Roger O Green

Mary Elizabeth “Sissy” Spacek turns 70

Recommended: In the Bedroom; The Straight Story

Although I never saw either Carrie or Coal Miner’s Daughter, I’ve seen Sissy Spacek in a slew of movies, so many that I had to look them up on IMDB.

Three Women (1976). Robert Altman film about three women in a western desert town. It was creepy, as I recall.

Missing (1982). It was a Costa-Gavras (Z) political drama in a South American country on the precipice of a military coup. American activist Charles Horman (John Shea) suddenly disappears. Spacek plays his wife Beth, who can find no information from either the new rulers or from the American consulate. Her father-in-law Ed Horman (Jack Lemmon) joins Beth in the search, despite their political differences. A real thriller.

Crimes of the Heart (1986). “Three sisters from a rather dysfunctional family in the South are gathered together for a birthday. One can’t seem to stay in a relationship for long, one was just released on bond for shooting her senator husband, and the other is an aspiring actress.” Well-acted but stagey, if memory serves.

The Nineties

The Long Walk Home (1990). The Mongomery (AL) bus boycott of 1955/1956 was “a decided inconvenience for Miriam Thompson (Sissy Spacek), a well-to-do white woman. Now, Miriam must drive to the black section of town to pick up her maid Odessa Cotter (Whoopi Goldberg) and bring her to work.” I recall it as pretty good, albeit sober.

JFK (1991). Spacek played the wife of the crusading district attorney wife of the Louisiana district attorney Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner), who is skeptical that Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby each acted alone. Liz Garrison served as a sounding board, I believe.

If These Walls Could Talk (1996 TV movie). An anthology “about three disparate women coping with unexpected pregnancies.” Spacek is in the middle section in 1974 “when Barbara, who already has four kids, tackles another one. A pretty good, if overly earnest, film.

The Straight Story (1999). A G-rated David Lynch film about “a trip made by 73-year-old Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth in his final role) from Laurens, Iowa, to Mt. Zion, Wis., in 1994 while riding a lawnmower. The man undertook his strange journey to mend his relationship with his ill, estranged, 75-year-old brother Lyle (Harry Dean Stanton). Spacek plays Alvin’s daughter Rose. This was REALLY good and quite touching.

21st Century

In the Bedroom (2001). “A New England couple’s college-aged son dates an older woman who has two small children and an unwelcome ex-husband.” This is Spacek’s best performance among the ones on this list. “Quietly wrenching…”

Tuck Everlasting. I’m fairly certain I saw it, but the details of the book adaptation are failing me.

North Country. I recall that Charlize Theron was quite good as “Lori Jenson, who took a job at a Minnesota iron mine in 1975. She and other female miners endured harassment from male co-workers.” But I’m not remembering Spacek.

Get Low (2009). I saw the movie. Fortunately, I wrote about it, and the details are refreshed.

The Help (2011). She played the old woman pushing back against her daughter’s bigotry.

Sissy Spacek turns 70 on Christmas Day 2019.

Robin and Maurice Gibb would have been 70

The working title for the film was Saturday Night

Bee Gees 1977 — Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb, 1977

Robin and Maurice Gibb, fraternal twin brothers and 2/3s of the BeeGees, would have been 70 on December 22.

Maurice “died unexpectedly on 12 January 2003, at age 53, from a heart attack, while awaiting emergency surgery to repair a strangulated intestine.” Robin had contracted pneumonia, went in and out of a coma, and “died on 20 May 2012 of liver and kidney failure” at age 64.

This leaves Barry as the only brother Gibb remaining, as I noted here. What more can I say about these guys beyond what I’ve already written?

I’ve always liked this anecdote: “When Bee Gees manager Robert Stigwood was producing a movie about a New York disco scene, the working title for the film at that time was Saturday Night. Stigwood asked the group to write a song using that name as a title, but the Bee Gees disliked it.

“They had already written a song called ‘Night Fever’, so the group convinced Stigwood to use that and change the film to Saturday Night Fever… The string intro of ‘Night Fever’ was inspired by ‘Theme from A Summer Place’ by Percy Faith…”

While their disco-era music was fine, I always felt their earlier stuff is still somewhat overlooked. They never received a Grammy or An American Music Award before 1978. They did make it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997, based on the whole body of their work.

LISTEN

I decided to fill this, in part, with some BeeGees covers. Coverville has a necessarily incomplete list. Chart action is from US Billboard charts; some of these songs were bigger hits in the UK and elsewhere.

Bee Gees Medley – Perpetuum Jazzile, which popped up on that “next song” feature on YouTube
How Can You Mend a Broken Heart – Al Green
More Than a Woman – Tavares, from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, #33 pop, #36 RB in 1978
To Love Somebody – Roberta Flack

BeeGees songs from SNF I had not previously linked to:

How Deep Is Your Love
Night Fever, #1 pop for eight weeks, #8 RB in 1978
More Than a Woman

Songs from the first BeeGees greatest hits album that I had not previously linked to

Holiday, #16 in 1967
I Started a Joke, #6 in 1969
First of May, #37 in 1969
Massachusetts, #11 in 1967
Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You
Tomorrow, Tomorrow – #54 in 1969; only on the CD, replacing Spicks and Specks

Peachy version of Ask Roger Anything

Pseudonyms also work

peach A few years ago, my church had a gathering for people experiencing the Christmas blues. I didn’t go, but I understand it wasn’t well-attended, so it fell by the wayside. I never believed it was from a lack of need.

There is surely a market. I think a lot of people feel OBLIGATED to act peachy-keen about the holidays.

They may be financially underwater or stressed about getting the perfect gift. Loneliness is often a factor at this time of year, ironically. Grief and estrangement are huge during the holidays. I have to actively work against the melancholy, myself.

Let me tell you what makes me feel just a little peachier at this time of year. It’s when I use my solstice powers to request that you Ask Roger Anything. If you do so, I am obliged to answer, generally within four weeks.

A wide variety

You could ask about impeachment or peach melba or the book James and the Giant Peach, though I have, in fact, never read it. The Allman Brothers album Eat a Peach or the duo Peaches and Herb or songs referencing the fruit. Or a different fruit. Or even vegetables.

Think of this as a method of social interaction that could alleviate your stress and mine. If you’d rather, vent that frustration over family gatherings, as you bite your lip not saying the wrong thing. Or saying it. You could share it here.

Per usual, you can leave any of your questions and/or suggestions, in the comments section of this blog or on Facebook or Twitter; for the latter, my name is ersie. Always look for the duck.

If you prefer to remain anonymous, that’s ducky, but you need to state that specifically. E-mail me at rogerogreen (AT) gmail (DOT) com, or send me an IM on FB and note that you want to be unnamed; otherwise, I’ll assume you want to share your identity. Pseudonyms also work.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

The movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood I thought was going to be some sort of biopic about Mr. Fred Rogers. But it really wasn’t.

Rather, the story concentrated on a hard-bitten journalist Tom Junod. He’s called Lloyd Vogel in the film, played by Matthew Rhys (The Americans; Brothers and Sisters). Lloyd is assigned to write a puff piece on the television performer (Tom Hanks). He interviewed Rogers extensively for what was supposed to be a 400-word piece in Esquire magazine. Because of that very clever angle, the story worked.

Tom Hanks, nominated for Best Supporting Actor in the Golden Globes, embodies Fred Rogers without overtly imitating him. I was astounded by a couple of interviewers suggesting to Hanks that playing Mr. Rogers must have been easy. Fred Rogers was nice. Tom Hanks seems nice. Those reporters showed no understanding of the craft in creating a specific persona.

Even though it it less Fred’s story than Lloyd’s, the values of guy in the cardigan sweater are clearly infused. One of the funny moments was in the trailer, but still worked. Lloyd’s wife Andrea (Susan Kelechi Watson) says to her husband, “please don’t ruin my childhood.” Chris Cooper is strong as Lloyd’s estranged father.

For its time

As Ken Levine put it in his review: “As I was watching it I thought, if Fred Rogers hadn’t really existed no one would ever buy this film. We’d all be saying, ‘No one is that genuine and kind-hearted.’ But of course he was. And my second thought was ‘Boy, we sure could use him now.'” That last sentiment shows up at least in the subtext of many of the reviews I read.

I’m glad this was not the standard biopic because the 2018 documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor, which I loved, already covered that territory. And if it isn’t quite as strong as the doc, the biopic nevertheless stands on its own.

(Conversely, I had a much different feeling after seeing two films about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The documentary RBG was great. The biopic On the Basis of Sex was extraneous unless you’d never seen RBG.)

I recommend A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which did made me feel better about the world. Oh, and check out a piece from the Washington Post: “What happened when I showed vintage Mister Rogers to my 21st-century kids.”

A meteorological winter lion

About 22 inches over two days

Winter.Amy Biancolli — c 2019 Amy Biancolli

A lot of folks complained about how early substantial snows hit the bulk of the US in 2019. I was reminded by something that Kiwis such as Arthur understand. December 1 is meteorological summer in New Zealand. This means it’s meteorological winter in the Northern Hemisphere. And it surely came in like a lion.

When we got home from a play on Sunday, the 1st, I shoveled the four inches that had fallen. But ugh. I woke up to about ten more inches. Little wonder why virtually every school in at least a seven-county area and the libraries were closed. Later that day, I helped my wife dig out the car from its on-street parking space. That packed snow is SO much heavier.

Then Tuesday morning, I shoveled enough to get to the replowed-in car, and we dug it out again. Not only is there about eight more inches of snow, but there’s also nowhere to put it. You don’t want to place it where it’ll be more difficult for others to get out of their spaces. One’s not supposed to put the snow onto the street, though surely several people did.

After my wife and daughter went to school with the two-hour delay, I went back to bed and took a nap for an hour. The joy of retirement. Then I attacked the sidewalk snow.

Methology

Historically, I’m from the “shovel often” school of snow removal. I learned this back in the 1980s, when I worked at FantaCo, the comic book store on the first block of Central Avenue.

“Shovel the walk” does NOT mean creating a path a shovel-width wide. I mean, clear the WHOLE sidewalk, walkway to the house and the steps. I mean, clear it so you can see the pavement. If you do it early enough, the winter sun will do the work and minimize the need for rock salt. I use it as sparingly as possible.

Mayor Kathy Sheehan recommended that drivers be wary of pedestrians. This is true because there are folks digging out their vehicles. But it’s really important to protect those who’ve abandoned the sidewalks in favor of walking in the road. The guy passing our house pushing the baby carriage, going with traffic, made me particularly nervous. If you’re walking on the road, you should go against traffic.

Some of the worst failure to remove snow was by some bus stops. One was a couple of blocks away, where Western and Madison meet. People were forced to go well into the intersection. The nearby gas station cleared around the pumps and the entrance, but the walks, not so much.

Too high

I have lost the ability to mountain goat. No way I’m going to climb over those piles of snow. Oh, I tried once and my shoe got stuck in a mound. Damn, that was uncomfortable.

Some folks complained that Albany didn’t call a snow emergency until Tuesday night. Alternate-side parking kicks in while the parking spots are plowed out. I was fine with that. Hey, at least my city didn’t have to call out the National Guard, as Schenectady did.

I’m not about to complain about meteorological winter. Now, I may complain about people’s poor response to it, but that’s a different kettle of fish.

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