That Would Be Me (dot net)

Many years ago I got into the habit of answering the ubiquitous question, “How are you?” by saying, “Dandy, how are you?” Most people just smiled and said they were fine. I was working in a law office in Los Angeles at this time and there was one lawyer who worked there, a junior partner, tall, smart, proper, very straight and very New England reserved. When I answered his salutation with my usual, “dandy, how are you?” he looked at me for a brief moment then said, “Foppish,” and sauntered down the hall with the bearing of a man who was very secure in his intellectual prowess and dry wit. I still admire him after all these years.

I rarely say “dandy” anymore, although I’m not sure why. I have found recently that I answer that question with the word “fabulous.” A friend once said to me that he could tell how good I really was doing by how long I stretched out the first syllable. “Only two ‘A’s today?” he’d say. If it were a one “A” fabulous, it was merely a good day. A five “A” fabulous would likely send one into convulsions of ecstacy. I think I usually hover around three.

I like the word fabulous. Okay, yes, it sounds really gay, but so the hell what. And they called Frank Sinatra fabulous and no one would ever consider calling him gay. I dare you to say you’re fabulous and, at least for the few moments you’re saying it, not actually feel fabulous. It’s impossible. The vibrational tones of that particular combination of letters won’t let you. I challenged one of the tellers at the bank I go to to try it. The next time I was at her window, I asked if she had. She said she’d tried it once and it didn’t work. I said to try it one more time. The next visit I was at a different window. That teller asked me how I was and I simply said “Fine.” The first teller called over three windows to say, “well, I’m fabulous!” She smiled and so did I. She was, indeed, fabulous. It works, I tell you.

More people should say they were fabulous. The more they say it, the more fabulous they’d be. President Bush should say it. If he were fabulous he might not be so inclined to incite war and strife all over the place. Andy Rooney should say it. At least momentarily he wouldn’t be so grumpy. It probably wouldn’t last with him, but we can all savor moments.  We should start a movement. The Be Fabulous Movement.  “How are you? You’re fabulous, of course!” It would be the only acceptable answer.

I think it’s a dandy idea.

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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

Many years ago Toyota had an ad campaign with the catchy slogan, “What Will You Do with All the Money You Save?” The thinking was, I assume, the consumer had $20,000 in their checking account allotted especially for the purpose of buying a car. When they bought the Toyota and it only cost $18,000, they had $2,000 worth of FREE MONEY! Woo Hoo! I’m going to Disneyland and have dinner at one of the real restaurants!

Of course, how many people actually have the cash already set aside to purchase a car? (Or even a pack of gum these days, even that’s put on a credit card more often than not.) We usually don’t even have the down payment ready at hand. So, when a car costs less than originally expected, you don’t actually “save” money, you just don’t spend as much potential (read “imaginary”) money as you would have on the more expensive item. You can’t do anything with the money you saved, because in actuality it never really existed. Except in your mind. Which, now I think about it, is how most of my money exists.

Why do I bring this up so many years after the fact? Well, there is a new ad campaign now running from Hyundai, called Dollars & Sense, where the wide-eyed consumers, having fallen in love with the car, are admonished by either Larry Winget, Ray Lucia or Adam Smith (all presumed to be best selling authors of books about money) that they should “put the money they saved into an insured CD” or some such drivel. These renowned economists should be ashamed of themselves! What could it possibly do to an economist’s reputation to advise people to put money that never existed into savings? Isn’t that illegal? Would there eventually be a margin call? Would you have to give the car back when that happened? What if you’ve already spilled ice cream on the upholstery during your trip to Disneyland?

I don’t really begrudge these authors getting their truck load of money for giving this fictional advice in a commercial, it is good economics. For them - lead by example, I always say. Are Hyundai cars relatively inexpensive? Yes. (I didn’t say “cheap”!) Will you spend less money on one than if you buy a comparable car from another maker? Probably. Does that mean you’ve saved money? Theoretically. What are you going to do with that money? I’m going to invest mine in an imaginary gold mine in Argentina. Hey, I don’t even have to buy the car to do that. How much more money can I save, then?

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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

Yes, I’m verbose.

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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

As a young boy in the remote New Jersey town called Flatbrookville, I hated peas, those grey-green orbs piled on my dinner plate threatening to roll over into the mashed potatoes (a favorite) and pollute Grandma’s wonderful pot roast.  They smushed on my tongue into a slimy mess that tasted unnatural with an undercurrent of vaguely chemical sweetness.  And heaven defend us when they appeared surreptitiously in an otherwise wonderful beef stew, nestling among the carrots.

I was not a picky eater.  Both my mother and grandmother were wonderful cooks and I liked almost everything they made, except fish (more to do with small bones than flavor), Brussel sprouts (everything wrong with a cabbage, condensed) and, of course, peas.  I ate everything put before me, I was, generally, a well behaved child.  I have fond memories of most meals: pasta with summer sauce, home-made ravioli stuffed with spinach and cheese or luscious Italian sausage filling, corned beef, venison, al olio, pasta con pesto.  The simple mention of these staples make me salivate.

But occasionally my dinner plate was offended by peas.

One morning when I was, perhaps, eight or nine, I “lost” my breakfast and had to stay home from school.  My mother had planed at day trip to visit our Aunt Lou, a two hour drive in each direction.  The other kids were in school and Grandma had the business to run, so I went along for the visit.  Shortly after we got there, it became obvious that I didn’t have a typical flu and Aunt Lou insisted we visit her doctor.

It was acute, gangrenous appendicitis.  I was rushed to the hospital and prepped for emergency surgery.  I was told that my appendix actually burst in the doctor’s hand as he removed it.  I’d been twenty minutes away from major complications or even death.  But I was kid from a large Italian family and all I knew was that I was getting individual attention from doctors, nurses, and even my mother and Aunt Lou.  It all seemed a fair trade.  

A day or so later I was lying in bed, one vestigial organ lighter, when the doctors started me back up on solid food.  The vegetable in my first dinner was peas.  But they were unlike any pea I had ever encountered.  They were bright green, almost shiny, a pat of butter was melting on top of the small pile, its edges taking on the contours of these tiny marvels.  I tasted one.  No smush!  No slime.  It actually popped when I bit down on it.  And the sweetness.  The wonderful sweetness.  I pondered this for some time, then finally asked my mother.

“Well, they were probably frozen,” she said.

Frozen.  We didn’t get frozen vegetables at home.  We either got fresh (corn or green beans from a neighbor’s garden) or canned.  It was a different time.  Even my Italian grandmother used canned vegetables.

I haven’t allowed canned vegetables in my house since I moved out on my own.  And peas are still my favorite meal-time treat.

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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

Second Day - Wednesday, August 10, 2006

Utah is in a different universe. And as you go further east (at least on the 70) it gets more and more alien. The western end has green and looks normal, but it starts to get strange very soon. I was told that, as you travel along the way, you go through every geological era. It’s beautiful, breathtaking, actually (how often will I use that word?) but off-putting. I can’t imagine living there. There is a stretch of the 70 highway where there are “no services” for over 100 miles. It’s no wonder. I can’t imagine any sort of people who would want to populate it enough for there to be services. When you cross the border to Colorado you are instantly transportede back into our universe, there is green and houses and people and horses. The only animals I saw in Utah were lizards.

Half way through Utah, I realized that a friend I haven’t seen lived somewhere in Colorado. I remembered the town Carbondale and looked at the map. It was only a few miles from the highway I was on. I had my little phone book with me. I called the last number I had for her and her husband. It was Michelle’s voice on the answering machine, but they weren’t home.

Just outside of Colorado, I stopped at a rest stop because the wind was so strong I had to put the top up on the convertible. Good thing I did, it started raining shortly after that and rained the rest of the day. Driving in the rain is a whole different experience. You can’t see as far ahead and the rhythm is different. I even think th e rhythm of my breathing changed a little. Slowed down or something. I could be wrong, perhaps I’m just trying to be poetic.

I called Michelle and Marvin again just inside of Colorado at Grant Junction. They were there, live in Paonia not Carbondale, they would love to see me and it would take me about two hours to get there from where I was. I had to go. They live in a small geodesic dome that they built as a “temporary” house while they built their big dome. They’d planned on being in the small one for a year. Well, Marvin’s job got exported to India, then he fell off the roof one winter and was in the hospital, so the big dome never got started. Until last May, seven years later. It’s pretty great, actually, very exciting. I took some video of it. (Yes, I finally started taking some short movies at rest stops, etc. Didn’t take me long to get off it…) I spent the night in their very funky home and visited.

Marvin’s network wouldn’t talk to my computer. Is it because I’m gay?

Third Day - Thursday, August 10, 2006

This morning, I got up and went into the big dome. The floor is still bare plywood, but most of the inner roof (ceiling?) is in place, as are the windows and a counter that will be the kitchen. Except for one corner that will be the bedroom, there are no inner walls, so it’s a huge open space. When I walked in, I felt dizzy. After a moment, it passed, but later Marvin insisted that the dome was on a vortex and that, when he was digging the basement, Michelle couldn’t stand in it because the energy was so strong she would almost faint. I’m not sure what to think of that, I’m one of those skeptic believers. I want to believe things like vortexes, even have some experience of things like that, but a big part of my mind says, “You were dizzy because you didn’t sleep well, silly.”

I had breakfast with Marvin and Michelle, then hit the road at about 10:30. While eating, they had the news on and it was full of reports of all the nonsense at the all the airports all over the country. Okay, yes, they captured a bunch of suspected terrorists. In England. Because the precautions being taken are working. So America responds with its normal, rational, considered reaction and goes nuts. I cannot convey how glad I am that Steve talked me into driving to my seminar. I was anyway, but now it seems more than propitious. Of course, I imagine certain people are ecstatic about the airport craziness. Divide and conquer, rule by fear.

I took the back highway from Paonia to Carbondale. Colorado is magnificent, beautiful, grand, green, immense, overwhelming. Driving down the twisty road listening to Beethoven’s Fifth is the only way to do it. Until Beethoven’s Sixth came on. Perfect. The fifth, so dramatic and grand, was the best way to see the mountains and the river by the road, the Crystal River. The sixth, the Pastorale, was then perfect for the lower end of the highway through the communities of local coal miners and hippy artists. The music ended just as I got to Carbondale and back on the main highway. Synchronicity, anyone? Of course, beautiful Colorado is also the state that voted in Proposition 2 all those years ago. Go figure.

I’m at a rest stop outside of Glenwood Springs. If I’m not too tired, I’ll write more this evening.

Fourth Day, Friday, August 11, 2006

Two nights with no Internet. Can I survive? The eastern end of Colorado is much more even, still beautiful, but it’s a gentler beauty. I’m now in Nebraska. I was told Nebraska would be boring. Flat and boring. Not true. Yes, it’s flat, but that makes it easier to drive, and it is lush and full green with lots of trees. The landscape is varied and very interesting. A lot of insects, though. I crossed the border at night and every time I passed a stand of trees I heard this arrhythmic whining buzz and clicking. After hearing it several times, I figured out it was some type of bug. Locusts? Who knows. I also kept colliding with bugs, and my windshield was a mess when I stopped. This morning when I cleaned the windshield off there were five dead bees and a wasp on the hood. Bees and wasps! I’m sitting at a beautiful rest stop with a thick lawn and tall shade trees with a stream running through it and the constant buzzing sound from the field behind me. And I’ve been bitten by at least six ants and a spider or two.

I think I’ve trained my bladder. As soon as I see a Rest Stop sign and decide to stop, it starts aching, as if it now has permission to get ready to void. Very odd. Useful, though, in a strange way.

I keep seeing signs for Buffalo Bill’s ranch, and there have been some highway-side attractions with tee-pees and covered wagons and it makes me wonder about the fortitude of people who traveled the same distance I’m traveling (in the other direction, of course) with their whole families and all their belongings and it took months and years. And there were no highways or rest stops. (Of course, if you think about it, the entire way was one big rest stop. When you have to relieve yourself just stop, go behind a tree and “rest”.

Last night the moon rose very late. It was completely dark and I saw this weird glowing orange dome on in the distance directly in front of me. I wondered what building would be lit like that. As I got closer, it got bigger and I realized it was the moon, huge, orange and distorted. When it broke the horizon, it looked like a glowing squashed pumpkin. It looked like that for about fifteen minutes until it was fully up in the sky.

I still don’t know why I love traveling so much. I was saddened that I would be going by myself and tried to think of a way to get a traveling companion, but I’m so glad I didn’t. Being alone on the highway is the point. I think. I’m trying to figure what it means to me. Maybe I shouldn’t try and just enjoy it. Today, I sang. For over an hour. To Simon and Garfunkle. It’s a good thing I am alone, probably.

I’m at a Best Western in Williams Iowa. Internet at last! (Oh, what a modern drone I am.) Iowa’s air is damp and dirty. I expected the damp, it’s high summer and this is the Midwest. But I didn’t expect the dirty part. During the day there was a faint brown hue to the horizon and as it turned to dusk, the air got damper and difficult to see through. Not like a smokey room, but dense and grey.

Nothing philosophical tonight. I stopped earlier than I expected and am just relaxing. I only have about a hundred and eighty miles to Minneapolis. I’m looking forward to the last leg of this part of the trip. I don’t know how many posts I’ll be able to do while the seminar is raging, but if the spirit and the opportunity present themselves simultaneously, I’ll write. If not, I’m sure there’ll be plenty on the road home, what with processing everything from the week and all.

Til then.
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Geoff Hoff is co-owner of Joseph Coaler Productions and, with Steve Mancini, co-wrote the best selling satirical novel “Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend“.

As you can probably tell, I love movies. I love them unapologeticly. I would often rather go to a movie than have a good meal or sit by a roaring fire with a brandy or watch the waves of a blue and green ocean spread toward me an a beautiful summer day. As I say, I love movies more than is reasonable for an adult person. Because of that, I will often forgive in movies what might be seen as flaws. I also love passion and artistic risk, so some of my favorite films are those that don’t quite work but the attempt was grand, movies like Altman’s Quintet (was I one of perhaps three people who ever saw this film?) and 3 Women (which was inspired by a nightmare Altman had one night). Robert Altman is a film maker who often takes grand risks, sets himself grand challenges. Usually, the risks pay off and he conquers the challenges, but even when he fails, he does so brilliantly. It’s no wonder all the big stars in Hollywood are willing to play cameos (and often parody themselves) in his movies.

The first Altman movie I ever saw was Nashville. It was sprawling and unwieldy and breathtaking, the story of several musicians, both established and new, talented and not, performing in and around Nashville during a political campaign and their fans and fanatics and the wannabe hangers on. Although Altman denies that it was his intent, it presents an odd, compelling, satirical cross section of Americana. (Barbara Harris is a revelation - why did she quit acting and become a casting director, I wonder.) From the opening credits, which hilariously resemble a frenetic television ad for a music compilation, to the political rally at the end, nothing is predictable, everything surprises and I was swept along the ride down the rapids.

The next movie of his I saw was A Wedding, which was much smaller in scale and didn’t quite hit the mark as well. I still liked it of course. In that movie, Altman set himself the challenge of presenting a huge cast of characters in a single setting in such a way that the audience ends up knowing and following them all. On this point he was very successful and I really admire him for the attempt, but the movie itself didn’t quite flow as well as Nashville did.

Another thing I admire about Altman is that he continues to produce, no mater what. He simply doesn’t care. If people stop liking his movies, he does television. And it’s always innovative television (Tanner ‘88 has been copied many times by lessor talents). If he can’t get television work, he directs theater. And then he comes back to the big screen and produces something stunning like Gosford Park, which pretends to be a murder mystery but is really a biting examination of class distinction and social mores in 1930s England, just as the “privileged class” was beginning to disintegrate.

Altman has dabbled in surrealism (Brewster Mccloud, 3 Women), social commentary (Nashville, The Player, Short Cuts), war (M*A*S*H), character study (Vincent & Theo), translations of theater (Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean and Streamers) and translations of cartoons into movie musicals (Popeye). Although I haven’t yet seen everything he’s done (he’s done so very much) I will see anything he does.

Geoff Hoff is co-owner of Joseph Coaler Productions and, with Steve Mancini, co-wrote the satirical novel “Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend“.

This week’s entry is a short one. It started as another email conversation with my father, poet Rowell Hoff, who currently lives with his wife Carol in China.

Dad:

We just watched last night the Paul Newman movie “Nobody’s Fool“. We sort of think he may be, if there is one, the best actor around. What I notice is that I forget about Newman; the person I am seeing is the person in the movie.

I read a review of this movie, the reviewer mentioned that Newman and Brando started out at the same time, the same classes, etc. But what happened to Brando after all? He started maybe imitating himself, maybe just tired of it all, maybe confused (certainly confused!) maybe whatever. Newman perfected his art, there is no other word for it. Did you see him in the movie about Earl Long (don’t remember the title)? Cool Hand Luke? Butch Cassidy? The Sting? etc. etc. etc.

Me:
That movie was called Blaze, but no, I haven’t seen it. Interesting that you should mention Paul Newman. He is by far my writing partner’s favorite actor, Cool Hand Luke his favorite film. And of course both Butch Cassidy and The Sting are two of my absolute top films. I too think he is close to the best actor around. Nobody’s Fool was not a great film, but certainly a very good one, and he was fine in it. That particular class at the Actor’s Studio produced a lot of wonderful actors, not the least of which were my two acting instructors in college who met and married there. (In other words, my training was second hand the same as Newman’s and Brando’s. Sort of… Okay, that’s really inconsequential to the conversation at hand, but what the hell.)

In terms of raw acting ability, I do think Brando far outweighs Newman, but Brando got very bitter about the industry very early on and Newman just dove in and made it work for himself, becoming a director, producer and better actor. After just “phoning in” (I hate that phrase, but it does describe it) performances for many years, and doing things just for the money, (such as Superman for goodness sakes. A fun film, but what the hell is he doing in it? Not much. Feh) Brando did kind of disappear. He didn’t make a movie for almost ten years after Apocalypse Now (what a performance that was!) and The Formula. You can see that he probably had resistance to his whole life by looking at his physical body over those years. Then he started doing some small roles in things and it looked like he was choosing movies he wanted to do and really did his homework. He had only one scene in a movie called Dry White Season with Donald Sutherland in which he never stood up from his chair but walked away with the film. (It was one of those films that bother me a bit because it is about a non-white ethnic group, but seen through White Man’s eyes as if that were the only way to communnicate the strange, bizarre Other. Or as if to say, the white oppressor isn’t all that bad, see? Look how he feels for the downtrodden. Feh. In this case, the movie is about the struggle of blacks in South Africa but seen through Sutherland’s eyes, who plays an upper middle class Afrikaner. But Brando is so wonderful, subtle, he almost makes up for that.) Of course, he followed that up with The Freshman, a movie even he disparaged.

Brando did a slightly bigger role in a caper film a few years before he died called The Score that was a hoot (although one major plot point didn’t make a lot of sense) with two other actors that are close to being in Newman and Brando’s league: Edward Norton and Robert De Niro. (De Niro was also an Actor’s Studio alum, although much later.) I think it was Brando’s last movie. Before that he went back and forth between great stuff and trash, following Don Juan DeMarco, a delightful film in which he is delightful, with The Island of Dr. Moreau, a dreadful film in which he is dreadful.

Newman has done some clunkers (don’t see Twilight, even though it has another couple of favorites of mine in it, it’s almost unwatchable…) but I will see anything he’s in and I rarely see a film just because Brando is in it.

Geoff Hoff is co-owner of Joseph Coaler Productions and, with Steve Mancini, co-wrote the satirical novel “Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend“.

Some people don’t like, or don’t get Woody Allen and wonder why he is so revered. I think he can be brilliant. The films of his that I have liked, I have loved. Manhattan is one of my favorites. Yes, it is, as some might say, about “whiny aimless people with boring neuroses”. That, I think, is part of the point. It has always fascinated me that the most mature, stable and intelligent character in it is the teenager played by Muriel Hemingway. The thing I find amazing about it, though, is that practically every shot is a work of art. This is the beginning, I think, of Allen’s experimentation with cinematic technique, and it pays off handsomely. I think you could pull any one frame at random from the film and it would be composed brilliantly. And it is composed that way in order to tell the story, not as an end. I find directors that show off beautifully lit and angled shots often get in the way of the film. I find that often of Allen, actually, (take a look at the nausea inducing hand held camera work in Husbands and Wives) but not in Manhattan. In fact, Allen insisted that it be presented on television, VHS or DVD only in widescreen format to keep the integrity of the shots intact, the first (perhaps only?) film maker to ever do so.

And, yes, given that, most of his stories are about whiny aimless people with boring neuroses. I do recommend “Broadway Danny Rose,” though, as a charming tribute to spunk. It is (very) loosely based on a real New York talent agent who actually had a roster much like the one portrayed in the film, an agent who took on the oddest of talent, but who believed in them and supported them beyond all reason. The real agent that it’s based on had Andrew “Dice” Clay among his talent pool, but most of his acts were odd variety and specialty acts. I haven’t seen it in a while, but remember being utterly charmed by it. It is told as a series of tales by actors and performers sitting around a table at a New York deli, trying to outdo each other telling “Danny Rose” stories, until one comes up with the ultimate tale. And there is one scene in a hanger full of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade floats that I remember as making me almost choke with laughter. Love and Death is also a good film; a fairly silly but intelligent comedy about Napoleon of all things.

Hannah and Her Sisters is another one that I liked a lot. Allen seemed to grow up in an odd way with that film. I mean Allen himself, not necessarily his art or film making. There seemed far less neurotic, juvenile behavior and the situations, characters and issues presented in it also seemed, somehow, more mature.

The latest by Allen, Match Point, surprised me. It was placed in London rather than New York, which everyone seems to think is the main point of departure and the most notable thing about the film, but it was other things about it that surprised me. It is unrelentingly nihilistic, I think, the whole point being that you win or lose completely by chance, by where the ball falls after it hits the top of the net, not by any endemic goodness or strength of character or act of redemption or even effort on your part. This seems to me to be the biggest point of departure from his other films. (And perhaps he needed to travel to London to make that departure.) Yes, his characters have often been obsessed with death (especially the characters he plays) and have been neurotic and frequently even selfish, but there has usually been an underlying goodness, even sweetness in all of his people. Even the animalistic brutes in Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy played by Jose Ferrer and Tony Roberts (what ever happened to him? He used to be the quintessential white bread foil for Allen) learn about the higher levels of love and human relationships by the end of the movie. The performances in Match Point are quite good (not unusual for Woody Allen, who has gotten the best performances ever from many of his actors) and the story is compelling, but his departure of mood and intent left me a bit cold.

There are so many other Allen films that I love (how could I not talk about Zelig or Purple Rose of Cairo, for goodness sake?) but they will have to wait for some future post. Anyway, I think Woody Allen is revered partly because he has experimented with the art of film making and brought it places other film makers haven’t had the foresight or courage to go, partly because he tells compelling, interesting and unusual stories, partly because he gets such intimate performances, but mostly because there is simply no other film maker even remotely like him.

Geoff Hoff is co-owner of Joseph Coaler Productions and, with Steve Mancini, co-wrote the satirical novel “Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend“.

The following is part of an email conversation I had recently with my father, poet Rowell Hoff, who now lives in China with his wife, Carol.

Dad:

We watched, on recommendation of a friend, “Once Upon a Time in America“, Sergio Leone’s long movie about — about what?? Me, I didn’t like it at all. What should one think of a movie about four people, in reality only two; one of them (Max, the character played by Woods) a stone sociopath, another (Di Niro’s character) in a sense worse, for he has some human sensibility and tenderness, which he invariably puts behind him in favor of criminality and nastiness in general, and ends up smiling on opium. And the directing: Feh, as you say. The perhaps comic in intention sequence about the police captain and his baby–not funny, just stupid. The scene in the empty-but-for-Niro-and-the-girl restaurant, a hundred waiters, an orchestra for Heaven’s sake. The story of Max (the stone sociopath) who fakes his own death, takes the money and disappears for 30 years, during which time he becomes a U.S. cabinet member. Come on! And so on. Nobody in the story was worth a counterfeit Confederate dollar as a human being, except “Fat Moe”. What was the message? Was there a message? Why did our friend like it? Why did Ebert like it? Leone should have stuck to spaghetti westerns. “Fistful of Dollars” was better (not good, but better than “Once Upon…”, and mercifully shorter), and Eastwood’s character, besides cleverly arranging for the massacre of most of the inhabitants of the town, who indeed were pretty bad persons, did at least one kind and self-sacrificing thing.

Me:

I saw Once Upon a Time in America shortly after it came out. When it was first released in the US, the studio re-arranged the narrative so it was told linearly and cut it down by (if I remember correctly) almost half its original length. I saw it when it came to cable and they showed both the theatrical release and the original cut. I remember being fairly in awe of the scope of the thing (I watched both versions and was appalled by the studio cut) and of what I remember as the very effective non-linear story telling. I love studying different ways of structuring a story, different ways to reveal the various threads in a story. (To see a really innovative narrative, and a really dark but quite good movie, see Momento. I warn you, it is very dark. It’s sort of told backward, but only sort of. It had an odd, lingering effect on me. After leaving the theater, it was literally several hours before actual reality seemed to be real.) However, I also remember having had some problems with the story itself in Once Upon a Time. It’s been a long time and I really don’t remember much about the specifics - the points you bring up seem valid but none of them ring a bell - but I do have a vague recollection of being a little annoyed at the depiction of Jewish people in it.

As for why so many people liked it, first of all Americans have a strange love for gangsters and the “romance” of the gangster life. Second, it was beautifully filmed and acted, which I have said before can almost make up for any other flaw. Again, from memory because it has been so long since I’ve seen it, I think a lot of the absurd story elements you point out are actually impressionistic rather than stark realism - they are the musings in he mind of De Niro. Isn’t it a lot about his looking back on his dark life? Also, a lot of films that have utterly reprehensible and unrepentant and unredeemable characters have had a lot of critical acclaim - take Raging Bull, a movie I really didn’t like, but that I could see a lot of wonderful film making in. No one in that film has any saving grace at all. They’re all complete a** holes from beginning to end, and the critics loved it.

Dad:

I am also happy with “non-linear” flicks, generally speaking. (What a good name for them!) Remember “Rashomon“? Although the technique was different, for a different purpose, really, and of course it grew out of the story by Akutagawa. (It is curious that the book of stories it came from had a story called “Rashomon” in it, but that was not the story that became the movie. I forget what the name of it was…) Zhang Yimou, in his “Hero“, may have been thinking of “Rashomon” a little.

The most interesting and technically and artistically fascinating non-linear film lately — that we have seen, anyway — is Syriana.

Me:

Believe it or not, I’ve never seen Rashomon! I know a lot about it and it is ALWAYS referenced when someone is talking about a story told from different perspectives. It is one I’ve always wanted to see, mainly because of the story telling technique. I often don’t like Akira Kurosawa and that’s one reason I’ve not yet seen it even though it has so heavily influenced so many other things. My main problem with Kurosawa is that his movies are visually stunning but seem somehow soulless and emotionally empty. (I find that with a lot of Japanese art, actually. Odd, probably, given my birth in Tokyo.) That’s probably a little unfair, I haven’t seen more than a few of his movies, but there you have it.

As for non-linear films, the first one I saw actually radically changed the way I wrote. There is a movie made in the sixties with Julie Christie and George C. Scott called Petulia. I can’t remember exactly when I saw it (probably when I was in high school, but it may have been even earlier), but it jumps around in time rather frenetically and it stunned me. You don’t really completely know what is going on until the very last scene. I tried for many years to see it again (this is way before video - and I’m not even sure it’s available on video in any case) without any success. Finally, several years ago now, I convinced an art house movie theater in LA to run it. I was thrilled. And very disappointed. It wasn’t nearly as good as I had remembered. Of course, how could it be? I had credited it with changing how I approached storytelling and I consider myself a story teller, so it was like some sort of religious or transformational experience in my mind - a walk to the peak, a flight to heaven. What could live up to that? I’d actually like to see it again, now, with the perspective of a little maturity and not as great an expectation.

I have not yet seen Syriana - it is top on my list. I had wanted to see it before it left the movie theaters, but alas, I think I’ve missed it there. Ah well. I want to see it for any number of reasons; the movie making is supposed to be superb, the emotional impact is supposed to be extreme and I have come to really respect George Clooney. (Who knew! That guy who goofed his way through ER on TV is actually an amazing man. - Speaking of Clooney, see Good Night and Good Luck.)

Geoff Hoff is co-owner of Joseph Coaler Productions and, with Steve Mancini, co-wrote the satirical novel “Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend“.