Jon Hamm and Christina Hendricks Reveal Season Four

Beware, spoilers! Omigod, is that Freddy Rumsen?
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Self-Styled Siren Checks In with Handsome Directors

On a pleasanter note than Monday's posting, my favorite classic-film blogger Self-Styled Siren posted her list of Hollywood's handsomest directors, and smack dab between Frank Borzage (Three Comrades, screenplay by my beloved countryman F. Scott Fitzgerald) and the sleekly elegant Vittorio de Sica was this devastating photo of John Cassavetes (from, I think, Polanski's Rosemary's Baby). Mrs Matheny is fanning herself.

Cassavetes favorites: Opening Night with Gene Rowlands and the great, great existential TV private eye series, Johnny Staccato, episodes of which have yet to be collected on a single DVD. (Note to SCTV fans: This is the TV show parodied in the skit "Vic Arpeggio" by Joe Flaherty.)

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Stephen Gyllenhaal and a Thousand Little Chappaquiddicks

"Senator Kennedy killed that girl the same as if he put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger." — Massachusetts State Police Detective Lieutenant George Killen

The personal is political, say we feminists, and I am taking very personally this particular anniversary of Mary Jo Kopechne's murder at the hands of one bloated bastard.

It's unlikely that we'll ever get a truthful account of the event, but brief summaries in the media of what "officially" happened that night at Martha's Vineyard—and, more important, what happened after—can be found here, here, here and here.

And just so you don't go thinking that this is an irrelevant bit of trivia from the past, here are the passionate reactions of a young woman named Mary Conley and a young man named Paul Trost, two people who were born decades after that night in July, 1969. Pay particular attention to the story of Paul Trost and what happens nowadays when you speak your mind.

Theories continue to abound as to what "really" happened that night after Teddy and Mary Jo left the party. They might have been having an affair. Or Kennedy, fearing to be recognized in his car, might have left her alone, drunk and disoriented, to drive herself home. Or he might have spent the time crying on her shoulder over his dead brother. A blogger at Open Salon named Sally Swift says the story told her is that Mary Jo simply chose Kennedy's car to sleep off the effects of too much alcohol and was passed out in the back seat, unnoticed, as he drunkenly drove away. Carol Joyce Oates even wrote a novel outlining her own theory. But really, who gives a rat's ass about theories? Mary Jo is dead. There was no autopsy performed and Kennedy was never prosecuted.

It looked as if she were holding herself up to get a last breath of air. It was a consciously assumed position. ... She didn't drown. She died of suffocation in her own air void. It took her at least three or four hours to die. I could have had her out of that car twenty-five minutes after I got the call. But [Kennedy] didn't call. — Diver John Farrar at the Inquest

But what I'm concerned with today is the reaction of one Stephen Roark Gyllenhaal—do I need to remind you a man I once loved and respected, a man whose words I once edited and published—to the incident now simply called Chappaquiddick. It was in his blog posting ostensibly about health care reform and Kennedy's recent death where he wrote "...we feel inferior to him. I have to admit I felt more than a bit inferior hearing about all the friends he had, all the papers and books he wrote, all the bills he passed and then, of course, the fact that he was a Kennedy, his hair ruffled by the winds of Hyannis. In some deep sense," concluded my idiot friend, "I have to admit it—I just don't feel quite as good as him."

As was his usual modus operandum, Stevie was blogging on the topic of the day simply in order to (re)broadcast to the world his persistent feelings of inferiority. That I've gotten used to. But when he "circled" the topic of Chappaquiddick things took a sinister turn. Because in his own brief account, he called the dead girl Mary Jo Kohekohe. (This was corrected within a day when an irate comment on his blog called him on it, after which he deleted the comment, though not his own comment to the comment.)

Now, as I said, I was once Stephen's editor so I know what a rotten speller he can be. But to get this name wrong, a name well-known by nearly every American of our generation? And to misspell it in such a ridiculous manner that it almost sounds like he's mocking her?

At first I thought he was, with his usual carelessness and thoughtlessness, simply being sloppy in his writing. But a few months ago, during a casual conversation with an acquaintance who happens to have been, like Stephen and his family, a summer resident of Martha's Vineyard, I mentioned his slip with the name.

"What was that name again?" she asked me. I repeated it and spelled it out. "Oh, yes," she said, "that's the joke that's been going around the island for years. That's what some people like to call her."

Even now it goes on, in bits and pieces. Don't tell me the past is the past.

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John Sayles and Philippine Independence Day

On this, the 64th anniversary of the independence of the Philippines from their American mentors/overlords—a day given to them, ironically enough, by those very mentors/overlords—I’d like to give a mention to John Sayles’ new film Amigo, which was done on the most modest of budgets and is now in post-production. I can’t begin to tell you what it means to me personally to see the most crucial story in the history of my people’s country done justice by the American master of morally complex film narrative (Matewan, Lone Star, The Brother from Another Planet, Lianna).

There was a time in the US when Filipinos weren’t just ignored, patronized or exploited—we were loathed. But you won’t find that in your history books. I didn’t even know it myself until I was thirteen and heard it from Pete Seeger on the Smothers Brothers show (at the 2:00 mark).

Thanks for letting me know, Pete. You raised my social consciousness that day.

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A Memory of the Soviet Invasion of Czechoslavakia

The story of how my husband Michael was coerced into becoming a spy for US Army intelligence, sent into Soviet-invaded Prague, and ended up killing two men and fleeing for his life I will leave for another time. For now this is actor Robert Vaughn’s dramatized account for the BBC of how he and the cast and crew of the WWII-set, Czech-shot film The Bridge at Remagen fled the Russian army during that tense August of 1968. Happy Father’s Day, Michael.

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L'Appel de 18 Juin

Les chefs qui, depuis de nombreuses années, sont à la tête des armées françaises, ont formé un gouvernement. Ce gouvernement, alléguant la défaite de nos armées, s’est mis en rapport avec l’ennemi pour cesser le combat.

Certes, nous avons été, nous sommes, submergés par la force mécanique, terrestre et aérienne, de l’ennemi.

Infiniment plus que leur nombre, ce sont les chars, les avions, la tactique des Allemands qui nous font reculer. Ce sont les chars, les avions, la tactique des Allemands qui ont surpris nos chefs au point de les amener là où ils en sont aujourd’hui. [more]

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Molly Bloom’s Soliloquy

Yes because he never did a thing like that before as ask to get his breakfast in bed with a couple of eggs since the City Arms hotel when he used to be pretending to be laid up with a sick voice doing his highness to make himself interesting for that old faggot Mrs Riordan that he thought he had a great leg of and she never left us a farthing all for masses for herself and her soul greatest miser ever was actually afraid to lay out 4d for her methylated spirit telling me all her ailments she had too much old chat in her about politics and earthquakes and the end of the world let us have a bit of fun first God help the world if all the women were her sort down on bathingsuits and lownecks of course nobody wanted her to wear them I suppose she was pious because [more]

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Two for the Road

Happy 30th anniversary, Michael. This song more than any other song is about you and me and our life together.
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Running on Empty

Ross Ching's vision of a carless LA. That's what I love about this city, all the possibilities. This posting is dedicated to my favorite car-free film producer, Marcia Nasatir.
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Bronte Power Action Dolls

What, no Bramwell?

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I’m Now a Fan of Candy Matson, PI

Heard on NBC radio from San Francisco 1949-1951, Candy was the toughest and wittiest of all the female private investigators on the air. Candy Matson, YU 2-8209 created by Monty Masters—husband of the star, Natalie Masters—also had some of the cleverest dialogue and well-plotted mystery scripts in broadcast drama. An added plus are the real-life Bay Area locations woven into each story. Candy’s love interest, SFPD Lt Ray Mallard, was played by Henry Leff, while her sometime sidekick, aptly named Rembrandt Watson, was played by Jack Thomas. Astonishingly for the early 50s, Rembrandt is obviously gay—probably the first favorably portrayed homosexual on radio. This episode, entitled “The Fort Ord Story” , is dedicated to my husband, novelist-editor Michael Matheny, who took his basic training in Fort Ord in 1967 before being shipped overseas.

[Cross-posted from Cantara’s Classic Radioville.]

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Mad Men Does Bye Bye Birdie

Behold the cast and crew of Mad Men performing their spoof of Bye Bye Birdie for the pleasure of Matthew Weiner. Dance, vixens, dance! (And check out goofy goofy goofy Jon Hamm and January Jones at :59, 1:31, 2:32, and 3:01).




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