More movie blasphemy...

[onager]

I hope everybody is having a great Labor Day weekend and doing something contructive and holidayish. As usual, I spent most of the long weekend in a sluglike torpor, only occasionally being roused to unwanted activity by the empty salsa bowl...

Just kidding, sort of.

Onto the subject, I was scanning the TV channels and hit a showing of the 1977 biopic MacArthur, about the famous General.

Caught the scene of Pres. Harry Truman, waiting impatiently for MacArthur to show up at the Wake Island conference in 1950.

Truman: "They're probably having a little trouble getting him down off the cross."



Over the weekend I did watch the movie with the fine Biblical title that's almost all blasphemy: The Day of the Locust

Redemption? Whazzat? We're ALL doomed. And the worst horror story is...well, us.

You have to love a movie that was completely hated by both of its major stars, and blamed by the director for ruining his career. That director was John Schlesinger, who also did Midnight Cowboy. So ruining his career was a pretty big accomplishment.

To sort of stay on-topic, Locust has a great scene of a Hollywood female evangelist/faith-healer, based on Aimee Semple Macpherson. Her neon crosses blink out the message - "Give To Jesus!" Intercut with scenes of her tormenting the handicapped with fake miracles, we see the collection plates full of jewelry and crumpled dollar bills.

Set in Hollywood of the 1930s, but as the last paragraph shows, the place hasn't changed much. Back then the kooks, wannabe starlets and drifters cluttering up the streets were pretty much left to run loose. The reality show hadn't been invented yet to give them their 15 minutes.

Two pieces of advice: one, if you've never seen TDOTL, do NOT read iMDB or any other reviews beforehand. The ending is a real shocker - some people say they've gotten physically ill watching it. You don't need any spoilers.

Two, if possible, read Nathanael West's novel first. If you can't, here's a non-spoiler. Lots of amateur reviewers wonder why the protagonist keeps seeing mental images of empty-eyed people roaming Hollywood. As the book makes clear but the movie doesn't, those are images from an epic apocalyptic painting the protagonist is working on, called The Burning of Los Angeles.

[dimbear]

1. For maximum enjoyment of Nathanael West, read also Miss Lonelyhearts and then never read any more.

Just my two cents.

[Curmudgeoness]

2. The Day of the Locusts was the worst book I have ever read.

Or at least one of them. With a book that shitty, the movie would have to really suck....I'll pass.

But for blasphemy, it is surely a good choice.

[onager]

3. Interesting response.

...from both of you.

We'll just have to agree to disagree on that one, then.

Something that probably influenced me to like it: when I first read the book, I was living in Hollywood. (For residents, between Hollywood & Sunset Blvds., just off Western Ave.)

I could walk out my door and literally see West's characters all around me. Frustrated retired Midwesterners waiting to "die in the sun." Old show people with their one favorable VARIETY review lovingly preserved and pulled out at every opportunity. Enough goofy varieties of religious experience to put William James on the laughing-gas forever...including a creepoid $cientology house almost across the street. Runaway wannabe teen starlets and their predators.

An incredible place, and I couldn't wait to get out of it. I moved up in the world...to North Hollywood. Ha!

The movie certainly doesn't suck on the level of Battlefield Earth. The screenwriter was Waldo Salt, who actually knew Nathanael West back in the 1930s. (Salt was later blacklisted during the McCarthy Era.)

Overall, the flick is probably about a half-hour too long and drags in places. But I sort of like slow draggy movies, I guess. Another favorite of mine is Death In Venice.

As you can tell, I'm a real big fan of light-hearted, family-friendly movies...

[Curmudgeoness]

4. I can see where you would have a different perspective

on the book/movie. I thought that every character in the book was too over the top....and maybe that was what it was supposed to be. Maybe they were supposed to be satirical representations of real types of people who populate Hollywood. But I just thought of it as ridiculous in the stereotypes. Then again, what do I know about Hollywood, then or now!

[kurtzapril4]

9. I lived in Hollywood, too.

On Whitley north of Franklin.

[onager]

10. Then howdy, former neighbor!

[awoke_in_2003]

5. Read the follow up to Catch 22...

"Closing Time"- it will change you mind as to what is the worst book ever written. Of course, maybe it was an extreme letdown of having read 22.

[onager]

6. And I would like to nominate for the coveted Worst Book Award...

Prayers for the Assassin by Robert Ferrigno (2007).

Basic plot: it is 2040 in the Islamic States of America, created after suitcase nuclear bombs destroy NY City, Washington, and Mecca. As "every schoolchild knows," the bombs were planted by Mossad agents. (I bet you've already figured out that's not exactly the story...)

The ISA is a moderate Islamic republic, in a perputual civil war with the Bible Belt (the American South), where the remaining Xians live. Another low-level war is being fought with the Aztlan Empire, former American Western states re-taken by Mexico. Utah is an autonomous Mormon republic. I think.

Oh, how did most of the USA become an Islamic republic? Revulsion toward Israel after the nukings. And many celebrity conversions, especially the country singer now known as "Shania X."

Naturally, we have a love story. Between an intrepid Fedayeen fighter and a gorgeous, oversexed historian.

Yep, it's a big ol' mess. There are a few fun parts, like "Jihad Cola" and the aircraft carrier "USS Ronald Reagan" being renamed "ISS Osama bin Laden."

But lots and lots of howlers. Ferrigno gets basic information about nukes completely wrong, and his "research" into Islam mostly consisted of surfing the web. Along with 1...that's ONE...book. (He admits that in the Foreword, though he seems to be BRAGGING about it.)

Most of the rave reviews seemed to come from right-wing Islamophobic sites. Gee, I wonder why?

http://www.amazon.com/Prayers-Assassin-Novel-Robert-Ferrigno/dp/1416567372

EDIT: I actually read this thing while living in Egypt, back in 2007. I'd mercifully forgotten a lot of it, and refreshed my memory by Googling. Lazily, though I think all the above is right.

[awoke_in_2003]

7. Oh my...

(in my best George Takei voice) that sounds awful

[AlbertCat]

8. I guess they'll get around to making it into a 3 part movie...

.... Just as soon as they finish "Atlas Shrugged"....

[badol]

11. good

good

[badol]

12. good

good