Another Week: Number 58

Ross MacDonald — Brightwood Press

Five days before she died, Amy asked me to put on Killers of the Flower Moon. She was yearning to see her beloved Jason Isbell in his acting debut. I declined because it was nine o’clock at night, because the movie is three-and-a-half hours long, and because it wouldn’t be released on Apple TV+ until the next day.

Three days before she died, I positioned my recliner right next to her bed and we watched it — the first half, anyway, including Isbell’s exit from the story. Up to that point, she was intently following the plot and knew the characters’ names. And then she fell asleep.

A week after Amy died, my sister Karen finished watching the movie with me, but I wasn’t paying enough attention to review it here.

It was long. Leonardo DiCaprio’s character was an idiot. Some criticism I read noted that three-and-a-half hours is a long time to spend with an idiot, and that’s true. I also had a hard time watching a movie about a very sick wife alongside my very sick wife.

One thing that I did get from it, however, was a peek at the work of Ross MacDonald.

Early in the movie, DiCaprio opens a book on “Osage Culture & History,” and its vintage graphic style was so perfect that I had to Google for more. As it turns out, Ross MacDonald is the man behind the book — as well as props for more than 40 other movies and TV series.

I don’t know how to convey the geeky thrill I get browsing his cool, cool, fake antiques.

American Experience: Nazi Town, USA

In the summer of 2016, I became curious about Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler. Growing up, there had been plenty of lamentations of the Holocaust and the raving dictator who caused it, but I wanted to better understand how an entire nation went down that path. People always said that Hitler “came to power” or “took over,” but how?

So I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William L. Shirer, and learned how an aggrieved. fringe faction was kindled and stoked by a warped personality with a genius for publicity until it could finally domineer an election. Later, I read the massive two-volume Hitler biography by Ian Kershaw, who illuminated an effect he called “Working Towards the Führer,” which involved everyone under Hitler anticipating and enacting what they felt his wishes must be.

Currently, I’m reading Joachim Fest’s 1973 Hitler biography. He details the tumultuous times and how timorous Germans (with much of Europe) had soured on the friction of democracy and wanted a decisive authority figure to restore their imagined paradise.

The obvious next question is whether it can happen here — and answer is that of course it can.

In her late 2022 podcast series Ultra, Rachel Maddow shined a spotlight on a forgotten chapter of American history in which 20 members of the U.S. Congress colluded with a Nazi agent in an attempt to overthrow our government. Maddow expanded on this story in her October 2023 bestseller Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism.

Now the PBS series American Experience has added an installment from that same era. Nazi Town, USA details the German American Bund, a group that nurtured Nazi ideology throughout the United States in the late 1930s through propaganda and rallies and even resort/training camps where children were taught to revere Hitler (including Camp Hindenburg in Grafton, Wisconsin, which is not named in the episode).

One photo used in the documentary shows a 1937 anti-Hitler demonstration outside a pro-Hitler rally at the German American Club on 52nd Street in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

In addition to sheer astonishment that such noxiousness penetrated our own neighborhoods, one takeaway is the examples of people who fought against it. Maddow has highlighted the unsung heroes — such as journalist Eric Sevareid — who stood up for what’s right.

My sister Karen was especially impressed by journalist Dorothy Thompson.

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974)

Saturday was dinner-and-a-movie night at my mom’s, and I was successful with both selections. I made Chicken Stir-Fry with Celery and Peanuts, which went over well, and I chose Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore to stream on Netflix. Mom hadn’t seen it before, but she likes Ellen Burstyn and she can sing “Where or When.”

Directed by Martin Scorsese just after Mean Streets and just before Taxi Driver, the movie follows Alice, a thirty-five-year-old former singer and now mother in New Mexico who is suddenly widowed and sets off with her eleven-year-old son Tommy for her childhood home of Monterey, California, looking for work along the way.

The kid — played by Alfred Lutter — is exactly the sort of annoying twerp that I was in the 1970s, complete with longish hair, wire-framed glasses, an acoustic guitar, and the music of T. Rex. It’s like looking at an old home movie. Alice has to cope with him, struggle to earn money, and handle various men — including Harvey Keitel, who my mom somehow does not know.

Eventually, Alice finds herself waiting tables at a diner in Tuscon — Mel’s diner, in fact, because this movie was the inspiration for the CBS sitcom Alice, which also featured Vic Tayback. In the movie version, Alice’s co-worker Flo is played by Diane Ladd, mother of actress Laura Dern, who is reportedly shown eating an ice cream cone, but I didn’t spot her.

It was an interesting hour and 52 minutes. There are some unusual camera choices. Ellen Burstyn gives a subtle and authentic performance. Kris Kristofferson looks cool.

Mom enjoyed it.