Trouble with the Eastwood?

When I heard Clint Eastwood was coming out of retirement (he said Gran Torino would be his last film as an actor) my feelings were mixed. I figured he, like MJ, had the perfect close to his (acting) career with Gran Torino. It certainly wasn’t his best all-around movie, but it definitely scooped into a barrel of quotables and kicked some gritty neck-scrunching ass. Everything you’ve come to know and love Eastwood for. One last ride into the sunset, albeit a much older, retiree sunset.

Then, I saw my all-time favorite actress, Amy Adams, was on the bill. My thought was, Million Dollar Baby II, one last run at the Oscar. Why not? The academy certainly makes picks to reward a career over the present, for respect and it’s own “Hall of Fame” aspirations. I thought Adams would be a ray of sunshine to what is typically and literally a dark brand of cinematography. Adams certainly can shine in shadow lighting too, right?

It and many other feelings alllllllll came crashing down when he made that “Eastwood and Chair” (link: Bill Hader SNL edition) speech at the Republican National Convention. What a train wreck. It reminded me of how I would turn my face away from the TV the first time I watched the British Office. Squirming. Squinting. Covering my eyes, I got through what seemed like a half hour of the worst improv I’ve ever seen. That brought my dreams of Eastwood glory to a screeching, whistle-laden speech impediment halt. There would be no Oscar. Is everything I know and love about my favorite movie maker a sham? Perhaps, he’s just a senile old man off his gourd? Or, I’ve hitched my movie wagon to an incandescent asshole, you know, the opposite of the kind of admirable asshole he plays in his movies that I love so fondly. 

I soon learned the real reason he came out of retirement was to help his long time director assistant and production partner, Robert Lorenz, who was directing his first film. That seemed noble to me. I like that. Use the name and pass the torch onto others. It was the first time since the 90’s In the Line of Fire that Clint relinquished overall movie command. They were able to rope in quite a surrounding cast, with Adams, who without a doubt was the star of this movie, and JT, who added impressive comedic flair, along with John Goodman, who once again, is in EVERY movie. Good for Goodman.

The real question I have about it all: Was it worth it? I believe, because of the retarded speech, Clint was actually in need to come through on screen to not tarnish his movie legacy.

I didn’t like J.Edgar at all. It was like a boring Oliver Stone spoof. 2009’s Invictus was similarly disappointing with a seemingly great premise and all-world cast with Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela and Matt Damon as a studly rugby player.

The 2006 duo-perspectives of the flag-raising at Iwo Jima left me slightly ying-yang dizzy. I felt Flags of our Fathers was flat, while Letters from Iwo Jima left me stunned with its sheer awesomeness.  I’m not sure how Eastwood pulled off a picture in Japanese and why that perspective had so much more punch and enthrallment, but it did and the duo perspectives ordeal ended up being successful in the face of a probable plateau.    

2010’s Hereafter and 2008’s Changeling were good movies, but nothing to get overly excited or brag about.  

Needless to say, after Gran Torino, I think coming out and making a bad movie would teeter the end of his career to a downward spiral that would possibly affect the legacy. So, that’s added pressure for Trouble with the Curve. Grantland already predicated this concept, basically promenading over Eastwood’s career as if he were the Limp Bizkit of filmmaking. They can go-ahead and profile the “rise and fall” OF MY ASS!!!!

There was one great take in the piece I agreed with though, “He rolled movies off studio lots like cars off Ford factory floors: speedily, under budget, without a ton of flash or hassle or pauses for fits of artiste-style pique. Actors and executives spoke with awe about how quickly and painlessly it all happened. And then it was onto the next one.”

I guess I’ve always enjoyed that about Eastwood though. His steady hand guides you through darkness, violence and all-around malfeasance like a floating, rocking hammock. I like a warm glass of milk when Sean Penn’s daughter is killed. Despite the awards and overall recognition, the highs and lows of his movies are typically pretty tame and/or consistent. You know what you’re going to get. That’s why J.Edgar and “Eastwood and Chair” were very troubling to me. He was handed Leo and a topic that should have been more engulfing. It wasn’t. He was handed a spotlight to make something I’m typically not that interested in, more exciting. He didn’t. He made me question my taste in pictures and heroes. He let me down.

Does Trouble with the Curve deserve all this pressure cooker legacy propaganda? Certainly not. Why can’t movies be fun anymore? You go, take a load off, get some terrible-for-you-food and forget about life. Good, bad, indifferent—just be entertained. There’s nothing like it, cue projecting reel sound.

Eastwood’s comeback was pretty parallel to Micheal Jordan’s with the Wizards. He proved in Trouble with the Curve that even at an age when you don’t belong “in the biz” the moves are still there beyond what others are capable of in their prime. He probably shouldn’t have made the movie and certainly should have declined to speak at the RNC, but, there is still something there for those like myself, that miss zipping by Model T’s on the roads. Even if you’re like me and weren’t alive when they were on the roads, you’ve read about them, your parents and grandparents told you stories trumpeting their omniscient prowess. They are ancient archeological antiques that now rule museums. When you see one, alive and well, you just have to gawk, and remember the day when they ruled the world.

Despite all that, I don’t think Trouble with the Curve has NOTHING to offer. The chemistry between JT and Amy Adams was electric, though mostly spoiled by the previews (stop doing that previews!!!). Timberlake is really proving that he can carry his own in a movie. He was funny, light and reflected the classic Amy Adams shine right back to her. It was tennis, not Adams hitting the ball against a wall, although, I’d certainly watch that—especially if she had a ponytail and sweats. Adams always seems like a real person to me. Perhaps, it’s because I have a friend that looks/acts/has the same first name as her. I just always see something real from something as basic as having a crooked smile, remembering her first movie moment (that I remember) as a girl with braces, to being remarkably cute in a non-movie star way. I think we all know an Amy Adams in our life, which seems plain, oozes cuteness, yet is an ordinary part of your day, but is extraordinary once she exits your lens.

The baseball scouts and players are comically clichéd Moneyball b-sides and poorly executed at that, much like the astonishing poor surrounding acting in Gran Torino. The “Grumpier Old Men III” lines are cringingly bad, like “Feng Schmei” and “I’m not a pole dancer.” He can take scripts that should have been in the shredder, he has to know they should have been in the shredder, deliver them in a way that says, “this is a lame line, but I can make it work,” and, somehow, it’s still warm and enjoyable. In that way, Eastwood’s late career is like the comedic delivery of David Letterman. Taking nothing, and pounding into something. A magical blacksmith who majestically rides into town to view the sunset with the common people—true Kings wouldn’t have it any other way. 

Clint Eastwood is the champion of being a bad ass. He’s so cocky he can do it as YOUR grandfather. Bob Dylan and Neil Young continue to make albums. 60 is the new 40. 80 is the new 50. Billy Joel never sang about how “only the good get old,” but, if he did, you’d have to respect the math and courage of it all.

In my favorite all-time Clint scene, he asks a bunch of guys to apologize to his mule. Then, he kills them all when they scoff at the idea. To ask the inverse of Eastwood, to apologize for becoming old and irrelevant, is just as crass.

Legends don’t need the money. They want the relationship. Somewhere someone is wearing a Michael Jordan Wizards jersey, reading and scoping a Model T in a museum after playing four hours of Megaman II on Nintendo. 

I wish someone would hand that guy the keys…that baby still runs. 

Water for Elephants

I love elephants! Perhaps it’s my jealousy at their ability to consume copious amounts of liquids while maintaining a descent cuddly elephant body or it could be they just always look happy. Something about the symmetry of the huge trunk shooting water and the delicious folded back ears spells smiley jubilant enthusiasm to me. They just seem like vast loads of fun.

I want a pet elephant, although obviously an elephant doesn’t even fit in my cloistered fourth floor box apartment, so it would have to be a baby elephant—an unrealistic pint-sized scale runt of the litter would be best. How fun would it be to have a baby elephant the size of a kitten? Can you picture the little elephant noise it would make?

With that in mind, when a friend recommended I read Water for Elephants I couldn’t resist my affinity for the loveable jolly beast. I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Turns out it’s an epic tale about the “land before law” circus much like a couple of my favorite books The Jungle (about the meat packing industry before the FDA) and Oil! (the greed of the oil rush in California loosely depicted in There Will Be Blood).

No matter how good or bad a read is, if you walk away with something from it—the time spent was a success. I don’t think Water for Elephants is anywhere near one of the greatest books I’ve ever read. But, the book properly took me on a journey through the early days of a grassroots circus with all the proper trimmings of an epic tale that will surely make a good movie; love, action, blood, thirst, etc.

I really made the connection that I’m obsessed with the era of this country before lawyers and law protected people from themselves. It seems to me before the shield of law and overpowering government rule integrity was upheld by the common man. And I believe that always makes for an entertaining story. How sets of circumstances take common people with seemingly common skills and are then forced to overcome the situation.

Western society forced people to be more grizzled and stick up for others when they notice they’re being wronged. In today’s day one can actually get in trouble more for being a “good Samaritan” than sitting back and watching society shred itself raw. Unless it’s the last episode of Seinfeld, in most cases people are better off watching injustice than getting involved with something that doesn’t concern them. In the westerns the Man vs. Man action seems to uphold more integrity, because people had to look out for each other as a whole in the face of society.

The more something is broken, the more people will band together.

Author Sara Gruen does a great job (extra points for her mastery of the em-dash prose style) setting up this scene of absolute terror and mistrust in the misguided circus society, before there was law. It’s amazing to me that people were able to live through such conditions. It makes me think about how easy things are for me. Like the difference between playing sports and playing sports on ice. If you can’t skate ice hockey seems impossible! Society has done a nice job removing our need to skate, but there is a reason ice hockey is the most fun sport to watch live.

In The Jerk (file this movie as the Ryan C. Zerfas bible), the circus is depicted as a last ditch effort for Steve Martin to “find his special purpose” while exploring what the world has to offer. The main character in Water for Elephants is going through a similar situation. Having suffered a dramatic family situation Jacob Jankowski needs to take time to find himself and stumbles upon the opportunity to travel the nation by train and be a part of “the greatest show on Earth.” When thinking about society as it was then, the circus was probably not a bad place to be, allowing the circus to be a grandiose testament to growing America rather than fodder for carnie folklore.

I doubt I am the target audience for this book, but I read with reckless abandon just the same. Once the elephant is introduced, I found myself wanting more and more elephant in the story. Gruen did a nice job making the elephant a desired spectacle much like the sound of an ice cream truck in the summer when you were a kid. You don’t know when it’s coming, but as you’re playing in the streets every now and again you get distracted and hunger for that loud over-amplified cheap carnival sound to drive by. And when it does…it’s glorious…and tops the day with a bountiful reward.

Although none of the other characters were extremely captivating to me, the setting and unfolding action was enough to keep me entertained between musings of the elephant. I think this movie will be amazing. I saw the preview when going to True Grit and the character Christoph Waltz (Inglorious Bastards) is going to play (August) should be nothing short of spectacular. After Inglorious Bastards I believe him to be the next Tommy Lee Jones or Gene Hackman of our generation—playing supporting roles in many films, often stealing the show with outrageous verisimilitude.

Lastly, this book was clearly well researched. Much like Upton Sinclair, Gruen intertwined real bits of circus history into the fictional tale to give the story an authentic trumpeted texture. It’s really worth reading the post story notes, which is something I usually avoid, but in this case it depicts the time, research and unruly writing process necessary to make the story come to life.

So whether you like elephants like I do (actually, please let me know if you do…) or you like epic books that will soon be epic movies—I believe this to be a worthwhile, but not life changing read.