A Lesson from St. Vincent and The Fisher King

** SPOILER ALERT *** If you haven’t seen these two movies, consider reading this essay after you do.

Watching Bill Murray’s film St. Vincent last week, I was reminded of another movie: The Fisher King, starring Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams.  Both the 1991 and 2014 releases are similar, not just because they’re manipulative and contrived, but because they could potentially lead one to view the more downtrodden among us differently.  How?  Well, that depends on how you look at things.  For some, the movies might invoke a spirited response similar to that of Christopher Tookey, who wrote of the Fisher King:

"The sagacity of the saga is diminished by screenwriter Richard LaGravenese's naively sentimental approach to homelessness and insanity.  Madness in this film can be cured just by knowing that someone cares about you, and homelessness is not a social problem, but a picturesque way that individuals have of coping with personal tragedy.”

Whereas Tookey feared people could stop viewing homelessness as a real problem, I remember walking away from The Fisher King with a more positive thought:  that its tale of a personal tragedy might lead people to view homeless in a more humane way, concluding that perhaps it wasn’t drug use, crime, or other poor choices that led their downfall, but rather a terrible event over which they had no control.

Never mind that generalizing a film’s depiction of a fictional character as a universal truth is unfair to a medium that’s primary purpose is to entertain.  After all, just because Robin Williams’s character suffered a horrendous tragedy doesn’t mean all homeless people have.  But it might be a positive step when we’re confronted with, say, a panhandler, to help use the movie as an example, and consider that this person asking for money may once have been living a full and rich life only to have a tragedy propel them downward (of course, you could argue that it shouldn’t matter one way or the other.  A person in need is a person in need, no matter what led to their circumstances).

St. Vincent walks a similar line to that of The Fisher King.  Its egregiously manipulative screenplay has the main character – who’s been a complete ass for most of the film – conveniently throw out the remnants of his nobler past just as a neighborhood kid watches through a window, thus casting the curmudgeon in a new light.  Like The Fisher King, this film seems to shout out, “Don’t judge a person too harshly – you don’t know what he’s been through.”

And as contrived as this message may be, this is exactly the default setting we should be employing in our lives.  When someone cuts us off on the highway, treats us inconsiderately at the cash register or demeans us at the doctor’s office, it’s easy for us to conclude that the person we’re dealing with is simply a low-life asshole who thinks of nothing but himself.  And you know what?  The easy conclusion may actually be right on the mark. 

But aren’t we much better served by assuming that the person who’s cut us off on the highway is in a terrible hurry because he just found out his spouse has cancer, or the inconsiderate cashier just discovered she can’t pay this month’s rent, or the demeaning physician just had to tell a patient that he’s dying.  Unlikely scenarios, perhaps, but possible, just like it’s possible the homeless person you encountered lost his wife in an unspeakably horrific way, and it’s possible that the cranky neighbor who everyone dislikes is a war veteran who’s been taking care of his wife with dementia for years.

It doesn’t hurt to assume the best in people, and it could even do a lot of good.  As Atticus Finch said, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”  It’s a difficult ideal to live up to, but it’s certainly one to aspire to, and movies like St. Vincent and The Fisher King are helpful – if a bit melodramatic – reminders if that ideal.

The End of Cable? (sniff, sniff)

A few months ago I documented an infuriating experience I had with Comcast for what should have been a simple fix (i.e., replacing a broken router).  Despite the fact that a friend of mine who I hadn’t heard from in over half a year proactively reached out to me to mock my essay, I stand by it, and now Joel Stein of TIME Magazine does too, at least tacitly.

In this week’s TIME, Stein discusses his attempt to transfer his cable service to a new address, but apparently Time Warner shares Comcast’s penchant for ineptness and stupidity.  After several phone calls with no resolution, Stein decided to cut the cord and discontinue cable altogether.  My blog may not have much of an impact on the cable industry, but Time Warner can’t exactly be thrilled with Stein declaring,“…I really, really, really hate Time Warner Cable.”  He certainly isn’t alone.

When Blockbuster went belly-up a few years back, I said to a friend of mine, “Well, I guess that’s what happens when your business model is built on treating customers like three year-old felons.”  Cable companies could learn a thing or two from the likes of Blockbuster.  My family hasn’t had cable TV in over 14 years, and it’s becoming less of a sacrifice with each passing year of added streaming content through Amazon, Netlfix, and the like.  And now, poor customer service is jeopardizing our decision to use Comcast for Internet and phone service.  

It may only be a matter of time before cable compaies take the dive, and when it does, it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch fo guys.  Except possibly the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.

Saying No to College Competition

Confucius may have said it first, but I remember the following quote best from The Brady Bunch Movie in which Mike Brady tells his children, “And as a wise man once said, 'wherever you go....there you are.'” (see 0:33)

Parents of high schoolers may have a hard time embracing this little tidbit when it comes to preparing their kids for college, when so many forces tell us that where you attend college is the most important decision you and your child well ever make.  It's hard not to get stuck in idea of achieving at all costs.  Case in point: while volunteering last week at Feed My Starving Children, I sat next to two women of high school sophomores and heard them discuss their kids’ impending college searches, and phrases like “ACT practice test,” “hire a tutor” and “a good college resume-builder” peppered their conversation.  I got the feeling that while packing food for the starving was all well and good, adding an entry for next year’s college applications was even better. 

They’re not alone.  The race to college is a national phenomenon that for many begins in the toddler years and lets up only with an acceptance letter from Harvard. 

Last March, Brigid Schulte of The Washington Post authored an excellent article about “the parenting arms race.”  In it, she highlights the story of Wilma Bowers, whose daughter was sneered at by fellow classmates after applying to James Madison University – a fine school by all accounts, but in the community of McLean, Virginia, anything short of Ivy League or Stanford is considered “settling.” (if you have time, read the comments section of this article as well – enlightening stuff).

This idea isn’t confined to hyper-competitive parents and their children.  A very down-to-earth friend of mine told me her son waffled a bit about attending a university in Colorado because part of him felt like he hadn’t pushed himself to get into a more highly-ranked school, and one of my own daughters has made similar comments.

But it’s important to consider the wisdom of Confucius and Mike Brady.  After all, you take yourself with you wherever you go, and if you’re a person who’s going to succeed (however that’s defined), you will succeed regardless of the school you attend.  Sure, going to college is important for many people, but where you go to school?  Not so much, even if you do happen to consider earnings the best measure of success.  According to a study by Stacy Dale, it’s the level of school a student is accepted to, and not where the student ends up going, that best determines future financial success.  And today’s CEOs of major U.S. corporations come from a more diverse group of schools than in the past, when graduation from an Ivy League school was more of a prerequisite.

A recent phrase that's been used recently is "authentic success," but it's really just common sense: do something you love, treat others as you want to treated, and give back.  This is nothing new.  

When my kids were two years old, I wrote the song "Head Start."

You go and visit your neighbors with kids
And brag about what yours just did
And hope her milestones measure up
Life's one big competition

Even then, I could sense that it would be very easy to fall in the hyper-competitive trap.  Fifteen years later, I hope I've dodged that bullet more often than not.

How Accurate Do Historical Films Need to Be?

Journalist Christian Caryl recently wrote a commentary in the New York Review about the movie, The Imitation Game, highlighting many of the film’s historical inaccuracies that he feels aren't trivial.  On the contrary, he contends that the film cooks up a portrayal of Alan Turing—the gay, wartime, British mathmetician who is the film’s subject—that is so far off-base, it crosses the line of artistic license and leaps into a world of artistic negligence.  He writes that the film “not only fatally miscasts Turing as a character—it also completely destroys any coherent telling of what he and his colleagues were trying to do.”  The film, he concludes, sends an “extremely distorted picture of history.”

I was intrigued to hear Caryl articulately make his point last week on NPR’s radio show, "Worldview,” along with show host Jerome McDonnell and film contributor Milos Stehlik.  At the crux of the debate was this: how accurate should historical films be, is there a line that should not be crossed, and does it really matter?

Whatever integrity Caryl built up for the first half of the show—during which he skillfully pointed out the problems with The Immitation Game—was quickly obliterated when asked about Selma, a film that's suffering similar scrutiny for its portrayal of Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King.  Caryl admits that the latter film takes “a lot of liberties with the history, some of which I found a little tough to swallow” and claims that people’s view of Martin Luther King with be “strongly shaped” by the movie.  Oddly, Caryl still recommends Selma.  Why?  “I thought it was just a damn good story.”

So, presumably, if the makers of The Immitation Game had simply made a better movie, then the historical errors could be overlooked?

During the show, host McDonnell didn't initially let Caryl’s inconsistencies off the hook, and asked him why he was okay with Selma.  Again Caryl answered, “You know, it’s a crackin’ good story…The Imitation Game I think is a bad story. A stupid story.”

Hmmm.  I personally don’t care what Caryl thinks is a good story vs. a bad story, and I’m thankful he’s not in a position of determining which films get made and which do not.  Whatever valid points he made in his essay were completely erased by his own inane argument on the radio.

But more distrubing to me is the following remark Caryl made: “A lot of people nowadays get their history from movies.  It’s that simple."

Excactly where he collected the data to formulate such a far-reaching claim is unknown, but it must be a sad, sad world Caryl lives in when most people with whom he interacts are clueless nincompoops.  Who are these people Caryl speaks of whose intellects are so flimsy that a two hour film can completely mold their viewpoints?  It’s true that I lean left politically and generally hate the right-wing attack on liberalism as “elitist,” but you know what?  In this case they would be correct to cry foul.  How much more elitist can one be to presume that most filmgoers (but not Caryl himself, of course) will have their sense of world history shaped by a movie?

Caryl's inconsistency and unsubstantiated claim notwithstanding, the question still lingers:  Does any of this matter?  Do films need to follow a guideline and be careful to portray history accurately? 

I'll answer the question with a series of additional questions: Is Amadeus an accurate portrayal of Mozart and Salieri?  Did Oliver Stone and Anthony Hopkins depict Nixon accurately in the film Nixon?  How about the character of Thatcher in The Iron Lady?  Or J.M. Barrie in Finding Neverland?  Oscar Schindler in Schlinder's List?  How about Hitler in Downfall?  Or Muhammad Ali in Ali?  The list goes on and on and on of films that were not meant to be the final say in a person’s life, but rather an entertaining interpretation. 

In other words, artistic. 

Huh.  Go figure.

Caryl overlooks a few other important points:

1)     All art is slanted, be it film, photographs, paintings, and yes, even documentaries (I doubt even Caryl would claim that Michael Moore’s films are objective).   And funnily enough, a film like Zero Dark Thirty which some blasted for supporting the use of torture, I found to be a film steadfastly against torture.   What?  A piece of art can conjure up multiple viewpoints?  Nah!

2)     People are not as dumb as Caryl presumably believes.  I have seen Nixon the movie.  It does not shape my viewpoint of Nixon the man in any way, shape or form.  I have not yet seen Selma, but I gotta believe it won’t shape my view of MLK more than the words and images of the Man Himself.  This brings me to my last and most important point...

3)     Historical films provide a gateway for learning more about the subject.  I knew nothing about Turing before seeing The Imitation Game (which I quite liked, by the way).  I still know little about him, but I at least have the salient facts down: Turing was a brilliant, gay man who—along with many others—helped crack the code to the Nazi’s Enigma Machine and was later arrested for having an affair with another man.  Now, that isn’t much to go on.  But you know what?  Because of the film, I may now choose to investigate further so that in time I’ll have a more complete picture of Alan Turing, The Man, instead of Alan Turing, The Character

In that sense, we owe a great debt to The Imitation Game.

Let's allow filmmakers do what they do best: entertainment us.

A Modest Tribute to Wayne Disseler

My mom’s husband of twenty-two years died yesterday, and though words are never adequate to sum up a person's life, I’d like to at least pay a modest tribute to the man my kids called grandpa.

My earliest memory of Wayne is probably from 1992, when he drove me in his truck to downtown Milwaukee to pick up a recliner that I’d left behind at an apartment on Juneau and Van Buren.  This is actually a fitting memory, because more often than not, Wayne was helping someone.  He wasn’t happy relaxing – he wanted to be doing something.  As luck would have it, I was often in need of just such a person, both at my first home in Pennsylvania and again in Illinois, where Wayne helped paint my wife’s and my bedroom, build a broom closet in the kitchen, and insulate around the radiators.  Whenever he assisted, he was a master at handing me a tool before I needed it, like a gifted nurse to a surgeon, and now everywhere I look around my home, I see little improvements that Wayne helped complete. 

It was fortuitous that Wayne – despite having been raised outside of Wisconsin – was a Packer backer, often vocally so, for it helped solidify our relationship.  Wayne’s mood often rose and fell with Green Bay’s performance.  I have a funny memory from October of 1999, when Wayne and my mom visited my young family in Pennsylvania.  The Packers were playing Tampa Bay, and the Buccaneers scored a touchdown with less than two minutes to play in the 4^th quarter to take the lead.  In disgust, Wayne couldn’t take anymore and retreated to the spare bedroom.  And then Farve did the same thing he’d done in weeks 1 and 3 that year: he drove the Packers for a game-winning touchdown!

Wayne loved hanging out with my kids, and for many years my family flew annually to Texas (where my wife had lived years earlier, and where she had earned Wayne’s nickname for her: “Alice from Dallas”).  It was here that my daughter Sarah crawled for the first time, and over the years Mom and Wayne loved showing her, Jessica and Sam their recently adopted state, from the Kennedy Museum on a very blustery February day to the Stockyards on a very hot day in July.  Some days were more low-key, spent playing in the pool, enjoying Wayne's chilli, or playing the card game sheepshead, during which Wayne would harrumph about my mother’s poor play and accuse the kids of cheating when they took a trick.

I have many other fond memories, from our trip to Clearwater, Florida, to the time Wayne and Mom babysat my twins so that Alice and I could get away for a three-day vacation, to our seeing "Damn Yankees" on Broadway.  He was always joking, always loving, and always supportive.  My kids, my wife and I were blessed to have him a part of our lives.

So long, Wayne.  Peace.