The Romanoffs 1.4: Expectation: Unfulfilled

I thought The Romanoffs 1.4:  Expectation, on Amazon Prime this past Friday night had great dialogue, tip-top New York scenery, and fine acting.  But the weakness of its plot, and the in-media-res ending made it feel like much ado about nothing, and thus the weakest of the four episodes so far.

I liked the slight connection to 1.3.  It was fun getting to meet the guy who wrote the script of the television series about the Romanovs that lead to the death of its prime actress last week.  As always, John Slattery gave a good performance.  So did the other Jon - Tenney - as the assumed grandparent of the Romanov heir, when Slattery's character was the real one.  But that's pretty much the long and the short of this little story.

Well, Olivia's struggles were of some interest, too.  But the way the story was told in flashbacks, which works when the plot structure is strong, didn't in this frozen-in-time photograph in slight motion.   Not to mention that we didn't even get the payoff of seeing the baby born, and the reactions of all the characters.

Not to make too much of the title - which works as a double entendre - but I was expecting a little more in this episode.   As I said in my review of the first episode, there's a lot in The Romanoffs that reminds me of Woody Allen.   Expectation shows that that's a two-edged sword.  Because, although some of Allen's movies are brilliant, some are just great dialogue, scenery, and acting, which, without a commensurately strong plot, don't add up to anything close to great.

But I'll be back here next week with a review of episode 5.

See also: The Romanoffs 1.1: The Violet Hour: Compelling, Anti-Binge Watchable Comedy of Manners ... The Romanoffs 1.2: The Royal We: A Walk on the Dark Side ... The Romanoffs 1.3: House of Special Purpose: Ghost Story ... The Romanoffs 1.5: Bright and High Circle: Music and Abuse ... The Romanoffs 1.6: Panorama: The Royal Disease ... The Romanoffs 1.7: End of the Line: The Adoption Racket ... The Romanoffs 1.8:  The One that Holds Everything: Writer on a Train

  
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" ...

Eric McLuhan: The Pot Roast and the Jokes

I first met Eric McLuhan in March 1978 at the airport in New York.  He and his father, Marshall, had flown in from Toronto for the "Tetrad Conference" I had organized at Fairleigh Dickinson University which would start the next day, March 10.  Tina and I waited for Marshall and Eric in the baggage claim area.  It was like a scene out of a movie.  Maybe like Woody Allen's take on the closing scene in Casablanca.  Except this was a beginning.

Everyone else had picked up their baggage.  There were no cellphones then, so we could not be 100% positive they had boarded the plane in Toronto.  There were no suitcases left on the conveyor.  Finally, we saw the two of them in the far distance, as if walking out of a mist, carrying their bags.  I had already met Marshall several times before that, after he'd invited me to lunch on an earlier visit to New York, after I'd written a Preface to his Laws of the Media.  Every time, including at the airport, was one of the high points in my life.

We drove Marshall and Eric back to our apartment by Van Cortland Park in the Bronx.  Tina had made pot roast - we forever after called it the McLuhan pot roast.  Josh Meyrowitz and Ed Wachtel joined us after dinner.  At the conference the next day, and at the pot roast dinner, what I most remember about Eric was our exchange of jokes.   We continued this just about every time we saw each other over the years, in New York and Toronto, and somehow always came up with new material.   (Often these jokes were about money - which Marshall had aptly examined as a medium of communication in Understanding Media.   Jokes such as ... A woman walks into a bank and up to a teller, who asks her for identification.  She pulls a mirror out of her purse, looks at herself, and informs the teller, 'Yes, it's definitely me' .... Or, a gunman walks into a diner, points the weapon at the cashier, and demands the money in the drawer.  The cashier responds, 'to take out?' ...)

It wasn't easy being Marshall's son, elaborating upon the work of someone whose contribution was so extraordinary and incandescent, that many academics were not up to understanding it.  But Eric gave it a go, and never lost his sense of humor, and the twinkle in his eye which he inherited from his father.

Paolo Granata emailed me last year with a great idea:  how I would like to organize an event at Fordham to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Marshall's year at Fordham University as a visiting scholar, 1967-1968.  Eric, who of course was with his father at Fordham in 1967-1968, too, would be available in 2017, too.  I put together an evening on October 13, 2017, with talks by Eric, John Carey (who was a student at Fordham in 1967-1968, and attended Marshall's talks then) and me.  (Thanks to Jackie Reich, our department chair, for supporting this.)  The room which seated 100 was packed to standing room only.  (The video of the event is below.  I introduce Eric at about 8 minutes 5 seconds into the video, Eric begins his talk at 11 minutes 50 seconds.)

The night before, Tina and I took Eric and Andrew to dinner.  Andrew had followed in his father's footsteps, being his essential and wonderful travel companion, as Eric had been for Marshall.  The food and the jokes were still good.

I don't know about afterlives.  I know about memories.  RIP?  That wasn't Eric's style.  Maybe somewhere in the cosmos, but definitely in my head, he'll still be telling jokes.

The Weekend: Ala McLuhan

Hey, The Weekend (a 20-minute short from 2016 on Amazon Prime) isn't about time travel - though it is reminiscent in more than the title of the 1945 classic The Lost Weekend (which actually isn't about a time travel either, though its title is suggestive) - and it's not even science fiction.  But The Weekend is nonetheless sensitive, well written and portrayed, and definitely worth watching.

It tells the story of a guy, recently jilted, who takes in a woman he meets on a walkway by a beach. She offers him French fries, he declines, but changes his mind, and off we go.

I won't tell you any more of the story, so you can enjoy seeing it yourself.  I will say that, except for one big thing, the story is about nothing - other than two souls brushing against each other, somehow finding a few days of peace in the noise and craziness of the real world all around us, and that's everything.

A short like this - the epitome of McLuhan's cool, because it bids you, the viewer, to fill so much of it in with your own thoughts and feelings (see McLuhan in an Age of Social Media for more) - is absolutely dependent on the acting. Danielle Guldin is quietly outstanding as Chloe, the bearer of the French fries, and Taso Mikroulis is just right as the guy.

The Weekend takes place in New York City.  The shore and the apartment could be anywhere, and there's just one small shopping-for-groceries scene where the street is clearly in the city, but somehow New York City is very much a part of this short film, which somehow also gives it a kinship in my mind to some of the work of Woody Allen.  All of which is to say that Dennis Cahlo, who wrote, directed, and has a cameo in The Weekend, did a fine job indeed with this movie.


 

It started in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn Monroe walked off the set of The Misfits and began to hear a haunting song in her head, "Goodbye Norma Jean" ...



 

watch The Chronology Protection Case FREE on Amazon Prime

  

"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

Max & Domino: Dark, Funny, Iconic

I had the pleasure of seeing Anthony Marinelli's Max & Domino at The Duke on 42nd Street last night, one of six short plays which are semi-finalists in the New York New Works (NYNW) Theatre Festival.  All six were excellent, and I'll likely review each of them in the coming days, but I'll start with Max & Domino, which was my favorite for a variety of reasons.

I saw and reviewed here Marinelli's Acoustic Space - a short 2015 movie made from his short play - which apropos McLuhan (who came up with the term) was about the impact of ubiquitous smartphones on interpersonal relations, and looked to me like a movie that might have been produced had McLuhan and Woody Allen gone on to collaborate as producers after McLuhan's appearance in Annie Hall.  Max & Domino has nothing to do with phones, but is invested with Marinelli's savvy about media, this time about movie idols and fevered illusions.

Actually, Max & Domino is about just one movie icon, Marilyn Monroe, who as fate would have it is the Marilyn in my just published Marilyn and Monet.  Unfortunately, she didn't live long enough to star in a Woody Allen movie, but she's permanently in our firmament, as hot today as ever she was in the 1950s and 60s.

In Max & Domino, she's perfectly played by Amanda Greer, who delivers just the right verve and breathiness.  Greer is in fact Domino, one half of a mobster enforcer team who are torturing poor Charlie (well played by Mike Funk) to give up where he hid their money and who knows what.  Like a boxer on the ropes having visions of some babe in his real or mediated life, Charlie makes his beating more exquisite by imagining that at times the brunette Domino is blonde Marilyn.  (I told you this was both dark and funny.)

But the best punch comes with a twist at the end, which I won't tell you, except that all is revealed and clicks into place with stiletto precision.  I hope Max & Domino move on from the semi-finals, and Charlie rides forever like his namesake on the MTA.

 

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

See also my reviews of the other NYNW semi-finalists: Frozen West ...  The Lady in the Woods ... Dear Diary, Burning Leaves, Sammy and Esther Are Breaking Up

Acoustic Space: A Short, Sage and Funny Movie

Just saw Acoustic Space, a short film by Anthony Marinelli currently on the film festival circuit, and based on the award-winning play by Marinelli of the same name.   That name is taken from Marshall McLuhan's phrase - "acoustic space" - which McLuhan created to describe the all-at-once immersion of the electronic environment.   In contrast to visual space, in which we tend to focus on a single direction or source of information, acoustic space gives us information from everywhere in the environment at once.  We can hear radio, for example, regardless of where our eyes may be focused - that's why listening to the radio works so well when we're driving a car.   McLuhan wrote this in the 1960s and 70s.   In my Digital McLuhan (1999) and New New Media (2009, 2012), I explored how what McLuhan wrote 40-50 years earlier was even more applicable to our current digital age, in which we're even more immersed in information than we were back then.

Acoustic Space the movie is both predicated on our digital immersion and a delightful and intelligent word-play on acoustic.  A couple about to have dinner in a restaurant are talking more to people on their phones than they are to each other.  We've seen scenarios like this before, but Marinelli  brings a special wit and pizzazz to the endeavor, with the couple almost seeming to be talking to one another when they're not, because the words they're saying on the phone have so much in common.

The man is an advertising exec and the woman is trying to give advice to her friend whose relationship is falling apart.   Acoustic Space thus resonates with the best of Mad Men and Girls.  The waiter - not at all a dumb waiter - also has some memorable lines.  If Woody Allen - who also had what to do with McLuhan in Annie Hall - and his irrepressible sketches of urban, high-tech frenetic life are to your liking, you're bound to enjoy Acoustic Space.   Indeed, I have no doubt that once it's released to the public, lots of people will be talking about it - in person and on phones in restaurants.

Manhattan Romance: Woody Allen Rebooted

If Woody Allen were in his late twenties or early thirties and made a movie today, it would be a lot like Manhattan Romance.   And, in fact, Woody Allen is mentioned early in the movie, and Tom O'Brien, who is about that age, wrote, produced, directed, and stars in Manhattan Romance - which is a delightfully sage movie, and better than some of Woody Allen's recent efforts.

Danny - played by O'Brien - is making a documentary about love in Manhattan in this day and digital age, but the main story is what happens off the screen of the documentary, in the real lives of Danny and women who are in the documentary.   Two women in particular play major roles in Danny's off-camera life.   Beautiful, new-agey Theresa, well played by Caitlin FitzGerald - seen to good effect the last couple of years as the alternately suffering and liberated wife of Dr. Masters in Masters of Sex on Showtime - is desired by Danny, who gets little more than a hug and a chance to give Theresa a massage with happy endings for no one.  In true Woody Allen fashion, Danny's take away from this relationship is frustration.

That would be ok, since we soon come to realize that Danny loves someone else - Carla, zestfully played by Katherine Waterston, who was on the screen in Boardwalk Empire last season.   But Carla, though she feels something for Danny, has opted to be with a woman.   And even though we see clearly from the outset that that relationship isn't working so well, there's no dividend for Danny.   He spends most of a night together with Carla in bed, but all that happens is good talk and sleep.

All of this is situated in a great, pulsating New York ambience, in which memorable characters make brief appearances, and there's even a little jazz in the air.   The guy Theresa is sleeping with - she's not against sex, just apparently sex with Danny - is a fount of lay-back aphorisms, or afflicted with "spiritual Tourettes," as Danny aptly puts it in one of the many good lines in the movie.   Zach Grenier, of Good Wife fame, plays Danny's mother's husband, and delivers a suitably zany, stoned performance at a wedding.

The movie ends with a great meta-piece about the nature of endings - in stories and realities - and I won't tell you more than that, lest I spoil the ending of that ending for you.   The movie premieres at the Big Apple Film Festival this Wednesday.   See it if you've ever wondered how the genre Woody Allen created half a century ago would play on the screen if it was almost brand new today.

Midnight in Paris: Time Traveling ala Woody Allen

A belated review of Woody Allen's 2011 movie, Midnight in Paris, which, considering that it's a time travel movie, it's amazing I didn't see and review much earlier.   The loss was mine - it's a wonderful movie - and thanks to my wife for suggesting we get it On Demand last night when there was nothing else to see on a cold, snowy night in New York City.

First, unlike Woody Allen's Sleeper, in which the hero is cryogenically frozen and jumps into the future that way, Gil in Midnight in Paris goes from 2010 to the past and back to the present like any decent, genuine time traveler.   The mechanism of the the time travel - the stroke of midnight on a quiet corner in Paris - is more like the means in Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court or Jack Finney's Time and Again, which is to say, close to magical - but still makes the cut as a legitimate time travel story as far as I'm concerned.

And it's excellent indeed, investing Woody Allen's sage, delightful repartee and style into a narrative in which Cole Porter, Ernest Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, and all manner of luminaries from the 1920s figure in our 21st-century hero's adventures in the past.   The neurotic Gil (well played by Owen Wilson) - a version of Woody Allen, despite Gil's Californian flair, as are all of Woody's male heroes - plays well and hilariously against these luminaries who no doubt are Woody's as well.  The attention to accurate detail of the 1920s, a key ingredient in my book in making any time travel to the past work, was mostly spot on.  The only slight error I caught was someone saying "science fiction" - although Hugo Gernsback did create the term some time in the 1920s, he much preferred the term "scientification" at first, and "science fiction" did not come into general use until a decade later.  But only a science fiction and time travel fanatic like me would know that.

The question always arises in these sorts of soft time time travel movies - that is, time travel without a machine or some sort of scientific explanation - as to whether the character is dreaming or really time traveling to the past or future.   Allen clearly answers this question near the end, when we're shown a private Parisian detective - who was hired to follow Gil by his about-to-be-father-in-law - running around in the age of Louis IV like a chicken without a head.  The scene is not only fall-down-funny but indicative that the time travel was not just in Gil's mind.  (Yes, Gil could have been dreaming that scene, too, but such solipsism is not much fun, and we see no other evidence of Gil dreaming - unlike, say, the Ethan Hawke character in The Woman in the Fifth, another recent Parisian movie.)

Like most of Woody Allen's movies, Midnight in Paris is not only funny but wise in the lessons it provides.  In this case, it's that everyone has their own favorite time in the past, but there's usually some of that still in the present, if you're lucky and alert enough to find it.   We enjoyed Midnight in Paris so much, we went on to see To Rome with Love, Woody Allen's 2012 movie, right after.  It was also excellent.  But Midnight in Paris is something special in the roster of both Allen's and time travel movies, and I predict it will become a classic.