Film and storytelling and language

G and I watched "Brokeback Mountain" again last night. We both had pretty much the same reaction to it as we have had in the past. After, we talked a while about it, then I dug up a copy of the original story by Annie Proulx. I had read it before, G hadn't. We had pretty much the same reaction to that as well, though mine was different than it had been years ago when I'd first read it.

The film is well made, very touching, beautiful to look at. Some of the acting - especially that of Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams - is great, finely calibrated. And the first half of the movie - the story of the two main characters and Ennis' wife - is nearly perfect. It's true. But it falls apart in the second half, when it tries to fill things out, adding characters and scenes that aren't in the original. It's understandable that the filmmakers would do this. I'm sure they thought the story was too short, really, and also that the characterizations might be enriched by adding more people for the two men to interact with. Not only did that not add anything that wasn't already there, but they cast three noticeably inappropriate actresses to play major roles. Michelle Williams looks and acts exactly right for her role, but Anne Hathaway, Anna Farris, and Linda Cardellini - as Jack's wife, Ennis' daughter and his invented girlfriend, respectively - never look like anything but what they are: Hollywood actresses with perfect teeth, straining to seem "country". That, combined with a strangely incompetent "aging" makeup for Heath Ledger, take us out of the truth that had been so well constructed, and undercuts the whole of the film.

(Interestingly, comparing the story with the film, we found that the screenplay uses nearly all the original dialogue, unaltered. One of its strong points.)

The original story is well constructed; the shape of it is nearly perfect. The characterizations are well done. On re-reading it, though, I was rather shocked at the inconsistency of the language. Maybe living with a writer has made me overly sensitive to every little word. (Though how can that be a bad thing...?) But it seems to me that language - the choice of each word - needs to be consistent, and congruent to the whole. Proulx is writing a scraped-knuckle sort of love story. Her characters speak in don't-nevers and you-goin-a-dos. How can she narrate using language like: suffused; inured to the stoic life; massed in slabs of somber malachite; the mountain boiled with demonic energy; a bestial drone; tumescent? The choices she makes are often so jarring. And in the end they just seem sloppy. Very disappointing, and a real disservice to a beautifully built story.

Reaching upward

I just want to say how proud I am of my beautiful, talented wife. Last night G produced her first literary event. And her producing career started off large, with a great turn-out and a killer line-up, some of Portland's hottest, most respected writers: Lidia Yuknavitch, Vanessa Veselka, Kevin Sampsell, Courtenay Hameister, Bradley Rosen, and Gigi. The event was part of March Music Moderne, a month-long celebration of modern music, and the theme of the evening was writing that touched on music in some way. G read one of the essays from her memoir, and she read suavely, bien sûr. The piece was mainly about how she was as a child, a little girl with dreams of musical stardom, but one who was too timid to let anyone but her mom know about it. It's a great piece. And it was a great night, great writing, great performance. Again, I'm so proud of her. I hope she's proud of herself for organizing and contributing to a very successful evening.

And so I also want to salute that shy little girl she was, the little girl in her essay. The little girl who wanted so much from life, but didn't know how to reach for the things she wanted, the things she deserved. The little girl who's found her way.

Temporary genius

Do you know what? If you're fairly familiar with the form and style of the classic nineteenth-century orchestral waltz - I am - and you happen to be a rather good whistler and/or hummer - actually, I am - AND you happen to have the most marvelous coffee buzz blazing away - I do - you can do all number of the most useful things (Why, I just made my breakfast, prepped several bunches of Lacinato kale for the week's usage, chopped up some bacon and baked it in the oven - so much less mess that way, you know - made a pot of rice, washed some dishes and gave the kitchen the once over) whilst simultaneously and extemporaneously composing really quite creditable waltzes created in the style of la famille Strauss, Waldteufel, Lehár, etc.* If you have acquired the prerequisites, and if the conditions are in your favor, and until the divine caffeinated frénésie deserts you, you will be quite the minor genius.



* The full orchestrations, of course, would be lost on anyone who might be listening but, I swear to you, they are definitely there in my head. I'm certain that any overheard performance would prove much more persuasive if only I could find a way to whistle and hum at the same time.

A painter sews

Some painters get to paint. Just paint. They figure it out as they go. I have to plan. The kind of work I do, and the thinness of the paint surface, means that I have to plot it all out ahead of time; I can't easily or effectively paint over things. In the last few years, especially, I've tried to get smarter in how and how much I prepare. I take more preparatory photographs, I do more Photoshop compositing, I grid. Drapery has always been a challenge. It's pretty difficult to just make it up in your head. As I've gotten older, I've become more adept at doing that, but it's a much better use of my time to arrange and work from photographs.

To that end, this past week I sacrificed three and a half painting days to clothes making. I dragged out the very heavy sewing machine and ran up: one very full (we're talking five-yards-of-material full) floor-length white taffeta skirt with train; the same thing again, but in red satin; one full petticoat, made from a very pretty old white cotton damask bed sheet; and two sets of lace sleeve ruffles, perhaps more properly known as engageantes.

I also re-purposed an old dress shirt to use as an all-purpose bodice. Pretty much all I did was cut off the collar and part of the front, and nipped in the sides and the sleeves. The shirt was a replacement for one I had adapted previously. I had rushed that version and very much regretted my haste. Thinking I could avoid some of the annoying pin-it-turn-it-inside-out-reset-the-pins nonsense, I had turned the shirt inside out to begin with, pinned and then was able to just go ahead and sew the alteration. (If you've never sewn, the preceding probably makes no sense at all.) I soon realized my grave error. Like most people, my arms are not the same size; I'm very right handed, and my right arm reflects that it gets more use. When I turned the shirt right side out and put it on, I had one very tight sleeve and one very loose one. It was serviceable, but it didn't look quite right. I'm glad I had a chance for a do-over.

I can't wait to start using these garment pieces for painting prep. The red satin skirt was made intentionally for use in the final painting I have planned for my show at Winston Wächter in June. I've been calling it, informally, the "big red dress painting". Oh, and there's a squirrel involved. But I won't go into that here. Now if I can just figure out a way to fit all of this pretty yardage into the closet....

***

This photograph gives very little feeling for how vast the white taffeta skirt is; it looks so innocent hanging there. In reality, it's all papery stiff, holding its shape against gravity and eating up huge quantities of real estate. I love it.








[Those are Nicholas' toys on the floor below; he brings them all out to the living room/studio and, when he's not looking, I kick them all to the end of the hall.]




This was just a Gap shirt. I really liked it, but it got an ever-so-slight-but-definite stain on the front, and now it's given its life in the service of Art.



These are meant to be wrist ruffles, worn with long sleeves, so I don't know if I can actually call them engageantes; the word might be reserved for those dainty articles that attach just below the elbow, worn for almost the entirety of the eighteenth century. Of course the fact that I made them to close with tiny bits of Velcro makes the whole question moot...!

State mandated amour

2009












No this isn't some screed related to the marriage equality/inequality debate. It's about Valentine's Day. It bugs me. And I know I shouldn't say so. That's one of the main reasons that it bugs me; unless you're single, you aren't allowed a dissenting opinion.

There's certainly a contrarian streak in my nature. Tell me how I'm supposed to feel, and I'll most likely go the other way. And I'll never be afraid to tell you so. With Valentine's Day, though, even if you and the beloved both agree that it's an immature, manipulative, crassly commercial, vulgar little event, there's no way 'round it. You can't not play: What, don't you love your wife?!

Well, yes, I do. Terrifically so. And I try to show it; I'm certainly not afraid to say so. All year round. But somehow today is the day I'm expected to declare it publicly? Said who? I was a little embarrassed, really, to be seen out and about this morning, looking like the stereotypical guy buying his proofs-of-love just like he's supposed to. Champagne and chocolate were already chez nous, but I bought flowers - just to buy flowers - and I had to stop myself from babbling to the cashier, "These are not for Valentine's Day!"

Luckily, G doesn't have huge, lacy, cardboard cut-out expectations for the once-a-year day. Honestly, we're pretty self-indulgent most of the time so, except for the dinner out - nothing fancy - it's not going to be that showy of an evening. After-dinner champagne, a little chocolate, and a movie. At first we talked about sniffing around and looking to choose a "romantic" movie, but we ended up with a very gritty Humphrey Bogart in "High Sierra". Neither of us have seen it before, but we assume it will be delightfully dismal, with the star and probably several others dead at the finish; just our style. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

***

Our biggest concession to the holiday is the card. The official card. Each year we take up Photoshop and try and out-muscle each other in Valentinian cuteness. It's always fun and a nice challenge. Here are a few of mine, including this year's:

2011

2010












2012

The things that lodge in your brain...and repeat

We talked about growing old gracefully
And Elsie who's seventy-four
Said [with a strong Mid-western twang], 'A, it's a question of being sincere,
And B, if you're supple you've nothing to fear',
Then she swung upside down from a glass chandelier.
I couldn't have liked it more.

From the Noël Coward song, "I've Been to a Marvelous Party", of course. Which I performed once or twice in the eighties, speak-singing the thing, as Coward would have done. I'm sure I was quite unable to pull off; I haven't got the stuff to put over that sort of business now, and I certainly didn't have it then. Of all the song's very droll lyrics - which I still remember fairly well - these are the ones that will just pop into my head. Again and again. From nowhere. And I'll speak-sing them out loud, if given any opportunity.

The stage direction for the Mid-western twang - or what I imagine one to be - is my little invention. The rest is done in a rather vague approximation of an icy British accent. Maybe it's the earthiness of Elsie's twang that tickles me so, and sets the fragment on repeat in my brain. Or that it's some genuine inspiration of mine in the midst of my pale imitation of a Cowardian delivery. Maybe, in my mind, it somehow makes up for my perceived inability to "sell" the rest of the song"; if I can't channel Noël, I can still damn well do Elsie.

Like most - maybe all - of the names of the people listed in the song, "Elsie" was based on an actual person in society at the time. She was the celebrated interior designer Elsie de Wolfe, Lady Mendl. Quite the marvelous self-creation, herself. You can read more about her on my friend Stephen Rutledge's excellent blog.

Dogs gathering wings

In my dream last night, we were at someone's house doing I don't know what. There were a lot of dogs running around being social, Nicholas among them. At some point G and I noticed that we hadn't seen him for a while. Being the nervous/good parents we are, we separated and went to look for him. I saw several dogs that looked quite a bit like Nicholas. I would be momentarily fooled, then notice that the dog wasn't wearing a green collar.

Eventually, I found Nicholas and his green collar standing in the sun under some trellis-like structure at the side of the house. There was a stack of wood or some other thing on the ground between us. As I was stepping over or around it, something changed and, when I looked up, Nicholas was now a small green bird, and my sister-in-law Sharon was holding him. She was standing under the trellis with foliage behind her and Nicholas was perched on her left hand, her right hand cupped protectively over him. She smiled and handed him toward me. As I took him, he changed again. Now he was a green butterfly, fluttering in my cupped hands. I stood there in the sun holding him - below my chin, above my chest - my hands only circling his fluttering, not really constraining him. I felt such joy in this moment, such wonder at this beautiful creature, such immense love for this green fluttering at my throat.

Of music, souls, and les Russes

I always listen to music while I'm painting. Have to have it. Otherwise I get too antsy; I'm more than a bit ADD-ish. I almost always listen to vocal music, though. Opera and operetta, yes, but mostly show tunes, movie music. Something I can sing along to. Otherwise, I have a tendency to start thinking about stress-making nonsense, stewing about petty, annoying things in my life, real and imagined. But once language is involved, I can't go to that place. If I'm warbling along - in any language, really - my mind disengages and I can really relax and focus and enjoy my work. Singing makes painting much better.

But I surprised myself recently. G and I bought movies for each other for Christmas, one of which was a big box set of Gone With the Wind. We watched it Christmas evening, and on my next painting day, I put on a CD of Max Steiner's music for the film. Then I shuffled a bunch of recordings of the great classic film scores of Steiner, Korngold, Waxman, Rozsa, Alfred Newman. It's wonderful, evocative music - and my jittery, troublesome brain did not take me into any unpleasant corners. I had several days of delighted painting!

Emboldened, yesterday I did something I've had in the back of mind for a while now. At least half of my music collection is "classical". Mostly Orchestral. But because my music-listening-time is almost always also painting-time, I'm not listening to that sort of thing much these days. I miss it. I've certainly missed my beloved Rachmaninov. So yesterday, straight through, I listened to all three of his symphonies and all four piano concertos. Then I listened to the second symphony again, the piece of music I love above all others. I don't know if it's just a coincidence - and I know it helped tremendously that the sun shone all day - but it was one of the most productive painting days I've had in months. I thank you Sergei Vasilievich.

***

When G and I were first emailing back and forth to each other, and came to the topic of family heritage I told her that, though I was Irish and German on my father's side and mostly English on my mother's, I couldn't relate to any of that. (I've never been able to connect with that most obvious genealogical ingredient, the conspicuously Irish name be damned.) I told her that, really, I considered myself to be have a "French and Russian soul". What a preposterous thing to say! I adore France and all things French, but a French soul? I haven't much idea of what that might be. Of a Russian soul I could presume even less. I've read and read about Russia and Russians, but it's actually only the Russia from, say, about 1780 until 'round about 1918. It's a Russia of the Arts, and those with the wealth and position to indulge the Arts. Aristocrats and Emperors. And the Russia I've internalized is that of the ones who fled the revolution, the émigrés, the well-educated, sophisticated nobility, who so often wrote beautifully crafted and persuasive memoirs of their own Atlantis. That's the only Russia I know.

And yet, if you love something dearly, doesn't it become a part of you? And if the thing you love is so much a part of a culture or a time that would otherwise be foreign to you, don't you bond with that foreignness in some way, as well? I love all of Rachmaninov's work, and his second symphony has been my official "favorite" piece of music for my entire adult life. I remember hearing it for the first time; I was staying at the house of friends and they had a recording of it. I connected with it immediately and completely.

Rachmaninov was a part of that chimerical Russia I've read about since I was a child. He was born there, lived and worked there, and was forced to leave that Russia. And, for me, his music precisely expresses that very particular lost world. That Russia. I don't know if there's any of the actual Russia in me, anything of a generalized Russian temperament. Probably not. But the musical evocation of time and place that I feel in Rachmaninov's second symphony - for me, his greatest work - is a part of me. And most definitely is a part of my soul.

Rachmaninov's Symphony No.2, Op.27 - 3rd movement.

Anonymously immortal

It's no news that G and I watch old movies...all the time. One of the things I enjoy most is noticing the various supporting players, bit players, and even extras who you can spot in film after film.* Hollywood, in the 30s especially, seemed to be a surprisingly small world. With the thousands of actors clambering to get ahead, I find it rather remarkable that the same relative few were getting all the work.

We have a box set of the most famous of the Busby Berkeley films: 42nd Street, Footlight Parade, the Gold Diggers series, etc. For years now, G and I have commented on a particular chorus girl/extra that we see again and again in several of his movies. She's often seen waiting, off-stage or on-, during auditions or rehearsals. But most of the time she's part of the big production numbers. And she's frequently featured in those famous Berkeley "pretty-girl close-ups". And the odd thing, one of the things that makes her stand out, is that she's not actually that pretty. And her figure certainly isn't perfect; her ankles aren't as slim as one might expect. We've always wondered how she ended up so prominently displayed. Was she someone's friend, someone's girlfriend? Berkeley's girlfriend? So far, we've only heard her utter a few words. In Footlight Parade's Shanghai Lil number she has the most to say; she's one of the prostitutes sitting at the gin joint bar, lamenting Lil's bad influence on the world's oldest profession. Her lyrics are, "That Oriental - dame is detrimental - to our industry."

We always figured we'd never know who she was, always wonder about her life and how it played out. We'd always look for her, wondering. But last night, for the hell of it, G googled that line from the song. And now - quite unexpectedly - she has a name. Donna Mae Roberts.

From IMDB:

Date of birth: 4 November, 1912, Los Angeles, California
Date of death: 1 October, 1996, Gardnerville, Nevada

Donna Mae Roberts was born in Los Angeles. She was the daughter of Walter Roberts and Cora H. Myers. She went to the University of California, where she majored in psychology and belonged to two honorary scholastic fraternities. She left her classes at the end of her junior year to join the chorus. Donna Mae Roberts started as a "Goldwyn girl" in movies, and was a chorus girl in several of the Busby Berkeley movies. She also played small parts in Warner Brothers movies of the 1930s.

Donna Mae Roberts had the highest intelligence quotient of 54 chorus girls given a bona fide test by Prof. Neil Warren of the University of Southern California. Her IQ rating was 132, which falls in the "near genius" class. After the test, Donna Mae Roberts was acclaimed as: "The smartest chorus girl in Hollywood".

Donna Mae Roberts career started to decline in the late 1930s. During that period she did some extra work and then retired from the screen.

Her first husband was Paul Spark, who died in 1943. Her second was Robert Roderick; she had a son by this second marriage.

Donna Mae Roberts died at the Cottonwood Care Center in Gardnerville in 1996. Her body was cremated at Fitzhenry's Crematory.

*

She worked on her first film in 1932. Between 1933 and 1936 she appeared in an astonishing twenty-four films. At least six of them were with Berkeley. She worked once in 1937, and her last job was working with Berkeley again on The Gang's All Here in 1943, apparently the same year her first husband died. Though the earlier Berkeley films were all at Warners, she doesn't appear to have been under contract to a studio. It looks as though she worked for most of them; she worked on a Harlow film at MGM, which we haven't seen, and at RKO in Astaire and Rogers' Roberta.

In the Honeymoon Hotel number in Footlight Parade.

In 27 films not once did she receive screen credit. She never got to see her name up on the screen. IMDB lists all of her film work as "uncredited". Which seems so sadly dismissive. And yet, because several of the movies she contributed to have become classics of the art form, preserved as historically and artistically important, are iconic, and because she is so visible in them, she's achieved her own level of immortality. Time has given her that elusive screen credit...and we salute you, Donna Mae.

*

In her first film, Eddie Cantor's The Kid From Spain. She's center right. Center left is better known movie chorus girl, Toby Wing.

Bottom right, in her second film, 42nd Street, beaming at star Warner Baxter. That's Toby Wing, again, top right.

And all wet, front right, in Footlight Parade's famous By a Waterfall.

Certainly, the high point of her career, she was the pinnacle of the revolving wedding-cake fountain of glittering
"dames" that was the finale of Waterfall, one of the greatest - and most audacious - moments in film history.

*

* (G is very indulgent as I constantly pause movies and say, "Oh, isn't that _ who was in _ ?", "Didn't we see him/her in _ ?" And then I get out my phone, go to IMDB, and look it up to see if I'm right. And I hate to brag, but my batting average is pretty damned impressive.)

The road ahead

The saying goes something like:

Getting old isn't for sissies.

The problem is, I've been a damned sissy all my life.

Ah, well....