Fire The Mountainside
Author Archives: Scott Bowles
Open Letter to A Puppy: Work Zones
Colchester My plus twos
It’s rare that bipeds come to the park without their emotional support pups (and what dogs are not?). But you’ve surely noticed the odd goings on there of late.
Surveyors in yellow hats. Their government trucks parked horizontally over vertical stripes. Cameramen in full gear. Reporters REALLY hoping to not step in something; not in these shoes.
Don’t worry. None of them are vets.
No, the humans are here for politics. Politics is what we do we’re not focused on more important things, i.e., you.
The people in helmets are surveilling how much of the park can be cut and how long it can be closed. See, the Summer Olympics are coming here in 2028, and the city wants to look its spiffiest.
Which means more bike paths. And I hate to tell you guys: They want land from your park. Our petitions didn’t dissuade. Our pressure could not prevent.
That’s why you see all the cameras and tasty shoes. Reporters want to know what your parents think of that — along with our thoughts on a new Los Angeles ordinance banning backyard breeding (shelters are 210% over capacity).
We’re all pretty united on both fronts: You can bike the street, but a dog already has a scarcity of choices. And Charlie would like a moment in private with his former backyard bait dog owner.
So be extra patient with the unaccompanied majors you see tromping your backyard. They’ve got a job to do, even if it is to pave paradise. Some might even have pups of their own.
But Charlie, feel free to jack a leg on one of those trucks. And, for this time only, any nice shoes dropped on the ground are fair game.
‘Zone of Interest’: The Return of Horror Radio
Between the pandemic, studio greed and America’s love of franchise, Hollywood has become a bit of a bedazzled cadaver: bloated, leaky, beginning to rot as summer heat approaches. But the makeup is perfect.
But Covid brought new life to other forms of sequestered living. Television is in a new golden era. Streaming created a new Hollywood power broker, the influencer. And everyone and their drunk half-cousin started a podcast.
America’s audio revival could not have come sooner. True Crime is as popular a genre in the U.S. as, well, true crime as an activity. And none come truer — or more horrific — than The Zone of Interest, a rare movie that is more powerful audibly than visually. It’s radio theater with virtual reality effects. This is a movie to be experienced twice: once with captions; once without.
Directed by Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast); Zone examines the real-life commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife Hedwig, who strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to the camp.
In a sublime decision, Zone doesn’t show a single death. Instead, it pulls a reverse Schindler’s List, the Oscar-winning masterpiece that was shot entirely in black and white, save for one Jewish girl in a red dress.
Here, we get muted colors, and the Jewish girl in a dress is cast in negative-contrast light as she rushes to feed her Polish village by sneaking food under the cloak of night.
More moving, though, is the sound that undergirds Zone. As Hedwig explains the garden to her mother-in-law, we hear the anguished cries of women and children being herded to the gas chambers (more than 1.1 million died in Auschwitz) just beyond the garden wall. As Joseph goes bird hunting on the grounds, we hear the crack of executional gunfire. The steady grind of the crematoriums is a nauseating white noise.
Some critics, particularly young ones, have dismissed the film as a foley stunt in an overdone genre. Conservative douche Ben Shapiro raked it for not showing a single Jewish death.
Apparently, Ben didn’t get the point of the story. Zone takes an intentionally clinical look at the task of murdering millions, from the paperwork to transportation to counting cash and gold-filled teeth. That the words then find purchase now is downright chilling.
It makes for a terrifying cacophony.
