Miscellanea: Rose, Netflix, Heartbreak Kid

Miscellanea: Charlie Rose, Netflix and The Heartbreak Kid [Miscellanea is a real word and it’s better than hodge-podge, no?]

1. Charlie Rose

(A) Check out Charlie Rose’s interviews and you can find one of Roger Federer the year he first won the US Open (beating Lleyton Hewitt), in 2004. It shows Roger at his best, a thoughtful and unpretentious superstar. Rose is a superb interviewer and he helps me to understand better why I like Roger so much, apart from the fact that I detest blowhards like Connors and in-your-face players like Nadal used to be (on the court). After watching the interview, I realized that what makes Roger so exciting on the court is his masterful footwork. He seems to glide over the court and that’s what enables him to make so many sensational shots.

Charlie Rose

(B) But check out also (or instead, if watching Roger doesn’t do much for you) Charley Rose’s interviews and find the one done about a week ago of Paul Krugman (after he had won the Nobel prize). You can learn a lot about what’s happening in the economy by listening. And again, Rose understands a lot of economics and is a terrific interviewer.

2. Netflix

Somehow, Marianne and I have become "addicted" to Netflix. It’s so convenient. Choose the movie on their web site, open the envelope when it arrives one or two days later, seal the pre-stamped envelope (when finished) and mail it back.

Last week we saw "True Romance," a Quentin Tarantino film (1993). It has violence but Marianne who can’t stand to watch violence in movies got through this one. It’s a love story between two people who are totally different from anyone we know, played by Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette, and it is a very engaging–perhaps enchanting might be the word–love story (given the crazy and violent setting), as well as a drug story, all of this with an Elvis theme. Having relatively minor roles are Dennis Hopper, Val Kilmer, Brad Pitt and Samuel Jackson.

But what we have also watched and enjoyed are a number of TV series, ordering them a year or so after they originally appear on TV, either here or in Great Britain. One is The Wire, enjoyed more by MA than I–she thought it was a genuine intellectual achievement–which just ended its 5 year run on HBO (about drugs and cops in my home city of Baltimore); Foyles War (a detective series about wartime England); Cracker (a British crime drama) and Prime Suspect (a British police drama). We order these discs, one by one, in order.

And then we watch old favorites, which we have completely forgotten though we had seen them years ago, such as (recently) Nashville–very recommended. Marianne saw On the Waterfront for the first time and that one I did remember a lot–also recommended. One recent viewing that I especially liked was 12 Angry Men, with Henry Fonda. (By chance, I just finished my jury duty obligation and was not even picked to sit and be interviewed by the lawyers.)

Just as I sit down to read or write, Marianne says "do you want to watch a movie?" How can I resist?

3. The Heartbreak Kid.

I haven’t seen this in maybe 15 years, but I’ve seen it about 4 times, since it first appeared in 1972. It was directed by Elaine May and the writers were Bruce Jay Friedman (story) and Neil Simon (screenplay). Charles Grodin realizes by North Carolina or Georgia on the ride to Florida for his honeymoon that he married the wrong "girl," played wonderfully by Jeannie Berlin (Elaine May’s daughter). She is boring him (and us) to death. And then as he lies on an empty beach (Jeannie is in the hotel bedroom with sunburn), Cybell Shepherd walks by and she accuses him of "lying in her space." Grodin then manipulates his wife mercilessly in order to win over Cybill (who of course looked beautiful).

Years later, I was sent a clipping, by a friend, that sums it all up wonderfully. [It has on the top VIDI VIDI VIDI and then is entitled DVD PICK:] "(May) takes Neil Simon’s adaptation of Bruce Jay Friedman’s story "A Change of Plan" and turns it into a kind of perverse answer film to former collaborator Mike Nichol’s The Graduate. The incomparable Charles Grodin plays the smooth, blankly earnest Jewish climber who ditches his sad-sack bride (Jeannie Berlin) during their honeymoon and sets off after WASP princess Cybill Shepherd. As the abandoned bride, May provocatively casts her own daughter, eliciting a performance of heroic self-abasement from Berlin–perhaps the ultimate portrait of female abjection in American cinema. But the film’s farcical premise, which might have devolved into creepy misogyny in a male director’s hands, allows May to carry out a merciless dissection of masculine anxiety and fantasy. One of the most excruciating comedies ever made, it’s up there with any of Fassbinder’s sado-masochistic satires."

The times I saw it audiences would laugh uproariously at the preposterous manipulations of Grodin. (It’s called a comedy and May is an "unsung genius" of American comedy.) However, I never laughed, not even a smile. Though I thought the Grodin character behaved terribly, and was absolutely immoral, I would have done exactly what he did, to be with Cybill Shepherd. I didn’t laugh, I guess, because my conscience wouldn’t let me laugh, even though it was just a movie. Grodin was absolutely great, ending up being out of place with a well-to-do WASP family, one that wasn’t happy that their daughter married a Jew. (Actually, I can’t remember whether they had gotten married yet.)