If you're easily annoyed by writers and artists "yakking," as Jack Kerouac might put it, you may want to avoid Curt Worden's One Fast Move or I'm Gone: Kerouac's Big Sur (2008/2009). On the other hand, if you like Kerouac and are patient, this documentary will be worthwhile.
First, what is the Gypse Curse? "May you get exactly what you think you want" is one variation. Be careful what you wish for. Becoming famous may be hazardous to your health -- or to someone else's health: just ask Mel Gibson, or Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and all down the line. Keoruac definitely has a station down that line. Don't get off there if you want to get out alive. But no one does anyway, so why the hell not?
One Fast Move or I'm Gone: Kerouac knew if he didn't regroup from alcohol poisoning, he'd be dead fast, he'd be gone. He went to Big Sur to "dry out." It didn't work. He died at 47 -- nine years after the Big Sur interlude. But he wrote in the meantime, including the novel that became Big Sur (1962).
The film includes good footage that I'd never seen, same with the new photos; Big Sur, New York City and San Francisco scenery; and an effective sampling of Kerouac's voice, rendered in most excellent fashion by John Ventimiglia (the dude who played Artie Bucco in The Sopranos) -- he sounds eerily like Jack Kerouac.
This woman smoking a cigar looks just like Cathy Searles, a former co-worker in North Carolina. Yes, women can vote. Yes, women can fight. And now, in Argentina, women can marry other women. Change comes in fits and starts, eh?
Above poster picked up at the main Northwestern University library in the late 1990s. They still had some on hand from their 1975 Paris Commune 1871 display. I wonder if they still have any left?
Beautiful and riveting is Joshua Marston's Maria Full of Grace (2004). Not only a compelling story, but surprising. The plot left me wondering -- caring -- like a cousin to Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days / 4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile (2007). These are great independent films about women set against the backdrop of specific socio-economic systems enforced by men.
In Maria Full of Grace, the Colombian-born lead, Catalina Sandino Moreno, conveys powerful emotions through her facial expressions, and with her eyes. Wonderful work.
It was like some crazy dream. Pancho Villa and his cross-border raiders rode into the town of Columbus, New Mexico, in March, 1916, blazing away, burning the town and escaping back into Mexico. Elements in the USA sprang to arms and gave chase with a "Punitive Expedition" including George Patton on horseback, bi-planes, trucks, telegrams and Buffalo Soldiers. At some harrowing points during the nearly year-long operation, American troopers crashed into Mexican federales and nearly provoked a second Mexican-American War. Pancho, meanwhile, at odds with the federalesand Doughboys, escaped capture.
Only German U-Boats provided cover and a way out for the Americans: entry into the First World War, heading "Over There" to Europe. Out of the frying pan, into the fire . . . Meanwhile, Mexico's sense of nationalism, if anything, was bolstered; perhaps most significantly, the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States was ratified in February, 1917, just as the last US troops were leaving Mexico.
Isn't the recruitment poster above quaint? Like so many others, it coaxes volunteers using patriotism and a sense of adventure:
"COME ON, BOYS, BE READY TO SHOULDER THE TRUSTYSPRINGFIELD" . . . "THE BOYS ARE NOW CROSSING THE ALKALI DESERTS AND JUNGLES OF MEXICO." WHAT FOR? THE GOVERNMENT ORDERS ARE GET VILLA AND GET HIM AT ONCE! . . . The Flag, Old Glory . . .
At the outset of any conflict, it works every time.
Mexico: Icon of the Revolution Emiliano Zapata (1879-1919), General, Ejército Libertador del Sur / Zapatistas. Co-creator of the Plan de Ayala calling for Reforma, Libertad, Justicia y Ley, a universal call, still appealing a hundred years later. Land is a tricky thing, though -- private property or social space for everyone? (Photo: US Library of Congress).
Icon of the Revolution: Francisco Pancho Villa (1878-1923), leader of the Divisióndel Norte, with staff (Villistas). Like Zapata, he came to a violent end. (Photo: US Library of Congress).
Icon of Mexican Independence: 200 years ago, Father Hidalgo (Miguel Gregorio Antonio Ignacio Hidalgo y Costilla y Gallaga Mondarte Villaseñor) raised high the banner of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe / Our Lady of Guadalupe and began Mexico's drive for independence from Spain. He was captured, shot and beheaded in 1811, ten years before independence was fully won.
Another milestone year, 2010 represents the 100th anniversary of the start of the Mexican Revolution, a sprawling and intense conflict that left an estimated one to two million dead; and the 200th anniversary of the start of the Mexican Wars for Independence from Spain. In popular culture, a much bigger spotlight has shone on the more recent Revolution, which was also a complex civil war. Both left Mexico devastated yet surviving.
Recommended books include Timothy J. Henderson's The Mexican Wars for Independence(2010) and Elena Poniatowska's Las Soldaderas: Women of the Mexican Revolution (2006).
Just finished James Baldwin's first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), and what strikes me now is how ridiculous Puritanical social mores and folkways actually cause disasters. For the sake of appearances, people do things against their better judgment, because they feel they have to. They are propelled into the always-lurking backdrop of violence in America, and the Jim Crow realities.
As with Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas, many of Baldwin's characters are related in some way, either by blood or by some form of kinship, like a daisy chain. And they often have the same kinds of difficulties getting through to each other.
Go Tell It on the Mountain is grim, set during the Great Depression; I found myself therefore especially enjoying moments of uplift, when characters show shrewdness or kindness. Richard and Elizabeth, John's biological parents -- (John is really James Baldwin as a boy) -- have a warm and interesting relationship. Richard wants to expand their cultural horizons, and takes her around New York City to show her things:
"Ain't we got to be educated, too -- to live with the motherfuckers?" . . . And when he took her to the Museum of Natural History, or the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where they were almost certain to be the only black people, and he guided her through the halls, which never ceased in her imagination to be as cold as tombstones, it was then she saw another life in him. . ." (p. 165 of the Dell paperback edition).
I also like it when John's Aunt Florence shares a cup of coffee with his mother, back before he was born.
Sad fact is, Stevie Wonder's "Living for the City" in 1973 would have worked just as well for the 1930s and could be a vignette from Baldwin's 1953 novel. How much is it still true in 2010?
