Cantara’s (Social) Notebook

Most of them are dead now and the handful of survivors are in their 90s, but today the Spanish goverment is finally officially honoring the veterans of the 1936-39 conflict. It’s difficult to interest a generation that doesn’t even remember Vietnam—and can’t even organize a group effort to blow up party balloons—in the Spanish Civil War, but I’ll try to break it down: Good guys: Republicans—defenders of the young, struggling, democratic, egalitarian, legally-elected republic Bay guys: Loyalists—supported by Nazi troops and Nazi state-of-the-art weapons, they wanted the king returned to the throne and everything back the way it was, which was hunky-dory for the rich/landed/influential/well-born There were a few times back in the twentieth century—that parent of all our present troubles—when people were called on to actually, you know, take a risky stand for what they believed in . One was for civil rights (Michael got knocked about in Selma over that one), another was for the Spanis...

Of course I watched him in Kung Fu , even though those of my persuasion were just a teeny bit irritated that he wasn’t Chinese. (His adorable sexiness made up for it, though.) And then there was the Woody Gurthrie biopic directed by Hal Ashby, Bound for Glory , and a little-seen 1983 gem called Americana . A late actor friend named D.G. Buckles trod the boards with his glorious father, John Carradine , in the mid-50s. Son David was Barbara Hershey’s boyfriend when she was Barbara Seagull. How she got that name is a typical story of my generation. Barbara went on to change her name back and star in two of my beloved Stephen Gyllenhaal’s films, A Dangerous Woman and the strange, strange Killing in a Small Town . The last one got her an Emmy. David Carradine’s death in a Bangkok hotel room, however it happened, is just another one of those stories about actors on the road that we’ve heard since Shakespeare’s time. Rest in peace, comrade. Chris Willman wrote a stor...

J.D. Salinger in his later years. J.D. Salinger hasn’t published much fiction in the last half-century, but the guy can still crank out a lawsuit when he needs to. The latest: Salinger, 90, has sued to enjoin the publication of a sequel of sorts to his most famous and celebrated novel,  Catcher in the Rye . The sequel, called 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye , is written by a purported American living in Sweden named John David California. The novel portrays a 76-year old Holden Caulfield—the famed protagonist of the original work—wandering the streets of New York after having escaped from a retirement home.

As the Sandra Bullock biopic, Grace , seems to be dead in the water (after five years, it’s now nowhere on Bullock’s IMDb slate) it’s pretty much fair game to discuss now. A shame that the life of controversial author Grace Metalious may never be seen on screen, because it’s a corker of a story. So how oh how did Naomi Foner (Naomi Foner- Gyllenhaal at the time) get first dibs to write the screenplay back in 2004? The problem is, a high-minded entity such as Ms. Foner has no business delving into the life of a woman like Mrs. Metalious, if for no other reason that if she’d met Grace in real life she would have cut her dead, as the rectitudinal ladies of Gilmanton, New Hampshire did when Grace’s tell-all novel, Peyton Place, hit the bestseller list and opened their town to public scrutiny. I remember reading Peyton Place in the late 60s. It was one of those dog-eared paperbacks that was passed around from girl to girl in high school. We were on the bri...