A Successful Conquest

Ever since the seventh grade, when the photograph above met my eyes in a hardcover volume on the history of cinema, I have wanted to see George Méliès’ Conquest of the North Pole. You might say that it’s been on my Bucket List before I had a Bucket List, before the term was ever invented.

What was I doing in the Thomas Memorial Library in the seventh grade looking at a volume of film history? I might have ended up there on my own hook, being the kind of kid that I was, but the truth is that my seventh grade history teacher gave us the assignment to write a paper on “something historical,” and we were to choose the subject ourselves. At that time in my life, “history” was nothing more than a somewhat uninteresting abstract to me... I don’t think any subject was as poorly taught in those days, and with the tools at our fingertips I don’t think that any subject has the potential to be taught better today.

On the other hand, the movies did interest me, even then. Nothing interested me so much. So I suggested the history of movies and somewhat reluctantly my teacher agreed.

Certainly not in grade school (and maybe not at any other time), did I ever pour myself into a research project with such enthusiasm. There were several really good books out at the time, including the classic on Disney animation, and I spent hours at the library learning about Mary Pickford and William S. Hart and D. W. Griffith and Lon Chaney, and the pictures, O my brothers and sisters, the pictures absolutely had the power to transport me into that other world, that other place and time.

I probably would have wrinkled my nose at the word “romantic” in those days, but that’s what it was, I was absolutely being Romanced by the  unsurpassed power of silent cinema over the mind.

Well, I wrote my paper and from my point of view it was a smashing success. I learned a lot. The grown-ups didn’t quite see it that way. When my parents read the piece, they seemed dismayed that it focussed on pure cinema history and “suggested” (we all know what that means, right?) that I add material relating to the impact of movies on culture as a whole.

I couldn’t have cared less, but I faked a half-hearted page or so along that line and tacked it on at the end. Of course that was the part that my history teacher liked the best, though he thought it was under-developed.

Me, I still could care less. It’s not about Aunt Edna doing up her hair to match Hedy Lamarr’s. It’s about the movies.

And ever since I saw that picture up there of the Snow Giant looming over the ice and menacing those polar explorers, Conquest of the North Pole has been one of those Holy Grails of movie-watching for me.

It has proved a danged tough quest to fulfill. The movie is simply never screened, and rarely, if ever, included in compilations. Compilers of silent collections fall all over themselves to include Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon, and to be fair, that probably is his most representative work, but come ON, guys... we’ve seen that one and seen it and seen it... Until now, the two or three DVD collections devoted to Méliès’ work have been dowdy affairs, utilizing rank, public-domain prints, and rarely including any significant material that we haven’t seen before.

But here’s why it really is (sometimes) good to be alive: from time to time, Good Things Do Happen, and when Good Things Happen, it really does radiate outward into the Universe and cause Other Good Things to Happen. In this case, with Scorsese’s Hugo in production, what did the good folks at Flicker Alley decide to do but release a major, and I mean major, definitive, gorgeous five-disk boxed DVD set of the man’s work, George Méliès’, First Wizard of Cinema. Look upon this set, y’all, and sigh heavily. The prints are the best I’ve ever seen. Some are pristine. Many are from hand-colored originals. Did I say it was five disks? Most of these films have not been seen in a hundred years!

Conquest of the North Pole, being one of Méliès’ last works, was waiting for me, nestled there on disk five. I was a good boy. I waited for it, going slowly through the first three disks, enjoying everything, savoring the build-up. Patience is a virtue. And I was very, very patient.

Then I couldn’t stand it anymore and threw the thing in the player.

One of the things that the boxed set makes clear, perhaps disappointingly so, is that Méliès’ didn’t have a terribly broad range. With very few exceptions, his films can be divided up into about four different genres, and he repeated these genres over and over again. One of these genres could be called “The Amazing Voyage.”

And the films in this category are all of a piece. Conquest is no exception. A group of luminaries get together and decide to travel to a Fantastic Destination. A marvelous means of locomotion is devised. It is built through spectacular and clever means. The voyage is undertaken; magical things occur along the way. The destination is reached! In a fantastical landscape, the valiant explorers are set upon by the whimsical and terrifying denizens of this distant world. Through a series of improbable events, the adventurers are swiftly returned home. All is well.

If you’ve seen A Trip to the Moon, you’ve seen all of Méliès’; and yet you’ve seen none of him. Conquest follows the blueprint exactly, but at half an hour it may be his longest film; it certainly is one of his most spectacular, combining all his techniques and themes to an extremely pleasing effect. I did not feel let down by Conquest, not even a little bit; and I watched it again a few days later.

Buffalo Bill is one of the luminaries who goes a’flying in the metal bird this time. In the extended voyage sequence, hundreds and hundreds of airships vie spectacularly for the skies. The airship does not just reach the stars, it visits the Zodiac -- Méliès’ was an incomparable romantic, which perhaps helps to explain the depth of his fall shortly after this film was made. 

But of course the triumph, the main setpiece of the film, is that wonderful Snow Giant. The photograph does not nearly do him justice. By equal parts menacing, impressive and charming, he captured my imagination all those years ago, and does not disappoint “in person,” so to speak. Rising out of the ice, fuming pipe in mouth, gesticulating wildly, gathering the explorers in his arms and chowing down on one of them, he is the Noble Father of all screen monsters, the first of the silver screen’s Great Giant Beasts. With his rolling eyes and wiggling ears, he may strike a modern audience as something belonging on a Macy’s Parade float; but think of when this was made, and think that this is the vision of one man, working well before monsters of this scale had ever been attempted by anyone else on screen. This is El Monstro Numero Uno, and I think he sets the bar at a good high place.

I am so happy to meet him at last. And happy also, that Méliès’, whose story is one of flourishing, being forgotten, being rediscovered, and being forgotten again, has the opportunity to come into our homes and introduce us to himself and to his work. One thing is quite evident from his films, repetitious though they may be: the man was extremely vital in his youth, filled with enthusiasm and joie de vivre. No one else ever had such stars in their eyes.

-- Freder.

The Only Rule You Need

-- Freder.

Coming Attractions

Click on the image to enlarge

Now, with nothing but time on my hands, what am I doing with myself?

Preparing my second novel for publication.

This means a complete edit of the entire text: not just touch-ups to sharpen the writing or eliminate youthful excesses (although I’m doing a fair amount of that), but significant additions and alterations. The first act, which I completed last night, has been lightly expanded and refined. The midsection is ahead of me, and that’s the most daunting part of the job: there are three swaths of material here that make me cringe today, and these will have to be dealt with: either replaced with new work, or extensively revised. 

Even some of the character names have been changed. It’s not a Saturday-afternoon project.

When I’m done, I doubt that there will be a single page that doesn’t show some revision, however small. Put the two versions side by side and I hope that they will look like siblings: the one eager and flush with some raw quality (after all, parts of it were good enough to see print in The North American Review and Kinesis, among other magazines), the other basically the same, sharing the stars in its eyes, but older and wiser and more sensible. 

The graphic above is connected to the project. It’s a desktop picture I made all those years ago. The art, of course, is by Magritte. Don’t know why I didn’t attribute the quote, but I’m sure it’s written down somewhere; it’s an epigraph for the novel. 

So -- procrastinating, yes I am... but slowly whipping this old lover into shape, that I am, too.

-- Freder.

One More Round

My father and his wife are coming to dinner here at the Duckhaus on Tuesday night. I dread this with a dread that runs thick and black and gums up the gears of my clockworks so badly that even the finest butter cannot make them tick. But there were things Sam Spade had to do because Archer was his partner, and there are things I have to do because he’s still my dad, and I won’t have him forever.

Ever since my mother died I think we’ve both been trying extra hard to put old grievances behind us and make the relationship work. But for my part, I’m getting tired. Yes, relationships take work. But they shouldn’t take this much work, and the work shouldn’t be so bloody unpleasant.

Late in my days in the outpatient program, I realized that we really don’t have a relationship at all. What we have is a baseball game where the two teams are facing in opposite directions, wondering why no one ever scores a run.

If we had a real relationship I would not dread the idea of dinner with him and the Piece of Work he calls his wife. If we had a relationship I would not groan inwardly every time an envelope turns up in my mailbox with his handwriting on it, or an email turns up in my e-mailbox bearing his name. 

I have these reactions because after all these years, I know what’s inside. And I know that it’s just going to make me angry. My father lives in the Land of the Blind Egoists and does not hesitate to stomp blindly through its thorny undergrowth no matter whose feelings he scrunches and squishes. In fact, he has always had a way of making others feel like the Guilty Party for Being Squished.

I’ve seen the way that real families interact when they get together for dinner. There’s a nice buzz in the atmosphere, everyone’s milling about, there might be one grumpy uncle in the corner but the rest are all making the scene in one way or another; maybe the television’s on, two or more people are working on the dinner, another is setting the table, the atmosphere is congenial, the topics of conversation are light and may include anything from the kid’s soccer game to the noisy neighbors to the movie they watched last night.

Family gatherings have never been that way when my father was involved, and now that it’s just my father, his wife and me, they are about as enjoyable as the Salem Witch Trials.

Instead of a cheery buzz, the atmosphere is might be similar to that of the Law Offices of Mordant, Shiver, and Rigor Mortis, L.L.C. on a day when an insignificant lower level member of their staff (me) has performed in a particularly disappointing manner and must be taught a Life Lesson, usually by means of an extensive narrative from the illustrious career of the senior member. 

Never mind having the television on, Dad can’t stand that, because it gets in the way of his talking.

I’ve written about my father’s habit of monopolizing every conversation before, several times, on the blog, so won’t belabor it here. Let’s just say that when he does allow me to speak, it’s usually quite suddenly in the middle of a speech that I may not have been paying the fullest attention to, and then he’s usually attempted to limit my topics by asking a question, often one that has no connection to my reality. Instead of a lifebouy, he tosses me a black hole.

When I am given the free opportunity to speak, suddenly the entire world falls silent and shifts its focus. My father crosses his legs, turns his piercing blue eyes on me and looks at me as intently as if I was a culture on a slide and he was looking down the length of a microscope. This is not the way to have a friendly, nice, enjoyable, relaxing conversation. This is the way to make me clam right up.

The last time we had lunch together I was hung over and so I had the alcoholic’s nerve to stand up to him, in the alcoholic’s inappropriate way. I actually shouted at him, right in the middle of the restaurant, “Why are you staring at me? Stop it! You’re making me nervous!”

It didn’t do any good. It never does any good. He’s been to my house one time since then, and he talked and talked, and said his piece, then opened the floor for my response. I do not play by those rules, and so passed. Then he left.

I sometimes think it’s time to give up on it completely, because it is hopeless, “Rilly it is,” as Katherine Hepburn would say. He’s never going to change, and it’s never going to hurt any less.

But then I think of how suddenly and unexpectedly Mom died. And that still reduces me to tears, even just now. It’s been two years and all the evidence aside it still feels like something that happened to someone else. I still wish that I could talk to her every day.

Dad’s a year older than she was. I won’t have him forever. He annoys the living crap out of me. Even the good moments that we have are Strictly Formal and Distant. And yet I know that he loves me. Maybe that’s why I feel so guilty.

-- Freder.

If we could bottle Noir, we could have Atmosphere wherever we went. . .

-- Freder.

Into the Blue Unknown

Well, now it begins. Ever since pouring gasoline onto my Status Quo and throwing a lighted match in its general direction, I’ve been kept more or less occupied with this, that and the other thing. For a while, these occupations could be as simple as “Discovering What Happens to Yrs Trly When He Is Taken Off of Anti-Depressant Medications.” Regretfully, a number of my friends got caught up in that particular occupation, while it lasted. Looking back on it, I think that mortifying episode plays like something out of the diaries of Anais Nin.

(What I learned, among other things, is that anti-depressant medication is not simply a whim or an indulgence for me: it is a matter of life and death. No, I’m not trying to be Dramatic. This is strictly Jack Webb “Pass Me The Facts Ma’am and Leave the Color to Charlie Kurault” stuff. Prozac, Wellbutrin, I really don’t care what you put me on, but if you take it away from me I’ll be drinking within days and dead with a month or two, and that’s a promise, not a threat. When two members of the group I’m going to talk about in a moment noted that they were going off of Wellbutrin, I joked that they would have to pry my Wellbutrin out of my cold dead heads -- except that, like most of my jokes, this one was only intended to be Half Funny).

For just over the past month, my weekday “job” has been attending the mental health outpatient program that I was referred into following my last stay in 4 East. That job came to an end yesterday. I was given my certificate and my rock and sent packing.

(Yes, like Charlie Brown, I got a rock. We all do.)

It was time and then some. But now the days loom ahead of me without any kind of structure imposed from the outside . . . oh, and with no driver’s license to allow any escape from the house! 

I can’t say that I was a terribly vocal or active participant in the group, but it gave me a reason to get up in the morning and a place to go every day at a time when I badly needed those things. It put me in the company of people who were at least as depressed as I was. More important than any of that, it kept me in front of some professionals who could casually check my thermometer, so to speak, and when my mood started heading dangerously, suicidally into the red they were quick to act and adjust the medication.

... which is working so well now that I find myself hopeful, even, dare I type it, “chipper” (ugh, what a word!!).

Now, with the IOP behind me and nothing but time on my hands, I have no excuses to hide behind. It’s time to start putting some personal projects back into motion. Not that progress in these areas will be visible to the outside world for some time to come. That’s the trouble with so-called “creative” work, although I hate, really hate that classification: from the outside, it doesn’t look like you’re doing anything. 

D____, the administrator of the IOP, saw me diligently doodling away in my notebook every day, and told me that I was “getting ready,” unconsciously, to do some real work. By Hela’s Hoary Hordes, I hope that she is right. The test begins as soon as I finish this post. 

Any time now.

Right away.

Yup. Gonna git ‘er done. 

...

... I really do need to refresh this cup of coffee ...

-- Freder.

Snakes and Bonzos: a Gift for You

Click on the game board to enlarge and print.

The Game of Life aside, there’s no board game that teaches the verities of life quite like Snakes and Ladders, or Chutes and Ladders for the reptile-squeamish. As rocker Dave Edmunds sang it in a song of the same name, “You’re in the game. you‘ve got no choice / You can’t complain, you’ve got no voice . . . Take a turn, roll the dice / Sometimes nasty, sometimes nice...”

And you never know, do you, when one of those chutes is going to open up underneath you (or when one of those snakes is going to some slithering along...) I do find that the climb is always arduous and the fall always precipitous. And when we played as children, it never helped that my sister always got the ladders and I always got the chutes, or that she always gave out a mean laugh as she grabbed my playing piece and moved it herself down the chute to the lower part of the board.

Of the many, many variations of Snakes and Ladders published by dozens of game publishers over the years, The Bozo Chase Game is my favorite. Bonzo the Pup was created by British cartoonist Geo. Studdy, and appeared on picture postcards, in magazines, comic strips advertising and in many other places. I have an original Bonzo comic art page by Studdy that I inherited from my mother; I could not bear to part with it. Bonzo even lent his name to a very fine and funny Rock Band. I hope you enjoy his game.

-- Freder.

-----------------------------------

“Hallo' kiddies, I do love sausages, don't you? Whenever I get a few, somebody interferes and I have never eaten one in comfort yet. Have you ever tried to climb on to a pile of plates? -- if not -- see what happens in square 57. I love policemen because they can run faster than I can, but I hate boys who throw stones at innocent puppies, see square 13 -- I'm sure it's an unlucky number! -- If you get into square 39, you really must go up to square 98 and give my love to the wet policeman. From square 45 you will have a lovely ladder to climb, but don't fall down again as I did from square 121. Then do try and dodge square 127 because if not you'll probably lose the game and never be able to end up with me on square 130 all bright and smiling. --With love from ‘Bonzo’ "

Rules of the Game:

1. Up to six players can compete. Draw a number to ascertain the order of starting.
2. Each player in turn throws the die or spins an indicator and travels the number of spaces shown on die or indicator starting of course from No. 1 in left-hand corner.
3. The first to reach or pass 130 is the winner.
4. Should a player land on any square with a colored arrow on it, he must follow the picture starting from that space until he reaches a square with a star of the same colour; for instance, a player arriving on 39 will go up to 98 or -- 121 goes back to 68.

Originally published by Spear's Games and designed by Geo. Studdy.

Yappety Yap

Ye Gods and Pickled Catfish, somebody tear me away from the App Store! If you think that apps themselves can be a waste of time, can you imagine a more insidious drain on one’s life force than the addiction to browsing for them?

The thing is, you know going in that it’s going to be a time-waster! Once you get past the tried-and-true essential apps -- the Evernotes and the iBook readers and the like -- and into the badlands of more than half a million unfiltered apps all craving your attention, it’s pretty much obvious from a casual skim-through that most all of them are unnecessary, or knock-offs of better apps, or hack jobs, or all of the above. 

Of course, no sooner do you realize this and prepare to tear yourself away from the App Jungle when something catches your eye: that one-in-five-hundred application that either does something just really extraordinarily cool, or else adds a completely new layer of functionality to your phone or tablet and thereby opens up whole new vistas of possibilities for you.

In the latter category, for me, are Paper, LetterMPress (literally a complete letterpress printing outfit living in my iPad), and AnimationDesk, all of which are so good that they had me glued to the App Store for hours to see if I could find anything else as flat-out fantastic, anything else that would open similar doors in my mind. I didn’t. 

Failing at substance, I found style aplenty, too much aplenty. Don’t even get me started about the inventive and gorgeous games that go for as little as ninety-nine cents a whack -- in nothing flat you can fit yourself out with an arcade that would have made your nine-year old self go into a sugar coma.

My iPhone is now so tricked-out and pimped up with gimmickry that I want to grab people on the street and force them to look at it. There’s the clever little innocent-looking  steampunk calculator that’s actually a working Secret Recording Device. There’s the complete, fully-functioning set of carpenter’s tools (not that I do any building, but it is awfully cool). There’s the complete three-dimensional vintage penny arcade. And that’s just for starters.

I have apps to tell my fortune and apps to track ghosts. I have apps to draw and paint in and apps to journal in. I have a toy theater, a telegraph that will post Twitters in morse code, and a fully-functioning darkroom.  I can tell if it’s raining in Kookamonga, shoot a round of mini-golf and even tell you where the cheapest gas in town is. I can calculate that I have been sober for 43 days.

I have spent so much time diligently gathering all the tools that I could possibly need to do the work that I need and want to do, to reclaim the creative person that I used to be. I’ve got the biggest damn sandbox right here in front of me, with every color of sand you can imagine, and more tools to mold it than I know what to do with.

Instead, I keep going back to the blasted App Store. I keep hoping that the Magic Key is there, the Magic App that will unlock whatever it is that’s holding me back, that’s making an Avoider out of me. In fact, they even have apps that help me examine why and what I am Avoiding and do their best to help me stop -- well, step number one would be to stop using self-help apps, I guess...

They have these apps that work absolute magic, some of them; really, with the best of them it does seem almost like magic. If they have apps that can do all of those things, there must be one that can make me into the person that I want to be.

Or, to put it in the terms of a very old joke: five hundred thousand apps piled up in the Mac App Store alone. With that much manure, there’s just got to be a pony in there somewhere.

-- Freder. 

PS: Have you noticed? This blog is not using generic or “borrowed” graphics anymore. Everything you see here is authored by me, even the pitchers.