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“You complete me”: Ask Roger Anything

This would be a very different experience if you didn’t encourage me with your comments.

“You complete me.” There was this segment on CBS Sunday Morning the day of the most recent Academy Awards called Why do people love to quote movies?? Reporter Faith Salie does not have that affliction, though her husband does.

I’m only so-so at remembering movie quotes, but I surely know the title quote is from Jerry Maguire, which I saw at the cinema, probably in early 1997. It is specifically from a monologue from the title character (Tom Cruise) to his estranged wife Dorothy ( Renée Zellweger).

It occurred to me that, in some metaphysical way, you all complete me, especially blogwise. This would be a very different experience if you didn’t encourage me with your comments.

And what do I do it repay your kindness? I ask for more, more, MORE! I request that you Ask Roger Anything, and I really do mean anything. Of course it’s also more work for me, but it helps with my self-discovery, so I don’t mind at all. I promise to respond, generally within a month, although the last batch of questions I stretched to less than two weeks ago.

I will answer your questions to the best of my ability, though that may be diminishing, as memories are wont to fade. Obfuscation on my part, though, comes with the territory. You know you like it.

You can leave your comments below or on Facebook or Twitter; for the latter, my name is ersie. If you prefer to remain anonymous, that’s fine; you should e-mail me at rogerogreen (AT) gmail (DOT) com, or send me an IM on FB (make sure it’s THIS Roger Green, the one with the duck) and note that you want to remain unmentioned; otherwise, I’ll assume you want to be cited.

Oscar-nominated live action short films 2017

“Enemies Within,” feels like it’s based on current events, though it was set in the 1990s.

Sometimes, you just need to leave work early to see the Oscar-nominated live action short films

“Mindenki,” Hungary (25 minutes)

This was the Oscar winner, and certainly worthy. The title translates to “Sing,” but it oughtn’t to be confused with another, full-length, animated recent film of the same name.

Reportedly based on a true story, young Zsofi (Dóra Gáspárvalvi) enrolls in a new school best known for its lauded children’s choir, which is great, because Zsofi loves singing. Her mother, the principal and her new friend Liza (Dorka Hais) encourage her to join the troupe. But Zsofi runs into a snag.

I love the music, and the world of competitive choir, and it has a nifty ending. But the most engaging part of the film is the friendship between the shy Zsofi and the cool Liza.

“Silent Nights,” Denmark (30 minutes)

Aske Bang’s third short starts off strong. Malene Beltoft (Inger) is a kindhearted worker for the Salvation Army homeless shelter worker. One of her clients is a Ghanaian immigrant named Kwame (Prince Yaw Appiah). They strike up a romance.

The film’s first half addresses the difficulty many immigrants, including Kwame, have in wanting a better life. But there may be way too much story at the back end to be credible. Still, I found the couple intriguing.

“Timecode” (Spain, 15 minutes)

Juanjo Giménez Peña won the Palme d’Or for this. Luna (Lali Ayguadé) and Diego (Nicolas Ricchini) work in a parking garage in 12-hour shifts. Pretty boring, with polite but minimal interaction between the two only at the shift change.

Then Luna discovers that Diego has a hobby. Eventually, the two soon start using the expansive video surveillance system to swap videos. It was a minor piece but with some charm, especially if you appreciate the moves.

“Ennemis Interieurs,” France (28 minutes)

Sélim Azzazi’s film, translated “Enemies Within,” feels like it’s based on current events, though it was set in the 1990s. It takes almost entirely inside a dim immigration office. Hassam Ghancy is an unnamed Algerian-born Frenchman hoping to procure official citizenship. Najib Oudghiri is the likewise unnamed official who essentially plays the good cop AND the bad cop at different points.

For a movie mostly confined to one location, it was quite affecting. Ghancy’s character showed fear and indignation from the interrogator’s questions. Probably the best of the five.

“La Femme et la TGV,” Switzerland (30 minutes)

Timo von Guten’s film is the most quirky of the features. Jane Birkin, who’s been in quite a few movies you may have seen, is the femme, a melancholy baker in a tiny French town. Her only joy is to wave at the TGV train when it goes by twice a day at 185 mph.

A train conductor sends her a note, tossed off the speeding train and landing in her yard, thanking her for her daily greetings. A correspondence is struck up between the pair, but not on “the Internets,” which she actively avoids.

There is a relationship based on more tossed packages, stuffed with cheese, and carefully written letters which eventually forces her to take action unusual from her predictable life. The solution was there but she couldn’t see it before. I liked it, though it may be a tad long. It’s based on a true story.

Here are trailers for Oscar-nominated live action short films. Most of the movies are in subtitles. I did not find them out there for free, only for a fee.

Music, March 1971: Humble Pie

He saw himself as a budding black militant, but he thought of me as a hippy-dippy, flower-power type.

More random music recollections based on the book Never A Dull Moment.

It was Woodstock, the March 1970 movie, that was the greater watershed than the August 1969 concert, the author posits, and I tend to agree. If a third of a million people actually went to Max Yasgar’s farm in Bethel, NY, after seeing the Academy Award-winning documentary, millions would say they were there.

I recall going to the film with a bunch of my anti-war, socially activist friends – Holiday Unlimited: “a splendid time is guaranteed for all”- shortly after the film was released. We sat through it TWICE, back in the days when you could actually do that sort of thing, and it was LONG, about three hours.

My most specific recollection was looking back at the light stream that was projected image that was showing during Sly and the Family Stone’s performance and noticing how purple it was. And, seriously, I had never taken any drugs at the time.

The Woodstock soundtrack propelled my listening for at least the next half-decade, really introducing me, and much of the country, to Joe Cocker and Santana, and solidified my listening to Arlo Guthrie, CSN(&Y) and The Who, among others.

Unlike earlier live albums, such as The Who’s Live at Leeds, which captured the performance and nothing more, producers in 1971 realized the “sound of the crowd was a key element” in transferring the excitement to the listener who had not been present. I always had mixed feelings about live albums for that reason.

Bill Graham closed both Fillmore East in New York City and Fillmore West in San Francisco in 1971. Agents such as Frank Basalona realized that some bands, such as Led Zeppelin, would sell out the venues based on their names, and weren’t willing for the flat rate someone such as Graham would offer.

Basalona signed groups such as Humble Pie from London and J. Geils from Boston. I listened quite a bit to cuts from the live Humble Pie album Rocking the Fillmore on the radio, featuring Peter Frampton, who would go on to have even greater live album success.

The groups’ common manager was Dee Anthony, who, in addition to worrying about the money, instilled in the band a sense of showmanship. Producer Tom Dowd got the Allman Brothers to dump their out-of-tune horn section and made them a much better band.

The other live music album I recall from this period was the one by Grand Funk Railroad, which came out in November 1970. I received it for my birthday in March 1971 from my sister’s boyfriend George. He saw himself as a budding black militant, but he thought of me as a hippy-dippy, flower-power type, and thought, incorrectly, that this would have been “my” type of music. But I did listen to it a few times, and it’s probably still in the attic.

Listen to:
Black Dog – Led Zeppelin. It was first played live at Belfast’s Ulster Hall on 5 March 1971.
I Don’t Need No Doctor – Humble Pie
Aqualung – Jethro Tull
Rock and Roll, Hootchie Koo – Johnny Winter
Mean Mistreater – Grand Funk Railroad

Video review: Where To Invade Next

After the 2008–11 Icelandic financial crisis, bankers were actually prosecuted.

The movie Where To Invade Next appeared briefly in theaters in New York City and Los Angeles at the end of 2015, but was booked for general release in February 2016. Unfortunately, Michael Moore, the writer/director/star, caught pneumonia around that time, forcing him to cancel activities to promote the film.

Then in May 2016, he emailed MoveOn members, offering them a copy of the video for a donation to the organization, and “tens of thousands… responded.” I was one of them.

The premise of the film is that Moore would “invade” particular countries, and “steal” their best ideas. In Italy, for instance, he interviewed well-paid workers with guaranteed vacation and paid parental leave.

France had delicious-looking school meals and frank sex education. Finland’s education policy, according to the Minister of Education, involved almost no homework and no standardized testing. In Slovenia, the President note that students, including those from other countries, can get a tuition-free, and therefore debt-free higher education.

The Germans have labor rights and a work–life balance, while engaging in an honest national history education about its past, especially regarding the Nazis. Portugal has a rational drug policy and has abolished the death penalty. Norway’s humane prison system applies even to the maximum-security facilities.

Tunisia touts women’s rights, including reproductive health, and women were very important in the drafting of a new constitution in 2014. In Iceland, where women have been in power, the world’s first democratically elected female president came about after a general strike by women.

Of course, the kicker is, in each of these cases, the countries had originally “stolen” the ideas from the United States. For instance, after the 2008–11 Icelandic financial crisis, bankers were actually prosecuted. This came directly from the playbook of the United States after the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s, and in stark contrast with how the US dealt with its subsequent fiscal disaster.

I’ve seen several of Michael Moore’s documentaries. Where To Invade Next is more fun, and far less preachy, than some of his recent films, as he shows what other countries’ choices look like compared with the American dream that seems so difficult to achieve. Yet it doesn’t paint those other countries as total utopias.

Certainly, some will find his examples superficial – I find them even more compelling as the movie progresses – but given the way many Americans know so little about the world outside their borders, this would probably be helpful primer. Not incidentally, there’s a bit about tearing down the Berlin Wall. People from all political stripes may find the film intriguing, a source of conversation even more relevant in light of recent political events in the United States.

G is for “The Great One,” Jackie Gleason

Gleason’s first album, Music for Lovers Only, still holds the record for the album longest in the Billboard Top Ten Charts

I recently noticed that actor/comedian Jackie Gleason would have turned 100 on February 26, 2016, and will have been dead 30 years come June 24, 2017.

When I was growing up in the 1960s, I used to watch his Saturday night variety show on CBS fairly regularly. Gleason played a variety of characters, including the snobbish millionaire Reginald Van Gleason III, the put-upon character known as the Poor Soul, and Joe the Bartender, who always greeted the bug-eyed “Crazy” Guggenheim (Frank Fontaine) before the latter would break into mellifluous song.

The show featured Sammy Spear and his orchestra, and the June Taylor Dancers, who were often shown in aerial pattern kaleidoscope formations, probably my favorite part of the show.

Before that show aired, there was The Honeymooners. Gleason was Ralph Kramden, on a series also starring Audrey Meadows (pictured with Gleason) as his wife, and Art Carney and Joyce Randolph as the apartment building neighbors. It is a classic 1950s TV program, though I didn’t much like it when I saw it in reruns as a child. The bus driver really bugged me with his rants such as “to the moon, Alice,” as though he were going to punch out his spouse. The Honeymooners was reprised in the 1960s with Carney, but with different actresses.

My mother had several albums of music with Gleason’s name attached. He lent his imprimatur to “a series of best-selling ‘mood music’ albums with jazz overtones for Capitol Records… Gleason’s first album, Music for Lovers Only, still holds the record for the album longest in the Billboard Top Ten Charts (153 weeks), and his first 10 albums sold over a million copies each.

“Gleason could not read or write music; he was said to have conceived melodies in his head and described them vocally to assistants who transcribed them into musical notes. These included the well-remembered themes of both The Jackie Gleason Show (‘Melancholy Serenade‘) and The Honeymooners (‘You’re My Greatest Love‘).”

Jackie Gleason had a decent movie career. I watched him, much after the fact, in The Hustler (1961) as pool shark Minnesota Fats. I saw him in the first two Smokey and the Bandit films, but not the third one. I recall enjoying his last film, Nothing in Common (1986), with an upcoming actor named Tom Hanks.

But perhaps the strangest thing in his career took place January 20, 1961: “‘You’re in the Picture‘ was a… replacement game show. Contestants would stick their heads through a cut-out board and guess what character they were. The first installment was so much of a failure that on the second week of the time slot Jackie Gleason came out, sat in a chair, and talked about how horrible the first show had been. He was hilarious.”