Runaway Future

Starting at the beginning of September, I’ve been fortunate enough to regularly view classic films with a neighbour of mine.  I’m going to attempt to chronicle those sessions in a new section that I’m calling “Sundays at Seven”.

The second week featured Inherit the Wind, a 1960 film based on a real-life court case in 1925 regarding the teaching of evolution in the classroom. It features an all-star cast with Dick York, from Bewitched fame as the teacher, Gene Kelly as a wise-cracking journalist and Spencer Tracy as the defense lawyer. Tracy’s Henry Drummond character matches up against Fredric March’s Matthew Harrison Brady, a Bible-thumping blowhard with political aspirations, who time is already passing by. Harry Morgan, who played Sherman Potter on M*A*S*H plays the judge for the trial. In the end, the school teacher is found guilty, but his only punishment is to pay a pittance of a fine.

The film pits religious fervour against scientific method and in that way it would be equally relevant in today’s political climate. One can only imagine the response from the right side of the political spectrum that this film would garner if released today. Perhaps for that reason, the re-releases in 1965, 1988 and 1999 were all TV films with much less fanfare or attention drawn to them. The story is based on a play that was intended to talk about the McCarthy trials in the 1950s, but the actual case was the Scopes Monkey Trial. As last week with the Heiress, another very contemporary and relevant story, although in this case, for much different reasons.

This was followed by another two episodes of the Twilight Zone

The first was Printer’s Devil, where Burgess Meredith plays the Devil who helps a newspaperman revive his failing paper. As always the case, a deal with the Devil is fraught with danger and everything that Meredith commits to type comes true, including disasters around the town. Eventually, the Devil plans to kill the newspaperman’s girlfriend and it’s only quick thinking by the newspaperman (who looks somewhat like Seth MacFarlane) that saves his girlfriend and sends the Devil on his way. Burgess Meredith (famous for playing the Penguin on Adam West’s Batman and playing Rocky’s trainer Mickey in those films) absolutely kills as the Devil, with sadistic grin on his face, clamping down on a bent cigar.

The second Twilight Zone episode was You Drive. Out of all four Twilight Zone episodes we’ve seen so far, I liked this one the least. The premise is a man is involved in a hit-and-run with a kid on a bicycle and after returning home and lying to his wife, his car develops a conscience and urges him to do the right thing. The man tries to go about his life and also nearly frames one of his co-workers, but the car continues to rebel against him. The climax is the man being chased down the street by this ghost car before finally relenting, jumping in and being driven to the police station.

Starting at the beginning of September, I’ve been fortunate enough to regularly view classic films with a neighbour of mine.  I’m going to attempt to chronicle those sessions in a new section that I’m calling “Sundays at Seven”.

In our first week, we watched the film The Heiress. Made in 1949, the film is set in the mid-1800s and focuses on a young woman (the titular heiress) who has been unlucky in love, but then finds herself the object of affection for a smooth young man. Although his intentions are never made completely clear, her father suspects he’s more interested in her inheritance than her love and certainly the suitor’s actions mirror these suspicions.

The film doesn’t have a happy ending for any of the main characters. The heiress ends up alone, the father passes away and the suitor is rejected and continues to be penniless.

I really enjoyed this film, not just because of the strong acting (the actor who plays the father is particularly effective as a cruel parent who often is eager to point out his daughter’s shortcomings), but also because despite the actual film being more than 60 years old and the story itself being set much farther back, it still felt extremely contemporary in story. It felt like something that could be told in today’s cinema. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I wasn’t the only one to think that: the film was remade in 1997 as Washington Square.

We also watched two episodes of the Twilight Zone.

In the first, The New Exhibit, a man becomes obsessed with the wax figures of five famous murderers (creepily done as heavily made-up actors, it was unnerving to see them stand there as wax figures, swaying ever so slightly). Bringing the figures home, they eventually begin to murder anything that threatens their existence, including the man’s wife, brother-in-law and former boss, before turning on their care-taker.

In the second, Of Late I Think Of Cliffordville, a businessman who has achieved everything that he wishes to do and is as successful as he can be, makes a deal with the devil to go back in time to his old home town and start all over again. As with any deal of the nature, the devil is in the details (to excuse the phrase) and things don’t work out as planned, leaving the man lost and making a bad deal to return to the future, where he finds that it was his janitor who enjoyed the success that he once celebrated. Julie Newmar is nothing short of stunningly attractive as the devil, while Albert Salmi is a very convincing blustery and boasting businessman.

A student in my class, feeling self-concious about being much older than the other students, told me that he had been in prison. I asked him what crime he had committed, and he said, “Shot a dude.” He wrote a series of very good but very stoic stories about prison life, and when I asked him why the stories were so tight-lipped, he explained to me the jailhouse concept of “doing your own time,’ which means that when you’re a prisoner you’re expected not to burden the other prisoners by complaining about your incarceration or regretting what you had done or, especially, claiming you haven’t done it. “Do your own time” – it’s a seductive slogan. I find that I quote it to myself frequently, but really I don’t subscribe to the sentiment. We’re not, after all, in prison – not exactly, not literally. Stoicism bores me. What I ultimately believe in is talking about everything until you’re blue in the face.

David Shields, Enough About You

This summer for the alFresco FilmFesto, an annual series of outdoor films projected onto the side of a building on the waterfront, the theme is Bill Murray films. As part of it, they’ve got a contest for Bill Murray themed haikus.

For whatever reason, this struck my interest and so I submitted:

Groundhog, Weatherman
Cursed to spend day after day
First step’s a doozy

Since then, my mind has been flowing with ideas:
Marine scientist
Chasing shark who killed best friend
Cousteau would be proud

Noble groundskeeper
Lama promised peace in death
Got that going for me

Present day efforts
Stoneface like Buster Keaton
Far from SNL

Just want to play golf
Hidden among undead folk
Nice shot, Eisenberg

I mentioned this previously, but I’ve owned the same cellphone, a venerable Samsung a640 for almost 6 years now, which is eons when it comes to that technology. I’ve been oft-criticized for that (as someone working in the information technology field, it goes against the expectations of many, as does my indifference for video games) and rarely draws any sort of respect (though I’ve been curiously painted as some sort of luddite technology freedom fighter, which might make sense considering my main home computer dates back to my college days, minus some upgrades that were done more to keep the damn thing running than to have any noticeable advancement in performance or features), but so far, I’ve resisted the allure and draw of the smart phone world.

It’s funny, my Dad, who calls me for computer and technology advice, now owns a “better” phone than I do. At least his has a full keyboard for texting and a bevy of other features like email and the Internet and apps. In fact, he called me to get my opinion on whether the phone he had chosen would be a good fit.

But it has been a deliberate decision on my part and not one that I don’t question often, moreso now that others continue to poke fun and question my position.

What it boils down to is being present in the moment, something that I fear by stating will immediately draw irk from some of my friends. But the fact of the matter remains:

On the weekend, a very close friend of mine got married. I had the privilege of being one of his groomsmen and the night before the ceremony, a group of us, including the other groomsmen and the groom himself went out to eat. The place was packed and as luck would have it, as we were being shown our seats, the bride-to-be called. Because the groom doesn’t have a cellphone (something that I have to mostly respect him for), the bride called my number and I passed the phone over. After the conversation, the groom sat down, clearly with some jitters in his mind, while the rest of the table continued to fool around with their Blackberries, iPhones, whatever.

With the others floating in their technological bubbles, I took the opportunity to talk to the groom. He wasn’t really in the chatting mood and so it goes, but I begin to wonder what would have been the case if he was in need of an ear and I was equally absorbed into an email, a Facebook feed, a tweet or something else? With everyone’s attentions turned to their screens, there wasn’t much in the way of a flow of conversation.

I remember I ran a half-marathon in May of 2010 and I fell apart right around kilometer 15. At the time, all I needed was someone to talk to, someone to run beside and take my mind off of my short breath, failing stride and fiery lungs. I was in a race with thousands of people but everyone close by was plugged in, listening to music or whatever, headphones in the ears and in their own tech bubbles.

Since then, I know that some races have instituted a no-MP3 player policy, not only for safety reasons but also for the general social aspects. I’ve made some great friends over the course of half-marathons and I understand and love the idea behind those policies.

And so it is the same with technology’s impact with many aspects of our lives, ‘bringing people together’ but pulling them apart. Maybe that’s why I continue to view my cottage with an almost mythical vision. Cell signals simply do not reach there. Phones are useless unless they’re landline. For once, being present in the moment is a forced duty.

Call it luddite, or maybe I don’t want to be accessible all the time or maybe I’m afraid that I’ll abuse it and let it abuse me and find myself answering work emails at 9pm on a Thursday, but more and more, I’m wondering how much longer I can hold out.