Breakfast All Day Podcast 3/27/20
There are so many movies to watch during these strange days when we’re all stuck at home, so hopefully we can bring you a little guidance this week on Breakfast All Day. Matt, Alonso and I review the comedy “Banana Split” (from director Ben Kasulke, an A La Carte alum), the WWII drama “Resistance,” Hulu’s “Big Time Adolescence” starring Pete Davidson and the Brazilian thriller “Bacurau.” All are streaming. Plus! We go back and revisit “Dirty Dancing,” which for some reason Matt had never seen. And over at our Patreon, we discuss the first three episodes of the insane Netflix series “Tiger King,” as well as the latest episodes of HBO’s “Westworld” and “The Plot Against America.” We’ve had the time of our lives, and we owe it all to you.
still want a review from you guys of “the way back”
Re: Memories and Inheritance
There is a piece that Irish journalist Fintan O’Toole wrote about Ireland and his memory of public health episodes that he had remembered from his childhood. Alonso reminded me of it, when he talked a little about it on the YouTube broadcast I watched. O’Toole in his article talks about this thing of grief that can be inherited. There was a veteran broadcaster in sport in Ireland. He was born in 1930 and has retired from his broadcasting for a long while. He was interviewed from his isolation lock down in the west of Ireland. And he spoke about an auntie that he remembers his family speaking about. When he was a very young kid around Christy’s child’s age. She was someone who had left Ireland and had died in the flu epidemic of the early 20th century that killed a lot of people globally as well. While that flu epidemic was only something that we learned about. Certain I only learned about. In some episodes of ‘History Detective’ on PBS channel maybe. Where they discover some artifact that has a long story about it. And over the ‘History Detective’ program, they tell the full story of this item. Sometimes they even return to the same story and item on multiple episodes. Because a piece is added on to the story later, that sheds some additional insight.
The veteran sports broadcaster in Ireland though, explained how he had carried a sort of inherited grief for an auntie who had died before he was born. In a different country at the other side of the Atlantic ocean. And even though he only heard the story as a child in the 1930’s decade. It had made an impression on him that he carried with him for his whole life. This was something like the explanation that Fintan O’Toole made in the Irish Times newspaper. He explained that his childhood in Dublin growing up in the 1950’s was one where the young person was surrounded by the presence of public health risk everywhere. You kind of get a parody of that world, or that childhood that is represented in some movies. I know that it is definitely not the critic’s choice of movie. But it is there nonetheless. A movie called ‘Forrest Gump’. O’Toole explained that lots and lots of children that he knew when he was young. It was just a kind of accepted reality, that a percentage of the children would face these challenges. What he contrasted it to, and what made some of the explanation that he had articulated in audio, in his podcast interview at the newspaper also. Was the idea of health as we understand it today. Christy mentioned the idea of the athleticism and exercise everyday. It is this modern idea of health he explained. Where it is healthy foods, health diet, healthy lifestyle.
A remarkable transformation across the decades of the meaning of this word that we use, health. From something that was very real for him growing up. Compared to the idea of Yoga, meditation and so on, as it has been reduced to now. I think the point he made, was that Covid-19 involves a whole re-calibration of the meaning of the word again. Fintan O’Toole even went so far as to explain. That in recent weeks living in Dublin city, strangely he had found himself re-living his childhood. The question I would have for the ‘Breakfast All Day’ folk, is have we been able to capture this world that Fintan O’Toole is talking about in motion picture story telling? Or is it wrapped into the story of a character in a larger story. Such as the example of Forrest Gump that I can think about. Ironically, it was Tom Hanks the same actor who emerges so many years later in the news, as being one of the first to face into getting the illness. Somebody at a hospital I understand it, had confronted him with a football, that relates to another movie he was in. Where he had been trapped on a desert island, with only a football for company.
I would however, draw a connection to that role that he played opposite Robin Wright as ‘Jenny Curran’, There it was on screen. In a movie. That childhood that O’Toole could reach back to in 1950’s Dublin. My point is again maybe. There are certain movies that we are simply going to re-look at now. And they will definitely acquire a meaning they did not have before. And the public health aspect to Forrest Gump’s character and how that character was written. Suggests to me there is an aspect of that character’s construction. That we really would not have been able to access in the past, as members of a viewing audience. However, to counter balance that suggestion. I would also reach for what Alonso was talking about perhaps. The idea of grief. And the idea that Fintan O’Toole had introduced in his article too. The idea of grief that one does not experience. Rather it becomes inherited. And maybe that is what we were feeling when we watched a character like Forrest Gump ‘run across our screens’ as we sat there as audience members in the 1990’s. Was there something lodged into or implanted into our awareness. Which might have related to a memory that someone else had. A close family member or similar. That we had simply inherited?
Fintan O’Toole’s main point was this however. He argues that at a certain point, we look at deaths as statistics and as numbers. And our ability to respond to these numbers is harder. We don’t quite know what to do with them. As Fintan explains, the process of inherited grief for an individual. Long after that individual has died. Is something that re-focuses. We realize that these are all individual stories and individual tragedies. As opposed to the statistical driven narrative that we are absorbing through news about the Covid-19 spread. O’Toole doesn’t mention it in his piece. However, it resonated strongly with me. I was quite a fan of a book that Karl Marlantes had taken several decades to write. He explained of how it had taken him decades. He had received rejection letter after rejection letter. To a point where he had effectively given up. ‘Matterhorn’ was a book though he explained. Where it’s characters too had been re-written. As he had grown older, characters that had been flatter, less multi-dimensional had become more filled out and rounded. Until he had ended up with the book he ended up with. Many decades after. When asked about the book. Which is really a book all about how we explain things through the use of numbers and statistics. In preference to dealing with the reality of things. When asked about the book. Marlantes explained why he actually spent so many decades writing it.
He explained that when he had returned from war (a second published title of his was called ‘what it means to go to war’). ‘Matterhorn’ was not a book about what it means to go to war. It was a book about what it means to come back. He explained that his girlfriend at home had broken up with him. Because he had been a U.S. Marine. He explained that his book was about trying to understand that young man that he was. Who had been left at the bottom of a stairs. Standing in his uniform. When his girlfriend had run upstairs and was angry at him. Over his uniform and what it had meant to her then. He explained that his book was all about trying to understand that young man. There are quite a lot of things in the movies, when you look at it. That deal in some way, with the same problems. The same challenges. That both as individuals and as communities we are having to contend with at the moment. And it is not easy. And it never was.
Re: Dirty Dancing (1987)
Christy,
I would place the movie into a kind of category. It’s an interesting category of movie and I haven’t fully formed thoughts about it. The comparison I would draw with ‘Dirty Dancing’ (1987). Is ‘Jurassic Park’ (1993). Why do I say that? I think that Matt and Alonso stumbled over this at the end of their review. It is the idea of a society that is changing around the context in which the story happens. In this situation it is the Catskills. In Jurassic it is this island that is hidden away in the ocean somewhere. Upon which they raise these genetically created dinosaurs from the past. In ‘Jurassic Park’ there is the central importance of the John Hammond character. That is the character that is played by Richard Attenborough. It is this character that one often find included by writers in good movie script writing. That is the character who has sufficient financial means and capability to create something. However, we are aware that this character who is responsible for creating this world, in which all of the other characters have to operate. Is somehow removed from reality themselves. Their fundamental and core assumptions about their plan and their objective is flawed. It is punctured below the water line. Before the theme park, or the holiday camp is operational. The cracks are already appearing. In the case of ‘Dirty Dancing’ (1987), it is based upon this old idea in entertainment industries. There are the people on stage who have been invited and promoted to provide entertainment. To the folk who dress up in these evening wear clothing. And there is always a beautiful looking date hanging on their side. However, the working people who provide the entertainment, will never been accepted in the world of the audience.
The strange thing about it is the following. And maybe from a movie critics point of view this is something that will strike you as interesting. The story behind ‘Jurassic Park’ that is directed by Steven Spielberg. Is very similar to a movie that was directed by Richard Attenborough and it starred actor Robert Downey Jr. It was released in 1992, that was ‘Chaplain’. As a movie, ‘Chaplain’ tells the same story as ‘Dirty Dancing’ (1987). Where Charlie Chaplain is this actor who makes one transition in his lifetime. Between stage acting and entertainment (and the character that Robert Downey Jr. plays in ‘Chaplain’ has similarities to the one played by Patrick Swayze in ‘Dirty Dancing’). There is a scene in which Robert Downey Jr’s character is in London. He attempts to visit a show as an audience member and take out a date for the evening. He is recognized by one of the ‘front of house’ reception staff. Who pretends that he cannot find the reservation. That is, his ‘cover has been blown’. That is the problem that Patrick Swayze’s character is constantly running into. This is the experience which in the Attenborough movie ‘Chaplain’ convinces him to seek better fortunes in America. That is how Chaplain actually finds his way to America. And in the process of that journey, he stumbles across the new medium of moving pictures there. Kevin Kline in the movie plays Douglas Fairbanks. Another one of those tragic figures from the early silent moving picture days. Who does not succeed in making the transition from silent movies to talking movies. In the same way as they had made the earlier transition from stage on to screen (and Chaplain had enough business sense in order to control his own production of movies too). Chaplain was more than an actor. He was like a one-man industry by himself.
That gives way at some point however to something else. A different kind of production systems, where things became more technical. One had studios that hired all different kinds of specialists in the various departments. And the members of ‘Breakfast All Day’ probably understand that history a lot better than I would. What is seductive from my point of view as an audience member, in movies such as ‘Dirty Dancing’ or ‘Jurassic Park’. In those kinds of stories. Are those characters who have this complete vision for a different world. And that complete vision is something that is only held together with bits of string and sticky tape. The idea of it is far more desirable to the John Hammond character. Than the actual implementation and mechanics of how it works. What the film is about then, is the gradual way in which that world literally falls apart. Through this crazy cascade of agents doing things the wrong way, and all of the unintended consequences that flow from it. In the case of ‘Dirty Dancing’ the main characters played by Jennifer Gray and Patrick Swayze are like the dinosaurs who break out through the fences. You have this world on one side with the theme park vehicles that run along a train track. In the same way in ‘Dirty Dancing’ you have a system that has been designed along train tracks too. Down to the finer details. Of where the daughters of the parents are encouraged to engage in these secretive romances. With the staff who act as waiters in the family setting. There are all of these undercurrents. And the contrast is very like in Jurassic Park, where something ‘less contained’ and wild, is happening on the other side of the fence. And there is that essential character, or set of characters there. Who imagine there is a way to contain all of this, and make it obey the rules they have established.
What I cannot decide however, is if the movie ‘Dirty Dancing’ has the Jeff Goldblum character in it. That is that character who looks at it all from a perspective of intellectual ‘high ground’. He explains, there is no way to keep things neatly separated like that, on either side of the fence. What is so entertaining to watch about the Jeff Goldblum (who is ‘Ian Malcolm’ in the movie) character. Is that the Richard Attenborough character never listened to them. I think the burden of the Jeff Goldblum character in ‘Dirty Dancing’ is carried largely by the Jennifer Grey character. The way it is written is that it is through her eyes, that we cross the boundary from one world and we see into the other. We realize that through the character of Baby Houseman. There is only this very flimsy fence or partition, which separates one world from the other. In ‘Jurassic World’ the Jeff Goldblum character is placed into the story. In order to do exactly the same thing as Jennifer Grey’s character in ‘Dirty Dancing’ (now that is a comparison that I never thought I would make). But that is how the ‘nuts and bolts’ of these script writing things actually operate. What is entertaining though is the Jack Weston character of Max Kellerman, or the Richard Attenborough acted part of John Hammond. What is entertaining is the fatal flaw in their vision. And it is that vision or that ideal concept which awaits it’s destruction. Through some agency, whether it is the dinosaurs or the dancers. Each of them is what poses the ‘mortal threat’ to the world vision of the entrepreneur. The guy who once operated the flea circus in Piccadilly. And ‘Chaplain’ in it’s story plays along similar lines to both too.