William J Cobb on books & film

So last night I caught HBO’s film Game Change, about Sarah Palin’s (improbable? nightmarish? absurd?) role as John McCain’s veep in the 2008 election, and it’s surprisingly good. Why surprisingly? I’m not a huge fan of biopics/reenactments of contemporary events, though HBO actually has a good track record in that genre, with Recount (about the 2000 election and debacle in Florida) and Too Big To Fail (about the 2008 financial meltdown) both being excellent films, and stylistically/thematically similar to Game Change. At one point it shows McCain’s (and the GOP’s, it implies) foreign policy advisors coaching Palin, pointing to a map and saying, “This is Germany.” It’s funny, painful, and fascinating all at once. Julianne Moore makes you sympathize with Palin, too, as a person in way over her head, not all of her own doing. Woody Harrelson is the other major player in the film, as one of McCain’s advisors/strategists in charge of coaching Palin, who at one point says to another advisor, “I haven’t even told John that she doesn’t know anything.” Ed Harris does a good job playing McCain, too, and actually makes McCain seem more likable, and even honorable—or at least embarrassed by how badly his campaign veered from his principles.

And this morning I was thrilled to see that Mark Leyner has a new novel coming out soon, titled The Sugar Frosted Nutsack. I’m a Leyner fan and consider him one of the wackiest, funniest contemporary fiction writers around. The Tetherballs of Bougainville (1997) is my favorite book, with a long rant about New Jersey’s State Discretionary Execution policy that made me laugh till it hurt. Somehow I think Sarah Palin as possible President of the USA and Mark Leyner with a new novel (his first in 15 years) in the same blog makes weird sense.

So the quirkiest angle of the success of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) was that we could all recognize what Discovery Channel shows Cormac had been watching, once you realize that the mysterious cataclysm that has befallen the world is some kind of “impact event,” to use the scientific (or quasi-scientific) term for a big asteroid/comet hitting the earth and causing mass destruction. One of the most intense (happy, almost) moments of the novel occurs when the father and son stumble upon a doomsday bunker of sorts in a back yard, one that is stocked with Canned Goods for the Apocalypse, one that saves their lives. After the grimness of the novel leading up to that moment, it’s a ray of light in a bleak world.

Enter the Discovery Channel’s and the National Geographic Channel’s new programs about just the kind of people who would build such bunkers, “Doomsday Preppers” and “Doomsday Bunkers”—as opposed to Doomsday Debunkers, which would be a different program altogether. “Doomsday Preppers” is amusing in a queasy, gruesome, black-humor mode: Most of these people look like they need a diet and some yoga to chill out, and perhaps some visits with a therapist, as well (not that it would help). One woman expects the government to declare martial law and “take over” in the next year or two: Take over what? Doing my laundry? I hope so. Answering my email? Go for it. Somehow, I’m guessing that’s not what she means by the things they would “take over.” It frankly seems part of the nutty Obama-is-after-our-guns myth that has been promoting gun sales to record levels, even though Obama is doing no such thing.

A TV critic in the NY Times has some funny (and some serious) observations about these programs, here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/arts/television/doomsday-preppers-and-doomsday-bunkers-tv-reality-shows.html?scp=1&sq=dooms%20day%20preppers&st=cse

But I think the reality behind these preppers is: They actually want the Apocalypse to come. Not in a rational way, but in an irrational, religious-extremist kind of way. If you spend much of your time & energy (& money) preparing for such an event, won’t you be somewhat chagrined if/when it doesn’t happen? That’s what fuels the phrase, “It’s not If, but When.” If the phrase is edited to be “Probably Never or in a Long Time or When We Least Expect It Is More Accurate,” it’s not much of a selling point.

We all want something big to happen in our lives. But some more than others.

So Monday night has become one of those rarities: the premier night of must-see TV. I mostly ignore network TV these days, because the many commercial breaks get so tedious that once you get used to programs without them, they seem too intrusive to put up with. That leaves most of the TV series, then, to the movie networks, as in HBO, Showtime, etc., and those can be hit-or-miss. I like Boardwalk Empire, which has still not quite reached the heights of The Sopranos, though it is the product of some of the same writers/producers. My new favorite show is Enlightened, now in its first season, which features nothing less than The Resurrection of Laura Dern’s Career—as in once again showing what a dynamic actress she is/can be. She seems most noticeable in the Jurassic Park films, which are fun in their own way, but she’s a much better actress than that. The last film I can remember where she was used to her potential was Alexander Payne’s Citizen Ruth (1996) in which she uttered the famous line, “I slept on some babies!” She was also great in Recount (2008), doing the famous Florida Republican stooge Katherine Harris to a tee.

In Enlightened she plays Amy Jellicoe, a frustrating/sad/agonizing/narcissistic/New Age train wreck of a character, who alternates between being profane, funny, heartbreaking, and self-destructive, all in the space of a half-hour show. It’s not quite a comedy, not quite a drama, not quite a dramedy: It’s painful at times to watch, because I know people like Amy, and they can be frustrating. It has an up-to-date feel that anchors it in the here-and-now. It’s not another Medieval wetdream targeted at withdrawn teenagers daydreaming of swords and talking unicorns. There’s a realness to the events/people that makes for great TV. The recent episode about a kayaking trip was maybe the best yet: both comical and heartbreaking.

So I’m home sick today, and one of the few pleasures for a working stiff on these sick days is catching up on mindless TV. It beats trying to figure out why in the world so many people are transfixed by a fraud like Herman Cain and his bogus 9-9-9 plan. In the category of not-so-mindless TV, HBO’s Boardwalk Empire is well into its second season now, and is much better than the first. The plot is cookin’. While the first season seemed too one note—especially for Jimmy Darmody (“Jimmy’s been in the war. Jimmy’s seen some things.”), played by Michael Pitt, like a young Marlon Brando—the second season has great, complicated plots, and Jimmy has risen into a major gangster, who might be about to take a fall. Paz de la Huerta is being underutilized, in my humble opinion, but Agent Nelson Van Aldren (played by the up-and-coming Michael Shannon, who had a wicked role in Revolutionary Road) is doing a great job in that plotline. For those not in the know, it’s set in the early Twenties, all about Prohibition, and is like a period-piece Sopranos.

Then there’s the grab-bag of Netflix. Lately I keep trying to watch B-movie horror flicks, and don’t make it through most of them. One in the so-bad-it’s-good category, was The Awakening. It’s so absurd you have to like it: Dorks (somewhat overaged dorks, at that, for a rave) get invited to a rave by a sexy girl, while plucky archeologist uncovers an amulet that (you guessed it!) unleashes an evil Aztec demon god. Mayhem ensues. Much blood and gore, low-budget style. It’s not My Dinner With Andre, that’s for sure.

So I’m sure if I were some kind of know-everything, Entertainment-Tonight wonk I would have already known this, but Curb Your Enthusiasm is back this Sunday! It’s hits and misses, but when it hits, it hits. The whole season with the Black family was great. This one has a reprise of the Annoying Laugh woman from Seinfeld. Here’s the NY Times link that gives a preview:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/arts/television/curb-your-enthusiasm-begins-its-eighth-season.html?hpw

It’s not TV, it’s HBO.

There should be some other catchphrase: It’s HBO: A lineup of awful movies padding the schedule for a few good series.

But I guess that’s rather long and cumbersome.

So I’ve been a fan of HBO’s series Big Love since it began, and now that it’s in the final episodes (I think there are two left now), it’s going out with a dramatic bang. Bill Paxton and Jeanne Tripplehorn are great, although more often than not Chole Sevigny, as Nikki, steals the show, getting to play the bad girl of the sister wives. (It’s about FLDS polygamists in Utah.) Last season it jumped the shark when Bill got elected to the Utah State Senate, which didn’t really make much sense or seem very plausible, but that did set up the death knell for the show. Like Jon Krakauer’s excellent nonfiction Under the Banner of Heaven, it’s an interesting look at Mormons and polygamists in the West, a more common phenomenon than most Easterners might think. My second home in Custer County has one of the highest populations of FLDS outside of Utah, dwarfed only by the infamous Zion Ranch in Texas. Although Big Love was never quite as good as, say, The Sopranos, it was a good show, whose swan song time has come.

It’s two weeks into the first season of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire and I’m hooked: Being a sucker for Steve Buscemi, gangster movies/shows, and a long-time fan of The Sopranos, it’s no surprise that I like Empire, considering it’s done by Terence Winter, Sopranos writer/creator. Plus the first episode contains a line I’ve been known to toss out from time to time, “Read a fucking book” (usually this is in relation to the current trend of Know-Nothing Politics, such as the deniers of climate change and other idiocy).

Boardwalk Empire definitely makes Prohibition look glamorous, especially the first episode, with the raucous party scene. The cinematography is terrific, kind of lustrous and lush. Everything looks beautiful in that light, even some gangster getting whacked, to use a phrase.The young actor playing Jimmy, Michael Pitt, has that kind of leading-guy charm that used to be summed up with the line, “The camera loves him.” It does.

But this harking back to the Prohibition of the 1920s only underscores the futility of the Prohibition of the 2010s, that disastrous waste of time/money/lives known as The War on Drugs. Here’s an editorial that I think makes total sense, is not published in High Times, and contains all the cogent arguments for the legalization of marijuana that have been known for years, but seem to be getting more credence know, after decades of wasted time and effort. I applaud the writer, Bill Piper. It’s even in CNN, hardly a bastion of liberal thought:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/09/28/piper.decriminalize.pot/index.html?hpt=C2