An Honest Liar

Year 8, Day 237 - 8/24/16 - Movie #2,432

BEFORE: As I did the other night with the cartoonist films, I'm going to drop in a short one tonight before the main feature.  But I don't think this one should count toward the total, because it's technically not a film - it's an episode of the "American Masters" show on PBS, called "Ricky Jay: Deceptive Practice".  I recorded it and put it on a DVD with "An Honest Liar" because it filled the space, and also went along thematically.  "An Honest Liar" also aired on PBS around the same time, but that aired as part of the "Independent Lens" series, which is a showcase for films.  So maybe I'm drawing a fine line between the two pieces, but that's where I've chosen to draw it.  One counts because it was meant to have a theatrical release, the other was made for TV.

I like Ricky Jay, and not just because he's been in a fair amount of David Mamet films - he does some amazing things with playing cards, and although I've never caught him in one of his off-Broadway shows, he seems like the type of magician I prefer, from the sort of Penn & Teller school.  But Ricky's been around longer, I think - the "American Masters" episode shows him appearing on a lot of older talk shows, with Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin and such.  And he was hurling cards into watermelons since before it was cool.  He also has great stories about getting into magic as a young boy and meeting or being trained by many of his idols, so he's become this sort of fountain of information about circus sideshow performers and the great illusionists of the vaudeville age, and even before. 

He didn't reveal how any of his tricks are done, of course, because that's more of a Penn & Teller thing, and also the focus of tonight's film, James Randi, aka The Amazing Randi.

THE PLOT: The life and career of the renowned stage magician turned scientific skeptic of the paranormal, James Randi.

AFTER:  You'd better sit down, America, because we need to have a serious conversation about magic.  And by that I mean magic tricks, the art of illusion.  I worry about you, America, because we've sort of reached the point as a country that our politicians can lie right to our faces, and many of you don't bother to fact-check or even think about what you're hearing, whether it makes any sense.  Because it's loud, and said with urgency, and seems to touch on some commonly held belief about Mexicans, or black voters, or missing e-mails, then you tend to believe it.  Do I really have to remind you that a little research, just a tad, would confirm whether a "fact" is true or not?  (Damn it, but we have a name in our language for these little things, factoids, which are supposed to entertain or enlighten, but don't necessarily have to have any truth in them.  We should not even have a word for such a thing.)

Because, really, what we're talking about here are magic tricks - and you tend to fall for those too.  Remember David Blaine?  And that time David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty "disappear"?  Come on, you KNOW that's not possible, but you want to hold on to that piece of your childhood, that time in your life when anything was possible, and you want to believe it's true.  But that Copperfield thing?  Turns out that he, and the audience, and the TV cameras and everything were on a rotating stage, and instead of genuinely making a giant statue disappear, they merely rotated the entire stage and audience so that when the curtain opened, they'd be looking at a place where the Statue of Liberty wasn't.  Because the statue can't move, so there just HAD to be another explanation.

So, specifically now I want to address the four judges on "America's Got Talent", who when presented with the simplest of magic tricks, have their minds completely blown - when if they would just take a minute and THINK about the trick in front of them, like I do, they could probably reason out a valid explanation for what appears, at first, to be impossible.  That guy who's doing tricks with the Rubik's cube?  I hate to burst your bubble, but he's not REALLY moving one cube around to match another.  He's taking advantage of the fact that one scrambled Rubik's Cube looks pretty much like another, and then he's got two cubes that are pre-scrambled to be identical, and when you're distracted, he switches out the cube YOU scrambled for one of the two matching dummy cubes.  

And that mentalist act, where there was a blackboard covered by a curtain, and in the end reveal the curtain drops to show words that seem to be uncanny predictions of random selections.  No, there couldn't POSSIBLY be a little person behind the curtain who wrote on the blackboard during the trick, and would then be covered by the curtain on the floor when it dropped, or be hiding behind the blackboard?  Please, please, THINK about how the trick is done - almost always, there's a simple answer.  Just because the magician implies that the writing was done on the blackboard before, that doesn't make it true.  And just because the guy with the cube TELLS you that his cube matches yours, that doesn't make it true either.  

Point of order, all of these mentalist acts, like "I'm going to write down my prediction on this paper" are B.S.  Let's say the guy writes down 4 predictions - and you CAN NOT see his clipboard or notepad.  Well, during the first prediction he's probably just scribbling, and during the second prediction, he's writing down his answer to the FIRST prediction, which he then knows, because he saw it happen.  Then it's just a simple matter of switching the envelopes, and you judges fawn all over him like he's got real mystical powers.  What a bunch of suckers.     

The reason I am so comfortable being a spoilsport or a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to magic is simple: I grew up.  I took what I knew about the world, about physical law and other sciences, and I made a judgment call - magic in the supernatural sense, does not exist.  Come on, you know that even "movie magic" is just computer special effects, now make that next mental leap with me.  I think that's what drew me to Penn and Teller when they hit the scene, they were upfront about the fact that what they were doing was merely distraction, sleight of hand and things like card forces - but dressed up in a new spectacular fashion.  They were honest about the fact that they were about to deceive you, that's what all magicians (and politicians and evangelist preachers) do, but those other folk aren't nearly as upfront about it. So I know that Teller didn't REALLY just fire a bullet that Penn caught in his mouth, but the trick still works and is impressive, because I can't figure out what they did instead. (But I'm working on it...)

Enter James Randi, who, like Ricky Jay, had many appearances on the talk-show circuit in the 1970's, often duplicating the escape tricks of Harry Houdini.  And like Houdini, who was obsessed with debunking the mediums and spiritualists of his day, The Amazing Randi went on to take on mentalists like Uri Geller, religious faith healers (whose messages from God seem to be transmitted via earpiece) and those despicable psychic surgery phonies, who used animal organs stuffed into a fake thumb to make people believe that they could remove cancerous tissue without a real operation, while they were instead removing all of the patients' money from their wallets.  There ought to be a special place in hell for those people, if hell exists...

Which is why I agree 100% with Randi's definition of an honest liar - he's very upfront about the fact that he's a fraud, a cheat, a charlatan with no special mystical powers, as opposed to those who pull off similar deceptions in an attempt to get people's money.  And his feud of sorts with Uri Geller went on for decades, with him following right after him on the talk-show circuit, bending metal objects in the same way, but making no claims about psychic powers, just informing everyone that it is, in fact, a trick.  

At notable times, the Amazing Randi pulled a number of frauds himself, setting up a fake mystic to "channel" the spirit messages from thousands of years ago, and also sending two teens with fake psychic powers to be studied at a paranormal institute - all the while telling them how to mimic psychic powers, while also telling the staff at the institute how to prove that they didn't.   

There's more to tell, particularly about James Randi's personal life, but I'll leave that to the film itself.  I did find this fascinating, largely because I'm glad that the Amazing Randi is part of the world, and I sure wish we didn't need him, but obviously we do.
   
Also starring Deyvi Peña, Penn Jillette (last seen in "Tim's Vermeer"), Teller (ditto), Uri Geller, with cameos from Bill Nye, Alice Cooper (last seen in "Dark Shadows"), Adam Savage.

RATING: 7 out of 10 bent spoons

Crumb

Year 8, Day 236 - 8/23/16 - Movie #2,431  

BEFORE: As long as I'm taking a look at documentaries about cartoonists, I'd be remiss if I didn't track this one down - cable TV doesn't seem to play it any more, so I'm watching it on the iTunes today.  I had some contact with the work of R. Crumb in the past, since I had a college roommate who ran a music/comic fanzine out of our dorm room.  Then I think I took a spin once through one of those hardcover anthologies of his work.  

THE PLOT:  An intimate portrait of the controversial cartoonist and his traumatized family.      

AFTER: Much like Tower Records, R. Crumb was in the right place at the right time, or so it seems.  His work caught on in San Francisco at the height of the hippie movement, with characters like "Mr. Natural", he drew the famous "Cheap Thrills" album cover for Big Brother and the Holding Company (just before lead singer Janis Joplin became mega-famous) and his comics (like the "Keep on Truckin'!" guy) seemed to catch on just as the counter-culture was taking over.  He worked on American Splendor comics with Harvey Pekar in the mid-1970's, and as drug use and the sexual revolution took hold, his themes seemed to be particularly relevant.  

But according to this documentary, he doesn't seem to fit in with the 1960's or 1970's era, even though that's when his work gained prominence.  He's more a fan of old jazz on vinyl records, and has always dressed like a guy who collects old records, in trademark wool suits and straw boater hats - like you'd imagine how a time traveler from the 1920's might look.  Although he admits that his drawing style developed after taking LSD, he doesn't look like the kind of guy who'd take drugs, unless they were prescribed for his mental health.  Even his most famous comic strips look a bit like they're spoofing "Gasoline Alley" or "The Katzenjammer Kids", if you can imagine those characters having graphic sex or taking drugs.  

Many people also know him as the creator of Fritz the Cat, which was at one point turned into an X-rated cartoon.  Crumb claims no connection to this animated film, other than that it's based on his characters.  But throughout the entire documentary "Crumb", there seems to be a distancing of the artist from his art, as he often claims that he wasn't thinking about the implications of his stories at the time, so therefore he doesn't seem to know what they all "mean".  Which seems a bit convenient, how do you tell a story and then not be aware of what it's supposed to be about?  

So the question then becomes, is Robert Crumb just clueless, or does he pretend not to know that his work tends to degrade and sexualize women, or appear to be incredibly racist in its humor?  Crumb just seems to smile and laugh as he's explaining his jokes, as if it's the most normal thing in the world to encounter a native African warrior woman, and then prank her by making her lick a toilet clean.  Oh, and if I don't happen to find that funny, then I'M the bad guy, with no sense of humor.  

There's an attempt here to rationalize Crumb's behavior, if not exactly explain it, by showing him interacting with his brothers Charles and Maxon, as he prepares to move to France with his wife (a move now known as the "Roman Polanski").  At the time of filming, his older brother Charles still lived at home with their mother and his younger brother Maxon, who supported himself by panhandling, but also sat on a bed of nails and employed Eastern methods of cleansing his body, like swallowing that really long cloth that passes through one's system over the course of a week.  Both brothers tell tales from their childhood together, where they not only wrote and drew comic books, but also felt their first sexual stirrings - one developed an attraction to a young boy seen in the film "Treasure Island", and the other took to molesting women in public.  

Perhaps this was an attempt to make Robert seem like the most normal and well-adjusted of the three brothers, but that's like being the least rotten tomato in a basket full of them.  And it doesn't excuse Robert's own behavior, or the misogyny in his art.  We can read between the lines and assume that their father was abusive (whose wasn't, back then?) and it's flat-out stated that their mother was addicted to drugs, and perhaps these brothers are just the type of people you get from hands-off parenting.  But since their two sisters declined to be interviewed for the film, we can only wonder what other depraved behavior went on in that house that the brothers AREN'T telling the filmmaker about.  

Robert is seen drawing images of the girls he knew in school, who wouldn't pay much attention to him then - which suggests that he's in a state of arrested development at best, and possibly some kind of sociopath as well.  Interviews with ex-girlfriends and his ex-wife also offer some insight, even though when confronted with his bad behavior as his boyfriend, like sleeping around with other women, there's that smile and laugh again.  Even when a woman is standing right in front of him, saying "This is what you did wrong," he seems incapable of understanding it.  He even states that he's "never been in love" right in front of his ex-girlfriend, which is the height of cruel cluelessness.  

I want to feel pity for someone who's never been in love, but I just can't find it within me.  One of his more famous comic stories detailed his character Mr. Natural delivering a woman without a head to his "everyman"character, Flakey Foont.  In explanation of why he removed the woman's head, Mr. Natural says it's because she was too "mouthy".  But thanks to a small second brain in her rear, the best parts of the woman could still be enjoyed - so of course Flakey has sex with the headless woman, which seems to be only a few steps removed from having sex with a headless corpse.  Later in the strip, it's revealed that her head was only inverted inside her body, so Flakey's act was only sex with a live woman without consent, which of course is rape.  

Now, I'm all for freedom of expression and freedom of the press, but I think there's got to be some limit, and this is way over the line.  While I tend not to side with the anti-porn movement, there are clearly some ideas that should be kept to oneself, especially if they might encourage bad behavior in others.  And so I'm left wondering why this documentary chose to focus on this aspect of Crumb's work, and not, say, his own music career as the leader of the band "The Cheap-Suit Serenaders", or even how he arranges and stores his records, or for that matter, why he only likes to listen to old music on turntables or watch TV in black and white.  

Overall it just seems like he's unstuck in time, like he was a retro hipster before that was even a thing.  Or he's constantly romanticizing a simpler time, when he was just drawing comics with his brothers, before puberty came around and turned them into deviant monsters.  

And thus I face a difficult task in "rating" a documentary such as this - do I rate by how it made me feel, which was sort of creeped out and nauseous, or by how "important" the subject matter is?  How do I justify sitting in judgment of a film that might have set out to entertain, but ended up just clarifying how deeply disturbed (and disturbing) some artists are?  I guess if we've learned only one thing this week, it's how screwed up all cartoonists seem to be - let's hope this is an extreme example. 

Starring Robert Crumb, Aline Kaminsky Crumb, Charles Crumb, Maxon Crumb.  

RATING: 5 out of 10 sketchbooks

It's Me, Hilary: The Man Who Drew Eloise

Year 8, Day 235 - 8/22/16 - Movie #2,430

BEFORE: I'm doubling down today, watching a second film on a similar topic, because I can - this one's a documentary short, only 36 minutes long.  Hey, it counts if I say it counts, I never promised that every film I set out to watch would be 90 minutes or longer.  I was going to just watch this before "Very Semi-Serious" as a sort of a preface, but since I realized my chain was two films too short for the remainder of the year, it makes sense to just count this one, add another film tomorrow which is available on iTunes, and then everything will be right on schedule again.

THE PLOT: This portrait of Hilary Knight, the artist behind the iconic Eloise books, sees him reflecting on his life as an illustrator and his relationship to his most successful work.

AFTER: A look at another illustrator tonight, they're really wonderful people once you get to know them, but they do have a tendency to look at life in a different way.  If you're familiar with the book "Eloise" or any of its sequels, you might wonder why there were four books published in the late 1950's, and then the next book appeared in 2002.  Yep, there's a story there, as author Kay Thompson, an actress with a larger-than-life persona created the character and had very strong ideas about how she should be portrayed - and while the illustrator was key to the success of the first book, apparently Ms. Thompson took umbrage at sharing the credit, and gradually tried to steamroll her collaborator out of the process.  

Talk about holding grudges - Thompson lived another 40 years after dissolving her creative partnership with Hilary Knight, and would not allow another Eloise book to be released to the press, so the next one came posthumously, with the agreement of her estate.  The race is not always to the swift, sometimes life demands a great deal of patience.  

Even though this film is only 36 minutes long, it managed to run out of things to say about Kay Thompson and the original books after about 10 minutes, and then focuses on Lena Dunham meeting the illustrator of one of her favorite childhood books, and then we learn a little about his amateur filmmaking, which isn't nearly as interesting.  At some point, Knight found a new muse - performance artist, B-movie actress and amateur accordion player Phoebe Legere, and has been inspired to make a number of awful-looking home movies with her as the star.  

It's not that I hate Lena Dunham, she might be a terrific person for all I know, but I hate everything she represents as a symbol of her generation.  Somehow she feels that having an Eloise tattoo on her lower back and having a gay uncle makes her the perfect person to host this documentary, instead of mentioning why she liked the book as a child, or how she identifies with Eloise.  I suppose it might have been too close to the mark to say, "Oh, you know, we're both spoiled little rich white girls who complain when things don't go our way!"  Hey, I've got a mole on my shoulder that kind of looks like Alfred Hitchcock in profile, I guess that makes me an expert on his films?

She just gives off that hipster vibe of being both self-righteous and self-entitled at the same time, the kind of person who would knock a drink out of your hand at the coffee shop if you accidentally ordered regular milk instead of cruelty-free soy, or will take you to task if you forgot to pledge yourself toward ending sexism, racism and body-shaming last week, or if you're acting all white-male important or something.  Yeah, feminists would do better if they could promote themselves without cutting men down, they just haven't figured out how to do that yet, or shown any interest in it.  

But back to Mr. Knight - he seems rather well-adjusted, aside from the terribly misguided notion that Phoebe Legere has any actual talent.  But isn't that a tired old stereotype, that gay men are most comfortable around flamboyant, domineering women?  I admire that he chose to not allow this portrait to focus on his orientation, I think there's entirely too much "in your face" activism when it comes to gay rights these days.  I long for a simpler time, when people just happened to be gay, and didn't all make a big THING out of it. I mean, sure, it's OK to be out and proud, but does it have to be the focus of everything that you do?  We don't have activists, poets and comedians anymore, we have gay activists, gay poets and gay comedians, as if that's part of the job.  No, seriously, the second word is your job, the first word is your orientation, and they should be two separate things.

I look forward to the inevitable documentary about Dr. Seuss, where we will no doubt learn a thing or two about his socialist leanings, or that he snuck a ton of dirty slang into his nonsense rhymes.  

Starring Hilary Knight, Lena Dunham (last seen in "This Is 40"), Phoebe Legere. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 unreturned phone calls