Rich and Famous (1981)

Richard Brody, in the 16 December 2013 issue of The New Yorker, wrote an essay on the films of George Cukor. I watched A star is born, but could not abide watching it all (his own greatest artistic achievement and also that of Judy Garland, its star.). I watched Rich and Famous, and did finish it.

Brody: An esteemed raconteur, Cukor started to write his autobiography, but his lifelong reticence got in the way, and he made his last film, “Rich and Famous” (1981), as if to explain: it’s a deceptively chirpy comedy starring Candice Bergen as a young society matron in Malibu who launches her literary career—and destroys her private life—by writing a tell-all novel.

 MRQE.com offers this synopsis: Two women find their friendship tested when one rises from obscurity to success in this glossy remake of Old Acquaintance. Liz Hamilton (Jacqueline Bisset) and Merry Noel (Candice Bergen) are close friends who met while they were freshmen at Smith College in the 1950s. Liz has become a highly respected novelist, while Merry wed Doug Blake (David Selby) and raised a family. While Merry is happy, she can't help but envy Liz for her glamorous career as an author. Merry decides to write a novel of her own, and with Liz's help, the book soon finds a publisher. While Merry's trashy potboiler earns few positive reviews, it's a massive best-seller, and Merry's fame and wealth soon outstrips that of Liz, leading to jealousy between the old friends and problems in Merry's marriage. Rich and Famous was the final picture directed by Hollywood legend George Cukor; the guest list at the party sequences include such literary and cinematic notables as Christopher Isherwood, Ray Bradbury, Paul Morrissey, and Roger Vadim

I wondered what Ebert thought of it. It contains scenes that make you want to squirm because of their awkwardness and awfulness, and yet you don't want to look away and you're not bored. The movie has the courage to go to extremes, and some of those extremes may not be art but are certainly unforgettable.
The movie forges ahead through tempestuous fights and tearful reconciliations, while Bergen's alcoholic ex-husband makes a pass at Bisset, and Bergen tries to bribe all of New York to win the book prize. I was not (and am not) sure what this movie was trying to tell me about the two characters -- perhaps that if you stay in touch with someone for twenty years, you can be absolutely sure that at the end of that time you still will be in touch.
Insights into human nature don't seem to be the point of the movie, anyway. It's a slick, trashy, entertaining melodrama, with too many dumb scenes to qualify as successful. A film critic for one of the national newsweeklies said, in reviewing this film, that he has a friend who has a rule: He only attends movies that are in color and are about rich people. I deplore the attitude behind that statement, but in a crazy way, I absolutely understand it.

More than once, during shouting matches, I thought it would do well as a stage play.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops's review: Rich and Famous -- Screen version of the John Van Druten play about two very different women (Candice Bergen and Jacqueline Bisset), both writers, who preserve a friendship for more than two decades despite the strains caused by emulation and jealousy. Directed by George Cukor, the glossy soap opera pays more attention to its glamorous locations than to the human dimension of its story. The sole redeeming feature is good acting by the principals. General air of vapid amorality and two graphic sexual sequences. (O) (R) ( 1981 )
O: morally offensive

Vincent Canby's review in the Times: SOMEWHERE inside ''Rich and Famous,'' George Cukor's splashy, elongated new comedy, there is the material for a possibly brilliant two-character one-act play.

The Sessions

I forst saw a blub review of this film by David Denby in the 19 Nov 12 issue of NYer by David Denby (Easily the most highly sanctified movie about sex ever made. John Hawkes plays a fortyish man in the nineteen-sixties, a polio victim who lives mostly in an iron lung. He’s never had sex, and he’s desperately horny. After talking it over with his priest (a morose William H. Macy), he hires a sex surrogate, played by a brisk, frequently naked Helen Hunt (looking great, for the record, at forty-nine). Hawkes is inventive and charming, and the writer and director Ben Lewin makes him ruefully funny; the actor is easy to take. The filmmakers know that their therapeutic approach to lust is a bit creepy, and they try to joke their way out of it. They don’t succeed: the sex scenes and the long discussions with the priest—an unhappy voyeur—are all a bit queasy, yet you can’t laugh. The movie is so clammily sensitive and tame that it stifles any strong response. Based on the life and journalism of the late poet Mark O’Brien.)

I did not find Macy morose; on the contrary, he showed a range of emotions, including gloom. He played a priest who, despite his misgivings, talked with a parishioner about sex outside of marriage. As a friend.

Roger Ebert begins his 3.5 stars review: At a time when sex is as common in the movies as automobiles, his need and his attempt to fulfill it requires an awesome dedication. The film is a reminder of how unique sexual intimacy is, and even how ennobling.

And he ends it: "The Sessions" isn't really about sex at all. It is about two people who can be of comfort to each other, and about the kindness that forms between them. This film rebukes and corrects countless brainless and cheap sex scenes in other movies. It's a reminder that we must be kind to one another.

Stephen Holden in the NY Times also liked it: Arriving in a culture steeped in titillation, prurience and pornographic imagery, “The Sessions” is a pleasant shock: a touching, profoundly sex-positive film that equates sex with intimacy, tenderness and emotional connection instead of performance, competition and conquest. There are moments between the client and his surrogate that are so intensely personal that your first instinct may be to avert your eyes. But the actors’ lighthearted rapport allows you to rejoice unashamedly in their characters’ pleasure.

Justice for all

Newton, Jim. (2006). Justice for all : Earl Warren and the nation he made. New York: Riverhead Books.

A superb book about a superb American. Earl Warren was California personified: born in LA, he grew up in Bakersfield, his father a union man who suffered at the hands of capital. EW grew up wanting to go to law school, and did, attending Berkeley's law school after graduating from it. Inspired by Hiram Johnson, he entered politics, and rose from Alameda County assistant DA to California DA, then California governor.

EW supported Japanese internment, and could never bring himself to admit it a mistake. Otherwise, he carved a middle-of-the-road stance in most, almost all, political issues. He supported education, imposed a gasoline tax to help develop a top-tier road system, and fought entrenched interests.

Deweys' VP candidate in 1948, he was California's favorite son in the 1952 convention (which Taft entered as a favorite; Taft opposed aid to Britain during WW II, and voted against NATO). Whether Eisenhower made a deal with Warren for California's votes at the convention is unclear; what is clear is the bad blood between Warren and Nixon.

“We have a traitor in our delegation. It’s Nixon.” (248)

Warren accepted Eisenhower's offer to become Solicitor General, contingent on his getting the first Supreme Court vacancy. When Chief Justice Vinson died, Warren pressed for the spot; Eisenhower resisted, but gave in to Warren. He would long after say his two worst mistakes were to appoint Warren and Brennan. As is so often the case, I utterly disagree: those were two of the best acts he ever undertook as President.

Newton's narrative flows easily, and for a reader who enjoys history, this is a superb book.

Bottle shock

Passably good film about an Englishman who is trying to teach wine to Parisians (he has very few customers), and falls on an idea of having a blind-tasting competition between French and California wines. Entertaining.

Some liked it: on Rotten Tomatoes 48% of critics and 60% of viewers rated it positively. I'd agree with the 60%, perhaps add a dime.

Successful Spadework

Detective-fiction readers hate saying the long goodbye. They want new cases solved by their favorite sleuths even after those heroes' author/creators have died. Publishers and estates sometimes oblige them. Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe was resuscitated at the hands of Robert B. Parker. Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe entertained more clients with the help of Robert Goldsborough. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes is ever with us, thanks to dozens of pastiche artists. But until a year ago, no writer had been allowed to summon the ghost of Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade, the 1920s San Francisco private eye who starred in three short stories and the classic 1930 novel "The Maltese Falcon."

Hammett's sole surviving relative, Jo Hammett Marshall, his daughter, didn't think anyone anyone could ever do a good follow-up piece on it." 

Joe Gores, a Northern California author whose books include the 1975 novel "Hammett," and who—like Mrs. Marshall's father—worked as a detective before turning to a life of fiction. "I said, 'I can't write a sequel to it,'" he recalls telling Mrs. Marshall during a 2005 celebration marking the 75th anniversary of "Falcon"'s publication, noting that most of the book's main characters by the end are dead or in prison, except for Spade. He proposed writing a prequel instead.


"Vince Emery, the publisher who did Hammett's 'Lost Stories,' gave me a whole bunch of research books," says Mr. Gores. "Jo [Hammett Marshall] sent me books about Sun Yat-sen. That's how I came up with the plot for the Chinese girl. And there's a research librarian at the Fairfax [California] library, Theresa McGovern, who is fantastic." (In tribute, Mr. Gores has Sam Spade encounter a Bay Area librarian named Theresa McGovern.)

The soloist

Good performances by Foxx and Downey as the principals in the story of an LA reporter who stumbles upon a homeless man playing Beethoven on a two-string violin, befriends him, and writes about him in his newspaper column. He, STeve Lopez, wrote a book. I remember reading about him years back.

Goal! : the dream begins