The Plot Against America Finale: Reality

As brilliant and memorable as The Man in the High Castle (in print and on the screen) was, it was a comic book adventure.  Complex, as alternate histories are bound to be, but still something in the world of fantasy not reality.  Though The Plot Against America may not be quite as memorable, it is just as brilliant in its own way.  And it is about reality.  Way too close to reality be just enjoyable.  It ends up being frightening, as even the most grim fantasy cannot really be.

Let's just look at the very ending.   There's a special election for President being held in 1942.  Mrs. Lindbergh has called upon Congress to authorize it, after her husband, the President, has disappeared.  There's hope, expectations, that FDR might reclaim the White House (earlier, Walter Winchell is assassinated).  But we see in the South, where African Americans are no doubt voting for Roosevelt, that ballots are being burned rather than counted.  There's word that FDR is also doing well in some northern states.  Will that be enough to restore decency and democracy to the USA?  That's where the mini-series ends.  Before a ballot is actually counted.  Just like where we are today, regarding our Presidential election scheduled for this coming November.

Philip Roth's book, upon which the mini-series was based, was written before Trump became President in our reality.  The mini-series wasn't.  Clearly David Simon, who has Homicide, The Wire, and Treme to his earlier illustrious credit, knew all about Trump in the White House, certainly when the ending of the mini-series was finalized.  Good for Simon for making this powerful statement.

Earlier in this finale, it gets about as ugly as an alternate history in which bigotry comes to power can be.  The Klan is running high.  The FBI is competing with the Gestapo.  All of that is all too reminiscent of our reality, too.

So, see The Plot Against America.  You'll be entertained by the Yiddish.  But you'll be horrified with how much of that alternate reality is not far from where America is today.

See also The Plot Against America 1.1: Yet Another Alternate Nazi History, with Forshpeis ... The Plot Against 1.2: The 33rd President ... The Plot Against America 1.3: Corrosive Anti-Semitism ... The Plot Against America 1.4: Close to Home ... The Plot Against America 1.5: Involuntary Transfer

 

The Deuce Season 1 Finale: Hitchcock/Truffaut

Hitchcock/Truffaut, a 1966 book of interviews of film genius Alfred Hitchcock by film genius François Truffaut, is generally recognized as one of the best, if not the best, book about the strategies of film making ever published.  I certainly do, and just this term at Fordham had reason to cite in one of my classes Hitchcock's distinction  between surprise and suspense mentioned in the book.  (Surprise is when the viewer doesn't know what's going to happen - a bomb suddenly explodes on a crowded bus.  Suspense is when the viewer knows there'a a bomb ticking on a crowded bus.  Hitchcock correctly thinks suspense is usually a much stronger way to go.)

So, I was delighted to see Harvey compliment Candy and her film making natural savvy by saying what she was talking about was straight out of Hitchcock/Truffaut.  She of course hadn't read the book, and Harvey knows that.  So his compliment was high praise indeed.  And that's high praise for The Deuce, for mixing a little high culture into its pop culture of pornography.

It was also great to see Clarke Peters holding forth as a retired pimp.  There's of course a lot of The Wire in The Deuce, with David Simon involved, and that includes not only the flow and ambience but the actors.   Peters is having a good year - I was just enjoying his performance on The Tunnel, Season 2, on PBS.  I hope he's a regular character on The Deuce.

But the creme de la creme of this season finale was Harvey and Candy going to see a porn film which all but made the X-rated movie legitimate back then - Deep Throat.   Linda Lovelace played by Heather Cole was there, and I swear I saw the real Andy Warhol there, too, though of course that's impossible (on the other hand, people are saying this is Halloween weekend).

There's powerful, simmering material for a second season, and The Deuce has been renewed.  Count me in.

See also The Deuce: NYC 1971 By Way of The Wire and "Working with Marshall McLuhan" and Marilyn Monroe on the Deuce 1.7 

  
It all starts in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn walks off the set
of The Misfits and begins to hear a haunting song in her head,
"Goodbye Norma Jean" ..

"Working with Marshall McLuhan" and Marilyn Monroe on The Deuce 1.7!

Just caught up with The Deuce 1.7 tonight - it was on HBO on Sunday - and was delighted to find it joined the eminent ranks of The Sopranos and Mad Men, with a reference to Marshall McLuhan!

It happened liked this ...

Candy (Maggie Gyllenhaal) working on a porn film with Harvey (David Krumholtz, who is getting to look a lot like Ron Jeremy) - actually, I guess you could say Candy is Assistant Director, or Assistant to the Director, I could never make sense out of those titles - buys a red bed cover, to replace the green one, which is making her "sea-sick," and may or may not be the underlying reason for the listless sex acting.

Krumholtz left, porn filmmaker Ron Jeremy right,  see what I mean?



Harvey asks Candy how much she paid for the "schmata" (inexplicably slightly but distinctly mispronounced, with no emphasis on the "schma") - but my ears perked up immediately, as they do anytime I hear Yiddish on a television show.

"Red is a horny color," Candy replies.  "you ever see a car ad?"

And Harvey comes back with "What, I am working with Marshall McLuhan?"

Now, that's not the best reference to McLuhan I ever heard - nothing about hot and cool, which would've worked well here - but, then, the references to McLuhan on The Sopranos and Mad Men were no great shakes, either.  And then there's this: The Deuce takes place in 1971, which is a little after McLuhan's heyday in the 1960s, and before he came back with the now classic appearance in Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977), so would a porn film director really have come up that reference at that time? But, hey, I'm not complaining, I'm happy.

And The Deuce 1.7 was excellent in other ways, too, with Candy really beginning to make her mark (I was going to say, come into her own, but thought the better of it) as a porn director, and a surprise shooting (of a gun) which changes a lot of things.  And, as icing on the cake, Marilyn Monroe was mentioned in the episode (icing on the cake certainly for me, since my Marilyn and Monet was just published last week).

This is an excellent series, not surprising with David Simon, Richard Price, and George Pelecanos in creative production roles, and I'd be enjoying it even without the nudity and mentions of McLuhan and Marilyn.



here's a panel we did about Marshall McLuhan just last week - I
actually sing a few lines from a Paul McCartney song at 1hr 3min 32 sec

 
And here's my novelette just published about Marilyn Monroe -
which starts in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn walks off the set
of The Misfits and begins to hear a haunting song in her head,
"Goodbye Norma Jean" ..


See also The Deuce: NYC 1971 By Way of The Wire and Mad Men 1.6. The Medium is the Message! -- and Max & Domino for more on Marilyn


and, ok, you twisted my arm - here's a recent little
book I wrote about McLuhan

The Deuce: NYC 1971 by way of The Wire

I thought, what's not to like about The Deuce, a new series,  now four episodes along, on HBO?  David Simon and George Pelecanos, best known for The Wire (unarguably one of the best series ever on television) are producers and writers, as is Richard Price (author of the superb Bronx novel, The Wanderers, as well as The Night Of, last year on HBO).  The Deuce even has two great actors from The Wire - Gbenga Akinnagbe and Lawrence Gilliard Jr. - and a riveting storyline about prostitutes and porn back in 1971, with lots of skin in the story.

So what's not to like about The Deuce?  Absolutely nothing - meaning, it's another example of outstanding and unique television, as only HBO and sometimes Showtime, have been able to deliver.  For HBO, The Deuce is very much in The Sopranos, The Wire, and Treme lineage -- meaning, memorable characters, searing narrative, served up with vivid color and style.

Richard Price and his way with words is in evidence all over.  Barely a conversation goes by without an apt phrase and a ringing line.  Simon and Pelecanos come across with their keen eye for detail, as a character mentions Penny Lane as a good song, and the songs playing the background are always bang-on right for the time.  I walked down or close to those New York streets, and nothing in The Deuce looked out of place.

And the characters and their vectors and actors are real and rewarding, too.   Gbenga Akinnagbe portrays a pimp with heart, Gary Carr with maybe a little less kindness but more than enough swagger to make up for it.  Maggie Gyllenhaal is just right as an older prostitute who wants to be in show business aka the porn industry; Margarita Levieva is very appealing as an NYU student who drops out (where I was student just a few years later - too bad I missed her) and into porn or prostitution or maybe not, it's still too to tell; and Emily Meade as the ingenue hooker under C. C.'s thumb (played by Gary Carr) and more, as they may be falling in love, or at least something, is just perfect.

Yeah, and I haven't even mentioned James Franco, who plays a bartender turned bar owner with a heart of gold - with money put up by the mob (with boss played by Michael Rispoli, who played nearly the same role years ago on The Sopranos, but doesn't look a day older) - as well as a gambler twin brother who's not quite as golden, with his typical sensitivity and splash.

The upshot: I'm looking forward to watching The Deuce for a long time.

The Cast of The Wire at the Paley Center

Here is a video of a panel that took place the other day at the Paley Center for Media in New York City.  The panel featured prominent cast members from The Wire.  At a little over an hour, this is the best panel I've ever seen - in this case, online - but also in person.



Watching this also cemented my view that The Wire is the single best show ever to have been on television.   I don't say that lightly - in their own ways, The Sopranos, 24, Breaking Bad, other shows including and even Lost in its good moments were superb.   But none quite compare to The Wire, for reasons that become clear, I think, in this panel discussion.  The only proviso is that the panel is replete with spoilers.  So, if you haven't seen The Wire - all five seasons - don't look at this panel video until after you do.

Part of the pleasure of watching this panel is thinking about how all of these stars first became known to me on The Wire, and have gone on to the other memorable roles.  But every time I see one of them, I say to my wife, hey, that guy was on The Wire ... Wendell Pierce in Treme and Ray Donovan, Michael Kenneth Williams in Boardwalk Empire, Lance Reddick (who wasn't on the panel, alas) on Fringe, Dominic West (also not on the panel) in The Affair, Chad Coleman (also not on the panel) in The Walking Dead, and Idris Elba in Luther and great movies such as Long Walk to Freedom, for which he deserved an Oscar but wasn't even nominated.   The list goes on and on - making The Wire a veritable directory of great actors in dozens of shows since then.  The Wire has seeded television with superb acting for almost a decade now.

My reviews of last season of The Wire, usually written shortly after the episodes were aired for the first time, follow ...

The Wire's Back! Review of Season 5 Episode 1 and Episode 2: The Great, Dangling Conversation ... 3. McNulty and Marlo ... 4. One Down ...5. Media Chasing Their Own Tales and Tails ... 6. Superman Omar and Tall Stories ... 7. King of Diamonds ... 8. Two Down ... 9. Cold, Killer Sweetheart ... The Wire Bows Out Gracefully: Kudos to the Cast and David Simon, the Charles Dickens of Television

See also this earlier Looking Back at the Wire

Two podcast episodes about The Wire -


    The Wire without Stringer        |   The Wire Season 4

Treme!

Seeing as how The Wire was one of the best shows ever on television, I figured I'd give Treme a chance.  It's another creation of David Simon, who did The Wire.   It has even has Wendell Pierce and Clarke Peters from The Wire (Bunk and Freamon), and lot of other incandescent talent (Melissa Leo, John Goodman, Khandi Alexander, more) and New Orleans music.   It debuted on HBO tonight.  I loved it.

The story starts in New Orleans, three months after Katrina.   What The Wire did for Baltimore, Treme does for New Orleans, more specifically, one particular part of it, Treme.  The details, the colors, and, most of all, the musical performances, are true and stunning.

Pierce plays Antoine Batiste, a trombone player.   He's constantly short-changing cabbies - promising to pay them someday, in one case, leaving his "bone" as collateral (in that case, he gets a gig from Kermit Ruffins, playing himself, the real musician, and pays the cabbie back right away).   The music he's part of, ranging from clubs to funeral processions, is just the thing.

Treme is as much about the music as New Orleans, which is only right, since New Orleans is so much about the music.   One of the best scenes, near the close of the first day, has dj Davis McAlary (Steve Zahn) playing Louis Prima's "Buona Sera" under all kinds of action.   The song plays pretty much in its entirety - the kind of thing you might see and hear in a movie, not usually on television.  Prima was born and lived the first part of his career in the 1930s in New Orleans, so his music was especially apt.

McAlary is a wannabe musician as well as a disc jockey.  He breaks into Tower Records, which is pulling out of New Orleans, to get copies of his band's CD, which he left there on consignment.  While he's there, he helps himself to a CD in which he was playing guitar, as well as a CD he says was stolen from his car  (so he's "karmicly" entitled to it).   He's sleeping with restaurant owner Janette Desautel - played by Kim Dickens - seen in Lost, FlashForward, and, most memorably so far as Matt's mother in Friday Night Lights.    But she could be even more memorable in Treme.

Even Elvis Costello's in Treme.   Kermit seems not to know of him, but McAlary certainly does, and is determined to get to better know Costello -  certainly can't hurt McAlary's musical  aspirations.

Goodman's a college prof, married to Melissa Leo, a civil rights attorney.   Each in their own way is fighting for New Orleans - against the media's misreporting, and various official misconduct in the wake of Katrina.

The Wire's realism had strong rays of optimism, but was mostly about the soul-lacerating, dead-end life of Baltimore's drug culture.   Treme's realism is about a city determined to survive what Goodman aptly insists is a "man-made disaster" - a levee system not up to the task.   The people and the music will make this story one of triumph.

And I'll be back here next week with my review of the next episode.


8-min podcast review of Treme

The Wire Bows Out Gracefully; Kudos to Cast and David Simon, the Charles Dickens of Television

I sometimes, often, in fact, think The Wire is the best show ever to have been on television. It's hard to compare to The Sopranos, which was just about one person, really, Tony. The Wire was an ensemble show par excellence, with at least 15 to 20 centrally important players over the past five seasons. You can't compare it at all to Lost, which is in another - fantastic - universe, entirely.

The Wire is certainly the best cop show, ever. My previously favorite was Homicide: Life on the Street. David Simon was the brains behind that Baltimore masterpiece, too. And there were lots of other connections - including Clark Johnson, Meldrick in Homicide, Gus in this last season of The Wire.

But The Wire was much more than a cop show - in fact, the cops were less than half the story. There was the dock, in Season 2; politics in Season 3 and after; the school in Season 4; and the paper, the media, in this final Season 5. All of these were done superbly - though perhaps the cynical ending to the paper story this season, with fraud rewarded with the highest honor, was a little too much, though I suppose not unrealistic.

But the real star of The Wire, season after season, in addition to cops, was the street. I can't recall ever getting such a clear picture of life in the street - or, the corner, real and metaphoric, on which drugs are sold and life is lived - as we got, season after season, in The Wire. Not in any movie, or book. First the Barksdale crew, then Marlo's, were as vivid a tableau of intelligent, brutal, sensitive, savvy, focused characters as ever presented. One of the shows this season was called "The Dickensian Aspect" - and, the truth is, that could easily apply to the whole series. David Simon, just by virtue of The Wire, could be called the Charles Dickens of television.

If you'd like a look at the characters and cast of The Wire in all five seasons, HBO has put up a fine page of photos. My favorite is still the extraordinary Stringer Bell, second-in-command in the Barksdale crew, The Wealth of Nations on his bookshelf, played to perfection by Idris Elba, but that takes nothing away from the dozens of other razor-sharp performances in The Wire.

And how did it all end?

The Wire did something exceptional and original here, too. Totally unlike the brilliantly ambiguous ending of The Sopranos, the ending of The Wire had complete closure, and was brilliant, too. And against all expectations, it was happy. McNulty is stretched out on a table for his wake - but it's only a mock wake - he's leaving the police, not life at all. Carcetti is elected governor; Rawls gets an appointment as a high state cop; Daniels looks happy as a lawyer; Rhonda Pearlman is a judge ... well, you get the picture.

The street does as well as can be expected, too. Marlo's free, rich, and likely out of the game (though you never know). Bubbles is eating upstairs with his sister. Michael may be a stick-up man, not good, but maybe he's just doing this once. Dukie is, sadly, in the worst shape ... going doing the road to addiction that Bubbles just left.

My guess is we won't see a series like this again for a very long time. Even the music was perfect, from the different versions of Tom Waits' "Way Down in the Hole" that opened shows for each of the five seasons (Steve Earle did the honors for Season 5, as well a good performance as Bubbles' sponsor at Narcotics Anonymous), to the great music that ended every episode, to the special version of "Way Down in the Hole" that accompanied the montage near the end of tonight show.

~When you walk through the garden ...~

That's a walk I bet viewers will relish for decades to come.

See also The Wire's Back! Review of Season 5 Episode 1 and Episode 2: The Great, Dangling Conversation ... 3. McNulty and Marlo ... 4. One Down ... 5. Media Chasing Their Own Tales and Tails ... 6. Superman Omar and Tall Stories ... 7. King of Diamonds ... 8. Two Down ... 9. Cold, Killer Sweetheart

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...





Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

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