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Wrong Ending

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Four Editions of Inside Moves photo by Todd

“Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.” George Orwell

A few weeks ago I had an inquiry about the movie remake rights to my novel Inside Moves. I replied to the inquiry (I do not own those rights) and then burned some sage and prayed to the gods of cinema to please make a second film from my novel. And though a remake is highly unlikely, just the thought of a new iteration of Inside Moves took me back thirty-eight years to the making of the first movie and the many conflicts I had with the filmmakers about how that movie should be made.

The narrator of the novel Inside Moves, Roary, is disabled from wounds suffered while fighting in Vietnam. For the movie, made in 1979, the screenwriters changed Roary from war veteran to a man who attempts suicide by jumping from a tall building. He miraculously does not die from the fall, but is somewhat disabled due to his injuries. I fiercely opposed this change because I felt it undermined the veracity of the entire story, nor is it ever explained in the movie why Roary wanted to kill himself.

John Savage plays Roary in the movie, and though superb in the role, I didn’t find him credible as someone who wants, or wanted, to kill himself. But the moviemakers were shy of bringing Vietnam into the story and they loved the shock value of showing someone jumping from a tall building. To compound the wrongness of their idea, when they filmed that suicide-attempt scenes they blocked traffic on the streets around the tall building and a huge crowd gathered. That crowd appears in shots of Roary’s jump, though in the movie, Roary sneaks into a building, goes to an upper floor, and quickly jumps, so there would have been no witnesses, no crowd. Oops.

One of the things many people love about the novel Inside Moves is the generosity and kindness of Roary and the gang at Max’s bar, where most of the story takes place. And this generous spirit does infuse the movie. However, the screenwriters added an ending in which Roary does something so antithetical to his nature, so opposed to the message of the rest of the movie, I several times beseeched the director, Dick Donner, not to end the movie that way. I also spoke at length to John Savage, and he agreed the ending was terribly wrong. John was certain that when Donner saw a rough cut of the entire movie, he would not use the misguided ending.

But because the people making the film were spending a large part of the production budget staging and filming the ending scenes of the movie, I was not hopeful. I attended the filming of those scenes at what is now Oracle Arena in Oakland, and was deeply saddened by an ending that had nothing to do with my book or the rest of the movie they made.

A couple months before the movie was to be released, I was invited to attend a sneak preview in a huge theater in San Francisco. I brought several friends with me and we sat in the jam-packed theater with hundreds of other people, most of them unaware of what movie they were about to see.

This was my first time watching Inside Moves, and I could barely process what I was seeing. There were times when the audience howled with laughter, and there were moments when I could feel everyone in the theatre deeply connecting to the characters and the story.

Then came the final ten minutes of the movie. In the scene just before those scenes filmed at the Oakland arena, Roary and several characters from Max’s bar are on their way to attend Jerry’s first basketball game as a member of the Golden State Warriors. While the group is waiting for their bus to arrive, Roary encounters Ann, Jerry’s former girlfriend, a hooker, who knows nothing of Jerry’s success. The interaction between John Savage and Amy Wright in this scene is a brilliant enactment of a scene lifted verbatim from the novel. As Roary says goodbye to Ann and joins his pals on the bus, the music swells and EVERY PERSON IN THE AUDIENCE THOUGHT THE MOVIE WAS OVER!

Because it should have been. The audience began to applaud and cheer, and hundreds of people gave the movie a standing ovation. But wait. The movie wasn’t over. Alas, there was an implausible and wrongheaded revenge scene glued to the end of the film. So people sat back down, and all the excitement and good feelings drained from the theatre as the senselessly violent scene played and then the credits rolled.

Filing out, we heard dozens of people saying how wrong the ending was; and many people made that comment in the questionnaires accompanying the screening. Then we went to a pub full of people who had seen the movie, and everyone was talking about the movie—how good it was except for that terrible ending.

And I hoped the director and producers, who were all in attendance at that sneak preview, would see the wrongness of their ending and cut it. But instead they shortened the scene of the bus driving away with the gang from Max’s, and they brought up the announcer’s voice at the Oakland arena while Roary was getting on the bus, to insure the viewer understood the movie was not over yet, lest they miss the violent ending.

So if by some miracle the cinema gods do remake Inside Moves, I hope they allow Roary to be a man transcending the wounds of war, and they end the movie with a message of kindness and generosity, not vindictive violence.

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Facts

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Now I’m Sailing painting by Nolan Winkler

“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” Martin Luther King

I recently watched several interviews with people attending the inauguration of Donald Trump, and I had to keep reminding myself these were not actors in Saturday Night Live skits, nor had clever cynics written the bewildering dialogue. These were real men and women, old and young, gay and straight, who were excited enough about the election of Donald Trump to travel great distances to witness the swearing in.

Each of the people was asked which of Donald Trump’s plans for America most appealed to them. One woman said, “He’s pro-Israel. All our other presidents have been anti-Israel, so this is fantastic.” Three of the men interviewed said they most resonated with Trump’s promise to strengthen the military, one of them saying, “I’m tired of us being so weak.”

One young man had traveled all the way from Georgia with his wife and son because, “This is the first president who ever cared about me.” When asked how he knew Donald Trump cared about him, the young man said, “Because he’s finally doing things for regular people instead of just rich people.”

A woman opined, “He’s about America first. Obama gave more money to other countries than to America. Trump will keep our money here and grow the economy.”

And there was a man who said, “Trump is gonna kick the corporations out of government and get things back to normal.” When asked what he meant by normal, the man said, “If you don’t know, I can’t tell you.”

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” George Orwell

I ran into a friend at the post office yesterday. When I asked how he was doing, he sighed and said, “I miss Obama.”

“What do you miss about him?” I asked, thinking of those interviews with people who love Trump.

“Are you kidding?” said my friend, glaring at me. “Compared to Trump?”

“Not compared to Trump. What do you miss about Obama?”

“He wasn’t a lunatic,” said my friend, waving his arms. “Trump is a fascist crazy person.”

“Yes, but I’m curious to know what Obama did when he was president that you liked.”

My friend thought for a moment and said, “He pardoned Chelsea Manning.”

“I’m so glad he did,” I said, nodding. “How are your knees doing these days?”

“Much better,” said my friend, nodding with me. “How’s your shoulder?”

“Coming along,” I said, and then we spoke of the weather.

“Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.” Dalai Lama

Facts, it turns out, are things people think are true because they want those things to be true. My facts are not necessarily your facts, and my facts are certainly not the facts of those who think Donald Trump is a wonderful guy doing wonderful things for America. Nor are my facts the facts of those who think Obama was a wonderful guy who did wonderful things for America.

And this is where gardening and the weather and rooting for the same baseball team come in handy. Humans enjoy agreeing with each other. My mirror neurons rejoice in agreement with your mirror neurons, and when our mirror neurons rejoice together, our entire body/mind/relationship systems rejoice, too.

When I was living in Sacramento a long time ago, I frequently went to McKinley Park to throw the Frisbee with a friend or by myself. I loved flinging the disc into an oncoming breeze and having the disc boomerang back to me. One morning on the greensward, I made an overzealous throw and my disc got stuck in a tree bordering the field, and by stuck I mean lodged in a dense tangle of branches about twenty feet off the ground.

I found a two-inch-diameter length of tree branch, about two-feet-long, and proceeded to heave that club at the tangle of branches in hope of dislodging my disc. I managed to hit the tangle several times, but the disc remained ensnared, and I was just about to give up when a man came sauntering toward me and raised his hand in greeting.

I had seen this fellow many times before because he was often at the park. I had never spoken to him, but I had seen him sitting in the bleachers watching tennis matches, sitting on a bench by the duck pond, and playing basketball on the asphalt court. He was often in the company of other men I guessed were unemployed, and I was afraid of him. He had never menaced me, but his clothes were ragged, his skin was dark brown, and he was one of the biggest men I had ever seen, and I do not mean obese. He was seven-feet-tall and his shoulders were so broad he must have had to turn sideways to get through a standard-sized doorway.

I stiffened at his approach and made ready to flee.

“Man,” he said, his voice deep and full of sympathy. “You hit that mess right on, six seven times. Wonder why that thing don’t fall down. Mind if I try?”

“Not at all,” I said, handing him my club.

“I seen you over here lots of times throwing that thing. You good,” he said, looking up at the tangle of branches.

Then he bent to one side, took aim, and hurled the club with such force and accuracy that the nest of branches was obliterated and the Frisbee fluttered to the ground at my feet.

“Wow,” I said, grinning at my hero. “Amazing. Thank you.”

“No problem,” he said, returning my grin.

“Would you like to play?” I said, miming a toss of the disc.

“I don’t know how,” he said, humbly.

“I’ll bet I can teach you in five minutes,” I said, not so humbly.

“I got five minutes,” he said, laughing.

So I taught him, and he was soon as good as I, and many times after we met on that field to play.

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National Pentagon Radio

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News Report pen and ink by Todd

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser October 2014)

“He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.” George Bernard Shaw

Say what you will about NPR, National Public Radio, when it comes to reporting on American foreign policy, i.e. using drones and missiles and fighter jets to bomb adversaries, real and imagined, who have no air force or any way to defend themselves against those bombs and missiles, NPR is the great legitimizer of the military-corporate strategy of endless war.

Most recently, NPR assembled a group of so-called journalists and politicians to respond to President Obama’s speech about launching a multi-year campaign (with no end in sight) to bomb the ten thousand fighters of the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Obama, who really does sound crazy these days when he reads speeches written to instill fear in the minds of his infantile listeners, proclaimed he has the right (because he said so) to bomb Syria, Iraq and pretty much anywhere else his advisors think the Islamic State fighters need to be bombed.

Oh, wait. The CIA just announced there are not ten thousand Islamic State fighters, but thirty thousand of them. Isn’t that something? The day after Obama’s here-come-the-terrorists speech, the CIA (renowned for accuracy and truth) just happened to find twenty thousand more of those horrible guys, which means the threat is much worse than Obama told us it was. Eek!

Made up facts aside (dutifully reported as gospel by NPR) the so-called journalists agreed that Obama’s speech was clear and decisive and good. Never mind that his speech was vague and ridiculous and predicated entirely on the public being incapable of remembering anything from last week, let alone last year. For obvious reasons, no one on NPR ever brings up the sad truth that America’s invasions and bloody occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are the primary causes of the rise of tens of thousands of lunatic fighters now threatening the oil refineries and oil pipelines in Iraq, which threat is the only reason the corporate puppeteers have commanded Obama to unleash the jets and missiles against those annoying killers who would never have arisen en masse in an intact and functional Iraqi society.

“If you talk to God, you are praying; if God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.” Thomas Szasz

Why won’t NPR allow Noam Chomsky or Robert Fisk on their airwaves? Or how about Julian Assange? Can you imagine Julian Assange on NPR’s silly news show Almost Nothing Considered? That will never happen because NPR is the official mouthpiece of the Pentagon and America’s imperialist foreign policy. Chomsky and Fisk and Assange and countless others who actually know what they’re talking about would quickly put the lie to the whole shooting match, as it were, by taking us step-by-step through the events leading up to the latest chapter in the redundant saga of protecting the pipelines and refineries at usurious cost to the American public and for the profit of major funders of NPR and both political parties.

By the way, did you know that KZYX, our local public radio station, is one of the only public radio stations in America that airs both NPR’s Almost Nothing Considered and Democracy Now! I find this fascinating in light of Democracy Now! contradicting virtually everything reported on NPR and vice-versa. Democracy Now! presents in-depth news and interviews, while NPR regurgitates Pentagon propaganda. What a weird combo.

“Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.” Theodore Roosevelt

In related news, the NFL, the National Football League, has been rocked recently by the arrests of three star players for assaulting their wives or partners, one superstar arrested for physically abusing his four-year-old son, and another superstar for assaulting his partner and his infant son. I conflate this news with America’s foreign policy because in my opinion, football, as it is packaged and presented on television, legitimizes and glorifies violence in much the same way that video clips of sleek jets bombing desert targets legitimize and glorify violence. Hundreds of millions of American men are violence junkies, with war footage, football, and hyper-violent movies keeping them constantly juiced and wanting more.

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” George Orwell

Imagine President Obama holding a press conference and saying, “I just want to let the American people know we will continue to use our incredible military might to keep the oil flowing so our corporations can reap obscene profits, we can remain dependent on fossil fuels, and gas prices will stay below five dollars a gallon. We don’t really give a hoot about human life or democracy or any of that nonsense. Everything we do is about maintaining the status quo, even if that means burning the earth to a cinder. Thank you and God bless.”

Now imagine the NPR analysts commenting on Obama’s speech. “Well, Bob, I think the President laid things out pretty clearly. The reference to burning the earth to a cinder was particularly cogent and timely given the latest global warming data that suggests there might be a link between the burning of fossil fuels and global warming.”

“I agree, Joan, and by saying we don’t really give a hoot about human life and democracy or any of that nonsense lends a down-to-earth honesty to the ongoing carnage that I, for one, find refreshing and inspiring.”

“Exactly, Bob. Coming up, a look at an obscure rock band in Minnesota that has a hit on their hands with their song and accompanying YouTube video Kill Everything, featuring five cute little children shooting caged ducks with assault rifles and then posting pictures of the slaughter on Facebook. Just hilarious. Stay tuned for that.”