Cool It

Posted on by

When it’s too darned hot to venture out, and the news is naggingly nasty, it’s time for the beach read, the air-conditioned matinee, the TV binge. Here’s my list of recent amusements to pass a summer’s day.

“Something Wonderful” is pretty wonderful. It’s the story of the Rodgers and Hammerstein’s collaboration that began in 1943, lasted almost 20 years, and changed musical theater forever. It’s labor of love by Todd Purdum, a veteran political reporter famous for his tough-mindedness. But scratch a cynic and discover a cock-eyed optimist, humming along to show tunes.

He follows his two protagonists from their early collaborations with others to their successful run as not just authors but an industry. Having been burned, they were owners of their own songs and plays, producers of their own shows, and controlled all aspects of their work.

Personally, they were quite different characters, though they had a similar background — New Yorkers, Columbia graduates, theater mad from an early age. They were also both consummate perfectionists, perhaps to a fault. Both also admitted to others that they never really knew if their partner liked them. The book not only chronicles their work, but is filed with wonderful glimpses of their world, including backstage. Here are a few examples.

Rodgers has a reputation as a hardheaded businessman. His daughter demurs. “My father was an atrocious businessman, he just made a lot of money.”

When she was a girl, the same daughter was in school with Irving Berlin’s daughter. It was a small world. She asked her mother whose father was more famous — hers or Mary Ellin’s. Her mother had to tell her the answer was, “Mary Ellin’s.”

Hammerstein’s fiercely loyal wife overheard a woman say Jerome Kern wrote “Old Man River.” “No,” she corrected the woman, “Oscar Hammerstein wrote Old Man River, Kern wrote “La La Dum Dum.”

The young Mary Martin came to audition and said she was going to sing an old song that Mr. Hammerstein might not know. She sang “Indian Love Call. Hammerstein complimented her and said he did know “Indian Love Call.” In fact, he wrote it. She was morified, but was soon in the road show of one of their musicals and not long afterwards originated the part of Nellie Forbush in “South Pacific.”

Especially charming is a story of Rodgers and the young Balanchine. It had been decided to include a long dance sequence in “Pal Joey.” Rodgers had never worked with a choreographer before and asked how it worked. Did Mr. Balanchine design the dance and then have music written to fit or vice versa. Balanchine in his Russian accented English said succinctly, “You write. I put on.”

Most interesting is the fact that the team that created the enduringly popular “Oklahoma,” “Carousel,” “South Pacific,” “The King and I,” and “The Sound of Music,” musicals that integrated book, music and dance seamlessly, had its share of clumsy, peculiar, misbegotten shows — “Allegro,” “Me and Juliet,” and the disastrous Pipe Dream.


Purdum doesn’t say so, but the evidence he offers seems to suggest that the difference was the quality of the source material. Hammerstein was a genius at adapting the stories of others to the musical stage, but less deft starting from scratch.

Also from the bookshelf are two novels by Ward Just, an Illinois boy who became a Washington reporter who covered Vietnam. I am slowly working my way through all his novels. They treat Vietnam, the Midwest in the 1940s and 50s, bureaucratic and political Washington in the 1960s and 70s. “An Unfinished Season” is the coming of age story of a boy from outside Chicago, his industrialist father, labor troubles, McCarthyism, and the girl who got away. It offers an expert evocation of a lost world.

“Exiles in the Garden” concerns a Washington D.C newspaper photographer and his Swiss-raised, Eastern European wife. The garden is that of the house next door to their Georgetown home. In it, emigres from Eastern Europe gather to dream of returning to their lost world that has vanished behind the Iron Curtain.

The husband is another Midwesterner, the son of a Senator who did not join the family business. His wife’s parents were like the exiles next door. She finds their European Weltschmerz seductive, while he’d rather stay home and watch baseball. And so begins the dissolution of a marriage due to historical forces he did not fully appreciate.

At the movies, I recommend “Sicario: Day of the Soldado,” a rare sequel that is as interesting as the original. It turns the menacing and ruthless Benicio del Toro character into a more soulful, though no less deadly, figure.

The very funny “Ideal Home” stars Steve Coogan as a gay Martha Stewartesque TV chef and lifestyle guru. Paul Rudd is his partner in life and business. Their design for living is knocked out of kilter when Coogan’s estranged brother is jailed on a drug charge and his child, who only eats Taco Bell, winds up in their custody. It’s the odd trio.

“The Spy Who Dumped Me” might have been paint-by-numbers silliness about a jilted woman who discovers her boyfriend was a spy He left her only to protect her from assassins out to kill him. Soon the girls are plunged into slapstick international intrigue. But the bond between best friends Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon adds a bit of heart and a lot of craziness to a couple California naifs running for their lives across Europe.

Once again McKinnon shows she can steal any show she’s a part of from SNL to Ghostbusters to this latest outing as madcap friend to the more cautious Kunis. As with “Wonder
Woman,” this film shows that female directors can pep up tired genres by bringing a fresh perspective.

Finally, you can just stay home and watch shows like the snarky “Succession,” (HBO) a thinly disguised take on Rupert Murdock’s family drama, though the Trump children may also spring to mind.

“The Split” (Sundance) is an excellent British series starring Nicola Walker as a high-profile London barrister. She is familiar from several earlier cop shows and as the haggard, lovelorn daughter in “Last Tango in Halifax.”

Here, she is blond, glamorous, and involved in another family drama. She learned the law at her mother’s knee. She and her younger sister both practiced divorce law with her mother, but she has left a joined a larger firm. Complications arise.

Her father, who abandoned the family when the three sisters were young, returns to claim a share of the business and to serve as father of the bride to the youngest daughter. The women differ bitterly about whether he should be forgiven or sent packing. The mother, it develops, may have not told them the whole story, nor has she mentioned the family firm is in financial trouble. Meanwhile the daughter who left the firm and mom find themselves on opposite sides in an ugly divorce, and a hack involving call girls seems to implicate Walker’s husband.

Finally, “Killing Eve” (BBC America) is must see TV starring Sandra Oh as Eve, a desk-bound, frazzled, frumpy British spook who becomes obsessed with the notion that there is a sleek, Russian contract killer at work, code name Villanelle. As played by Jodie Comer, she is wickedly, gleefully amoral. Soon Eve is desk-bound no more, and a weird folie a deux grows up between the hunter and the hunted.

Villanelle steals Eve’s luggage, and when it’s returned it contains a far more fashionable wardrobe in Eve’s size. This is a really odd couple involved in a prelude to a kiss of death. It makes Eve, and the audience, weirdly attracted to and even amused by a villainess so cheerfully malign.

Season One ends with a heck of a cliffhanger that will make you impatient for the next installment, due in 2019. Can’t wait, but a reminder we sure aren’t in Oklahoma anymore.

Who’s In Charge?

Posted on by

Insiders report that President Trump is in a dark place. His increasingly crazed, increasingly frequent tweets and rallies make the darkness visible. One of the uses of art and history is to help us make sense of life by providing images and models to compare our experience with — archetypes, templates, paradigms.

So who or what does Trump resemble that might help us grasp what’s happening before our eyes? Often on the campaign trail, he seems to be channelling angry birds, but much of his time is spent as a lurking recluse. He’s like Boo Radley, except that he seems more likely to assault the Finch children than to save them.

He also seems stuck in the past, obsessing not about better days but about bitter disappointments — like Miss Havisham from “Great Expectations.” She was jilted at the altar and wore her wedding dress in her rotting mansion for the rest of her life.

But she was a gentle, heartbroken soul. Trump is more like Catherine Sloper from James’s “Washington Square” ( or the film version, “The Heiress”). She too was jilted, but plotted and connived and enacted a cruel revenge. But who jilted Trump? He’s president.

Yet his grievances are on full, unceasing display. He didn’t win the popular vote, losing to a woman. Many in his own party and administration are insufficiently loyal, distrust hm and regard him as unfit for office. The press that he has courted for decades refuses to be his credulous friend, but in his mind is a critical enemy.

Worst of all, perhaps, though his lifelong aspiration was to rise from the Dauphin of Queens to become the King of New York, he lost the Empire State by a 60-36 margin, and was whipped out in Manhattan, with Hillary winning over 80 percent.

So, he obsessively relives past glories and avoids all reminders of the present’s bitter reality. He surrounds himself with other lost souls who share his anger, frustration, resentment and feelings of being dispossessed. Thus the rallies, the shrinking circle of family and reliable acolytes, his reliance on only favorable news from Fox, Alex Jones, Breitbart and now QAnon.

Where have we seen this before? Of course, Norma Desmond from “Sunset Boulevard.” She said, “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.” And, “No one ever leaves a star. That’s what makes one a star.” And, “This is my life! It always will be! Nothing else! Just us, and the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark!… All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”

Except that Trump is, perhaps, more like an aging pop-star who has to keep replaying his greatest hits to smaller and smaller crowds. This would be pitiful or comic except that he’s still the president with the power to remake the world to please his fan base which includes he greedy rich, the bigoted fringe, the actually fake news media, and foreign enemies only too willing to exploit his need for affirmation for their own ends.

This pathology may help explain his program for success in the midterms. He’s going to give his dwindling base what he thinks they want and his enemies what he knows they will hate.

So, Trump is now promising another tax cut, this time on capital gains. Once again, he will rob the poor of programs they need so he can provide $100 billion more in handouts to the wealthy. How many of the people at his rallies pay capital gains? Very few, since 86% of the benefits will go to the top one percent, those who earn over $1.48 million a year. But they re donor. Besides, as Frost said, “Better to go down dignified/ With boughten friendship by your side? Than none at all.” Especially when you aren’t paying for the handout. He can put in on the deficit. About what you’d expect from a man who went bankrupt repeatedly.

Trump also promises to keep increasing tariffs on China until they cry Uncle Sam, but it is not clear who’s a fan of this maneuver. American farmers and manufacturers are already crying for relief. And they can vote, so how long can Trump and the Republicans hold out? Not as long as Xi Jinping. His people don’t get a vote.

Trump has recently reacted to criticism of his policy at the border by promising to get even tougher on illegal immigrants. He’s also had Jeff Sessions announce an anti-gay policy under the guise of religious freedom, and he is aiming to roll back regulations which will bring us dirtier less fuel-efficient vehicles which automakers don’t want. And he has attacked LeBron James. This is all obviously aimed at pleasing the gun-rack in the pick-up truck voter. Can a new version of the Muslim ban be far behind?

Trump has also made the blood of Senators and Congressmen run cold by suggesting a government shutdown in October unless he gets his wall. Is government grinding to a halt really what his party needs a couple weeks before the voting takes place?

Nor can one can rule out an even bigger October, or September or August surprise. Perhaps Trump firing Bob Mueller, Rod Rosenstein, Jeff Sessions, and any other betrayers in one giant bloodbath. So, maybe he’s not Norma Desmond after all. Maybe he’s Medea. If I was Jared or Don, Jr. I’d keep my bedroom door locked.

Or even worse, he may be Wotan, perfectly wiling to set Valhalla afire in a Trmperdammerung. We can only hope Mad Dog Mattis can keep Trump away from the matches. And the launch codes.

Crazy Like A Sleuth

Posted on by

Scrolling through primetime TV options, I came upon a show called “The Sinner” and read a capsule description that began “A troubled detective returns to his hometown to investigate…” and there was no need to read further.

Of course, the detective was troubled. Aren’t they all? And yet they didn’t start that way. Poe’s Dupin was a model of rationality. Detective Bucket in “Bleak House” was the precursor of legions of tough-minded street cops who have seen it all. Hercule Poirot is finicky about his appearance, but much of that can be laid to English contempt for continental fops. Miss Marple is cozy and razor sharp, but far from troubled.

You can’t help but notice who I’m leaving out. Sherlock. The archetypal troubled detective — an antisocial, supercilious, easily bored genius who treats his ennui with violin solos and a drug habit. But even if he provided the template for the majority of later sleuths, most imitated his ratiocination not his psychopathology.

Morse substituted opera and beer. Nero Wolfe was more like Sherlock’s brother Mycroft. He never stirred from his brownstone where he ate gourmet meals and tended his orchids, but that’s merely mild eccentricity, like Lord Peter Whimsey’s dilettantism. Sam Spade, Phillip Marlowe and their heir, Lew Archer, were tough guys at home on the mean streets, but no more irregular than your average cop.

Originally the minor oddities of detectives were simply window dressing by authors trying to humanize their main character since their adventures were essentially solving puzzles, and the other chess pieces in the game were stock types from central casting, as in Clue.

Now, however, the oddities of detectives have begun to elbow aside the puzzle. They are the puzzle. You now seem scarcely qualified to lift a fingerprint if you aren’t certifiable. I suppose this was inevitable when even mob bosses were seeing a shrink.

Admittedly, the British are still more inclined to keep a stiff upper lip, especially the men. Their usual problem is being too irregular to maintain a marriage, household, or children. Women detectives, however, seem to be increasingly beset by angst, loneliness, neuroses and substance abuse. Helen Mirren in “Prime Suspect” was a trailblazer for women’s equality insofar as pathology was concerned.

A turning point in the process of highlighting the detective’s disorders may have been Jimmy Stewart’s vertigo in “Vertigo,” around which the entire plot dizzily revolved. Soon you could barely investigate a crime without having a disabling flaw you bravely soldier on in spite of. The updated Sherlocks played by Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch often put the ills of their character centerstage.

Monk was OCD. And detectives who are idiot savants or somewhere on the Asperger’s spectrum are now a dime a dozen, in part because of the Scandinavian series “The Bridge” which forced odd couple detectives from two countries to work together on a case. The female character lacked skills at social interaction and had a restricted range of interests but excelled at obsessive attention to a case. This was replicated by in remakes set on the Mexican-U.S. border (also called “The Bridge”) and on both sides of the Chunnel (“The Tunnel”) starring Diane Kruger and Clemence Poesy, respectively.

As long ago as 1965, Kingsley Amis was astute enough to describe the character of James Bond (books, not movies), and to identify his origin. Amis said Bond was “lonely, melancholy, of fine natural physique, which has become in some way ravaged…of a cold or cynical veneer, above all enigmatic, in possession of a sinister secret.”

This figure dates from 1818 as Childe Harold and has been popping up ever since, beginning with the Bronte sisters. He is the Byronic hero, and many detectives are his offspring. Often they are lone wolves, even if they work for an organization, though more often perhaps are private eyes. Reacher is an extreme case, in that he might easily be mistaken for a hobo since he has no fixed abode or possessions and has been know to travel by Greyhound. One, Wallander, even ends his career as a sleuth by adding a further isolating trait by becoming afflicted with dementia.

Many of these wounded figures have suffered an insupportable grief, a terrible loss, often a lost or murdered love — Gabriel Allon, James Bond, Bosch, Rebus. It clearly isn’t wise for a woman to cozy up to such a character. It is reasonable to see the weakness of these figures for drink or drugs as a means they have adopted to self-medicate their sorrow.

This is not the only way to cope. In the short-lived “Life,” starring Damian Lewis as Charlie Crews, an L.A. cop was framed and spent years in prison before emerging cleared and richly compensated for the mistake. He could live a life of luxury, but he insists on returning to duty. He is a changed man, however, having survived incarceration by embracing Zen Buddhism. This makes him as baffling to his new partner as if he had Aspergers or OCD.

Other detectives suffer from what might be called delusions of grandeur or quixotism. They imagine themselves to be pure knights righting wrongs, and not surprisingly don’t fit into the usual cop shop since they do not cut corners or settle for a tie score against the bad guys. Again, Reacher is an extreme case of this, and Travis McGee a more cheerful version. He only takes cases when he needs the dough and spots something worth crusading for. Bosch and Rebus occupy the more common middle ground. They are good cops, but sticklers for justice who keep running afoul of the suits and getting suspended for being too incorruptible.

Finally, in “Killing Eve,” we encounter a really interesting psychodynamic. Our heroine is an intelligence operative who has the usual quirks, but who becomes obsessed with similar murders that seem to point to a brilliant assassin. She identifies another women as the likely culprit and begins to develop an obsession that verges on a crush for the killer. The killer is bemused by the attention and reciprocates the feeling of fascination.

Wow! It’s a folie a deux. We’ve never seen anything like that before. Or have we? What about “The Woman,” the dominatrix, Irene Adler, Sherlock’s femme fatale? It has been said that all philosophy is just footnotes to Plato. Hemingway said all modern American literature came out of one book, “Huckleberry Finn.” And maybe we just have to admit that all detective fiction begins and ends at 221B Baker Street.