearly designed by a man who did not cook, says Schiff, because who would go to all the trouble of making batter for only three muffin cups?), a Chinese incense burner, long-handled, short-handled, and flexible-handled waffle irons, communion waffle irons, square-mold waffle irons, wavy-mold waffle irons, waffle irons with the design of a cross, an anchor, fish, waves, scales, and a lily, and cast-iron molds in the shape of a rabbit, a fish, a lobster, and a pig’s head. He also collects thousands of antique postcards that depict scenes featuring one or more pieces of cast-iron cookware. Schiff says he has only a third of his collection in the apartment; the rest is in storage elsewhere. How many pieces does he have? Replies Schiff: “I stopped counting five years ago when I had five thousand pieces.”
Some collectors overindulge. A nineteenth-century British nobleman, Thomas Phillips, sought to acquire one copy of every book in the world. Phillips was said to have allowed his wife and children to live in squalor, but he left a collection so vast that Sotheby’s held more than sixty auctions. Newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst bought so many treasures that he had difficulty finding places for them or finding them after he had found places for them. According to one biographer, Hearst, beginning in the 1920s, created his own holding company to buy art and stored it in garages and warehouses in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and at his mansion in San Simeon. At one point the inventory was managed by thirty employees and included 10,700 crates of goods and tens of thousands of books.
Two brothers, Langley and Homer Collyer, of New York City, in 1947 showed just how dangerous collecting can be. Police received an anonymous phone call informing them that a man had died at the Collyers’ Fifth Avenue brownstone. Police had to force the door open and shovel through mounds of trash before they eventually found Langley Collyer, dead in his bed. They assumed that his brother, Homer, had made the call, but they could not find Homer. They spent nineteen days emptying the house of the reeking piles of garbage and trash, the vestiges of a lifetime of collecting. That’s when they found Homer Collyer, in the same room as his brother. The best guess was that Homer was digging his way toward his brother when huge piles of refuse toppled onto him, pinning him to the floor.
Obsession can be scary. Bill Heuring, a New York dealer who reconditions and sells antique cash registers, says he has seen collectors spend their savings and lose their wives and children over their quests to buy just one more piece. Marilyn Gehman, who runs a market in Adamstown, Pennsylvania, says she often sees people who appear to be living out of their cars, who use the market’s restroom and showers. “We see a lot of homeless people, people who are homeless because they have an addiction, similar to what one has for alcohol or drugs, for collecting,” she says. “Many of the people are very intelligent. They can speak two or three languages, they have multiple college degrees, yet they are living out of their cars and they are fixated with buying antiques and collectibles.”
Schiff’s collecting is restrained by his economics, and he tries to balance what he can do on his income. He says that his income is directed to three areas: food, transportation, and cast iron. Schiff has a long-term plan for the collection: he wants to turn it over to a museum. Such aspirations are not unusual. Entire museums have been structured around collections. J.P. Morgan’s collection of Egyptian art, Chinese porcelain, and early manuscripts is displayed in the tycoon’s former palatial mansion in New York. A museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut, was created by another collector who specialized in nuts, nutcrackers, and anything else related to nuts.
Schiff was long wanted his collection to be part of a museum of the kitchen or hearth. His vision for the museum is centered on not just the objects but what they have meant for society. “People look at objects such as jewelry as to the thing itself,” he explains. “It becomes a suspended object, something to be approved of, to admire, solely for its beauty or for the nature of what it is. That, and also for its investment value. I don’t look at things that way. I like to look at objects, especially what I have been collecting, as texts, as anthropology, as something that tells us something of life. What I think these objects do is that they tell many stories.”
He is convinced that the story of the hearth goes to the heart of understanding social history, especially the role women have played. The development of the cast-iron stove, to a considerable extent, first emancipated women from both the drudgery and dangers of working over open kitchen fires. As early as 1640, cast iron was being forged in Saugus, Massachusetts, although it would be more than another century before stoves arrived. Cookware’s arrival preceded the other great development in the home, indoor plumbing, by another century. Cast-iron appliances also became indispensable. For example, George Washington’s mother bequeathed her cast iron in her will, and the members of Lewis and Clark’s expedition found that a cast-iron Dutch oven was one of their most essential tools. Over time, cast-iron appliances led to the mass production of food products, moving the country toward greater urbanization and greater freedom for women. Schiff does not aim to create a stand-alone museum but perhaps to have his collection mixed with others in an interactive museum. Patrons might not only learn but even use his pieces to cook food they would then eat. He even would like to use his life insurance policy and whatever is left of his assets after he dies to help the museum’s endowment. The only problem is that he has yet to find anyone interested enough. He’s talked to a number of regional museums, universities, and culinary schools, but so far he has found no takers.
These days Schiff spends long hours online and at shows searching to buy something new. It rarely happens anymore. When it does, he is surprised, puzzled, and a little fearful. That’s the situation with the $1,400 pot he has found here at Brimfield.
“It’s quite a spectacular piece,” he says, after his friend Paul has left. “It’s definitely one of a kind.”
Schiff wants the pot to be authentic, but he wishes he could do a strike test to determine the type of metal. He is also worried that the 7 in the date does not look the way the numeral did in Europe in the 1780s. He knows he has to make a decision. Finally, he approaches the owner, Mario Pollo of Woodstock, New York. Pollo tells Schiff he just bought the pot a few hours earlier from a dealer who said it used to be in a museum in Vienna.
“I bought it and I really did not want to sell it,” says Pollo. “But someone said I had to at least let Joel see it.”
Schiff makes a decision. He dickers, but buys it for $1,300. As he writes the check he asks Pollo to hold it until next week when he can transfer money into the account. With his fixed income, that’s a lot of money. He really has no choice. Joel Schiff is on a quest to build the most complete collection of cast-iron cookware that he can. He just can’t stop now.
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