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Friday, July 16, 2010
Puppies, Etc.
Puppies are cute. Also kittens. And rainbows are pretty.
A thought for today.
Update: The other day I got an email that said, in part:I salute your soldiering on with the blog even after you read the comments. A lesser man might have given up by now. As an experiment, you could post the most bland, inoffensive thing you can think of just to see the response.Mick blog entry: Puppies are cute. Also kittens. And rainbows are pretty.
Commenter: Further proof, LaSalle, what a horrible human being you are. Now as I was saying about the Che Guevara movie....
It didn't take that long.
The point is that some people are stewing so much in their own bile that they import it to whatever site they land on, kind of like the malaria carrying mosquitoes that Terry Gross was talking about yesterday on her show.
| Jul 16 at 08:37 PM
Thursday, July 15, 2010
More on Mel
To be brief, because I have to get to work, this is what flipped me on Mel:
1. Either he really is crazy on that tape or he is trying to SOUND crazy, in which case he's crazy for thinking it's within the bounds of acceptable human behavior to want to sound that crazy if you're not. You ever see the wonderful Jeffrey Hunter movie BRAINSTORM, in which he pretends to be crazy -- but he also really IS crazy? At a certain level of behavior, the fine distinctions blur.
2. When she mentions that he hit her and broke her teeth, he doesn't say, "What are you talking about?" He says, "Boo hoo" and makes fun of her -- and I THINK, not sure, but I THINK that there's enough overlap of their voices that the tape is probably not doctored. If that is an authentic exchange that's damning.
3. He's either scary, or he's really trying to scare her, and that's abusive. I am not one of these kneejerk people who defines abuse as any time a guy raises his voice. Men are men. They are not women who are a little uncouth and need to learn to behave. And women find ample ways of driving men crazy, too. This is an old dance. But when a guy carries on like that (or even remotely close to that), that's a threat. And I mean it's a threat even before he follows it up with promises to come over there and hit her with a bat -- and says she has one more chance to do this or that -- I mean, come on.
4. I thought one of the first tapes sounded out of context. But this one begins with "Hello." She has him at hello -- he's off his rocker already.
5. One thing can't be forgotten or ignored -- and actually it's implicit throughout all these conversations. This is a very very rich and powerful man. He might sound like a garden variety jerk, but he has millions and millions of dollars, and he has access to anybody. That in itself constitutes a danger to her. A man of his wealth could have someone killed and make it look like an accident. I'm not saying he would do it, simply that with his carrying on in that way, that possibility CAN'T be far from her mind. So no wonder these tapes are seeing the light of day. She has to put them out there, because it's her one guarantee of not going missing.
Putting it out there also levels the playing field in terms of custody. He has money for the best lawyers. She doesn't. Would you want that guy raising your daughter?
6. This guy's hatred of women -- this constant c-word thing -- is so off the charts. I don't even know what to say. I don't want to know what's under that rock.
7. All this stuff about her being a golddigger and probably setting him off -- maybe true, probably true, but it misses the point. Who knows, she might be a nice lady, but just looking at her, he should have had some kind of clue. I would be wary of her, and I'm a pretty gullible guy. I believe everybody. In any case, his finding out he made a mistake is no excuse for punching her, threatening her and making her feel like worse is on the way. And I'm not even factoring in the fact that this is the mother of his child, for crying out loud. Even under the worst of circumstances, with the most flagrant of provocations (which we don't know took place), this is just not how a man should behave. It's not even in the general ballpark. Nor in the same town that has the ballpark. It's just beyond the beyond.
| Jul 15 at 08:43 AM
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
On Second Thought, About Mel
Oops. I just heard the third tape. I take it all back. He sounds off his rocker. If I were her, I'd definitely release the tape. I'd be afraid of getting run off the road and having it be made to look like an accident. I'd be afraid to be in the same room with the guy. Disregard all previous statements. The third tape takes the prize. That IS abuse. Unbelievable.
| Jul 14 at 12:58 PM
Monday, July 12, 2010
Let's Talk About Mel Gibson
The racial invective is indefensible -- and doesn't even make sense, in context -- and he does sound like an angry nut -- but aside from THAT . . .
I've listened to the tape and it's not really that bad. Obviously, she knows she's recording HIM, so she's trying to sound as mild as can be. But it sounds like two minutes pulled out of an ongoing argument, in which one person, having gotten the other to the verge of exploding, subsides and lets the other go off for the sake of the recording.
I'm not saying it's not bad. I'm saying if someone recorded you at your worst moment how would you sound? And what if they egged you on so as to produce your worst moment? How would you sound then?
The man has an offensive way of expressing himself, and APOCALYPTO did sort of look like the work of a maniac, and on the recording he sounds like a guy deliberately working himself up and being nasty because he knows he can. Yet I also wonder if he doesn't actually have a legit grievance in that relationship. Indeed the thing that impresses me most negatively about the tape is that he'd involve himself with such a woman in the first place. That there could be an attraction doesn't speak well of Gibson's maturity or sense.
| Jul 12 at 10:34 PM
Polanski is Free
The Swiss authorities have released Roman Polanski from house arrest and have denied the US request for extradition.
Read the statement. It's interesting.
Comments?
| Jul 12 at 08:30 AM
Monday, July 05, 2010
What I've Been Working On
Anyway, since you're not hearing much from me, I figure the least I can do is tell you what I've been doing.
I mentioned that I'm writing the second draft of my book. The first draft is where everything is thrown in to see if there's actually enough there for a book. There was, a 100,000 words worth. The second draft is where the real writing gets done. Before I started, I came up with a new outline, reorganized everything into 16 chapters instead of 21. Now I'm trying to write two chapters a week, but I'm averaging more like a chapter and a half.
But these chapters are more or less going to be going into the book. I'll fix it up, I'll change a few things, and do a complete third draft, and then my editor will take a whack at it and some readers, etc. But with the second draft, I'm writing the book, while with the first draft, I was just writing words and making a mess.
Anyway, the book is going to be arranged not chronologically, not thematically and not by personality -- but in a way that's sort of a combination of all three. This took a long time to arrive at, but it's the most important element, the structure, because if you don't find a flow and a feeling of narrative, no one will read the whole book from start to finish.
Earlier in the week, I finished a chapter (4) that's predominantly about Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, who is one of my favorites. Way up there.
Valeria Bruni Tedeschi
I'll let you know when I finish something else, not that you have any reason to be excessively interested, but as a way of keeping in touch.
| Jul 05 at 02:09 PM
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Why (Some of) the "Sex and the City" Pans Made Me Uncomfortable
My goal is never to go on sabbatical to write a book and never to waste a vacation writing a book, so the result is that I maintain full work weeks and then, at the end of each work day, try to write about 1,500 words on my project. This means I'm basically working almost until it's time for bed, which would be horrible if I weren't interested in what I was doing. Right now I'm trying to get the second draft of my book done in two and a half months. That comes to two chapters a week. Which is a long way around of saying that's why you haven't heard much from me.
However, I wanted you to check out this article from the UK Guardian. This writer noticed the phenomenon that I noticed about the SATC 2 pans but also did the research and looked into what specific UK critics actually said.
This phenomenon is why it's possible to feel that SATC 2 was a bomb and still be made uncomfortable by the tenor of (not all but some of) the reviews.
| Jun 30 at 08:02 AM
Friday, June 18, 2010
Two Celebrity Birthdays
It took me years for me to realize I love this guy. I always felt that if you love Paul McCartney, you have to get in back of a long line, and at the head of the line is McCartney himself. But McCartney has given me so much pleasure over the years that I ultimately had to break down and face it.
The other celebrity birthday is that of the Belgian actress Marie Gillain -- I interviewed her in September.
McCartney was born in 1942, when my father was seven and my mother was five. But I remember when Marie Gillain was born on June 18, 1975. I remember what I was doing that day. School let out early -- it was the last day of my sophomore year -- and I went to the little mom and pop store near the school and asked for three quarts of beer -- two Colt 45 and one Schaeffer. The guy behind the counter asked my age.
"Sixteen. I mean, eighteen. Eighteen!"
"You're out early."
"Oh, yeah, it's the last day of class for sophomores. I mean, seniors! Seniors!"
It was the seventies. Nobody worried about IDs or anything like that. Everybody just accepted, either grudgingly or happily, that the end of civilization was at hand, so there was no point making a fuss over the details.
I had friends come over. We listened to PHYSICAL GRAFFITI. Then at night I went to a party. I took the bus over and some old, drunken derelict fell asleep on me, which normally would have made me very irritated. But I was half bombed myself, so I thought it was funny. Then I went to the party, where my very nice girlfriend was, and that's about it. But for years after that, I thought that this rather common but pleasant day was one of the best of my life, because I was just happy the whole day. Not ecstatic, just steadily and reasonable and securely happy, with not one moment of unhappiness or anger or fear or dread.
AND on top of that, Marie Gillain was born, so it was even better than I knew!
| Jun 18 at 03:53 PM
More on "Toy Story"
At the start of TOY STORY 3, the toys, who are not in control of their destiny, face three possible fates: They will either be thrown out, put in the attic or relocated.
Thrown out is the equivalent of death.
Being put in the attic is the equivalent of retirement.
Relocating is the equivalent of changing jobs.
The movie taps into both existential and economic anxieties. A version of the unconvincing pep talk Woody gives his fellow toys has been repeated, in different form, in virtually every home in this country since the beginning of the recession.
This is a great movie, timeless in its overarching concerns, but thematically specific to some of the country's concerns right now. I'm surprised that not everybody who likes it is seeing what a serious movie it really is.
| Jun 18 at 11:41 AM
Thursday, June 17, 2010
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