A star is found

David Carr tells his colleagues What Is

Page One: Inside The New York Times (2011) is either metafilm if you are a philosopher or Pirandellian if you favor theatrical analogy.  The title promises a PBS-style process piece about how a newspaper is turned out.  But the film is about a newspaper reporting its own death and (it hopes) resurrection.

We get a little process -- a couple of Page One meetings, what All The President's Men called budget meetings -- but the bulk of the film focuses on the Media News department reporting on the dissolution of print media both at the hands of digital media, which certainly destroyed the classified advertising business which was the economic basis of all local newspapers, as wellas by the blindness, greed, fear and incompetence of the managers of traditional media.  It is notable that the Times, after a decade of mistakes and attempted cover-ups now so courageously charts the course of the cancer that may just kill it.

So far, we have a good episode of Frontline.  But what happens in Page One is what often separates theatrical documentaries from television nonfiction, the arrival of a star performer.  In this case, it's David Carr, a too-good to be true beat reporter who literally keeps his head down, yet plows ahead toward the facts driving his stories and devlin-take-the-hindmost.  It helps that Carr has his own dramatic biography, touching the absolute bottom of addiction and desperation and coming out the other end, the most conventional and humble of suburban single dads.  He is a compelling character, with a raspy voice doubtless damaged by living on the street and/or cocaine addiction, an odd compulsive forward tilt of the head and a Columbo-like disingenuous manner of interrogating his targets, like a cat carelessly toying with a mouse, delaying the moment of the kill.

Clearly Carr has no animus toward the malefactors of the media, but he has no hesitation in calling out greed and stupidity, and backing up his claims with names, dates and numbers.  It's a wonder that he isn't now being fictionalized into a character for a new USA Network series (maybe he is). 

There are a lot of other good, well-meaning folk, Carr's bosses, whose names can be found in other discussions of this film, but to me, Carr's unintentional wresting of the spotlight from the historical trends and concepts with which the filmmakers undoubtedly embarked proves one essential truth of film narrative -- character beats ideas every day of the week.

Ripped off from the headlines

Somebody tell Errol Morris that somebody who saw a couple of movies made a cheesy imitation of a documentary, stuck Errol's name on it and called it Tabloid (2010).

Mr. Morris has two basic modes.  In one he puts two people or groups of people championing competing stories in front of the camera, lets them tell their stories and gently leads the viewer toward the most plausible version of events, sometimes with the aid of carefully identified reeactments, stock footage and shots of artifacts and locations.  In the other mode, he lets amiably odd people ramble on about their fixations, and we are invited to think, "Aren't these eccentrics charming?   Well, it takes all kinds to make a world."  There is no "other side of the story" in such cases -- the whole story is the wacky things these loveable people believe.

Tabloid botches the whole thing.  An idiot-maniac is permitted to drivel on in front of the camera at length with a story so silly and distasteful that you will have to watch the film at home, near a shower or bathtub.  No other perspective is offered, other than the so-called journalists who profited from spreading her delusions across the countryside.  So there is none of the interesting tension of conflicting versions of the story.  We get one, solitary, unitary deranged rendition of a deranged set of facts.

There are small Errol Morris flourishes -- big animated words on the screen, mock-ironic stock footage spliced in, real footage of the subject of the film (you notice how I avoid repeating her name) 35 years ago, younger and slimmer and just as crazy if not crazier.

If your idea of art or entertainment is being locked in a small room with a nut, have at it.  Include me out, thank you.

Living history

To take off my dispassionate-film-blogger hat and put on my educator hat, Wild Boys of the Road (1933) should be required viewing in every high school class studying the Great Depression in America.

First of all, it was recording the events as they unfolded, without any knowledge of the outcome or assurance that everything would turn out all right. (I also marvel at WWII-era films that way--what faith we had as a people!) Second, it reflects, very powerfully and plausibly, exactly the effect this depression had on young people exactly the age of our high school students today. In other words--if you want students to sense exactly how it would feel for them to have lived through the Great Depression as people their own age--Wild Boys of the Road spells it out.

It is obviously a deeply felt film by director William Wellman, employing speed, trials and tribulations, rain, deep bonding and loyalty among young men--and in this case, one young woman is added to "the club." But it is rendered with a focus and an intensity that shows Wellman gathering his powers.

As with its predecessor, Heroes for Sale, Wild Boys begins by showing the fall from the middle class. These are not the undeserving poor--these are the children of workers and middle managers whom the System has failed. At first, it seems as though the downturn is something that families can weather with a little belt-tightening and a healthy dose of patience. But it becomes apparent that there are no jobs and that none are coming. Our hero, played by Frankie Darro like a small dark Cagney, sells off his beloved jalopy, symbol of carefree times--teenage freedom and emerging sexuality. It becomes evident that sacrifice will not be enough and the boys forge a plan to leave home and go on the bum to relieve their families of the burden of supporting them. So strong is the middle class ethos of optimism, that Darro's parting note to his parents is based on a blatant lie about work waiting for him out of town, a lie his parents are happy to accept for their own peace of mind.

There follows a section with little sugar coating. They ride in empty box cars, receiving regular beatings from railroad thugs. They meet a girl dressed as a boy, and although it is not stated as such, it is presumably her defense against rape. This is brought home by the rape of another girl by that all-purpose movie thug, Ward Bond, who perishes at the hands of an angry mob of kids seeking revenge. It feels so refreshing to reach back to before the decades of antiseptic lies about the world as found in films in the 40s, 50s and 60s. Something about that crisis in the early 30s gave them courage to speak--and to hear--the ugly truth about what was going on. There is feeling, yes, even sentiment, but not forced or falsified, shoehorned to make some kind of point or moral lesson.

The most famous moment in the film is that of the boy who, lacking the strength to pull his body out of harm's way, loses his foot under an oncoming train. It's still shocking, and technically impeccable-the effect work is seamless. But the strength of the sequence comes later, when the kids have browbeaten a local doctor into caring for the boy. An amputation takes place in the train yard, almost a precursor of the similar sequence in Gone With The Wind. But what makes Wild Boy's amputation sequence powerful is how Frankie Darro stays with his friend, comforting him, bucking him up, lying to him a little bit, completely giving himself to this other person for their sake. At that moment, you know it is that feeling of belonging to each other and mutual sacrifice that will ensure the nation's survival.

Wellman wanted a completely pessimistic ending, which the studio rejected. And this time, I believe the studio was right. First of all, it would be too much to endure 75 minutes of misery and end with an outlook of more misery. Second, it is truthful and natural that the good things in our lives are generally not delivered by systems and institutions, but by individuals stepping out of their predetermined roles, perhaps even bucking the system and giving others a chance, as the kindly FDR-like judge does at the end of this film. Moreover, it's been established that these children, damaged as they are, have the spirit and will to survive and thrive--and, as we now know with hindsight, defeat mankind's most dangerous enemies in the second World War. What a crucible those children passed through.

And Wild Boys has its own movie-movie satisfactions--the snatching of a cake as the boys run from the police, Frankie Darro's neat leap into a handy ashcan, disappearing completely. And most satisfying is the final film appearance of former chorus girl Dorothy Coonan. She had already retired from the screen when she married director William Wellman. But Wellman pressured into acting one more time, convincingly playing a tough and resourceful teenage girl, though she was already 30. Best of all, she cadges spare change on the street by dancing to the song "42nd Street" and performing exactly the same tap dance steps she performed in that film only a few months before. Put the sequences side by side--you'll see she remembered the routine step for step. Though unintended, that correspondence between films creates an irony that virtually encapsulates the Great Depression in itself. "Good times and bum times, I've seen them all and, my dear, I'm still here..."

The Sound of their Own Voices

Watching Network (1976) and His Girl Friday (1940) in immediate succession as part of our Film Studies unit on screenplays (specifically, dialogue-driven screenplays) brought out some interesting parallels and contrasts. Both concern the control of information and its use in seduction. The seductions themselves, however, differ

Network's seduction is partly that of good old Max Schumacher, William Holden's mostly straight-arrow point-of-view character that today nobody cares about. William Holden has faded as a screen personality, despite his anchoring important films such as Sunset Boulevard and Bridge on the River Kwai. That's the problem--he anchors them, but doesn't drive them. That's up to crazy nuts like Norma Desmond, Colonel Nicholson and in Network, Howard Beale and Arthur Jensen. Yes, there's a crazy woman and she has mixed her obsession with words and numbers with her failure of a sex life, but that seems to be there to be dismissed. The ultimate seduction is of Howard Beale by Arthur Jensen, a liebestod that precipitates Beale's death. And director Sidney Lumet has said that the film itself becomes corrupted, from a straight-forward recorder of events at the outset to a stylish glamorizer at the end.

Nobody cares what the news is in Network. They're just interested in what it does for them; therein, the common bond with His Girl Friday, where the battle for eyeballs is just an instrument in Walter Burns's endless seduction. This was always true in HGF's source material, The Front Page, in which Hildy was a man. But the seduction was clearer and more palatable when it was made into a conventional romance. And here also, the romance of words is probably a liebestod. At the end of the film it seems clear that Hildy will not have an actual life, but race from scoop to scoop in the effort to hold onto her man--and her eyes glitter at the prospect.

Neither film has a music score--where would you put it? Although, I must admit that Network's super-pompous TV theme music (by Elliot Lawrence, a veteran arranger/conductor of big bands, Broadway pits and TV award shows) always makes me laugh aloud--it is so dead-on, not an ounce of exaggeration or mockery. But that is a grace note. Both films are finally about people who will, if allowed, talk themselves to death.