EPISODE 540: KEEP GOING
We are all making this up as we go.
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
So the election is in ten days. Or maybe for you it was yesterday? Time is a flat circle. Also in many states you’re already able to vote.
I have been waiting for my ballot to come since October 5th. It has definitely been on a journey. And me also. On Thursday I was told it may take a week more, but if it doesn’t come I can always go to the polls, which is of course EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE OF WHY I REGISTERED TO VOTE BY MAIL.
(Aside: My mom ALL CAPS’d me at Mass last Sunday. It was amazing.)
I feel like we’re in a horror movie where it’s not clear whether the movie is just about over or we just reached the midpoint. And to my mind it’s much more intense because the monster can only come back if we let it in. So there’s this horrible sense of unease; we walk around looking at other people’s faces, trying to see if any of them are secretly planning to let the nightmare back in while the rest of us are sleeping.
I’m not paying attention to polls right now. I’m just trying to keep my eyes up and my heart open. Sometimes God makes a way.
This song captures how I want to be.
Actually I had an idea on all this. You know that concept of “manifesting”? If you want something in your, you’re supposed to imagine it coming into being?
I don’t know much about all that, but spending a week watching some movies that present the America we want to live in sure sounds like a good use of time.
I’m going to try it. Here’s a couple possibilities off the top of my head:
Lincoln
Milk
American Utopia (David Byrne’s Broadway show on HBO, which is supposed to be great)
13th
What the Constitution Means to Me (Broadway show on Amazon)
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Dave
The Purge*
How about you? What would you include?
*Just kidding. Purge II is way better.
This week in Movies You All Have Seen That I Just Watched For the First Time…
Singin’ in the Rain and To Kill A Mockingbird!
Yes, that’s right I have never seen either of these films. You have every right to shun me.
Random impressions of Singin’ in the Rain
First of all, what’s with the apostrophe? Would we really all be over-pronunciating if you included that last “g”?
More important: I’m stunned by the incredible performances. How was a musical that was not first on Broadway this good?
Debbie Reynolds is way too young for Gene Kelly.
Also, is it me or do Kelly and O’Connor have incredible energy together? Because as far as I can see there is no world in which O’Connor’s character is not gay.
While Singin’ does better than 99% of 50s movies when it comes to gender, still it’s hard to ignore the fact that a big part of the premise is how do we get a woman to stop talking. (And also that the solution is to pit another woman against her.)
Not trying to ruin the movie. But that scene at the end where three men delight in showing that Lina is a fraud, and the whole audience suddenly turns on her, laughing and pointing, is pretty brutal.
I don’t know if meta is the right word, but a 1950s movie about a silent era film star who saves his career by becoming a song and dance man, and then the whole experience of making that movie and falling in love with Debbie Reynolds becomes a movie itself that is called Singin’ in the Rain feels wildly modern.
(And if you want to really blow your mind, how’s this: The thing that saves the day is Debbie Reynolds’ character Kathy agreeing to dub Lina’s performance, right? Well, it turns out in real life the studio didn’t like Reynolds’ voice for Lina. So, they they actually used Lina (Jean Hagen)’s real voice as the dubbed voice, and then also got someone else to sing the song “Would You” that Lina/Kathy sings.)
Random Impressions of To Kill a Mockingbird
Just by chance I watched Aaron Sorkin’s new film The Trial of the Chicago 7 maybe two days before I watched Mockingbird. It’s an interesting comparison. Sorkin’s film, about the Nixon Administration’s attempt to scapegoat eight men involved with the protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention, is in many ways a classic courtroom flick. The whole film either takes place during the trial or flashes back to events from the protest.
I expected the same from Mockingbird. (I had no idea, by the way, what the case was going to be, or anything else about the story. I’ve never read the book. I know, it explains a lot about me. Again, shuns are welcome.)
But instead it decides to center the film on the lives of these three children, who don’t know what’s happening and who have their own thing going on with Boo Radley. And that makes this such a different kind of story, one where the ideals of the country in a sense don’t have to be mentioned, because just by virtue of having these innocent children around we’re thinking about them.
For me the heart of the story is captured at the very middle of the film, when Scout talks to the farmer in the lynch mob with so much warmth it completely breaks him down. It’s the same with Boo; in treating them like good human beings, they become good human beings.
This week I also came upon this insane bit of Star Wars trivia: When George Lucas changed Star Wars to make Greedo shoot first, he was incredibly specific about the timing of it all. Namely, in the Special Edition version Greedo’s shot goes off only five frames before Han’s – a little less than a quarter of a second. It’s so short a period it seems to undermine Lucas’ whole point that Han was only reacting to Greedo.
Then I looked up the human reaction time to pull a trigger based on some external event is apparently 213 ms, or just a little less than a quarter of a second. *sigh*
Okay fine George. Now just give us what we want, okay?
And in case you need more reasons to be frustrated with The Rise of Skywalker, aka Star Wars Episode Eh, check out the concept art for Colin Trevorrow’s original vision of the film (which involved Rose and Finn leading a revolution of the poor on Coruscant).
In addition to Halloween and the election, this Friday is also the return of this!
Yep, The Mandalorian, season 2. Honestly I feel like we only just got season one, but in fact it was almost a year ago.
It’s just that in between we’ve had this weird experience of living our lives on hold, I guess?
My big questions:
Will the Child get a name?
Is it Charles Nelson Reilly?
Why can’t it be?
How do you know?
Will we learn the Child’s gender?
Could the gender be something other than boy or girl?
Why not?
Will the Child say its first word?
If the word is dadda, is the Child actually saying it like we do, or has it reversed the order of the sounds, like Yoda with sentences.
No you shut up.
I don’t know that I’m expecting anything, really, other than something that allows me to escape from reality and generates a lot of good memes.
In conjunction with the start of the second season I’m planning to launch this website I’ve been talking about where I look to great TV, movies, comic books, Stephen King novels and whatever else for lessons on how to tell a good story. I’ve got a ton of material already written. I think I’m going to start by writing about episodes of The Mandalorian, Star Trek: Discovery, Halt and Catch Fire, Fringe and maybe Little Fires Everywhere, and then weave lots of other stuff.
Right now I’m calling it Craft Service with Jim McDermott. I have no idea if anyone will find it useful. I’ll give you a link next week so you can watch me light myself on fire.
THREE TWEETS
I love this attitude.
This is the greatest tweet.
(And yes, it led to MANY “Actually”s.)
This blew me away.
At the beginning of the year I suggested we should make Princess Leia/Carrie Fisher the patron saint of 2020. She’s who/how we hope to be, I said — “hopeful, funny and utterly refusing to submit to outrage or despair.”
So much has happened between now and then. But Leia'’s still there on my Twitter homepage, reminding me what’s really important is sticking with it and trying to love.
“I pray my rage is a fire that cleans my mind out and makes me ready to listen.
I pray my pain is a river that flows to the ocena that connects my pain to yours.
And I pray my happiness is like pollen that flies to you and polinates your joy, oh boy.
Oh boy, is that possible? I don’t know. I don’t know. We are making this up as we go. We have to make it up as we go.” — The Keep Going Song.
Are you filled with rage? Keep going.
Are you filled with pain? Keep going.
Are you filled with joy? Oh boy.
Keep going.
See you next week.
Jim-put down the remote and read the book!!! We can forgive your seventh grade teacher (or tenth) for not having you read TKAM, but now you know better.... As great as the movie is, there is so much more in the book. This is a very good way to spend some time during election week, I promise! You are welcome to borrow my copy ..(the one I still have from seventh grade, because I read it every new phase of my life for the reminder of how to be a good human being.....)