Walrus Pemmican and La Vie En Rose

I'm thinking about changing the name of my Walrus character. It's starting not to feel right to me any more. What if later on the guy falls in love with a beautiful hippie chick? Can you imagine his girl friend saying , "Oh Walrus, I love you!" I can't. It sounds silly.

Still, he should have a street name, not a real name. Something fitting for a guy who doesn't want it to get around that his real name is Chauncey. Who is trying to build a little romance and drama into his young life.

Anybody got any ideas?

On a completely different subject, Patrushka and I saw La Vie En Rose last night, a biopic about the life of French singer Edith Piaf. It's really quite an amazing movie, an onslaught of power and emotion that captures and reflects the star's truly melodramatic life, -- complex, innovative, yet totally appropriate film editing, a sound track that electrified my nervous system, and art direction - the film is played out in a succession of perfectly realized pictures of Paris in the twenties and thirties, New York in the forties, and Hollywood in the fifties - that's a sumptuous visual treat.

Marion Cotillard's performance as the Little Sparrow is astounding. I have really never seen anything on film to match her breadth and range - she portrays Edith from sixteen-year old street singer to a terminally weary middle-aged invalid dying of cancer. And she captures each phase of that unhappy life with such passion - it's like Piaf herself is alive again. If she doesn't win an Oscar for her performance, then there is no justice.

We walked out of the theater afterwards like we'd just seen Romeo and Juliet for the first time. I stopped to thank the manager of our little art house for bringing it to little Spokane - but I found my voice breaking. I was overwhelmed.

It will probably be good on DVD too - but seeing it on the big screen was -- wow! If La Vie En Rose playing anywhere near you, don't miss it.

Bonnie and Juliet, Romeo and Clyde

I learned two useful pieces of information this week. First, I learned how to structure a comedy. You build it like this: "They're going to lose! Oh no, they're going to lose!...they win." Now, here's how you structure a tragedy: "They're going to win! Oh boy, they're going to win!...they lose."

Modern people don't like tragedy very much. Maybe we have enough of it in our own lives. A movie with a 'downbeat ending' is a hard sell in Hollywood, but back in the old days it was different. Theater-goers lapped it up. "C'mon, Willy. Give us another one where the beautiful fourteen-year-old stabs herself to death because her hot but sensitive seventeen year old lover poisoned himself when he thought she was dead but she's really not. That was your best play so far!"

I will never, ever forget walking out of the Larkin Theater into the rain after seeing the Zefferelli Romeo and Juliet. My date and I were stunned. We couldn't speak. Our fellow moviegoers stumbled out at the steady, slow pace of people who've heard some ghastly news about their loved ones' sudden and untimely demise. There was no after movie chitchat - just stunned silence. Yet, when they saw us, the people jammed outside waiting for the next show didn't start running the other way. They could hardly wait to get in and eat some of that stuff we just ate.

And that movie remains one of the high points of my Sixties movie-going experiences, right up there with that other full-bore tragedy, Bonnie and Clyde, where Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway and Michael J. Pollard, a trio that we've grown to care a whole lot about, go down in a shocking and unforgettable blaze of machine gun fire as the credits roll.

Aristotle, before he married Jackie O. and settled down, used to say that watching fictional characters we cared about go down in a blaze of gunfire made us feel better. We were 'purged' of a lot of emotional crap that was building up inside us and left us free to build up some new crap.

I don't know, myself. I've read that Charles Dickens couldn't decide whether or not to kill off his heroine Little Nell. Then, one afternoon he was hanging out with his illustrator and old Cattermole pointed out the structure of The Old Curiosity Shop so far had been, "They're going to win! Oh, boy, they're going to win!..."

Dickens answered something like, "Oh, maaan! Why you tell me that now?"

The whole world wept. People in New York crowded at the docks waiting for the next ship from London. Before it even docked, they shouted at the sailors, "Is Little Nell alive? Say she is!" But of course she wasn't. The whole city went home in stunned, cathartic silence, and stared at the embers of their little fires. But then they thought it might be nice to roast a bit of cheese. And perhaps a wiener. Because, all in all, it was Little Nell in a book who died. And their own little Nell was sitting right beside them enjoying the fire.

I'm going to make sure Walrus, Sylvie and Paulie lose, lose, lose. If Sylvie gets shot down at the end, it'll be her own darned fault - I want nothing to do with it.

The Pig Turns Movie Critic

I don't do film reviews. There's already enough guys out there peddling important opinions. But I do do recommendations if they fit into the general theme of the Pigsty. What? You didn't know there was a theme?

First - Amazing Grace, which Patrushka and I saw yesterday. An amazing, powerful film about William Wilberforce, who fought the British parliament for thirty years to outlaw slavery. He didn't give up for thirty years and he WON! It's the story of how he did it. OK, it's marred by a corny subplot about a nice old couple who are trying to fix him up with raving red haired beauty Romola Garai. And I don't like the marketing campaign which is trying to make it into a Christian movie. It's not. It's a movie about a guy who is a Christian. The movie's about standing up to fight to end slavery against all odds - and winning. I came out inspired, revved up - thinking I'll never give up either! If its playing in your town, go see it and then check in, okay? Highly Recommended.

Second is The Lives of Others. A German film about a little man, a functionary in the East German secret police, who grows up into a big man at the cost of his career. It ain't pretty - but it's beautiful. Emotionally exhausting. I staggered out of the theater completely drained. Had to hie to Starbuck's and sit in a stupor till the caffeine kicked in. After seeing it, I thought, "Thank God for Glasnost. Man, the world really did change for the better." Highly recommended. And hurray for AMC Theaters, who brings movies like this to a parochial burg like Spokane!

My Charlie Chaplin Film Festival

I had to go to my doctor.

"Doc", I said, "Something's wrong with me. I never laugh at comedies any more. I just sit there."

"Tell me your symptoms, son", he said. "Well, for instance I saw this movie called Meet the Fockers or Meet the Parents or something like that. People all around me were laughing but it made me hurt so bad inside I had to leave the theater. The characters were so cruel to each other."

"Hmmm," says he, "anything else?

"Well, fart jokes don't make me laugh. Like in Shrek, which was supposed to be so funny. Seemed like the high point was when the ogres farted. I just sat there and waited for it to be over. What's wrong with me?".

The doctor ran some tests and fiddled with his electrometer for a while. Finally, he said, "Well, you might try Charlie Chaplin."

"???????," I thought, like they do in comic strips.

I said, "You mean the great silent film monolith that every film lover bows to but nobody watches? You mean those silly Keystone cops movies all scratchy and speeded up? That sounds like a duty, not a pleasure."

"Hey, I'm the doctor," he said, "And one more thing. That will be $280.00 please."

Since his advice cost so much, I figured I'd at least try it, so I went down to my local library and checked out The Gold Rush, Chaplin's 1925 hit starring a bunch of people I'd never heard of, like Mack Swain and Georgia Hale. Actually, I had to special order it from the big library downtown.

But, I have to tell you, within one minute, as soon as the bear fell into line behind the Little Fellow as he danced along the precipice path, I started laughing uncontrollably. And I really didn't stop for the next 95 minutes. I fell off the couch. I hurt my bottom. Even my cat was laughing. People started peering in through the front window to see what was going on. Then they started laughing too so I had to let them in. I mean it was snowing outside. Patrushka had to get up and make popcorn. And we all watched it over and over all night, screeching with joy.

The Gold Rush is so funny, and so sweet, and so endearing, and the DVD is so clear and crisp. I couldn't bear to leave. I had to stay and watch it over even though I was in my own living room and everybody finally went home.

Next day I called my doctor, "Doc, I'm cured! It turns out there's nothing wrong with my sense of humor at all. It's just that the movies they're making now are so stupid!"

So I started holding my own private Charlie Chaplin Film Festival/Block Party. We watched Modern Times which I immediately had to watch again and it was even better the second time as I got into the rhythm of it, and I have The Great Dictator ready to go for our next movie night. All from the the Spokane Public Library, which I hereby thank for providing my medicine free of charge.

Hooray for Charlie Chaplin! Finally, I'm laughing again at something besides my own thoughts.