23-25. Star Wars Episodes IV, V, and VI

I watched the three original Star Wars movies back to back to back on May 4th this year, since it is Star Wars Day and all.

I watched these movies frequently as a kid, but had not seen them for the last few years up until now. So it felt like I was watching something I used to like to see if I still like it as an adult.

The verdict: Yep. Still a magical movie experience. My favorite has always been The Empire Strikes Back, but this recent viewing gave me a stronger appreciation for A New Hope. I always like the exposition part of a story, and I love how the characters are introduced in Episode IV.

I did get kind of restless part way through the marathon though, so I think I will wait a few years before attempting it again.

I'll always connect Star Wars with my dad, whose story of seeing it on the big screen is my strongest and earliest memory of movies as a transformative experience. Also, "I thought they smelled bad on the outside" is one of his favorite quotes.

22. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Another classic 1950s sci fi. This one isn't as overtly preachy as The Day the Earth Stood Still, but it does play on the sense of dread and paranoia so prevalent during the Cold War era.

The plot, in a nutshell:

The story depicts an extraterrestrial invasion in a small California town. The invaders replace human beings with duplicates that appear identical on the surface but are devoid of any emotion or individuality. A local doctor uncovers what is happening and tries to stop them.

I enjoyed this movie quite a bit. It has beautiful black and white cinematography, and there are some legitimately creepy moments. Recommended viewing for when you feel like staying in on a Friday night. Pour yourself a gimlet or a mint fizz and pop this in.

21. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

A flying saucer lands in Washington, D.C. with a humanoid extraterrestrial (Klaatu) and his protective robot (Gort) companion onboard. Klaatu has been sent to preach disarmament to all the world's leaders, but is told that assembling a meeting would be impossible (it's the height of the Cold War and the US-Eastern Bloc rivalry). Klaatu was sent because the residents of other planets have started fearing for their safety ever since the humans of Earth began harnessing atomic power. Klaatu escapes his confinement in a hospital and ventures into human society; society responds with a paranoid witch hunt. Since he can't get access to the world's leaders, he seeks out the smartest man he can find, the Einstein-esque Dr. Barnhart, and explains that his home planet has solved the problem of violence by creating a robot police force. He also tells Dr. Barnhart and his scientist friends that if humanity lets its violent nature bleed over into space exploration, Earth will be destroyed by the robots. His final words of warning: "The decision rests with you...."

In addition to being a sci fi classic, this movie is also a great time capsule of Cold War-era social commentary. It's not the subtlest or most exciting movie ever captured on film, but it showcases what so many sci fi stories try to achieve: we humans get in over our heads, and placing us in extraordinary circumstances is sometimes the only way to expose us to our own naivete.

Book: What is the What

What is the What was one of the awesome books I read during the month of April.

It tells the story of Valentino Achak Deng, a Dinka who was one of the Lost Boys of Sudan orphaned in the 2nd Sudanese War. Valentino fled on foot with a group of boys and a teacher after their village was destroyed, and they walked all the way to Ethiopia, where they started new lives in a refugee camp. A few years later they were moved to another refugee camp in Kenya. Eventually, Valentino made it to America, where he has lived ever since.

My mom read this book a few years ago, and when my mom is really into a book she has a habit of updating me on it every day in vivid detail, recounting her favorite parts she has read the previous day. While she was reading this book, she kept saying, "Rachel, you read it and you just can't believe it. You just can't believe it." I specifically remember her telling me the Dinka tale that the book is named after.

A common theme of the book is the need to keep moving into the unknown: first the group is moving away from the Arab militias, then they're moving into Ethiopia (an unknown place to most of them), then Kenya (another unknown place), and finally America (where life turns out to not be so easy as they had hoped.)

The book is not all sad, though. There are a lot of funny parts about adapting to life in the various locations Valentino lived. One of my favorites revolved around a tampon box. Upon their first visit to an American grocery store, some of the Lost Boys were entranced by a tampon box because they thought it was really beautiful. Their host mother explained to them what it was for and that they had no need to buy it, but they bought it anyway and proudly displayed it as a centerpiece on their table at home.

I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading for fun. It is a punch to the gut, but a good one.

Book: Going Clear

This may be the creepiest book I have ever read. It is also totally riveting and one of the best books I have read this year.

It covers L. Rob Hubbard's life, how he created Scientology, various scandals related to the church, the rise of current church head David Miscavage, and the relationships of various celebrities with Scientology. Lawrence Wright covers all the angles thoroughly. He conducted interviews with over 200 current and former Scientologists as part of his research, and he focuses heavily on the story of Hollywood screenwriter Paul Haggis' experience in the church. Haggis joined the church as a young man in the 70s and was a devoted member for 35 years before leaving in 2009. Lawrence Wright wrote an article for the New Yorker about Haggis' experience, in which Haggis called the church "a cult," and that article inspired Wright to write a book on the subject.

I saw The Master last year, which was rumored to be kinda/sorta based on L. Ron Hubbard's life, but not officially about Scientology. Now the movie makes a lot more sense because 1. a lot of the stuff in the film very closely mirrors L. Ron Hubbard's life and early events in Scientology history, and 2. I can see why the backers denied it being a film about Scientology, because church members love to harass anyone they deem threatening. I'm sure the principles involved still got their fair share of grief, even though they tried to distance themselves from any connection between the film and Scientology.

Large swaths of the tale told in this book are hard to believe. The extent to which Hubbard could manipulate others defies logic. There are a lot of heartbreaking stories about people who gave up their relationships with their loved ones in exchange, only to be later abused by the church. Hubbard himself alienated many of his close family members.

My dad once (jokingly) told me that "all you have to do to be a teacher is stay just one lesson ahead of your students." L. Ron Hubbard took that farce to the extreme. He had a gift for making up stories on the fly and writing quickly. He spun that into a career for himself and, ultimately, one of the greatest scams in history.

This book is a must read. Not just for the story it tells, but also for Lawrence Wright's journalistic prowess. I've added his earlier book The Looming Tower to my reading list.

Books: Beautiful Boy

I've read a string of really great books in the past few weeks. I finished this one most recently and it was the one that made the most impact on me, because my brother has a history of drug abuse and has been using for most of my life. Until now I have never gone out of my way to try and understand what it all means.

I originally ran across David Sheff's new book Clean while perusing an airport bookstore and put it on my reading list. But in doing some more research, I found that Clean was a follow-up to Sheff's earlier book Beautiful Boy, and I vaguely remembered reading some positive reviews of that book when it came out. I decided to start from the beginning of the story and picked up Beautiful Boy from the library.

I read it over the course of a few days and it got so intense in some parts that I had to stop and take breaks because the story made my eyes well up with tears. It resurrected some memories from my childhood I had not thought about in a long time, but remember vividly. There's a reason I haven't thought about in a while. They are some of the most painful memories I have. It also helped me make sense of a lot of the emotions I remember feeling back then, the helplessness, the hurt, the confusion over why my brother did things that made no sense at all when he seemed like a naturally smart kid.

It's just now hitting me that I really don't know my brother at all and I never have. Maybe I have known this for a while but couldn't verbalize it until now. He started using drugs when I was so young that I have only a few fuzzy memories of him before the drugs. All I know about his early years is borrowed from what my parents have told me. It's like in Blade Runner where the replicant Rachel insists she's a human because she has memories of her childhood and Deckard tells her they are implanted memories, taken from someone else. I'm just now realizing I never refer to my mom and dad as our parents and I don't think of them that way. They're my parents, they have always been there, while he has been in and out and had kind of a phantom presence.

And now I fully understand how much people change when they start using drugs. This is one of the hardest parts of drug addiction for families to cope with. The child they know vanishes and is replaced with a person who lies and steals. My brother became that when I was so young that I've never known what he is really like. We watched an old home video at a relative's house recently, and my cousins and I looked and acted like younger versions of ourselves. Seeing my brother felt like seeing a ghost, and impression of a person.

The timing of my finding this book feels like fate, if you believe in that sort of thing. I'd been wanting to spend time with my parents this summer and talk about certain things; for whatever reason, I feel ready right now to process big stuff like this. They did their best to shield me from what went on with my brother, but 20 years of near-constant worry and stress inevitably took its toll on them and me.

I got into the habit of not talking about my brother a long time ago because it seemed like opening up to people caused them to say things like "well why don't you just send him to rehab?" "Why don't you do [x]?" They made it sound like there was an easy solution to the problem and my family just wasn't trying hard enough. I used to wonder, why doesn't anything work? Why isn't he fixed yet? We did everything we could do. You just can't save a drug addict with love. There are tons of people out there just like us.

Why did I never take the time to learn about my brother's condition until now?? Maybe I just didn't want to think about it, it was too painful. My parents wanted me to be OK and I focused on making it to adulthood and creating a stable environment for myself. Now I'm ready to think about it all.

21. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

I saw a good chunk of this movie on PBS when I was about ~10 years old, but this past week was the first time I actually sat down and watched it beginning to end. The parts I remembered from childhood include: the space station spinning to Strauss like a ballerina, the mysterious black monoliths showing up, and (most vividly seared in my memory), HAL singing "Daisy Bell" as he's being shut down.

I like most of this movie a lot. It achieves an epic feel without resorting to the usual glittery tricks other epic films employ (lush scenery, dazzling costumes, star actors to deliver crackling dialogue). What it lacks in instant gratification, it makes up for in thought provocation. The pacing is solemn and meditative. The starkness of it leaves you feeling unsettled.

I would put this movie in the category of "films you should watch once a decade." It is the work of a supremely confident director (if you ever needed proof that Stanley Kubrick was born to make movies, here it is. But I doubt you need it.) Kubrick was still in his 30s when he started production of this film. Pretty impressive.

Fun fact: the apes in the beginning section were portrayed by a mime troupe.

20. Spirited Away (2001)

Confession: I probably would never have watched this movie had it not been on the list. I don't normally seek out animated films, because I think of them as "kid movies." This movie shot that bias to hell. I'm so glad I watched it, because it is a masterpiece and totally deserves its place on the list. The story is surprising and creative and the animation is beautiful.

It reminded me of the book Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which is ostensibly a children's book, but is complex enough that I had to read it for a college English class. We spent a lot of time discussing the symbols and references in that book, and you can do the same with Spirited Away.

The story focuses on a 10-year-old girl named Chihiro, who is moving to a new town in Japan with her parents. On the way to their new house, they stumble across an abandoned theme park, and the parents get into some trouble. Chihiro then has to figure out how to save them.

If you haven't already seen this one, I hope you will check it out and be pleasantly surprised like I was. 

19. Blade Runner (1982)

Blade Runner is the first sci fi movie I can remember feeling blown away by.

I watched the Star Wars trilogy a lot as a kid, but it was just always around for me to watch whenever because we had the VHS tapes. I can't remember a time when I hadn't seen Star Wars yet. 

The first time I saw Blade Runner all the way through was a few years ago, during my original half-assed attempt to watch the movies in the book.

From the opening shot (below), the movie is just jaw-dropping. The art direction and music are perfect for creating this futuristic mashed-up version of Los Angeles. The whole thing is even more jaw-dropping when you find out that all the special effects were done in camera!

Ridley Scott proved himself to be a genre mix-master here, as he takes a noir film vibe and transplants it into a futuristic setting (2019--not so far off, now!). Throw in some heavy symbolism, and you've got yourself a sci fi epic. Except it was a flop when it came out in 1982.....

This is one of those special movies that has risen through the ranks of well-regarded films over the years. Time has served it well.

I watched the "Final Cut," which has no voiceover, includes the dream sequence, and does not have the original ending the studio tacked on. If you don't know what I'm talking about....get a copy of this movie immediately!!

Here is the opening scene, one of the best in film history:

18. All the President's Men (1976)

All the President's Men tells the true story of two reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who uncover the Watergate scandal while writing for the Washington Post newspaper. Of course, it's not yet the Watergate Scandal when they start out, it's just an odd burglary. But as they start to investigate, they realize something much bigger is afoot and have to fight to keep reporting on it.

I first saw this movie in high school history class. We watched a few other history-related movies, but this is the only one that stuck with me as being really good (I will never forgive my teacher for making us sit through all of Dances with Wolves.......). Everything about this movie is simple and straightforward, but the pacing and editing propel it into thriller territory. No time is wasted on backstories of the main characters or exposition. This is a procedural movie. It's less about the historic outcome and more about the process of chasing down leads that eventually nailed President Nixon. The music is unobtrusive and doesn't even start until half an hour in, but once it does, it increases your sense of dread. It takes place in mostly drab locations, and there's a ton of dialogue, but it is well-paced and engrossing the whole way through.

My favorite thing about this movie is the balance of earnest vs. goofy between Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. There is one great scene in particular that shows their initial interactions: Redford puts a finished piece in the stack of articles to be re-typed.....Hoffman strolls over, picks it up, and starts making corrections.....Redford feels wounded and walks over to ask Hoffman what he thinks he is doing. Watch:


Their relationship starts off uneasily, but they gradually ease into a symbiotic working partnership.

Jason Robards has the perfect amount of crust as publisher Ben Bradlee.


More crust here.

I wonder if young Aaron Sorkin watched this movie and felt inspired to become a writer.

American filmmaking at its finest.

17. Mad Max (1979)

This was my first time ever watching this movie. I can see why it's a classic.

One of the things I worry about with my project is whether I will remember any details of individual movies after I've watched so many of them. Here's what I will remember about this one:

1. Mel Gibson was once young and innocent looking

All my memories of Mel Gibson are post-Braveheart, so it was refreshing to go back to what first made him famous and see him in all his fresh-faced glory. It's kind of mind-boggling to think about how much has changed for him in the interim and what a catastrophic fall from public grace he had. Maybe he was always destined for a troubled personal life, since he showed up to the first audition for this movie with facial injuries sustained in a bar fight.

2. This movie may be an Australian sci/fi, but it feels like an American western

Is it a bleak prediction of the world's future, a story of revenge and the triumph of good over evil, or a meditation on the themes of lawlessness and control that prevail in stories about the Old West? All of the above. Mad Max was inspired by incidents of violence related to the 1970s oil crisis and the director's experience working on car crash victims as an ER doctor. George Miller noticed that Australians would go to great lengths to keep their cars running. I've never been to Australia, but it sounds like their car culture is comparable to America's. The attitude embedded in this film reminds me of all the 2nd Amendment debates that are all over the news in the wake of 2012's shootings. What do people really need those guns/all that gas for? Doesn't matter. What matters is what they believe is within their rights, because that will drive their actions. Ideology is the greatest motivator.

3. The villains are memorable

It takes great skill to make a villain really scary. You need an actor who can portray someone so angry and unhinged that you actually believe they would do crazy and evil things. Hugh Keays-Byrne is pitch perfect as the Toecutter. 

4. It's got a great ending

I don't need to describe the ending, because you've probably already seen it. It is perfect and this movie would not be nearly so satisfying without it. 

16. The Terminator (1984)

Arnold at his most chilling.

15. District 9 (2009)

What would happen if an alien spaceship came to Earth over South Africa?

District 9 tells the story of what happens after an alien ship appears over Johannesburg, South Africa in 1982. The locals watch and wait, but for months, the ship just hovers there with no signs of movement. Finally, the government sends in a team to investigate and it finds the ship is populated by a large group of very malnourished aliens. Suddenly the aliens become the world's newest refugee group. Humanitarian aid is called in, and a special area (the District 9 of the title) is built for the aliens to live in. There is one big problem, however: their ship is broken, so the aliens are stuck being South Africa's permanent guests. Over the next two decades, District 9 devolves into being a slum; this, added the governmental costs of keeping the aliens alive creates tension with the citizens of South Africa and leads to interspecies violence. By 2010, a decision has been made to raze District 9 and relocate the aliens to a new site 200 kilometers away from Johannesburg. The film opens with documentary-style interviews recounting the appointment of an affable and naive bureaucrat named Wikus van de Merwe to lead the eviction and relocation efforts. The interviews hint that something went terribly awry with the operation, and one interviewee mentions feeling like Wikus' actions during the operation felt like "a betrayal." You can't believe that happy-go-lucky Wikus is capable of doing anything to betray his fellow humans, but over the course of the film, you see the circumstances he is trapped in and how that alters his humanity.

I was blown away by this movie. It turned the premise of "aliens coming to Earth" on its head and tackles themes like racism, xenophobia, bureaucracy, and military force. The aliens land in an unexpected place, and they need our help, which we give. But then the alien issue turns from "how can we help them?" into "how can we get rid of them?"

Unsurprisingly, the plot was heavily influenced by the director's growing up during apartheid in South Africa. The razing of District 9 is even inspired by a real event when the residents of a mixed-race district in Cape Town were forcibly removed so their area could be used exclusively by the white population.

The most surprising thing about this movie is that it's the first feature film for both its director and lead actor. What a heck of a first film. I liked everything about it. It's framed by a faux-documentary that gives it a sense of realism. A lot of science fiction films are intended to be allegorical, but this one really brings it home. Highly recommended viewing.

I'm caving...sorta

I've decided to amend my original plan to watch the 1001 movies in chronological order. I'm already losing steam and I need to get my momentum back. I'm not always in the mood to watch a long silent movie, you know what I mean? From now on I'm not going to focus so much on chronology and just try to check movies off the list. I might do them thematically and spend a whole month watching dystopian sci fi, or go by director or country.

I've been in the mood to watch Blade Runner recently, so now I can. The new plan (to get through the list as fast as I can) starts.....now.

Moby Dick, the Essex, and Ships on the Silver Screen

Remember a few years ago when Russell Crowe was in Master and Commander, that really awesome movie about a British warship that had an ending that was perfectly poised for a sequel? I'm really disappointed a sequel hasn't happened. I guess it's still possible, though unlikely. Hollywood seems preoccupied with other stuff now.

I got to thinking about it after I read this blog about the sinking of the Essex, which partially inspired Moby Dick and is one of the most amazing survival stories in modern history. I have been fascinated by anything related to Moby Dick and 19th century seafaring ever since I was a kid. My dad knows all about whales; he studied whales in his free time before I was born and I'm convinced that the only person who could tell you more about whales would be an actual marine biologist. Moby Dick loomed large in my house growing up. My dad references it more than any other literary work. You have to know it to keep up with him. In addition to being an amateur cetologist, dad also has encyclopedic knowledge of 19th century whaling and naval warfare. I think he enjoyed the "nuts and bolts" passages in Moby Dick more than anyone else who has ever read it. Let's be honest, most of us skipped over those parts, if we made it through the book at all.

I was really happy to see that blog from the Smithsonian. There are actually two true stories that served as Herman Melville's main inspiration when he was writing Moby Dick. The character of Moby Dick (yep, he's a character) was inspired by a real-life albino whale named Mocha Dick who was famous for his large size and many skirmishes with whaleships. This whale was a legend. When he was finally killed, his body yielded over 100 barrels of oil and there were numerous harpoons stuck in him from previous chase attempts. All of these traits would make their way into Melville's book.

The other true story that inspired Moby Dick was that of the Essex. The Essex was an American whaleship that was rammed and sunk by a sperm whale in 1820. Melville folded the idea of a whale ramming a ship into his book, but he didn't include what happened after, which was even more unbelievable: stranded at just about the most remote possible location on earth (more than 1200 miles from the nearest island), the sailors set out in open whaleboats to find land. Eight of them survived the epic ordeal--3 months on the open sea, starvation, cannibalism, the works--and all of them, yes ALL returned to sea after they got back to New England. Can you believe they recovered and went back to sea? Well, they didn't all totally recover. The captain of the Essex would survive two MORE shipwrecks before backers finally deemed him an unlucky "Jonah" and he was forced to spend the rest of his life on land. The first mate hoarded food in his attic later in life and eventually had to be put in an institution.

Whaleboat like the ones the Essex crew used

There is a fantastic book about the Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick that has all the gory details of what went down. This book is on my short list of "books I read in a single day." I couldn't put it down. It is well worth your time.

I wish Hollywood would make some more good movies about ships. The 1956 version of Moby Dick is really good, although not many people have seen it because it was a commercial flop. Audiences couldn't handle Gregory Peck playing a villain (Captain Ahab). The story of the Essex could make a fantastic movie with the right director attached. And there needs to be a Master and Commander sequel.

If you're in the mood for other movies about ships: Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) is really good, is also based on a true story, and stars Clark Gable and Charles Laughton! I haven't seen the 1962 remake with Marlon Brando, so I can't comment on whether that one is worth your time or not.

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage is another great book I couldn't put down that is about a true story of survival.

America's Homegirl: Nora Ephron

I went to Austin, Texas last week for a few days to visit my boyfriend and I bought this book to read on my flights home. I was all prepared to be a literary genius by the time I deplaned. But when I got to the airport, I realized I had left the book on his kitchen table. <sadface> So I high-tailed it to the airport bookstore and luckily they had this book I'd heard really good things about that has been on my reading list for a while, but I never got around to checking out.

I'm glad that it got accidentally got bumped up to the top spot, because it entertained me all the way home. Here are a couple of my favorite quotes.

From her chapter on cooking -

Just before I'd moved to New York, two historic events had occurred: The birth control pill had been invented, and the first Julia Child cookbook was published. As a result, everyone was having sex, and when the sex was over, you cooked something.

On the weird true stories one encounters as a journalist -

I can't get over this aspect of journalism. I can't believe how real life never lets you down. I can't understand why anyone would write fiction when what actually happens is so amazing.

Nora did, of course, get into writing fiction. She wrote my favorite romantic comedy, When Harry Met Sally, and she also directed Sleepless in Seattle, which has one of my favorite scenes in a movie, ever:

I might have to do a little Ephron Fest this weekend and toast to her memory. She seems like one of those great people who was absolutely beloved by everyone who knew her. And she gave some great advice (passed down from her parents) in her book: everything is copy. Everything you see, do, and hear in life can become writing material.

Introverts and Movies

I just finished reading Susan Cain’s book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking (you have probably seen her TED talk.)

It was less of the self help manual for introverts that I expected and more of a plea to all people to understand that the person who talks the loudest does not always have the best ideas, and introverts shouldn't be pressured to fit into the "extrovert ideal." They contribute unique input and skills just the way they are.

I started wondering: are there certain jobs in the movie business that attract more introverts than other areas? Writing, editing?

Who are some great introverted characters from movies?

The first two that came to mind were Amelie (Amelie) and Andy Dufresne (Shawshank Redemption). They're not your typical heroes. They're quiet and hard to peg, but also sneaky and brilliant in their own ways.

Some of the qualities Susan Cain talks about in regards to introversion are tenacity and focus. These qualities can empower shy, gentle people (Gandhi, Rosa Parks) to oppose great foes. 

You can definitely see that tenacity in Andy Dufresne's character. Part of Shawshank Redemption is taken up by Andy's crusade to get better books for Shawshank Prison's small library. After he gets books, he acquires money to renovate and expand the library. Then he adds a music library, and he gets resources to start a GED program. And on and on. He single-handedly creates this amazing place for his prisonmates to go and stimulate their minds, something no one previously thought possible. Which leads to one of my favorite movie quotes of all time (Morgan Freeman's character speaking): 

"Prison time is slow time, so you do what you can to keep going. Some fellas collect stamps. Others build matchstick houses. Andy built a library." 

Andy finds his greatest foe in Shawshank Prison's Warden Norton. Norton is a cruel and merciless man who loves to hear himself preach. He uses and abuses Andy, but Andy has the last word when he gets revenge in the most fantastic way possible. And it's fantastic because it was a trap he had laid over the course of many years and no one saw it coming. Then you start thinking back over things he said and did throughout the movie that now make more sense. He was always a man with a plan. 

Tenacity and focus.

I've already got a running list of great supporting characters in movies, but now I'm going to start a list of great introverted characters as well. I think people are inspired by the way introverted characters solve unusual problems, because isn't that how we view life sometimes? A series of problems to solve? It takes a lot of creativity to make it through. Sometimes the quietest people have the best ideas for what to do. Active imaginations can do wonders.

Quiet is an interesting book and I recommend reading it. It's got some great food for thought. If you read it too, I'd love to know what you thought. And let me know if you can think of any memorable introverted characters I can add to my list. 

Creativity as a Moving Force

In this TED talk, Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love) discusses creativity and how elusive it can be. The ancient Greeks came up with an explanation for this, positing that creativity doesn't come from within our own beings, it's brought to us by mysterious "geniuses." Gilbert also talks about the fears people hold about creativity, that success makes you doomed to always live in the shadow of the one thing that made you famous. Her goal in all of this is to encourage people to view creativity in a new (old, really) light and lessen the burden of our expectations on each other.

The idea of viewing creativity as a moving force that is sometimes there and sometimes not resonates with me. Just this week I was talking to my uncle Judd, also a writer, about his work habits and he said that his output usually occurs in bursts. The idea of a creative genius makes me think of the scene in Mary Poppins where you see the weathervane changing directions, and in comes Mary, flying through the air with her umbrella. But she'll only stay until the wind changes again.

Gilbert doesn't directly address this in the video above, but listening to her talk and reading about her career got me thinking about this other trait of creativity: most people do their best work in the middle of their careers. Many of the greatest minds in history hit their strides only after years of hard work and dedication. Child prodigies and early masterpieces are the exception, not the rule.

I first read about this probably a year ago, and then I found proof of it when I went on a months-long Tolstoy bender. I read all 12 of Tolstoy's novels and novellas, which represent a span of about 60 years of his life. I could see an increase in his clarity of expression as I read through all the books. His two great masterpieces, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are numbers 6 and 7 on that list of 12.

I find all of this extremely comforting. As Gilbert says, your obligation is to show up every day and keep plugging away--and the more you show up and do your job, the more likely one of those creative geniuses will stop by for a visit.

14. Nanook of the North (1922)

The first documentary on the 1001 list, Nanook of the North is a groundbreaking film that depicts the rigors of subsistence living in northern Quebec. It follows the eponymous Nanook as he hunts, builds igloos, and engages in other survival-related activities to keep his family from starving or freezing to death. Also depicted in the film are Nanook's wife, Nyla, and their children.

Nanook of the North was the first documentary in history to be commercially successful and is still praised as one of the greatest achievements in the genre. In fact, this film almost singlehandedly established documentary as a new genre, though a name didn't exist for it yet. Very early one-reel films had depicted people going about their daily lives, but this was the first feature-length film to depict "real life" and focus on one subject. The only problem is, almost everything in Nanook of the North is staged. The family in the movie wasn't really a family, they were members of an Inuit community that director Robert Flaherty cast in the roles. The main character's name wasn't even Nanook. And he didn't die of starvation shortly after filming as the film claims.

Robert Flaherty was a young prospector and explorer sent to the Arctic by a railroad company in the early 20th century. Somewhere around 1913-14 he started filming the Inuit he encountered on his travels. For the next couple of years, he filmed them going about their daily lives until he had enough footage for a feature-length film. Then tragedy struck: he dropped a cigarette butt on the negative of his film (it's flammable stuff) and 30,000 feet of it burned up in an instant. He wasn't satisfied with the scenes left in tact, so he decided to raise money and return to the Arctic to shoot new footage.

Upon his return north in 1920, Flaherty set about making his film with a more focused plan than what he had before. He cast a few Inuit as the main characters of his film and hired other members of the Inuit community to be his crew. By this time, the Inuit in the area had started wearing Western-style clothing and hunting with guns, but Flaherty wanted to depict their traditional way of life, so in the film they only wear animal skins and hunt with weapons carved from animal bones. The hunting scenes in the movie are real--the actor playing Nanook actually kills live animals on camera (I don't recommend watching this if you're a vegetarian).

One of the most interesting scenes shows the family building an igloo from start to finish. In reality, more than one igloo was built for this sequence: the "family" built one to be shot from the outside, and another 3-sided igloo was built with the 4th side open so Flaherty could shoot some inside shots.

Even if the activities were staged, it's still interesting to see the traditional Inuit way of life and the movie is a good example of salvage ethnography. Even if the Inuit had been exposed to Western influences by 1922, they weren't so far removed from their traditional habits that they didn't know how to hunt with just a knife or a spear. I suspect there are plenty of scenes in modern documentaries that are staged for effect.

Unlike Flaherty, the Inuit involved in the film did receive any concrete benefits from the film. The woman who played Nyla reportedly bore a son fathered by Flaherty, but Flaherty never acknowledged him, despite the difficult circumstances of the boy's life--he was part of a group of Inuit relocated by the Canadian government to the High Arctic in the 1950s. The actor who played Nanook died of tuberculosis a few short years after the film was released.

The success of this film brought Flaherty worldwide acclaim and allowed him to continue directing films. His second film would inspire a fellow film-maker to coin the term "documentary." There are two other films by Flaherty on the 1001 list, Tabu and The Louisiana Story, both of which are hybrid documentary/narrative films with ethnographic themes.

13. Nosferatu (1922)

Nosferatu is the second great Expressionist film on the 1001 list (here's the first.) Its director, F.W. Murnau was one of the poster boys for German Expressionist cinema and one of the most influential directors of the Silent Era in general. He spent the first few years of his career making a name for himself in Germany, and then immigrated to the United States in 1926 to work in Hollywood. He would die of injuries sustained in a car crash at the tender age of 42, but he achieved great heights in his relatively short career.

Nosferatu is Murnau's best known film, but the origins of the film began with producer Albin Grau. When he was fighting in World War I in 1916, a Serbian farmer told Grau that the farmer's father was one of the undead, a vampire. A lifelong student of the occult, Grau was intrigued.

Fast forward to 1921. Grau and partner Enrico Dieckmann established Prana Film for the purpose of producing films with supernatural or occult themes. Remembering the Serbian farmer's tale from five years earlier, Grau decided their first film would be about vampires.

Grau and Dieckmann hired a writer experienced in dark romanticism to write a screenplay based on Bram Stoker's Dracula. The playwright renamed the characters and changed other aspects of the story enough that the filmmakers hoped they could get away with not having film rights to the book.

The resulting screenplay was detailed and rhythmic, filled with copious notes on lighting and camera angles. Murnau would rewrite some portions of the screenplay, but he kept the rhythmic feel in tact, even using a metronome during filming to keep the actors' movements in time with his script notes.

Murnau hired actor Max Schreck to play the film's version of Dracula, Count Orlok. His involvement in the film would become legendary in its own right (more on that later), but in real life he was an actor who had both stage and film experience before he was offered Nosferatu.

Filming took place in Germany (the town shots) and Slovakia (Count Orlok's castle). The production could only afford one camera, so there was only one original negative of the film (!!!).

Dracula is an epistolary novel, where the plot is told through a series of documents--diary entries, letters, newspaper articles, etc. The film keeps this format in tact, using the documents as title cards.

The beginning of the movie starts out just as Dracula does: young lawyer travels to visit Transylvanian Count on business.

Near the middle, it starts to deviate a little: the Count, now revealed to be a vampire, makes his way to Germany (England in the book.)

The ending of the movie differs more widely from the book than the rest of the story (I won't spoil it here).

The character of Van Helsing is almost completely left out of the movie, which made me really sad because I read the book a couple years ago and Van Helsing was my favorite character by far. It would have been nice if the studio had made a part 2 focusing on the Van Helsing parts of the book, but sadly, they never got the chance.

The film was released in 1922 with an ad campaign and a lavish release party and the producers had high hopes for its success. But the fate of the film's legacy was threatened when Bram Stoker's widow sued for copyright infringement and won. At Mrs. Stoker's request, the court ordered that all the existing prints and negatives be destroyed.

Luckily, at least one print survived outside Germany. Copies were made and the film surfaced again in the late 20s. This is why the release date is sometimes listed as 1929: that's when it was first shown in the United States.

The costs of the lawsuit caused Prana Film to declare bankrupty. Albin Grau's vision of a studio producing only supernatural-themed films would be short lived. But in its brief existence, Prana Film did give the world one groundbreaking classic.

Another part of the film that miraculously survives to this day is the shooting locations. Almost all of the buildings used in the film survived World War II and are still standing in Wismar and Lübeck, Germany, and northern Slovakia. One could feasibly make a pilgrimage there. Maybe Nosferatu tours already exist?

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One interesting thing about reading/watching stuff about vampires is you get to see how vampire lore has evolved over time. Most modern depictions of vampires show the influence of Stoker's characterization of Count Dracula as a cool, suave aristocrat. Nosferatu's vampire is a Count, but has none of the gentlemanly manners of the Count in Stoker's book. He's 100% creepy and is more of a rat/lizard creature than a human.

In addition to the indelible images of Count Orlok that this film contributed to the world, Nosferatu is also the point of origin for the idea that sunlight is fatal to vampires. That was not in earlier vampire fiction, but it entered the canon of vampire lore starting with this film. It demonstrates how much movies play a role in shaping public consciousness. An earlier example from the 1001 list is Birth of a Nation, which established burning crosses and white costumes as KKK iconography.

Nosferatu has inspired at least two feature-length films. The first was Werner Herzog's 1979 film Nosferatu: Phantom of the Night, starring Klaus Kinski (awesome in whatever role he plays). By 1979, Dracula had entered the public domain, so Herzog restored the original character names from the book. He wanted to make a stylistic homage to Nosferatu because he considered it the greatest German film ever produced, and he even copied some shots verbatim. This movie is on the 1001 list, so I'll be watching it at some point. 

The second feature film based on or inspired by Nosferatu was Shadow of a Vampire in 2000. Its plot is based on the legend that Max Schreck really was a vampire and director F.W. Murnau (played by John Malkovich) convinced him to appear in Nosferatu, but Murnau doesn't tell the rest of the cast and crew that they're dealing with a real vampire. The myth about Schreck began when someone claimed there was no evidence he had been in any other movies (this was later proved to be false). If it were true, that would have been the greatest casting move in history. Shadow of a Vampire is not on the 1001 list, but I might watch it anyway, because the premise sounds pretty entertaining. The role of Max-Schreck as real vampire" was reportedly written specifically for Willem Dafoe (more inspired casting).

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So that's the general story of Nosferatu. A little more about the nuts and bolts of the movie:

It's one thing to look at pictures of Count Orlok and think he is creepy, but it's a totally other feeling to actually see him in motion.

The first time he appears on screen is some of the most awesomely creepy footage I've ever seen. He only blinks once in the entire movie, and he appears to slither across the screen as he moves with quick, tiny steps and hunched over shoulders. Like I said before, he seems like more of a rat/lizard creature than a person, and his character development doesn't go much further than that. 

This film has all the striking visuals and effective use of shadow that The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari does, but the main difference is that whereas Caligari was obviously shot on a stage with matte paintings as backgrounds, Nosferatu was shot on location. That does give the film an air of realism, and the Count's movements are all so perfect that I can see why some people did not believe Max Schreck was just playing a role. This movie probably has the widest range of visual effects I've seen yet in a film on the 1001 list.

I was sad they greatly diminished Van Helsing's character, but the changes to the plot make for a movie that's just right in pacing and length. It's available to watch on Netflix. I suggest you check it out.

Hitchcock Part 2

I finished the Hitchcock book.

There are a whopping 18 films by Hitchcock on the 1001 movie list, more than any other director, and they span 1929 to 1972. Does that make mean he's the greatest director in history? Not necessarily, but that's for you to decide. Hitchcock remained experimental throughout his career, even at the very height of his fame, and he was incredibly prolific--53 films in all, and he was even working on plans for a 54th at the end of his life until he realized he didn't have enough time left to finish it. These are among the reasons it's impossible to tell someone to watch just a couple Hitchcock movies. You have to see at least two from every decade.

In contrast to all that's been written portraying Hitchcock as a control freak who terrorized actresses, this book presents him as a much more benign character. It feels like there are two Hitchcocks: there's the concrete Hitchcock of everyday life, the man who loved food and wine, told dirty jokes, and prized his wife's opinion above all else. And then there's the more abstract Hitchcock, the one whose psyche is played out in his films.

The parts of the book that most interested me weren't about the making of his best known films, but what happened in between filming, the creative process he followed - how he would create an entire movie around an experimental technique or an idea for a single shot that had been floating around in his head. Sometimes ideas would slowly evolve for years, even decades, before he could actually spin them into something bigger. One of his more experimental pictures is Rope, the whole of which consists of ten long shots, a huge stylistic risk. North by Northwest came into being because Hitchcock had the idea of filming people crawling over the faces of Mount Rushmore.

In addition to being prolific and experimental, Hitchcock was also impressively resilient. In between all the hits and classics, there are the missteps like Under Capricorn and Torn Curtain, but he always bounced back. Just when everyone thought he was too past his prime to direct anything else worth watching, he directed Frenzy, his "late masterpiece." Whenever he tried something new and it didn't pan out, he would so "whoops, OK, that didn't work," but he never stopped creating.

His legacy has proven to be just as resilient, even after his death. Take Vertigo, for example. Possibly the most personal and enigmatic of all Hitchcock's films,  it received mixed reviews upon its release and didn't do well at the box office, but its reputation steadily rose over the years. Its crowning achievement was displacing Citizen Kane as the #1 on Sight and Sound's poll of the 10 best movies of all time in 2012, 54 years after its original release. Other movies have seen a rise in popularity over the years, but this one is the most impressive. How does something like that even happen? The only way I can explain it is that critics needed that long to digest it. With this film, Hitchcock took us deeper into his mind than we had ever been before and we needed time to process what we'd seen. Even those who were around during the filming said that this film in particular seemed to strike very personal chords with him.

In addition to all his other innovations, Hitchcock worked with a dizzying array of collaborators throughout his career. The ones most interesting to me were the writers. Over the years, he engaged award-winning novelists, playwrights, New Yorker columnists, actors, and everyone in between to write his movies. Another interesting collaboration: composer John Williams wrote the music for Hitchcock's final film, Family Plot.

So Hitchcock was a creative force to be reckoned with, but his greatest strength is his accessibility. And that's why he is so widely appreciated today. He made movies that were replete with meaning, yet not so convoluted that the everyman couldn't follow them. As his daughter said: above all else, he made movies for the audience. He gave people movies they could interpret on their own and keep interpreting long after he was gone.

I don't think there's anything more you could ask of a director.

12. Foolish Wives (1922)

Disclaimer: I've noticed that the films are in a slightly different order depending on which edition of the book you look at. So from now on I'm going to just try and go in roughly chronological order, but I probably won't get it 100% right.

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Remember this guy from Sunset Boulevard?

How could you not? Gloria Swanson makes the movie, but he provides a memorable assist. The character's name is Max von Mayerling and he is described as "one of the three greatest silent directors" who is now working for his ex-wife Norma Desmond as her butler. It's some of the most inspired casting in film history, because the actor (Erich von Stroheim) actually was a famous silent director who had been mostly forgotten in America by the time Sunset Boulevard came out in 1950.

Von Stroheim's story proves as well as anyone's how it's possible to totally reinvent yourself in Hollywood, but you have to work hard to stay relevant and be willing to make compromises. Your ego can only carry you so far.

These days he is viewed as an auteur, which I think is just a fancy word for pain in the ass/batshit crazy. For example, he thought many of his movies should run 6-10 hours because he was obsessed with exploring all the details of a story. All the tales behind his films are about him being difficult and inflexible to work with, and he brought down his career by refusing to compromise on his artistic ideals to make commercially successful films.

Foolish Wives is considered the first "big" movie that he directed. It was also the first movie that was advertised as costing over $1 million dollars. It was originally budgeted for $250,000, but Universal Studio estimated it ended up costing $1,225,000 (von Stroheim argued differently, that it cost "only" $750,000).

Foolish Wives takes place in Monte Carlo and tells the story of a con man (played by von Stroheim) who poses as a Russian count. He's known for being a ladies' man and he zeroes in an the young wife of the American ambassador as his next target. Working with him are two female accomplices who pose as his cousins.

In a strange twist of irony, the theme of a man posing as an aristocrat mirrors von Stroheim's own life:  he was born Erich Stroheim, son of a lower-middle class Viennese hat-maker, but when he arrived in America he registered himself as Count Erich Oswald Hans Carl Maria von Stroheim und Nordenwall, Austrian noble. He didn't completely get away with the ruse, however; other German speakers in Hollywood outed him as having a lower-class Austrian accent. Others say he didn't speak German at all, and later in life von Stroheim claimed he had forgotten his native tongue completely.

So, you have an enigmatic guy who rewrites his own backstory in America and does the same thing for characters in his films. Despite never having served in the military, von Stroheim often wrote himself into movies as high-ranking military officers.

In addition to casting himself as a smooth playboy-type, this film has another really big hint at von Stroheim's ego in the scene where he first meets his prey as she is reading a book on a hotel veranda. The book's title? "Foolish Wives, by Erich von Stroheim." 

I will say that the art direction in this movie is fantastic. The recreation of Monte Carlo is exquisite.

There was one scene that stuck out at me as really creative in which the Count uses a bit of mirror to spy on the diplomat's wife as she is undressing. You see a little sliver of what he is seeing, but the focus is on his face and how much he's enjoying being a voyeur.

One of the trademarks that gave von Stroheim the "auteur" label is the cynicism that pervades his films. This film employs the motif of innocence lost that I've mentioned so much recently, but the difference here is that the bad guy gets a lot more screen time and isn't really presented as, well, a bad guy. The blame is placed pretty squarely on the victim--the film's title is Foolish Wives, not Evil Playboys. It reminds me of Goodfellas: the "bad" guys do bad things, sure, but the lifestyle is just so glamorous and fun, how could anyone resist! It's the other person's fault for being such a schmuck! If the message of D.W. Griffith movies is "watch out for bad guys," the message of this movie is, "bad guys are sexy."

I find von Stroheim to be pretty fascinating, so I'm looking forward to seeing his other movie on the list, Greed.

11. Orphans of the Storm (1921)

Orphans of the Storm is the last D.W. Griffith movie on the list, and my feelings about it are pretty similar to what I felt about the rest of them (with the exception of Broken Blossoms): the technical aspects of the film are praiseworthy (the set pieces are particularly impressive), but the characters and plot are formulaic and left me feeling pretty bored. I figured out how this movie was going to end with over an hour of running time left.

Lillian Gish and her sister Dorothy play the requisite innocent heroines in a French Revolution setting, bad guys threaten to tarnish their innocence, etc., a battle between good and evil ensues....you get the idea.

Factoids about this film:

It is based on a play called "The Orphans" that had already been filmed at least twice before 1920; one version starred Theda Bara and was released in 1915. (I've seen some other examples of multiple silent films being based on the same source material--I guess the precedent for the current remake frenzy sweeping Hollywood was set a long time ago!) Theda Bara was one of the film industry's first sex symbols/femme fatales. She made over 40 films in her career but, unfortunately, most of them were lost in a fire in 1937 and very little footage of her survives to this day.

This movie is the last Griffith film to star Lillian Gish, and it's also considered his last big commercial success.

I am so glad to have all the D. W. Griffith films on the list behind me now.

10. The Phantom Carriage (1921)

The frame story of The Phantom Carriage is that whoever dies last on New Years' Eve is doomed to serve as Death's servant for the following year and collect people's souls when they die. The doomed servant of Death must ride around in a ghostly carriage to accomplish the task.

The film opens on New Years' Eve as a young Salvation Army sister lies ill on her deathbed. Her final wish is to speak to a man named David Holm before she dies. The next scene reveals that David Holm is a local drunk, but it's not immediately clear what the connection is between him and the girl. The rest of the movie explains the connection between them, and also what happens next for David Holm.

I absolutely LOVED this movie. It is suspenseful and chilling from the start and never really lets up.
This film is known for its use of extensive flashbacks and special effects: the carriage and the dead characters appear transparent. The effects add a lot to the film and make it extremely eerie.

The effects were created with multiple double exposures. And cameras had to be hand-cranked at that time, so the cameras had to be cranked at exactly the same speed for the exposures to match up. Post-production of this film took a while because of these technical challenges, but it all turned out beautifully.

Telling the story with flashbacks is also very effective. And in an early stroke of marketing genius, the movie was first released on New Years' Day in 1921. It had a big impact on a 15-year-old Ingmar Bergman, who would later become Sweden's most celebrated film director.

This is probably my favorite from the list so far. Highly recommended.
The whole thing is available on YouTube, if you want to watch it.

9. Within Our Gates (1920)

Happy Black History Month! Within Our Gates is the earliest known film by an African-American director. Usually considered a response to Birth of a Nation, it was released during a period of violent racial tension in the United States that followed the Great Migration of southern blacks to the north.

The film follows a young woman (Sylvia) as she runs into various perils while she is trying to raise money for a black school in the south. The movie is pretty straightforward until it nears the end, when Sylvia's father is framed for a crime. The pace really picks up as her family is being chased down by white townspeople. After Sylvia's family is captured, a white mob lynches her parents; Sylvia and her brother narrowly escape. The lynching scene is the most famous in the film.

In contrast to D.W. Griffith's one-sided vision of post-Civil War race relations in the United States, Oscar Micheaux offers a more complex look at some of the issues blacks faced. Not all the white characters are unsympathetic in this film, and not all the black characters are sympathetic. Sylvia eventually gets $50,000 for her school from a white philanthropist, while two black characters are shown "selling out" -- one denounces the idea of suffrage just to please the whites around him, and another turns Sylvia's family in to an angry mob in hopes of personal gain. At the end of a film, a rich white man chases Sylvia down, but lets her go after realizing she is his biological daughter.

The censors objected to this film because they feared it would incite more race riots like the one in Chicago in 1919. The objections caused some cities to show the film only with major scenes cut out, leading to multiple versions of the film. All prints later disappeared and the film was lost for decades until a single copy was found in Spain under the title "La Negra" in the 1970s.

This film isn't exactly one you would settle in and watch with a bucket of popcorn, but it is a very important piece of social history that would make a good teaching tool for classes/modules about the early 20th century in America. it's classified as a "race film," but I don't really agree with that label, since the cast isn't all black and the movie doesn't seem targeted just toward a black audience. It's meant to educate all people about racism, women's rights, and the importance of education.

8. Way Down East (1920)

Do not watch this movie on Netflix! I settled in for what I thought was an 83-minute movie and as it neared the end I thought to myself, "hmm....they have a lot of loose ends to tie up in a very short amount of time." Turns out Netflix only has part 1. The full movie is actually 145 minutes long. Luckily the whole thing is posted on YouTube, so I finished it there.

This film is based on a play that premiered in the late 1800s. It was popular through the first decade of the 20th century, but by the time Griffith released his film version, the Victorian plot seemed tired and outdated. It is old-fashioned and trifling even for 1920.

Griffith's reliable heroine Lillian Gish stars again as an innocent young woman who is wronged at the hands of society's less savory characters. Gish plays a poor country girl (Anna) who goes to visit her rich relatives in the big city and gets swept off her feet by a big city playboy who lures her into a sham marriage. After he abandons her, she goes through the traumatic experience of giving birth to an out-of-wedlock baby and being kicked out of a boarding house because of it. After the baby dies, she wanders until finding work on a prosperous farm. Things seem to be looking up until her ex-quasi-husband appears and starts wooing another girl, and the town gossips expose Anna's past and get her kicked off the farm. Reeling from the humiliation, she wanders out into a violent winter storm and eventually collapses on an ice floe headed for a waterfall. Luckily the farmer's son who has fallen in love with her saves her just in time and the film ends with a triple wedding (did those ever really happen in real life, or just in movies?)

The scenes on the ice floes are by far the most interesting part of the movie. Like I said, the rest of it is kind of corny and melodramatic, but it's notable for being the first Griffith movie on the list that has a lot of comedy in it. There are a lot of moments of slapstick comedy involving the minor characters in the film.

This movie was way too long. I don't mind long movies as a general rule, but the length of this one did not feel justified or satisfying. I didn't enjoy this movie nearly as much as the previous Griffith film I watched, and I'm convinced that what made that one good was the fact that Griffith really reined himself in on the length, didn't waste time on a million supporting characters and subplots, and chose a story that didn't have a cliched happy ending.

The ice floe scenes are pretty impressive for 1920, but that's really the only interesting thing about this movie. And filming those scenes had a lasting impact on some of the people involved: Lillian Gish's right hand was in the icy water for so long during the shoot that she had problems with it for the rest of her life (she lived until 1993) and D.W. Griffith also suffered long-term problems from getting frostbite on one side of his face.

This is the 4th of the 5 D.W. Griffith movies on the 1001 list. I wonder if the last one will be a melodrama like this one, or a more satisfying tragedy like Broken Blossoms.