Nano Steps

OK, another milestone. Something of mine will be in published in print. On a Page. In a Book. But it's barely a step above self-publishing. Still. It's one tiny bit closer to some literary street cred. Meanwhile this piece is published on HumorPress.com's website and you can find it here.

Lame Movie Review: The Americanization of Emily

If this classic movie were remade today, people would jump on their ill-educated soap boxes to either denounce it or embrace it. And for all the wrong reasons. The advocates, (registered users of MoveOn.org who receive Protest Of The Day emails) would say the antiwar theme still resonates today. Its detractors (Fox News Channel nerds inundated with pro-war rhetoric) would raise their hackles and say this movie belittles the sacrifice that soldiers make when dying for their country, that it says our soldiers will die in vain. Such narrow-minded views will miss the point entirely and certainly not take away from it what I did. The Americanization of Emily is an anti-war movie like L.A. Story was an anti-L.A. movie. And I loved both of them.

I loved this movie. I loved the acting. I loved its dialogue. What a script! Many classics (this one was made in 1962) come off today as too melodramatic, requiring the viewer to wear ancient-colored glasses to appreciate the acting methods of way back when. This movie doesn’t ask you to do that. And that is why I am now a self-proclaimed fan of Paddy Chayevsky. I want to run out and see everything he’s credited with writing. Unfortunately only a handful of movies are available on DVD. Coincidentally, I watched another Chayevsky-written movie just prior to this one: Marty. Another faboo movie. Chayevsky is also known for Network, and Hospital. He won Oscars for Network, Hospital, and Marty, but The Americanization of Emily was his favorite, and the favorite of director Arthur Hiller, and actors James Garner, James Coburn and Julie Andrews. Perhaps if he’d kept the title of this movie to one word, he would have had a fourth Oscar in his curio cabinet. And for some reason, James Garner sounds just like Tommy Lee Jones. Has he always sounded like Tommy Lee Jones? Am I only just now noticing this?

Yes, this movie makes a political statement about war. A statement that given the opportunity would also be twisted into an erroneous one once the extremists’ panties have gotten up in a bundle. To quote director, Arthur Hiller, this is not an antiwar movie, it is “an anti-glorification of war” movie. It says that yes, sometimes war is necessary, but don’t glorify it. Hiller says in the director’s commentary, “don’t make it seem so wonderful, that the future will want to have more wars to have more wonderful times.” This is not an anti-war movie, as much as the extremists from both sides of the political spectrum would like it to be. It is a movie that asks you to take a step back, a deep breath and look at how we get caught up by all the advertising and PR.

Fox News glorifies war. George Bush glorifies war. And like many of their actions, they know it is wrong so they deny doing it through the art of semantics. They can only justify glorification of it by clouding and combining the act of war with the glorification of it in order to drum up the support of it. They will say things like “Your husband or son did not die in vain. This is a just war.” What they are really saying is “We need more pawns, more men with names, ranks, and serial numbers.” Meanwhile, they’ve got a twenty-four hour war promotion machine on cable whose slogan is “Fair and Balanced” when what they’re really saying is “War is sexy.” Would it be too provocative to compare that implied marketing strategy with another group’s promo involving approximately seventy-two virgins?

Now if you think that I’m a bleeding heart liberal based on the above statements, then you are just the type of person who will not enjoy this movie, will over-politicize it, and dismiss it as an antiwar flick. My point is not to turn this into some political diatribe, but just the opposite. With the exception of one scene where Julie Andrews delivers what looks like a soliloquy, even though she’s in the same room with someone who does respond, this is an otherwise solid movie with joy-to-watch performances. This movie was made during a time when product placement was not an issue. Thank God. Again, people would be up in arms if a movie today pushed so many Hershey’s chocolate bars. “Oh, in a time where we face an obesity epidemic, how can you sleep with yourselves making a movie that so graphically depicts sugar?” they would cry. That’s right, soon unemployed bored people will march with poster boards screaming something about “STOP the Carbo-Porn” or “Glucose Kills Innocent Babies!”. Pregnant mothers chomping down Hostess Ding Dongs will be beaten in the streets for “condemning their children to a life of gluttony”.

The Americanization of Emily’s dark humor is a refreshing, Aqua Velva-like slap in the face. If anybody were awake enough to make the effort to see this movie, its satirical and black comical themes would undoubtedly be compared to that of Catch 22. However, this movie, in my opinion, is much better than Catch 22. Both films were adapted from novels, but Emily somehow pulls it off better. Catch 22 has that inside-joke Carl-Reiner humor whose redundancy just isn’t that funny anymore. Kinda like watching It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World today and thinking, ‘Now why was this funny again?’

So please, do yourself a favor and rent this movie. It’s great! But don’t call it an antiwar movie. Its political statements, while compelling, are not entirely what make this movie worth watching. If anything, it’s a satirical, dark comedy. And a thoughtful love story, with one of the most theatrically brilliant Break Up scenes in filmdom. And there’s nothing quite so pleasantly surprising as watching a black and white movie and witnessing someone call someone else a “bitch”.

Show Me The Money, Already!

Defenestration is an online humor lit-mag and they have accepted a little something from me to publish in their May issue. If you add what they are paying me (zilch) to my accumulated writing career total, that makes fifteen dollars so far! I will announce when the issue with my stuff is in it, but you can check out the current issue now if you want.

My Pal Stinky

Well, I figure today is as good a day as any to tell you about the time I brought a skunk to school for Show and Tell. Every Friday, the science teacher, Mrs. Fahrenheight, would come into our class for an hour and try to teach us something. And every Friday, Jimmy Three-Hands Nelson would load his arsenal of a desk with spitballs to thwack the back of our heads during Science Hour. Ten minutes before the hour was up, Mrs. Fahrenheit would ask someone if they had something for Show and Tell. We'd been learning about animals for the last month and I thought the skunk would be appropriate.

Except that earlier that morning, Peppy had funkified our classroom to unbearable levels. My classmates bolted to every available open window gasping for air because our cold war Commie-hating gun-toting security-conscious principal put us in lockdown once a week as part of our drill program. This was in addition to our weekly sessions in earthquake, tornado, fire, flood, and hurricane disaster preparedness.

Not willing to admit the musky stench tortured my olfactory senses, I sat rigidly in at my desk, my eyes stinging with tears, while Peppy continued to emit the foulest odor known to man from his cage beneath my desk. I decided he had to run out of steam at some point and I would wait him out. Did you know that skunks are capable of producing their sickening smell continously forever? I think we all came away learning that trivia nugget.

By the time the warden unlocked our cells and the kids poured out choking and screaming and crying for their parents, it was lunchtime, and poor little Peppy was famished. When I opened his cage to give him his snack, he grabbed it and took off down the hall toward a screeching Mrs. Fahrenheight.

"That's my Show and Tell", I yelled to her, "he won't hurt you." Peppy scampered past her and escaped through the front door of the school building. In the cafeteria, all the kids in my class had to sit together in a far corner of the lunch room, because nobody would come near us. Little Jimmy Three-Hands Nelson threw his lunch at me, bite by bite, and the other kids joined in, calling me "Stinky" and "Smelly", which seemed stupid because they smelled just as bad as I did, but it wasn't a good time to tell them that. I couldn't take the pelting of Sloppy Joes and Tater Tots any more so I left the school and walked home.

After the initial shock to most of her senses, my mother refused to let me into the house until she had completely hosed and scrubbed me down. I was almost sure she was laughing at me as I told her what happened to me, but she categorically denied it.

"And now Peppy is gone," I cried, dripping with tomato juice.

"Peppy's here," she consoled. "He's in his cage in the backyard."

I walked around the house and found him asleep in his little bed. As he purr-snored, I wondered if he was aware of the ruckus he had caused. I lay down in the grass next to his cage and fell asleep, dreaming of honeysuckle and pear blossoms.