Trump: Make America Grope Again

Taastrup  

My head is going to pop off like a dandelion’s if I hear one more fresh-faced newscaster wax philosophic on how Donald Trump represents a true break from the political rules of old. True, Donald sealed his fate with last week’s hot mic, but the scandal, however salacious, is hardly new.

I know Twitter limits you to 140 character per missive, but come on; just a little institutional memory, pretty please.

God knows I’m no historian. But I can at least (vaguely) remember events in my life. Your own life span should be grounds for a hint of historical context. And there is much to contextualize here, just as there was a half century ago.

In the year of my conception, 1964, another Donald Trump threatened to wreck not only the GOP, but the republic itself: Barry Goldwater. goldwater

Consider Barry Morris Goldwater Trump beta: also a Republican, a businessman, rich and nasty as hell. Like Trump, he despised what America had become. Namely, less white. He would earn his fame by filibustering and voting against the Voting Rights Act — and taking a shellacking in the presidential race by a guy who wasn’t even sure he wanted the job. lyndon

As Trump will in a month.

This will likely come naturally, as the Donald and his ilk choke on his own vitriolic bile. But just in case, all historians and the Clinton campaign need do is look at the Democratic advertising strategy of Lyndon Johnson. Like Clinton, he was ahead in the polls.

But there is an important stratagem here in Johnson for Clinton: Don’t take your foot off an opponent’s neck.  Johnson, for instance, was worried of an 11th hour rally and, not wanting to risk a GOP resurrection, sprang an attack campaign that created the modern template of American politics.

Johnson approved “Daisy Girl,” one of the most terrifying and effective political ads in political history. Sure, it was alarmist, sensational, and had no real basis in fact.

But at least it kept a nut from learning the nuclear ATM passcode.

Clinton would be well-served to follow Johnson’s lead. While her lead in polls (if they can be trusted; who under 40 even uses a home phone?), now is the time to break into the Secretariat Stretch, finishing off the Republican Party as it lurches in Tea Party/Trumpian death throes spasms.

Maybe she could even find this guy, if he’s not dead from cancer. The parallels are frightening. He even kind of looks like Trump, if a world away in logic. But it would be a kick to Trump’s slats, which is apparently the only place Donald can feel.

No one enjoys negative ads.

But it’s a lot better than negative nuts.

Something Whatzit This Way Comes

 

I’ve always been a sucker for gadgets, gizmos and whatzits.

Perhaps it was the gimmicks in the cheap magic tricks I bought as a kid. At least that’s what I rationalize when I continue to feed my addiction to odd purchases. Like the spy pen camera I bought I last week.

I had no need for one, as I’ve really cut down on my pen writing and spying. I can’t even really tell you why I was looking at them. But I knew when I wanted one: When one reviewer who raved about the device admitted that he bought it it “because when I was a kid I always dreamed of having one.”

spy-pen

That’s enough for me (along with a price tag of $35; funny, the cost of dreams). Alas, the toy was broken upon arrival, and I had to reluctantly return it.

The psychosis spreads to my vehicles, many of which will become historical footnotes of bad engineering. There were the two Fieros. The Yugo. And one of my favorites, a purple X-90 that’s the closest the auto industry has come to a bubble car. x90 I’m currently driving a smart car because the Fiat 500 seemed too big, having a backseat and all.

I drive another ridiculous contraption now, a Can-Am Spyder that is, in essence, a reverse trike — two wheels in front, one in back. Think a dyslexic Big Wheel. The bike flummoxes insurance companies and state DMVs, which aren’t sure how to categorize it. You don’t even need a motorcycle license to drive one, which is about as insane as not needing a license to work an AR-15.

But the gizmo has turned into an intellectual whatzit. The purchase was borne of the stubborn realization that driving on only two wheels is insane in Los Angeles. But I can’t bring myself to give up the roller-coaster high that is any motorcycle ride.

So now I drive the equivalent of either a Batbike or a bike for circus clowns, and love it. I take 6-mile rides along Lake Balboa to pick up a donut three blocks away. The thing has such a cavernous trunk I take it grocery shopping, as it can hold a 24-pack and two grocery bags. It’s the first motorcycle to earn a thumbs-up from my mother, which is either a very good or very troubling sign.

It has come at the cost of some hubris. Once I rode a Harley, and I’m still too embarrassed by the training wheels to pull into a Harley shop, lest I be discovered for the fraud I am.

biker-wannabe

But there’s something to that third wheel, more assuring than I expected. A good friend recently confided he rides his Harley now to simply keep it running. “But it’s a 700 pound bike,” he told me. “If that drops, I won’t be able to pick it up.”

I hear you, brother. And I’m only a half step behind you in my burgeoning caution.

But on the ride to buy cake donuts this weekend, I came upon a group of boys, all brandishing skateboards and spasming cell phones. They geared up, headed out of the shop, and surrounded the bike. “What the hell is that?” one asked loudly to no one.

And I realized: He’d found the through line to much of my life. From magic tricks to handheld gadgets to the motorcycles and cars that ferry me, I’m undeniably drawn to any whatthehellisthat?

Fortuna may insist that my body age. But she is powerless against my towering immaturity.

Nyah Nyah Nyah.

Now what’s that spy pen website?

Children of Men and the Latin New Wave Movement

 

A world in chaos. Terror attacks run rampant. Deportation is the hottest issue on a worried public consciousness as walls keep immigrants from interacting with native citizens.

A documentary? A nightly newscast? A Trump political ad?

Try Children of Men.

Ten years after it hit screens, wowed critics and cemented the reign of the “Three Amigos” over Hollywood, Alfonso Cuaron’s ominous tale of an infertile human race remains as prescient and topical now as it was a decade ago.

If anything, it has grown in stature, becoming a video cult favorite, spawning academic debate and influencing films today in what critics consider a new wave of cinema akin to the French films of the 1960’s and 70’s.

Not bad for a commercial flop.

From its stunning opening to a sprint of a finale, Children proved two hours of frenzy on film. Utilizing handheld cameras and seamless tracking shots, the picture would earn a raft of critic top-10s with its story of a government paper pusher (Clive Owen) who finds himself the charge of humanity’s last pregnant resident, Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey).

The film would earn three Oscar nominations — best writing, editing and cinematography — on its way to 41 other movie awards and nominations. Roger Ebert compared it to Metropolis and Nosferatu. metropolisnosferatuThe New York Times called its final battle sequence one of finest “ever seen on film.”

Yet it never really took off at the box office. With ticket sales of about $35 million, the grim tale collected less than half its production budget. When it opened on Christmas weekend 2006, it did a paltry $180,000 in limited release — about the catering cost of a Michael Bay opus.

But like The Matrix and Blade Runner, the dystopian cautionary tale found an audience over the years. matrixblade-runnertAnd like those films, Children has become a benchmark for science fiction — largely for its timeless nature. Word of mouth and steady video rentals would ultimately make the $75 million film a tidy profit for distributor Universal Pictures.

And its audience continues to grow. Children has become a springboard for debate among academics such as Stanford senior fellow Francis Fukuyama, author The Origins of Political Order and The End of History. Fukuyama tours the nation with the film, using it as the fulcrum for geopolitical debate over a growing populace squabbling over a shrinking natural resource pool.

Indeed, there’s no escaping the topicality of Children. The movie’s Muslim-Christian tension resembles BBC footage. The story’s narrative kindling — the percolating firestorm over immigration — could have been come from the teleprompter of the Republican National Convention. The story’s immigration center is located in Bexhill, England. (Brexit, anyone?)

Technically, the film’s shaky, handheld camera — usually holding on long, extended takes — is the hottest flourish in Hollywood, thanks to editing technology that makes cuts a stylistic choice, not a filmmaking necessity.

Consider the brutal car ambush scene (spoiler alert), which takes place about a half hour into the movie. In addition to putting the film into overdrive (and killing a character in stunning fashion), the bloody chase/shootout lasts more than four minutes without a visible cut. (Orson Welles’ classic one in Touch of Evil lasted three, once considered an eternity.)

Since Children, directors have engaged in a contest of tracking shots, essentially seeing who can hold their breath the longest; Cuaron’s Gravity opens with a tracking shot that lasts an epic 17 minutes. Birdman, the 2014 film that captured Best Picture, plays as one entire tracking shot, without a single visible take.

gravitybirdman

Speaking of which: Those movies came courtesy of Cuaron and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. two-thirds of Hollywood’s “Three Amigos” trinity. Along with third member Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Pacific Rim), the men have have hurtled the industry into a technically-savvy style not unlike the movies of the French New Wave movement. Last year, Inarritu became the first filmmaker to win back-to-back directing Oscars (Birdman, The Revenant). Consider it the Latin New Wave movement in cinema.

Both movies took their aesthetic cues from Cuaron’s bleak vision of the world 20 years in the future.

“It is above all the look of Children of Men that stirs apprehension in the heart,” mused Ebert. “Is this what we are all headed for?”

It may be the end of the world as we know it, but on the big screen at least, it all looks fine.