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Stephen Frears The Grifters (1990) stays true to the spirit and many of the specifics of Jim Thompson's 1963 noir novel of the same title. It is a lesson in human psychology and the freakonomics of grifting (swindling). Essentially, grifting only works with economy of scale: corporate size grifting. Smalltime grifting will get you nowhere and is a dangerous, self-destructive pursuit. It is too small to succeed over the long run. Corporate-size grifting, on the other hand, is more often "too big to fail," making millionaires of its psychopathic avatars; its destruction is aimed at everyone else but the perpetrators.
In The Grifters, Anjelica Huston, Annette Bening and John Cusack are superb as unlikeable protaganists, smalltime mental cases who overestimate their grifting skills. Their characters are relatively small bit players going nowhere. Secondary players -- all good -- include Pat Hingle (the judge in Hang 'Em High, 1968); Henry Jones (Leroy the halfwit in The Bad Seed, 1956); J.T. Walsh (The lawyer in The Last Seduction with Linda Fiorentino, 1993) Stephen Tobolowsky (Deadwood, Californication); plus Jeremy Piven before hair implants as a sailor (Ari on Entourage). Director Stephen Frears has presided over the creation of many excellent, thoughtful films ranging from My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) to The Queen (2006).
Finally, the "period" details in The Grifters show just how much has changed in the past two decades. There are several payphones, primitive computers, large cars, no SUVs, no cellphones. It is most apparently a different world, though human nature remains the same.
Today's Rune: Harvest.
I've written about fire disasters in the USA before, and they all have one other common thread: lack of safety standards/overcrowding. Most have another commonality: greed of the building/business owners.
Today's the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in New York City: a fireproof building with locked exit. Wouldn't want workers getting away with anything to marginally reduce profits . . .
As a result of the fire, union activities and safety regulations were strengthened -- only to be weakened a century later. What's going on now? Wall Street screws up and the Tea Party/GOP turns on unions, the working class and civil society, not to mention the social safety network. Bastards in 1911 and bastards in 2011. Let's hope the majority of voters undermined by these fuckers get out to vote in 2012 -- using their minds and ballots as much as their emotion.
Today's Rune: Warrior.
Digging 13 Most Beautiful... Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests (2009), with tailored ambient soundtrack by Dean & Britta (including a Velvet Underground adaptation).
It's stunning how two to four minutes in front of a camera mutely doing not much of anything actually seems to reveal about persona and personality.
What I hadn't realized prior to screening this: the screen tests are slowed down versions of "reality," not played back in actual speed. However, you can bring them up to "real life" motion by fast forwarding. You can learn yet more about radiant human gestures by speeding them up even beyond that.
Technique -- really great. The peeps include the late Dennis Hopper, Nico (a real pisser), Ann Buchanan, Edie Sedgwick (blink-blink), Billy Name, Susan Bottomly, Mary Woronov and Ingrid Von Scheven. Also, see Lou Reed drink a Coke and Baby Jane Holzer brush her teeth. Then compare with commercial advertisements.
Today's Rune: Defense.
Cutting edge, the latest in war technology: aerial assault on Libya. Today in 2011, the operation against Libyan land positions includes the Italian aircraft carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi. In 1911, Italian zeppelins, also known as dirigibles, blimps and airships, began the assault from above with the support of fixed wing biplanes. One hundred years of bombs and missiles coming out of the sky.
(Incidentally, the contemporary Giuseppe Garibaldi could only be so designated in the late 1980s due to an outlawing of such Italian weaponry after the downfall of Mussolini's fascist regime in the 1940s. That is, the Italians are good to go again now, free to send jets and choppers from flight decks into war zones just as they sent zeppelins and biplanes into action one hundred years ago).
In 1911, zeppelins and biplanes. Today, mobile robots in Japan, pilotless Predator drones firing Hellfire missiles in Pakistan, Tomahawk cruise missiles raining down on Libyan positions. Exactly the same as in 1911, yet even more Satanic in ingenuity.
(William Blake, "And did those feet in ancient time" 1804-1808:
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!).
In taking the longer view, it becomes very apparent that in North Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East, for much of the last century and even beyond that, war and revolution has hovered over the decaying remnants of the Ottoman Empire -- dogs of war fighting over various tasty scraps of territory, waterways, petroleum reserves and other resources. The Italo-Turkish War of 1911-1912 was only one of scores of such violent convulsions. Today's news highlights only the "present" side of a continuum that is -- in the parlance of our day -- "moving forward." The vanishing point or "endgame" of the current upheavals may exist only in our imaginations, ungrounded in the historical record.
Today's Rune: Defense.
Erich Maria Remarque's Der Weg zurück (1930/31) / The Road [Way] Back (1931) follows Im Westen nichts Neues [Nothing New in the West] (1928/29) / All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), yet I'm guessing relatively few have even heard of (let alone read) the English version for decades. That's a shame, because The Road Back deals with veterans trying to live after surviving traumatic events, an enduring social reality in the USA as well as Germany or most anywhere else.
Despite this hokey movie poster, I'd like to see the James Whale 1937 film version of The Way Back, especially a director's cut or reconstruction. Whale is better known for having made the influential 1930s horror films Frankenstein and Bride and Frankenstein (starring Boris Karloff), but he also served in the Great War, was a POW and later committed suicide, suggesting a lot more gravitas in his approach then the above poster suggests.
Today's Rune: Flow.
Above shot: poster for a 2007 screening of Chris Eyre's Smoke Signals (1998), based on parts of Sherman Alexie's interconnected short story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993). My sister Linda was among the panelists discussing it. Seeing this on a tour of her office at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro recently thrilled me, not only because I like the movie and the book, but also because I've included both in Macomb College English classes -- yeah, synchronicity! Ideal for class discussions and response essays. Highly recommended.
Another good indie film with overlapping themes is Jonathan Wacks' Powwow Highway (1989), based on David Seals' novel The Powwow Highway (1979). Seals also wrote a sequel to the novel and movie, Sweet Medicine (1992).
Today's Rune: Wholeness.
Another war, same planet. And a lot of upheaval around the clock. More to come. No doubt. Ares, one of the many gods of war, must be delighted with the carnage.
Pictured abve: Dareen Abughaida reporting on the latest from Libya and around the globe via Al Jazeera English Live Stream.
A snippet from Black Sabbath, "War Pigs," as relevant now as in 1970.
Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor.
Time will tell on their power minds
Making war just for fun . . .
Today's Rune: Disruption.
