Do it like a monkey!

STIPIMM: “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” by the Backstreet Boys

Merry Fitzmas everyone!

I got some exciting news today. Improv Asylum, Boston’s foremost improvisational troupe, has selected my film, “Through the Window,” be shown as part of their weekly “Director’s Cut” event next Tuesday, the 1st.

The concept behind “Director’s Cut” is kind of unusual. Each week, the troupe shows two short films, one each from a local filmmaker. The directors then get the opportunity to “direct” the troupe’s actors in an improv game. Sounds daunting, but I’m sure it will be set up to be fun no matter what.

Bridget won’t be able to come, and that makes me sad (she has rehearsal that night). However, it seems that a few people from work will be able to go, which will be nice.

The only thing that I’m particularly uneasy about is the film itself. For those of you who don’t remember, “Through the Window” is the film-noirish 7-minute silent black & white film I did with Kenneth Tebo for our Film & Video II final project. It stars the lovely Jenny Morris as well as Kenneth and me. It has its merits, but it’s certainly not something that I hold up as my finest work. I will do my best not to wince while watching it Tuesday night.

Busting out the cherry

STIPIMM: “Circus Act” by R.E.M.

Our long-awaited furniture finally arrived to our home this weekend. Three pieces of furniture that sucked the wedding money from our account as quickly as we put it in are now providing a homey décor in our bedroom. Bridget’s mother did it one better by purchasing an end table as an additional wedding gift… four! four glorious solid-wood cherry furniture pieces! Ah ha ha! *lightning strike*

Getting them from New Hampshire, where they were purchased, down to Massachusetts, and then up into our apartment was a considerable chore. The pieces all fit in the cab of Bridget’s Uncle Ray’s truck, which was fine, but we opted to stuff four people (Ray, Bridget, her mom and I) and some additional luggage into his cab. It was a snug fit, but we did fit.

As luck would have it, though, it was raining, and Ray had to cover the furniture (still it their boxes) with a Lilliputian array of tarps and ropes, secured with the help of his impressive Coast Guard knot-tying knowledge.

Once in Brighton, it was still wet and nasty, so we had to move the pieces inside in the rain. But the water was the least of our worries. Our new furniture is in four pieces: one bed frame (headboard and footboard); one nightstand; one tall dresser; and one massive armoire. The first two things aren’t so bad, but those last two…solid-wood pieces… ye gods they were heavy. The narrow width of the doors on the first floor of our apartment building didn’t help matters much either. But we all put our backs into it, and eventually, everything was upstairs. Some assembly was required on the bed frame, but it really wasn’t too bad.

How we originally wanted it

So then we had our bedroom pieces. And just as soon as we did, we had a problem. In our purchasing, we had made a couple of assumptions about the width of our room. And you know what happens when you assume: it makes an “ass” out of Bridget. Needless to say, our original designs for how we wanted to arrange the furniture were not feasible because the dresser and armoire were too deep.

So, once we accepted that fact, we set out to figure out how we were going to arrange our suddenly crowded room. In the end, we hit upon an acceptable solution that requires a little bit of maneuvering on my part (though god knows I’ll impale myself on the corner of the dresser at some point), but leaves a lot of open space on either side of the bed. Not perfect, but very livable.

How it wound up

Of course, before the furniture was even finally in place, Bridget was itching to fill it up with our clothes. And so, in little time, we had arranged all our sartorial needs in our new furniture. It’s a set-up that will probably change incrementally over the years, but it works for now.

We spent a lot of money on this furniture. When Bridget first saw the set, she fell in love with it, but quickly noted that we probably could never afford it. She was probably right, but when I saw it, and fell for it as well, it was a given that we would put up the money to get what will hopefully be a long-term furniture investment. As many people have told us, this furniture is designed to last us forever, and so spending extra on it will be worth it. Maybe. But right now, there’s a gaping hole in the ol’ account, a 24p video camera that’s going unbought, and occasional nail-biting with regards to paying bills. But, hey, the furniture is fantastic. And it's ours.

And yes, we tested the bed frame thoroughly. No squeaks.

Survivor: Dreamland

STIPIMM: “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” by John Denver

It is a rare occasion anymore that I remember my dreams, so this morning, when I awoke from anxious dreams, I made sure to remember them as best I could. I thought I’d share one of them.

The setting of this dream was the reality show “Survivor.” It began with me and my team, called Fugali, at the starting line of a race for an immunity challenge. There were four people in total on my team: me and three women. I didn’t catch much about the other team, except that there were four of them as well. The women in my team were not smoking hot and clad in skimpy bikinis, as most of the young women on “Survivor” are; these women were “normal-looking” (which of course to me is hotter than “hot”) and clad in very non-Survivor clothes: jeans and T-shirts. I myself was wearing jeans and a T-shirt as well, but it didn’t seem a problem to us at the time.

Jeff Probst, the eternal host of “Survivor,” was there and called out the immortal words for our challenge, “Survivors ready? Go!” and we were off. The challenge consisted of a race through the jungle, not unlike the marathon trek the contestants had to take in the first episode of this season (24-hour trek through rain and night). But, for some reason, Fugali didn’t have too much trouble with it. We got though a mud obstacle (basically a pit) as though we were walking through water, while the other team got hopelessly mired in it. The rest of the race was easy, with no real obstacles until we reached the end.

The end was a hut with a large bamboo tower next to it. When we got on site, Jeff told us we had to climb said tower as a team. And so we did, each of us scaling one side of the tower until we got to the upper edge. When we got there, we somehow realized what we’d have to do next. On the top of the tower was a small platform, and at the middle of this platform was an envelope with instructions of what to do next. However, there was a caveat: if anyone touched the top of the tower (which was a small platform), that person would be forced to stay there for the rest of the challenge.

Well, we decided that one of the girls would sacrifice herself for the team, and she hopped up on the platform and opened the envelope. In it there were four problems of math and logic that would have left the usual “Survivor” contestants dumbfounded, i.e., they were very hard.

In fact, in thinking about them, they only made sense in the dream realm. I don’t remember them exactly, alas, but each of them were vastly different from the others. One of them asked us to calculate the “cone of influence” of the tower, whatever the hell that meant (I seemed to understand it just fine during the dream). I think that it had something to do with (believe it or not) four-dimensional space (as related by Stephen Hawking in “A Brief History of Time”) and how the influence of an event spreads out from it at the speed of light. Like I said, hard questions.

Another one called for us to take a matrix of the letters of our names (Chris; Carrie; Sharon; Karen) and convert it, mathematically into a matrix with the letters of the names of the other team’s members (Paul, Sam[antha], Grace, Bud) In words, change

C H R I S X
C A R R I E
S H A R O N
K A R E N X

into

P A U L X X
S A M X X X
G R A C E X
B U D X X X

using standard algebraic methods (note how many columns have letters in common, thus facilitating matrix math). What I don’t remember, however, is how the letters became numbers, or even if they did.

As for the other two questions, alas, I cannot remember them, just that they were unique and hard. Carrie, Sharon and I descended the tower as Karen took up her position, which was oddly hanging under the platform for the duration of the challenge. When we got to the bottom of the tower, I, being a misogynist, apparently, decided to go figure the problems out on my own. Now, any of you who have watched “Survivor” know that this would be a fatal mistake, and that I surely would be voted out next by my team for being such a self-centered jerk. But it made sense in the realm of the dream. Indeed, I think the other two split off to be alone as well. Apparently, Fugali was a team of loners.

So, I went into the hut and started working on the problems. And I got nowhere. I worked on each one of those bastards for god knows how long (in dream time, it probably wasn’t much, but it seemed like a lot). Meanwhile, I and my teammates are sweating the pending arrival of the other team. However, they never came, and I finally reached a point of exhaustion, having been thoroughly befuddled by the problems (gee, I can’t imagine why), but coming up with something approaching answers.

Another funky dream thing happened just then. My answers, like Moses on the mountaintop, became magically engraved into a bronze plate, which I’m supposed to place at the top of the tower. Perhaps Moses is the wrong analogy… it was quite like Joseph Smith, though no part of me would be contending that my answers were anything like gospel truth.

So, with my magically engraved plate (mounted on wood like an award plaque) in hand, I went back out to the base of the tower. There waiting for me were Sharon and Carrie, who each had their own answer plaques. They were quite a bit more excited than I was, and I soon saw why: Carrie had deciphered the questions and came up with the correct answers. Part of me was cowed by the ability of someone else to decipher these rubrics, but most of me was ecstatic that we were going to win the challenge. So, we scaled the tower and put Carrie’s plaque on the top of the platform. Jeff immediately raised his hands and declared, “Fugali! Winner!” We all got off the tower and celebrated. In particular, I was extremely turned on to Carrie after that. Yessiree… the rest of the dream shall remain my own private reverie, if you don’t mind.

Except that I want to comment on the fact that I was so turned on. Just as strong as any physical attraction for me is a woman who excels in doing something (mentally) that I cannot do or at least do as well. It’s one of the many things that attracts me to Bridget: watching her work in the theatre and hearing about her adventures and misadventures as director and acting coach simply makes me hot. She may not perfect at it, to be sure, but she has a natural excellence at working with actors that is just terrifically sexy. Without that, she probably wouldn’t be as attractive to me as a person as she is.

Bridget admitted something similar to this the other day, saying that she feels the need to have a boyfriend/husband who always excels in what he does. It sounds selfish on the surface, but it makes sense, too; both of us are attracted to the other in part based on our abilities, and any varnish on those abilities would possibly affect how we felt about the other. We both agreed, though, having both seen the other at their worst, that we’re able to look past the stumbles and focus on the larger picture. In other words, just because I mess up on a particular project doesn’t mean she looks at me any less as a filmmaker and a person; in like fashion, a mistake of hers doesn’t mean my image of her as a bright, talented director would crumble.

The only way, we decided, that our feelings could change is if the other failed and just gave up. Failure is an option, but surrender is not. In other words, it’s not the success of the other that we love and that turns us on, it’s the passion for the work. In both our cases, that has little danger of dying out anytime soon.

Would Brecht approve?

Liz Palin, one of the finalists in the Best Ass contest, portrays Buddha in "Brecht on Brecht"

STIPIMM: “Blind,” by Darren and the minorities

The text of the play “Brecht on Brecht” is rather long; indeed, the play, as written, is much too long to be performed in its entirety (of course, they say the same thing about “Hamlet,” and just ask Kenneth Branagh about that one). In fact, it really wasn’t ever intended to be done from beginning to end – it is more or less a smorgasbord of prose, poems and dialogue from which individual directors can pick and choose and make their own version with its own unique theme and outlook.

At first glance, the direction of the work taken by director Judy Braha doesn’t seem to be strongly thematic – the texts chosen range from light songs to thoughts on the theatre to militant political screeds – and it kind of meanders at times. However, as the play progresses, it becomes clear that Braha has taken a more political direction with this play. Segments are anchored with real audio from Brecht’s HUAC testimony in 1947, and most of the text choices seem geared toward showing Brecht’s political philosophies, which were rooted in Marxism. The play itself is divided up into parts, among which are “Of Poor B.B.,” “Conversations in Exile,” and “Change the World, She Needs It.”

It’s this last title that seems to provide the center for the overall mood of the play; it’s a theme that is repeated not only in dialogue but during the curtain call, where the actors present the title card as the play’s enduring statement. Several of the texts in the latter half of the play are proletarian calls-to-arms, with some dialogue having particular resonance in today’s political climate. But despite the high ideals, there’s an undercurrent of despair; the “Questions from a Worker Who Reads,” which I quoted in a previous post, is damning in its view of history, but it doesn’t hold out much optimism of the problem being fixed. Indeed, as you hear Brecht’s high-pitched, heavily accented voice testifying before HUAC, with an actor as him sitting alone in the middle of the playing area, you really get a sense of the loneliness and futility that Brecht felt in his years away from Germany. Indeed, texts in the part of the play called “Conversations in Exile” demonstrate the isolation he felt in his flight to Scandinavia and his winding up in the “hell” of Los Angeles.

Another subject that is presented throughout this play is the issue of gender. I’ve described Brecht as a philanderer in a previous post, but as I watched the play, I was struck by the number of strong women depicted in both his songs and his plays. He seems to be particularly sympathetic to women – he calls for pity for a young mother who murdered her infant out of despair; in two separate songs, he shows women as the one’s in control of relationships; and then there’s the closest thing “Brecht on Brecht” has to a showstopper: Emma Greer’s rousing version of “Pirate Jenny,” a “Dogville”-like story about a tavern maid who gets revenge on all the people who mistreated her when it becomes clear that she is brethren to the pirates who are attacking the town.

The first time I saw this BU production of “Brecht on Brecht,” I thought the meandering of theme was a liability, but upon second viewing, I realized that it made a lot of sense. The play after all is called, “Brecht on Brecht,” and is not supposed to be about any particular theme, but about the man himself. And having read more about Brecht than I ever hoped or needed to, I can say that this production succeeds very well in creating a portrait of the author and all his passion, his attitudes, and his melancholy.

But beyond the academic analysis of the play, I must say that I enjoyed it much more than I had anticipated when reading it months ago. The energy with which the actors take on these disjointed segments serves to bring them together rhythmically. Several standouts in the cast: Rachel Rusch playing a Jewish wife forced by Hitler’s reign to leave her husband, played ably by Tim Spears; Liz Palin in several parts, including, of all things, Buddha; Veronica Barron as a Mr. Magoo-like Herr Keuner (“I’m preparing my next mistake.”) and belting out a song (whose name I forget) late in the play atop the scaffold; and the aforementioned Emma Greer, whose Pirate Jenny song was inappropriately placed as the penultimate piece in the show – it would have been better placed earlier in the epilogue.

The staging of the piece is faithful to many of Brecht’s philosophies of theatre, particularly the idea that the set and the staging should not be hidden from the audience. Bare incandescent bulbs hang over the stage; scaffolding provides a theatrical jungle gym for the actors; the assistant stage manager is deliberately called out on stage to clean up a mess; the actors warm up during intermission in full view of the audience. In fact, beyond just pulling the curtain back for the audience to see the workings of the theatre, the production goes one further, living up to Brecht’s demand that theatre should engage the viewer head on. At a couple of different points in the play, the actors go out toward the audience and interact with them; at several moments, the actors stare into the eyes of individual viewers, daring them to look back and be a part of the action on stage. The second time I saw the play, I decided to embrace the idea and allowed myself to be engaged. At one point, I got into a 30-second-long staring match with one actress that left me disconcerted, but thrilled.

Throughout the rehearsals, when Bridget (the gorgeous assistant director) talked about some aspect of the production, I would often come back with the question, “Yes, but would Brecht approve?” In the end, with a production that reflects both his life and philosophy and embraces many of the artistic ideas he held dear, I think we can safely answer yes.

Mormons take Manhattan

STIPIMM: "The Rainbow Connection,” as sung by Kermit the Frog

Within the past week, the movie that we shot a year ago, “Trapped by the Mormons,” has been shown in two different major cities, New York and Boston. The screening in Boston took place last Friday, the 14th, at the Boston Fantastic Film Festival at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge. It was monsooning that night--miserable when you don’t have a car at your disposal. And yet, despite the bad weather, between 30 and 40 people showed up to watch our humble little flick. The director, Ian, his boyfriend Sung, and Judith, one of the zombie girls, came up from Boston to join in. Three of my co-workers from H&R Block braved the weather and the late hour to see my work; that meant a lot to me. It was a successful showing, overall, but who knows how good it might have been had the sky been clear.

Even if the Brattle had been packed to the rafters, however, it probably couldn’t have compared with Wednesday’s sold-out show at the Pioneer Theatre in the East Village. I made the trek to New York City that afternoon (via cheap-ass Chinatown bus) just for the event. Ian and I went to the theatre together about 45 minutes before showtime and basked in the success of our venture. When we first got the screening there, we were worried about filling seats; we said we could pack the house, and we wanted to deliver. Turns out we needn’t have worried as much as we did; the show sold out the day before, which meant walk-up traffic was turned away.

The lovely Miss Baicich

Johnny Kat and friends

Besides Ian and I, many of the major people involved in the project were there: Johnny Kat, the drag-king star of the movie; Emily Riehl-Bedford, the darling ingénue; Judith Baicich, who played zombie queen Tilly; and Emily Rems, who had a bit role in the film, but a big role in promoting it in NYC (Bridget couldn’t be there because she had to go to something for school that night; she found other ways to occupy herself, though). No big celebrity sightings at this premiere, alas, but the enthusiasm of the crowd made up for it. Packed into that theatre were almost 100 hipsters, wanna-bes, queers, dykes (spelled correctly, Mams?), and straight-laced-looking little videographers. During the curtain speech, Ray, the programmer at the theatre, announced to the public what Ian and I already knew, that “Trapped” will have a one-week run at the theatre in mid-December! So all those people turned away at the door will have a second chance in a couple of months.

The audience laughed, gasped and applauded in all the right places and seemed to genuinely enjoy the movie. Afterwards, about half of the attendees wound up at Mo Pitkins, a bar just around the corner from the theatre. There we reveled in the events of the evening and enjoyed the Stormin’ Mormon, a coffee/liquor drink concocted especially for that evening (actually, being a coffeephobe, I didn’t try it, but I heard [and saw] that it was potent). Several of us went over to the Two Boots restaurant across the street later and shot the breeze. Johnny Kat boldly took out his dick, or at least the disturbingly realistic rubber thing that provided a bulge in his pants; I didn’t get pictures of that momentous event, but you can be sure that Ian did.

Standing room only

That evening, as I went to sleep on Ian’s couch, I was struck with a bittersweet note. Leave it to me to find a cloud for every silver lining, but I couldn’t help think about a few things. Most significantly, I recognized that the success of this event was, in many ways, an anomaly. The marketing of “Trapped by the Mormons” had two big things going for it right out of the gate: the campy infamy of the original film, and the inherent hilarity of the idea of being trapped by anything Mormon. The movie attracts a hipster crowd that is, more or less, a specialty audience that is readily marketed to in the alternative publications and burlesque shows in New York.

Then I think of other projects that I particularly am interested in doing or care about – no ready-made audiences there. My dream project, “Indian Girl,” isn’t exactly the kind of flick that would get young people running to the theater. I see the quick (albeit minor) success of a specialty film like “Trapped” and the way that other good, but unquirky films trudge through getting screenings and festival plays, and I just realize that there will be nothing quick or painless about “Indian Girl,” or any other project I might have in mind. That’s not to be pessimistic or fatalistic about future film prospects, but just a dose of reality I gave myself that night. After that diversion into Dumpsville, though, I jumped back into reveling in the success of the evening and what promised to be great run in December. My first New York premiere… I swear it won’t be my last.

Brecht on Breast

STIPIMM: “Eight Days a Week,” by the Beatles

It is difficult for me to find a proper balance between art and sex. That is the very enlightened conclusion that I have reached after twice watching “Brecht on Brecht,” directed by Judy Braha, and assistant directed by my dear Bridget.

“Wow, an interesting revelation!” you may say. “The play must be quite dense with examinations on sexuality and the nature of art!” No such thing; if anything, the content of the play that deals with sex is rather pedestrian. No, I came to my hypothesis after having trouble concentrating for two hours while nine nubile young women, most of them clad in tight pants and delectable tops, danced, slinked around on the floor, and showed off their natural wonders. Sure, they were spouting off Bertolt Brecht’s poetry and dialogue, and I’m sure it had some important point or made sense on some level, but it’s hard to care when a gorgeous woman is crawling across the floor, her ass calling up to you like a baboon. Excellent staging? Sure, I guess. Insomuch as it called for one nymphette to rest on all-fours in a hungry, come-fuck-me, doggy-style position for, oh, about five minutes. Choreography? Superb, especially when all the young women were called upon to simultaneously lie on their backs, open their legs wide, and moan orgasmically. Costume design? Whoever decided that my favorite gal in the bunch should wear a top that made the nipples on her perky little breasts perpetually hard should get an award.

Yes, I’m a dirty old man at the ripe age of 31. Have pity on me; I have to endure these tortures for the love of Bridget, who, for all her beauty and talents, refuses to get up on scaffolding and sing and writhe around for me. The actresses in “Brecht on Brecht” did that in spades.

The winner of the Best Ass contest leads the runners-up in a dance

Fortunately, Bridget makes up for this torture by playing along with me. Knowing that I’m an ass man, she challenged me, on my first viewing of the play, to determine who in the cast had the best behind. It was a tough contest, with a lot of fierce competition. But in the end (ha!), there was one clear winner (oh, shove off--like you’d even know the name if I told you; look at her pic instead). After the show, when Bridget and I caught the bus to go back home, three of the actresses from the show got on and sat with us. Bridget, discreet as ever, announced that she had tasked me with finding the best ass in the cast, and naturally, the girls wanted to know my decision. Now, none of the three actresses were my winner, but two of them were strong finalists. And I certainly didn’t want to hurt the feelings of the third gal (who probably only didn’t fare well in the contest because she was wearing a skirt), so I demurred and gave some noncommittal answer.

Here they were, Bridget giving me permission to physically evaluate these women, and those women earnestly wanting to know the results of my evaluation, and what do I do? I crumble. A chance to show my kooky sexual side, and I wither and hide. Bridget’s seen this happen to me many times in the time she’s exposed me to the zany theatre world. I suppose I’m the kind of dirty old man who is more used to being private with his dirtiness (that sounds foul…). Actually, the roots of it go deeper than that; since adolescence, I have operated under the assumption (picked up from seeing women of all ages kvetch about men) that women would rather have men be clean, faithful and modest, and that they perceive any man with an outwardly visible sex drive as something to be feared and reviled.

Like I said up front, it’s a public sexual balance that has been off-kilter for me for some time. One of the things I love about Bridget is that she embraces it and stands right with me as I blush my way through whatever cums our way. She’s told me that she too has quite a bit of problem concentrating on the goings-on in “Brecht on Brecht” at times. For god’s sake, it was her idea for the ass contest (or at least her idea to bring it up from the recesses of my filthy mind). I always feel it’s easier for her, because girls can be that way and get away with it; and those theatre college girls, they dig that whole bi thing. But god bless Bridget for her patience with my bumbling, fumbling sexual persona; she’ll turn me into a Leisure Suit Larry in no time.

--

I’ll talk about the artistic aspects of the production shortly (yes, I was lucid enough to evaluate them, at least the second time). But first, in tomorrow's post, I have to tell you what I did in NYC yesterday!...

The German philanderer

STIPIMM: “Georgia on My Mind,” by Ray Charles
(guess which state’s tax forms I’ve been working on this afternoon)

And now, to the second thing that set Bertolt Brecht off from the pack as both a man and an artist: he had a high-pitched girly voice. Okay, that’s not the second thing, but it is true, he did have a high voice.

Helene Weigel

The second thing that distinguishes him is his record of relationships with women. Brecht is hardly the first great artist to be a womanizer, but Bertolt integrated his affairs into his daily life in a way that many men dream of, but few men achieve. His longtime wife, the actress Helene Weigel, not only tolerated his affairs, but managed them for him. There’s an oft-cited story of how Helene, upon seeing one of Bertolt’s mistresses flirting with someone else, went to the other man and asked him to stay away, essentially saying that the mistress’ wanderings would distract Brecht and hurt his art.

Ruth Berlau

Elizabeth Hauptmann

And that seems to be the underlying power that B.B. had over his women: his art. Several women, particularly Ruth Berlau and the aforementioned Elizabeth Hauptmann, effaced themselves both sexually and literarily for this man. It was a power he exhibited early on in his life, wooing teenage women up to his bedroom with his songs. And until he died in his 50s, women, young and old, were drawn to Brecht’s charisma and artistic temperament. In his 40s and 50s, he had several lovers (mostly actresses) who were in their 20s. Poor B.B., indeed. How this homely fellow, who smoked big stogies and had poor hygiene, got so much tail is something to be marveled at.

But again, it’s not so much his power of attraction that set him apart, it was the way in which he made his women part of his life. When hopping from country to country after fleeing from Hitler’s Germany, he not only took his wife and child with him, but one or two of his mistresses, often traveling together. The things that Bertolt was able to get people to do is at times astounding. Later in life, he had an ongoing affair with the young wife of a German socialist reformer--with the husband’s outright permission.

Despite his own unwillingness to tie himself down to one woman, he was a fiercely jealous lover. From his teens on, he insisted that his woman remain faithful to only him, even as he was hopping from bed to bed. If he found out that one of his women was about to stray, he would redouble his efforts to keep her, just long enough to ensure that she remained true.

When we look at these incidents, and indeed as I read his biography, it is astounding how much he was able to get away with. And as I learned more and more about the man, it was evident that these women believed they were, in some way, contributing to his art by being his servile mistress or by coddling his neediness. The German film “The Farewell,” which depicts the last days of Brecht’s life (and a lot of the type of behavior I’ve described) portrays Bertolt as a child in a man’s body, whom Helene has to mother in order to keep him on track with his art. When a mistress’ outbursts threaten to upset his work, Helene struggles to put the woman back in her proper place: at Bertolt’s beck and call. The film, obviously, is a fictionalized account of Brecht’s life, but I think it correctly captures the essence of his many relationships with his women.

Looking at Brecht’s relationships through our current mindset, we’re liable to judge him unfavorably. The man was selfish, childish, and lived what was something akin to a polygamist lifestyle. Not someone to be looked up to? But the man created great art (or at least assembled it…) and sparked a revolution on the stage with his idea of “epic theatre.” And it could be argued that his body of work would have never emerged from someone a dutiful, faithful husband.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m not one who is sold on the idea of monogamy (but I am sold on honesty), so it’s hard for me to judge him negatively. Hell, in some ways I admire the man for it. One could say that his women were victims, manipulated by a charismatic artist who made them believe they needed him more than he needed them; indeed, nothing particularly honest about that. But consider that these women, many of whom had the better part of a lifetime to deal with their love for Brecht, all were willing participants in his amorous web; in reading about his life, it seems that Brecht’s women were all to willing to give themselves emotionally in exchange for being a part of this great artist’s life, even a part of his art. I don’t think that these women would have agreed that they were victims.

The German plagiarist

STIPIMM: “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” by Julia Ward Howe

This is the first of what will probably be several entries related to the play that Bridget was most recently involved with, “Brecht on Brecht” (I like to pronounce it as though I was hocking a loogie each time I say “Brecht.” First, I want to talk about Bertolt Brecht, the man.

Over the summer, I got to digest a fair percentage of the information that Bridget also had to take in as she prepared to be the dramaturge for the play. I read a biography of him by Klaus Volker and read most of his major plays. I cannot claim to be as sizable an expert on B.B. as Bridget, but I certainly know plenty about him.

There are two things that I think really set Brecht apart from others, as both a person and an artist. The first (I’ll tackle the second in tomorrow’s entry) is that he was, shall we say, a chronic borrower of other people’s ideas. Brecht habitually, from the time he was a teenager, appropriated other people’s works and incorporated them into his own, usually without any attribution or recognition. The most notable example is his most famous work, “The Three-Penny Opera;” it is almost taken for granted now that it was mostly written by his longtime collaborator and lover, Elizabeth Hauptmann. Not only did Brecht not give her proper attribution (which Hauptmann put up with for the sake of her beloved B.B.), but after he died, his true widow fought giving Hauptmann any proceeds from the royalties of the work.

A saying that got thrown around a lot this summer at the lake as we learned about Brecht was: “Good writers borrow. Great writers steal.” And it’s true that there’s little that hasn’t been done in one fashion or another sometime in the past. But there’s a line between being inspired by a text and outright lifting things from it. What’s the difference, you say? One requires a lot more work and thought. It's almost as though he was an editor, bringing disparate parts together into great works. A worthy effort yes, but hardly the work of genius. He has more value than say, the famous play “The Blue Room” by David Hare, which is essentially a translation of Arthur Schnitzler’s “La Ronde.” (sorry, but saying it's "freely adapted" from the original play doesn't let one off the hook; how he is able to hold copyright on a derivative work and make so much money off of it is something I can’t understand… but I digress).

One could say that Brecht’s casual attitude toward the notion of copyright and authorial ownership is simply an expression of his larger attitudes toward the world in general, which believed in socialism and collective ownership. That may be, but if Brecht were really so concerned about collective work, why was he so adamant about being the only writer credited on his plays?

In “Brecht on Brecht,” there’s a passage by B.B. called “Questions from a Worker Who Reads” which talks about how the wars and great monuments of history are always attributed to great men, who got to their position through the work of the people under them, often soldiers and slaves.

        Young Alexander conquered India.
        All by himself?
        Caesar beat the Gauls.
        Not even a cook to help him with his meals?
        Philip of Spain wept when his Armada
        Went down. Did no one else weep?
        Frederick the Great won the Seven Years War.
        Who else was the winner?

Brecht himself was guilty of this sin, and the hypocrisy of that passage made me smile both times I saw the play.

XXXI

STIPIMM: “Birthday,” by the Beatles

Someday, my biographer will begin his work thus:

“[The Boy] was born on October 13, 1974, at 3:10 in the morning at St. Francis Hospital in Lynwood, California. His parents were the 21-year-old Beverly Marie (nee Holder) and 25-year-old Michael Lewis McKenzie, a student at an L.A.-area junior college. The doctor’s recorded remarks after the birth note that although the child was delivered breech, he emerged from the womb with eyes open and lucid, calmly taking in the scene with a natural wisdom, while the nurses gasped at the disproportionately large size of his penis.”

Birthdays begin just like any other days. Lying in bed, looking up at the ceiling illuminated by morning sunlight, there’s that moment of solitude. Your partner is asleep next to you, your body not quite ready to move. It’s usually a nice moment, as it was today, punctuated by the recognition that, despite all the relationships and emotional connections you may have in your life, that you are still a single person. One mind. Not alone, yet pleasantly alone.

Today, as with other birthdays, the moment was different in that I was very aware of my age. And not in a creaky-bones, I’m-getting-old kind of way. Just a realization of what it means to be 31 and what it doesn’t mean.

Ever since I became an adult, I’ve sometimes compared my life to those of my parents, especially my father, noting what he was doing in his life when he was my age. Upon turning 31, I have now passed the age of my father when my brothers were born in 1980. As a 31-year-old, he had three children; I quake at the thought of just one. What’s more significant is that this is the first time that I am at an age that I actually remember my father being. That is to say, my first clear, long-term memories are from the time when my father was 30 to 31 years old. Now, thinking back to how I saw my father then, and what place he had in my life, it is almost as though I’m looking at myself, but through very different eyes. It is, to say the least, a strange feeling.

I love having a birthday; age is just a footnote for one of my favorite days of the year. I take celebrating my friends’ birthdays very seriously, because I know how important mine is to me. I hope I always will enjoy it as much as I do now, as much as I ever have.

Because Bridget has a tech run for “Brecht on Brecht” tonight, we celebrated my birthday last night. She made me fettucini alfredo with Italian bread, followed up by a birthday cake, yellow with chocolate frosting. Yum! Then we topped it off by sitting down to watch my favorite movie, “Dr. Strangelove.” Seeing that movie always reminds me why I got into films in the first place.

This morning, after my moment of solitude, my true love brought me breakfast in bed. I took the opportunity to reread something Bridget had written for me in a card the previous evening – a lovely poem, for me:

        I wake in the morning and begin to crave him
        The emptiness begins on my left
                and slowly burrows through me
        Sometimes he’s kind enough to leave
                a faint smell of him behind
        It is both splendid and cruel

        At noon I begin to forget who I am
        My left side still aches with his absence
        I tell myself… 11 hours to boy
        I don’t know if the counting helps much

The moment of solitude, punctuated by an overwhelming sense of love.

When it Mormons, it pours

STIPIMM: “Chain of Fools,” by Aretha Franklin

Some good news fell into my lap yesterday afternoon, in the form of a phone call from a Mr. Ian Allen, of Cherry Red Productions. Specifically, it was three pieces of news all regarding the my thesis film, “Trapped by the Mormons.”

First, it turns out that “Trapped” will be playing in Beantown this weekend. It will be shown as part of the Boston Fantastic Film Festival on Friday night at midnight. This is pleasing for a lot of reasons; most significantly, I’ll be able to exhibit some of my work to some of our new friends. It may sound kind of strange to an outsider, but imagine if I wanted to ask one of Bridget’s school chums to act in or help out with something of mine. It is leaps and bounds easier to convince them to participate if they already have a taste of what I do, rather than just going on Bridget’s word alone. That worked in D.C., where everyone knew Bridget well… probably wouldn’t work so well here yet.

Second, in addition to the one-time showing that “Trapped” will be getting at the Pioneer Theater in Manhattan next week, the theater wants to run “Trapped” for a full week in December. That means a lot of really good things: 1) just being able to say we had an actual run in NYC; 2) money, money, money; and 3) the very real possibility of a review in the New York Times (just the thought makes me orgasm spontaneously).

And third, what has to be the most surprising development of all, the owner of the Pioneer Theater, who apparently has a fair amount of background in all aspects of film distribution, wants to be the distributor for the movie. That could mean a lot or it could mean nothing – depending on how good of a distributor he is. But at the worst, nothing else could happen, and at the very best, we could have screenings in small theaters all over the place. Which, of course, means money, money, money. One can dream.

This month marks the one-year anniversary of the shooting of “Trapped by the Mormons,” and I must say, I’m very pleased with how post-production and distribution has gone. I can’t say that Ian and I didn’t imagine this kind of thing happening; we thought about and discussed a lot of the possibilities for growth of the movie. But we certainly weren’t counting on any particular result. So, every success the movie has seen has been a pleasant, if not entirely unforeseen, surprise. As Ian put it yesterday, we’re batting 1.000 so far in terms of venues and festivals he’s approached to show the film (and the irony of Ian Allen using a baseball metaphor didn’t escape me). All that’s left in our original high-hopes plan of action is to show in Salt Lake City, and that looks like that might happen soon. Beyond that, there’s the new distribution possibilities, and then the beauty of online DVD sales. We’ll see what happens.

Where my tuition went

STIPIMM: “Ages of You” by R.E.M.

The front page of today’s Washington Post says it all: Dr. Benjamin Ladner, the president of my recent alma mater, American University, was fired from his job, sacked, shitcanned, sent packing, given a pink slip, booted, ousted, deposed, laid off. Ladner had the post taken from him in the wake of a financial scandal.

In the world of east-coast academia, this is a particularly significant event for a number of reasons, most notably for the effect it might have on the hiring and spending practices of university trustees. The importance for yours truly is that it involves, oh, about $20,000 of money I spent to get a degree at this place.

The Post story can explain the details of the scandal far better than I could. But it’s important to know some of the particulars if you intend to read this long, boring post. First off, a few months ago, the board of trustees received an anonymous letter detailing how Ladner had been allegedly squandering school money on decidedly non-school events, including his wife’s social get-togethers, Ladner’s birthday party (at which, apparently, caviar was served), and their son’s engagement party. There were also lavish restaurant trips and unnecessary use of limousines and first-class airfare. The board initiated an audit which found and questioned these expenditures, while Ladner claimed that he was entitled to them under his contract.

There it gets kind of sticky, because Ladner apparently had *two* contracts with the university, only one of which was formally ratified by the board, but both of which had been signed by all parties concerned. It’s the non-ratified one, of course, that allowed Ladner a lot of leeway in how he spent discretionary funds. Ladner disputed the idea that his expenditures were problematic, but he agreed to repay all the questioned expenses and get the whole contract thing ironed out.

But by then, the taint of scandal had sunk in deep. The Post had been aggressively following this story, and for good or for ill, that threw a cloud over whatever was to follow. Both the students and faculty were up in arms over the high-life spending Ladner, who was already one of the highest paid university presidents in the country. The faculty boards of five out of the university’s six schools (including my School of Communication) overwhelmingly voted no-confidence in Ladner. A large group of students protested on campus, marching to the doors of a board meeting and basically raising holy hell over the issue (they march and shout when daddy's money is on the line, but do they fuck shit up for people dying in Iraq? Of course not - daddy might buy them a car, after all [AU has a deserved reputation as being the dumping ground for rich kids who weren't bright enough to get into the Ivy League])

Funny thing is, it seemed at first that Ladner had strong enough support on the board of trustees to remain, but with that kind of opposition in the ranks, the board had no real choice but to let him go. There was just no way the man could have restored his credibility in the eyes of the students and faculty.

And so, now he’s gone. And I could barely care less. I’m mainly interested in this as a news event that took place close to home; I’m certainly not really concerned about it as “a member of the American University community.” Whatever. As those of you who saw me hightail it out of the shadow of Rice University know, I’m not one to buy into the idea of the importance of the academic quality of your alma mater. If I ever encounter someone who would look at my degree and seriously be bothered with where I got it, then that’s not a person I’d want to work for anyway. Perhaps I’d feel differently if I’d actually gone to universities that I had more than a modicum of respect for, but that’s for another blog entry.

I do have an opinion about the whole fiasco, however (just because I don’t care doesn’t mean I don’t *care*). I think what happened at dear old AU can be compared to the impeachment of W.J. Clinton, another chubby president. Political opponents, desperate to get rid of a president they don’t like, finally find a charge that sticks and milk it as much as they can. The trustees of AU are as political a bunch as any you’ll ever find, and Ladner had plenty of supporters and detractors, all equally firm in their beliefs. Ladner got hit by a witchhunt that finally found a witch.

That’s not to say I particularly approve of Ladner’s “imperial lifestyle,” as one of his opponents called it. But there’s a perfectly legitimate reason for a university president having some version of the high-life; just as our American president needs a big executive mansion and all the trappings of rich life to project the power of the country and woo the dignitaries that visit him, so do did our American University president need all that good stuff to woo money out of the pockets of wealthy donors. Ladner raised untold amounts of money for the university with his events, and now students and faculty are shocked, shocked to find out that getting that money required spending some first.

And I don’t think people are naïve of the needs of university presidents to spend money, but as soon as they saw what that meant, with the lavish dinners and limousine rides, etc., then everyone went bezerk. Guess what, American University, your next president will be more careful not to put all of his dinners out on the university tab, but he or she sure as hell will spend as much money as Ladner did.

I really think what it all boils down to, at its essence, is poor-man’s schadenfreude. Most Americans love the idea of being rich, living large and not worrying about money, but only so long it’s us that gets to do it. Having stories of grand living rubbed in one’s face while you’re having trouble making ends meet just makes one angry and hungry for blood. Just ask former Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski.

So, yes, I think Ladner got scapegoated. Yeah, he could have been a little smarter about the spending, but the fact is, the board of trustees tacitly approved of that spending and all that it encompassed. If there is anyone at fault, it is the board of trustees for its lousy oversight and for its money-first attitude toward the institution. Because of this fiasco, the board was forced to put a faculty member and a student on the board for the first time. If any good can come from this, perhaps its that the atmosphere in the board room will have changed for the better.

I won’t hold my breath.

The password is...

STIPIMM: The “Wallace and Gromit” theme song

One of the few joys I get from moving to a new area is the opportunity to create a new password base. In a continuing effort to make the passwords to my account hard to figure out, yet easy to remember, I’ve taken to thinking up a password root that is based on the place I’m moving to. Something not quite so obvious, something that no one else would think up or attribute to me. From there, I use that root and a simple, but obfuscating, formula to come up with passwords for my different accounts in a new place.

The only drawback with my fun little intellectual exercise is that sharing my cute passwords is verboten for the simple reason that they’re supposed to be secret. And as Bridget can tell you, I tend to be obsessively secretive about my passwords. Well now that I’ve updated all my accounts to the new Boston passwords, I can reveal my proud password history.

The following are the password roots that I’ve used since 1992. Note that the actual passwords, once they’ve gone through the formula, look nothing like these, and knowing the roots wouldn’t do you any good without the formula. I’m not going to explain them to you just yet, so you have to try to figure out yourself what they mean. I’ll reveal the explanations in an upcoming post.

While at Rice (1992-1996):
Dartmouth

Pauls Valley, Okla. (1996-1998)
Pecan pie

Winchester, Va. (1998-1999)
Apple pill

Fredericksburg, Va. (1999-2001)
Dead arm

Vienna, Va.
Schnitzel

Washington, D.C.
Dangerfield

My password for Boston is one of my best yet; I’m quite proud of it… too bad I can’t share it.

Art Appreciation 101

STIPIMM: “Criminal” by Fiona Apple

“So what did you think?”

“I enjoyed it. I liked the guy who was playing Henry, but everyone else was not all that good.”

“Yeah, Henry seemed to be the only stand-out guy. What about the play itself?”

“Well, I’ve never really liked ‘The Real Thing.’”

“Really?”

“Yeah, the characters don’t really have depth. The story’s just kind of… fluff.”

“I didn’t know anything Tom Stoppard wrote could be considered ‘fluff.’ What do you mean when you say ‘depth’?”

“Well, layers, you know. Different aspects of character and of the story.”

“Example?”

“Like ‘Boy Gets Girl.’ The stalker only appears in the first scene, but his imposing presence is felt throughout the entire play because of how it’s constructed. It’s brilliant how they did that.”

“Well, you could say that ‘The Real Thing’ has layers too, I mean the whole thing with Henry’s trying to look intellectual, the parallels between Henry and Brodie.”

“Yeah, but those aren’t that interesting. They’re just kind of there. They don’t really signify anything.”

“Anything interesting, you mean.”

“Right.”

--

I’ve been thinking about theater quite a bit over the past week or so. Makes sense, since my wife regales me every evening with the stories of drugs, debauchery and mayhem that she experiences daily at rehearsals for “Brecht on Brecht.”

Okay, that’s a lie. There’s not much drugs and debauchery (though some, I’m told). But it’s not a lie that I’ve been thinking about theater, and art in general. It started when Bridget and I had the conversation with is (badly) paraphrased above this past weekend. It got me to thinking quite a bit about the nature of art.

Something about our conversation stuck in my craw that evening. I finally realized (just a couple of days ago) that it was this: it is taken as axiomatic that having layers of meaning (i.e., “depth”) is one of the measures of good art. Perhaps that’s a good thing; the last thing we need is someone calling “The Berenstain Bears” art. But it’s taken too far in most discourse, to the point where just having layers of any kind is a praise-worthy achievement.

I would contend that we’ve watered down the idea of “layered” work. What we mean when we say something has “depth,” is not really that it has “layers.” I mean, I could take the Steven Seagal movie “On Deadly Ground,” and find what could be called “layers” (capitalism vs. Nativism; man finding redemption through revenge; “What does it take to change the essence of a man?”; lots of arm-breaking). What we really mean when we say “layered,” is 1) that it has layers of meaning that we think are worthy of note; 2) that they’re brought out well in the execution of the artist. “On Deadly Ground” might have layers worth examining, but with an action-focused story, not to mention Steven Seagal’s Oscar-worthy acting, the execution isn’t worth spit. “Debbie Does Dallas” may have well executed sex scenes, but the lack of story depth beyond the premise of nubile teenagers trying to raise enough money to go to cheerleading camp makes the movie fall flat… at least after the climax(es).

Sounds pretty “Art Appreciation 101,” right? Fine. Here’s where I go off-track: in terms of number 1, where we value art based on the quality of its layers, I think we art-goers are quite easy and forgiving when we’re presented with something that is excellent in execution, but otherwise lacking in depth.

Let’s take “The Princess Bride,” one of my favorite movies. But what the hell is so good about it? Depth of story? Give me a break. We like it solely for the execution: silly, snarky, anachronistically funny, and smart (whatever that means). It’s entertaining. There are a host of films that are of questionable depth that our dear Gen-X/Y culture loves anyway. And it would be okay if it wasn’t for this: when we like a film or a play or a book or whatever for its execution, we subconsciously search for and find meaning even where there isn’t one, or at least one that we would otherwise give a damn about.

My personal example for this is “Pulp Fiction.” Here’s a movie that basically wears its lack of depth like a badge. It’s a great movie simply for its narratives: putting interesting (yet mostly one-dimensional) characters through extraordinary circumstances. And yet, we’re tempted to try to make it more important than it is. “Ooo, what’s in the briefcase? Marcellus’ soul? Is that why he has a band-aid on the back of his neck?” “Harding vs. Coolidge… is that some political statement?” “By going to a nonlinear format, he’s trying to shake up our notions of time.” Oh please. He did it because it’s cool. Leave it at that.

But even when something does have layers, are we really that much better off? Is the story of “Chinatown” really that much better than that of any other hard-boiled noir thriller? Again, it seems it’s the execution that we admire as much as any layers.

Indeed, I’m discovering something about my artistic outlook that I’m not too happy with at the moment: the range of the kinds of layers that I find “worthy of note” (as I mentioned in ‘1’ above) is very small. So small in fact, that as I think about most of the films/plays/art I like, two words keep coming to mind: “So what?”

“Hey, you should see ‘Manhattan!’ It’s got a lot of layers about the nature of love and desire.”

“So what?”

“I really like Manet’s painting ‘Olympia.’ The way she stares back at the viewer, daring you to look at her naked form, making you a part of the scene.”

“So what?”

“Boy, that Shakespeare knew how to write ‘em. Especially ‘Hamlet,’ which is just has layers upon layers of meaning.”

“So what?”

It’s revelatory that the two movies that I’ve long considered my favorite (“Dr. Strangelove” and “Crimes and Misdemeanors”) have themes that are harder for me to say “So what?” to (the insanity of nuclear war; the amorality of life). Maybe I’ve been reading too much about Brecht, who thought that art without any practical importance or use was just that, useless. Does art have to speak to something important for me to really consider it worthwhile? More to think about.

The family accountant

STIPIMM: “Downtown” by Petula Clark

Those of you who know me probably have some inkling of my proclivity to keep track of my finances. Most of you probably don’t know, however, exactly how deep it runs. My dearest Bridget is finding out these things first-hand, with mixed results.

Almost 10 years ago, my friend Justin wrote a song about me called “The Diarist,” in which he examines my then-desire to keep a written record of every day, trying to keep it fresh in my mind.

“When you think of all the wasted time
The days we lost in the traffic lines
Of pen and page and worn-out rhymes –
Oh God, I’m going to lose my mind.”

In other words, if you spend too much time trying to keep hold of the past, you’ll sacrifice living in the present.

After I graduated from college, I stopped journaling quite so much, and the need to record daily life seemed to fade.

But in fact, it only transformed. It started when I lived in France, when I kept a detailed ledger of all the francs I spent and what I spent them on. I still have it; thumbing through it is one quick way of reliving some of the experiences there, or at least the materialistic experiences.

After college, faced with the actual necessity of keeping track of my personal finances for the first time, I followed my father’s example and purchased Quicken, a software program that basically serves as an electronic ledger.

I was quicken-ly hooked. It wasn’t the recording of the income and expenses that really got me addicted, it was being able to track everything through categories and reports and graphs. And the addition of features to subsequent versions of Quicken have only fed that addiction. It may sound crazy, but I like the fact that I can tell you exactly how much money I spent on Dining in all the years between 1997 and today (quite a bit…).

At first, living meagerly in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, it was pretty easy to track all my expenses. I didn’t have that many, so keeping track of my cash expenses wasn’t that hard either. However, as I started to move up in salary and expenses, so did the complexity of my finances. If I were a rational man, I would drop the need to keep finely detailed accounts of my expenses, but no, I still like to track my cash expenses as well as electronic ones.

And so, it requires almost daily upkeep to keep track of things, whether it be balancing the bank account or reconciling credit card statements. In actuality, the total time I spend on this stuff per month would probably not be terribly more than a normal person would spend if they just paid bills and balanced the checkbook once or twice a month. But it would still be more time, nonetheless.

The end result is that I always feel comfortable with my finances. Even if I know that I’ll be eating ramen until next month’s paycheck, I feel better knowing that than I would not knowing.

On Aug. 21, 2005, I merged my finances figuratively and literally with my lovely wife. Since then, I’ve been working almost daily to try to get her records entered and merged into my accounts, and getting back to the level of comfort with our finances that I had before.

It’s been hard for Bridget to understand. Her previous version of bookkeeping consisted of throwing her bills (sometimes unopened) into an accordion file and checking her balance on an ATM to make sure she didn’t bounce any checks. My desire to not only pore over these bills and statements and keep regular track of how our financial picture is on any give day is something she can’t comprehend.

To her credit, though, she recognized early on that it would be better for me and easier for her if I kept track of all our finances (calm down feminists: I give her regular updates…). However, she’s learning what that entails for me: entering in statements from before we got married so we can track spending trends; poring over her bills and scanning them into my computer for digital archiving. She admitted to me a couple of nights ago that it “weirds” her out a little bit, and I can understand why.

But what I explained to her, and what she understands (I think), is this: Bridget felt the need to unpack our apartment as soon as we moved in and continues to work tirelessly to get things organized and keep them that way. In the same way that she needs that level of “organizational comfort” at having merged our two lives together in Boston, so I need the “financial comfort” of being able to understand where our position monetarily. And just as she didn’t feel quite at ease until things had settled down in our apartment in terms of moving in, so it will be with me: I won’t ever feel quite at ease in our new life until I have our financial picture fully drawn for me to see and understand. I’m almost there, I promise…

Tuesdays are always difficult

Since school began the boy and I have been in a pattern of saying good-bye in the mornings and then not seeing each other until about midnight that evening. I am enjoying everything I'm doing, but the goal all week is to get to Saturday night when I can spend time with him. We get Saturday night, all day and night Sunday and then Monday night. Then Tuesday morning comes and the routine begins again.

This weekend was particulary nice. Saturday I had rehearsal and the boy finished editing a promotional trailer for the documentry he's been editing (and he got major props from the director...lots of exclamation points after statements like: You rocke!). Saturday night the boy packed us some PB&J's and met me at the theater where we enjoyed a fluffy realism play. Sunday I had a lot of work to do but I mixed up with some play time with the boy. Last night we did our usual Monday night laundry-thon, dinner and a movie (mixed in with Paper Writing 101 for me). They were perfectly wonderful days. It's both bitter and sweet. On the one hand it is a great head space to start the week off with. On the other hand it makes Tuesdays a bit more difficult.

Jesus and Biff

STIPIMM: “The Smartest Monkeys,” by XTC

I just finished a very interesting book, loaned to me by my good friend, Amanda, about the life of one Jesus of Nazareth.

Damn, that sounds like something from a Vacation Bible School skit. “It’s called the Bible. It ain’t bad – you should read it sometime.”

No, Amanda did not loan me a Bible, thank Allah. The book is called, “Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal.” It is a humorous novel whose primary conceit is that Jesus of Nazareth had a best friend named Biff (or “Levi who is called Biff”) who accompanies him throughout his travels up to and including those chronicled in the New Testament. However, it purports (tongue-in-cheek) to portray all the events that are missing from the Gospels, namely Jesus’ childhood, adolescence and ascent into manhood.

Being a lover of this kind of thing, I starting reading Amanda’s copy while they were up for the wedding, and she generously sent it along for me to read when she had finished.

It was a fun read, to be sure. The book begins with Biff meeting Jesus and them becoming fast friends. They both fall for a pretty young thing named Mary Magdalene (“Maggie”) who becomes “the one that got away” for both of them. The stuff about Jesus’ childhood, up until the time he turned 13, was my favorite part of the book.

Most of the rest of the book involves Jesus and Biff’s journey to find the three wise men from the East who came to witness Jesus’ birth. Jesus wants to know exactly what they knew that led them to him and what it means for his destiny, which he’s still trying to figure out. They find each one in turn, spending years with them as they (or at least Jesus) learn the philosophy of love and kindness.

It is an interesting historical speculation to send Jesus east to learn about philosophy. Indeed, there are plenty of parallels between what Jesus taught (as opposed to what most Christians purport to believe now) and eastern philosophy. Moore tracks those parallels quite well.

But this part of the book is also where it starts to get a little hokey. The book is at its best when it tries to sound true to history; at times, despite the crazy narrative, you think, yeah, it could have happened that way. But when it freely takes in anachronisms, such as Biff’s supposed invention of sarcasm, or his (believe it or not) development of an early form of the law of evolution, it just stands out and just makes me think, “Oh look, trying to be clever. Hardee har har.”

The book gets back on track once Jesus and Biff return to Galilee to start Jesus’ ministry. It tracks through events portrayed in the Bible, but adds certain twists, yet staying true to the Gospels. My favorite aspect of this is the focus on the idiosyncracies of the twelve Apostles, from the delusional Thomas to the dense, but loyal, Peter.

As I look over what I’ve written so far, I realize that this sounds like a book review. I didn’t mean it to; I’m basically just writing it out to kind of work out what I think about it.

The main reason I started talking about this book at all, however, is because I was thinking about what kind of film it would make. Me being a film person, I’m always considering how a particular piece of intellectual property would convert to cinema. It’s me practicing to be a producer. (“This is a great story! Get me this Bill Shakespeare on the phone!”) Several of you out there may remember that I had previously considered doing a version of the Book of Jonah, and so imagining this as a film was a logical extension of that. And besides, can you imagine the controversy/publicity that could be garnered from this kind of story, even if it fundamentally remains faithful to the spirit of the Gospels?

My simple answer about it’s translatability to the screen is… it could work. The first and last parts of the story (those parts that take place in Galilee and Judea), could be wonderfully done, much in the spirit of “Monty Python and the Life of Brian.” But the middle part of the story, the main meat of the entire book, which is set in what is now Afghanistan, China and India, would have to be retooled. There’s just too much philosophizing and internal struggle for a film to deal with (sorry, we can’t make “My Dinner with Jesus” here) and not bore the pants off the audience. Granted, there is a very exciting part with a demon killing some Chinese concubines, and another part where Jesus and Biff save children from ritual sacrifice a la “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” but other than that, something would have to be reworked.

Of course, this is just an intellectual exercise. No doubt some like-minded producer has snatched up the option to this story and is developing it as we speak. I’m curious to see if they can come up with something film-worthy.