Smoking in the Laundry

The Danish Film Institute preserved this excerpt from the Ham and Bud comedy The Winning Wash (1915). More than half of the footage is missing, but the plot is simple enough that it doesn't matter much. The tramps, as crude and violent as ever, are astoundingly able to acquire work at a Chinese laundry and are delighted to find a roll of money in a customer's pants. A similar plot was used in the Three Stooges' Sing a Song of Six Pants (1947). The highlights of Hamilton's comic improvisation occur after the tramp burns his backside on an iron and later when he shares a smoke with a dope fiend.

Sleepy Time

Inception (2010) is regarded as revolutionary, state-of-the-art cinema and yet strong parallels can be found between this film and another film made more than seventy-five years ago. Peter Ibbetson (1935), a sentimental fantasy directed by Henry Hathaway, features Gary Cooper and Ann Harding as ill-fated lovers who find themselves driven apart when Cooper is sent to prison for murder. The couple comes to rely on a telekinetic link to carry on their passionate romance inside a dazzling dream world. Cooper, who finds that he can control their new surroundings, builds Harding a castle made of clouds and stardust. The world crumbles when Cooper loses his faith in the dream, but he is able to recover his faith and rebuild everything as it was before. The lovers grow old together and Harding, dying in Cooper's arms, tells Cooper that they will continue to be together in death. The couple's ideals - "death-cannot-separate-us" and "we-must-be-together-forever" - are no different than the morbidly obsessive romantic notions that are central to the plot of Inception.

How a Movie Gave Me Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

The challenge that Alan J. Pakula faced in directing All the President's Men (1976) was that he had to craft a gripping political thriller out of a story devoid of spies, assassinations, bomb explosions and car chases. Pakula basically had a story about two guys talking on the phone and typing. But Pakula was working with two charming superstars, Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, and he had a script from William Goldman that played up the tension and paranoia involved in two young reporters digging up facts to topple the leader of the most powerful government in the free world.

In 1957, at a time when people mostly went to the movies to see giant radioactive monsters or widescreen Technicolor epics, Sidney Lumet had to turn Twelve Angry Men into a spellbinding courthouse drama without relying on a single reliable dramatic device. The script did not include a hysterically sobbing mother or a shocking surprise witness. It did not include a cantankerous judge banging his gavel to declare a passionate defense attorney in contempt of court. It did not have a last-minute confession dragged out of a guilt-wracked witness during a heated cross-examination. Instead, Lumet had twelve tired, sweaty, rumpled jurors gathered around a conference table inside the sort of drab room that could only be found in a government building. But Lumet had as his hero the legendary actor Henry Fonda, who audiences had come to regard as noble, intelligent and true. Fonda expressed doubts that the man on trial was guilty of murder and the audience was willing to go along with his cautious examination of the evidence to assure that an innocent man didn't go to the electric chair. Drama came out of the complexity of the jurors' personalites and the deep conflict and prejudices that came from the jurors' tense interactions. Lumet kept the pacing taut and he adjusted lens and camera angles to make the room seem increasingly claustrophobic.

I could not help but be reminded of All the President's Men and Twelve Angry Men as I was watching The Social Network, a film that mostly consists of characters staring at computer monitors (sometimes while listening to music on headphones) and characters gathered around a conference table to come to a legal finding. The characters are not charming, sympathetic or complex. Henry Fonda, noble, intelligent and true, is not present to lead the audience to a just outcome. In place of Fonda, we are presented with a sour-faced, arrogant jerk as the film's protagonist. He hardly says much and, when he does, it is a snarky remark. I kept wanting one of the other characters to beat him with a sock filled with manure. It is unnecessary to examine the evidence as we know that the jerk is guilty. Reporters have no need to use their fact-digging skills to track down sources or uncover incriminating documents. We have no need to worry that a G. Gordon Liddy-type bogeyman will sneak up behind someone in a dark room to strangle them with fishing line. The outcome of this gathering will not bring about the downfall of a government or the execution of a man. Simply, large sums of money will be transferred from one greedy spoiled rich kid to other greedy, spoiled rich kids. Our protagonist, win, lose or draw, will leave the room a billionaire. Wait, before he leaves, I need the large polo mallet.

This movie made me feel icky as if I had watched torture porn. I felt like, to make myself feel better, I had to go to the opposite extreme and watch something inspirational and uplifting like The Sound of Music.

Is Television Production Safe for Young and Old Actors?

The title of Jackie Cooper's autobiography, "Please Don't Shoot My Dog," came out of the fact that, when Cooper was a child, director Norman Taurog got him to cry in a scene by telling him that he had just shot his dog. This came to mind as I was watching a scene in the premiere episode of Boardwalk Empire. The small girl in this scene is genuinely frightened to witness an argument between her pretend parents. The father shouts angrily, he curses, he shakes mommy, and he finally strikes the woman across the face. The girl finally bursts out in tears. The art of film making is not so important that it justifies scaring a little girl out of her wits to accomplish a dramatic scene.

I am always wary seeing small children and babies used in movies and television shows. The uncredited baby currently appearing weekly on the Fox sitcom Raising Hope is often in the middle of the show's broad physical comedy. The producers of the show assure the public that the baby is never in danger. Mikey O'Connell reported on the zap2it website, "[A]ll of the jokes at baby Hope's expense are smoke and mirrors." Still, it doesn't seem that this type of activity should be part of a baby's daily routine.

Am I being the disapproving old woman snooping behind the curtain?

It has long been a pet peeve of mine to see a newborn used in a birth scene. I felt extremely protective of my son when he was first born and nothing could have persuaded me to put this fragile newborn fellow into the hands of a film crew.

In California, infants can start working when they are 15 days old as long as a doctor's note can be provided to assure the infant is in good health and is sufficiently developed to withstand the stress of film making. California has more regulations than any other state when it comes to protecting child actors, but these regulations may not be good enough. Paul Peterson, president of the child-actor support group A Minor Consideration, alleged that, in 1995, the production team of ER filmed a birth scene using preemies. "They were still four weeks short of their due date, and they were brought in to work," said Peterson. Peterson became aware of the incident when he was contacted by the nurse caring for the infants on the set. The producers denied this ever happened and no charges were ever brought against them.

Babies simply need more care and attention than they are able to receive on a film set. In 1994, a production coordinator on Chicago Hope asked the 20th Century Fox medical department if it would be acceptable to sedate an infant for a scene where the infant is supposed to be anesthetized. Janet Fisher, the supervisor of the medical department, put an immediate stop to these plans. She sent out a memo in which she explained the risk of sedating an infant and made it clear that an infant should never be sedated for non-medical purposes. The production coordinator embarrassed himself just by asking this callous question.

Filmmakers prefer to avoid animatronic infants as the results are less than convincing and sometimes even creepy. This is demonstrated by another scene in Boardwalk Empire.

A recent episode of 30 Rock was able to do without a newborn in a birth scene and even got a couple of laughs out of it.

The people busy making a television show are usually too preoccupied to consider a child's welfare. Gina Gillespie, who was a busy child actor in the 1950s and 1960s, remembered the cast and crew expecting child actors to act like adults. They were to know their lines, hit their marks, and never do anything to cause delays. Scenes had to be completed and no one had time to coddle a child. Gillespie said that her worst experience occurred when Loretta Young was directing her in a scene. Young asked Gillespie to move to another part of the set and, when the little girl failed to move fast enough for her, she snatched her up, carried her across the set, and dropped her where she wanted her to be.

Of course, all of these incidents pale in comparison to the tragedy that occurred during the production of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983). The story is well known. Two children were placed in the middle of a war scene by director John Landis. The children, accompanied by actor Vic Morrow, had to race across a distance while pyrotechnic explosions were set off around them and a low-flying helicopter pursued them overhead. One of the explosions damaged the helicopter's rotor blade, causing the helicopter to crash on top of Morrow and the children. It was a shame.

Actors at the other end of the age spectrum also require special care and attention, but the actors and their fans find the effort to be worthwhile.

It is no secret that we are more fragile in our later years than we are in our early years and health and safety concerns need to become a priority when a lead actor is over the age of 70. . This is a timely subject as three veteran television actors have recently returned to series television. 88-year-old Betty White is a curmudgeonly old landlady in Hot in Cleveland, 79-year-old William Shatner is a curmudgeonly old father in $#*! My Dad Says, and 84-year-old Cloris Leachman is a curmudgeonly old granny in Raising Hope. It should be hard for these actors to distinguish themselves while having to play the same standard utility role, but none of these old troupers seem daunted by the challenge.

The producers of Hot in Cleveland admitted to arranging a less than rigorous shooting schedule for White. ''They were making all these concessions where I felt like a heel if I said no!'' said White. Still, the producers of these series generally keep mum about health and safety concerns as it can distract from the primary objective of the series to get laughs. Also, the actors do not want to reveal health problems as it could prevent them from getting work. This is the reason that 73-year-old Jack Palance found it necessary to perform one-armed push-ups on a live Oscar telecast. He was in fact able to continue acting for another twelve years.

While Shatner's current working conditions have not been publicized, it is known that producer David E. Kelley took special measures to assure safe conditions during the filming of Shatner's last series, Boston Legal. Kelly kept well-equipped medics on premises. The law offices of the show were made to look as if they had waxed marble floors, but these floors in fact had a rubberized grip to prevent falls. Shatner was often depicted having a smoke on a high balcony in the chill of the New England night, but these scenes were actually shot on secure warehouse stages.

David Jason found that, at age 70, he no longer had the energy to play the feisty Inspector Frost and elected to end the ITV series A Touch of Frost with one last daring action scene.

The long-running BBC series, The Last of the Summer Wine, features an assembly of pensioners involved in slapstick antics. The producers of the series learned better than anyone how to create madcap silliness with old actors while satisfying the insurance underwriters.

All in all, I would like to see more old actors on television and less young ones.

The Lost Weekend Duology

Summer of Sexual Deviance at the Multiplex

It never occurred to me that Frankenstein (1931) would have been a better film if it ended with the monster raping Dr. Frankenstein and his bride. Yet, this is the idea at the root of Splice (2010), a re-imagining of the Frankenstein legend that uses gene splicing in place of body part splicing and brings a sense of sexual allure and erotic tension to the misguided scientists determined to play God.

The storyline for My Favorite Year (1982) never suggested to me Peter O'Toole should arrange a threesome with Mark Linn-Baker and Jessica Harper. However, this is more or less route taken by Nicholas Stoller, the writer and director of Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), as he reworks the premise of My Favorite Year for Get Him to the Greek (2010).

In old horror films, a mad scientist would stitch together body parts to create a fascinating new creature. The Thing with Two Heads (1972) took this idea to a new level by depicting transplant surgeons joining two heads together onto a single body. It did not seem that this practice could get any more outrageous until the recent release of The Human Centipede (2009), which shows a sadistic surgeon joining three comely young people together by using his stitching prowess to fashion a gruesome mouth-to-anus union.

Sexual deviance does not breathe new life into an old story or make a trite film daring and edgy. These desperate updates come across as nothing more than juvenile, twisted and crass.

The Return of the Smoke Monster

I was surprised to discover that the finale of Lost was lifted directly from a 2006 television movie called Desperation, which was based on a Stephen King novel.  Here are screen captures from Desperation.

Tell me if the plot of Desperation sounds familiar. A ragtag group of strangers bands together to battle an evil force that has occupied the body of the local sheriff. When this force has worn out his host's body, it manifests itself as a smoke monster. In the end, a man who is seeking redemption chooses to sacrifice his life to seal "The Well of Life," a hole in the Earth concealed deep down inside an abandoned mine. The well emits a golden glow and it is surrounded by ancient religious artifacts. The last shot of the hero before he dies shows him lying on his back and staring upwards. The closing scene of the film reveals that the man has reunited in the afterlife with other victims of the evil force.


So, in other words, I waited six years for Lost to give me a recycled ending.