David Andrews

Then I am a hack, because I respect achievement in multifarious forms. I agree with you about the book, but amid the garbage and bad prose, Coppola found the through line of a family saga, and that homely aspect appealed to people, especially, I think, the descendants of immigrants. He saved the darkest family musings for Part II, a story he could control more closely. And people found a nostalgie de la boue in that, because every family is darker than we let on. Yet, of course, better than other people's families, who all deserve to be assassinated. These pictures tapped into a vein. It's like I wrote here once: Would we love the Kennedys less, or more, if, like the Corleones, they hit their enemies first?

Also shot in the throat, first. I shouldn't give Jim ammunition, but if you watch the scene closely, in the long shot where Sterling Hayden's clutching his throat, he's already got the head wound blood on his forehead before Michael shoots him there in the following close shot. Because the original intention was to reverse those shots. Let's puff this up into a Z-film analog.

Thanks, everybody for their input. I apologize for misstating that Frazier has never been questioned by researchers on this.

The Godfather and Godfather Part II took a lowbrow novel and totally eradicated it. People kept buying it after the films came out, but they were essentially buying a merchandising souvenir. The book wouldn't have existed without a film deal. Mario Puzo took the film treatment to Robert Evans because he needed to pay gambling debts. Evans gave him c. $12,000 and told him to pay the shylocks and come back with a novelized version. Puzo banged it out, threw in a personal-experience subplot about a celebrity plastic surgeon because he ran out of Mafia anecdotes to pilfer, and brought it back to Evans. On the strength of Evans' agreement to make the picture, Puzo got a book deal for the novel. (Similar deals were made with the novelized versions of Dances with Wolves and Forrest Gump, but those books weren't pimped as hard in the press, because The Godfather was a harder sell to the studio. I'm betting Paramount's money was behind the book's newspaper ad campaign, which splashed critics' praise over double pages in NY and LA.) The whole production history of The Godfather is as slapdash as Bonnie & Clyde's. You think it's crap now? You should have seen the studio's fantasy version with Robert Redford as Michael, directed by Sidney Pollack. Coppola, Pacino and Brando were unwanted in their roles. Evans got Coppola genius talent in the cinematography, art direction, and wardrobe departments to make the film hang together and produce convincing rushes (daily footage) for the suits. All the while, Mob money was coming into Paramount to make the film through president Charlie Bluhdorn , which is why they had so much say over disuse of the words Mafia, Mob, and Cosa Nostra. (Bluhdorn's connections lead to Paramount's involvement with the Vatican in the Credit Immobiliare finance scandal - the subject of Godfather Part III. That no one found Coppola and Puzo's bite-the-hand-that feeds rendition of this true-life evil compelling is a subject for further analysis. Perhaps people are suckers for old-school mythmaking after all.) The point is, the Godfather films became a social and cultural phenomenon. It was the Mafia's JFK! People who didn't know bupkis about the Mob learned plenty by seeing other films and documentaries, and reading other books. If you want to slag the director and the co-writers, you can't deny the acting and production talent that made these films great, and filled the History Channel with docs about goons the likes of Roy DeMeo stabbing Mob rats to death in saloon basements. Myself, I didn't much care for Pulp Fiction after I drove 40 miles to see it in a theater - I thought it was impossibly over the top, showy for showyness' sake, and idiosynchratic to the point of solipsism. After the low-budget restraint of Reservoir Dogs, it was like watching a football player run the ball through the end zone, out the tunnel, across the parking lot, and spike it in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant across from the stadium. But so many people loved it - my own mother included - that I had to watch again and reevaluate. That's the power of a social and cultural phenomenon, and often they come from making ignoble crap noble. Plus attitude. And that was already an old Hollywood story by the time of The Godfather.

If he lives a hundred years, Scorsese could never equal that kind of exquisite subtelty I would argue that, earlier than The Irishman, Scorsese defined a different sort of subltety about viewing the realities of life, low or otherwise. I'm going to write something here about the cold ending of The Irishman, and also some things about the film's flaws. But I need to watch it again, and also suck up my own intimations of mortality so I can do it objectively. Joe, I believe there's a great deal of condemnation of gangster life in the Scorsese and Coppola films, and also of the straight world that it resides within, symbiotically.

Jim, you understand that The Seven Pillars of Wisdom is looked on with a great deal of suspicion in several book-length studies of Lawrence. Lawrence's rape story, his relationship with the mysterious Arab, S.A. (to whom the book is dedicated), and his depiction of other Arab characters have all been called into question. Further, the David Lean film greatly aggrandizes Lawrence's relations with the Sherif Ali character (Omar Sherif), and essentially invents the two boy servants Farraj and Da'ud. Multiple scenes, including all with the British high command, are written for drama and not historical accuracy. The fictional diplomat Dryden (Claude Rains) and all his dialogue and interactions with historical characters such as General Allenby, are spun from whole cloth by the screenwriter. The British officer who unknowingly slaps Lawrence in the desert may be based on a real character, but his appearance to hypocritically defend Lawrence at his funeral is invented. Lawrence, for all his achievements and stature, was an inveterate mythologizer, particularly about the origins and development of his sexuality. It's the kind of psychology that occurs when one has to hide one's family background in a repressive age. In an extension of that, he similarly mythologizes personages in the Arab Revolt. Should we hate Lawrence's writing for this, and hate Lean's film? Oh, hell, no. But you can take both those artifacts apart and repack them like you can The Irishman and the Brandt book. I can refer you to the books on Lawrence that have a go at this job.

"at the time" 😎

Features Ruth's guided tour of the Ruth Paine House Museum. So save your money when in Big D. "For a little house, it did a lot!" -- Ruth

I am glad to be corrected for the record, and the record probably appreciates the update as well.

Allow me to be a total pr*ck and mention that no one at these conferences is asking BWF if LHO was out on the TSBD steps.

More uncrushed voices heard from: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/dec/03/the-irishman-oscars-race-national-board-of-review-win

John - Search the back threads here for JVB and also Dr. Mary's Monkey. An embarrassment of riches.

The DuPonts talk to strange men.

Again, let's not ignore Ed Haslam's claims to have been beckoned into God-knows-what by a visiting professor at Tulane calling herself "Judyth Vary Baker." Is there any lead on this woman to be found in the Tulane University Archives? Nobody's fact-checking.

I'm missing what you mean at the 9:00 mark and after.

It would be wickedly funny if The Irishman turned out to be the JFK of the Hoffa case, and inspired renewed investigation leading to Hoffa's grave. I have a feeling, though, that Frank Sheeran was in a position to hear a smidgen of the truth: Hoffa was cremated ASAP. Some guys they wanted found, some they didn't. As with the JFKA, though, we should ask ourselves, What organization was capable of dumping decades of false leads in the media for law enforcement to chase like wild geese?

Hopefully some shampoo and a stylist.

+1

What are we seeing? A Kennedy death premonition? "Room for one more," as the old story used to go.

Thanks, Ernie.

Ernie - Thanks for the holiday present. How current would you say your FBI Acronyms list is? I see the last revision was 2015. Offhand, would you say there are items on it that were 1960s-1970s era, and were disused by, say, 2008? THANKS

OK, I see the pump fore-end now. Film is dim.

I have not been aware of tunnels at Parkland. However, at some time in my long past here, I asked David Lifton, in a thread or a PM, whether the body could have been removed from the coffin at Parkland and secreted out, instead of being removed from the coffin aboard AF-1. I mentioned that this scenario seemed to provide a premier reason why the SS would refuse a Texas autopsy and remove the coffin with threats and violence -- they couldn't afford to have that coffin opened. I believe that Lifton responded that Dr. Rose did not let the coffin out of his sight from the time it was closed. I'll try to find the post tomorrow. If we communicated in a PM, I hope I'm not violating any confidence with David Lifton. David, would you care to weigh in on this matter once again?

Is there a photo of the crates? I've heard about them for years but never seen them. If you can't post a photo, post a link, please. Also, what's with the rifle in the plainclothesman's hand, by the window at 01:57 in this assemblage of the Alyea film?

Andrej -- as either direct analog or as metaphor, I believe your "psychic detective" trope covers a number of personalities we're familiar with in assassination and 9/11 studies.