The other day I watched Oliver Stone's Heaven and Earth, probably his least known film, and, in my mind, one of his best. I first saw it during those slowly dying days of high school, Christmas '93, when Schindler's List had taken the cinematic world by storm. There was little room left for yet another Stone flick about Vietnam. It came, went, disappeared. (Much like Alexander has done.)
I've watched it a few times over the years. It keeps drawing me back. And then I watched it, here, in Phnom Penh, eleven years on, and I picked up so many things I'd never noticed before -- in its story of a young, traditional Vietnamese peasant woman and her life as it's torn asunder by the Vietnam war, both in Asia and America, it achieves a kind of still, Buddhist grace. I'm older, the movie is the same, but it's a new experience now, a richer experience.
So much to love about this movie -- its images, its heart, its blatant, overt romanticism. It is not cynical and hip; it replicates a more innocent, Asian view of the world, where ghosts and fate and karma are all linked with bombs and bullets and helicopters flying overhead.
The main character was criticized as being too passive at the time of its release, too much of a pawn in the story, tossed around from incident to incident -- which, to me, pretty much misses the whole point. Anybody who's spent anytime in Southeast Asia will recognize the raw deal that most young girls have on a continual, daily basis -- the lack of any viable options. The lack of control they have over their own lives. We have so many ingrained notions about narrative, so many expectations. This movie does not necesarily fulfill those, or even try to, which is its strength.
If you've travelled over here, you'll recognize the subtle acts of corruption depicted in the film, the innocent smiles, the wide sky and bright sun. This is a movie about tone and texture and images, which is why the plot gets a little stalled in the end, a little overcrowded, a little rushed.
But so what? Who goes to movies for plot, anyways? We go to experience another life, another view of the world. The narrator of this movie is a Vietnamese peasant woman. Think about that. When was the last time you ever had a female narrator for an entire film? I can't think of one. Let alone a village girl who sees her life as a working out of her own karma. Stone may have a reputation as a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist, but this film proves the range of his interest, the depth of his feeling.
Why would anyone back home get it? It approaches life at an angle that most people have never been priviliged to see from. I loved it back in high school, but I didn't get it; I was intrigued and haunted by its image, its tone, and, most importantly, its fantastically sumptuous music by the Japanese composer Kitaro. As Stone notes in a rambling-but-oh-so-fascinating director's commentary, the score is popular the world over, streaming forth from elevators and taxicabs. It has a heart, this music does.
So does the film. I recommend it. Don't go in expecting a well-plotted, well integrated storyline. Don't go in with your own point of view of the world (although I guess it's impossible not to, right?) Just watch it, and imagine the story from the heroine's perspective, Le Ly Hayslip, and allow yourself to be sucked in. Allow the grace to take over.
Monday, February 14, 2005
Saturday, February 12, 2005
OUR CYNICAL, SARCASTIC CULTURE, JAPANESE HIRING PRACTICES, AND WHY ANTHONY ROBBINS (DESPITE HIS SLIGHTLY CRO-MAGNON APPEARANCE) TRULY IS THE MAN
We have to choose what to believe:
1) Life is either an endless slog through a neverending series of browbeating, soul-destroying humiliations, or
2) it is a battleground through which we can seize our ultimate potential, help others grasp theirs, and live each day as a spiritual, enlightening progress towards our ultimate purpose.
Guess which theory Anthony Robbins would choose?
For those not in the know, Anthony Robbins is America's premier motivational speaker, star of countless late-night infomercials, personal coach to hundreds of elite athletes, businessmen, politicians and statesmen, guru to anyone and everyone seeking to become better than they are at the present moment.
He is, depending on how you look at it, an inspirational role model or a complete and total crock.
(Or maybe a bit of both.)
Upon hearing even the name 'Anthony Robbins', a lot of you are either rolling your eyes. I want you to think about why.
A few years back there was an Esquire profile of the man titled 'Wouldn't YOU like to be Anthony Robbins?' It followed him around for a day or two, detailing how slightly larger than life, is-this-guy-for-real his existence seemed to be, requiring an energy level, a positivity level, that was not only inhuman, but somehow subhuman, too. (I'm not sure what that means, either, but it sounds good, so I'm going with it.)
A lot of people consider Robbins to be nothing more than a scam-artist out to con vulnerable, desperate people who need a little pick-me-up in their lives.
That's always a possibility. I happen to think there's a lot to what he says, what he represents, what he advocates.
Most of what Robbins preaches is not new; it's the packaging that sets him apart, the packaging of himself, and what he' s selling, which is positivity, planning ahead, modelling yourself after others who have succeeded in the same fields that you want to succeed in, and then going after what you want.
Take the firewalk.
At his seminars, Robbins has people walk on burning coals.
Why?
Because once you do something you did not think you would be able to do, it leads you to question what other limitations you have imposed upon yourself. And once you do that, you start to see that a lot of what society imposes on us seeks to limit ourselves and our place in the world. Robbins wants to cut through the cultural conditioning and allow the individual to emerge in all his or her proper glory.
Already, people are rolling their eyes. That's your right.
But I think that's also what western culture conditions us to do.
We're a very cynical, sarcastic culture. We celebrate David Letterman and Jon Stewart and Conan O'Brien and Saturday Night Live and the cult of insincerity. (All very, very funny guys, by the way.) It's hip and cool to be glib. It's almost expected that you view the world with a cynical air by the age of, oh, fourteen. The world is a terrible place, and we are merely pawns, and the government is corrupt, and pass the remote because The Sopranos starts in five.
And as much as I like Michael Moore, the man and his movies, I still believe that there's a fundamental flaw in what he's preaching, which is this: it's not constructive. It's all about using humor and wit to point out flaws with the people in power, without ever, ever proposing another alternative. (Unless that alternative is the mere act of voting, getting the guys in power out, and oh then the world will be fine and dandy, and you will be satisfied, and your life will better.) Which is fine, in limited doses. But when that becomes your worldview, when your whole attention is focused on taking apart the people who are actually doing things without simultaneously focusing on what should be done by you and you alone, we're regressing as a people.
What does this have to do with Anthony Robbins? Good question. Give me a minute...
Okay.
It comes down to this: the education we receive throughout the first twenty-one years of our lives barely prepares us for any kind of job whatsoever, let alone for the emotional, physical, psychic toll that living itself does to our nervous systems. In our school systems, we don't get any, I mean any, advice on how to tackle the problems of life head-on, without fear; we don't get (or at least I didn't) any educational, I don't know, invigoration or preparation, are not indoctrinated with the sense that destiny is within our hands, with the belief that we can go out and do things in the world, invigorate the world, even change the world.
Anthony Robbins preaches change, and self-mastery, and even that latter term is something that many people right away would scoff at.
Why? Because, as Robbins himself has often pointed out, we celebrate the victim in our culture. If we're not feeling well, we get lots of attention around the water cooler. If we have emotional problems that are dragging us down, we can go on Oprah or Dr.Phil or Jerry Springer and become celebrities because of our misfortunes. We medicate ourselves with countless drugs to boost our self-esteem.
What Robbins talks about isn't necessarily enticing. He's talking about putting back in your own hands. He's speaking on the need to believing that you have to be a victim of yourself and whatever 'system' you're currently railing against. He simply highlights what all of our teachers should talk about -- the necessity of making goals, of believing in yourself, of seeking out those who have done fantastic things and finding out exactly how they did them, and how those rules could possibly apply to ourselves.
Did you get any of that kind of advice in high school or university? I sure as hell didn't.
In Japan, the year before you graduate, you go to countless job fairs and check out myriad companies and decide, a year in advance, which company you want to work for. When you do graduate, you know what you're doing and where you're going.
I used to tell my students in Japan that back home in Canada, when you graduate, you...graduate. You get a piece of paper. You get a handshake and a smile and a kick out the door into the real world. ("Good luck! Have fun! The Prozac's in the medicine cabinet, second shelf, next to the cough syrup!") There's rarely any systematic (or even haphazard) approach to life talked about.
(I'm not saying the Japanese way of doing things is necessarily better, or worse, because there's a lot of disadvantages to their hiring structures as well, but boy, at least they have something in place.)
I think it's sad, in a way, that even the name Anthony Robbins usually conjures up snickers and chuckles and rolls-of-the-eyes.
That says something about who we are, I think. It says that any open display of passion, of energy, of excitement, becomes a source of disdain. It says that we've given up on our true potential before we've begun.
We are what we think about all day long, somebody once said.
Can you imagine if we had somebody like Anthony Robbins teaching our kids, each day, every day? Can you imagine the amount of self-confidence they'd have?
This all comes spewing out simply because, as I approach thirty, I see a lot of sapped lives and cynical people. I see wallowing and self-pity (often from myself) and unnecessary misery.
I want to believe in the good stuff. I choose to believe in the good stuff, the Robbins stuff, the 'Just Do It' stuff, because the alternative, quite frankly, blows. I decide to believe that we are the masters of our own destiny, that we can be and dream and do great things, heroic things, however we define 'heroism' to ourselves. I want to believe that what Anthony Robbins says is the truth, because that's a better way to live, a more heightened way to live. I want to believe in the power of our individual selves. I want to believe.
Don't you?
(For a really long and interesting interview with Anthony Robbins from What is Enlightenment magazine, in which he talks about the relation between self-mastery and spirituality, click here:)
www.wie.org/j15/robbins.asp
1) Life is either an endless slog through a neverending series of browbeating, soul-destroying humiliations, or
2) it is a battleground through which we can seize our ultimate potential, help others grasp theirs, and live each day as a spiritual, enlightening progress towards our ultimate purpose.
Guess which theory Anthony Robbins would choose?
For those not in the know, Anthony Robbins is America's premier motivational speaker, star of countless late-night infomercials, personal coach to hundreds of elite athletes, businessmen, politicians and statesmen, guru to anyone and everyone seeking to become better than they are at the present moment.
He is, depending on how you look at it, an inspirational role model or a complete and total crock.
(Or maybe a bit of both.)
Upon hearing even the name 'Anthony Robbins', a lot of you are either rolling your eyes. I want you to think about why.
A few years back there was an Esquire profile of the man titled 'Wouldn't YOU like to be Anthony Robbins?' It followed him around for a day or two, detailing how slightly larger than life, is-this-guy-for-real his existence seemed to be, requiring an energy level, a positivity level, that was not only inhuman, but somehow subhuman, too. (I'm not sure what that means, either, but it sounds good, so I'm going with it.)
A lot of people consider Robbins to be nothing more than a scam-artist out to con vulnerable, desperate people who need a little pick-me-up in their lives.
That's always a possibility. I happen to think there's a lot to what he says, what he represents, what he advocates.
Most of what Robbins preaches is not new; it's the packaging that sets him apart, the packaging of himself, and what he' s selling, which is positivity, planning ahead, modelling yourself after others who have succeeded in the same fields that you want to succeed in, and then going after what you want.
Take the firewalk.
At his seminars, Robbins has people walk on burning coals.
Why?
Because once you do something you did not think you would be able to do, it leads you to question what other limitations you have imposed upon yourself. And once you do that, you start to see that a lot of what society imposes on us seeks to limit ourselves and our place in the world. Robbins wants to cut through the cultural conditioning and allow the individual to emerge in all his or her proper glory.
Already, people are rolling their eyes. That's your right.
But I think that's also what western culture conditions us to do.
We're a very cynical, sarcastic culture. We celebrate David Letterman and Jon Stewart and Conan O'Brien and Saturday Night Live and the cult of insincerity. (All very, very funny guys, by the way.) It's hip and cool to be glib. It's almost expected that you view the world with a cynical air by the age of, oh, fourteen. The world is a terrible place, and we are merely pawns, and the government is corrupt, and pass the remote because The Sopranos starts in five.
And as much as I like Michael Moore, the man and his movies, I still believe that there's a fundamental flaw in what he's preaching, which is this: it's not constructive. It's all about using humor and wit to point out flaws with the people in power, without ever, ever proposing another alternative. (Unless that alternative is the mere act of voting, getting the guys in power out, and oh then the world will be fine and dandy, and you will be satisfied, and your life will better.) Which is fine, in limited doses. But when that becomes your worldview, when your whole attention is focused on taking apart the people who are actually doing things without simultaneously focusing on what should be done by you and you alone, we're regressing as a people.
What does this have to do with Anthony Robbins? Good question. Give me a minute...
Okay.
It comes down to this: the education we receive throughout the first twenty-one years of our lives barely prepares us for any kind of job whatsoever, let alone for the emotional, physical, psychic toll that living itself does to our nervous systems. In our school systems, we don't get any, I mean any, advice on how to tackle the problems of life head-on, without fear; we don't get (or at least I didn't) any educational, I don't know, invigoration or preparation, are not indoctrinated with the sense that destiny is within our hands, with the belief that we can go out and do things in the world, invigorate the world, even change the world.
Anthony Robbins preaches change, and self-mastery, and even that latter term is something that many people right away would scoff at.
Why? Because, as Robbins himself has often pointed out, we celebrate the victim in our culture. If we're not feeling well, we get lots of attention around the water cooler. If we have emotional problems that are dragging us down, we can go on Oprah or Dr.Phil or Jerry Springer and become celebrities because of our misfortunes. We medicate ourselves with countless drugs to boost our self-esteem.
What Robbins talks about isn't necessarily enticing. He's talking about putting back in your own hands. He's speaking on the need to believing that you have to be a victim of yourself and whatever 'system' you're currently railing against. He simply highlights what all of our teachers should talk about -- the necessity of making goals, of believing in yourself, of seeking out those who have done fantastic things and finding out exactly how they did them, and how those rules could possibly apply to ourselves.
Did you get any of that kind of advice in high school or university? I sure as hell didn't.
In Japan, the year before you graduate, you go to countless job fairs and check out myriad companies and decide, a year in advance, which company you want to work for. When you do graduate, you know what you're doing and where you're going.
I used to tell my students in Japan that back home in Canada, when you graduate, you...graduate. You get a piece of paper. You get a handshake and a smile and a kick out the door into the real world. ("Good luck! Have fun! The Prozac's in the medicine cabinet, second shelf, next to the cough syrup!") There's rarely any systematic (or even haphazard) approach to life talked about.
(I'm not saying the Japanese way of doing things is necessarily better, or worse, because there's a lot of disadvantages to their hiring structures as well, but boy, at least they have something in place.)
I think it's sad, in a way, that even the name Anthony Robbins usually conjures up snickers and chuckles and rolls-of-the-eyes.
That says something about who we are, I think. It says that any open display of passion, of energy, of excitement, becomes a source of disdain. It says that we've given up on our true potential before we've begun.
We are what we think about all day long, somebody once said.
Can you imagine if we had somebody like Anthony Robbins teaching our kids, each day, every day? Can you imagine the amount of self-confidence they'd have?
This all comes spewing out simply because, as I approach thirty, I see a lot of sapped lives and cynical people. I see wallowing and self-pity (often from myself) and unnecessary misery.
I want to believe in the good stuff. I choose to believe in the good stuff, the Robbins stuff, the 'Just Do It' stuff, because the alternative, quite frankly, blows. I decide to believe that we are the masters of our own destiny, that we can be and dream and do great things, heroic things, however we define 'heroism' to ourselves. I want to believe that what Anthony Robbins says is the truth, because that's a better way to live, a more heightened way to live. I want to believe in the power of our individual selves. I want to believe.
Don't you?
(For a really long and interesting interview with Anthony Robbins from What is Enlightenment magazine, in which he talks about the relation between self-mastery and spirituality, click here:)
www.wie.org/j15/robbins.asp
Thursday, February 10, 2005
RECOMMENDED READING: GEORGE PELECANOS
If you're ever looking for anything good to read, real to read, I wholeheartedly recommend the 'Derek Strange' novels from George Pelecanos. (You can probably find them either in the 'Mystery' section of your local bookstore, or they might just be stacked in the general 'Fiction' area.)
Pelecanos has written twelve or so novels, of which I've read three, the ones featuring
Washington, D.C. private detective Derek Strange. (The Strange novels are Right as Rain, Hell to Pay, Soul Circus and Hard Revolution. You can find them in paperback under the 'Warner Vision' label.) Strange is an African-American p.i. with a fondness for old spaghetti westerns and beautiful modern women. (Morgan Freeman or Laurence Fishburne or Samuel L. Jackson would all be perfect as the main character for the likely screen adaptation.) He's got a new wife and stepson, coaches little-league football, has lived in D.C. his whole life, has a somewhat, how shall I put it, 'racially sensitive' white partner who moonlights in a bookstore (and loves Wild West stories).
I'm making these books sound light; they're not. I'm making them sound like 'thrillers' or 'police procedurals', but they're not those, either. They are novels. They deal with the moral issues of our times. They are about people and places in situations that most of us will never see, thank God, and there is drugs, blood, guts, and hard, relevant, biting social commentary about what it means to be black and what it means to be white in the ghettoes of present-day D.C.
The characters are well-drawn, the dialogue is authentic, and the stories move. There's no wasted breath.
So-called 'crime fiction' seems to be where it's at these days, where the novel shows its true, authentic force, what it can do better than any other media. Literary snobs still look down on it, but I guess, being snobs by definition, they look down on everything, right?
These are books that entertain you and make you think and make you feel. On every page.
If you don't usually read genre stuff, or even don't read much of anything, don't be shy.
Pelecanos is the real deal. He'll draw you in. I promise.
(For an interesting interview with George Pelecanos, go to:
www.identitytheory.com/interviews/birnbaum100.html)
Pelecanos has written twelve or so novels, of which I've read three, the ones featuring
Washington, D.C. private detective Derek Strange. (The Strange novels are Right as Rain, Hell to Pay, Soul Circus and Hard Revolution. You can find them in paperback under the 'Warner Vision' label.) Strange is an African-American p.i. with a fondness for old spaghetti westerns and beautiful modern women. (Morgan Freeman or Laurence Fishburne or Samuel L. Jackson would all be perfect as the main character for the likely screen adaptation.) He's got a new wife and stepson, coaches little-league football, has lived in D.C. his whole life, has a somewhat, how shall I put it, 'racially sensitive' white partner who moonlights in a bookstore (and loves Wild West stories).
I'm making these books sound light; they're not. I'm making them sound like 'thrillers' or 'police procedurals', but they're not those, either. They are novels. They deal with the moral issues of our times. They are about people and places in situations that most of us will never see, thank God, and there is drugs, blood, guts, and hard, relevant, biting social commentary about what it means to be black and what it means to be white in the ghettoes of present-day D.C.
The characters are well-drawn, the dialogue is authentic, and the stories move. There's no wasted breath.
So-called 'crime fiction' seems to be where it's at these days, where the novel shows its true, authentic force, what it can do better than any other media. Literary snobs still look down on it, but I guess, being snobs by definition, they look down on everything, right?
These are books that entertain you and make you think and make you feel. On every page.
If you don't usually read genre stuff, or even don't read much of anything, don't be shy.
Pelecanos is the real deal. He'll draw you in. I promise.
(For an interesting interview with George Pelecanos, go to:
www.identitytheory.com/interviews/birnbaum100.html)
REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST (MINUS THE PROUST), or WHY ROCKY IV IS BETTER THAN YOU MIGHT THINK
I'm probably the only person in the entire world, other than the author himself, to have actually read every single page of Sylvester Stallone's first and last novel, Paradise Alley. (Or the only person to even know that he wrote a novel. Or care.)
Yes, I said 'author' and 'Sylvester Stallone' in the same sentence. And I meant it, too.
How do I know that he wrote the book, and not some ghostwriter?
Because there's a line in Rocky V where Paulie, Adrian's brother, sick of her stubbornness, tells offs his sister by saying: " You live in this fairy tale world, where the air don't move! You're like a season that don't change."
Rocky V came out in 1990; Paradise Alley came out in 1978. (Paradise Alley was a script Stallone wrote before Rocky, actually, which he then turned into a book and a movie after Rocky's success.) I read the novel and noticed the line 'you're like a season that don't change' because I remembered that line from the final Rocky flick; it was a line I'd always liked. Had a touch of poetry to it. Then I read the book, and noticed it again; Stallone stole his own line from his own book to use in the Rocky V screenplay twelve years later.
(Scott, you may ask, why the hell do you know this stuff? To which I can only answer: Well, I notice things like that, because, um, those are the kinds of things I notice.)
I read it when I was working at the downtown library in St.Catharines back in high school. (Tori, if you're reading this, that copy is probably still lurking somewhere in the shelves.) It was a hardcover, with a photo on the back of Stallone sitting in front of a dressing-room mirror, hands clasped over his face. I even remember the dedication, to his first wife: To Sasha, who takes away the rain.
(I told you I remember and notice strange stuff.)
I was interested in writing. Always had been. Tried to read everything out there that seemed interesting. I was getting more and more interested in movies, too, and I had always loved the Rocky movies as a kid, and when I was fourteen, fifteen, I watched them again and again and again. (I was racing cross-country then, and I used to watch the training montages to pump me up the night before a race.)
I realized that the first Rocky, especially, had a pretty damn good script. And Stallone had wrote it, and had been nominated for an Academy Award for it. And he wrote all the Rocky movies, and he directed II through IV, and he wrote and directed Paradise Alley, and he wrote and directed the Saturday Night Fever sequel Staying Alive, too.
In the early nineties, when I was in high school, Stallone was making junk like Stop!Or My Mom Will Shoot and Cliffhanger and Demolition Man. (Actually, I have a soft spot for Cliffhanger because it was the first 'R' rated movie I saw in the theater as a legitimate 'adult'. Saw it three times in the theatre, actually, because it was very cinematic and kind of cool, truth be told, which freaked out my Canadian Literature and Drama teacher Mr.Dimartle. "You saw Cliffhanger three times? In the theatre?" I don't think he'd seen any movie in the theatre since probably Bonnie and Clyde. Let alone three times. Let alone the fact that it was a Stallone movie. But he's a good guy, so I forgive him his trespasses, as he forgives mine.)
Stallone's cinematic legacy was that of a pumped-up, monosyallabic, pretty-damn-bad actor.
Which he was.
But...
He'd wrote Rocky, see. And Rocky II. Good scripts. Human scripts. And he was a good actor in those, too. A real and honest one. And I was interested in writing. And if the image of a writer was a nerdy guy in a room smoking cigarettes, well, Stallone didn't fit the image.
It taught me a good lesson, is what I'm saying. To look beyond the surface of things. To delve deep into a person. To not rely on stereotypes. To not take things at face value. To not necessarily believe what the media and everyone else around you is saying. To look past exteriors. All the stuff we're supposed to learn in kindergarten but never really do.
I was thrilled to see Copland back in '97, the last good movie Stallone made, perhaps the last good movie he'll ever make. The director, James Mangold, knew he could act, knew he could get a good performance out of Stallone in a movie that included such heavyweights as Robert
DeNiro (the best American film actor ever), Ray Liotta and Harvey Keitel. There's not much Stallone can do well, as an actor, but what he does do well, he does very well -- two or three things only, mostly facial expressions, vocal expressions, that accenuate his droopy eyes and give him a tender, sympathic look. But Mangold knew what to look for and ask for, and he exploited Stallone's strengths to good effect.
Ah, the strange obessions I have...
Most of you don't care, nor should you. We all have our own quirks. We all have these eccentric cultural, societal likes and dislikes we don't talk about with people. This is one of mine: defending Sylvester Stallone to the world. Why? Because it's a strange and goofy thing to do. Because I'm a contrarian by nature and choice. Because when you're a teenager you still don't know how the world works, and you rely on what you're told, and I was learning that most people thought Stallone was a loser while I was learning that he wrote scripts and novels and offered something others neglected, and ignored. It was my own secret and my own theory, and it's important to remember who we used to be and what we used to love.
I always try to look for the full story of someone, and Stallone had a hell of a story -- kicked out of multiple schools, a struggling actor, writer, Academy Award nominee, biggest movie star in the world, now a somewhat sad, fading has-been. In the first Rocky, everyone's watching Apollo Creed on the TV, and the bartender says a disparaging remark, to which Stallone says: "This guy went out and took his best shot and became champion of the world. What kind of a shot did you ever take?" And some director was once accused of only having one or two good ideas, to which he responded: "Yeah, but most people don't have any good ideas, so one or two ain't bad, really." That's my take on Stallone: he latched onto a hell of a concept, and he rode it, and he took a shot. Almost everything else he made is garbage, true, but he took a shot. (Although I could defend his comedy Oscar, if you want me to, because it's actually not that bad. But you probably don't want me to, do you...)
I still maintain that Rocky is a great movie with a great script. (We have to stay true to our adolescent selves, after all.) I've realized that Stallone, as a director, evolved into the Michael Bay of the mid-eighties (which is a good thing or bad thing, depending on how you look at it); that Rocky IV is better than you think if you accept it as it is, which is a comic-book style allegory of Cold War tensions, not the gritty realism of the first film in the series; that First Blood is a tight, taught thriller; that most of his work his complete garbage; and that he really, really shouldn't have sung the title song to his directorial debut Paradise Alley. (Yes, Stallone himself sang the title song. Honest to god.)
We have to stay true to our adolescent selves. We have to remember what we used to love, and why. We have to defend the people and times that nudged us forward.
Yes, I said 'author' and 'Sylvester Stallone' in the same sentence. And I meant it, too.
How do I know that he wrote the book, and not some ghostwriter?
Because there's a line in Rocky V where Paulie, Adrian's brother, sick of her stubbornness, tells offs his sister by saying: " You live in this fairy tale world, where the air don't move! You're like a season that don't change."
Rocky V came out in 1990; Paradise Alley came out in 1978. (Paradise Alley was a script Stallone wrote before Rocky, actually, which he then turned into a book and a movie after Rocky's success.) I read the novel and noticed the line 'you're like a season that don't change' because I remembered that line from the final Rocky flick; it was a line I'd always liked. Had a touch of poetry to it. Then I read the book, and noticed it again; Stallone stole his own line from his own book to use in the Rocky V screenplay twelve years later.
(Scott, you may ask, why the hell do you know this stuff? To which I can only answer: Well, I notice things like that, because, um, those are the kinds of things I notice.)
I read it when I was working at the downtown library in St.Catharines back in high school. (Tori, if you're reading this, that copy is probably still lurking somewhere in the shelves.) It was a hardcover, with a photo on the back of Stallone sitting in front of a dressing-room mirror, hands clasped over his face. I even remember the dedication, to his first wife: To Sasha, who takes away the rain.
(I told you I remember and notice strange stuff.)
I was interested in writing. Always had been. Tried to read everything out there that seemed interesting. I was getting more and more interested in movies, too, and I had always loved the Rocky movies as a kid, and when I was fourteen, fifteen, I watched them again and again and again. (I was racing cross-country then, and I used to watch the training montages to pump me up the night before a race.)
I realized that the first Rocky, especially, had a pretty damn good script. And Stallone had wrote it, and had been nominated for an Academy Award for it. And he wrote all the Rocky movies, and he directed II through IV, and he wrote and directed Paradise Alley, and he wrote and directed the Saturday Night Fever sequel Staying Alive, too.
In the early nineties, when I was in high school, Stallone was making junk like Stop!Or My Mom Will Shoot and Cliffhanger and Demolition Man. (Actually, I have a soft spot for Cliffhanger because it was the first 'R' rated movie I saw in the theater as a legitimate 'adult'. Saw it three times in the theatre, actually, because it was very cinematic and kind of cool, truth be told, which freaked out my Canadian Literature and Drama teacher Mr.Dimartle. "You saw Cliffhanger three times? In the theatre?" I don't think he'd seen any movie in the theatre since probably Bonnie and Clyde. Let alone three times. Let alone the fact that it was a Stallone movie. But he's a good guy, so I forgive him his trespasses, as he forgives mine.)
Stallone's cinematic legacy was that of a pumped-up, monosyallabic, pretty-damn-bad actor.
Which he was.
But...
He'd wrote Rocky, see. And Rocky II. Good scripts. Human scripts. And he was a good actor in those, too. A real and honest one. And I was interested in writing. And if the image of a writer was a nerdy guy in a room smoking cigarettes, well, Stallone didn't fit the image.
It taught me a good lesson, is what I'm saying. To look beyond the surface of things. To delve deep into a person. To not rely on stereotypes. To not take things at face value. To not necessarily believe what the media and everyone else around you is saying. To look past exteriors. All the stuff we're supposed to learn in kindergarten but never really do.
I was thrilled to see Copland back in '97, the last good movie Stallone made, perhaps the last good movie he'll ever make. The director, James Mangold, knew he could act, knew he could get a good performance out of Stallone in a movie that included such heavyweights as Robert
DeNiro (the best American film actor ever), Ray Liotta and Harvey Keitel. There's not much Stallone can do well, as an actor, but what he does do well, he does very well -- two or three things only, mostly facial expressions, vocal expressions, that accenuate his droopy eyes and give him a tender, sympathic look. But Mangold knew what to look for and ask for, and he exploited Stallone's strengths to good effect.
Ah, the strange obessions I have...
Most of you don't care, nor should you. We all have our own quirks. We all have these eccentric cultural, societal likes and dislikes we don't talk about with people. This is one of mine: defending Sylvester Stallone to the world. Why? Because it's a strange and goofy thing to do. Because I'm a contrarian by nature and choice. Because when you're a teenager you still don't know how the world works, and you rely on what you're told, and I was learning that most people thought Stallone was a loser while I was learning that he wrote scripts and novels and offered something others neglected, and ignored. It was my own secret and my own theory, and it's important to remember who we used to be and what we used to love.
I always try to look for the full story of someone, and Stallone had a hell of a story -- kicked out of multiple schools, a struggling actor, writer, Academy Award nominee, biggest movie star in the world, now a somewhat sad, fading has-been. In the first Rocky, everyone's watching Apollo Creed on the TV, and the bartender says a disparaging remark, to which Stallone says: "This guy went out and took his best shot and became champion of the world. What kind of a shot did you ever take?" And some director was once accused of only having one or two good ideas, to which he responded: "Yeah, but most people don't have any good ideas, so one or two ain't bad, really." That's my take on Stallone: he latched onto a hell of a concept, and he rode it, and he took a shot. Almost everything else he made is garbage, true, but he took a shot. (Although I could defend his comedy Oscar, if you want me to, because it's actually not that bad. But you probably don't want me to, do you...)
I still maintain that Rocky is a great movie with a great script. (We have to stay true to our adolescent selves, after all.) I've realized that Stallone, as a director, evolved into the Michael Bay of the mid-eighties (which is a good thing or bad thing, depending on how you look at it); that Rocky IV is better than you think if you accept it as it is, which is a comic-book style allegory of Cold War tensions, not the gritty realism of the first film in the series; that First Blood is a tight, taught thriller; that most of his work his complete garbage; and that he really, really shouldn't have sung the title song to his directorial debut Paradise Alley. (Yes, Stallone himself sang the title song. Honest to god.)
We have to stay true to our adolescent selves. We have to remember what we used to love, and why. We have to defend the people and times that nudged us forward.
RUN, CONDI, RUN
A canidate for the presidency of the United States of America is worried about the effect his religion will have on the popular vote, and the people are worried, too. Will his religion affect his decision-making process? Is his religion suitable for America's highest office?
Am I talking about George 'Dubya' Bush?
No, I'm talking about John F.Kennedy.
I just finished reading the new biography of him, the one subtitled An Unfinished Life. An interesting read, if only because I discovered a) Kennedy was really, really, really sick for most of his life and all of his presidency, constantly pumped full of steroids and painkillers for his horrible back, ulcers, etc; and b) 'womanizer' does not really do justice to Kennedy's accomplishment's in that department. If bedding women was analagous to playing hockey, Kennedy would be Wayne Gretzky and Clinton would be Russel Crowe in Mystery, Alaska. (An obscure reference, but I'm in an obscure country, so what the hell.)
The author of the book makes a pretty convincing case that Kennedy was the right man at the right time. Unbelievable, what Kennedy had to deal with -- Cuba, Vietnam, the Soviet Union. He basically pulled the world back from the brink of nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was internationally focused and forward thinking.
And he was a Catholic.
Big deal?
Actually, yeah, it was a big deal. A huge deal, especially in the run-up to the election. I hadn't realized what an earth-shattering effect his run for the presidency was at that time. The whole debate centred around: Is America ready for a Catholic presidency?
The question of today is: How about a black female president?
It's possible.
After all, Canada had a female prime minister for a little while. (Okay, okay, nobody really liked Kim Campbell that much -- a nice lady and all, but following Brian Mulroney is not exactly going to win you any prizes. And the world didn't exactly pay too much notice at the time.)
Condoleeza Rice is wowing the world with her European tour right now, showing poise, grace, and ice-cold, rock solid firmness. She is one tough cookie. She is also disciplined, refined, elegant, intellectual and driven.
Dick Morris, Clinton's old campaign consultant, has a column today debating the likelihood and merits of a possible Condi run.
(See it here: www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/Comment/DickMorris/020905.html)
She would be a shrewd, more than capable coutnerpoint to Hillary's inevitable run in 2008.
Can you imagine that? These two vying for the world's top prize?
I don't know if Condi will run; a lot can happen in the next four years. (And boy does it look like the U.S. is gunning for Iran.) I think she could run, though, I think it's possible, maybe even likely, and I think she would do very, very well.
I like her. I like her stamina and resilience and singlemindedness. I may not necessarily agree with all of her boss's policies, but I appreciate and admire her very human struggle, the fact that she has risen from the very centre of racial segregation to the centre of her nation's government. It's kind of sad, though, that most of black America (with good reason) resents the administration she represents; kind of sad that her success can't be shared by the masses the way it should be.
Was America ready for a Catholic president in 1960? They were. It was a slim win, yes, but they were.
Is America ready for a black female president?
The world waits.
Am I talking about George 'Dubya' Bush?
No, I'm talking about John F.Kennedy.
I just finished reading the new biography of him, the one subtitled An Unfinished Life. An interesting read, if only because I discovered a) Kennedy was really, really, really sick for most of his life and all of his presidency, constantly pumped full of steroids and painkillers for his horrible back, ulcers, etc; and b) 'womanizer' does not really do justice to Kennedy's accomplishment's in that department. If bedding women was analagous to playing hockey, Kennedy would be Wayne Gretzky and Clinton would be Russel Crowe in Mystery, Alaska. (An obscure reference, but I'm in an obscure country, so what the hell.)
The author of the book makes a pretty convincing case that Kennedy was the right man at the right time. Unbelievable, what Kennedy had to deal with -- Cuba, Vietnam, the Soviet Union. He basically pulled the world back from the brink of nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was internationally focused and forward thinking.
And he was a Catholic.
Big deal?
Actually, yeah, it was a big deal. A huge deal, especially in the run-up to the election. I hadn't realized what an earth-shattering effect his run for the presidency was at that time. The whole debate centred around: Is America ready for a Catholic presidency?
The question of today is: How about a black female president?
It's possible.
After all, Canada had a female prime minister for a little while. (Okay, okay, nobody really liked Kim Campbell that much -- a nice lady and all, but following Brian Mulroney is not exactly going to win you any prizes. And the world didn't exactly pay too much notice at the time.)
Condoleeza Rice is wowing the world with her European tour right now, showing poise, grace, and ice-cold, rock solid firmness. She is one tough cookie. She is also disciplined, refined, elegant, intellectual and driven.
Dick Morris, Clinton's old campaign consultant, has a column today debating the likelihood and merits of a possible Condi run.
(See it here: www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/Comment/DickMorris/020905.html)
She would be a shrewd, more than capable coutnerpoint to Hillary's inevitable run in 2008.
Can you imagine that? These two vying for the world's top prize?
I don't know if Condi will run; a lot can happen in the next four years. (And boy does it look like the U.S. is gunning for Iran.) I think she could run, though, I think it's possible, maybe even likely, and I think she would do very, very well.
I like her. I like her stamina and resilience and singlemindedness. I may not necessarily agree with all of her boss's policies, but I appreciate and admire her very human struggle, the fact that she has risen from the very centre of racial segregation to the centre of her nation's government. It's kind of sad, though, that most of black America (with good reason) resents the administration she represents; kind of sad that her success can't be shared by the masses the way it should be.
Was America ready for a Catholic president in 1960? They were. It was a slim win, yes, but they were.
Is America ready for a black female president?
The world waits.
DO YOU GO BACK TO THE VOLLEYBALL GAME OR NOT? IF YES, WHEN?
While I sit here typing this and you sit there reading this, someone, somewhere, is reaching out their hand, begging, asking for more.
An obvious statement, I know -- but you're always confronted by it here in Cambodia, and the moment it doesn't make me stop, pause, think, is the moment that I have officially become one of those robotic things that completely took over the second half of The Matrix Revolutions. (Which, incidentally, I still haven't quite figured out -- the movies, I mean. Loved the second, liked the third one, but not sure what happened. Then again, The Great Muppet Caper left me puzzled, too, as did Ocean's Twelve, so...)
It's scary. How you can get so damn used to seeing homeless people waiting outside of supermarkets, or dirty, scrawny kids hanging around convenience stores, waiting for whatever you feel like giving them. (There are a couple of western style shops called STAR MART here in Phnom Penh, where you can buy Coke and KitKats and Time and Cosmopolitan, the Australian edition, or sometimes the UK one.) You start to resent their presence; you start to resent yourself for resenting their presence. The cycle continues.
It's natural, I guess; we don't like looking at unpleasant stuff. It sticks in our craw. You ever see that movie The Beach? Leonardo DiCaprio settles down in this idyllic Thai island unspoiled by the rest of humanity and culture's crass influences. (The real island where they filmed the flick was wiped out by the tsunami, I think; turns out 'humanity' wasn't the problem, just nature.) At one point one of the characters gets really, really sick, so they put him up in a tent on the other side of the island, partly for his own safety and comfort, mostly so that they can play volleyball and lounge on the beach and make-out without being confronted by the daily unpleasantness of someone dying.
When I first watched that scene, I thought: What jerks. What losers. What unfeeling, heartless, bastards.
Then I realized that the whole movie works on a whole metaphorical level too, and if I choose to approach it from that viewpoint, then you could argue that the dying man in the tent simply represents society's invalids, and the people on the beach represent, well, us, basically, those healthy, active, living citizens who just want to enjoy our days on this planet.
Isn't that what we do, after all? We put our sick people safely in hospitals, where we don't have to deal with them. We put our old people in 'retirement homes', so they can spend their final months and years playing pinochle and watching the clock. (The hours pass by so slowly!) We see the commercials for the starving and Africa and mock Sally Struthers' hair and career and physique. It's what we do. It's how we survive.
Here, well, most people don't go to hospitals. There's no retirement homes. You can see the wretchedness on a daily basis. I'm not saying it's like Dachau or Auschwitz here; Phnom Penh is, in some respects, a thriving little town, getting bigger and better due to the spending habits of the corrupt government elite. (It's the countryside that's really getting worse and worse and worse.)
The point is, it's all mixed together. You see homeless kids every day transporting garbage around. You see the mothers and children hanging out in front of the stores, always with the same nervous smiles and wounded eyes. You see little boys and girls leading by hand blind musicians around town as they play their pipe or stroke their mandolin, hoping for spare change. Occasionally, you'll see two very old women clutching hands and slowly making their way down the road, stopping when they see someone more prosperous than them, holding out their hands, hoping, hoping for anything.
Stephen King gave a great commencement speech to Vassar College a few years back that was posted on his website for awhile. Why was it great? He didn't try and give a funny speech full of ten or fifteen humorous pieces of advice. He picked a theme (giving back) and he chose one or two ways to illustrate that theme. He asked the graduates and guests to imagine a simple image: a traditional American barbeque, the father wearing an apron saying KISS THE COOK, the mother and kids waiting at the picnic table for their burgers and hot dogs. Behind them lies a fence, and behind the fence is a group of hungry, homeless people, asking for food. They aren't hostile; they aren't angry. They just want what the rest of us have: health and security. We are the people at the table, he said, and most of the rest of the world are the people behind the fence.
He wanted to make the graduates feel guilty, I think, because when you feel guilty, you give back. (Guilt is an unfair, wonderful motivator.)
So living here you always are reminded of the people behind the fence, to swipe King's metaphor, because here there is no fence. You can taste and sample a fairly authentic
proportion of the world's misery; you have no choice but to do so, and no real barrier exists between you and them, chainlink or otherwise.
But how much do you give? How do you choose who to acknowlege, respond to, help? When do you turn around and go back to the volleyball game and leave the poor and the sick to their dying days in the tents?
An obvious statement, I know -- but you're always confronted by it here in Cambodia, and the moment it doesn't make me stop, pause, think, is the moment that I have officially become one of those robotic things that completely took over the second half of The Matrix Revolutions. (Which, incidentally, I still haven't quite figured out -- the movies, I mean. Loved the second, liked the third one, but not sure what happened. Then again, The Great Muppet Caper left me puzzled, too, as did Ocean's Twelve, so...)
It's scary. How you can get so damn used to seeing homeless people waiting outside of supermarkets, or dirty, scrawny kids hanging around convenience stores, waiting for whatever you feel like giving them. (There are a couple of western style shops called STAR MART here in Phnom Penh, where you can buy Coke and KitKats and Time and Cosmopolitan, the Australian edition, or sometimes the UK one.) You start to resent their presence; you start to resent yourself for resenting their presence. The cycle continues.
It's natural, I guess; we don't like looking at unpleasant stuff. It sticks in our craw. You ever see that movie The Beach? Leonardo DiCaprio settles down in this idyllic Thai island unspoiled by the rest of humanity and culture's crass influences. (The real island where they filmed the flick was wiped out by the tsunami, I think; turns out 'humanity' wasn't the problem, just nature.) At one point one of the characters gets really, really sick, so they put him up in a tent on the other side of the island, partly for his own safety and comfort, mostly so that they can play volleyball and lounge on the beach and make-out without being confronted by the daily unpleasantness of someone dying.
When I first watched that scene, I thought: What jerks. What losers. What unfeeling, heartless, bastards.
Then I realized that the whole movie works on a whole metaphorical level too, and if I choose to approach it from that viewpoint, then you could argue that the dying man in the tent simply represents society's invalids, and the people on the beach represent, well, us, basically, those healthy, active, living citizens who just want to enjoy our days on this planet.
Isn't that what we do, after all? We put our sick people safely in hospitals, where we don't have to deal with them. We put our old people in 'retirement homes', so they can spend their final months and years playing pinochle and watching the clock. (The hours pass by so slowly!) We see the commercials for the starving and Africa and mock Sally Struthers' hair and career and physique. It's what we do. It's how we survive.
Here, well, most people don't go to hospitals. There's no retirement homes. You can see the wretchedness on a daily basis. I'm not saying it's like Dachau or Auschwitz here; Phnom Penh is, in some respects, a thriving little town, getting bigger and better due to the spending habits of the corrupt government elite. (It's the countryside that's really getting worse and worse and worse.)
The point is, it's all mixed together. You see homeless kids every day transporting garbage around. You see the mothers and children hanging out in front of the stores, always with the same nervous smiles and wounded eyes. You see little boys and girls leading by hand blind musicians around town as they play their pipe or stroke their mandolin, hoping for spare change. Occasionally, you'll see two very old women clutching hands and slowly making their way down the road, stopping when they see someone more prosperous than them, holding out their hands, hoping, hoping for anything.
Stephen King gave a great commencement speech to Vassar College a few years back that was posted on his website for awhile. Why was it great? He didn't try and give a funny speech full of ten or fifteen humorous pieces of advice. He picked a theme (giving back) and he chose one or two ways to illustrate that theme. He asked the graduates and guests to imagine a simple image: a traditional American barbeque, the father wearing an apron saying KISS THE COOK, the mother and kids waiting at the picnic table for their burgers and hot dogs. Behind them lies a fence, and behind the fence is a group of hungry, homeless people, asking for food. They aren't hostile; they aren't angry. They just want what the rest of us have: health and security. We are the people at the table, he said, and most of the rest of the world are the people behind the fence.
He wanted to make the graduates feel guilty, I think, because when you feel guilty, you give back. (Guilt is an unfair, wonderful motivator.)
So living here you always are reminded of the people behind the fence, to swipe King's metaphor, because here there is no fence. You can taste and sample a fairly authentic
proportion of the world's misery; you have no choice but to do so, and no real barrier exists between you and them, chainlink or otherwise.
But how much do you give? How do you choose who to acknowlege, respond to, help? When do you turn around and go back to the volleyball game and leave the poor and the sick to their dying days in the tents?
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
COINCIDENTAL COINS, CONNECTING THE UNIVERSE'S DOTS, AND THE CONTINUING GALACTIC SUPREMACY OF RALPH MACCHIO
Why does the universe and all its minions so often to conspire to unleash harmless, weird, freaky-deaky coincidences on us? We wail (with justification) at the senseless fury of volcanoes and earthquakes and tsunamis; we shake our heads (in perplexion) at the galactical equivalent of Grade 6 practical jokes. Are they flip sides of the same coincidental coin?
For instance:
1) Last week, I got an e-mail from the Khmer dude who teaches at the orphanage I used to teach at. He wants me to help him out, see if I can get him a job, that sort of thing. He called my housemate (as I don't have a phone -- long story), and I was reminded of the call Sunday night. Monday morning, I'm running down by the river in the crisp and total darkness that 5:30 a.m. provides, and what do I hear?
"Scott? Scott Spencer?"
I stop, turn around, and there he is, Petro, just the guy I had been thinking about the night before. Hadn't seen him in over a year. And then bang, there he is.
2) The actress Rosario Dawson seems to have been in every movie I've seen in the last few months. Just as I was telling somebody this, I slipped the movie Shattered Glass into the DVD player, and the credits roll, and, guess what, there's her name.
3) The Karate Kid III was on TV the other week. I watched the first Karate Kid back in that long-ago summer of 1984, the summer of the Los Angeles Olympics, in a theater in Niagara Falls (about fifteen minutes from my hometown of St.Catharines.)
I remember that weekend very clearly, because my family moved from the house I grew up in all the way, get ready for it, to the new house we were building on the edge of Lake Ontario, at the end of Geneva Street, on Evangelista Court. (Supermodel Linda Evangelista is from St.Catharines, and some of her relatives were the first ones to build on this court. True story. I'm sure you're thrilled.) I was devastated. Distraught. You see, this house was, literally, a five minute walk from my old house. Do you know how long a five minute walk is when you're eight years old? I've moved from St.Catharines to Toronto and St.Catharines to Ottawa and from Canada to Japan and from Japan to Cambodia, but those distances absolutely pale in comparison to the distance I tread back then. I was leaving everything -- my buddies, my home, my world. My parents, being rational, decided that Scotty wasn't quite ready to handle the move. So they shipped me off to our friends in Fort Erie, and I happily missed all of the heavy lifting. Instead, I was introduced to that wonderful world of Daniel LaRusso and Mr.Miyagi.
I saw the first sequel at the Town Cinemas two years later. I saw The Karate Kid III at that same theatre in 1989, and if you wonder how I can remember all of these minute details, I can only ask: How could you ever forget? This is the Karate Kid movies we're talking, here. I loved the second film and I loved the third film, too, even though, in retrospect, it's clear that the first one is the best. (And it's clear that they're all derivative of Rocky, even sharing the same director, John Avildsen, but so be it; we're all derivative of something or someone, right? If the worth and value of something were judged based only on originality, we'd all be on sale at Wal-Mart. Or, for you St.Catharines readers, Bargain Harold's. Or Bi-Way. Take your pick.)
The sequels are forced and strained (as all sequels, by definition, are) but there's a wonderful continuity at work; there's a marvellous steadiness that I responded to, latched on to. When you're a child, everything is changing, shifting, growing. Every year a new grade, notebook, friends. Your voice lowers. Hair starts to sprout in unlikely places. (I'm still going though that, actually.) Nothing is certain. But three years can pass and I can step into a theatre and lo and behold, there's Daneil LaRusso, and he's still seventeen, and he's still facing and fighting the same old demons, and though I've grown five whole years since the first film he's aged not at all, and his world still exists, and I can be a part of it, and when you're a kid, it's wonderful to have that all-access pass. More than that -- it's rejuvenating.
But I digress...
The point is, I was just talking to someone via e-mail the other day about the wretchedness of The Next Karate Kid, the fourth film in the series, the one starring current Academy Award Nominee Hilary Swank. It had (the great) Noriyuki 'Pat' Morita, yes, but no Macchio, and I jokingly said that a 'Karate Kid' world without Ralph Macchio is not a world that I want to be a part of.
And then today, on www.cnn.com, there it is, an interview with Macchio about the new DVD box set of the films that's recently been released.
Weird.
That's all I'm saying.
It's weird.
You can go weeks, months, even years without talking to someone or even thinking of someone and then bam, for two, three days in a row they are brought back into your life for some reason or another. I hadn't really thought about The Karate Kid much at all in the past few years, and then, over the course of a week, it suddenly returns full-force into my life.
We always look for the presence of the divine in large-scale, world-changing events, but what about the smaller stuff, the inconsequential stuff, the stuff that forms our lives? Is there a pattern to all these trivial coincidences?
Einstein said that God doesn't play dice with the universe, true, but maybe He's playing another game with us, a sillier one made up of chance encounters and long-forgotten loves. Maybe it's a game we'll someday, if not win, at least get to know the rules of.
Until then, all we can do is sit back and try to connect the dots.
For instance:
1) Last week, I got an e-mail from the Khmer dude who teaches at the orphanage I used to teach at. He wants me to help him out, see if I can get him a job, that sort of thing. He called my housemate (as I don't have a phone -- long story), and I was reminded of the call Sunday night. Monday morning, I'm running down by the river in the crisp and total darkness that 5:30 a.m. provides, and what do I hear?
"Scott? Scott Spencer?"
I stop, turn around, and there he is, Petro, just the guy I had been thinking about the night before. Hadn't seen him in over a year. And then bang, there he is.
2) The actress Rosario Dawson seems to have been in every movie I've seen in the last few months. Just as I was telling somebody this, I slipped the movie Shattered Glass into the DVD player, and the credits roll, and, guess what, there's her name.
3) The Karate Kid III was on TV the other week. I watched the first Karate Kid back in that long-ago summer of 1984, the summer of the Los Angeles Olympics, in a theater in Niagara Falls (about fifteen minutes from my hometown of St.Catharines.)
I remember that weekend very clearly, because my family moved from the house I grew up in all the way, get ready for it, to the new house we were building on the edge of Lake Ontario, at the end of Geneva Street, on Evangelista Court. (Supermodel Linda Evangelista is from St.Catharines, and some of her relatives were the first ones to build on this court. True story. I'm sure you're thrilled.) I was devastated. Distraught. You see, this house was, literally, a five minute walk from my old house. Do you know how long a five minute walk is when you're eight years old? I've moved from St.Catharines to Toronto and St.Catharines to Ottawa and from Canada to Japan and from Japan to Cambodia, but those distances absolutely pale in comparison to the distance I tread back then. I was leaving everything -- my buddies, my home, my world. My parents, being rational, decided that Scotty wasn't quite ready to handle the move. So they shipped me off to our friends in Fort Erie, and I happily missed all of the heavy lifting. Instead, I was introduced to that wonderful world of Daniel LaRusso and Mr.Miyagi.
I saw the first sequel at the Town Cinemas two years later. I saw The Karate Kid III at that same theatre in 1989, and if you wonder how I can remember all of these minute details, I can only ask: How could you ever forget? This is the Karate Kid movies we're talking, here. I loved the second film and I loved the third film, too, even though, in retrospect, it's clear that the first one is the best. (And it's clear that they're all derivative of Rocky, even sharing the same director, John Avildsen, but so be it; we're all derivative of something or someone, right? If the worth and value of something were judged based only on originality, we'd all be on sale at Wal-Mart. Or, for you St.Catharines readers, Bargain Harold's. Or Bi-Way. Take your pick.)
The sequels are forced and strained (as all sequels, by definition, are) but there's a wonderful continuity at work; there's a marvellous steadiness that I responded to, latched on to. When you're a child, everything is changing, shifting, growing. Every year a new grade, notebook, friends. Your voice lowers. Hair starts to sprout in unlikely places. (I'm still going though that, actually.) Nothing is certain. But three years can pass and I can step into a theatre and lo and behold, there's Daneil LaRusso, and he's still seventeen, and he's still facing and fighting the same old demons, and though I've grown five whole years since the first film he's aged not at all, and his world still exists, and I can be a part of it, and when you're a kid, it's wonderful to have that all-access pass. More than that -- it's rejuvenating.
But I digress...
The point is, I was just talking to someone via e-mail the other day about the wretchedness of The Next Karate Kid, the fourth film in the series, the one starring current Academy Award Nominee Hilary Swank. It had (the great) Noriyuki 'Pat' Morita, yes, but no Macchio, and I jokingly said that a 'Karate Kid' world without Ralph Macchio is not a world that I want to be a part of.
And then today, on www.cnn.com, there it is, an interview with Macchio about the new DVD box set of the films that's recently been released.
Weird.
That's all I'm saying.
It's weird.
You can go weeks, months, even years without talking to someone or even thinking of someone and then bam, for two, three days in a row they are brought back into your life for some reason or another. I hadn't really thought about The Karate Kid much at all in the past few years, and then, over the course of a week, it suddenly returns full-force into my life.
We always look for the presence of the divine in large-scale, world-changing events, but what about the smaller stuff, the inconsequential stuff, the stuff that forms our lives? Is there a pattern to all these trivial coincidences?
Einstein said that God doesn't play dice with the universe, true, but maybe He's playing another game with us, a sillier one made up of chance encounters and long-forgotten loves. Maybe it's a game we'll someday, if not win, at least get to know the rules of.
Until then, all we can do is sit back and try to connect the dots.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)