What makes a great story? For legendary filmmaker Ken Burns, the answer is both complicated and personal. In this short documentary about the craft of storytelling, he explains his lifelong mission to wake the dead. Recently featured on The Atlantic. (http://www.theatlantic.com/video/archive/2012/05/ken-burns-on-story/257165/)
Directed by Tom Mason and Sarah Klein
Music by Ryan Sayward Whittier
Animation by Elliot Cowan
What did I say about researchers? Kevin Holtsberry points to an amazingly unqualified study by National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute and AARP that we should drink coffee. “We think our study provides some reassurance that (drinking coffee) may not increase their risk of death,” says one researcher. Of course, he meant death from various specific diseases within a certain timeframe. But, you know, details.
Mark Twain. Photo: Library of Congress
For example, he [William Godwin] was opposed to marriage. He was not aware that his preachings from this text were but theory and wind; he supposed he was in earnest in imploring people to live together without marrying, until Shelley furnished him a working model of his scheme and a practical example to analyze, but applying the principle in his own family; the matter took a different and surprising aspect then.
A few days back I posted a link to an article on the shameful domestic behavior of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. One of our commenters, “Habakkuk 21,” pointed me to Mark Twain’s essay, In Defence of Harriet Shelley. I downloaded it for my Kindle, and it made interesting reading.
As I’ve said before, I have ambivalent feelings about Mark Twain. I yield to no one in my admiration for his gifts as a novelist and humorist. He was one of the greats, and he’s given me plenty of good laughs. I like him less as a man, and when he gets on his Skeptical hobbyhorse he irritates me. On top of that, many of my generation saw Hal Holbrook (at least on TV) doing his Mark Twain show, in which he cherrypicked Twain’s writings to give the impression that he was essentially a man of the ’70s—the 1970s—born before his time.
But in In Defence of Harriet Shelley we see another Mark Twain—the Victorian middle class gentleman, the devoted husband and father, for whom nothing could be more vile than a man who abandoned his family. I expected a little more wit in this essay than is actually to be found here. The primary tone is withering scorn. It appears that Twain had little intention of entertaining the reader in this piece. He was morally outraged, and it’s the outrage that comes through.
I like Mark Twain a little better as a man, after reading A Defence of Harriet Shelley. It’s hardly a classic of Twain’s work, but it’s kind of nice having him as an ally for a change.
I know scientists of all stripes choose to study things that may seem obvious to us in order to thoroughly understand why they happen, but somehow this one seems like a high school science fair project. A researcher “suspects novels can sometimes be life-changing.” Yes. Yes, they can be.
In other research news, people will judge a body by his facial hair. An online poll shows the soul patch and chinstrap beard are the most offensive.
I finally streamed Adaptation on Netflix, and now I’m going to talk about it. Adaptation is one of those movies they tell writers they need to see, and indeed it has much to say about writing and the creative process, not to mention the movie business. But I’m not sure I consider the film a success.
Adaptation, released in 2002, is based (in a sense) on a book called The Orchid Thief, by journalist Susan Orlean (played here by Meryl Streep). The book, about an orchid poacher in Louisiana, was apparently very well received by the right sort of people. Some Hollywood idiot acquired the movie rights, in spite of the fact that the story is basically a think piece in which nothing much happens. The job of adapting this non-story for film fell upon Charlie Kaufman (played by Nicholas Cage), who had previously made a splash with the script for a very strange movie called Being John Malkovich.
The movie starts with Kaufman verbalizing his determination not to vulgarize the purity of the book by adding extraneous elements like a romance or action scenes. Which is essentially an impossible task, and he knows it in his heart (his interior dialogue, presented in voice-over, is frighteningly similar to my own, I might add). Gradually he hits on the idea of focusing the script on his own struggle to write it, and what we see on the screen is that story. But adapted. By the addition of romance and action scenes.
For someone interested in writing, there’s considerable interest in watching each script writing principle Kaufman discusses (with a fictional twin brother, Donald) appear before our eyes. Donald is writing a thriller script, and he talks about fooling the audience by making one character seem like two—precisely what Kaufman is doing. The action picks up—absurdly—as the script becomes entirely Donald’s kind of story.
It’s certainly a fascinating film, worth seeing more than once, and I’m sure it deserved all the accolades and prizes it received. But in my personal view, a movie fails if you have to go to Wikipedia to find out how to feel about what you just saw.
Cautions for language, brief nudity, sex and violence.
M. Leary has an interesting article (probably more interesting if you have already seen the movie, which I have not) on the few references to gods and deity in Marvel’s The Avengers.
Not one to sit on his duff when justice can be served, Captain America begins preparing to do his thing. “Wait,” Black Widow says. “You might wanna sit this one out, Cap. These guys are basically gods.” To which, the Captain replies, “There’s only one God, ma’am. And I don’t think he dresses like that.” And out of the plane Captain leaps, his fall to earth surely cushioned by his ideological purity.
Leary makes the valid point that whenever you pull God into the conversation, you can’t just side-step him. Somehow, a simple reference draws in a world of meaning.
“…They even make virtues out of ‘humility’ and ‘turning the other cheek’ and ‘loving everybody.’ Because it alleviates their guilt. It’s much nicer to pretend to yourself that your passivity makes you a saint, rather than just another gutless puke who won’t take a stand for what’s right.”
The passage above kind of encapsulates my ambivalence about the novel HUNTER: A Thriller
I usually do a synopsis of a novel’s opening chapters when I write a review, but the peculiar structure of this story makes that hard to do without spoiling the central surprise (if surprise it is). So I’ll mostly talk about the concepts underlying the story.
The central problem of this book is the early release of dangerous felons into society. Our justice system, as Bidinotto paints it (and he says all the atrocities in the story are based on true events) is that in order to take pressure off the courts and prisons, we’ve set in place a system that automatically pleas down criminal charges, and then shortens even those abbreviated prison sentences through early release for “good behavior.” This early release is facilitated by a naïve network of social service agencies staffed by do-gooders eager to let the prisoners out, proud of their “success” in rehabilitating them. But when those prisoners kill again, these do-gooders feel no responsibility. Continue reading Hunter: A Thriller, by Robert Bidinotto
Mike Cosper talks about telling great stories and making films to the best of your ability.
They say that anything worth doing is worth doing badly. This is as true of filmmaking as it is of anything, and it’s the final thing that I’d say to a Christian who wants to be the next Spielberg or Soderberg. If you want to make films, then make films. Make them badly. Make them with iPhones and flip cameras, edit them on a laptop or in a computer lab at your middle school. Make lots of them and don’t worry about whether or not they’re good until you’ve made 10 or 20. Even then, don’t worry when they’re bad. Look for the things you’ve done well and figure out how to apply those lessons to the entire next project.
Gunnar Sønsteby. Photo credit: Arnephoto.
I was planning to post something about Occupied Norway today anyway (you’ll find it below), but it happens that one of Norway’s last living Resistance heroes died today. He was named Gunnar Sønsteby, and he was the most decorated man in Norwegian history. If you followed my advice and watched the movie, “Max Manus,” Sønsteby was one of the characters portrayed in it. But he could have carried a movie all on his own.
OK, here’s a strange story.
A while back, I posted a piece I called Survival Story. It concerned a strange character I discovered in a Norwegian-language book I read about my ancestral community, Kvalavåg, in Norway. During World War II, one of the German occupation officers who served there was a Jew named Konrad Grünbaum, who ended up in the Wehrmacht due to a clerical error.
One of the commenters on that post was an actual descendent of Grünbaum’s. He contacted me through Facebook and asked if I had any further information. I didn’t, but promised to check with my relatives over there.
And they came through, past all hope. As it happened, an article on Grünbaum had been published in the Haugesunds Avis newspaper back in 1986. The article was illustrated by a photo of part of Kvalavåg which Grünbaum took during the war. Because of that, my relatives kept a couple copies, and they were happy to send one to me. I have forwarded it to my correspondent, and it’s on its way to him by mail.
My translation of the article can be read below:
THE GERMAN IN KVALAVÅG
By Ida Nydstrøm (July 23, 1986)
Konrad Grünbaum, a Jew by birth, is now 70 years old and a retired city council member in Fürth. He lived in that city before the war as well. He was a metal worker in a factory, and an active member of the SAJ: The Socialist Labor Youth. Continue reading Concerning Norway and World War II