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Complete Last-Minute Oscar Predictions

The Academy Awards will be handed out in a few hours but, as far as I'm concerned, several of the big awards are still up for grabs. I feel compelled to get my predictions down in print before the big day, but, more than in years past, I think we could be in for a few surprises. At least I hope we are—something needs to juice up the potentially deadening broadcast.

For me, one of the biggest questions is who will win the Best Actress Oscar. For months I thought Meryl Streep had a lock on that prize, and I’m still predicting that she’ll take it, but the buzz on Viola Davis has been building by the day and she may just pull it off. Of course, in my insanely early predictions, Streep and Davis were the only women on my list who even got nominated. Last fall, I was still operating under the crazy assumption that Emma Stone (remember her?) was the “star” of “The Help” and I also thought there’d be some Oscar love for Kirsten Dunst and Helen Mirren, fool that I was. Let's not even get into other worthy candidates like Tilda Swinton, Anna Paquin, Elizabeth Olsen, and Vera Farmiga.

But I'll shut up already about the people I thought SHOULD have been nominated (cough-Albert Brooks-cough). Now that total gridlock on Hollywood Boulevard has begun, limousines are being scrubbed, and Wolfgang Puck's sous-chefs are working overtime, let’s just get on with it and assess who the Academy will choose from their list of nominees.

I could be way off with my predictions of a great night for “Hugo” but I definitely think there will be a lot of Veuve Clicquot corks popping in France as the news starts coming in about “The Artist.”

Best Picture 
Likely Winner: “The Artist” 
Possible Spoiler: “The Descendants” 
Worthy Long Shot: “Midnight in Paris” 

Best Actress
Likely Winner: Meryl Streep, “The Iron Lady”
Possible Spoiler: Viola Davis, “The Help”
Worthy Long Shot: Michelle Williams, “My Week with Marilyn”

Best Actor
Likely Winner: Jean Dujardin, “The Artist”
Possible Spoiler: George Clooney, “The Descendants”
Worthy Long Shot: Demián Bichir, “A Better Life”

Best Supporting Actress
Likely Winner: Octavia Spencer, “The Help”
Possible Spoiler: Melissa McCarthy, “Bridesmaids”
Worthy Long Shot: Bérénice Bejo, “The Artist”

Best Supporting Actor
Likely Winner: Christopher Plummer, “Beginners”
Possible Spoiler: Kenneth Branagh, “My Week with Marilyn”
Worthy Long Shot: Nick Nolte, “Warrior”

Best Director
Likely Winner: Michael Hazanavicius, “The Artist”
Possible Spoiler: Martin Scorsese, “Hugo”
Worthy Long Shot: Woody Allen, “Midnight in Paris”

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
Likely Winner: “The Descendants,” Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, and Jim Rash
Possible Spoiler: “Hugo,” John Logan
Worthy Long Shot: “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan

Writing (Original Screenplay)
Likely Winner: “Midnight in Paris,” Woody Allen
Possible Spoiler: “Margin Call,” J.C. Chandor
Worthy Long Shot: “Bridesmaids,” Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig

Cinematography
Likely Winner: “Hugo,” Robert Richardson
Possible Spoiler: “War Horse,” Janusz Kaminski
Worthy Long Shot: “The Tree of Life,” Emmanuel Lubezki

Art Direction
Likely Winner: “Hugo,” Dante Ferretti and Francesca Lo Schiavo
Possible Spoiler: “The Artist,” Laurence Bennett and Robert Gould
Worthy Long Shot: “Midnight in Paris,” Anne Siebel, Hélène Dubreuil

Visual Effects
Likely Winner: “Hugo,” Rob Legato, Joss Williams, Ben Grossman, and Alex Henning
Possible Spoiler: “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2,” Tim Burke, David Vickery, Greg Butler, and John Richardson
Worthy Long Shot: “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” Joe Letteri, Dan Lemmon, R. Christopher White, and Daniel Barrett

Film Editing
Likely Winner: “Hugo,” Thelma Schoonmaker
Possible Spoiler: “The Artist,” Anne-Sophie Bion and Michael Hazanavicius
Worthy Long Shot: “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall

Sound Editing
Likely Winner: “Hugo,” Philip Stockton and Eugene Gearty
Possible Spoiler: “Drive,” Lon Bender and Victor Ray Ennis
Worthy Long Shot: “War Horse,” Richard Hymns and Gary Rydstrom

Sound Mixing
Likely Winner: “Hugo,” Tom Fleischman and John Midgely
Possible Spoiler: “War Horse,” Gary Rydstrom, Andy Nelson, Tom Johnson, and Stuart Wilson
Worthy Long Shot: “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” David Parker, Michael Semanick, Ren Klyce, and Bo Persson

Music (Original Score)
Likely Winner: “Hugo,” Howard Shore
Possible Spoiler: “The Artist,” Ludovic Bource
Worthy Long Shot: “War Horse,” John Williams

Original Song
Likely Winner: “Man or Muppet,” Bret McKenzie
Possible (and only!) Spoiler: “Real in Rio,” Sergio Mendes, Carlinhos Brown, Siedah Garrett

Make-up
Likely Winner: “The Iron Lady,” Mark Coulier and J. Roy Helland
Possible Spoiler: “Albert Nobbs,” Martial Corneville, Lynn Johnston, and Matthew W. Mungle
Worthy Long Shot: “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2,” Nick Dudman, Amanda Knight, and Lisa Tomblin

Costume Design
Likely Winner: “Hugo,” Sandy Powell
Possible Spoiler: “The Artist,” Mark Bridges
Worthy Long Shot: “Jane Eyre,” Michael O’Connor

Foreign Language Film
Likely Winner: “A Separation,” Iran
Possible Spoiler: “In Darkness,” Poland
Worthy Long Shot: “Bullhead,” Belgium

Animated Feature Film
Likely Winner: “Rango”
Possible Spoiler: “Puss in Boots”

Documentary (Feature)
Likely Winner: “Hell and Back Again,” Danfung Dennis and Mike Lerner
Possible Spoiler: “Undefeated,” TJ Martin, Dan Lindsay, and Richard Middlemas
Worthy Long Shot: “Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory,” Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky

Documentary (Short Subject)
Likely Winner: “Saving Face,” Daniel Junge and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy
Possible Spoiler: “The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement,” Robin Fryday and Gail Dolgin
Worthy Long Shot: “Incident in New Baghdad,” James Spione

Short Film (Animated)
Likely Winner: “La Luna,” Enrico Casarosa
Possible Spoiler: “Dimanche/Sunday,” Patrick Doyon

Short Film (Live Action)
Likely Winner: “Tuba Atlantic,” Hallvar Witzo
Possible Spoiler: “The Shore,” Terry George and Oorlagh George

And there you have it. Am I a good predictor of Academy tastes or simply a blithering idiot? Um...don't answer that! Or at least wait until after tonight's show! I'll be live-blogging the Oscars telecast over at MSN Movies with fellow Hitlist writer, Kate Erbland. Click here starting at 4 pm PST to join in the fun!

Grammy Night 2012

I planned to write about our fun experience going to the 54^th Grammy Awards on Sunday but the minute the show ended we were all felled by illness. Kendall and Charlie weren’t at the Staples Center that night but I decided to blame the terrifying Nicki Minaj and her satanic number for Charlie’s double ear infection and Kendall’s weird case of extreme vertigo. Did that bizarre creature pass some spell through me to my loved ones? Hmm, I was physically closer to Cyndi Lauper and Kathy Griffin, maybe they were responsible.

We found out early on that Wilco’s category, Best Rock Album, was not going to be part of the televised extravaganza but would be doled out in the pre-show at the neighboring convention center. Isn’t that weird? I mean, it’s not like they were nominated for Best Foreign Polka Band, their category sounded pretty major to me. Turns out the Grammys is more of a concert than an awards show. Out of 78 categories, only 8 awards are given out during the three and half hours of TV time. Whatever.

We arrived at the Red Carpet about a half hour before Wilco’s category was announced. The boys slooooowly made their way down the gauntlet which included everyone from CNN India to these two little YouTube girls, Sophie Grace and Rosie, that Leah seemed to know. Before each band hit the endless media outlets, frantic publicists rushed forward to tell the often clueless reporters who the hell they were about to interview. We were kept just behind the ropes of the Red Carpet area and there were several times when I was tempted (but restrained myself...until now) to make allusions to the lines at Auschwitz as burly Grammy guards ordered us to go to the left while pointing the celebrities to the right. Gulp.

Here’s a photo taken of Wilco at the end of the gauntlet. Insanely, several outlets I saw labeled brilliant drummer Glenn Kotche in this photo as Glenn Close and Pat Sansone as Patti Sansone. Hello? Is there anyone reviewing copy at news outlets anymore? The scary thing is that I checked those sites two days later and am happy to report that Wilco’s percussionist is still Oscar nominee Glenn Close. I only hope he wins his Best Actress Oscar later this month! Before we even made our way into the arena, we heard that the Foo Fighters won Best Rock Album. Or as they are known by my disgruntled nephews, the Poo Fighters. It was the second time Wilco lost out to them. Oh well.

Because Sue and Jeff were sitting way up front with the nominees, Leah and I sat with Spencer and Sammy. Everyone looked fantastic. Leah was such a fashion plate she could have passed for one of the Best New Artist nominees. It was hard not to ogle all the crazy people at the Grammys. I had to look up most of the performers I saw on the Red Carpet when I got home to discover who I was looking at. It was easy to spot the record company execs but much of the rest of the crowd was a mystery to me. All you could see everywhere were sequins, feathers, dangerously high heels, tattoos, and boobs, boobs, boobs. Spencer and Sammy were in heaven. 

Here are Leah and Sammy in a position emulated by thousands of Staple Center attendees all night long. Because I know next to nothing about much of the current music scene, I had to constantly ask my young charges who the performers were—at least the performers under 50! What follows are just a few of my own personal highlights, not in any way to be confused with an exhaustive or intelligent “review” of the proceedings. For a hipper take, check out my nephew Spencer’s recounting of the event.

Believe it or not, I had never even heard of Adele, the charming British minx who dominated the night. Well, I recognized her hit song when I heard it, but I hadn’t been following her career. Killer pipes but it’s still a mystery to me why some talented singers become SUCH a sensation (how many Grammys did she win on Sunday—30?) while most remain in relative obscurity. I liked her a lot, though, and she became the first in a long list I gave Leah of CD she owns that I want to download.

I also loved Bruno Mars and his retro 60s look and sound. Who knew? Great production number. The sets at the Grammys were insane—constantly changing and quite complex. I have to hand it to the people that put this night together, it is one well produced show. I haven’t watched it on TV but it looked fantastic in person.

When I got home I read about all the Chris Brown Twitter arguments. Some people thought he shouldn’t have been invited because of his abuse of Rihanna a few years back. I don’t know enough about that to comment (I assume he’s gone through some kind of treatment or rehab?), but dare I say that if she’s okay with him being present, shouldn’t we be? I’m not defending Brown’s actions, God knows, but I’m also not blaming him for the lunatics online who announced via Twitter that they would love to be abused by him. Oy. I actually interviewed him last month on the set of his latest film (“Planet B-Boy”) and found him to be quite nice but I barely knew who he was (except for an amazing dancer—wait till you see that film!). Sometimes my cluelessness is a gift.

And speaking of Rihanna, her song with Coldplay was mostly memorable to me for how they got the audience involved. When we all filed into Staples Center, they handed us these colored bracelets that said “Coldplay” on them. I thought it was just some off-putting promotional move and was shocked when at a specific moment during the number, all of the thousands of bracelets suddenly turned on and started blinking. They all went off at the same moment and then back on, in time with the music. It was a stunning effect even though I wondered if they were also engaging in group mind control!

Certainly one of the major highlights of the evening was seeing the legendary Paul McCartney perform. He was there with his new (um…young) girlfriend and he’s had a bit of work done but oh, how great he was both singing his new “My Valentine” and in the amazing “Abbey Road” finale with Bruce Springsteen, Joe Walsh, and others. Wow. I was so happy Leah, Spencer, and Sammy got to witness that.

There were several points during the show that reduced me to tears. The Beach Boys reunion, Jennifer Hudson’s brief but extremely heartfelt musical eulogy to Whitney Houston, Bonnie Raitt and Alicia Keys honoring the late Etta James, but the Glen Campbell tribute made me sob like a baby. As we all know, Campbell is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s and this is undoubtedly the last time he’ll be able to perform at such an event and take in the accolades that were coming his way (with musical help by The Band Perry and Blake Shelton). I grew up with those songs and I remember every episode of “The Glen Campbell Show.” I was moved to read later that several of his family members are supporting him on his farewell tour—his son Cal on drums, his brother Shannon on guitar, and sister Ashley on keyboards, banjo, and violin. Whoever was responsible for including this number in the Grammys this year deserves a lot of praise.

Another highlight was getting to see 85-year-old Tony Bennett in the flesh and sounding as great as ever. I loved his rendition of “It Had to Be You” with Carrie Underwood who was damn lucky to have been chosen as his partner for that song. He is not only a great singer, he is a fantastic person by all accounts. And such a rare example of the lack of ageism in the extremely ageist music industry. Again, all I could think of is one day Leah, Spencer, and Sammy will be telling their children that they saw the great Tony Bennett live even if they didn’t realize the full weight of that the other night.

All in all, a fabulous, memorable night. Everyone kept pointing out that in all the times that Wilco has been nominated for a Grammy, they lost when they showed up, and won when they didn't. After seeing Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters perform not once but three times on the show, we had to laugh when some Grammy official asked Jeff toward the end of the show if he was a “seat filler.” Um…no, you idiot, he is a nominee! Not that any of it really matters. When you consider who votes for these things and how it all works, it’s a miracle that Wilco ever gets nominated at all. It’s really not their thing and it's not sour grapes to say that this and all awards shows are ultimately pretty meaningless. And yet I selfishly worry that Jeff won’t bother to show up the next time he's up for an award. What about ME? Will I have to produce a CD of my blog and hope to get nominated for Best Spoken Word Recording?

We went to the Wilco label party afterwards and then home to watch Nicki Minaj’s curse take effect on me and my entire family. The next day MTV published this Instagram Photo Diary of pix taken by Wilco members John Stirrat and Mikael Jorgensen. Check it out if you want to see how smokin’ hot everybody looked that night.

The best news came over breakfast the next morning before my sister and her gang left for Chicago. As Spencer reported in his blog, some of the band members went to a Warner Bros. party (their old label) at the Chateau Marmont after the Wilco bash and Paul McCartney told John that he had stayed up late a few nights before watching Wilco’s concert on “Austin City Limits” and loved it. If that isn’t better than winning the damn Grammy, I don’t know what is!

One Million Moms Is a Hate Group

Normally I’d resist giving attention to any group as idiotic as One Million Moms, an “activist” offshoot of the odious American Family Association, but their current campaign to try and force the retail outlet JC Penney to fire Ellen DeGeneres as their new spokesperson (“DeGeneres is not a true representation of the type of families that shop at their store. The majority of JC Penney shoppers will be offended and choose to no longer shop there.”) is so obnoxious that I think they need to be called out by as many people as possible. And they have been. Ellen herself responded to the campaign on her talk show, but even people as far-ranging and unexpected as Bill O’Reilly and Howard Stern came out against the ignorant, offensive, and time-wasting moves by this organization that, in my opinion, is a disgrace to true Christian values and a horrible model for the children they claim they are working to “protect.”

 

  

I speculated earlier this week that their optimistic use of “One Million” was probably more like 300 although Ellen pointed out that their Facebook page had 40,000 likes (“I get it, they’re just rounding up to the nearest million!”). Their page was down for several hours yesterday so they could do “a clean sweep of negative comments.” They had their work cut out for them in that regard—following Ellen’s remarks on her TV show, they had thousands of comments decrying their ridiculous campaign, many by self-professed religious Christians. But OMM had the audacity to respond to their critics by saying, “As you can see, some folks are always going to have a bigoted and narrow mind when our faith is expressed.” THEIR FAITH? Or is it their narrow-minded hate? Oh, the stupidity that is so often expressed in Jesus’ name.

JC Penney is just one of the group’s current targets. They are also going after Macy’s (one of their ads featured a wedding cake with two grooms on top), advertisers for the TV show “Modern Family,” Jenny Craig for featuring “an extremely sensual and scantily clad Mariah Carey” in one of their commercials, Mattel for teaming up with the Kardashian sisters for a line of limited-edition dolls, ABC and “Good Morning America” for featuring “lingerie photos” of comedian Kathy Griffin, Target, Ben & Jerry’s for some of their “tasteless flavors,” and all advertisers for “Dancing with the Stars” because of Chaz Bono’s involvement with the show. After listing that show’s sponsors and urging their members to insist that the companies pull their support, they added, “Thousands of Christian counselors and pastors are available all across the country to help anyone who is struggling and living in any kind of sin including homosexuality, gender identity disorder, or gender dysphoria.” Oy.

Oh, there’s more, lots more: Oreos, Febreze, Dentyne, Old Navy, J. Crew (I love their headline, “J. Crew Plants the Seeds for Gender Identity Confusion”), Burger King, NASCAR, even Disney for their offensive disregard for “Christian values.” Don’t even get them started on the TV show “Glee” (“Openly homosexual producer Ryan Murphy is pushing his lifestyle choice on teens. Teenagers are being desensitized, but parents can do something about this hidden agenda.”)

All of this would almost be funny in a sad kind of shoulder-shrugging way if so many of the advertisers and other groups weren’t so quick to cave to the crazy demands of these irritating people. As they gleefully point out, sometimes all it takes is one letter or phone call to these nervous companies for them to pull their “offensive” ad or change their entire marketing plan.

But One Million Moms really miscalculated when they went after Ellen, a person who is admired and watched by millions of people of every stripe. Following the public outrage over the group’s actions, they published an op-ed piece yesterday on the site of their parent organization, the American Family Association. Here are some excerpts:

As you are certainly aware by now, JC Penney has chosen an open and avowed lesbian to serve as the face of the company. This spokesman is by all accounts warm, engaging and funny. But she is more known by America for what she does off camera than on. Why should this matter to pro-family Americans? It matters for one simple reason: role models matter. 

When a company with the visibility and reputation of JC Penney deliberately chooses as its representative someone who engages in a sexually abnormal lifestyle, it is not an insignificant thing. JC Penney’s choice will further lower the bar of what Americans consider sexually acceptable behavior. 

“Deviancy” means, according to the dictionary, “actions or behaviors that violate cultural norms.” A generation ago, virtually all Americans would have agreed that homosexual conduct violated cultural norms. It represented a violation of the laws of nature and nature’s God. We shared an understanding that such behavior was immoral, unnatural and unhealthy, and represented behavior that society should discourage rather than promote. 

What America considers sexually deviant behavior has been redefined downward, downward, downward. And JC Penney has done its part by celebrating and rewarding a practitioner of behavior which has serious psychological and physical consequences. 

Will America’s young women be just a bit more likely to experiment with lesbianism now that JC Penney is mainstreaming it? To any objective observer, the answer must be yes. Is this a good thing? To any objective observer, the answer must be no.  Research has indicated that lesbians suffer from increased levels of depression, suicidal ideation, substance abuse, breast cancer and vaginal diseases compared to heterosexual women.  

Wait, what? Lesbians have more breast cancer and “vaginal diseases” than heterosexual women? How did I miss that research? The co-opting and twisting of words like “faith” and “family values” by groups like this infuriates me to no end. It’s sad that these women can’t harness all that energy in more productive ways. On the other hand, I may be with them about those Kardashian dolls. What was that website address?

Simpler Times in Disneyland

What strikes me most about this just-restored previously unseen footage of Disneyland that was taken in 1957 (two years after the park opened, a few years before I was born) is how much the place still looked like this more than a decade later when my family made its first pilgrimage. I'm not sure Aunt Jemima was still walking around hawking her pancakes and I think they had a new version of the Skyway, but most of the place still resembled this more homey, less crowded, work-in-progress. I haven't been to the park in years now and I'm looking forward to taking Charlie there eventually even though I believe these days you have to take out a second mortgage on your home to be able to afford entry. Take a look at this gorgeous color film and read the commentary by Todd J. Pierce of the Disney History Institute. 

 

I first wrote about my obsession with Disneyland on the occasion of its 50th anniversary in 2005.

I know it’s sort of cool these days to dismiss the entire Disney corporation as an evil empire whose sole aim is to lure our children into their corporate lair like crack pushers in the school playground and create new generations of consumers with glazed eyes and open wallets. I have often joined in anti-Disney rants, railing about the over-commercialization, condemning Disney’s distorted treatment of women, sympathizing with showbiz friends who say it’s the cheapest studio in town, and repeating speculation that Walt Disney himself was an anti-Semite (Jews were the butt of many jokes in the early Disney cartoons—in one scene in the original version of “The Three Little Pigs,” the Big Bad Wolf comes to the door dressed as a stereotypical Jewish peddler—an image straight out of Der Stürmer). But in the privacy of my own blog, do you want to know what I really think about Disney’s worldwide domination?

I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it!

Being the pop culture slave that I am, many of my happiest childhood memories revolve around Disney. Seminal moments of personality development occurred as I was hooked up to the IV drip of the Disney machine. My supersized Disney diet included such staples as the Mickey Mouse Club, The Absent-Minded Professor, Babes in Toyland, Swiss Family Robinson, Mary Poppins, The Sword in the Stone, The Three Lives of Thomasina, The Parent Trap, That Darn Cat, The Computer Who Wore Tennis Shoes, The Happiest Millionaire, The Gnome-Mobile, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, The Jungle Book, and, every Sunday night, Disney’s Wonderful World of COLOR, COLOR, COLOR! (Please note that the absence of the classic Disney animated films on my list is only because of the lack of VCRs and revival screenings in the 1960s—I came to love those films later on.) But by far the most exciting Disney experience of my childhood had to be my trips to Disneyland.

Our first visit to the Happiest Place on Earth occurred during the 1967 Summer of Love. While hippies and other counterculture types were gathering in the head shops of Haight-Ashbury, I was breathing in the psychedelic fumes of Disney Spirit. We stayed in the glorious Disneyland Hotel (back when there was only one official hotel for the park—I believe this original one was recently bulldozed)—a child’s Shangri-La complete with themed restaurants, a monorail stop that would take us right into Disneyland, and a distinct smell of oranges (did they pipe in this artificial smell in memory of the groves that once filled these 100 acres?). It’s almost embarrassing to admit how excited I was to hurl myself into the Disney dream. Somewhere in a box in Chicago is my dog-eared scrapbook of the trip, stuffed with Mickey Mouse-shaped menus, Instamatic portraits of our encounters with Goofy, Winnie the Pooh, and Chip n’Dale, and remnants of our Disneyland ticket books.

In those days you paid a very small admission fee to get inside the park ($2.00 for adults and 60 cents for children) and then you purchased ticket books for the different rides which were given with A through E designations. The coveted E-tickets, of course, were for the Big Experiences like the Matterhorn Bobsleds, the Submarine Voyage, and It’s a Small World, a ride that premiered a few years earlier at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. Going on this ride helped me deal with the trauma I still felt at being left behind during my family’s fabled vacation to the World’s Fair. E-Tickets were supposed to be the most sought after coupons but I also favored the more sedate C-Tickets that provided entry into escapist fare such as Peter Pan’s Flight, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, and Mike Fink’s Keel Boats.

We stuffed our faces at Aunt Jemima’s Kitchen where large African-American waitresses called us “honey chile” and recreated the “happy, carefree days” of life in the Old South (the NAACP must have rightfully protested this throwback because the name of the restaurant was changed to the Magnolia Tree Terrace in 1970). We went on Monsanto’s Adventures Through Innerspace (Disneyland pioneered the idea of amusement park rides with heavy corporate sponsorship) and I truly believed with all my heart that we were shrinking down to microscopic bits as we explored the world residing inside a snowflake. As we exited our little cars which had miraculously returned to normal size, we were shown the “modern miracles created by rearranging the molecules, not only of water, but of air, coal, petroleum and many other raw materials. THIS IS MONSANTO!”

We marveled over “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln” (which also debuted at the blasted 1964 World’s Fair) featuring the first fully functioning audio-animatronic human figure who actually stood up, spoke, and gestured to the audience. Amazing. What if the rumors of Disney’s predelictions were true and this technology was secretly handed over to our enemies? Can you imagine “Great Moments with Adolf Hitler” with a walking, talking Fuhrer and an army of audio-animatronic SS officers?

The Disney “Imagineers” had also created the brand new “Pirates of the Caribbean” which featured a whopping collection of 64 fake human figures and 55 fake animals. This was my favorite ride and we waited again and again in the hellish lines to join the bloodthirsty pirates on their rampage through a Caribbean outpost. What other children’s ride in the world boasts a scenario that is centered around rape and pillaging? We learned the word “wench” and laughed when the local women were caught by the lascivious pirates. “Yo-ho-ho, the pirate’s life for me!” Four decades later, the pirates are still chasing women, but as a 1990s nod to political correctness, we are now supposed to believe that they are chasing them for the trays of foods that have been awkwardly placed in their audio-animatronic hands instead of for their bodies. Oy.

Our second trip to the Magic Kingdom occurred in 1971. My parents were in the middle of their hideous divorce, and during the worst of it my dad got the idea to squirrel us away to California for a bit of a reprieve. The Times They Were a-Changin’ at the Happiest Place on Earth. The summer before Abbie Hoffman’s Yippies had invaded the park and forced it to close early for the first time ever. While the park had just welcomed its 100 millionth guest, the changing political climate had forced the closure of Frontierland’s Indian village (featuring REAL Indians, the signs boasted—dirt poor locals who were forced to shvitz in the sun all day long looking authentic while tourists riding by on the Disneyland Railroad snapped their photos). The Indian War Canoes became the Davy Crocket Explorer canoes and that paean to the Old South, the Magnolia Tree Terrace, was shut down for good.

Our new favorite ride was New Orleans Square’s Haunted Mansion, another marvel from those clever Imagineers. The original plans for the ride told the story of the owner of the house, a wealthy sailor who built the mansion for his soon-to-be wife. When the wife discovered that the sailor was actually a pirate, he had no choice but to axe-murder her just before their wedding. At the last minute Walt decided this story was a bit too frightening for the kiddies so they did away with it while keeping many of the original props including the distorted wedding march, the skeletal bride with the glowing, beating heart, and the disembodied heads that popped up in the graveyard screaming “I do!” to taunt the would-be bride.

In 1971, Tomorrowland was looking a bit tired. Following the Apollo lunar landing in 1969, Disneyland’s “Voyage to the Moon” was given a minor facelift and renamed “Mission to Mars” but it still looked woefully out of date compared to the real NASA footage we were able to see every night on the news. This image of the future where everything was encased in sparkling white plastic was starting to seem a little retro but it wasn’t until 1998 that Tomorrowland was re-envisioned as a place of color with hydrophonic farms and state-of-the-art computer technology.

My next trip to Disneyland took place in 1984 when I was in Los Angeles on a business trip. I made a nostalgic pilgrimage to the theme park which looked even more faded than it had in the 70s (Tomorrowland was now truly Yesterdayland) but what I remember most about that visit was the 30th reunion of the original Mouseketeers. There, in the flesh, were those icons of my youth, now in their mid-40s and being forced to dance and sing their original Mickey Mouse Club tunes over and over again in the blazing Orange County heat. Annette, Sharon, Bobby, Darlene, Karen, Cubby, Tommy, Cheryl, Don—they were all there, God love them. Annette Funicello, by far the most famous Mouseketeer and a bona fide Disney goddess, would soon be diagnosed with debilitating MS so this was sadly one of the last times we Baby Boomers got to see her strut her stuff and play off her “Beach Blanket Bingo” persona. And poor Darlene Gillespie, once my favorite Mouseketeer, would soon become embroiled in a case of securities fraud and spend a couple of years in the slammer.

M-I-C—See you real soon!
K-E-Y—Why? Because I LIKE you!
M-O-U-S-E!

When I moved to Los Angeles in 1986, one of the advantages frequently repeated to me by my Chicago family and friends was that I could go to Disneyland ANYTIME I WANTED TO! But DID I want to? After Leah was born I loved introducing her to the park, especially since her French mom wouldn’t go near the place. But my youthful tolerance of the oppressive heat, endless lines, and rides that deposited you into high-priced stores was gone. I realized that it only worked when Leah and I went to Disneyland by ourselves. If another adult accompanied us, I couldn’t resist spewing a steady stream of complaints about all that was wrong with the place. When we were alone, I was better able to see Disneyland through my daughter’s eyes and remember why it was so magical for me when I was her age. I did institute a two-year rule—I could only handle a visit every two years, and that one had to be off-season, preferably a freezing rainy Tuesday in November.

The new trend is to create feature films out of Disneyland attractions. “Pirates of the Caribbean” with Johnny Depp became an insanely lucrative franchise while “The Haunted Mansion” with Eddie Murphy is long forgotten. Please tell me they’re not going to make a movie version of “It’s a Small World.” If they do, it should be made as a horror film. As it is, I can never look at those scary multicultural dolls without thinking of the infamous “Trilogy of Terror” in which Karen Black is chased down and hacked to death by an African doll straight out of that evil ride.

It's a world of laughter
A world of tears
It's a world of hopes
And a world of fears
There's so much that we share
That it's time we're aware
It's a small world after all.

After all this reminiscing, I can't wait until Charlie is old enough to appreciate the wonders of the Happiest Place on Earth. Forget a college fund—I better start saving now for his Disney indoctrination!

Accepting Loss

I was so grateful that I was able to be in Chicago last week for the funeral of my gorgeous and loving stepmother, Marilyn. She and my dad had been together for over thirty years. For much of the last twenty, Marilyn had been suffering as a result of this awful and fairly rare blood disease she had called polycythemia vera. She almost died at least a dozen times over the years but because she always rallied, we were still incredibly shocked when she finally succumbed, especially since it happened just a few hours after she was released from the hospital and seemed to be feeling okay. 

The only part I really hate about growing older is having to endure the loss of the people that came before you (and, of course, sadly, sometimes people of your own generation or after). I know it’s part of life, that it’s inevitable, that we need to live one day at a time and enjoy the people around us when they’re here and accept when they’re gone, but it still sucks, no matter how you position it in your head. The only saving grace with Marilyn’s death is knowing that she is free from all that pain and misery. When my mom died almost 13 years ago, the last months were so traumatic I worried I’d only remember her that way. But I needn’t have worried. Sure, that was part of her time here and I haven’t forgotten it, but it was only a very small part, and as soon as she died, I began visualizing her back in her healthy, strong body. The same thing with Marilyn. Her illness was such a part of her life for so long that I was surprised over the past week how many memories came flooding back of a time I hadn’t thought much about lately when she was so much healthier and more active. 

Marilyn’s son spoke so beautifully about his mom at the funeral, as did her niece. My dad’s words tore my heart out, especially when he ended with a beautiful message to her in Spanish. I just pray that Marilyn heard every single word, and I’m sure she did. 

Here’s a version of what I said at the funeral.

Marilyn. Marilinda. Grandma Marilyn. Evil Stepmother. These were some of the names we had for the woman we were so lucky to have in our lives for more than three decades. I was in college when I met Marilyn for the first time. I remember going to her apartment in Highland Park for Sunday brunches that made Martha Stewart look like a hillbilly. The fruit bowl alone was a museum-worthy work of art and could have fed a small European country. I remember taunting my mother with tales of Marilyn’s gorgeous cakes that were adorned with decorations she made by brushing melted chocolate onto leaves and then peeling the leaves away when the chocolate hardened. For years whenever Marilyn’s name was mentioned my mother would scream, in mock jealousy, “Chocolate leaves! Chocolate leaves!” 

Marilyn was one of the most glamorous people I ever knew. I always used to think that if another famous Marilyn had lived longer, the two could have passed for sisters. Marilyn was so warm that we all felt instantly close to her even though we put her through her paces. I remember in the early days before she lived with my dad, they’d come home and my dad would announce to me and my friends that they were going upstairs to “watch TV.” We didn’t even pretend to believe him and everyone openly snickered. If I were Marilyn, I might have run out of the house in embarrassment but she just smiled and followed my dad upstairs. 

I am beyond grateful that my dad found Marilyn when he did. Watching the way that she cared for him for all those years was always so moving. I remember the big surprise party that she threw for him for his 60th birthday in 1992 and how she beamed throughout that wonderful event as my father was celebrated by his friends and family members. Marilyn was at her happiest when she was making my dad happy. She may have rolled her eyes when he’d start telling a long, drawn-out joke that she’d heard over 600 times, but when he got to the punch line she’d still laugh every time. 

Marilyn was also one of the most well read people I ever knew. I loved talking books with her—as well as movies, theater, politics. She and my dad used to go to the movies all the time. The only one I remember seeing with them was the Holocaust documentary “Shoah” at a special screening in which we watched the whole 8-hour film in one sitting, as opposed to breaking it up into different nights as many people did. It was a fascinating film, but what I remember most was the gigantic cooler of food we brought with us into the theater. God forbid we should go that long without some major sustenance! You’d have thought WE were war-time Jews hoarding food in the Warsaw Ghetto! 

I am grateful that Marilyn was there for so many family events, both good and bad. She was a tower of strength during my mother’s illness and death 13 years ago. She was there for me in a big way when we lost our son Oliver and when our 1-lb. son Charlie was fighting for his life for months in the hospital. God knows she had her own never-ending medical problems, and she bore those with a dignity and grace that I don’t think I ever could have mustered in her position. 

No matter how sick she was during these later, difficult years, she always had a smile for us, she was always interested in what we and her grandchildren were up to, and she kvelled over every accomplishment and achievement, no matter how small. 

Marilyn was so strong and managed to come back from so many horrible health crises that it’s still hard to believe that she’s not here. I want to think of her now with her little dog Sunshine and with all her family members that she had to say good-bye to over the years. I want to think of her finally showing my mother how to make those chocolate leaves, and imagine that she’s spending time with Charlie’s twin brother.

We love you, Marilyn.

Ten Burning Questions About Last Night's Golden Globes

I have railed against the "legitimacy" of the Golden Globes ever since I started this blog, but really, whether it's a group of 75 questionable foreign journalists or a few thousand members of the Motion Picture Academy, all of these awards shows come down to the opinions, biases, preferences, and baggage that flawed human beings bring to the process. It’s sort of dumb to call one show more “legitimate” than another, they’re all sort of ridiculous. And yet, there I am every year, watching them and getting excited about many of the winners (when I'm not cowering under a table cringing in embarrassment). I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that—I love movies, I enjoy seeing how these things play out, and it’s fun to see my some of my favorite actors getting honored. And now especially, I tell myself, I have to watch them because of my writing gig for MSN Movies. I have to "stay informed" even though it’s frustrating that many of the smaller films I love the most will never be represented.

The key to watching awards shows is to view them as entertainment only and not as something real or important. Watching the Golden Globes last night, I'm amazed at the A-list star power gathered in that room, laughing at host Ricky Gervais' jokes about the scandal-plagued organization that is doling them out. I'm sure it's fun for most of the movie folks to be feted and honored, and for those who would rather stay home, I'm sure there’s tons of pressure to show up to boost ticket sales and PR for whatever film is nominated.

Here is a list of ten issues that I posted on MSN this morning that came up for me as I watched the awards:

1. Does hiring Ricky Gervais, who lives to skewer the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, reveal a certain kind of self-hatred among Golden Globe executives? Like hiring Rick Santorum to host the GLAAD Awards? Or is it just a shrewd marketing move to get higher ratings? I enjoy Ricky’s irreverent patter but maybe it’s time for the HFPA to retire the comedian and get some self-respect back. How about Viola Davis as next year’s host?

2. Jodie Foster is an excellent sport. Anyone who can look that relaxed and amused during Ricky’s R-rated bit alluding to her private parts must be a really fun gal. And with her two young children right there with her? Oy.

3. Is Madonna the most humorless woman on the planet? She makes Meryl Streep’s “Iron Lady” seem like a laugh riot. And hold it, did I miss something? Why were none of the songs from “The Muppets” nominated?

4. I’m glad that Ludovic Bource won the award for Best Original Score for “The Artist.” But all I could think of was how Kim Novak must be going ape shit right about now.

5. Kate Winslet is one of the most talented and beautiful women ever to appear on film or TV. I would never begrudge her any accolade, but wasn’t “Mildred Pierce” made a million years ago? I remember when she won the Emmy for that same role—wasn’t that during the Clinton administration?

6. Can Meryl Streep be hired to give every winner’s speech? She is perfect. Her humility, her grace, her self-deprecating humor. I love how she honored not only the other nominees but also the stars of smaller films (such as “Pariah”) whose performances she admired.

7. Michelle Williams won the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Comedy or Musical. I'm a big fan of her performance, but I would never call “My Week With Marilyn” a comedy OR a musical. For that matter, I feel the same way about “The Artist,” which won the Best Picture award in this category. Am I crazy or do the members of the HFPA simply not understand film genres? Is it a foreign thing?

8. Isn’t it time to retire the antiquated “Miss Golden Globes” concept? Andie MacDowell’s daughter looked painfully uncomfortable in the role and the whole thing feels like something out of “Toddlers and Tiaras.”

9. Did they really have to cut to the actors from “The Help” when Ricky Gervais made the joke about Colin Firth being racist?

10. Should the HFPA consider splitting the TV and Movie awards into two separate broadcasts? The TV categories seem so truncated and like an afterthought just to get more stars crammed into the Beverly Hilton. As much as I love Tina Fey, I was glad to see someone else win for a change. I need to watch Laura Dern’s “Enlightened.” (Oh, SEE, winning a Golden Globe really does work! I guess these shows will never go away.)

Did you watch the show? Despite my love-hate relationship with these broadcasts, I won't even pretend that I won't be riveted to all things Oscar, especially since I will be writing about it for the movie site. 

Jew Eat Yet’s Year in Review: 2011

With only a few hours left of this tumultuous year, I thought I’d take one last look at the past 12 months as seen through my terribly neglected blog. I’m sorry to say I’ve written here less this year that at any other time in the blog’s seven-year history—yikes, only ONE post in November! When I first started this thing, I somehow found a way to write every single day! Some people say blogging is dead as a doornail, but I don’t accept it. In fact, I vow to write more in here in 2012. My problem, at least in the latter half of the year, was trying to find a balance between my new gig blogging for MSN Movies and my other book editing and writing work. Clearly this blog was a casualty of that but even if no one reads blogs anymore, I still want it all—I so enjoy having a place to write about any and all topics that come to mind so I refuse to let it die!

So let’s take one last jog through the months of 2011…

January

Said good-bye to Honey West aka Anne Francis while reeling at the assassination attempt of Gabrielle Giffords; was repulsed by Sarah Palin’s obnoxious “blood libel” response to Giffords’ Arizona shooting; honored the late Sargent Shriver and confessed to the theft of some of his personal items; made my annual Oscar predictions (unlike the year before, I didn’t fare very well); and marked the 25th anniversary of the horrific Challenger disaster.

February

Found five positive things to say about Ronald Reagan to honor his centennial; deeply mourned the loss of our friend, MGM musical star Betty Garrett; made a rare winter trek to visit family in Chicago, braving subzero temperatures and a major blizzard; continued to make bad Oscar predictions; stalked the Kodak Theatre as preparations were underway; and dissected one of the worst broadcasts in the history of the Academy Awards.

March

Said good-bye to that lovable but self-described “teetotaling, mean-spirited, narrow-minded conservative Christian bigot,” Jane Russell; participated with Charlie in World Read Aloud Day, founded by my friend and colleague, literacy maven Pam Allyn; reviewed my favorite Elizabeth Taylor performances as I tried to accept her death’ and defended Kirstie Alley from pigs like George Lopez who were regaling themselves with unfunny jokes about her pre-“Dancing with the Stars” weight.

April

Examined my gender hang-ups regarding Charlie’s sleepwear; remembered the late, great director, Sidney Lumet; enjoyed a Cecil B. De Mille-inspired Passover seder; and celebrated Charlie’s second birthday with another visit to the NICU.

May

Thought about my mom on what would have been her 77^th birthday; went berserk when confronted with a bunch of privileged, smoking teens; and contemplated my lack of a “seven-year itch” on my seventh wedding anniversary.

June

Detailed, far too explicitly, my miserable kidney stone trials; celebrated Charlie’s lesbian film debut; and cried with Debbie Reynolds about her lost costume and movie memorabilia collection (except she ended up with over five million bucks!).

July

Dreamt about Katharine Hepburn and George Cukor; said good-bye to one of my favorite Republicans, Betty Ford; whooped it up for Ginger Rogers’ 100th birthday; followed Charlie ‘from the Redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters’; started my fun gig writing for MSN Movies; and watched Leah lead the Occupy France movement in a riveting production of “Les Misérables.”

August

Curated a photo exhibit to honor my sister’s birthday; returned to Chicago and visited all my favorite haunts; and got irritated at Snooki as well as snarky online commenters.

September

Admired the success of Charlie’s “speech therapy”; let some scary clowns help me celebrate my 52nd birthday; pondered the 10th anniversary of September 11th; and bid a fond farewell to Erica Kane and her many exes.

October

Attended a joyous reunion of the brilliant “Dick Van Dyke Show”; expressed gratitude to the late Steve Jobs and reviewed my obsession with Apple products; and contemplated the mysteries of Charlie’s brain.

November

Presented a “Day in the Life” exhibition to mark the rare 11/11/11 calendar date.

December

Honored Michelle Williams for her channeling of Marilyn Monroe and took another look at Marilyn’s once-private thoughts; premiered Charlie’s new Hanukkah video which included the latke poisoning of our two dogs; and celebrated the 17th birthday of my amazing daughter by singing one of the most depressing songs ever written.

Hope to see you all more often in 2012—unless, of course, that pesky Mayan prophecy turns out to be true…

Seventeen

My first birthday post for my daughter was when she turned ten years old in 2004 (amazing this blog still exists—even if it is on life support!). Today Leah turns 17. How is that possible? More importantly, how did I go through the whole year WITHOUT torturing her with my rendition of “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” from “The Sound of Music?” Damn it. Maybe it’s because I sang it to her constantly when she was a little girl—thus permanently imprinting its hideous message into her subconscious (“your life, little girl, is an empty page, that men will want to write on…”).

Now I’ve already switched to my favorite anthem of adolescent angst, Janis Ian’s “At 17.” Never has a more depressing song been written and yet I've always loved it. I’ve been singing the song since I heard Ian perform it at a concert in Central Park a million years ago. Hard to believe the singer-songwriter turned 60 earlier this year. “At 17” won her a Grammy around the time I turned that difficult age, and even though I was a boy, I could relate to the song even more (I hope) than my much-better-adjusted daughter:

And those of us with ravaged faces 
Lacking in the social graces 
Desperately remained at home 
Inventing lovers on the phone 
Who called to say "come dance with me" 
And murmured vague obscenities 
It isn't all it seems at seventeen...

To those of us who knew the pain 
Of valentines that never came 
And those whose names were never called 
When choosing sides for basketball 
It was long ago and far away 
The world was younger than today 
When dreams were all they gave for free 
To ugly duckling girls like me...

So remember those who win the game 
Lose the love they sought to gain 
In debitures of quality and dubious integrity 
Their small-town eyes will gape at you 
In dull surprise when payment due 
Exceeds accounts received at seventeen...

Brilliant. If ever a Grammy was well deserved! Not that I considered myself an “ugly duckling” back then, and God knows Leah sure isn’t, but I’ve rarely heard such a poignant and dead-on homage to teenage malaise.

Unlike me and Janis Ian, Leah was never a painfully shy wallflower “repenting other lives unknown,” but she certainly has plenty of strong and heartfelt emotions (which I’ll leave for her to share in her own meaningful blog).

Since I wrote on her last birthday, Leah has embraced her unschooled post-high school pre-college years, taking on internships, work as a stage manager around town, and a variety of interesting activities and travel. She’s about to make her third trip to New York, a city she worships and one that does not intimidate her in the least. She has mastered New York’s public transportation system and doesn’t hesitate to hop on the subway to get anywhere at all hours. I admire that even as I’m sending white light and doing “Hail Marys” on her behalf while my father regales me with stories of beautiful redheads being snatched all over Manhattan for the Middle Eastern white slavery market. Oy.

Leah has always had way more chutzpah than me. She is a master at getting great, cheap tickets for Broadway plays and then feels very comfortable talking to the stars afterwards and thrusting her iPhone into a random stranger’s hand to get a photo. Here she is during her first solo trip to the Big Apple with actors Roger Rees, Will Swenson, and Aaron Tveit.You go, girl!

Now Leah is starting to look at the next big adventure of her life. She’s taking the SAT next month and contemplating what’s ahead in her educational life. In the meantime, she starts work soon on a local production of “Spring Awakening” and is considering some longer trips abroad.

Is this starting to sound like one of those awful Christmas letters? Am I turning into my father who once gave a party specifically to “celebrate the great achievements” of his children (barfing sounds commence)? Oh well, at least now I get it!

Leah, you have been a major light in my life since you arrived on this planet seventeen years ago today. No matter how much you ever feel like that sad girl singing “At 17” (you can hear all of the fantastically depressing lyrics below), always know how much you are loved and the huge amounts of joy that you’ve brought to me and so many people.

I love you so much!

 

Oh, Hanukkah!

Check out our video below that is part of Neil Kramer's amazing Sixth Annual Blogger Christmahanukwanzaakah Online Holiday Concert, the coolest online event ever! Take that, all you people who said blogging was dead. And thanks, Neil, for not moving your great concert to Twitter! 

 

Some background on the video: seconds after you see Kendall feeding some of my latkes to our dogs, Henry and Emma, they both threw up all over our living room. Yay! The Santa Claus lookalike in the "to remind us of days long ago" photo is my great-grandfather, Itshe Meyer Korolnek, with some children (some of them relatives) at a 1950s Toronto Hanukkah. And yes, that's Barbra Streisand in "Yentl," what Jewish video would be complete without her?

Happy Hanukkah, everyone!

Will Marilyn Finally Get an Oscar?

I saw the film “My Week With Marilyn” yesterday and was floored by Michelle Williams’ performance. To be honest, when I first saw her on screen, I took a big gulp and thought, “oh, no, this isn’t going to work.” Although beautiful in her own right, Williams doesn’t really look like Monroe and I cringed at her brazen attempt to portray the iconic figure. Ten minutes later, and for the rest of the film, part of me honestly believed I was watching Marilyn Monroe. I don’t know how she did it. Yes, she got her voice down, she mastered the walk, she did all the technical things that any actress needs to do to play Marilyn, but those things in and of themselves are simply impersonations, like the Marilyn lookalike who trolls the forecourt at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, asking $5 per photo and breathily responding “Thank you ever so” to every customer. Nope, what Michelle Williams did was not merely an impersonation, it was a channeling.

I’ve always admired Williams as an actress but this is, in my opinion, her best performance to date. In fact, I think she is better than the film itself. Oh, I loved it but I felt it could have gone further in exploring Monroe’s psyche at that time in her life. Especially with Michelle Williams’ uncanny ability to show us the vulnerable, terribly damaged, but also oddly strong woman trapped under the weight of Marilyn’s persona. 

I thought Kenneth Branagh was great as Sir Laurence Olivier but I was very disappointed with Julia Ormond as Vivien Leigh. I heard they wanted Catherine Zeta-Jones (who I think would have been perfect) but at the time she she didn’t want to leave her sick husband’s side. On the other hand, Dame Judi Dench was perfection as Dame Sybil Thorndike. I don’t have much of a frame of reference for the real Thorndike but I don’t care, Dench was amazing! As Marilyn’s companion/acting coach, Zoe Wanamaker was as irritating as the real Paula Strasberg must have been, and I thought Eddie Redmayne was very good as the young Brit who falls in love with Monroe (and who wrote the book on which the film was based). It was nice to see Harry Potter’s Hermione, Emma Watson, in a small role as Lucy the costume girl. Good for Watson, that’s exactly the kind of role she should be tackling following the end of the Harry Potter juggernaut. Now she has the time (and money) to take on smaller roles in interesting films and continue to build her craft (she’s quite appealing in the part).

The film, of course, takes place during the shooting of the film “The Prince and the Showgirl” starring Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier. As much as I loved “My Week With Marilyn,” however, I have no desire to watch that awful film again. Interestingly, both Monroe and Olivier went straight from that monstrosity to some of their most successful projects (Marilyn made “Some Like It Hot” and Olivier appeared on stage in “The Entertainer”).

Poor Marilyn. She longed for the fame and recognition she achieved but never seemed very happy with it. I remember writing about Marilyn several years ago after a former L.A. County prosecutor named John Miner, the man who first investigated her death in 1962, shared what he said were the contents of tapes that Marilyn made with her psychiatrist. The official ruling on Marilyn’s death was that it was a “probable suicide” but until the day he died last year at the age of 92, Miner believed the actress was murdered. 

Back in 2005, Miner made headlines with his previously unreleased transcripts of Marilyn’s sessions with her shrink, Dr. Ralph Greenson. Miner had interviewed Greenson who had supposedly shared the tapes with him in an attempt to find clues about the foul play Miner was convinced occurred on the day that she died. The tapes were made shortly before Marilyn’s death and some of the content was pretty shocking. Miner promised Greenson that he wouldn’t release any of the info from the tapes (according to Miner, Greenson destroyed the actual tapes before his death).

The prosecutor kept his promise for many years, but when some recent books about Monroe tried to implicate the psychiatrist himself in the movie star’s death, Miner got permission from Greenson’s widow to reveal the secret transcripts. Unlike some reports about Marilyn’s demeanor at that time, she seemed anything but despondent on the tapes, and she was making lots of plans for her future including a commitment to study Shakespeare with Lee Strasberg:

I'll pay him to work only with me. He said I could do Shakespeare, I'll make him prove it…Then I'll produce and act in the Marilyn Monroe Shakespeare Film Festival which will put his major plays on film...I've read all of Shakespeare and practiced a lot of lines. I won't have to worry about the scripts. I'll have the greatest script writer who ever lived working for me and I don't have to pay him…I've some wonderful ideas for Lady Macbeth and Queen Gertrude. I feel certain I'll win an Oscar for one or more of my Shakespearean women.

It feels weird to read Marilyn’s private comments to her shrink, but they are mostly flattering to the film star, and do a lot to broaden our idea of what made her tick. Marilyn was clearly an intelligent, introspective person. In addition to Shakespeare, she talked about other authors she was reading including Joyce and Dostoevsky. She was clearly someone who wanted to be taken seriously despite her glamorous image that she had a big hand in creating. At 36 years old, Marilyn surveyed the parts of her that the public seemed to be most interested in:

I stood naked in front of my full-length mirrors for a long time yesterday. I was all made up with my hair done. What did I see? My breasts are beginning to sag a bit. My waist isn't bad. My ass is what it should be, the best there is. Legs, knees, and ankles still shapely. And my feet are not too big. OK, Marilyn, you have it all there.

She mentioned Clark Gable, with whom she had recently completed “The Misfits” with great fondness.

He was so nice to me and I didn't deserve it. I was having problems with Arthur and being sick and I held up the shooting a lot. Clark protected me from Huston who kept giving me a bad time… In the kissing scenes, I kissed him with real affection. I didn't want to go to bed with him, but I wanted him to know how much I liked and appreciated him. When I came back from a day off the set, he patted my ass and told me if I didn't behave myself, he would give me a good spanking. I looked him in the eye and said, “Don't tempt me!” He burst out laughing so hard he was tearing.

Because of his performance I've seen “Gone With the Wind” over and over again. He was perfect. It makes me so mad I could scream—those Academy fuckers didn't award him the Oscar. He should have won hands down.

Marilyn talked about her famous husbands in the tapes and confirmed that she and Joe DiMaggio still had feelings for each other:

Joe D. loves Marilyn Monroe and always will. I love him and always will. But Joe couldn't stay married to Marilyn Monroe, the famous movie star. Joe has an image in his stubborn Italian head of a traditional Italian wife. She would have to be faithful, do what he tells her, devote all of herself to him. Doctor, you know that's not me.

It's different with Arthur. Marrying him was my mistake, not his. He couldn't give me the attention, warmth, and affection I need. It's not in his nature. Arthur never credited me with much intelligence. He couldn't share his intellectual life with me. As bed partners we were so-so. He was not that much interested. You know I think his little Jewish father had more genuine affection for me than Arthur did.

Is that getting too salacious? But wait—you ain't heard nothin' yet! Before reading these transcripts in 2005, how had I never heard about the brief affair Marilyn had with…wait for it…Joan Crawford! Yikes! What, Faye Dunaway was too busy for a cameo in “My Week With Marilyn?”

We went to Joan's bedroom…Crawford had a gigantic orgasm and shrieked like a maniac…Next time I saw Crawford she wanted another round. I told her straight out I didn't much enjoy doing it with a woman. After I turned her down, she became spiteful. An English poet best describes it: hath no rage like love to hatred turned; and hell hath no fury like a woman scorned – most people wrongly credit that to Shakespeare. William Congreve is the author. That's me, Marilyn Monroe, the classical scholar.

Joan Crawford’s orgasm? Marilyn quoting William Congreve? Remember, folks, I got all this stuff from the Los Angeles Times, not the National Enquirer!

Of course, most people combed the transcripts looking for anything Marilyn said about the Kennedy brothers. She waxed on about JFK’s promise as President:

This man is going to change our country. No child will go hungry. No person will sleep in the street and get his meals from garbage cans. People who can't afford it will get good medical care. Industrial products will be the best in the world. No, I'm not talking Utopia — that's an illusion, but he will transform America today like FDR did in the 30's…I tell you, Doctor, when he has finished his achievements he will take his place with Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln. and FDR as one of our greatest Presidents.

But Marilyn was worried about her relationship with Bobby Kennedy.

I guess I don't have the courage to face up to it and hurt him. I want someone else to tell him its over. I tried to get the President to do it, but I couldn't reach him. Now I'm glad I couldn't. He is too important to ask…Maybe I should stop being a coward and tell him myself. But because I know how much he'll be hurt, I don't have the strength.

Pretty incendiary stuff if it’s true. Several people place Bobby at Marilyn’s house on the day that she died. They apparently had an argument and Kennedy stormed out, not that I believe he had any direct connection to her death. In releasing the transcripts in 2005, Miner was hoping to get public support for exhuming poor Marilyn’s corpse to run further tests that may prove her death was not a suicide after all. He didn’t succeed, and frankly, the idea of exhuming her body decades after her death seemed pretty grisly. We’ll probably never know what really happened that night.

But if you want to see a living Monroe one more time, get yourself to a screening of “My Week With Marilyn.” I need to revise my “Insanely Early Oscar Predictions” that I published on MSN Movies last month and add Michelle Williams right away (sorry, Kirsten Dunst). If there’s any justice, Williams will help Monroe finally get the acclaim from the Motion Picture Academy that alluded her during her life.

11/11/11

The once-in-a-lifetime calendar date of 11/11/11 seemed somehow important to mark. Lacking any profound words of wisdom about the interesting but arbitrary numbers, I decided to simply record a Day-in-the-Life photo essay with the help of my new iPhone and Instagram app. It was a very typical day for the Miller household. Leah is off doing exciting things in Manhattan this week but the rest of us are carrying on as normal. I'm tempted to mention the "boring" nature of the photos ahead but I'm afraid that word will sound too pejorative. When I think of boring these days, I think of Holocaust survivor Gerda Weismann Klein's moving speech at the 1996 Oscars when she urged the Academy audience and all the people watching to "be grateful for the magic of a boring evening at home." I am, Gerda, there's nothing I appreciate more! So here goes.

I wake up at 4:30 am (late for me these days), do some work on my computer, and watch an episode of "Grey's Anatomy" before Charlie wakes up.

I then make some delicious carrot/celery/beet/apple juice with my ancient Champion juicer that I recently dug out of storage. Yum, no better way to start the day.

I also make us a big bowl of matzoh brei, one of Charlie's (and Leah's) favorite breakfasts (simply matzoh run under water to get it soggy and then mixed with eggs and sometimes onions).

Emma the Dog loves it, too, and she waits patiently for Charlie to slip her a little taste (which he usually does).

I load Charlie into his car seat for a morning outing (while Mama sleeps a little longer).

On the road again. Oy, I've just surpassed 178,000 miles on my Honda Civic (which I bought the month before Leah was born). That means I could have driven this baby around the circumference of the Earth over seven times. 

Charlie and I arrive at one of our favorite morning spots, the original Farmers Market on Third and Fairfax.

Charlie wanders around gazing at the people, the food stalls, and the displays of Farmers Market's 77-year history. 

He loves to watch the peanut butter being made at Magee's House of Nuts which has been in this spot since the market opened in 1934. There's a great photo just over this machine of President Eisenhower looking at it during a visit in the 1950s. 

Charlie and I walk over to the neighboring Grove shopping center and watch Mario Lopez's crew from "Extra" getting ready to film a Veterans Day segment. There are tons of veterans in the crowd and everyone is wearing matching 11/11/11 t-shirts. 

We head into Barnes & Noble to look at some books and see there's a signing coming up with those literary geniuses, Kim, Kourtney, and Khloe Kardashian. If you can't get enough of their brilliance, you can check out mom Kris Jenner's book signing a few days before. What would the Los Angeles book world do without the Kardashians? 

Charlie and I head across the street for a quick shopping jaunt at Whole Foods.

At exactly 11:11:11 on 11/11/11 we are loading groceries into my car in the Whole Foods parking lot.

We head home, after stopping for Mama's venti decaf nonfat mocha, and Charlie races in to see her.

I go off to one of my main "offices," the glorious Susina Bakery on Beverly and La Brea.

Susina is full of untold delicacies but I'm good and settle down with my own double latte. 

I spend the day editing a book for Scholastic and writing several posts for the MSN movies blog including this one about Leo DiCaprio's extraordinary transformation in the new film, "J. Edgar."

I return home to find Kendall and Charlie lounging in front of a roaring fire in our living room. It's our first fire of the season and feels very cozy.

Kendall enjoys the chicken caesar salad I make for dinner. After eating like a maniac during my brief trip to Montreal earlier this week, I'm going for simple, healthier meals. Henry the Dog stares at Charlie, hoping for scraps.

Charlie is fascinated by my new iPhone and its camera option on both sides.

Bath time for Charlie Miller. Will he yell at me one day for posting naked pictures of him online?

After getting into his pajamas, Charlie tries on a hat someone made him and declares, "Charlie's hat is pretty!"

Charlie and Dad pick out some books for bedtime.

These are the three books we read before Charlie falls asleep. 

And there you have it, a delightfully banal slice of life from November 11, 2011. Charlie may make it to the next celebration of this unusual date, but he'll be 102. Until then, we'll see you on 2/22/22 when he'll be getting ready for his Bar Mitzvah and Leah will be 27. Oy.

Brainiac

This is a photo of Charlie and Kendall taken just after Charlie’s sixth surgery at Cedars, the fourth surgery he had on his brain. It was a little over two years ago and, as always, we were given all sorts of dire prognoses about what we might be facing with Charlie as a result of the brain injuries he suffered just after his extremely premature birth. When he was born at 24 weeks, he weighed 1 pound and had a Grade 4 brain bleed (intraventricular hemorrhage) on his left side, which is the worst one you can get, and a Grade 3 on his right side. I haven’t looked at any online boards for parents of premature children in a long time but I just glanced at one and this is the first thing I saw:

My son was born at 24 weeks and he has a grade 4 brain bleed on the left side. We have been given very grim news and pretty much told he will have cerebral palsy and mental retardation. He may not walk and so many other bad things. I asked the doctor if my son could possibly have mild palsy and he said he feels there is an 80 percent chance it will be moderate to severe. Why, why, why is what I keep asking myself. Why my boy, why any little baby? This is horrible and I am so scared and wish the doctors would give us some hope, but is there any hope?

I could’ve written that, word for word, except Charlie’s condition was a bit worse because he had two brain bleeds and other problems. I get why doctors feel the need to provide parents with worst-case scenarios in situations like this. They want the parents to have all the facts, they want to make sure they’re not in denial about the challenges ahead, and yes, they want to cover their butts in case things get really bad.

I have nothing but admiration for most of Charlie’s doctors and I’ve never wanted to kill the messenger (well, almost never). But I do wonder if stressing worst-case scenarios is really the most effective plan. My mother-in-law was telling me last night about someone she met who was getting a PhD on the physical aspects of “hope.” Apparently there are a lot of new studies that show how patients do much better when they are given reason to believe that there IS hope in their situation, no matter how dire it may seem in the moment. That makes so much sense to me—it’s not about lying to patients or families, I don’t think anyone would ever want that, it’s about the medical staff acknowledging that they don’t know everything, that every person is unique, and that the power of hope, prayer, and positive thought should never be dismissed.

To be fair, our doctors always combined worst-case scenario meetings with a standard reassurance that the brain is “plastic,” meaning that even though the parts of Charlie’s brain that control certain functions were damaged, he could learn to use different parts of his brain to do the same things. It’s an amazing organ and, of course, as much as these brilliant doctors know about it, I think they’d be the first to admit that medical science has only scratched the surface. 

There were many dark days back then, we were told so many scary things about Charlie’s condition and his future. One time I accidentally overheard a doctor who'd been present at one of Charlie's brain surgeries say to another doctor, “It looked like a bomb went off in there!” But I also remember the day when we were told by a doctor that Charlie had gone from having less than a 50 percent chance of survival to just over 50 percent. To us, that seemed like the best news we’d ever heard, I remember practically dancing out of the NICU that day. We had no idea what we’d be facing in the months and years to come, but we finally found the comfort of surrender: it didn’t matter. Whatever happened, we’d deal with it. We’d already lost Charlie’s brother (who didn’t have any brain bleeds) and we’d seen Charlie fight through five months in the NICU that included many terrifying moments. That kid had a will to live. 

When Charlie was in the NICU, I spent every free moment Googling “24 weeks, Grade 4 brain bleed,” scanning every result for hopeful outcomes, especially among older kids. That’s part of the reason why I post all these videos of Charlie on here. Okay, I’d probably do it anyway because I’m a parent and think my kids are amazing, but I want to give hope to people who are dealing with that terror right now. No matter how old Charlie gets, those NICUs will always be full of sick babies and terrified families. It makes me feel so great every time I hear from someone who has found some comfort by reading about Charlie on this blog.

For all parents, a child’s development is so gradual that you suddenly find yourself saying, “Huh? When did he start doing that?” I remember when there was worry that Charlie would never talk. Then I remember the concern that he only spoke in one or two word sentences. The other day I actually started counting the number of words in his sentences because I couldn’t believe he was talking so much. There was a 14-word sentence in there: “I want to throw this away in the white trash can in the kitchen.” (Charlie is all about trash, recycling, dumpsters, and garbage trucks!)

Last week he had an evaluation by an occupational therapist who said that while he still has some physical issues that can be addressed, she was thrilled to see how well he was doing cognitively. Charlie has a way better memory than I ever had. He can hear a song once or twice and repeat it in its entirety. The same goes for books. Below is a video I just made of Charlie reciting a nursery rhyme on his own. I had no idea he knew it until he just started blurting it out:

 

Notice how he started clapping and then remembered that he hadn’t finished the verse and went on. Here’s another recent video that I already posted on Facebook of Charlie singing one of the most ridiculous songs from my childhood. Again, I had no idea that he knew it so well (I guess I’d been singing it around the house):

 

I’ll refrain from my usual apologies for posting such videos and instead address the terrified Googling parents of premature babies who’ve somehow landed here. Please know that there IS plenty of hope—give it time and your babies, too, will be walking and running and singing wildly inappropriate songs! 

Thanks, Steve Jobs

I wrote about my obsession with Apple Computers several years ago when the Macintosh was celebrating its 21st birthday. When I saw last night (via my iPod Touch) that Steve Jobs had just died at the age of 56, I thought about the impact his beloved company has had on my life. I'm the first to admit that to non Mac-users, we Apple fanatics must appear like the worst kind of cult members—constantly drooling about how pieces of machinery are changing our lives and talking about Steve Jobs like he was the Second Coming of Christ. I'm aware of how we must come across as condescending and superior. It's embarrassing... but we just can't help it. I was surprised to learn that Steve Jobs was so young when he died. Doesn't it seem like a million years ago when that amazing 1984 commercial (directed by Ridley Scott) first introduced the Mac in a frightening, futuristic way during the Super Bowl?

 

A few years ago someone found the long-lost introduction of the computer by Steve Jobs that aired on public television. Watch the crowd scream with shock and delight as they witness the marvels of this machine that had less RAM and speed than we’d accept in a Happy Meal toy today!

 

Can you believe the original Mac cost $2,495? I was just talking to my brother about the first printer my dad bought back in those early days. It was capable of printing only one font at a time and used that paper with the holes on the side that you had to feed in and it cost $3,500! Unbelievable. But we thought it was the coolest thing on Earth.

My first introduction to computers was watching the great Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn movie, “The Desk Set.” Hepburn’s Bunny Watson is a crack research librarian who is forced by Tracy’s Richard Sumner to accept the inevitably of the computer age. Tracy is hired to make the research department where Hepburn works more efficient so he drags in the gigantic room-sized Emerac computer which, while weighing several tons and requiring thousands of punched cards as data entry, had less computer power than my microwave oven. Hepburn’s loyal assistants, played by Joan Blondell and Dina Merrill, are convinced that the new computer spells doom for their jobs but Kate is not intimidated. At one point she takes on the computer in a research pissing contest and wins hands down as poor Emerac has a nervous breakdown. A prominent theme throughout the film is how the aging Hepburn’s chances for landing a mate are rapidly diminishing, so the ultimate takeover of the computer is presented as a positive step towards women achieving what they really need: HUSBANDS! The screenplay for “The Desk Set” was written by Phoebe and Henry Ephron, the parents of Delia and Nora Ephron who 40 years later wrote the screenplay for “You’ve Got Mail,” another computer-based movie. I think my favorite computer flick was “Demon Seed” in which Julie Christie was actually raped and impregnated by a computer. Talk about fear of new technology!

I bought my first Macintosh just after moving to Los Angeles in 1986 and I’ve been hooked ever since. It was a Mac Plus and considering it had the Heinz ketchup speed of 8 MHz and a paltry 4 MB of RAM, can you freaking believe I paid $2,600 for it?! That’s without the dot matrix printer that cost another $2,000 and was so loud I remember putting a cardboard box over it while it was printing to avoid disturbing my downstairs neighbors. In 1987, the company I was working for got its first laser printer and its arrival was greeted with the same reverence and celebration as Mottel the Tailor’s sewing machine in “Fiddler on the Roof.” I remember printing a single paragraph and running all over the building showing the sheet of paper to everyone as they gasped at the perfect, non-typewritten text. There were no such things as laptops, of course, and we could not fathom the idea that one day people would be carrying around little portable computers wirelessly hooked up to the Internet (which in 1986 was still called the ARPANET and was used only by the military). They might just as well have speculated that we’d all be sexually assaulted by Julie Christie's computer. My long line of Macintosh computers, now leeching dangerous chemicals in landfills all over California, included names like the Macintosh IIsi, LC, Quadra, Centris, Performa, Power Macintosh 6500, PowerMac G3, Wallstreet and Pismo PowerBooks, IBook, all the way to the three-year-old MacBook I’m writing on right now. 

I really do think Steve Jobs altered the face of this planet with the Macintosh. He changed our lives every bit as much as Henry Ford did in his day, and Jobs had the advantage of not being a raving, evil anti-Semite like Ford was. For the full story of the birth of the Macintosh, see the Folklore website and have a Geek’s day in paradise! Again, I realize that people who love Macs act like cult members or fetishists. I’m sure PC people want to sink into the ground when they see us coming because they know we’re about to launch into one of our smug speeches on the inherent superiority of the Macintosh. Sometimes I think that the gulf between Israelis and Palestinians is more manageable than the one between Mac and PC users.

My immediate family members own so many Macs we could open up an Apple warehouse. I stopped counting how many desktops, laptops, iPods, iPads, and iPhones there are in my sister's house in Chicago. Her husband Jeff appeared in an ad campaign for Apple years ago which was more exciting to us than when he played Madison Square Garden or the Hollywood Bowl. 

I don't know that much about Steve Jobs, the Man, but from what I've heard, including the brilliant commencement speech he gave at Stanford several years ago, he was a real mensch. Rest in peace, Steve.

Celebrating “The Dick Van Dyke Show”

Fifty years ago last night, CBS aired the first episode of what would become one of the most beloved sitcoms in the history of television. As far as I’m concerned, “The Dick Van Dyke Show” has no equal and never will. I can recall more details about the 158 episodes produced between 1961 and 1966 than I can about my actual childhood. On Saturday I attended an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime event at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood that reunited many of the principals behind the show.

To mark the anniversary of the first broadcast, Dick Van Dyke (84), Carl Reiner (89), and Garry Marshall (76) met on the stage of the Egyptian to reminisce about the series. The room was packed full of people with connections to the show, from the wonderful Rose Marie, who played Rob’s colleague, Sally Rogers, and Larry Matthews, who played Rob and Laura’s son Ritchie, along with dozens of guest stars, crew members, and children of cast members who are no longer with us. We were there for over three hours, it was truly a magical evening.

Though he’s certainly getting up there, the genius that is Carl Reiner still is sharp as a tack, funny as hell, and someone you feel you want to sit chatting with for hours on end. His beloved wife Estelle (“I’ll have what she’s having!”), on whom Laura Petrie was based, died three years ago and Carl talked so lovingly about their fantastic 65-year marriage. I’m sure my fellow “Dick Van Dyke Show” fanatics have heard many of the stories about how that series came to be. Carl Reiner wrote a pilot called “Head of the Family” and starred as Robert Petrie. It didn’t get picked up. Later, producer Sheldon Leonard expressed interest in the 13 episodes Reiner had already written and wanted to give it another go. “But this is my best work,” Reiner said, “I don’t want it to be rejected twice!” Leonard reassured him that the new version would work. “We’ll get a better actor to play you!” he told Carl. Enter Dick Van Dyke!

Here’s just a taste of how Carl Reiner opened the evening on Saturday, talking about the genesis of the show:

 

Reiner also told the story of how Mary Tyler Moore got cast. They had auditioned countless actresses for the part of Laura and finally had flown Eileen Brennan in from New York. (Kendall’s family knows Eileen but we had never heard this!) She was about to get the part but Carl rightfully worried that as great as she was, she just wasn’t the right match for Dick. He felt that Brennan would “eat him alive!”

With Carl Reiner panicking, Danny Thomas mentioned a girl that had recently auditioned to play his daughter on “Make Room for Daddy.” “She has three first names,” Thomas said. But Mary Tyler Moore refused to come in at first. She’d already been rejected three times that week and couldn’t handle another failed audition. Finally convinced, she sat across from Carl Reiner in his office and read all of one line from the script. Reiner grabbed her head (“like a claw from one of those prize machines”) and marched her into the studio.The way Mary Tyler Moore, who had no comedy experience, blossomed on that series was miraculous. She went from a young, unknown, gorgeous dancer to a true comic genius.

There were so many stories that evening, including many I’d never heard. I knew that in the pilot, Rob’s last name was pronounced Pee-trie. I didn’t know it was Dick Van Dyke who mispronounced his own name in the first show that forever changed the pronunciation.

We saw three episodes from the show projected on the Egyptian's huge screen which was absolute heaven—I could have watched 20 episodes! I laughed myself silly during “The Life and Love of Joe Coogan,” “No Rice at My Wedding,” and “Coast-to-Coast Big Mouth.” Truly, there have been some great sitcoms in the past 50 years, but nothing makes me scream with laughter like “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” It must be why I find myself repeating random lines from the series at least once a day! Here’s a few minutes from one of the episodes we saw just to give you a little taste:

 

I was sitting in the same row as Dick Van Dyke and Carl Reiner and watching them watch the show was surreal. I was dead center, though, and Dick and Carl were way on the side. As the lights were dimming, Carl Reiner shouted out, “Dick and I have the worst seats in the house!”

Dick Van Dyke seems like the nicest human on the planet. After the screening, he told us that long ago Morey Amsterdam had written words for the famous theme music but they had never been used. He called up three of his barbershop quartet buddies and sang the lyrics for the appreciative crowd:

 

When Ritchie came up to the stage for a quick chat, someone commented that he spent much of the series off in his room. “What were you doing in there all that time?” the fan asked. “Cocaine,” answered Larry Matthews as his wife gave him a potch.

I’ve written about my obsession with “The Dick Van Dyke Show” several times so I’ll spare you more since I could go on for hours. I’ll end with what may be my all-time favorite scene from the series. Rob and Laura are at their neighbors’ house for dinner but they are acting bizarre. Unbeknownst to Millie and Jerry, their kids had set up walkie-talkies in the two houses and Rob and Laura accidentally overheard Millie and Jerry saying some not-very-nice things about the Petries before the party. Here’s the result:

 

I’ll say it again: Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore are geniuses. Not to mention Carl Reiner, Rose Marie, Morey Amsterdam, Richard Deacon, Ann Morgan Guilbert, and everyone else connected with this show. Starting this week, to honor the 50th anniversary, the show is back on TV Land. So what are you waiting for—go set your DVR!

Farewell, Pine Valley

I outed myself a few years ago as a follower of the goings-on in Pine Valley, Pennsylvania, the fictional enclave that is the setting for “All My Children.” Yeah, I know. The ABC soap began airing in January 1970, when I was ten years old, and ended its run yesterday after almost 42 years. I watched off and on over the years but got hooked again recently following news of the show’s cancellation. I have no idea how the economics of such shows work—it’s clear that soap operas are remnants from a distant television past when the three networks ruled the airwaves and advertisers could expect huge non-fast-forwarding audiences for their endless commercials. Times have changed in the world, in television, and in Pine Valley, but whatever the numbers are, I still think ABC is crazy to throw away a four-decade-plus franchise that has such an insanely devoted fanbase. The show is being replaced by a cheap-to-produce talk show called “The Chew” that no one’s going to watch.

The final months of “All My Children” were built around a preposterous storyline in which we discovered that evil but brilliant Dr. David Hayward (Vincent Irizarry) had the power to bring dead people (i.e., fan favorites who could be coaxed back onto the show) back to life. These resurrections were absurd but the fans didn’t give a damn as long as they got to see their favorite stars back to say good-bye and their favorite couples reunited at last. Oy.

As I wrote several years ago, I blame my sister for my Pine Valley addiction. Just after college, when I was looking for a job, we found ourselves back at my dad’s house in Chicago. We’d eat lunch together, my sister glued to “All My Children” and me shrieking about how unbelievably stupid I thought the show was. I told her she was crazy to waste her time with such trash. The next thing I knew, I was foregoing calls to potential employers so I could find out if Erica Kane would be cleared of murder charges and could stop posing as a nun; whether beautiful Nina Cortlandt, who had no idea that her housekeeper was really her grandmother and that her best friend Monique was her long-lost mother, would find out that she wasn’t going blind but was being lied to by her scheming father Palmer so that she would end her relationship with Dr. Cliff Warner; if bad girl Liza Colby would learn that her boyfriend Tad the Cad Martin was having a tempestuous affair with her nymphomaniac mother, Marian; or whether blue-blooded matriarch Phoebe Tyler Wallingford would discover that her respectable husband Langley, supposedly a college professor, was actually a con-man and purse-snatcher named Lenny Wlasuk from the carny circuit.

And there was more, so much more. Women falling in love with their rapists, people becoming full-fledged doctors weeks after graduating from high school, sweet middle-aged ladies turning out to be the ruthless leaders of international drug cartels, kidnappings, babyswaps, epidemics of amnesia and multiple personality disorder, miraculous recoveries of wheelchair-bound invalids, the entire community drinking tainted punch and falling victim to Libidizone, a drug that removes all sexual inhibitions, and the endless parade of characters coming back from the dead on the very day that their spouse is walking down the aisle to marry their rival. Ah, Pine Valley, how I will miss you.

The reigning queen of “All My Children” was Erica Kane, played by Susan Lucci, the only original cast member who stayed with the show from 1970 to its final episode on Friday. When Lucci began, Erica was in high school. By the time I tuned in, she was the most famous supermodel in the world, despite the fact that she was 38 at the time and about 5-foot 2-inches tall! One of my favorite Erica lines occurred when she was being seduced by newcomer Mark Dalton. After weeks of flirtation, Erica suddenly announced, “I can’t make love to you. You’re my father’s bastard son!” Indeed, Erica had just found out that Mark was the product of an affair that her father, director Eric Kane, had in Hollywood. Who knew?

When she wasn’t busy hunting down terrorists in Bosnia, protecting herself from violent prison mate Kathy Bates, or facing off with grizzly bears (I kid you not), Erica spent much of her time planning her lavish weddings. She married 10 times, making her official name Erica Kane Martin Brent Cudahy Chandler Montgomery Montgomery Chandler Marick Marick Montgomery. She had three children, but only remembered giving birth to one of them. Her daughter Kendall was the product of a rape when Erica was 14 years old that she forgot about until Kendall returned as a teenager. Her son Josh came back into her life as an adult. In 1973, a few months after Roe v. Wade, “All My Children” made television history when Erica became the very first television character to have a legal abortion. Imagine how surprised she was decades later when she found out that the doctor who had performed her abortion had actually taken the embryo and implanted it in his infertile wife and then raised the child as his own. In one of the creepiest and scientifically ridiculous plots in the history of the show, Erica’s son, Josh, became TV’s first living abortion. Eww. Perhaps sensing they had gone too far, the writers promptly had Josh murdered, with his heart donated to sister Kendall who was desperately in need of a transplant. Gulp.

Despite all the outrageous storylines, “All My Children” was also known for tackling serious social issues. In addition to Erica’s retroactively reversed abortion, the show was the first soap to deal with post-traumatic stress syndrome in Vietnam vets, the burgeoning women’s movement, interracial romances, eating disorders, spousal abuse, and homosexuality. Donna Pescow arrived in Pine Valley in 1983 playing openly gay doctor Lynn Carson. Years later, in 2000, Erica’s own daughter Bianca came out of the closet as a lesbian. Erica flipped out, fell off the wagon (despite the character’s previous stint at the Betty Ford Clinic), escaped to Las Vegas under an assumed name, and became Sin City’s most celebrated showgirl (in her late 50s!). Erica eventually came to her senses and accepted Bianca’s homosexuality.

A few years ago, in what was billed as a cost-cutting move, the production of “All My Children” was moved from New York to Los Angeles. I began seeing the residents of Pine Valley around town. I spotted Erica’s daughter Bianca (Eden Riegel) at the movies and Jackson Montgomery (Walt Willey) at my favorite coffee shop. I had a conversation with Greenlee Lavery (Rebecca Budig) at a bookstore, and just the other day saw both Jesse Hubbard (Darnell Williams) and Amanda Martin (Chrishell Stause) hiking in Runyon Canyon (they weren’t together). “All My Children” has been a training ground for countless actors, some of whom went on to great success elsewhere. Most famous on that list, besides actress Sarah Michelle Gellar, talk show host Kelly Ripa, and movie star/Fergie’s husband Josh Duhamel, is Oscar-winning actress Melissa Leo who began her career on “All My Children” as Cliff Warner’s disturbed sister.

My most memorable encounter with a resident of Pine Valley occurred many years ago. In 2005, “All My Children” lost one of its foremost citizens, Phoebe Tyler Wallingford, when actress Ruth Warrick died at the age of 90. Like Susan Lucci, Warrick had been on the show since the beginning. She was once a member of Orson Welles’ renowned rep company. Her first film was the 1941 classic “Citizen Kane” in which she played Orson Welles’ first wife, Emily Norton Kane, the niece of the President. The montage of their marital problems as shown through the ever-lengthening distance between Orson Welles and Ruth Warrick at the breakfast table, is one of the most iconic sequences in the history of the movies.

Back in the early 1980s, Ruth Warrick published a book, “The Confessions of Phoebe Tyler” and also recorded an LP as her feisty character. Somehow she got booked into a rock club in Chicago that was owned by my sister’s boyfriend at the time. I don’t remember much about the evening except the moment when Warrick, looking for a male volunteer, singled me out in the audience and brought me up on the stage. To the crowd’s delight, she sang a love song to me as Phoebe Tyler. I’m sure I turned as red as Fusion lipstick as Warrick caressed me while singing the lyrics: “I love you, yes I do, I love you. If you break my heart I'll die. So be sure that it's true, when you say ‘I love you,’ It’s a sin to tell a lie!” When it was over, she planted a lingering kiss firmly on my lips. Okay, I’ll say it. Ruth Warrick was in her late 60s and I was in my early 20s, but it was hot!

There is talk about an online version of “All My Children” starting up again in January, but so far Susan Lucci and many of the other actors have said they’re not interested. Pine Valley without Erica? I don’t think so. Good-bye to the Kanes, the Martins, the Chandlers, the Hubbards, and all the rest of the relics of this disappearing art form. We’ll miss you and your crazy lives.

Staring at the World Trade Center

I have absolutely nothing significant or profound to say on this tenth anniversary of September 11. And yet, of course, I woke up thinking about that terrifying day. I didn't listen to a lot of the coverage this weekend but one show that moved me to tears was a podcast from “The Story” on public radio. I listened to “They Did What They Could: Three Stories” as I hiked Runyon Canyon yesterday and found myself sobbing throughout. The stories are not about the day of the attacks, they are just simple looks at three individuals and what they did in the aftermath. The first profile is of Richie Cabo, a horticulturist with a New York nursery who was there when they brought in a near-dead tree from the World Trade Center plaza that had been buried in the rubble of the towers. Over many years, Cabo and his colleagues miraculously nursed the damaged tree back to health. Last December it was replanted at the site of the attack where it is now part of the 9/11 memorial. Especially moving is Richie's emotional reading of a poem someone sent him about the “Survivor Tree.” 

Ten years ago this second, I was sitting at my computer in my apartment on Crescent Heights Boulevard in Los Angeles, answering emails from my company on the east coast. It was a little before 6 am when I noticed a news scrawl that said “small plane accidentally hits World Trade Center.” Huh? By the time I got to the TV set in my bedroom it was clear that it wasn't a small plane but there still seemed to be massive confusion about what had taken place. When I watched the live transmission of a second plane slamming into the other tower, I thought it was a video replay of the first attack. Then, when the Pentagon was struck by yet another plane, I remember running to my bathroom window to see if the skyscrapers in downtown Los Angeles were being hit as well. I was on the phone with my friend Helena as the first building collapsed. It took us both almost a minute to understand what had happened, it just seemed incomprehensible that the building wasn’t there anymore.

After getting through to some of my friends in New York, I learned that a close friend of one of my colleagues was on the 105th floor of one of the towers and, knowing that he couldn’t get out, had called his family and friends to say good-bye. At the time I was working with an author in North Carolina on a geography book. Two close friends of this woman worked for National Geographic and were on Flight 77 with some Washington, DC teachers and three 11-year-old sixth graders who were traveling to California to participate in an outreach program at a marine sanctuary near Santa Barbara. The students were from an underprivileged neighborhood and were terribly excited to be on their first plane trip. All of them were killed when the plane slammed into the Pentagon. The author I was working with dedicated her book to her lost friends and colleagues.

The first time I saw the World Trade Center was in September 1972 during my very first trip to New York. My grandfather had just been elected President of the Menswear Retailers of America and, as a Bar Mitzvah present, had taken me to the swearing-in festivities. I was thrilled to see that great city at last, and I’ve written about some of the memorable moments from that trip, such as when my grandmother accosted Liza Minnelli in front of the Plaza Hotel screaming, “Leeesa! Leesa Minoolli! Come over here and meet my grandson!” as well as my unwilling participation in some grand theft at the fancy La Côte Basque restaurant. One of our touristy adventures during that trip was a boat ride around New York Harbor. I vividly remember staring in awe at the brand new towers that I believe were still being cloaked with their white sheathing. Sure, we had skyscrapers in Chicago, including the still-under-construction Sears Tower which would soon eclipse the World Trade Center as the tallest building in the world, but I was still impressed by the sight of these imposing double monoliths.

I first ventured inside the World Trade Center in September 1978. My mother and I were spending a week in New York prior to my departure for my Junior Year Abroad in Paris. The day before I left the country, we had a sumptuous brunch at Windows on the World, the elegant restaurant on the 106th floor of the North Tower. I remember exactly where we were sitting and the breathtaking views all around us that were even more dazzling than the food. I can still see the employees of the restaurant buzzing about. Could any of those people have been working there in September 2001? As we know, there were no survivors from that floor, well above the swath of the building that was decimated by the plane. The restaurant lost 73 members of its staff along with 87 people who were eating breakfast or having meetings there at the time. There is a haunting photograph dubbed “The Falling Man” that shows one of the restaurant employees in mid-air, having jumped from the building in order to escape the inferno.

In the mid-1980s I visited New York with my girlfriend Julie and we couldn’t get enough of Manhattan, walking from one end of the city to the other. I took my shiksa girlfriend to lunch at Sammy’s Roumanian, a Lower East Side Jewish hangout that is not for the faint of heart. A pitcher of golden chicken fat sits on every table and there is enough cholesterol in each meal to clog the Lincoln Tunnel. I remember Julie ordering some dish that featured “unborn eggs,” God help her. When she couldn’t finish her plate, the waitress reprimanded her, calling it a shanda to waste all that good food.

Trying to walk off our heavy meal, we continued southward until we found ourselves in front of the twin towers. It’s eerie to see Julie standing in front of “The Sphere,” Fritz Koenig’s massive bronze sculpture that stood in the plaza between the two buildings. “The Sphere” was the only work of art in the World Trade Center complex that survived the terrorist attack. It was heavily damaged by the falling buildings, of course, and the unrepaired sculpture is now on display in Battery Park. It’s a surprisingly powerful symbol that is now the focal point of a new controversy. A group of 9/11 families want the sphere moved back to its original location at Ground Zero, its damaged hull a fitting reminder of the violence of that day. But they're getting resistance from Port Authority and claim officials don't want the Sphere to mar the “sanitized” beauty of the new memorial.  

To get as much of the towers in the frame as possible, I got on my back on the ground of the plaza and snapped this photo of Julie standing in front of the massive buildings, the same picture that was taken by millions of tourists up through September 10, 2001. Looking at the photo now, all I can see are the obscene gashes left in the buildings by the two planes and the grisly footage of the people who jumped to their deaths, many landing in the very spot where Julie is standing.

I wandered around the World Trade Center complex many times since then, including just a few weeks before the attack. Kendall and I were on one of our pilgrimages to New York, the ones where we'd cram half a dozen plays into three or four days. Being an early riser, I’d hightail it onto the busy New York streets and wander down Broadway, past Greenwich Village and Soho, and into Lower Manhattan. I remember that last Sunday in August 2001, using the twin towers as my compass rose as I headed towards the Museum of Jewish Heritage, a beautiful structure which sat in the shadow of the World Trade Center. As part of its permanent collection, the museum contained priceless artifacts rescued from Staszow, my great-grandparents’ Polish shtetl. I gazed at the towers as I walked by, remembering earlier visits, including those with my mother who had died in 1999. It was sad that I’d never be here with her again, but at least these buildings would be permanent and everlasting reminders of our New York adventures.

Turning 52: The Greatest Show on Earth?

I’m continuing my insane tradition of looking at my birthday through the lens of the Best Picture winner from the year of my age. I started this practice way back in 2005 when I turned 46. I contemplated my year based on 1946’s Oscar-winning film, “The Best Years of Our Lives.” When I turned 47, I examined my connections (there were many) to “Gentleman’s Agreement.” 48 was “Hamlet” but I found I related more to the other Best Picture nominees, especially “The Snake Pit,” God help me. When I turned 49, the film was “All the King’s Men,” which seemed appropriate since my birthday fell on the last day of the Republican National Convention when John McCain made his big speech. My 50th birthday came during Charlie’s final week in the NICU and I discussed that and my relationship to 1950’s Best Picture, “All About Eve.” Last year, when I turned 51, I pondered my past as “An American in Paris.”

Glancing at these birthday posts, I am stunned at how long I’ve been writing in this blog and the sheer volume of material on these pages.  Most of my posts back then were endless—did anyone read that stuff? Thanks to all who are still paying attention to this nearly obsolete writing form. Is my refusal to give up this blog after all these years similar to my past reluctance to let go of typewriters, 8-track tapes, Betamax, and laserdiscs?

The Academy Awards for 1952 was the first Oscars ceremony that was televised, with live feeds from New York and the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. It was the 25th Academy Awards presentation, and in the view of many, the most perplexing. The five films nominated for best picture were Cecil B. De Mille’s circus extravaganza, “The Greatest Show on Earth,” Fred Zinnemann’s classic western, “High Noon,” Richard Thorpe’s costume epic, “Ivanhoe,” John Huston’s look at Toulouse-Lautrec’s Paris, “Moulin Rouge,” and John Ford’s uncharacteristic John Wayne vehicle, “The Quiet Man.”

The fact that the worst film of the bunch, “The Greatest Show on Earth,” won the top honors stinks of some kind of backroom deal. Everyone expected “High Noon” to take home the prize. But don’t forget that this was the height of the Cold War and McCarthy’s anti-commie crusade. Is it an accident that the right wing De Mille was a cooperative player in the witch hunt while Fred Zinnemann was not? Indeed, the producer of “High Noon,” Carl Foreman, would soon be blacklisted. Some critics have even called that film an allegory of the McCarthy era—it’s no wonder the jittery Motion Picture Academy left it alone (although they did award conservative Gary Cooper, a recent “friendly witness” before the House Un-American Activities Commission, the Best Actor Oscar).

“The Greatest Show on Earth” is a melodramatic look at a traveling circus troupe. Many actual members of the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey circus appeared in the film, mingling with trapeze artists Betty Hutton and Cornel Wilde, creepy clown Jimmy Stewart, elephant trainer Gloria Grahame, hula girl Dorothy Lamour, and the stressed-out circus manager, Charlton Heston. Oy. How this abomination even got nominated boggles the mind. And guess which films were  NOT nominated that year? Would you believe “The Member of the Wedding,” “The Bad and the Beautiful,” “Come Back, Little Sheba,” "Monkey Business," and “Singin’ in the Rain,” to name a few? WHAT WAS THE ACADEMY THINKING?!

Still, in terms of my life as I hit the ripe old age of 52, I’d say “The Greatest Show on Earth” is an apt description. I won’t even start on the whole issue of being in my 50s—it doesn’t seem possible, I feel like I'm in my low 30s at the most. Is that a case of dysfunctional arrested development or am I just young at heart? Whatever. But the good news about getting older, I have to say, is that my overall priorities have changed dramatically over the years. True, thanks to the crumbling economy I’m making less money now than I was ten years ago and I’m obviously not thrilled about that, but I no longer torment myself that this is a mark of my failure in life. If I dropped dead tonight, God forbid (even though, like Ingrid Bergman, I would like to go on my birthday one day!), I’d die a happy man, knowing that I lived a life that included so much loving and being loved. Isn’t that all that really matters? (Please forgive my De Mille-like schmaltziness!)

Despite several issues I have with Cecil B. De Mille, there are many of his films that I enjoy immensely, from the lavish Gloria Swanson silents to his campy Biblical dramas such as “Samson and Delilah” and “The Ten Commandments.” Whether you like his work or not, you have to concede that he was a master showman. He used to always narrate the previews to his films with great solemnity. I think this trailer for “The Greatest Show on Earth” is a hoot—way better than the film itself. Take a look:

 

See you next year, when, God-willing, I will be traveling “From Here to Eternity.”

Charlie Learns a New Word

At the risk of media overkill (this video has already been posted by several people on Facebook), I want to share a clip of Charlie getting a vocabulary lesson from my nephew Sammy last week in Chicago.

Like a good cousin, Sam is making it his mission to teach Charlie the important things in life. Here you can see that his persistence pays off. Charlie is also developing great comic timing. As you hear my sister yelling at her son to stop, Charlie begins his rant at just the right moment and plays it for all it's worth!

 

I won’t even go into the other words Sammy taught Charlie, but let’s just say he raised a few eyebrows on the airplane later that day!

Why I’m Irritated Today

Have you noticed how some people are getting more and more cowardly online? What is it—the anonymity with which people can so easily and obnoxiously criticize others? The growing tone of incivility in this country?

I think I have a pretty thick skin when it comes to online criticism. As a rule, I enjoy any dialogue with readers even if it’s to tell me that they think I’m full of shit. Sure, there have been times when it’s gone over the top such as when certain “anti-circ” extremists descended on my blog, the Huffington Post, and my personal email account because I dared to write a humorous look at my own circumcision. The level of vitriol was so extreme in that case that it got scary—some people even threatened me with violence. That was my first taste of how crazy anonymous commenters can be even though the vast majority of the feedback I’ve received over the years has been the polar opposite of that.

So why am I so irritated today about a fairly innocuous, stupid, and ultimately meaningless comment I received on an interview I did with a French director of a great new film opening in the U.S. tomorrow? I posted the interview yesterday on the MSN Movies blog and just a little while ago received the following comment:

“ZZZZZZZZZZZ…Five minutes of my life I will never get back…”

I realize it’s nothing in the scheme of things but it absolutely boggles my mind that someone who clearly has zero interest in the topic took the time to read the entire interview and then took additional time to post that obnoxious comment. Why would that person read it at all, I just don’t get it? I’m sure that person wouldn’t have made such a comment if he or she were sitting across from me, so why does being online make some people act so differently? I know it shouldn’t bother me, and such idiotic stuff usually doesn’t, but after working hard on that piece, it just bugs me that this is the only comment. If you happened to have read the interview (you can find it here) and feel remotely moved to comment in any way, I’d very much appreciate it. I’ll never ask such a thing again but that person just hit me on the wrong day. Is it just me or is the online world getting brattier by the minute? At least if there were any wit or intelligence involved, such remarks might be interesting.

Maybe I’m also in a foul mood because I got caught in the Snooki traffic at the Grove today. She was being interviewed by Mario Lopez in front of Barnes & Noble. Of course you’re familiar with Snooki’s literary masterpiece, “A Shore Thing” that included such chapter titles as “Penises Always Look Bigger Under Water.” Now I hear she has another book deal. She was standing in front of a sign advertising an upcoming book signing with Perez Hilton. Meanwhile, exquisitely talented writers I know can’t get agents to return their calls. Grumble, grumble.

Okay. Bitter rant ended. 

My Kind of Town: Summer 2011

We're headed back to L.A. in a few hours after a visit to my beloved hometown. We never seem to have enough time to see everyone we want to see in this great city. I love Chicago, and to prove it I'm taking at least 10 lbs. of it back with me (oy). We're on the run but here's a quick photo look at our adventures (hashtag: "What I Did on My Summer Vacation"):

Charlie looks wistfully at our delayed plane at the John Wayne Airport in Orange County wondering when we'll be able to board. Would we have had more luck at the Spencer Tracy Airport? 

Upon arrival, Charlie continued his love affair with Aunt Susie. Get a room, you two!

The cousins (Spencer, Sam, and Leah) on their first night together.

It's always fun exploring the American Folk Art Museum that is my sister's Chicago house. Her collections are rivaled by no one. This display of vintage Pez Dispensers is only the tip of the iceberg.

At Toast, our favorite breakfast place in Chicago, with owner and friend, Jeanne. Stuffed French Toast, anyone?

Leah bonds with baby Cal, the adorable spawn of our friends Ellen and Greg. 

Spencer and Charlie walked all over Chicago. Spencer is now taller than me which is NOT okay. Stop growing, Spencer!

We went to many of our favorite Chicago restaurants but one night Leah made an entire home-cooked meal from scratch including these scrumptious strawberry shortcakes. 

Up to Michigan for several days and in my sister's crazy pedal-operated surrey, complete with the fringe on top. 

One last naked ride for Charlie. "Chicks and ducks and geese better scurry, when I take you out in the surrey..."

Michigan was a pleasure paradise of vehicles for transportation-happy Charlie. Here he is in his old Ford pickup (forgive me, GM!).

Charlie and his goddesses, Isabel and Vivi.

Leah communing with nature in Michigan.

Back in Chicago, we try to hit more of our favorite restaurants before leaving town. Flat Top is the best, WHY does it not exist in Los Angeles?

Charlie is fascinated by Uncle Jeff's nose.

Kendall, Leah, Charlie, and I on the Chicago El for a fun field trip downtown.

"Sunday in the Park with Charlie." I haven't been to the Art Institute in years and I was floored by it. I think it rivals the Met and the Louvre in every way. 

Grant Wood's "American Gothic" used to hang in my kitchen growing up. Here's Leah posing with the original.

Charlie and I left Kendall and Leah at the Art Institute and indulged in a Field's Special at the State Street Marshall Field's (I refuse to call it Macy's). I grew up on this bizarre concoction of iceberg lettuce, turkey, swiss cheese, and bacon sitting on a buttered piece of rye bread and slathered in Field's Thousand Island dressing. Yum.

A poignant moment for me in the lobby of the Reliance Building which my family used to own (it was their flagship Karoll's Red Hanger Shop for almost 50 years). Now it's the beautifully restored Hotel Burnham. Look at that gorgeous tile floor. Let's just say it looked a little different in our day. Gulp.

On the El ride home, Charlie and I munched on Garrett's mixed caramel and cheese popcorn, a true Chicago delicacy. I would've tried to deny that we ate so much of it but our hands were dyed that tell-tale cheese popcorn yellow for days!

"Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd. He served a dark and a vengeful God." Leah and I slipped off to see an amazing production of this gruesome musical starring Greg Edelman (who was in my class at Northwestern) and Liz McCartney. I saw the original with Angela Lansbury and the revival with Patti LuPone and this was just as innovative and exciting. Chicago has so much great theatre.

One more dinner with my dad. This may be the first photo taken of him with his three children since Richard Nixon was President.

The cousins on their last day together. Sammy taught Charlie to scream "poop," "diarrhea," and "turd." Oy, what are cousins for?

 

Our last meal together, insanely good burgers at DMK on Sheffield for Uncle Jeff's birthday (with parmesan truffle fries, no less).

Good-bye to the Tweedys and Millers. We love you!

See you next year, Chicago.

Happy Birthday, Sister!

I love the above photo of my sister with Charlie. It was taken in Chicago six months ago and we're heading back there on Monday for another visit—this one mercifully not involving blizzards and frozen tundra. Today is my sister's 54th birthday. Do you think she'll mind me mentioning her age? Eh, what difference does it make—anyone on the Internet can find out that stat in seconds these days. Did you know that August 12th was also Charlie's due date? We just about screamed when the doctor told us that. But, of course, he was so fearful of becoming a Leo (no offense, Sue!) that he decided to come out four months early! In honor of my sister's special day, I've been examining some of the scanned photos I have of the two of us.

These artifacts are endlessly fascinating to me—I feel like I need a historian, sociologist, and psychologist to provide commentary. Some of the photos are so old-looking you'd swear they were daguerrotypes. Are we actually in our 90s? Oy, please, being in our 50s is hard enough to swallow since we both still feel so young. Well, mentally anyway. Sorta.

This might be my favorite picture of the two of us—probably because it represents such a common childhood memory: watching TV together! (Is that sad?) This is in my parents' bedroom at our apartment on St. Louis Avenue in Chicago. I can literally feel the nubs on that bedspread under me. I wonder what we're watching. Possibly a first-run episode of "The Dick Van Dyke Show" or "Mr. Ed." I was just mentioning the other day how I first learned how to read so I could decipher the credits of my favorite TV shows. I was tired of calling my mother into the room to read the names of all the crew members. And I couldn't NOT know who they were. 

This photo belongs in the Smithsonian. Or a retro Trix commercial. I can still remember the taste of those multi-colored orbs and how it left my milk swirling with artificial dyes. I wonder who is taking these photographs? 

I went to my grandparents' apartment for Friday night dinner every week of my life until I moved to California. This seems like it might have been a special occasion, though, since Sue and I are dressed up and we have the high-fallutin' (for the 1960s) grapefruit appetizer. Could that yarmulke be any bigger on my head? Look at how adoringly I'm gazing at my sister. 

Before the P.C. police started ruining our fun, most kids in the 60s spent a lot of time playing Cowboys and Indians. In this photo I'm making the offensive but required Indian yelp and my sister is naturally pointing a gun. We don't seem that into it, though—I suspect an adult is directing our every move.

Now this is more like it. Being good Jews, Sue and I naturally identified more closely with the oppressed Indians (this was way before the term Native American was coined). My grandparents had brought back these cool outfits from some exotic location (maybe the Wisconsin Dells?) and I remember the feel of that drum. Of course I could kill myself that I don't have this outfit for Charlie. Me wantum Injun clothes. Ugg!

Are you getting the idea of how crazy close we were (and are)? We were two years apart in age but people often thought we were twins. I feel like I can still see Sue in these photos but very little of myself in that little boy. Help, I need a shrink! I also need those circus PJs my sister is wearing, I remember them well.

Back on the nubby bedspread, this time in vivid Kodacolor. I can literally feel the fabric of that shirt I'm wearing on my skin. And I remember that squirrel stuffed animal. Wait, is it a squirrel? Did we coordinate the color of our clothes so we always matched? I wouldn't be surprised if my mother did.

And here's why. My mother used to force us to wear matching Halloween costumes. This year we were Raggedy Ann and Andy. Can you say hu-mil-i-a-tion? But I have to hand it to my mom for her ingenuity, she made these costumes from scratch. She dyed mopheads red for our hair, did the makeup herself, and even put pieces of white medical tape around our red stockings for the stripes. Brilliant...and horrific.

Better we should have been trolls like the ones we're holding here. Do trolls still exist? Did I ever wear long pants? Why did my sister often have her hair tied back into a pony tail and yet still wear a head band? Aren't these all riveting questions?

Sue has literally been looking for the cool play kitchen set you can see in this photo for the past 30 years. I'm sure half of these pictures are going to send her over the edge and into a spending spree on eBay. We had an amazing basement in our house. Well, my dad still lives there so we still have it but now it's mostly filled with unopened mail from the 1970s that he's "going to get to one day." Yes, all of us Millers have a touch of the hoarder. This may have been the last time I lounged around the house without a shirt on.

My dad's best friend, Sam Bobrick, wrote several of the songs on these Mad Magazine albums Sue and I are holding. They were classic—titles such as "She Got a Nose Job" and "It's a Gas" which was a song made up entirely of burps. Ironically, after many successful decades as a TV writer and playwright (Sam just won an Edgar Award for his new play, "The Psychic"), he recently went back to his roots and recorded a CD of similarly twisted songs, this time with a country flair. Kendall's favorite on the new CD is called "Will My New Boobs Go to Heaven." It's because of Sam that Kendall and I met (he was a colleague and friend of her dad's). 

In the back seat of my grandfather's cool convertible. No seat belts, of course. We may have been on the way to the airport for our first trip to Los Angeles. Is it mean to add that my late grandfather was the worst driver I ever knew? He would pump the brakes constantly so minor whiplash was an everyday occurrence. Of course Kendall accuses me of driving that way today. 

Jumping ahead a few years, here we are in high school, standing in front of our local PBS station which was just a few blocks from our house. We used to work at their fundraising auction blowing up balloons. My brother Bruce worked at this station for several years. Notice my bellbottoms and my oversized flannel shirt. Oy. Cool truck, though.

And, finally, here we are at ages 20 and 18, touching the belly of my just-out-of-frame Aunt Bobbie who was pregnant with my cousin Sarah (now 34). I don't think Sue and I were ever this tan or skinny again. Mood swing!

And there you have it. Happy Birthday, Susan Rae Miller Tweedy. Love you and see you soon!

Les Misérables

My daughter Leah completed a run in “Les Misérables” today. This was something like her 40th musical. I love watching her on stage—since Leah's very first play (“West Side Story” at the age of 6—she played Officer Krupke!), she has taken performing very seriously, giving 100% of herself to every role. 

I saw a touring production of “Les Misérables” in the late 1980s and I loved it but until I saw Leah’s show I forgot how great and epic a musical it is. I remember being in Paris when the original opened at the huge Palais des Sports in 1980. The English-language version premiered in London in 1985. Kendall and her family saw it there with Patti LuPone as Fantine and Colm Wilkinson as Jean Valjean. Though it’s transferred theatres twice, the show is still playing in that city 26 years later which is pretty incredible. It’s a real masterpiece that has been seen in 40 countries and translated into 21 languages. It played over 7,000 performances on Broadway. The musical is finally being made into a film this year with Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean.

 

Of course the show is based on Victor Hugo’s book, set in 19^th-century France. It follows the story of Jean Valjean, a good man who is sent to jail for 19 years because he stole a loaf of bread.We see many other characters struggling through miserable living conditions and achieving various levels of redemption amidst the backdrop of a political revolution. In Leah’s production, she played Enjoiras, the leader of a band of student revolutionaries and a close friend of Marius, who is in love with Cosette, the daughter of the late Fantine, who was forced to become a prostitute to send money to the abusive couple that was raising the daughter she had to give up. Oh yeah, there are some pretty intense themes in this musical, and I was surprised at how well this high school-aged troupe dealt with them all.

I loved seeing Leah as such an lefty activist. She also played smaller parts in other scenes. The story of “Les Misérables” couldn’t be more appropriate for our times with its harsh examination of poverty, greed, and corruption. It seems very meaningful that we were watching the final performance of this show just as Congress and President Obama were in final negotiations on the debt ceiling crisis, with many of the programs that could have aided the characters in this story put on the chopping block.

The show was almost three hours long (oy, those poor kids!) but I’ve made a five-minute version if you want to take a look at Leah’s ability to mobilize the masses:

 

There's a reason I could never be an actor, besides a total lack of talent. I would find it very difficult to bond so intensely with a group of people in a show only to be thrown to the winds after the last performance. On the other hand, Leah has been part of this acting company for nearly a decade and has several very close friends in the cast.

The music in this show is really beautiful. Charlie already knows most of Leah’s big number, “Do You Hear the People Sing?” I wonder if disappointed Democrats are singing it tonight in Washington:

Do you hear the people sing? 
Singing a song of angry men? 
It is the music of a people 
Who will not be slaves again! 
When the beating of your heart 
Echoes the beating of the drums 
There is a life about to start 
When tomorrow comes!

The Hitlist Movies Blog

Are you tired of reading about the debt ceiling crisis? Will one more story about John Boehner or Michelle Bachmann make you ingest cyanide at your next tea party? Then check out The Hitlist, the new blog for MSN Movies that I started writing for a few weeks ago. I’m writing 12-15 posts a week for the blog—very different from the stuff I write about on here but I still manage to get in some of my favorite topics (for example, see yesterday’s post about the new Kristin Scott Thomas film that focuses on the 1942 mass arrests of Jews in Paris by French—NOT German—police).

I’ll be writing for the Hitlist four days a week—on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. You can find all my posts to date here. But be sure to check the main site and read the interesting articles by the four other contributors. They’re an incredibly talented bunch: William Goss, who also writes for Film.com; Kate Erbland, who is a writer and managing editor at Gordon and the Whale; Corwin Neuse, who, in addition to writing about movies has a blog about hiking the Appalachian Trail; and James Rocchi, film critic for MSN Movies and a variety of publications.

It’s fun writing about different aspects of the movies, from the women of Harry Potter to the curse of the Bond Girls to an upcoming sequel to “The Wizard of Oz.” Feel free to comment if you like. The most comments I’ve received so far was for a tongue-in-cheek “liveblog” I did of opening day at “Captain America.” I liked the film okay but shared some critical comments. For that I had my IQ questioned and got called a racist and a douchebag! (I admit that I take a perverse pleasure in such comments. My favorite to date was when someone referenced my blog on a Wilco message board and someone else wrote, “Oh God, not the Danny Miller blog again!”)

To quell the panicking in the streets, I will stress that I’ll still be writing here as regularly as I can. And thus ends another bout of shameless self-promotion. Now back to your regularly scheduled program.

Charlie Sings Woody Guthrie

I get yelled at on Facebook whenever I apologize for posting a new video of my two-year-old son, Charlie. On the one hand, I still marvel at the ease with which the Digital Age allows us to instantly share images of our loved ones for all to see—it’s such a great way to connect with family and friends who are interested and, in Charlie’s case, with the supportive folks, some of them total strangers, who’ve been following his story ever since he was born at 24 weeks weighing only 1 lb. 4 oz. He truly is a miracle baby and his progress is seen by many as a tremendously hopeful sign for their own children who may be dealing with similarly grave heath issues.

On the other hand, whenever I write Charlie-centered posts, part of me still can’t shake the notion that they are akin to the endless slide shows we were all forced to watch of our relatives’ Bermuda vacations back in the Dark Ages before computers changed our lives and the world became a much smaller place. I know it’s a silly comparison, especially since unlike those forced viewings in darkened living rooms, no one has to click on these videos or look at these photos if they don’t want to see them. So I hereby vow that I will no longer apologize for sharing these items. And I can’t deny that, because of Charlie’s precarious early months, there are people who are very interested in following his developmental progress.

The past month has been full of changes. Charlie still works with physical therapists three times a week and despite the delays caused by his Grade III and IV brain bleeds (intraventricular hemorrhages), his walking has finally taken off. Verbally, he is just exploding, repeating every word he hears (oy, we really have to watch our mouths now!) and seemingly memorizing every book in his collection. I only wish I had half the memory that Charlie has. I’ve been singing to Charlie ever since he was born, often without even thinking about it just when we’re walking around. It’s only lately that I’ve realized that he knows the words to almost all of the songs in my eclectic repertoire. Sometimes he seems to commit them to memory after hearing them only one or two times.

One song that I sing a lot as we’re bopping around town is Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land.” The American folksinger’s 99th birthday would have been last week and it happened to be on that day that Charlie started singing along with the iconic lyrics. He’s heard a lot of Woody Guthrie in his lifetime. I often sang Guthrie tunes in the NICU and Charlie’s Uncle Jeff wrote the music for and recorded (with Billy Bragg) two albums of previously unheard lyrics by Woody Guthrie in collaboration with his daughter Nora. If someone commanded me to choose only one musical artist in history to represent the American zeitgeist, it would have to be Guthrie, wouldn't it? I’m glad Charlie is already a big fan.

Later on Guthrie’s birthday, I grabbed my camera and recorded Charlie singing his song while taking a bath:

 

The following two videos were already posted on Facebook but my non-social-networked relatives begged me to repost them. Here’s Charlie and my daughter Leah reading one of Charlie’s favorite books, “B Is For Bulldozer” by June Sobel. I have to say Charlie’s obsession with trucks and construction has helped me learn a bunch of new vocabulary words, I can now identify almost every kind of truck that I see in the streets! I was delighted to get a comment on YouTube from the book’s author and happy that a bunch of people reposted the video on their own sites, including progressive education activist and expert Susan Ohanian who included it on her “Good News” page extolling the importance of surrounding children with reading opportunities.

 

Charlie is also a big fan of Simon & Garfunkel. He does a killer “Scarborough Fair” that I haven’t recorded but here he is singing, for the first time, “Mrs. Robinson.” He knows it much better now—I no longer have to add the “-son” to “Robinson” and he sings a lot more of the lyrics. Koo-koo-ka-choo:

  

Do we have another future recording artist in the family? Oh, and seeing these three videos on one page, I just want to note that Charlie does wear clothes most of the time, it’s funny that these videos were all recorded shirtless! Oh well, maybe that will be his thing? The Naked Toddler Folksinger? 

Happy 100th Birthday, Ginger Rogers!

How is it possible that tomorrow would have been the 100th birthday of eternally youthful Ginger Rogers? I met her only once in the flesh—at a screening in the early 1990s of one of her most powerful films—the hard-hitting Ku Klux Klan drama  “Storm Warning” co-starring Doris Day and Ronald Reagan. Rogers was in a wheelchair by then, but was still dressed to the nines and she enjoyed the warm response from the crowd. She died a few years later, in 1995.

Of course I loved the ten films Ginger made with Fred Astaire (who didn’t?) and I'm glad she eventually got the kudos she deserved for her stellar performances in those iconic dance numbers. But when I think of Ginger Rogers today, I am more likely to seek out her non-musical films. Though not always given the same acclaim as other female stars of her era, Ginger Rogers was a killer actress in dramas as well as comedies. She won a Best Actress Oscar in 1940 for “Kitty Foyle,” but my favorite Ginger Rogers’ performances include the following:

Stage Door (1937). Oh, how I love this film, directed by Gregory La Cava, based on the play by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman, about a group of young wannabe actresses living in a boarding house in New York. Rogers more than holds her own opposite Katharine Hepburn and a bevy of supporting players including Eve Arden, Ann Miller, Lucille Ball, Gail Patrick, and Andrea Leeds not to mention the great Adolph Menjou as a philandering producer. The rapid-fire dialogue is delivered perfectly by the cast, and the transformation of Ginger and Kate’s relationship from one of contempt and loathing to a deep and loving friendship moves me to tears every time. If you’ve never seen this classic film, treat yourself immediately.

 

Bachelor Mother (1939). When you consider the times in which it was made, this film about a single unwed mother was pretty daring. Of course, in this sparkling Garson Kanin comedy, Ginger Rogers is not actually the mother of the abandoned baby she finds, but no matter what she says, the rest of the cast, especially David Niven as her employer-turned-love interest, believes that she is. This absurd tale of mistaken identities gets more complicated as the film progresses, but Rogers is perfect as the title character who eventually falls in love with the tot everyone assumes is her own. My favorite scene involves a New Year’s Eve party where Ginger pretends to be David Niven’s Swedish cousin who speaks no English (“Oppy Neuuu Yeeuhr!”) but still manages to wipe the floor with Niven’s obnoxious ex-girlfriend. Years later, this film was remade as the horrific musical “Bundle of Joy” starring real-life newlyweds Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher. Their lack of onscreen chemistry should have given Debbie a clue that there was trouble ahead!

 

The Major and the Minor (1942). If I had to pick just one favorite Ginger Rogers movie, this first American film written and directed by the great Billy Wilder would be it.  In this preposterous story, Rogers, at her most glamorous, is a scalp massager (!) in New York City, but one masher too many has led her to chuck her dreams of making it in the big city and return to her small home town in Iowa. When she gets to the train station, however, she realizes she doesn’t have enough money for the fare. Solution? Dress up as a 12-year-old girl in order to get the half-price fare. On the train she meets the head of a military school played by Ray Milland who, after a series of crazy events, ends up taking Ginger home with him for the weekend. Milland is engaged to a horrible woman (Rogers always seems to be rescuing her male leads from ghastly shrews!) but Ginger, still playing the 12-year-old, falls head over heels for him. Only the girlfriend’s teenaged sister is on to Rogers’ true identity, but she ends up helping Ginger in her quest to nab Niven for herself. In this funny tour-de-force, Ginger Rogers ends up playing three different ages, and her mother, Lela Rogers, shows up as her mother in the film. Again, Ginger’s expert delivery of the crackling dialogue is not to be missed.

 

I’ll Be Seeing You (1944). Imagine this pitch meeting: Ginger Rogers as a convict from a women’s prison on furlough to visit her family, meets a shell-shocked and mentally ill ex-soldier played by Joseph Cotton. They keep their true identities a secret from each other as they develop a timid and unlikely romance. This ain’t your typical Hollywood film but Ginger gives a wonderful and poignant performance as the down-on-her-luck woman. George Cukor was signed to do the film but was replaced by William Dieterle, a favorite of producer David O. Selznick. A teenaged Shirley Temple appears in the film in one of her first post-child-star roles and is very moving as Rogers’ young cousin.

It’s a rare Ginger Rogers flick that I would pass up at a revival screening or on Turner Classic Movies. Other Rogers’ favorites include “Vivacious Lady,” “Fifth Avenue Girl,” “Roxie Hart,” “Tender Comrade,” “Weekend at the Waldorf,” “Monkey Business,” and “Oh Men! Oh Women!” a weird 1957 comedy we saw at a screening last summer that was moderated by our friend and Ginger’s co-star, actress Barbara Rush. I may not have agreed with Rogers’ politics (she was a lifelong conservative Republican) but that dame sure had the Right Stuff.

Happy 100th, Ginger!