NUMBER TWO: "Round up the usual suspects!"

NUMBER TWO: CASABLANCA

Just one of the movies that went into production on the Warner lot that year, CASABLANCA was part of the movie-making machinery of its day. Made up of a cast and crew that consisted of oodles of contract entertainment industry workers, the movie – in so many ways – was intended to keep pace with an audience hungry for stories about the triumph of good and love over evil.

I have to believe they knew they had something pretty good, but that they had no idea just how good. For one the script wasn’t anywhere near finished when they started the production…and the production was scheduled to take a week. It was only in a cab rushing to the lot that writers Julius and Phil Epstein thought of the line, “Round up the usual suspects,” as a way to end the story they’d written.

And because they’d never really had an ending to the story when they started, both Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart had no idea if they’d end up together when the curtain fell. And they had to play it like they really didn’t know what would happen because, frankly, no one could tell them.

It’s also a peculiar genius that Michael Curtiz – who was known for action films like ROBIN HOOD and gangster flicks such as ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES was called in to direct this fast-moving love story. He managed to move all the many parts in the right direction while keeping what’s arguably the best sad ending in cinema to ever come along.

But all these things are artifacts, ways to get into how it was assembled and inspired. Hundreds of other films have stories about how strange and unlikely it was that they would get made or become a hit. Ultimately, as Martin Scorsese has said many times, I can only respond to the films that move me deeply. And this one always has.

It’s a story about millions of people on the run from tyranny, oppression and loss and their unrelenting push toward hope. These people are coming to Casablanca to find a way – any way under the sun – to get to America and the promise of a new life. Despite the obvious parallels, it was only years after seeing this film that I finally understood how much this story reminded me of what my parents when through as children because of World War II.

Maybe my favorite scene in the film is the one I’ve posted here. The simple defiance of just singing a song associated with a free state sets so much of the story in motion. And ultimately frees both Rick and Ilsa of their past regrets.

NUMBER THREE: "Meeting in the middle of the desert always made me nervous. It's a scary place."

NUMBER THREE: CASINO

From the moment that credit sequence at the beginning starts to roll, you know you're in for an epic tale of Shakespearean proportions. You're looking at three people who've pulled themselves up through a brutal world by their wits, talent and muscle...and then they're given the keys to the kingdom, a way out even. But they are who they are. And therein lies the rub.

Ginger is a hooker with more of a broken heart than one made of gold. She can never escape the pimp who first conned her and taught her how to be a great con herself. Nicky - a thug who is sent to watch over the skims from the Tangiers - can't tell when he should turn off the force and use his brain. And Ace - cool-headed Ace - actually finds himself magnetically drawn to the one woman who is the least sure thing going in Vegas.

For me, these are the performances of a lifetime for these three actors and the finest Scorsese has ever made. Despite being a hard core East Coast guy, there's something about the tension of having this story take place in the vast blasted moonscape of the Nevada desert that creates a unique vibe I've never seen this filmmaker duplicate since the release of Casino.

My favorite moment in the film comes during a meeting between Ace and Nicky in the middle of that desert. Something about the dust flying off Nicky's car as he speeds toward Ace and Ace himself growing nervous waiting for his old friend. And then there's that wickedly huge shot of the desert, backed by a thoughtful, somber score and the composited image of Nicky's car in the lenses of Ace's sunglasses.

It's all more than just a little magical.

NUMBER FOUR: In Switzerland, they had brotherly love. They had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

NUMBER FOUR: THE THIRD MAN

It's one of those things you can't avoid. The more you try to run from something in your past, the more likely it is to follow you and turn up when you least expect (or want) it to be there. All the characters in this movie are haunted and running in the shadows from the things that spook them. 

This movie - already excellent on its own in every way, IMHO - moved me because it so clearly reflected the kinds of stories my parents used to tell about post-World War II Europe. After struggling to survive for years and years, as one army would march out and another would march into town, most people had a host of secrets and cloaked alliances they used to get by and get on with their lives. 

After the war, nearly everyone had something to hide. My mom told me that once they knew the war was over - really over - her father when out into their backyard and either buried or destroyed everything associated with his service as a soldier in the German army. He didn't want anyone to know where he'd served or what he'd done. To this day, I don't know most of the details. I doubt if I ever will.

When my father and his father were released from a concentration camp, they both struggled to find a way to make a living while waiting for my Uncle Howard - who had already immigrated to the U.S. - to get them passage on a boat to the Port of New Orleans. Eventually, they found their way into dealing  in black market commodities like sugar and flour, which were strictly regulated at the time. My father - who was normally willing to talk openly about just about anything - only told me about his illicit days in the sucrose game late in his life, when he was sure he could no longer be arrested for it. Despite the passage of time, he still lived with a kind of fear about being found out.

But we all live with secrets to some degree or another, I think. And the fear associated with them does something to the person who keeps the secret, if they consider it something truly bad, shameful or ugly. This movie comes just about the closest I've ever seen to showing the long term toll on the hearts and minds of some who tried to find a way to live again despite their secrets.

NUMBER FIVE: "What have you done with her?"

NUMBER FIVE: REAR WINDOW

After spending a very long time in a cast with little but a high powered lens at his disposal, Jimmy Stewart finds himself peeping in on the lives of his neighbors, across the way through their windows. He sees their desperation, loneliness, celebration along with overhearing the intimate details of their erotic lives and relationships. It's a kind of reality television decades before the genre took off and became what it is now.

Jimmy Stewart becomes so entangled in the details of their lives - and the arguments between a husband and a wife who live near him - that he begins to suspect the husband of murder once he goes a few days without seeing the wife make an appearance.

This provokes a detective friend of Stewart to make an incisive observation as he casts multiple shades of doubt on Stewart's theories: "People do all kinds of things in private that they couldn't possibly explain in public."

REAR WINDOW becomes more delicious and troubling every time I watch it. Of course I get why Jimmy is watching. We're all curious about the people around us, perhaps more than we'd like to admit. People wonder what others are doing, how they're living and see maybe just glimpses of their lives here and there and make an assumption, fill in the details and run with them based on whatever is haunting their own cerebral cortex. There's an entire GOSSIP SHOW INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX to fill our need to look into the lives of the famous.

And now there's Facebook. I can't help but think the social media site is so successful because it - in part - makes it possible to look in on the lives of others without necessarily having to participate, react, etc. We become silent digital voyeurs - albeit to the extent that someone invites us in with their posts - scrolling through our feeds.

It's certainly not all bad. I can tell you personally that nothing's easier than sharing an important moment like Stella's birth through Facebook. I was downright thankful to be able to invite friends and family into the experience in an instant, rather than having to stage a time-consuming upload to Shutterfly when Rob and I were both exhausted.

But there can be something else there. Sometimes lives viewed through the Facebook rear window look much, much better than they really are. Few people post about the brain numbing difficulties of their daily lives or even the major challenges. So, there can be a high gloss on what you see and I'm not sure if that makes you feel closer to someone or further away.

In any case, we know we all like to watch. And sometimes we go out of our way to be watched as well.

NUMBER SIX: "The story of life is this: Static."

Becoming a mom makes this movie even more visceral, important...and terrifying. My own mom spent a lot of time choosing her words very carefully so as not to allow stereotyping and bias into our lives. To be honest, I'm not sure it always worked. It's hard to fight American culture and the assumptions that travel with it. But, at least, my mom did something to bring on a little awareness and sensitivity. If I'm able to do that for Stella, I'll be able to check something off in the "Good Mom" column.

Given all this, "Do the Right Thing" jumped to number six on my list.

The original post:

In the long line of pretty damn amazing Spike Lee Joints, DO THE RIGHT THING stands alone for me. The movie summons up a community of people - from Sal, the owner of a local pizza parlor, to Sweet Dick Willie, a street corner poet of sorts - who feel the forces of a hotter than hell New York summer and simmering racial tensions. All of them struggle in some way with their own prejudices and the prejudices others hold against them. And the whole thing errupts into some of the most alternately disturbing and hilarious writing ever done for film, IMHO. Maybe the height of it all is a kind of hate speech montage that outs everyone for their biases. And - in turn - their speeches are undercut by the rants of others which are full of the biases held against them:

Mookie: Dago, wop, guinea, garlic-breath, pizza-slingin', spaghetti-bendin', Vic Damone, Perry Como, Luciano Pavarotti, Sole Mio, nonsingin' motherfucker.

Pino: You gold-teeth-gold-chain-wearin', fried-chicken-and-biscuit-eatin', monkey, ape, baboon, big thigh, fast-runnin', high-jumpin', spear-chuckin', three-hundred-sixty-degree-basketball-dunkin' titsun spade Moulan Yan. Take your fuckin' pizza-pizza and go the fuck back to Africa.

Stevie: You little slanty-eyed, me-no-speaky-American, own-every-fruit-and-vegetable-stand-in-New-York, bullshit, Reverend Sun Myung Moon, Summer Olympics '88, Korean kick-boxing son of a bitch.

Officer Long: You Goya bean-eating, fifteen in a car, thirty in an apartment, pointed shoes, red-wearing, Menudo, meda-meda Puerto Rican cocksucker. Yeah, you!

Sonny: It's cheap, I got a good price for you, Mayor Koch, "How I'm doing," chocolate-egg-cream-drinking, bagel-and-lox, B'nai B'rith Jew asshole.

Mister Senor Love Daddy: Yo! Hold up! Time out! TIME OUT! Y'all take a chill! Ya need to cool that shit out! And that's the double truth, Ruth!

These rants are poignant because they show how absolutely ridiculous it all is. I remember Spike Lee being criticized by some members of just about every community for this language. And - years later - Sacha Baron Cohen found himself defending the same kinds of artistic choices at a press conference after winning the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical for his performance as Borat.

People kept asking Cohen how he could have something like "The Running of the Jew" in his movie when he himself is a Jew. After making a few flip comments he got around to explaining that the point for him was to show that prejudice is a delusion - a delusion that others are different and a delusion that you are better than someone else for no real reason at all.

Now, I'm not sure that Don Rickles - a.k.a. "Mr. Warmth" - would describe his standup as some sort of hyper-intellectual deconstruction of prejudicial language...but that won't stop me from doing that here. I think he makes people uncomfortable - and laugh - because he holds a kind of linguistic mirror up to people and the odd, complicated beliefs that might be hiding in the folds of their cerebella.

DO THE RIGHT THING was released during the height of the academic movement we've all come to know as political correctness and I think that's pretty important. Originally "Political Correctness" was a term flung as insult during the Marxist revolution in Russia. It meant someone who'd ceased to think for themselves and just given into the party line...on everything.

In the 1980s and 1990s, I think the reinvention of "political correctness" as a means to treat others with respect and kindness by establishing sensitivity in language was genuinely noble. It fell apart for me when members of the "political correctness" movement on campus attempted to suppress any dissent or discussion about what exactly that meant and targeted DO THE RIGHT THING as destructive and tried to ban it from playing at the campus movie theatre where they did a kind of second run/discount house combo operation that allowed students to see amazing films for just $1 each. They argued they were only trying to protect (?!) college students from the language.

The most wonderfully brave thing in this film is its ambiguous, painful third act. For those of you who haven't seen it yet - SPOILER ALERT. The next few paragraphs are all about specific plot points.

When Mookie stands outside Sal's and watches the crowd start to broil into a near murderous frenzy he makes a decision. I think it's a decision that saves the lives of Sal and his sons. Mookie realizes *something* must happen and the resigned way in which he marches over picks up a trash can and throws it through the glass window at the pizza place says to me he'd rather see the crowd take it out on the building than on Sal. It's a beautifully muddy and heartbreaking moment.

Radio Raheem gives a spotlight speech about the fight inside of every person (symbolized by the rings he wears) between their better and lesser instincts - the struggle to (you guessed it) DO THE RIGHT THING. For me these words are the best part of the film and the reason it hits the nine spot on my list. I hope you dig 'em:

"Let me tell you the story of "Right Hand, Left Hand." It's a tale of good and evil. Hate: It was with this hand that Cane iced his brother. Love: These five fingers, they go straight to the soul of man. The right hand: the hand of love. The story of life is this: Static. One hand is always fighting the other hand; And the left hand is kicking much ass. I mean, it looks like the right hand, Love, is finished. But, hold on, stop the presses, the right hand is coming back. Yeah, he got the left hand on the ropes, now, that's right. Ooh, it's the devastating right and Hate is hurt, he's down. Left-hand Hate K.O.ed by Love. "

NUMBER SEVEN: "That place... is strong with the dark side of the Force. A domain of evil it is. In you must go."

Somehow, this movie hung onto its original slot on the list. In the original post I didn't mention the crucial moment when Yoda lifts Luke's damaged ship out of the waters after the young Jedi cannot do it himself. Yoda uses only his badassed powers and barely lifts a finger in the process. When Luke looks on at what's happened he says he can't believe it. And then Yoda comes on with one of the best lines of the film:

"That is why you fail."

I think so much of that exchange now and I think about it so much more than Luke going into the cave. Yes, we've all got demons and dragons to stare down from time to time but, over the last two years the random happenings of my life have convinced me that believing you can pass through the cave of doubt/evil/bullshit is ultimately so much more important than what happens to you while you're in the cave.

And on to the original post:


NUMBER SEVEN: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK



For anyone born between the mid-1960s and all the way into the early 1980s, STAR WARS, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK AND RETURN OF THE JEDI are cultural touchstones. Few works of art have been more successful at articulating a kind of belief or faith held amongst a generation that didn't depend necessarily on organized religion so much as it did on each person's own empirical and highly personal quest to walk their own path and discover their own meaning in this life.



Part of walking that path is confronting your own shit - some of it rad and some of it not so rad. So I would say just as Luke enters a cave in search of his own identity, so does everyone. The cave can be anything - a quest real or imagined, dealing with some random insanity that seems to fall into your life from nowhere - but Yoda's words will always be the same when one of us enters:



Luke: There's something not right here... I feel cold. Death.

Yoda: That place... is strong with the dark side of the Force. A domain of evil it is. In you must go.

Luke: What's in there?

Yoda: Only what you take with you.

This movie is also eternal for me because it's just so much fun - even amongst all the muck of horrible discoveries and carbon freezing. There's almost nothing better than Han's reply to being told his tauntaun will freeze ("Then I'll See You in Hell!") or Han's farewell to Leia (Leia: I love you. Han: I know.). It's wonderful writing used to tell a story that means something on the screen when you watch it and then means something even more when you think back on it later. The people working on everything from the puppetry of Yoda to the visual effects that set a standard still rarely equalled also made this film the iconic thing it is. Part of the magic of cinema - I think - is that when you have an enormous group of people moving in the same direction with all their creative energies you really do come away with something that is so much more than the sum of its parts.

NUMBER EIGHT: "I don't have any bullshit left. I just ran out of it, you see."

It probably seems impossible that a film like NETWORK could drop a few places on anyone's list, but it did. Hopefully it'll all make sense once the list is up here in full. In the meantime, here's my number eight (formerly number six).


Somewhere Paddy Chayefsky is truly laughing his long dead ass off. When NETWORK opened in 1976 people looked at it as a kind of prophetic farce, from what I gather in the reviews written about it at the time. Great art. But, no, things aren't that bad. And isn't this a great warning of how bad things could get if we aren't careful. The headlines from the L.A. Times over the last year must have a horrible, delicious taste to Mr. Chayefsky, wherever the cranky bastard might be right now.

Though nearly every word in this screenplay is golden to me, one speech by Howard Beale feels especially important lately. If you switch out a few of the words (maybe change "Russians" and replace it with "terrorists") you see we're where we've always been as Americans, television viewers and bad citizens of the world:

Howard Beale: I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.

Before things get too down, I have to talk about Faye Dunaway. She was not just a fabulous babe of the day. She was a real badass. Look at her choices: CHINATOWN, BONNIE AND CLYDE, NETWORK. Damn. Can you imagine having a haircut as fine as the one she had in BONNIE AND CLYDE and being able to run circles around Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson? IMHO, her work here as the ruthless programming executive with an emotional maladjustment no episode of Oprah could solve is her best...and certainly among the best I've ever peeped - actor or actress - on the screen. She's so good you begin to feel sorry for someone who is fundamentally a hollow, selfish a-hole. And then, in my case, you wonder where she bought those amazing boots.


I didn't see this movie until many years after its release. Our advisor to the Arizona Daily Wildcat - a seasoned journalist who'd worked all over for Sports Illustrated and the daily papers in Arizona - insisted one day that I watch it before I decided to work any longer even as just a student journalist. More than anything I remember one particular moment in the movie which seemed to foreshadow a horrible trend in journalism - newspapers becoming corporate properties rather than being run by local upstarts with a sense of making some small difference in their community - and I still wonder today how it's all gonna shake out based on this speech:

Arthur Jensen: It is the international system of currency which determines the vitality of life on this planet. THAT is the natural order of things today. THAT is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today. And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature. And YOU WILL ATONE. Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little 21-inch screen and howl about America, and democracy. There is no America; there is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.