The Voice of Reason: A V.I.P. Pass to Enlightenment Read online

  3 Again with Fredo. We find out he somehow “betrayed” Michael, leading to an attempt on his life in the “fortified Corleone compound” by guys with machine guns. Later, Fredo says to Michael, “I swear, I didn’t know it was gonna be a hit.” So, when he let the guys onto the grounds carrying machine guns, what did he think they were there for, to play pinochle?

  4 While Frank Pentangeli is being strangled, the guy robbing him of life says to him, “Michael Corleone says hello!” Number 1, what does that knowledge do for Frank Pentangeli in the afterlife? Number 2, it wasn’t Michael who ordered the hit. So why lie to him as you kill him? Who is he going to complain to? The only answer, which one of my fellow movie pals came up with, is that he wasn’t actually trying to kill him. According to my friend, it was a government plot to “turn” ol’ Frankie Five Angels. But that’s an awful lot of trouble to go to with a man of that age, with a piece of piano wire wrapped around his neck, to further some plot to make him a government witness, isn’t it? Especially because you run the risk of killing him, and a bunch of other people, in the process. Whether it was a mob hit or a government plot, it makes no sense. It’s a ridiculous scene, and it should have been ripped out of the script during the first read-through. Someone, anyone, should have asked the questions I just asked, made the same observations, and seen the wholly unsatisfactory nature of any of the plot outcomes. But this was obviously the best they could come up with for why Frankie turns into a cooperating, reluctant witness. With screaming and shooting and strangling and people getting run over by cars out in the street—just a colossal mess.

  5 When Michael comes back and Hagen (Duvall) solemnly intones that Kay (Keaton) has “lost the baby,” why does Michael ask, “Was it a boy?”

  Why does this matter? He already has a boy at this point (and a little girl, if my memory serves correct; I don’t have the energy to rewatch this awful scene). What’s the difference what sex the baby is? Or was it, as I suspect, just some awful way of wedging in yet another example of that eye-rolling, Lilliputian, mega-hack Pacino screaming at his fellow performers because he couldn’t out act them? Duvall lets it ride; had Pacino tried this with a prime Gary Oldman, were they contemporaries, he’d have gotten eaten for lunch.

  I could go on and on. If you want more, drop me a line after you read (translation: buy and read) this book, and I’ll throw you a half-dozen more of this franchise’s miserable bones to bury. The point I am trying to make is that I cannot comprehend how these films have achieved iconic status, which they clearly do not deserve. It’s all part of the “cultural instruction program,” which has also told us that Precious and Philadelphia were great films.

  To counteract all this negativity, I would like to offer you ten films from roughly the same era as The Godfather movies, all of which are much better. Don’t worry, I won’t go all highbrow and mention some movie from Serbia that only nine people (including the director’s parents) have seen. Some of these films you will have heard of and probably seen, but I am not talking about the chopped-up versions they show on TV. Before you get all “up in my grille” about them and start defending your precious Godfather, let’s watch them together and then do a little compare and contrast. So go grab a tub of popcorn and curl up in the seat next to Uncle Chael.

  THE MOVIES

  Just for the record, we’re not at the movies. We’re at the cinema. That’s what the French call it, and who am I to argue with Truffaut and Bazin? Pipe down, the move is starting. Wait, not just yet. I know we paid $13.50 per ticket, $6 for a coke, and $8 for popcorn, but we have apparently not been fleeced enough yet. We get the privilege of hearing a pitch for more Coke, a Visa card, and a pickup truck. Yep. Commercials in the movie theater. If you’re an old-schooler like Chael P., then you remember the big come-on for cable TV back in the day. Twenty bucks a month and no commercials. Now my cable TV bill is $120 a month, and I get to watch that annoying gecko or those played-out cavemen or that hot, crazy hot, Flo from Progressive, whom I can just imagine stripping off that white jumpsuit and beehive wig so we

  Now that you know how Chael gets his groove on, let’s get back to the movies. You ready for this?

  CHINATOWN

  Just an extraordinary piece of work. It’s got everything you could ever want from a film: great acting (yes, before he paid more attention to his eyebrows and his front-row seats at Lakers games, Nicholson could really, really, act), great story, great sets, great lighting, etc. Just watch it. Oh, and the sequel, The Two Jakes, is pretty damned good too. Not as good as Chinatown, but better than the reviews it got. Nicholson’s Jake Gittes, an idealist pretending to be a cynic, has so much more depth and character than anyone in any Godfather film. Watch him; watch a great actor, with a great part, create a great character, in a great story. Enjoy Nicholson’s brilliance. It was all downhill for him after this.

  THE EXORCIST

  A horror film? Well, yes and no. A brilliant cinematic triumph, which used the story of demonic possession as a kind of palimpsest to write questions about faith, life, family, illness, fear, and mortality onto the culture itself. This movie’s cultural and cinematic impact far overshadows that of The Godfather. So much so, it is actually embarrassing to mention them in the same sentence. Friedkin, the director, is a true genius. Seriously, if I were him, I wouldn’t allow either Spielberg or Lucas to wash my car. He recreated cinema with this film. Watch it. Watch a master at work.

  LAST TANGO IN PARIS

  Yes, that blown-out boring wretch from The Godfather, Brando, was a fantastic actor when he didn’t have contempt for the material and actually tried. Watch him in this movie, and then watch him as Don Corleone. He’s laughing in his grave right now at the mockery he made of himself as Corleone. He actually appeared as Corleone (unbilled) a final time, in a film called The Island of Dr. Moreau. Rent it. You’ll see what I mean. In both films he has the same contempt, the same self-congratulatory, breezy lack of concern or artistic integrity—a man fully at peace with his position above and beyond the material he has been given, comfortable, inoculated, warmly ensconced in the brutal, mercenary notion of his own private, smirking, artistic joke. Then watch him in Last Tango. Watch the scene with him sitting next to his wife’s casket. Listen to him, a great actor at the height of his powers, with a great script and a great director (Bertolucci).

  LITTLE BIG MAN

  A great film starring Dustin Hoffman, who would have made a much better Michael Corleone.

  DIRTY HARRY

  God, I love this film. This film sprang from the fertile ground of mid-’70s San Francisco and became an unintentional landmark of gay cinema. It held strong elements of the city’s import to the national restructuring of cultural themes of sexual identity—macho pestering; the louche, lurid appeal of sexual slumming; the “rough trade” ethos. When Harry Callahan’s antagonist, who is also Harry’s gay “femme/bottom” alter ego, sees Harry’s gun, he lasciviously intones, “My, that’s a big one.” This is mere seconds after Harry has spurned another anonymous potential male sexual partner in the rambles of Golden Gate Park in the middle of the night. That self-same antagonist, I should point out to you kids who aren’t on board yet, is named Scorpio, an overt reference to Kenneth Anger’s masterpiece film Scorpio Rising, commonly referred to as the Gayest Film Ever Made. Dirty Harry Callahan—an insane, inhibited, dangerously listing cargo vessel of repressed homosexuality, torpedoed below the waterline by his own unrequited urges, lurching ever closer to wrecking on the shoals of his own misunderstood masculinity—shoots what he can, beats what he can’t, and ignores the opposite sex entirely. What a great cop movie, with such an interesting subtext.

  A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

  Insane, violent, visionary, original, challenging, brilliant.

  THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY

  Unjustly derided with the descriptive term “spaghetti western,” this film stands as a great story, a powerful artistic statement, and a meditation on war, culture, religion, friendship, betrayal
, and greed. It’s also great fun and great entertainment, and it doesn’t weigh itself down with ponderous notions of its own profound importance à la the two Godfather films I mentioned. When you rewatch this movie, I am sure you will agree that Eli Wallach would have made a much better Don Corleone than Brando, and that Lee Van Cleef would have made a better Hyman Roth than Lee Strasberg.

  ALL THAT JAZZ

  Almost criminally underappreciated artistically, Roy Scheider was an actor of the very first rank. As a performer, he was powerful, talented, versatile, and assured. Scheider never turned in bad work. He was amazing in All That Jazz, Jaws, and Sorcerer, a Friedkin remake of Clouzot’s Wages of Fear. Without a doubt, Scheider would have made a better Sonny Corleone than James Caan.

  VANISHING POINT

  What a film. Check out Barry Newman in the white Dodge Challenger. Check out Cleavon Little as Super Soul. An existentialist essay on, well, I don’t know. I’m not going to go all “film school” on you. Just watch and enjoy.

  AGUIRRE: WRATH OF GOD

  In this film, Klaus Kinski, a true and proper man and one of the greatest actors ever, plays a hunchbacked, mutinous conquistador on a doomed mission to find a city of gold in the rainforests of South America. Personally, I’ve had a lifelong fascination with Kinski. Back in ‘88 when I was just a young buck, I can recall my father bringing me to Studio 54 in New York to attend the book-release party for Kinski’s autobiography, All I Need Is Love. I remember clutching my copy of the book to my chest, and brushing past Michael Musto and various other members of New York’s nightlife royalty, and approaching the Dark Prince Himself—Yes, Kinski in all his demented glory, a shock of blond-white hair perched slightly askew on his huge head, his full, blood-red rubbery lips, and wide-set, incredibly blue and almost supernaturally piercing eyes, staring down at me momentarily as I stood there with a book and pen, hoping for an autograph. Only to have him sneer at me in utter contempt and turn his back on me. I still have the book, and I recommend it to all of you. Not the garbage, stripped-down, ruined Kinski Uncut, a reprint that was criminally “edited” (translation: destroyed). That book came out many years later to yawns and crickets, after Kinski had given up the ghost in the redwood forest of Lagunitas, California. I suggest the book despite being snubbed. I remember that my father took me to Chinatown to eat as a consolation for my failure to obtain the autograph—and we may or may not have gone to a restaurant whose name rhymes with “Ho Wop,” and we may or may not have seen members of the New York arts-and-culture scene whose names rhymed with “Candy Marhol” or “Bavid Dowie,” and we may or may not have snorted heroic lines of white powder that may or may not have been pulverized vitamins off the red-enamel tabletop in full view of the assembled patrons. But back to Aguirre—a great film and a great achievement. Watch, learn, enjoy. You’re welcome.

  So there is the list. As promised, all are better than The Godfather series. Again, The Godfather movies are not terrible, but they certainly don’t deserve their status as great films any more than their mutant, stunted, bastard TV offspring The Sopranos deserved its years of praise as a great TV show. The Sopranos was, in fact, mediocre at its very best, and excruciating to the point of being unwatchable at its most mannerist. The acting was atrocious, from the top of the cast to the bottom. (Just look at how well they’ve all done since that lame horse of a show was taken out behind the barn and shot. The best any of them have done is a tequila commercial.) Yet this show was anointed as brilliant by the punditocracy at the New York Times. It was called groundbreaking, creative, original, and excellent. It was RUBBISH. But like The Godfather films, people were told it was good, and instructed to act as though it were a work of art. So if you want to do yourself a favor, and I know that you do, check out my list above. If you want to see good TV, watch South Park. There is more clever writing, social commentary, and character development in one twenty-two-minute episode of South Park than in a whole season of The Sopranos. My favorite South Park episode is called “Stanley’s Cup.” It’s bitter, cynical, funny, brilliant. Enjoy.

  Oh, right, the lesson … well … do your homework on the things you like and develop your own opinion about them. Don’t be enamored with or disenchanted by critics unless you know the critic and relate to his perspective. Art is in the eyes of the beholder. Science, on the other hand, is in the eyes of the Lord—so if you get shot and fall down, unless the bullet severed an artery or exploded in your intestines, walk it off.

  On Today’s Menu:

  Sacred Cow

  SACRED COW (2ND HELPING)

  I know I’ve already touched on this Sacred Cow thing with The Godfather movies. But there is another culturally instituted, nonnegotiable concept that has got to go. This one deals with rock-and-roll guitarists.

  It seems that we just all have to agree, by dint of the “ascended masters” of all things rock and roll, that Jimi Hendrix was the best without question, or review, or dissent.

  And he wasn’t.

  Was he great? Sure. But he was also sloppy, his control of tone was less than perfect, and he died before he had a chance to register any significant artistic growth or create a massive enough oeuvre so as to enable us to do a comparative analysis with other great guitarists. Essentially, he fired a few shots that hit, and then hid in the weeds by dying. Make no mistake—he was a very, very good guitarist. But the Music Thought Police have declared him the Greatest, and anything other than slavish obedience to that notion constitutes heresy, which must be confronted, attacked, and burned at the stake.

  Don’t believe me? Try it for yourself. Bring up the subject with some music-fan friends. Mention the fact that you think Hendrix is a bit overrated, and that in your opinion there are a few guys who were just as good, and perhaps even a few who were better. Watch as they refuse to even consider your opinion, as they ridicule you, and as they question your ability to make such a pronouncement. Listen as they question your motives for making such a statement (including leveling charges of cultural bias and racism), and attack you personally. You may also notice, as I have, that the virulence of the attack is often directly proportional to the attacker’s reputation and status (self-created and self-maintained) as a “liberal” and “free thinker.” You will not be given a chance to bring up contrary evidence (say, by playing “Cowgirl in the Sand” by Neil Young). You will be ganged up on and shouted down by your friends. They will accuse you of ignorance, stupidity, and worse. Individuals like, I don’t know, MMA Color Commentators, who fashion themselves as free-thinking libertarians, will become Lockstep Liberals who stand for freedom, justice, and diversity—as long as you think like they do.

  Keep this in mind the next time you decide to enter into a conversation with your most “enlightened,” “democratic,” “liberal” friends about just how good anything—from something as silly, subjective, and meaningless as Hendrix was (or wasn’t) to issues like global warming. You might see them a bit differently.

  Don’t say Uncle Chael didn’t warn you.

  Occupy And The Turkey Corollary

  hen I was in college, I studied sociology, which is a sophisticated way of saying I spent five years watching how people become more idiotic as they band together.

  I like to refer to this as the “turkey corollary”: as a group grows larger and larger, the group’s average IQ is only as high as the dumbest lump of nerves in the bunch. You could have a roomful of Nobel Prize winners, Mensa members, and ten flawless clones of me, but the moment a halfwit walks in, our collective powers are diminished by the bowl of brain pudding that is violently allergic to reason and common sense. Yes, stupidity is contagious.

  A fine contemporary example of the turkey corollary at work is the Occupy movement. Don’t get me wrong, I think people should be brave enough to speak up when they see injustice in the world. I just don’t think they should follow the loudest voices (which are usually the dumbest) into some kind of pretend version of homelessness that disturbs honest people’s lives. I am sure that
there are some bright people somewhere among the Occupy activists, probably hidden by drum circles and the “concerned” parent dragging her five-year-old child into the opium tent for a “learning experience,” but their critical thinking has been sucked into the black hole of embarrassing incompetence, hacky sacks, and acid trips dominating the movement.

  The Occupy movement interests me on an intellectual level. Thousands of unhappy people who wanted something but couldn’t quite articulate it banded together to create a big urban camping party and yelled, hoping that someone in the “one percent” would notice, read their minds, and then give them what they wanted in a gift-wrapped package without any political consequences whatsoever. Why did I ever run for office when there are so many much more brilliant analytical minds in the world? I’ll tell you why, because I know that if I want the government to listen to me, I have to speak like an economist. I can’t just, like, you know, man, I can’t just think about how the world is, like, so messed up and stuff. I have to put my thoughts into a coherent message, approach the appropriate agency with my thoughts, and explain why my needs and the government’s needs are compatible.

  It has never been quite clear what the movement wants. Apparently, it’s equality, but no one has offered any suggestions for how to accomplish that. People wanted their work to matter, so they quit actually going to work so they could park their butts in a public place. They wanted to create more jobs, and so they railed against companies that employed thousands of people. They wanted redistribution of wealth, but to no reasonable ends. Worst of all, they didn’t bother to think through how they expected these demands to be met because they were more concerned with having other people get the job done for them. They wanted change, but a poem about a tree is not a credible voice, nor is an acoustic-guitar song about peace. Change needs to be quantified, calculated, and weighed against alternatives by people who are neither biased nor lazy.