Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest

In this post, I'm going to talk about Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 film, North by Northwest. Cary Grant portrays Roger Thornhill, a Madison Avenue advertising executive who's mistaken for a government secret agent and chased by enemy spies across America. One of the enemy spies, Eve Kendall, (Eva Marie Saint) turns out to really be an American double agent. The film is iconic for the image of a crop-dusting plane chasing Cary Grant at near-ground level, and for the closing scene where Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint's characters attempt to escape their would-be assassins down the face of Mt. Rushmore. I watched this movie recently and came away very satisfied. Bottom line - this is a well made film. It holds up today and is still fun to watch (despite some inevitably dated elements which I'll talk about in a little bit).

Alfred Hitchcock movies have a definite feel. They are never so scary that you're horrified at the end, and they're rarely so in your face that you're jumping around in your seat. BUT, they are very definitely eerie and "off”. In North by Northwest, dark comedy contributes greatly to this “off” feel. In the movie, Thornhill is constantly being pursued. He is running for his life at every turn. This could easily make for a one-note suspense movie, where the satisfaction in viewing comes from consistent special effects – fight scenes, chase scenes, cliffhangers – and from the constant question and doubt of whether the hero is going to escape at the end. But in North by Northwest, the suspense and thrill are never the star; they're the flavor of the film, but not the final word. Hitchcock puts his stamp on the movie and gives it his signature dark, dark humor. When things are most tense, you can expect a joke. Like when Thornhill is trapped in an elevator with the villains and it's gotten to the the point where it seems like no one believes Thornhill and that he's all on his own, and THEN Thornhill's mother, also in the elevator, cracks “ you gentlemen aren't really trying to kill my son are you?” It's the presence of Thornhill's mother throughout several scenes that transforms their feel. Instead of being on the edge of your seat, you just feel uncomfortable.

The shot composition / cinematography in North by Northwest is all over the place. There are shots where we're looking down at the characters from above and shots where we're looking up at the characters from the floor. There are beautiful repetitions of shots where we see a similar shot replayed, but with different characters. Example: at the beginning of the famous crop-dusting scene, we see Thornhill and a man on a dusty road near a cornfield – they're on either edge of the frame with the wide road between them; later in the movie, this same shot is repeated with Thornhill and Kendall on either edge of the frame and with a forest of trees between them. And there are some great crane / dolly shots where the camera smoothly scans the action and takes in a wide spectrum of characters and space (like when we enter the auction hall scene). There's also a lot of playing around with the camera: we see an iris shot when Thornhill looks in a telescope viewfinder and a fist-eye's view when Thornhill's getting punched. And there's an elegant editing of the opening titles, where they appear lined up with the glass panes of a skyscraper. So to make a long, long nerdy story short = this movie's a lot of fun to look at.

While watching North by Northwest, I noticed scenes where the music and the action on screen are just so well in tune that they seem more like complete music videos than parts of a greater film. One of these scenes happens when Thornhill is driving drunk in a car, swerving dangerously close to the side of the road and to the edge of a cliff. The enemy agents had previously captured him, got him very very drunk and were attempting to kill him. Thornhill managed to wrest control of the car and is making a sloppy getaway attempt. Throughout this scene, the music is dramatic and intense and really elevates the action. This scene is allowed to play out for a decent amount of time, unrushed, which kind of lulls you into appreciating how the music and video relate to each other. The music and action cue up to dramatic effect again, in the final scene where Thornhill and Kendall attempt to flee the enemy agents down the face of Mt. Rushmore. Here, the music is turned up to the max and is allowed to play out over a lengthy scene where we watch the characters stumble slowly down a cliff. We can guess at the outcome (they'll get away), so the rather long length of the scene isn't for exposition, it's to let us take in the iconic setting and the raucous musical score.

The flipside of this music/action synchrony is seen in the famous crop-duster scene, where Thornhill runs for his life from a dive bombing crop duster. For the length of this scene, there is no music. It's probably the most dramatic few moments in the film. After it's clear that the plane is going for Thornhill, the action becomes heart-pounding because we can clearly hear Thornhill struggling for breath as he runs and hits the dirt for cover. The music doesn't need to tag team with the action here - the greater dramatic effect comes from silence. (***don't believe me? check out this clip with music added onto the scene - it feels so wrong!)

Music interacts with the video in a different way in the scene where Thornhill has been mistaken as a murderer inside of a United Nations building. Thornhill is trying to talk to someone at the General Assembly building in order to get to the bottom of the mistaken identity mess. When he approaches the man he thinks can help him, someone off-screen throws a knife in the man's back. Thornhill is shocked and tries to take the knife out. Bystanders see this and start shouting, pointing and taking pictures, thinking that Thornhill's the killer. Realizing that there's no time to explain, Thornhill tries to make a run for it. Here, There's a beautiful / very artificial looking shot taken from the top of the UN building, looking down at Thornhill running out onto the street (it's some kind of model set used for this shot). And the music that plays during this quick shot feels like a dramatic interlude in the action – like the kind of music you might hear between brief set changes in a play.

And now some odds and ends. Martin Landau is intense in his role as the enemy henchman, Leonard. Landau's piercing eyes really drive home the hostile atmosphere that envelopes Thornhill. Some of the dated elements in the film: when the characters are driving around, it's an obvious green screen behind them and not the actual “street”. When Thornhill and Kendall get romantic in their train car and start to kiss it gets pretty awkward for the modern day viewer as the characters don't actually lock lips at any point - they kind of rub against each other and kiss around each other's mouths. This feels very stunted and controlled and I'm guessing that's because it was very definitely controlled – there was most likely no full-on french kissing allowed on screen in the US at this point. Hitchcock makes an appearance in the movie, as he does in many (all?) of his movies. At the beginning, you can see Hitchcock just barely miss a bus and stand there on the sidewalk for a second. And the ending to this movie is so wildly absurd, it's hilarious and kind of distracting – it makes you say “what?”. I don't want to give it away for anyone but I'll just say that there's a huge dramatic buildup in the Mt. Rushmore scene – it plays out slowly and you're really locked into that scene for quite a while. And then...Bam! The movie's over. One cut, a few seconds of action, a throw away line, and roll credits. Now, to me at least, this ending plays very awkward and funny. Maybe that was intended?

North by Northwest = a great watch for anyone who enjoys movies. An even greater watch for Hitchcock fans / film buffs. Go check it out.

1981 NBA Eastern Conference Finals Game 7 Celtics Vs. 76ers

For Christmas, I got a “Boston Celtics: The Complete History” box set. It features 5 discs / 1,141 minutues of Celtics basketball with highlights of their championship seasons and even entire games. Now, I'm a recent convert to Celtics basketball so this box set is an excellent training ground. My favorite part of the box set is the entire-length games. While you can definitely get a feel for the game by watching montages or documentaries, its just a whole other experience to actually get to see a full length game from 30 or so years ago. I recently watched the seventh game of the 1981 Eastern Conference Finals between the Boston Celtics and the Philadelphia 76ers. With the series tied 3 to 3, the 7^th game was played at the Boston Garden. Larry Bird's a newbie in the NBA (his 2^nd season) and Dr. J is leading the 76ers who are trying desperately to win a title. It's been a fierce series up to this point and this game goes down to the final seconds.

As a basketball lover, I enjoyed watching this game on many levels. It was a chance to see Larry Bird and Julius Erving in action. It was a chance to see Robert Parrish (Celtics center) actually in his prime (when I last remember seeing him - in 1992 or 1993, while at a Celtics game - he was running out of steam). Most importantly, it was a chance to see the game played in a different way than it is today.

The speed of the game was intense. It felt more like a college game than the NBA basketball you see today. There were almost no dunks; it was a lot of jump shots and a lot of fast breaks. Both Bird and Erving were somehow in the background throughout the game. They managed to quietly lead their teams in scoring and most other stats for the first half but they weren't the obvious stars of the game. I was expecting to see Dr. J's tomahawk dunks and Bird's 3 point shots and wild passes. I don't think Julius dunked once. Bird was most prominent on the offensive boards, working like a mad man. It wasn't til the very end that Bird cranked out a nasty spin move on his defender and wound up for a dunk (which missed because of a foul). I was also surprised at the play of the point guards. I'm used to seeing guards cross half court and walk up, sizing up the defense face-on. In this game, however, I noticed Celtics guard “Tiny” Nate Archibald “posting up” on his defender at around the 3 point line – this seemed very bizarre, but I guess it did give him some leverage. A refreshing thing I noticed was the conspicuous lack of complaining. No matter which way the ref's calls went, there was rarely any bickering from the players (at least not televised bickering). ***RANT ALERT*** It's pretty obscene how often you see players whining about calls now. The crossover between athletics and entertainment is way too murky now and for this we have a lot of primadona players. I mean, in 1981, for this Celtics / 76ers game, you could still find a lot of empty seats in the stands and even during a finals game there was patchy attendance. Really not the case now. The NBA in 1981 wasn't the guaranteed primetime entertainment it currently is. Bird and Magic Johnson, then Michael Jordan, did much to bring in the current era with players getting crazy endorsements and basketball games getting a lot of play on television...BUT...that's another article.

Some interesting elements to the game: the lack of any kind of game clock displayed on the screen. Only when it got down to the last minute(s) of a given “period” (not quarters yet), did you see how much time was left. It was funny to hear the announcer say: “that looked like 'offensive goaltending'.” Offensive goaltending? The player had tipped in a missed shot that was rolling off the rim. This is pretty standard procedure now and makes for some righteous put-back dunks. I guess it was cause for debate in 1981. Before the commercial breaks, you'd hear brief snippets of either Heart's “Crazy on You” or Kool and the Gang's “Celebration” which was pretty great. The players were sporting moustaches, very short shorts and very high socks. Suffice to say, NBA basketball was quite different in 1981.

Tim and Eric Awesome Tour, Great Job! Chrimbus Spectacular 2010

I recently saw the “Tim and Eric Awesome Tour, Great Job! Chrimbus Spectacular 2010” at the Wilbur Theater in Boston. Let me tell you, it was a success.

I've loved Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! for quite a while and feel a strong kinship with their kind of humor: off-beat / dark / weird / inspired by David Lynch films / makes you say “what?” every time. When I first saw the ad for the live show in the newspaper, I was absurdly pumped and cut it out right away so that I wouldn't forget to get a ticket. Then as the day got closer, I began to have my doubts and kept wondering “can Tim and Eric really pull off a live show?” I remember talking to a friend about it a couple weeks before the show and him saying, “wow...that's going to be a mess”. It was a legitimate concern: could two comedians who have mastered the detailed pre-taped short, who's comedy relies on break-neck speed editing and visual effects, also entertain a live crowd in person?

The answer is: duh. More than being good with video or editing software, Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim are funny. And their material translates live. The live show was well paced, varied and satisfying. What really made it work is how the live skits blended seamlessly into and out of the taped content.

The show sold out – apparently, Boston was one of the first city's to sell out on the tour - and the crowd was really into it, shouting out lines and singing along to the music when Tim and Eric later performed as their band, Pusswhip Banggang. There were pre-taped video bits that had never before been aired – shorts with Zach Galifianakis, John C. Reilly as "Steve Brule," and a whole stable of other Tim and Eric regulars who's names I'd cite if I had any idea who they were. There was one of the recurring “Cinco” commercials and also a “vote with your applause” bit where the audience got to cheer and yell for their favorite of three classic Tim and Eric sketches (the Spaget sketch won).

Neil Hamburger opened with a 15-20 minute set of bizarre celebrity news quips that were all pretty distasteful and hilarious, as is his schtick. Tim and Eric's set started with an intro taped bit where Tim and Eric regular, David Liebe Hart (who always has a blue tooth in his ear and is perhaps best known for his bits where he sings with various horrifying puppets) talked to the crowd and got us ready for what was about to happen. This intro was fast, chaotic and very energetic. At one point, Hart said “if you have to pee...go in your pants...you don't want to miss a second of this”. For the online advertising during the runup to the show, there was a trailer with a running gag that the “Wharf” character from Star Trek (the character with the huge, curved ridges in his forehead) was going to be featured. This was, of course, not true.



During the live show taped intro, there was a line: “the appearance by Wharf has been canceled, but WHO FUCKING CARES!” which got a lot of laughs. This running Wharf gag reminded me of a Tim and Eric episode I'd seen a while back that had the theme: “100 years of Jackie Chan! Congratulations!”. The episode was commemorating the incredibly false 100 year milestone of Jackie Chan being in entertainment. This and the Wharf gag are both random celebrations of a false and delightfully weird thing.

The opening live skit to the show was Tim and Eric singing a “Chrimbus” song while the huge projection monitor behind them played an accompanying video where people dressed in Chrimbus-wear awkwardly moved about a festive landscape. After the song, there was a skit about Chrimbus and how Eric didn't get Tim a present for the holiday. Eric evenutally revealed that he did have something for Tim – a fat, naked, plushy body costume with a huge penis and testicles and weird reddish buttocks. With the costume revealed, Tim and Eric walked around in circles to the sound effects of hooves playing. Whenever they finished one of these galloped circles, they pretended to open imaginary doors (with the accompanying sounds of doors playing on the speakers) and then they said a quick line of dialogue and closed the pretend doors. They made about three of these circles. I think this little bit with the galloped circles and opening/closing of fake doors was one of the most bizarre and brilliant parts of the show. One of those moments where you just feel completely adrift; like the humor is coming at you from no identifiable place and it hits you in a visceral way.

There were a few live action set pieces – the Jim and Derrick sketch where Tim and Eric dress up like really stupid bro/skater guys; the universe skit where they're dressed up in all black and “explain” the universe; a “Blues Brothers 2012” bit, where Tim and Eric acted like they were going to be in a new Blues Brothers movie sponsored by Terminix. They sang all these famous pop/rock songs while doing awkward exaggerated dances, and then shot the audience with fake Terminix bug sprayers.

The Cinco commercial was disgusting. It was advertising a food tube that you can use in restaurants so that you don't have to chew your food, because...who has time for that? You just remove all of your teeth, put the tube in your mouth and into your stomach and then drill a hole in the table you're sitting at so you can properly fit the apparatus. And then you dump your plate of food into the machine. The food gets blended and gets shot into the tube which goes directly into your stomach. Like all of the Cinco products, the "food tube" is a certifiably unnecessary / dangerous / scary product. 

There were recurring video bits where different Tim and Eric regulars talked about the Star Trek character Wharf and their relationship / memories of him. All of these were very off and random; the “memories” or “stories” had non-existent punchlines and completely off-topic focuses which is, of course, the point of the humor. Tim and Eric stable member - Ron Auster (“I wanna' meet that dad” song guy) was featured in a video where he sang a song while walking through a wintery woods scene. He slowly developed frostbite in front of our eyes while wondering aloud “where are the squirrels when you need them?”

There was interaction with / messing with the crowd throughout the show. Right after the opening sketch, Tim and Eric announced that the show was over. They walked off stage and people started cleaning up the cables and props off the floor while the big screen on top of the stage rolled the credits. After a few minutes of this, the video changed and announced that there was more show coming up. This gag made me think of Andy Kauffman.

There was a hilarious bit of video where Liebe Hart was talking to the audience and was abruptly interrupted for an “emergency sound calibration” where all the color bars flashed and the sound got crazy.

Prior to the show, I wasn't sure what to expect from Pusswhip Banggang. I knew a couple of the songs they were going to play but I had never seen video or anything of them in action. The band took stage after the comedy act was over, about an hour into the show. While people were setting up the instruments, still pictures of different Tim and Eric-related stuff played on the screen: backstage shenanigans, friends, etc. Some of the stills showed people with Tim and Eric-inspired tattoos (whether real or not, I'm not positive) and one of them was of the Spaget character on a guy's hip, popping out of what would be his pants waist line to surprise whoever was there.

Pusswhip took the stage with Tim on guitar, Eric on auxillary percussion and unknown other band members on drums, keyboard and bass. Eric was dressed in these hilariously high boots and very tight pants. Tim had an un-bottoned shirt on. After playing what I guess is the Pusswhip Bangang theme song, they went into “Petite Feet,” a personal favorite. They also played "Sports"; during the song, they tossed out a bunch of beach balls to the crowd. There was a lot of energy and the crowd was loving the music – something I find both incredible and refreshing (I mean these are dumb songs and aren't that involved. You could easily argue that they don't stand up on their own. But the songs are also catchy and creative, and are part of the greater universe of Tim and Eric and I think that people who like Tim and Eric like to throw themselves into and get lost in that universe, songs included).

During a break in the action, the audience started shouting out song names, favorites that hadn't been played yet. Tim kind of absently said “it's not a jukebox” and got right into the next number. This got cheers from the crowd. It was clear to me by the end of the night that fans of Tim and Eric respect Tim and Eric and that Tim and Eric respect their fans – they don't play to them because they know that what the fans want (at least the good ones) is them pushing it and doing what excites them.

Towards the end of the Pusswhip set, Tim yelled at a guy in the first row, who was looking away from the stage and toward the crowd. Tim yelled, “what the fuck man...that's rude...people paid good money and you're in the front row not even looking...are you doing a bit or something?” and then Tim pointed the mic at the guy and the guy explained that he worked for the Wilbur theater. After that, there was a running gag after each song where Tim apologized to the guy and made like he was so incredibly sorry.

At the end of the show, after much clapping and cheering, Tim and Eric came back out on stage and thanked the audience. They asked people who were dressed up in costume in the audience to come up on stage and show off their outfits. Somebody was dressed as Wharf, the Star Trek character, and Eric was joking that this guy's friend had been pointing to him the whole show and yelling “it's Wharf! It's Wharf!” Eric said, “I'm trying to play a fucking show man...you think I don't see this guy dressed up like Wharf in the fucking first row??”

At the end of Neil Hamburger's set, when he was introducing Tim and Eric, he said: “Now get ready for our young stars...” That really hit me - Tim and Eric are certifiable stars. They've completed 5 seasons of the Awesome Show, they're on this tour (and it's not the first time they've taken their show on the road), they've got a movie in the works, they've created a spinoff show with the Steve Brule character, they cut a record of the songs featured in their shows, and they had an interview in Maxim, which revealed that marketing executives now say “we've got to Tim and Eric this” when they want to make a commercial more random / bizarre.

Why / how are Tim and Eric so huge? Humor now, on the whole, has taken a turn for the “absurd” - it's there in a lot of commercials, it's behind the near-ubiquitous love of Family Guy and like-minded network comedy, and it's why a programming block like Adult Swim can exist and thrive. And I think it speaks to something deeper too – everyone enjoys the experience of totally letting go. That, to me, is what Tim and Eric is – the most primal / silliest / craziest / out of the park kind of humor. But it's also brilliant in the sense that it's aware of a context and what's come before and is commenting on norms and stereotypes. Evidence of this primal attraction and brilliance = the laundry list of incredibly talented actors and comedians who frequently participate in the show (David Cross, Bob Odenkirk, Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Paul Rudd, Michael Ian Black, Maria Bamford, etc., etc.)

Synopsis: Tim and Eric make a hilarious pre-taped show and they're hilarious live. Long live Tim and Eric. 

Stephen King's "Just After Sunset"

I'll start this review by saying that I'm not an avid Stephen King reader. In fact, this is the first Stephen King book I've ever read from cover to cover. I started reading The Shining several years back and liked it but never felt compelled to finish. I mean, if you've seen the film adaptation of The Shining you can understand my lack of interest in the source material – Stanley Kubrick's version is so damn good it makes it hard to get excited for the actual novel.

Up until a couple years ago, I had discounted Stephen King as a supermarket pulp writer. I figured that an author who pumped out books with such frequency (he's published 49) and with such silly names and covers surely could not be worth my time. Reading Just After Sunset has changed my opinion.

In 2007, King was asked to edit the 2007 Best American Short Stories anthology, and this experience motivated him to write Just After Sunset, his 5^th collection of short stories. As an introduction to the collection, King comments on how writing short stories harkens back to his roots when he was struggling to make money publishing stories in random magazines. He remembers how exciting it was and how the writing just flew out of him. I think you can sense that spirit in Just After Sunset - more than anything else, these are fun reads and must have been fun for King to write. 

While reading the stories in this collection, I noticed something. There are moments in each when I stop and appreciate a sentence, or the pacing of a section, or a character. And then there are other moments when I stop and shake my head, feeling like I've encountered throw-away lines or trite cliches. I think this comes with the territory. Years from now, people will probably not read Stephen King in their Literature class (in their higher level Genre class, maybe - wait a minute...are they already doing that? it's possible), but that is not to say that he doesn't have the chops. It's a fact that these stories have been published in magazines like the New Yorker and McSweeney's. There wasn't a story in this collection that I had to labor through. Some, I loved. Others, I didn't necessarily feel an excitement for but still enjoyed. With King, you have to take the strokes of genius with the occasional commercial elements. Now, on to the stories:

My favorite is “Stationary Bike” – I love this story for the wonderful complexity and ingenuity of the setup. A commercial artist needs to lose weight so he paints a mural depicting a country road in front of his stationary bike. But the motivation becomes dangerous as he imagines characters into life and struggles to keep his grip on reality. It's such a great / interesting story because the frightening and suspenseful elements are all coming out of the action going on in a painting / fictional world that a fat man had to create for himself in an attempt to lose weight.  

The “Cat from Hell” is a treat in that “give me what I expect” kind of way. If you don't know much about Stephen King, you might expect him to have written a story “The Cat from Hell”. You can probably even guess the plot – possessed cat seems to be killing off everyone around it and a hired hand comes in to fix the problem but may have met his match because this cat... This story has long been anthologized and is included here as a kind of bonus. It's intriguing enough but the thing you'll remember is the payoff at the end and the rather gory and very graphic details.

“A Very Tight Place” is the most disgusting of the stories. There are a lot of cringe worthy moments and King even wrote in his notes that he grossed himself out at points during the writing of this one. The main character is a gay man and he has to deal with a very homophobic / insane man for much of the plot - this is just one instance where King engages serious content within a story that largely exists to entertain / scare. “Harvey's Dream” is very short and succinct. In its few pages, you get a vivid image that will stick with you. I can still picture a scene from this story, weeks after I've finished reading it.

“Willa” is maybe the only story in the collection that I would describe as “cute”. It's a story about ghosts and it has some sadness and some scare but that's not what I took away from it – I remember the image of ghosts dancing together in a road side bar. They're not going to hurt anyone, but they do make for quite a scene. “The Things They Left Behind” is, as King explains in his notes, his attempt to engage the September 11^th attacks and write about them in a way that could help him to understand what happened and how it affected the people who were there and who were directly touched by it.

The most forgettable story for me was “New York Times at Special Bargain Rates” – maybe it would work better as a movie? The crux of the action happens on a telephone and it reminds me of the Mothman Prophecies and the scenes in that movie where so much suspense and tension happened via phantom phone calls. This story feels like a scene more than a complete and finished work. 

If you have seen the Coen Brothers' A Simple Man, and remember the abrupt ending to that movie you will recognize a similarity in the story “Graduation Afternoon”. “N” is one of the longer stories and was later made into an animated miniseries. It feels like the most ambitious of the stories and involves a mix of writing styles and a very involved presence of the supernatural which is less conventional / pulpy than ghosts or cats from hell. During some of the conversations between the N character and his psychiatrist, I felt like I was reading an Edgar Allen Poe tale – there was this horror and just “off” feeling about the conversations, but it was always kept muffled and never allowed to come fully to the surface. “N” has a slow and strong progression. Each page is peppered with hints and tips of the inevitable and frightening conclusion.

I appreciated the brief section at the end of the book, where Stephen King writes a short explanation of where he was coming from with each of the stories. It's good to have a context and a frame for these imaginative worlds and characters. While a story can stand on its own, it can also be enriched by context, which I think it is here. So, in conclusion, I say YES! to Stephen King. He may write pulp/horror fiction but he does it well. I'm looking forward to reading more Stephen King in the future and think I'll next take the plunge into one of his epic books - The Stand.