Law and Other

John Phillip Law, R.I.P.

He had a role in one of the quintessential Cold War movies, The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming, one of those films that will have to be shown to our grandchildren if they're ever to understand the times we lived in.

And he starred in some of the best/worst films of the late '60s and early '70s, such as Barbarella and my favorite, the delightfully fluffy
The Love Machine. Based on a Jacqueline Susann novel! Also starring Dyan Cannon, David Hemmings, Shecky Green! With Eve Bruce as "Amazon Woman." Soundtrack sung by Dionne Warwick! Does it get any more "period" than this?

And of course, he also starred in the great Saturday matinee boys' adventure flick The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, which brought together two of the great accomplishments of early '70s movie-making: Ray Harryhausen special effects, and Caroline Munro.

Which is an excuse to run a picture of Caroline Munro.




As if I need one. Which makes this post a modern corollary to Lord Byron's observation that, "All tragedies are finished by a death, All comedies are ended by a marriage." All Hollywood obits are potential excuses to run pictures of hot tomatoes.

For Fans of Old Movies

The phrase "the inevitable Ward Bond" is just one of the pleasures of this article.

Hillbillies

This is one of those news stories that trips people up:

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) -- Gov. Joe Manchin and others took offense Tuesday to a planned scene from an upcoming film starring Julianne Moore that they say stereotypes West Virginians as inbreeds and carnival sideshows.

The horror thriller "Shelter" is recruiting extras with unusual physical features for a scene in a "West Virginia holler," according to Donna Belajac Casting of Pittsburgh.

The casting call said the film is looking for extras who are extraordinarily tall or short, those with unusual body shapes and unusual facial features, especially eyes, and even people with physical abnormalities as long as they have normal mobility.

"It's clear that they have no real understanding of who the people of West Virginia are," Manchin said. "And that's not only unfortunate, but in this case offensive. Certainly it doesn't sound like a movie worth watching."

The casting call also advertises for a 9- to 12-year-old white girl with an "other-worldly look ... could be an albino or something along those lines -- she's someone who is visually different and therefore has a closer contact to the gods and to magic. 'Regular-looking' children should not attend this open call."

And Hollywood wonders why people in the heartland think it looks down on them. This casting call seems to confirm the notion that, to Hollywood, hillbillies and white country folk default as freaks and people you don't want to run out of gas among, unless they're victims of sexism ("Coal Miner's Daughter"), U.S. military culture ("Deer Hunter"), or corporate greed ("Norma Rae").

Not just Hollywood, but liberal intelligentsia generally. A 2002 "New York Times" book review section ran a review of T.R. Pearson's latest novelistic journey down South to take his readers "inside the otherwise lackluster skulls of hillbillies and white trash" [reviewer's description].

Along about a third of the way through this generally glowing write-up, the reviewer opens a paragraph by noting, "Rednecks may compose the last minority that is still fair game for insult from almost any quarter." But he doesn't pick up this thread, and instead returns to the book's praise. You can almost hear the pause, the glimmer of doubt, and the "but who cares?" before he plunges on.

Some people who will defend this because there is no such thing as racism when it is directed against the white majority/patriarchy. But Appalachian whites represent a particular strain in the American mutt-mix -- largely Scots-Irish in ancestry -- and have been the butt of jokes and prejudices by the dominant white culture (see "New York Times" review above) since at least Mark Twain's day.

Here's what else you'll see as this plays out its 15 minutes of Internet fame: Somebody on the "right" will scold people on the "left" for hypocrisy for not speaking up about this when they have decried similar slurs against any other ethnicity/cultural identity.

Someone on the "left" will respond with a counter-charge of hypocrisy against the guy on the "right" for suddenly embracing a multi-culti position he has scorned in every other instance.

"Right" will shoot back that he is merely holding "left's" feet to his own fire. "Left" will reply that right is just an ignorant wingnut ...

BLOGTOPIA:




One starts to wonder who the real freakshow is. "'Regular-looking' children should not attend this open call."

Red Dawn

Cruising the anti-war sites, I was surprised by repeated references to "Red Dawn," the 1984 Hollywood movie about a group of American teenagers who go underground as resistance fighters after a Soviet-Cuban surprise attack on America.

Supposedly, according to the lefties, this is our favorite movie, and it plays in a continuous loop in our heads. It's "xenophobic paranoia" ... "a patriotic breath mint to help teenagers feel proud of our country again" in the wake of Vietnam ... "right wing propaganda" ... "an NRA wet-dream." And that's just from a movie review site, not a political site.

The obsession is all on their side, of course. Long before 9/11 I sat in a tavern with our staff columnist (highly liberal, of course) and some other people and "Red Dawn" played on the TV over the bar. He refused to even look at it, and spent the rest of the night looking the other way.

I saw the film when it came out, when I was an anti-Reagan liberal. I enjoyed it. I thought it was stirring and thought-provoking, and a fun adventure flick. Not "Animal House" or "Outlaw Josey Wales," mind you, but it stayed with me.

It stayed with me mainly because, even while it made me appreciate the American values that the heroes in the movie upheld, it gave me an insight into freedom fighters/resistance fighters/partisans everywhere in the world.

After all, the "America invaded" plot was a fantasy, though it was imagined realistically enough if you suspended disbelief. But in reality Americans had been facing insurgencies overseas all through my life. In Southeast Asia first, in Central America at the time of the movie. It's one reason I embraced the cause of the Kurds, back in the late 1970s; for once, we were supporting the freedom fighters. When we abandoned them, I was bitter.

From the comfortable distance between here and there, it was easy for young people like me to see all these fighters as Marxist puppets, bandits, and terrorists, or else saintly Che-like figures. But to see them with the faces of American teenagers, in a situation that, if fantasy, was not utterly unthinkable, made the matter more complex. They were unlikely warriors, forced into the role by circumstances, and growing into it.

In fact, if the movie is dangerously subversive in modern terms, it is so from the point of view of the right. You watch "Red Dawn" and you root for the insurgents. You understand their motives, you cheer their victories of grit and wit against superior firepower. They even use some of the tactics of al Zarqawi (booby-trapped corpses, for instance). Their essential rightness is presumed, and the collaborationist elements among the Americans in the movie are even more evil than the invaders.

All insurgencies will look alike, on some level. Rural Boston rebels in 1775, Alabama Klansmen in 1866, the Maquis in 1944, Irgun in 1946, Iraqi al Qaida in 2005. They attract certain personality types, they gravitate to certain tactics.

And the resemblance is purely superficial. The difference in them is in their motives and goals. The essential thing is what they are fighting for, what their code of honor allows, what kind of nation they would create if they won. All the difference in the world is in that.

So what would it take to make leftists like "Red Dawn"? Here's some suggestions:

1. Instead of resisting communist invasion, the heroes should be resisting a Halliburton corporate coup in America headed by Dick Cheney.

2. Instead of all-American football players and huntin' and fishin' types, the heroes should be gloomy goth outcasts ostracized by the in-crowd.

3. Global warming. Lots of global warming. Tornadoes, tidal waves, ice ages [Ice ages? Warming? -- ed.]

4. Instead of the U.S. military resisting the invasion, the Cuban communists should be the cavalry riding to the rescue. Preferably with a Che-look-alike in command.

5. Michael Moore chasing people around with a camera crew and a big fat smile.

6. Sean Penn.