Trapped on the hamster wheel, part 8: Three obits and an update.

85.
I’m working on so many writing projects I find my head spinning. I have three active manuscripts I’m now trying to submit, two nonfiction, one fiction, and a fourth under consideration at a publisher. I’m still tempted to self-publish some of these . . . but I worry about the design features and, of course, promotion. I’ve also made it back to the Joseph Lewis manuscript, working through it as if another author had written it. I’m whipping it into shape. 

86.
I’ve read too many good books in a row. It can spoil you. The insanely entertaining When the Game Was War, about the 1988 NBA season; the unsettling fascist takeover as ghost story, Prophet Song; the wonderful oral history of the Village Voice, The Freaks Come Out To Write; a collection of David Remnick’s essays, The Devil Problem; a collection of Murray Kempton’s essays on the 1930s, Part of our Time (Remnick profiles Kempton, which is what led me to this dark delight of a book); David Thomson’s new book on the movies, The Fatal Alliance; Monika, Daniel Clowes magnum opus and one of the most disturbing books I’ve read in years; and I’m making my way through the comic series, East of West. I’ve been on a tear. I’m revisiting Raymond Chandler for an upcoming trip out west. That dude could flat-out write. 

87.
I also read The Book at War: How Reading Shaped Conflict, and Conflict Shaped Reading, a fascinating history of books as catalysts and products of warfare. Here’s an early sentence:

88.
“It cannot be a coincidence that the major wars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were fought between the world’s most bookish nations (which arrived at this position on a tide of mass literacy from the nineteenth century onwards).”

89.
Historian Pettegree offers this intriguing thesis with a lot of evidence but only a little oomph. My beef with the book is its metaphorical weight. A fascinating insight, such as that many of the leaders during World War II were also best-selling pre-war authors and obsessive readers, is followed by chunks of repetitive evidence.

90.
The chapter on war poetry in particular is fascinating—poetry has historically been one of the primary literary engines for fascism, go figure—but Pettegree doesn’t dig into the poets or their lives. It’s bad reviewing to look for things that aren’t there, but I’m not a reviewer here, so I’ll sum up by saying, I wish he had written the same book, but added more anecdotes and some zip. 

91.
The Fatal Alliance takes a similar approach; Cinema appeared as a mass art right as World War I began, and it probably isn’t a coincidence. Thomson deals with war movies and actual war. Thomson is one of my favorite writers on the movies, and here he’s as entertaining as ever, if a bit ponderous here and there and prone to overstatement. (I consider myself a self-proclaimed acolyte of his; I have similar predilections.) He highlights strange, often out of the way films, including Tavernier’s Captain Conan and The First of the Few, among others. Thomson is often a digressive writer, and the asides, career summaries, and odd digressions are what I love about him. I’m sure he drives non-movie people nuts. Weirdly, and it isn’t out of the realm of the possible, I think he might have read The South Never Plays Itself. (I sent him a copy.) I sensed in the flow of the book similar thought pathways. Maybe it’s wishful thinking. 

92.
Roger Corman died. This is my obituary for him. We lost one of the hidden engines of American cinema with the death of Roger Corman, the B-movie maven cum unlikely auteur. Learning the hard lesson of how many compromises a youngish screenwriter faces, Corman struck out on his own as an independent director-producer for American Releasing Corporation, a cheapie distributor that reformed as American International Pictures. Corman would become AIP’s standard bearer, knocking out over fifty profitable films burning up the drive-in circuit. He didn’t have a discernible style; the movies run fast and loose with goofs aplenty. The titles often didn’t match up with the plotlines. The Undead is a time travel story. The Secret Invasion is a World War II movie. Corman hit his stride with loose Edgar Allen Poe adaptations with Vincent Price: The Pit and the Pendulum, House of Usher, The Raven, The Premature Burial, and most notably, Masque of the Red Death. The vibrant colors, the operatic performances, the skeevy poetry of Price, the odd winking tone—they aren’t my cup of tea, but they are bright, bold, campy, and unforgettable. Corman loved ripping off popular movies. Battle Beyond the Stars is Star Wars meets Seven Samurai on a shoestring. It’s terrible. And awesome. Tucked inside the exploitative and the derivative, he made some good films, including The Intruder, a compelling crime drama about a racist demagogue in a small town. It’s dynamite. It also didn’t do well, and Corman was always a consummate man of commerce, so he moved along. The Trip is a proto-drug movie, a wild time capsule following a square taking his first trip and freaking out. It’s nuts. Corman’s work is overpraised, but his role in the industry isn’t. He kickstarted the cinematic 1970s by midwifing the talents of Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Towne, Jack Nicholson, and Peter Bogdanovich. He gave Ron Howard his first directing job, and Sandra Bullock her first acting role. He also ushered in special effects talents, cinematographers, and the like.  Corman made money on every movie he directed or produced, save one: Monte Hellman’s The Cockfighter, an oddball lugubrious crime picture that unfolds at a snail’s pace. My favorite Corman story involves Bogdanovich. He told the aspiring young director that Boris Karloff owed him two days of filming. Corman advised him to use some footage from an old Karloff movie (The Terror), and grab as much as he could from Karloff in two days, and then he would have a new Karloff movie. Bogdanovich followed his advice. The movie was Targets, and it kickstarted a hell of a career. Generous, friendly, stingy, witty, clever, and obsessed with the bottom line, Corman is the epitome of the contradictory B-movie maven, the weird artist with the heart of a businessman. Will any of his movies last? Probably not. But he gave us the cinema of the 1970s and for that, we owe him the world. 

93.
Dabney Coleman died. Here’s my obituary for him. We lost one of the great onscreen cads with the passing of Dabney Coleman, the unlikely star. He worked bit parts on TV shows throughout the 1960s before moving into richer roles in made for TV movies. Quippy, with a wonderful condescending side eye and a pinched sour face, Coleman hit the big time with 9 to 5, the 1980 comedy where he plays a sexist, domineering pig, a role he plays with relish. He was already middle-aged but he got six good movies in quick succession: Melvin and Howard, Tootsie, War Games, Cloak and Dagger, and Muppets Take Manhattan. I first took notice in Cloak and Dagger, a seminal boys’ movie in the early ’80s; he plays a make-believe spy friend to a lonely child who finds himself embroiled in real spy shit. God, I loved this movie, and so did everyone I knew. It must be pretty terrible, as no one talks about it anymore. I later watched The Slap Maxwell Story, a short-lived series where he played a fast-talking reporter with a cynical sense of humor, in syndication. I thought it was great; no one else I knew was even aware of it. In Tootsie, he’s pitch-perfect—but almost everyone is in that marvelous movie. 9 to 5 was his breakout, and it’s easy to see why, even if the movie has aged poorly. (Jane Fonda is miscast; the gender politics are so distant from our current era that the movie isn’t believable; the score doesn’t work; etc. Tomlin and Parton are great, though.) He’s so risible and skeevy, you can’t wait for these poor secretaries to bump him off. He played boorish reprobates as opposed to charming rakes, and his myopic, frustrated, why isn’t the world doing what I want it to do old guy antics have aged like wine. Still, he slid back into TV land, with some rich roles on TV movies, especially in Sworn to Silence, followed by loads of mediocre stuff, canceled shows and the like. He could overact. He hammed it up, especially in sitcoms. But he made his way back to prestige with Boardwalk Empire and a single episode of Yellowstone, his last work. That signature mustache. That crinkled face. Yet another character actor with a CV of gold has moved along. 

94.
Trump was found guilty on all counts of election interference, a stunning result. Mike Johnson, on paper the third most powerful person in America, called for the Supreme Court to intervene, despite having no jurisdiction. Other Republican leaders called it a sham, a conspiracy. The case was both simple and complex, in essence a documents case. The prosecution had over twenty witnesses. The defense called just one. Trump has since given word salad press conferences, the verbal diarrhea involving little league baseball and bad weather. I have little schadenfreude over Trump’s conviction, although he is undoubtedly guilty. 

95.
Morgan Spurlock died. Here’s my obituary for him. Morgan Spurlock, the director of Super Size Me, one of the most successful documentaries of all time, died. That film follows Spurlock through 30 days of only eating McDonalds, tracking the deleterious effects on his health and well-being as he did so. The movie was a left of center diatribe against the fast food industry, how it gets its hooks in children and how it’s wrecking the health and well being of adults. The trick is that it’s funny. Spurlock is genial, good company. He laughs at himself and, despite the movie’s message, loves McDonalds. Half of the movie is Spurlock relishing the fast food he never eats, as he knows it’s bad for him. After its success, he set up a production company and embarked on TV shows and other film projects, including Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?, and 30 Days, a series of hour-long documentaries about people stepping out of their comfort zones for a solid month. I liked Spurlock. He had a touch of the prolonged adolescence about him, something louche and lounge singer-y, and used his goofy grin to sneak in trenchant arguments about America into his movies. He was an effective, entertaining director. At the beginning of #metoo, he outed himself for bad behavior, including a rape allegation in college. It was a strange confession; It ended his career. I don’t know what his life was like after his mea culpa. I imagine he felt lost, a little bewildered, a little disgusted. He probably wrote some scripts. I hope he read novels, listened to music, spent time with his family. Cancer got him. He was 52 years old. It’s hard to assess his career in the end. Super Size Me was a seismic event in pop culture. He made a sequel that no one watched. The fast food industry is more profitable than ever. 

96.
As for the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, we’ll see. Putin is now purging the military ranks of his top officers, while Israel just bombed a refugee camp. Russia continues to destroy Ukrainian villages and cities, razing them with endless artillery fire and waves of expendable soldiers. Russia has suffered over half a million casualties, a shocking number. Yet, they continue to threaten nuclear winter if Ukraine dares to strike back. Putin’s stranglehold continues. Israel continues to bomb dense urban areas, including schools and hospitals.

97.
The wars are different, but we’re all drawing parallels. In both cases, children are dying. I watch a video of a three year old girl in Ukraine shivering while Russian artillery explodes nearby. She’s trying to eat her morning cereal without crying. My heart fills up with hate. 

98.
My crystal ball is broken. I don’t know if Biden will win, or Trump. I vacillate. I’ve tried to take refuge in books, music, and my children. But the news of the world won’t leave me alone. I plan to make phone calls and write postcards as the election draws nearer.

99.
I go to a palm reader. The how and why are complicated. She looks at my palm. I can see you’re a good person, she says, but you are deeply unhappy. She goes on to tell me I’m a writer, I struggle, and that I don’t spend enough time on myself, and I’m resentful about it. Jesus, I thought I was good at reading people. I flee as quickly as possible. I was afraid of having a breakdown.

100.
I’m out of pocket for the next month. I’ll be writing and rewriting, traveling, reading, recharging.