Booker’s out and I’m sorry for it. I thought he added something to the field and felt as if he could have been a dark horse after Iowa. The polls showed him as many people’s second choice which can matter in a caucus.
I can’t help but worry that this quote by Wayne LaPierre, speaking of Hillary Clinton back in 2016, is what too many Democrats assume is what most Americans believe:
I don’t think it’s controversial to point out that governments lie to their people about war. We have been through too many examples in recent memory, right here in the United States, to fool ourselves into thinking that it’s unusual. Governments often lie about the reasons for getting into wars, how much wars cost in blood and treasure and how well the war is going once they get into it.
We have a pathological liar for a president at the moment and a party and administration that is eager to cover for him. So when they take military action, the press and the general population are more skeptical than usual. But let’s not pretend this is the first time that’s happened. It’s just that Trump and his henchmen are incompetent and can’t even lie very effectively.
The most obvious examples of the government lying us into war are quite recent, of course. The Iraq invasion of 2003 was based upon the big lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. George W. Bush’s officials knew Saddam didn’t have the capability to make a nuclear bomb, which was why they used the vague “WMD” term as a sly way of implying an existential threat.
That was just one element of a full-fledged propaganda campaign waged to persuade the American people to attack a country that hadn’t attacked us. In the wake of 9/11, it wasn’t all that difficult, particularly with the media wrapping itself in the flag so tight it almost strangled itself.
Indeed, Pence was at it again just last week.
This 2015 poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University demonstrates that many Americans still believe what the government told them:
Overall, 42 percent of Americans believe that U.S. forces found active weapons of mass destruction program in Iraq. Republicans are more likely to hold this belief than Democrats: Fifty-one percent of Republicans think it’s “probably” or “definitely” true that an active program was found after the 2003 invasion, with 14 percent saying that it was definitely true. Still, large portions of other groups think that the WMD program, a major part of the justification for the invasion, was actually found, including 32 percent of Democrats.
But what about the great and glorious first Gulf War, back in 1991? That “victory” was the main reason Democrats with presidential ambitions voted for the second go-around in 2003. Anyone who had voted against the first Gulf War resolution under George H.W. Bush was considered dead meat in presidential politics afterwards. Democrats were literally fighting the last war when they voted for the Authorization to Use Military Force after 9/11.
That magnificent victory in ’91 was the last righteous war, right? Poppy Bush got the whole world together, everyone pitched in with troops and funding, the air war was a spectacular video game and they pushed Saddam out of Kuwait and right back to Baghdad. It was American power at its best. Except that too relied on lies to sell it to the people.
According to John R. MacArthur’s book “Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the 1991 Gulf War,” the Bush administration hired the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton to run focus groups on how to convince the public to back military action. The one thing that really got people worked up was baby killing. (Nothing new in that. World War I propaganda heavily featured “the Hun” bayoneting babies in cartoon form.)
Prior to the vote, two congressmen with strong ties to Hill & Knowlton, Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., and Rep. John Porter, R-Ill., called a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl named Nayirah to testify before Congress. She claimed that she had volunteered at the al-Addan hospital and said, “While I was there I saw the Iraqi soldiers coming into the hospital with guns and going into the room where 15 babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die.”
It was a big news story and had a major effect on public opinion, reportedly swaying some members of Congress to vote for the war. But it turned out that the witness was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S., and human rights organizations found no evidence that anything like what she described had actually happened.
The New York Times ran a little story a few months after the war discussing the controversy.
Following the attack that killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, official explanations have been vague and contradictory. The briefings to the congress were called “sophomoric” and “absurd” by Democrats and even some Republicans, although the usual gang of GOP toadies has come out and flamboyantly genuflected to the president, saying they were fully satisfied. The administration’s only nod toward a standard presentation to the public was the halting speech Trump gave on the morning after the restrained Iranian response. Since then, he has been cavalierly throwing out new alleged threats that appear to have no basis whatever, leaving his henchmen to sputter incoherently trying to keep up with him.
It’s important to keep all that in mind as we observe the unfolding Iran debacle and President Trump’s attempts to justify a decision that pretty clearly was not based on any evidence of an imminent threat. This administration didn’t feel the need to hire a PR firm to build public support, because its officials acted out of a belief that the president can order any kind of military action on his own and there is no need even to consult with Congress, much less seek its approval.
First, Trump casually mentioned in a brief press encounter that Soleimani had been planning to blow up the American embassy in Iraq. At a rally later that night, he embellished that unfounded claim even more by claiming the plan had been to blow up four embassies. Nobody who attended the briefings had heard anything about that.
First, Trump casually mentioned in a brief press encounter that Soleimani had been planning to blow up the American embassy in Iraq. At a rally later that night, he embellished that unfounded claim even more by claiming the plan had been to blow up four embassies. Nobody who attended the briefings had heard anything about that.
Neither did the secretary of defense, apparently, and he reads the president’s daily briefing:
The lies are clumsy and completely preposterous. But that’s nothing new for Trump. And unfortunately, lies about war are nothing new for the U.S. government either. Removing Trump from the White House may be important. But it won’t fix that problem.
A sobering bit of sermon translated from Chinese appears in today’s New York Times. Ai Weiwei writes from Berlin where an encounter with a surly casino clerk led both to a lawsuit (against him) and an op-ed on how humans use “cultural differences” to justify oppression, slavery, and genocide.
Western businesses deluded themselves into thinking exploiting cheap, plentiful Chinese labor would build a middle class there that, in time, would demand freedom and democracy and absolve their cooperation with the government. Instead, China’s rulers are richer and more powerful than ever, and western democracies weaker.
In the northwestern region of Xinjiang, authorities have sent perhaps a million Muslim Uighurs to reeducation camps, Ai explains, to “denounce their religion and to swear fealty to the Communist Party of China.” Ai himself spent nearly 20 years there in the 1960s and 70s, banished along with his poet father. The government detained the artist for months in 2011.
In Xinjiang today, western businesses including Siemens, Unilever, Nestlé and Germany’s Volkswagen boost their bottom lines using cheap, ethnic minority labor. Not the first time for Germany, Ai notes, only more distant. “China and Russia have shown how legacies of Communist authoritarianism can combine with predatory capitalism to build new political structures of daunting power,” Ai writes. Instead of democracy supplanting authoritarianism, western democracies “sense themselves falling behind or, worse, beginning to fit in.”
Ai concludes:
The great challenge facing German and other Western governments is whether they can find a way to exit the carnival of profit making with their moral integrity intact. So far we have seen little on this score other than craven diffidence. The crux of the matter is not ignorance of the moral alternatives but a failure of will. Pursue greed? Do what is right? We shyly select the former. When Western governments come to realize that liberal democracy itself is at stake, this balance might tip the other way.
It is no accident Ai published his exegesis on greed trumping principle in America’s newspaper of record. The business class has long justified exploiting cheap and near- slave labor by how it would raise living standards for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable. The notion that black people in America were better off in the Old South persists even today. Slavery was a win-win for both slaveholders and slaves, some conservatives still argue with straight faces. In public.
But a broader, albeit indirect, indictment of this dynamic came last week in Rolling Stone from former Republican and conservative strategist Steve Schmidt. Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign manager, Schmidt had up-close opportunities to observe McCain pal Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. In the wake of McCain’s death, Graham’s transformation from conservative virtue-signaler to fawning Trump sycophant led Schmidt to this unsettling analogy:
“The way to understand him is to look at what’s consistent. And essentially what he is in American politics is what, in the aquatic world, would be a pilot fish: a smaller fish that hovers about a larger predator, like a shark, living off of its detritus. That’s Lindsey. And when he swam around the McCain shark, broadly viewed as a virtuous and good shark, Lindsey took on the patina of virtue. But wherever the apex shark is, you find the Lindsey fish hovering about, and Trump’s the newest shark in the sea. Lindsey has a real draw to power — but he’s found it unattainable on his own merits.”
Ai’s view of predatory capitalism is not so different. Business cozies up to oppressive regimes for the chance to feed off the detritus of the neighborhood apex predator. It profits from cheap labor and underdeveloped protections for workers. In that sense, we are all Lindsey Graham. We participate in that system for the chance at cheap consumer products. We tell ourselves those producing them will get jobs and a higher living standard. With Xinjiang, distance, internet commerce, and globalism cast the entire system in the blandest, most inoffensive shade of beige. “What is it about this remote place, to which the emperors of old banished criminals in lieu of sending them to prison, that makes it so attractive?” Ai asks.
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The Secretary of Defense Mark Esper didn’t see evidence that Suleimani was preparing to attack four embassies as Donald Trump is suddenly asserting. But he’s sure it must be true anyway. Dear Leader doesn’t lie, right?
Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said on Sunday that he never saw any specific piece of evidence that Iran was planning an attack on four American embassies, as President Trump had claimed last week as a justification for the strike on an Iranian general that sent the United States and Iran to the brink of war.
“I didn’t see one with regard to four embassies,” Mr. Esper said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” But he added: “I share the president’s view that probably — my expectation was they were going to go after our embassies. The embassies are the most prominent display of American presence in a country.”
The Secretary of Defense doesn’t have any intelligence hidden from him. He gets the President’s Daily Briefing and unlike the president, he probably actually reads it.
The president is lying. Of course he is. And Esper knows he is lying and this is the best he can do. The question is whether or not Trump knows that Esper basically admitted that there is no evidence. Probably not. He’s spent all day getting more and more hysterical about the impeachment:
Trump is said to trust his new factotum, Robert O’Brien, because he’s handsome and looks the part of a national security adviser in his mind. He is not an isolationist. He is a doctrinaire right wing hawk. How do we know this? well….
“Cut n’ Run” is right out of the wingnut hawk playbook. Liz Cheney probably screamed with delight when she heard it.
Setting aside the fact that we are in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government and that we invaded 15 years ago and destroyed the place, this is not what Trump said he wanted. Not that I believed him, of course. He is a vengeful, bloodthirsty monster. The only good news is that he’s also a coward who believes he can bully and threaten the world into crawling on their bellies and begging his forgiveness. So far, most world leaders have been wise enough to steer clear, undoubtedly waiting to see if America has completely gone nuts or if we rectify our mistake next November. If he wins, all bets are off.
Meanwhile, we are in a very precarious position with Iran. Robin Wright in the New Yorker goes over the fraught history with the US military and Iran, starting with the Beirut barracks bombing. (Reagan’s quick bug-out there is somehow never called a “cut n’ run.”) She points out that “the Trump Administration’s top two goals in Iran have been undermined.” which refers to the fact that they are now hustling to build a nuclear weapon (they can see how well that’s worked out for Kim Jong Un) and it’s reignited nationalism in Iran. (It is true that protesters are in the streets condemning the government for shooting down the airliner, but that does not translate into great love for the US or Donald Trump, however much he thinks it does.)
Iran’s goals remain what they were in 1983. “Military action like this is not sufficient,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, said of the missile strikes. “What is important is ending the corrupting presence of America in the region.” And Tehran is much more capable today. It has evolved into the world’s leading practitioner of “gray zone” activities—covert and unacknowledged military operations, proxy attacks and cyberwar—Michael Eisenstadt, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said last week. “The United States has struggled to respond effectively to this asymmetric way of war.”
Iran also has time and geography on its side. “We are historic interlopers. We come and we go,” Robert Malley, the president of the International Crisis Group, said. “The notion that we could sustain our forces in a multifront, multiyear, unpredictable struggle in the Middle East—given the politics in this country, and the fact that most Americans don’t think this is of vital interest—is illusory.” On Thursday, the House of Representatives voted 224 to 194, largely along party lines, to limit the President’s powers to make war on Iran. A similar resolution is expected in the Senate. Neither would be binding, but both reflect anxiety in Washington about the consequences of further hostilities.
Yeah. There are some “anxieties” and there should be.
Greetings from our new home! I’m thrilled about the update and this post is simply intended to test how it feels to use our new platform.
But since I’ve been having so much fun listening to The Hots Rats Sessions by Frank Zappa, I thought I’d use this test as an excuse to shout it out. Released in 1969, Hot Rats was Zappa’s second release under his own name (rather than under “The Mothers of Invention”). Like Matt Groening , who wrote the liner notes for Sessions, I can still remember where I was when I first heard the amazing drum fills that begin Hot Rats (my friend Neil Sturchio’s house). And like a lot of Zappa’s music, it holds up incredibly well. It is, I believe, one of Zappa’s masterpieces.
The Hots Rats Sessions is for people that know this music inside out and want to find out what else Frank recorded at that time. Answer: tons of great, great music. There are Zappa guitar solos that are so fresh and inventive, it’s simply mind-boggling. There are absolutely stunning jams with Sugarcane Harris on electric violin and gorgeous piano solos performed by Ian Underwood. And, as you listen through the six CDs (!) you can gradually hear Hot Rats take shape.
Enough. I could spend the rest of my life praising Zappa’s music and still not capture its disturbing beauty. Because Frank, of course, is what-ya-call a complicated figure. Zappa had (his term) a repellent personality that indiscriminately expressed contempt for nearly everyone and everything.
So, unconditionally guaranteed, Zappa’s lyrics will surely offend you. And no, what he says about nearly everyone is, well… I’m not going to make any excuses for it. But… I did say he trashed “nearly everyone and everything….” There were two things he never, ever sneered at.
Zappa loved great music, any idiom, any style. And he loved music-making whether it was Boulez’s precision or Don Vliet’s re-enactment of Howlin’ Wolf on Mars. And that deep love of music and music-making comes through in every single note Zappa wrote and recorded.
As you can see, we’ve moved at long last. I figured after 17 years it was time to make a change! It’s nothing fancy, but it’s home. We’ll be trying out all the new gadgets in due course and in the meantime I hope you’ll be patient as we get set up. For now, just know that the blog goes on…
Your new bookmark is easy to remember: https://digbysblog.net/
Cheers,
digby
As Justin Amash tweeted in response, “He sells troops.”
Even after all this time, with Republican officials all turning themselves into quivering supplicants and Republican voters becoming unprincipled cult members, this one surprises me. And, honestly, it shouldn’t. The GOP embraced the “private” contractors” during the Iraq war and they are fine with unaccountable covert CIA operations. It’s a short hop to selling the troops to foreign countries for money.
Eric Prince has been on the inside influencing Republicans for a long time. His family is highly influential and his willingness to wage privatized war has been extremely appealing. He was with Trump on election night and he’s offered a serious proposal to turn Afghanistan over to mercenaries under his control and make himself the Viceroy. He promised the US would “take the minerals.” (“To the victors go the spoils”)
So, this principle isn’t something that strays too far from traditional GOP orthodoxy. But literally selling US troops for money isn’t something I anticipated. And even if he’s just blathering dishonestly, and the troops were part of a defense against Iran after the oil fields were hit a few months ago, the fact that the president of the US believes that sending US troops overseas in exchange for money is perfectly normal and right is disturbing.
But hey, GOP voters, including those in the military, have fallen under his spell and as far as I can tell will go along with anything he does, so I don’t know how much it matters electorally. Nonetheless, it’s really something to see a US president say such a thing and get absolutely no blowback from the flag-waving patriots on the right.
by Tom Sullivan
Climate activist Greta Thunberg, Time magazine’s 2019 Person of the Year has called on German industrial giant Siemens AG to reconsider supplying mining equipment a new Australian coal mine under development by India’s Adani Power. Thunberg’s demand is international news. Thunberg is 17.
Australia’s government approved the coal project last year. Today Australia is burning. The fires and drought, climate scientists insist, are driven by climate change driven, in turn, by burning fossil fuels.
In a bid to fluff its environmental bona fides, Siemens offered German environmental activist Luisa Neubauer a seat on the supervisory board of newly created Siemens Energy. Suggesting instead they give the seat instead to a member of pro-environment Scientists for Future, Neubauer declined:
“If [Siemens] is honestly committed to fighting climate change and to Fridays for Future, they will respect my decision,” she told the German DPA news agency.
Taking the seat herself would legally limit her ability to speak out against Siemens, she said in a statement. Neubauer is 23.
Neither Thunberg nor Neubauer can vote in U.S. elections this fall. But a lot of Americans of their generation who can, plus many of those up to 40-45, do not. At least not in numbers that would challenge the grip on state and federal decision-making held by us oldsters. I regularly mention this (click over for the graphic) not to criticize, but to point out that if Americans under 40 vote this fall, in numbers rivaling voters from 40 to, say, 75, they might just SAVE THE WORLD. Literally.
And end Donald Trump’s presidency in the bargain.
U.S. emissions are up slightly over January 2017 when Trump began to roll back environmental regulations for the oil and gas industry:
Trump is still working to further weaken bedrock standards. This week he proposed to allow major projects like pipelines and highways to bypass reviews of how they will contribute to global warming. The draft rule is unlikely to become final before the November election, but it is yet another reason industries weighing climate choices might delay significant action.
“What they have done is created confusion within the business community and the environmental world as to what are going to be the standards,” said Christine Todd Whitman, who led the Environmental Protection Agency under the Republican president George W Bush. “Essentially every regulation the agency promulgates gets a lawsuit that goes with it, almost inevitably … that’s the only good thing you can say about it.”
Andrew Light, a climate negotiator in the Obama administration, told reporters Americans choosing Trump again would signal the world they don’t care about the environment.
To the victor go despoils
Meanwhile, Trump has populated the upper ranks of the National Park Service with “anti-public land sycophants,” Jonathan B Jarvis and Destry Jarvis write at The Guardian. They administration’s anti-NPS animus stems in part from the service reporting smaller crowds on the National Mall for Trump’s inauguration than Obama’s, they speculate. Next, NPS exiled career Washington staff to the field where they could less effectively resist Trump’s agenda:
Then came the decisions to leave the parks open to impacts during the unfortunate government shutdown, illegally misuse entrance fees, open park trails to e-bikes, suppress climate science, kill wolf pups and bear cubs in their dens to enhance “sport hunting”, privatize campgrounds, and issue muzzle memos to park managers. With a waiver of environmental laws, bulldozers are plowing ancient cacti in national parks along the southern border in order to build a wall. Senior career park managers are likely to be replaced with unqualified political hacks.
These are not random actions. This is a systematic dismantling of a beloved institution, like pulling blocks from a Jenga tower, until it collapses. You ask, why on earth would someone want to do that to the popular National Park Service, the subject of one of Ken Burns’ acclaimed documentaries and often called “America’s best idea”?
Because if you want to drill, mine and exploit the public estate for the benefit of the industry, the last thing you want is a popular and respected agency’s voice raising alarms on behalf of conservation and historic preservation.
The political class listens to two things more than people’s voices: money and votes. Voters under 30-35 may not have the political-donation clout of their elders, but they have the numbers in raw population to seize not just the attention of their leaders, but control of the levers of power. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may be a media phenomenon, but she was not a one-off. She turned out the heir-apparent to Nancy Pelosi by turning out underrepresented voters, Latinos and younger white voters.
Pew Research reported last May that voters from 18 to 53 cast slightly more votes than Baby Boomers in 2018. But voters over 40 are already joining their elders among regular voters. Including voters up to 53 obscures significantly less participation among younger voters. Voting among Americans 18-29 may have jumped 79 percent over 2014, but the question is 79 percent over what? See my graph.
Younger voters can save the world this fall. Literally. Like superheroes.
Their futures and the world itself is in peril. It’s dying to get better.
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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide election mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
By Dennis Hartley
Mr. Braddock: Ben, what are you doing?
Benjamin: Well, I would say that I’m just drifting. Here in the pool.
Mr. Braddock: Why?
Benjamin: Well, it’s very comfortable just to drift here.
Mr. Braddock: Have you thought about graduate school?
Benjamin: No.
Mr. Braddock: Would you mind telling me then what those four years of college were for? What was the point of all that hard work?
Benjamin: You got me.
– from The Graduate, screenplay by Buck Henry and Caldar Willingham
I was saddened to hear about the passing of Buck Henry a few days ago; screenwriter extraordinaire, droll character actor, occasional director and samurai deli enthusiast. He co-created the classic “Get Smart” TV series with Mel Brooks, and co-directed the well-received 1978 comedy-fantasy Heaven Can Wait (a remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan) with the film’s producer/star/co-writer Warren Beatty (Henry also had an acting part).
Depending on your age, you may be thinking “Buck who?” or “Oh yeah…the bespectacled guy in all those SNL “Samurai Deli” sketches with Belushi back in the day.” Regardless of your Buck Henry touchstone, know that he brought a lot of laughter to a lot of people…and that’s a good thing. For me, I’ll always remember him for his acting work in films like The Man Who Fell to Earth, Gloria, Eating Raoul, Taking Off, Short Cuts, the Real Blonde, Defending Your Life, and The Player…even if a lot of them were bit parts, he had a knack for understated hilarity. And of course, I’ll remember him for his writing. Here are the Henry-penned films you need to see (alphabetical order).
Candy – As far as barely decipherable yet weirdly entertaining films go, you could do worse than Christian Marquand’s 1968 curio. Henry adapted the script from the novel by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg. What I can say with certainty is that there is a protagonist, and her name is Candy Christian. (Ewa Aulin). However, disseminating what this film is “about” remains in the eye of the beholder. Semi-catatonic Candy whoopsie-daisies her way through vaguely connected vignettes awash in patchouli, bongs, beads and Nehru jackets, as a number of men philosophize, pontificate, and (mostly) paw at her.
Oddly compelling, largely thanks to the cast: Marlon Brando, Richard Burton, James Coburn, John Huston, Walter Matthau, Ringo Starr, John Astin, Anita Pallenberg, Sugar Ray Robinson (don’t ask), and a host of others. Henry has a cameo as a mental patient.
Interesting sidebar: Director Marquand (also an actor) appeared in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. His lengthy monologue in the “French plantation” scene originally ended up on the cutting room floor but was resurrected for the “Redux” and “Final Cut” versions that Coppola has assembled in recent years. He died in 2000.
Catch-22 –
Yossarian: Ok, let me see if I’ve got this straight. In order to be grounded, I’ve got to be crazy. And I must be crazy to keep flying. But if I ask to be grounded, that means I’m not crazy anymore, and I have to keep flying.
Dr. ‘Doc’ Daneeka: You got it, that’s Catch-22.
Yossarian: Whoo… That’s some catch, that Catch-22.
Dr. ‘Doc’ Daneeka: It’s the best there is.
Anyone who has read and appreciated the beautifully precise absurdity of Joseph Heller’s eponymous 1961 novel about the ugly and imprecise madness of war knows it is virtually “un-filmable”. And yet…Buck Henry did a pretty good job of condensing it into a two-hour screenplay (although arguably some of the best exchanges in the film are those left virtually unchanged from the book). Of course, it didn’t hurt to have a great director (Mike Nichols) and such a fabulous cast: Alan Arkin, Martin Balsalm, Richard Benjamin, Art Gafunkel, Jack Gilford, Bob Newhart, Anthony Perkins, Paula Prentiss, Martin Sheen, Jon Voight, Orson Welles, Charles Grodin, Bob Balaban, et. al., with Henry playing the part of “Colonel Korn”. I think this 50-year-old film has improved with age.
Day of the Dolphin – “Fa loves Pa!” This offbeat 1973 sci-fi film marked the third collaboration between Henry and director Mike Nichols. Henry adapted from Robert Merle’s novel. George C. Scott is excellent in the lead role as a marine biologist who has developed a method for training dolphins to communicate in human language. Naturally, there is a shadowy cabal of government spooks who take keen interest in this scientific breakthrough. Unique and involving. I like to call this one a conspira‘sea’ thriller (sorry).
The Graduate – “Aw gee, Mrs. Robinson.” It could be argued that those were the four words in this 1967 Mike Nichols film that made Dustin Hoffman a star. With hindsight being 20/20, it’s impossible to imagine any other actor in the role of hapless college grad Benjamin Braddock…even if Hoffman (30 at the time) was a bit long in the tooth to be playing a 21-year-old character.
Poor Benjamin just wants to take a nice summer breather before facing adult responsibilities, but his pushy parents would rather he focus on career advancement immediately, if not sooner. Little do his parents realize that in their enthusiasm, they’ve inadvertently pushed their son right into the sack with randy Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), wife of his Dad’s business partner (the original cougar?). Things get complicated after Benjamin meets his lover’s daughter (Katharine Ross).
This is one of those “perfect storm” creative collaborations: Nichols’ skilled direction, Calder Willingham and Buck Henry’s witty screenplay, fantastic performances from the cast, and one of the best soundtracks ever (by Simon and Garfunkel). Some of the 60s trappings haven’t dated well, but the incisive social satire has retained all its sharp teeth. Look for Henry in a cameo as a room clerk.
The Owl and the Pussycat – George Segal plays a reclusive, egghead NYC writer and Barbra Streisand is a perfect foil in one of her best comedic turns as a profane, boisterous hooker in this classic “oil and water” farce, directed by Herbert Ross. Serendipity throws the two odd bedfellows together one fateful evening, and the resulting mayhem is crude, lewd, and funny as hell. Buck Henry adapted his screenplay from Bill Manhoff’s original stage version. Robert Klein is wonderfully droll in a small but memorable role. My favorite line: “Doris…you’re a sexual Disneyland!”
To Die For – Gus van Sant’s 1995 mockumentary centers on an ambitious young woman (Nicole Kidman, in one of her best performances) who aspires to elevate herself from “weather girl” at a small market TV station in New England to star news anchor, posthaste. A calculating sociopath from the word go, she marries into a wealthy family, but decides to discard her husband (Matt Dillon) the nanosecond he asks her to consider putting her career on hold so they can start a family (discard…with extreme prejudice).
Buck Henry based his script on Joyce Maynard’s true crime book about the Pamela Smart case (the most obvious difference being that Smart was a teacher and not an aspiring media star, although it could be argued that during the course of her highly publicized trial, she did become one). A barbed and darkly funny meditation on the cult of celebrity.
What’s Up, Doc? – Peter Bogdanovich’s 1972 film is an entertaining love letter to classic screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s (the most obvious influence is Bringing Up Baby), with great use of San Francisco locations. Ryan O’Neal and Barbara Streisand have wonderful chemistry as the romantic leads, who meet cute and become involved in a hotel mix-up of four identical suitcases that rapidly snowballs into a series of increasingly preposterous situations for all concerned (as occurs in your typical screwball comedy). Henry gets top billing on the script, co-written with David Newman and Robert Benton. The cast includes Madeline Kahn, Kenneth Mars, Austin Pendleton and Michael Murphy.
More reviews at Den of Cinema
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