Weekly Wilson

Tim Stopulos, Assumption High School (IA) & Wake Forest Musician, on tour with new album "Songs of Separation."

Tim Stop…used to be the Tim Stopulos Trio, then the Tim Stop Trio. Now, just Tim Stop (www.timstop.com) Whenever Tim plays in Chicago and I’m there, as well, I try to stop by, as when he played “Market” on Randolph Street. I wondered about band member Seville Lilly (the hat guy).  Justin Hooks and Michael Tahlier are still onboard. (Justin just for the album, it seems.)

Tim’s CD back when I first wrote about him was “The Long Drive Home.” Now, he’s released a new set of “Songs of Separation,” and the universal theme should hit home for anyone who has loved and lost. The 27-year-old Davenport Assumption High School graduate puts all the emotion out there on the tracks. Therapeutic.

 Most of Tim Stopulos’ new album “Songs of Separation” (released October 18th) focuses on the heartache and heartbreak that is  impossible to avoid when you’re young and in love. Or old and in love. Or young and falling out of love. Or old and falling out of love.Boy meets girl. Boy dates girl. Boy and girl have a long-term relationship. Boy and girl break up to go in different directions. It’s a story as old as Adam and Eve. 

The new CD out from Bettendorf’s Tim Stopulos (“Songs of Separation”) begins a favorite, a song entitled “Half A World Away.” Lyric:  “You’re safe at home, you’re safe and warm, And I’m longing for one day when I find my way.  I will find my place, even if it’s half a world away.” Melancholy. Minor key. One of my personal favorites on the album. Lyric: “Now I’m anxious as these thoughts inside my head begin to swirl about a history that’s only just beginning to unfurl. And I long for adaptation to an unfamiliar world.”  

Coming from Stopulos in a John Mayer pop ballad vein, the songs on this new CD  chronicle the age-old and familiar terrain of falling in and out of love. Influenced by such musicians as Dave Matthews, John Mayer, Ben Folds, Coldplay, Billy Joel, Radiohead (Thom Yorke) and Jeff Buckley, you can hear the Wake Forest graduate’s 22 years of piano lessons paying off in his composition and performance, and, more importantly to this writer, the lyrics are impressive, too. 

The rhythms pick up on “A Little Bit Better,” the second song, which has some interesting and expert guitar work. It’s one of the most upbeat songs, despite this lyric:  “It’s a different kind of alone when you’re locked and trapped inside your mind.” [Reminded me of a Sheryl Crow lyric: "I'm a stranger in my own life."]  

Third song on the CD, “Rollin’“, has the line, “I know I should leave you, but my heart won’t let me go.” Next up, “Unconditional:” “Wherever you are, I love you. Whatever you do, I always will.  I hope some day you’ll find me. My love is…Wherever you are, just call my name.  I’ll race across this empty state.  I’d leave tonight to find you, ‘Cuz my live is unconditional. It’s unconditional.” (Wow! You’re a better man than me, Charlie Brown. I remember some break-ups that left me feeling pretty bitter; this guy’s much more forgiving.)

Next up was “Something’s Gotta’ Give,” (which, judging from the sound of young Tim’s weekend at the Iowa Hawkeye game, written up on his blog, may well be his health. Sounded like a long, crazy weekend!) 

“Professional,” a song with a slightly more cynical slant about a girl who “doesn’t change for anybody” was less devoted than “Unconditional.” I liked “Professional” a lot. [Maybe I've grown more cynical in my old age. You think?] 

 ”Malaga,” the 7th song, is the only one that didn’t seem to focus on the break-up of a relationship. A bit more of a “carpe diem” philosophy, expressed musically.

“Whisper in the Wind” is a melancholy melody that references  the death of a young friend from cancer and wonders where she is (“Did she find God or does she wander in the wind to remind the world of a life that could’ve been but never was.”) After spending Halloween night at a local funeral home— [thankfully, not for a person cut down in their prime]—I could relate. (And, by the way, there’s no place creepier to spend Halloween night!) This song has a wistful air of melancholy, and is performed beautifully. 

“After You” opens with a ticking sound. Liked it. Lyrics:  “I recall she said that if I left I would go alone..she wouldn’t have the strength to follow me, and now I’m gone, so alone is what I chose to be.  But I didn’t choose this life, I told her, it chose me.” That one sounds very autobiographical for a musician on the road trying to make it in the music business. 

There is no mention of “Every Day” on my liner notes, but that is the last song on this impressive, original CD, “Songs of Separation.” Tim just played with Deas Vail at Legends of Notre Dame and he’s set to hit the following venues in the next few days or weeks: 

11/3 – Janesville, Wisconsin, Timeout @ 9:00 P.M.

11/4 – Lindey’s, East Troy, Wisconsin @ 9:00 P.M.

11/5 – Lindey’s, East Troy, Wisconsin @ 9:30 P.M.

11/9 – Crow Valley (Country Club), Davenport, IA

11/10 – Rockit, Chicago, IL 9:00 P.M.

11/23 – Jersey Grille, Davenport, IA

Time off for the holidays, then:

1/20 – The Livery, Benton Harbor, MI

1/27 – The Redstone Room, Davenport, Iowa

Stopulos wrote all the words and music on this expertly produced CD, with help from Michael Tahlier on electric guitar, Tim Seisser on bass, Khari Parker on drums, Matt Nelson on Rhodes/organs, Justin Hooks on percussion with Packy Lundholm on “Something’s Gotta’ Give.” The artwork is by Josh Nelson and photography by Matt Wince, with production by Tim and Bob DiFazio, Engineering/editing mixing by DeFazio, vocal production by El Thornton and Justin Hooks and mastering by Danny Leake at Urban Guerillas. 

Among other accolades thrown around about the handsome young singer are: “energetic, soulful, sophisticated songwriter, wonderful voice, mesmerizing stage presence” Hard to top those already-used descriptions. Let me just say: “Ditto.”

 Check out his songs on YouTube. Better yet, buy a copy at www.timstop.com or Cdbaby.com. But don’t worry about his broken heart. Something tells me there’s someone out there eager to help nurse it back to health.

Neal and Carolyn Cassady with their son John.

At one point in the documentary “Love Always, Carolyn” son John Cassady, [Neal Cassady’s son with the Carolyn of the title], says, “In a secret way, I dig the attention.” Someone should break it to John that his love of the spotlight is no secret; it comes through loud and clear in this documentary made by Swedish filmmakers Malin Korkeasalo and Maria Ramstrom. This underscored when Malin shared, after the film screened in Chicago at the Chicago Film Festival, that John, now in his sixties, drives around in something dubbed “the Beatmobile.”

Swedish filmmaker Malin Korkeasalo.

Asked how this documentary about Carolyn Cassady came to be made, how the filmmakers gained access to her, Malin said, “I did a short portrait of Carolyn for a magazine and, afterwards, she wanted help with her photographs.” Added Malin, “I was surprised at how eager she was to have her children involved (in the documentary).”

Carolyn Cassady was not the only woman in Neal Cassady’s life. He had a previous marriage (to LuAnne Henderson in 1947, which was annulled), became a bigamist with Dianne Hansen (he had another son named Curtis in 1950). When he died in Mexico at age 41, he had yet another woman (Anne Murphy) in his life. Said Carolyn, “Every woman fell in love with him.”

Swedish filmmaker Maria Ramstrom.

Apparently every man did, as well, since Neal and Alan Ginsberg had a well-documented homosexual relationship that spanned 20 years. I saw Alan Ginsberg come onstage to give a poetry reading at the University of California at Berkeley in the summer of 1965. A less attractive physical specimen would be difficult to find, “Howl” notwithstanding.
Neal Cassady, on the other hand, was physically handsome and very charming, but his upbringing with his alcoholic father in Denver, Colorado was far from normal—although Carolyn, in the documentary says, “There is no such thing as normal.” Carolyn also says, “I don’t regret knowing Neal, but I regret all the artificial self-promoting stuff that has come after it.  You just can’t get away from it.”

Maria Ramstrom and Malin Korkeasalo.

At this point in her life, nearing her 89^th birthday (April 28) Carolyn has begun divesting of various mementos of her life with Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac, her lover from 1952 until 1960 at Neal’s urging. As Carolyn explains in the film, “It was Neal’s wish to share me with Jack.  I was against it, to begin with, but it was a survival for me to keep the man I loved.” Puffing on one of many small cigarillos, she says, “You have to go with the flow…There isn’t any hard and fast thing called love…Your heart is too big to just hold one sometimes.”

Going with the flow must have been difficult for Carolyn Cassady, who describes herself in the documentary as frigid ever since an older brother (she is one of 5 children) molested her in adolescence. Said Carolyn, “I was totally frigid from then on, but from then on I sold it for affection.” As she told the filmmakers, “You just do what you have to do. You get on with it and do it.”

Maria Ramstrom during the Q&A.

Carolyn’s early life in Lansing, Michigan and Nashville, Tennessee was fairly repressive. The youngest of 5 children, she describes a very solid Victorian upbringing, with a good home and a good education. “There was no touching or cuddling after infancy.  My nanny was the only hugging I ever got.  Almost anything you did, you never were quite good enough.” Carolyn left home at 16 to study drama and theater and became an accomplished painter and costumer of theatrical productions.

She met Neal and Jack in Denver at age 24 (1947) and says, “Some clog just clicked on a wheel.  That’s just how it felt and I knew this was the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.” Unfortunately, her parents strongly disapproved. Her mother wrote Carolyn a letter in which she told her “what a horrible horror I was” and her parents eventually disinherited her.

To this day, Carolyn has money issues. At the film’s outset, her son John says of her situation that she has only 200 pounds in her British bank. (John:  “She was down to 200 pounds in the bank last week, and I don’t know what we’re gonna’ do next month.”) (*Carolyn moved to Bracknell, England, outside London, at age 63 and lives there alone, as her 3 children with Neal Cassady all live in the United States. At one point in the film she jokes that the sheets she is folding have been around since 1954 and that “maybe I should sell them to Johnny Depp or somebody.”) There is also a line about “all those pictures that have been supporting me ever since” and Carolyn is heard verbally admonishing a representative of Penguin Books, who is selling a book that has a picture of Neal and Jack on the cover that Carolyn took. (“Well, shame on you! You used my photograph without permission or payment!”)

“I think we learn by our mistakes, by our wrong choices,” says the 89-year-old in the film. “The hardest part of my whole life is ending up alone.” She repeated the theme, “It’s a real drag that I ended up my life completely alone,” yet it was Carolyn who moved thousands of miles away from her children. She pronounced possible men in her age range after Neal to be “married or gay or impossible.”

When she looks back at Neal’s constant departures and irresponsible behavior as a husband and father she says, “You don’t do that (leave on a road trip) when you have a new wife and baby.” But, she adds, “He’d always talk himself back…Throwing them out never worked.” She says wryly, “He couldn’t quite get the marriage thing together.”

Cassady also “hated himself like that” when he would play the fool while high on drugs.  Neal told her, “They all just look at me and I get high and behave like an idiot.” Added Carolyn, “Which is so sad.  He hated himself for it. I asked him, ‘Then why do you do it?’ He responded, ‘I don’t know.  They just all expect it.’” Several times, Carolyn murmurs, “Such a brilliant mind.  Just horrible that he wasted it all on drugs.”

Carolyn has been quoted in Notes from the Underground as saying, “As far as I’m concerned, the Beat Generation was something made up by the media and Allen Ginsberg.” Her marriage to Cassady suffered tremendously when she refused to post his $5,000 bail after he was arrested for offering 3 marijuana cigarettes to an undercover policeman and he did 5 years in prison at San Quentin as a result. Said Carolyn, “We had some good times after that, but always in the background was resentment.  He never ever really forgave me.  I couldn’t risk the house, could I?”

The throngs of college students cheering for Carolyn and John Cassady at their appearances on campus seem to have bought into what Carolyn dubbed the myth of the Beat generation, without considering the consequences to the participants.  Sad is the biggest emotion that comes through.

Carolyn says, “I watched both of them destroy themselves.  It was hell.”  She quotes from a letter written to Neal discussing their young son John, who is acting out in adolescence, and says, “I don’t know how I can stand to watch him go the way you have, at what expense?”

Maria Ramstrom and Malin Korkeasalo.

Carolyn Cassady may have lived an interesting and memorable life that she has chronicled in her own book Off the Road, but this documentary takes a look at an almost 90-year-old woman who is living alone, trying to sell off memorabilia from her past with two of literature’s notorious Merry Pranksters in order to survive. What is even more distressing is that her three children seem to also have the idea that living off their always-absent father’s name is desirable. (One daughter wanted to market a wine with the pictures of Kerouac and Cassady on the jug.)

Far from leaving the film feeling envious of a woman who has experienced this history up close and personal, it just made me feel sad. Sad for Carolyn Cassady now, and sad that her life was spent in thrall to a man who had numerous women other than Carolyn in his life. (LuAnne Henderson, his first wife, in 1947; Diane Hansen, who gave birth to Curtis in 1950; Anne Murphy when he was in Mexico, where he was found dead alongside the railroad tracks just 4 days shy of his 42^nd birthday.)
As for Jack Kerouac, he drank himself to death at age 47.

Allen Ginsberg, bearded, disheveled and unkempt, in 1965 had to be physically carried offstage by the janitor at Berkeley, since squatting on the floor playing finger cymbals and mumbling incoherently didn’t really fall under the heading of “poetry reading.”

Adjectives like “ineffectual,” “powerless” and “desperate” are employed by the central figure in the film.  Carolyn says of herself, “I was overwhelmed,” but adds, “That’s what makes life interesting is all these complications.  Mine was pretty messed up.”

The documentary “Undefeated” (not to be confused with the documentary about Sarah Palin) played the Chicago Film Festival, depicting the Manassas High School Tigers football team’s 2009 season, as they attempt to win the first playoff game in the 110-year history of the school.

The filmmakers, T.J. Martin and Daniel Lindsay, spent 9 months living in Memphis and soon learned that “There’s a story under every helmet,” as Coach Bill Courtney told them. Courtney began volunteering in 2004 and is quoted throughout the documentary, reminding this Iowa Hawkeye fan of the antics of Coach Bob Commings (Massillon, Ohio), who was immortalized in a John Irving novel as “Iowa Bob.”  Commings called the Hawkeyes the “chosen children” and succeeded in winning some memorable games, but, ultimately, was unsuccessful in turning that program around and was fired. Coach Courtney, by contrast, announces he is quitting after the season to spend more time with his own family.

Daniel Lindsay (R) and T.J. Martin (L) at the Q&A for "Undefeated" in Chicago.

Before that, however, we learn a lot about the players on the Manassas Tigers team.  Most successful of the lot is probably O.C. Brown, 6’ 3”, 315 pounds and fast.  Mike Ray, volunteer coach, says, “That’s a big dude running that fast.” O.C. has some academic problems and, in a real-life plot that echoes “The Blind Side,” ends up moving in with an assistant coach and his family to make sure he remains eligible and is able to claim a college scholarship. After one report card period, the coach asks O.C., “How do you get a 90 in calculus and a 70 in keyboarding?” One memorable quote to the team, “If you will allow it, football will save your life.”

Another player highlighted in the film is troublemaker Chavis, who has one of the most emotional moments in the film as he turns his attitude around. Then there is “Money,” who suffers an injury to his ACL and must miss 8 to 12 weeks of playing time.  He begins to miss school after he can no longer play, and Coach Courtney says, “Money is on the cusp of being lost.”

Director Daniel Lindsay takes questions from the audience following the screening of his football documentary "Undefeated" in Chicago.

Really, most of the team is on the cusp of being lost and the filmmakers, in interviews after the game, revealed how many stories they had to ignore to highlight those that are included. There was Jaquim Collins, who had been in 18 different foster homes in 4 years, a defensive lineman. He became too old to remain in the 19^th home and was kicked out of the system.  Said Director Lindsay, “It was heartbreaking not to be able to tell his story. But ultimately the sum is greater than its parts.”

Money, in the film, is shown looking at an X-ray of his injured interior ACL ligament and asks the doctor, “Is that my brain?” The filmmakers reported that Money was not thrilled that that scene remained in the documentary.

Director Lindsay said, “We just filmed a ton of scenes and then laid them out. None of it was scripted…We were going for a very intimate film. Bill’s trusting us made the kids trust us, but it was really surprising to us how quickly they forgot we were there. The camera became an extension of us.” However, reported the filmmaking duo, “Even 2 to 3 months later, they (the players) still didn’t get what we were doing.  They’d ask, ‘So, who’s going to play me in the movie.’”

T.J. Martin, filmmaker, in Chicago.

The answer is that the Manassas Tigers played themselves, and the filmmakers did a very good job of being in the right place at the right time to capture moments in their 2009 season.  As Lindsay said of one particularly moving scene involving Chavis (the troublemaker), “Oh, my God! Did that really just happen?  We have a movie here!”

The film with plenty of exhortations like, “Please remember discipline. Please remember character, and let’s go kick their ass,” (Bill Courtney). As a former NFL player, invited to address the team by Coach Courtney, tells them, “It’s not where you start; it’s where you finish.”

The documentary, which earned great praise from one audience member, in particular, who called it “the best football film I’ve ever seen” will open in February with distribution from the Weinstein Brothers. Said Coach Courtney at one point, “If they don’t win the game, they’re gonna’ win the fight. You gotta’ believe in yourselves.  You can come back.”

Daniel Lindsay, T.J. Martin and Music Supervisor Sandy Wilson.

Sandy Wilson was Music Supervisor on the film, and should be singled out for praise, as well. All in all, with 70 young men on the team, there are some compelling and amazing stories of life in North Memphis and what it means to be resilient and never give up.

Kevin Spacey plays Wall Street trader in "Margin Call."

“The ground is shifting below our feet and apparently there’s no other way out,” say characters in the star-studded vehicle “Margin Call,” (playing now in Special Engagements). This film about the financial crisis of 2008 and how it brought Wall Street to its knees and created a ripple effect still being felt around the world is instantly reminiscent of “Too Big to Fail,” which was nominated for 11 prime-time Emmys.

“Margin Call” has Kevin Spacey as the 34-year-veteran of the financial world who sends traders onto the floor to do business each day.  Company head honcho Jeremy Irons needs Spacey to help facilitate a plan to sell off worthless securities, once Stanley Tucci and a young protégé, played by Zachary Quinto (Spock in 2009’s “Star Trek”) discover that the projected losses the formulas predict are greater than the financial worth of the company. Can the traders go forth and sell all this junk in fire sale fashion without the rest of Wall Street getting wise? Not easily, says Spacey to Irons, and, he adds, “You will never sell anything to any of those buyers ever again.” He adds, “This one is very ugly” and tries to quit, saying, “I think this will destroy this firm.  You’re knowingly putting people out of business.”  Irons needs Spacey standing by him for at least 24 months and Paul Bettany, next man down, does not seem willing to step into Spacey’s shoes and take part in what is described as “professional suicide” (A mercy killing, really,” says Spacey.)

It doesn’t help that, as this Lionsgate film opens, 80% of the staffers, including Tucci who found this imminent disaster scenario and is one of the few who totally understands what is already beginning to occur, is being shown the door. He seems anything but eager to return to help the firm out when the s*** hits the fan. Tucci had reported the discrepancies to his superior (a brittle, dour Demi Moore) earlier, but she and Simon Baker had soft-pedaled it to the big boss(es).

The firm tells its traders that, if they sell 93% of their assets, they get a $1.4 million personal bonus, and if the entire floor hits 93.1% sales, all will get another $1.3 million bonus and, as Irons says, “There’s always been fat cats and starving dogs and the percentage will stay exactly the same.” Irons, the big boss, also notes, “There’s gonna’ be a lot of money made coming out of this mess” and says, “it’s certainly no different today than it’s ever been. “ He notes of the fat cats, “We’ve got our fingers on the scales to help them.”

Written and directed by J.C. Chandor, the ads note that, to win, you need to either (1) Be first (2) Be smarter, or (3) Cheat. When Jeremy Irons’ character says to Spacey’s, “Where is this going to come back to us?” Spacey responds, “Everywhere.”

An all-star cast includes Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany, Simon Baker, Stanley Tucci, Demi Moore, Zachary Quinto, Penn Badgley and Mary McDonnell, plus Ella the chocolate brown Labrador retriever that humanizes Spacey as he knowingly helps dump $8 trillion of bad paper around the world before Armageddon.  Favorite line (re the explanation of the financial machinations):  “Speak as you would to a young child or a golden retriever.”)

A bit talky, but engrossing and your cynicism will rise by at least 93%.

“Jeff, Who Lives At Home,” a film by the Duplass brothers, was screened at the Chicago Film Festival on Tuesday, October 18, 2011 to an enthusiastic crowd anxious to see Ed Helms (“The Office,” “The Hangover”), Jason Segel (“Knocked Up,” “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” “I Love You, Man”) and Susan Sarandon (“Dead Man Walking,” “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” “Thelma and Louise”). Jay Duplass was present for the screening and answered questions afterwards.

The film follows two brothers, Jeff (Segel) and Pat (Helms) over one day, using the documentary-style shooting that Jay and Mark Duplass have become known for. “We just put people in a room and light the whole room and film it like a documentarian.  On a regular film, there is just one area lit and the actor has to come down and hit his or her mark and there might be 50 people standing there in a circle.  The actors outnumber the crew.

Jay Duplass, Director of "Jeff, Who Lives at Home'" at the Chicago Film Festival.

In our films, they (the actors) own the space.  Of course, I’ve gotta’ hustle to get the shots or there might be something epic going on and I’m standing behind a lamp.” This is the style the brothers Duplass have employed since 2001 and it has become standard on such TV sit-coms as “Parks & Recreation” and “The Office.” Many, seeing those shows on television, think the Brothers Duplass have been copying TV, when it is the other way around.  Said Jay Duplass in the Q&A after the film:  “We’ll never put anything secondary to what our actors are experiencing.”

Another hallmark of a Duplass film, aside from the fact that all of their protagonists seem to be desperate (“Cyrus” with John C. Reilly is an example) is that all actors are expected to improvise most of their lines.  With lines like, “What you just said sounded like Yoda took acid and stumbled into a business meeting,” or (Segal commenting on the size of Helms’ new Porsche), “The Porsche is normal-sized. You’re a Sasquatch,” make it clear that these actors are more than equal to the task.

Jeff Thompson (Segel) is shown dictating his thoughts into a tape recorder as the film opens. It isn’t until the camera pulls back that we realize he is sitting on the toilet at the time. Most of Jeff’s musings are about the meaning of life and the “signs” in the Universe that might help him to realize his potential, since, at this point in his life, he is 30 years old and living in his mom’s (Susan Sarandon) basement. (The M. Night Shymalan movie “Signs” is a recurring reference in the film.)

Jay Duplass and moderator during a Q&A that followed the screening of his film "Jay, Who Lives at Home" at the Chicago 47th International Film Festival.

Sharon Thompson (Sarandon) is at work and speaks to Jeff on the phone, telling him to take the bus to Highland Avenue to get wood glue to fix one of her broken shutters within the house.  Jeff (Segel) does get on the bus, but he is currently obsessed with the phone calls he keeps getting asking for “Kevin.” Jeff expresses the idea that everything in the universe is inter-related, that everyone and everything is interconnected and he thinks “there are no wrong numbers.”

When Jeff sees a young black man on the bus wearing a jersey that says “Kevin,” he gets off the bus and follows him, eventually ending up in a pick-up game of basketball and (also) being mugged. So far, no wood glue.

Enter brother Pat, who is married and works at Poplar Paint Company.  Pat and Linda (Judy Greer), his wife, have hit a rough spot in their childless marriage, some of it because Linda wants to buy a house, while Pat goes out and buys a Porsche, which Linda is not thrilled about. It is easy to see that both brothers are screw-ups, just in different ways.

After Pat’s impetuous purchase of the expensive Porsche (which he promptly wraps around a tree), Linda almost has an affair with a co-worker, Steve (Steve Zisses), even though all she is looking for is someone who will actually listen to what she says. (At one point, attempting to reconcile with her, Pat says, none too endearingly, “I’m going to try to understand your incoherent babble.”)

Another sub-plot involves a “secret admirer” at mother Sharon’s work, who keeps sending Sharon computer messages. At various points, characters say things like, “This is not the way I imagined my life was going to go.” Sharon muses on how she thought she’d join the Peace Corps, live in a hut, and end up kissing the love of her life under a waterfall. Instead, she is a widow (her husband Dan died in 1995 at the age of 44) and, as she tells co-worker Rae Dawn Chong, “I hate my kids right now.  When did that happen?  They were so cute when they were little.”

The universal human desire to love and be loved dominates the film.  After Pat discovers that Linda has been seeing another man, confronts her and she says that she thinks they should both “just walk away” from their marriage, Pat says to his brother, “I just want to feel like I love Linda and I want to feel like she loves me. I miss it.  I want it so bad.” Jeff, who is more the philosopher of the two, suggests that Pat must go to Linda and tell her. (“You need to say that to her right now.”)
That leads to a climactic scene on a bridge in traffic, where both brothers, their mother and Pat’s wife Linda end up in a destiny-shaping moment that makes them appreciate their lives.

“What happened?” asks Jeff as he recovers from a near drowning.

“Everything,” is the answer.

A truly entertaining film that is about much more than it sounds like it will be, when/if you read the plot synopsis.

See it for yourself. It’s worth doing.

Gayland Williams ("Sheila") and Michael Bricker of "Natural Selection."

The first feature-length outing by Director/Writer Robbie Pickering, “Natural Selection,” played Chicago’s 47^th International Film Festival on Sunday. It was a welcome change from the independent films and documentaries exploring suicide, murder and torture. I was delighted to find a movie about living life that had such a well-written script, such enjoyable humor and such good performances from all.

Everything in the film worked, from the cinematography (Steve Calitri, with editing by Michelle Tesoro) to the humor to the symbolism. Rachel Harris’ Linda White (Rachel played Melissa in 2009’s “The Hangover”) was one of the most skillful turns by an actress I’ve seen so far this year. Three actresses in the Chicago competition whose films screened could easily be  Best Actress nominees, with Tilda Swinton (“We Have to Talk About Kevin”), Michelle Williams (“My Week with Marilyn”) and Rachel Harris in “Natural Selection” leading the list. (And never count Meryl Streep out, as she takes on “The Iron Lady”).

The plot of “Natural Selection” focuses on a character named Linda White, who is modeled on Robbie Pickering’s own mother whose real name is Linda White. In fact, the puffy jacket used in the film belonged to Director Pickering’s Mom. Production designer Michael Bricker and cast member  Gayland Williams (Sheila) were present to answer questions after the movie screened and shared that detail, plus some behind-the-scenes about the motivation to make this particular film.

Bricker shared with the audience that Pickering wanted to make a film about how the weaker creatures in the forest survive. He was worried, at the time, about his mom’s being alone, as his stepfather, Bill (to whom the film is dedicated) had recently died. How do people who go through life trying to be “pleasers” and going along with the more dominant individuals among us fare?

The film opens with a Biblical quote: (Genesis 38: 9) “And God said to Onan, thou shalt not spill thy seed in vain.” Linda has been pronounced barren years earlier and is unable to give her husband, Abe, played by John Diehl (Detective Larry Zito on “Miami Vice” from 1984-1987) a child.  Abe is deeply religious. For their entire 25-year marriage he has withheld sex from Linda because “God says it’s a sin to act on these desires if you aren’t making babies.” Instead, Abe traveled to the Vista Care Fertility Clinic where he deposited his sperm weekly while watching pornographic movies.

It is while making one of the deposits at the “bank” that Abe has a stroke and Linda learns the truth about how Abe has coped with his own sexuality all these years.  In the opening scenes, however, Abe asks Linda to pray with him  and it is pretty clear that Linda, whose libido is proven to be undeniably healthy,  is just supposed to suck it up and do what Abe wants, once again seeking to please her man. Linda even says, “Whatever makes Abe happy makes me happy.” But does it, really? The film will examine that proposition; the viewer can judge for him or herself. One thing that Linda herself acknowledges is that she doesn’t like to be alone. She finds the presence of another person comforting, even if that other person is inflicting his will on her, like it or not. When on the road seeking Raymond Mansfield in Florida, Linda even attempts to call up the desk clerk at one of the motels she has checked in to, simply to talk to another human being. The lyrics of “Eleanor Rigby” would have sufficed for Linda’s plight, but, instead, we have Raymond saying of Linda, “The chick’s got so many holes, I guess it’s hard to keep them all shut.”

The next scene shows a man mowing grass. We learn a few moments later (in a scene derivative of “Raising Arizona”) that inside the grass bag is a prisoner escaping from Huntsville Prison. He forces his way out of the bag after the lawn mower is left untended and flees to an old colleague’s home: Raymond Mansfield’s ramshackle residence in Tampa, Florida. It is Raymond who is the biological son of Abe White (born of Abe’s sperm from the Vista Care Fertility Clinic) but Clyde Brisbee is the escapee guest in residence at Raymond’s pad when Linda arrives.

After Abe’s stroke, Linda discovered that Abe has a son somewhere in Florida, a son he has never met.  The doctors tell her Abe is not going to make it, so Linda sets off to find his child. As the film’s log-line notes, “God help her!” When she comes to Raymond’s door, the young man is quite adamant about not wanting any “Jesus crap” from his clean-cut visitor. In fact, he insists that Linda pay him $20 for 5 minutes of talk time. Unkempt. Drug-using. Living in a pit. Linda says, “This place could use a woman’s touch.” Raymond responds, “So could my pecker but that ain’t happening, either.”

I was interested in the respective ages of the two leads. After all, Linda White of the film says she has been married to Abe for 25 years. Rachel Harris, who plays Linda, in real life was born in 1968. Matt O’Leary, a Chicago-born actor who has been working since age 13, was born in 1987.  I have 2 children born those exact years, so Linda is supposed to be 19 years older than Abe’s “son,” (whom, we learn in the course of the movie, is not his son at all).

Raymond (Matt O’Leary) is not too keen on accompanying Linda on a cross-country trip to see Abe before he dies, but an unexpected visit from the police to his drug-riddled lair quickly changes his mind. Linda represents an opportunity to flee Tampa and avoid returning to Huntsville Prison. So, off the two-some go in the hatchback Linda has driven to Florida.

The car is symbolic of the relationship between Abe and Linda with lines like these:  “A man gets used to a good old car and he misses it when it’s gone…I’m starting to think it was a piece of shit to begin with.” Later, when the car has been stolen (thanks to Raymond’s unsuccessful attempt to ditch Linda and strike off on his own in it) and Linda has returned home, the miraculously recovered Abe asks Linda if it wasn’t just a mistake losing the car.

Linda responds, “It was a mistake. Yes, it was.  All of it.” Only, by then, seeing Abe through the eyes of pseudo-Raymond and others, she is realizing some hard truths about her marriage and Abe’s behavior throughout their 25 years together. She’s not really talking about the car at all.

Michael Bricker, Production Designer for "Natural Selection" awaits the screening of the film.

Linda has longed to make a trip to Morgan’s Key, where a person can be a universe of one. The snow globe representing it reminded me of the 1980 film “Resurrection” with Ellen Burstyn, Sam Shepard and Richard Farnsworth.  In that film, a postcard of Machu Pichu took on symbolic significance. It represented that destination we all strive to reach in life, just as the postcards from Cool Hand Luke (Paul Newman) to his fellow prison inmates held that distinction in the days when people actually sent postcards and letters. That mythic place will make us whole and happy.  In this movie, that place is Morgan’s Key, which Linda’s older sister Sheila (well-played with a flair for the bitchy and a broad Texas accent by Gayland Williams) has visited, but Linda has not.  (Reminds of another great line of dialogue, spoken by Raymond to Linda: “Maybe we’ll catch a unicorn takin’a shit of lullabies.’”)

The film was shot in Smithville, Texas, also the location for “Hope Floats” and “The Tree of Life.” The small town (population 4,000) has its own film committee and, according to Production Designer Michael Bricker, couldn’t have been more accommodating. (Every hotel room contained a DVD of Sandra Bullock’s “Hope Floats” film, and the huge tree in Terence Malick’s “Tree of Life” is a Smithville landmark.)

Although first-time director Robbie Pickering studied film in New York and California, he lived in Texas and knew Smithville, which is near Austin. The film not only won big at SXSW, but also won an Audience Award in Athens, won 2 awards in Indianapolis, another in Kansas, and Director/Writer Pickering has been given a Sundance Award to allow him to make more films. This is good news for those of us who have been suffering through films on suicide, grisly murder(s) and all manner of human suffering. Another bit of good news is that Cinema Guild is going to distribute the film. Writer/Director Pickering was not present in Chicago because he was accepting an award in New York from the New York Friars.

In his place, Production Designer Bricker explained that his path to the film and career started when he studied at the University of Texas in Austin (near Smithville), earning a Master’s in Architecture. He applied to be an intern on a film. He was hired and promoted rapidly to the point that he was, first time out, the Production Manager on a film with 4 sets being built for the movie’s use.  His plan for “Natural Selection” was to focus on decay and lifelessness, with “different versions of ‘not right,’ moving on to more colorful images later.”

Gayland Williams, who was also present at the Chicago screening, explained that she was the last Texas principal hired, as most of the actors and actresses were from Los Angeles.  As Gayland said, “Sheila was not a real sympathetically written character.” Indeed, she was not. She was the older sister who gave her sister bad medical advice (a recurring theme, intentional or unintentional, is truly horrible medical diagnosis of major characters verging on malpractice). That advice changed her sister’s life.

Meanwhile, Sheila seems quite selfish in flaunting her healthy children before a woman who cannot bear children. She also seems aware that her husband, Peter, a minister, seems quite attracted to her pretty younger sister and takes every opportunity to squelch that. Peter was well played by Jon Gries. His own road trip to rescue Linda after her car is stolen is comical.

The only person missing on October 16th who could have made a trip back home and appeared in support of the film was the film’s leading man, Matt O’Leary, who plays Raymond White/Clyde Brisbee. O’Leary, a Chicago native, has been acting since age 13. I remember him as “the Brain” in “Brick,” a 2005 independent film sensation.

One last bit of praise for Izler Curt Schneider, whose work as Music Supervisor was spot-on. The film won for Best Score/Music at SXSW and was nominated for a World Soundtrack Award. In addition to Schneider’s original scoring, many of the songs were performed by the group Futurebirds.

See this film if it comes to a theater or video store near you. It will amuse and entertain and watch out for Robbie Pickering and crew in the future.

John C. Reilly

A conversation with actor John C. Reilly is like talking to an old friend. He comes across onscreen in films like “Cyrus” as such a good-hearted, ordinary, normal guy onscreen. After the conversation with Reilly, (which took place on Wednesday, October 12, 2011),  the Chicago-born-and-bred DePaul graduate who grew up in the Market Park area of Chicago, the impression is that he is  just as down-to-earth and nice off-screen as he is onscreen.

When asked what reminds him of Chicago, Reilly says his first impression from way-back-when is the color green, in the schools and neighborhood of his youth. The Market Part area was a rough neighborhood (“The old Chicago lumbering into the future”) where the interiors and exteriors of the Irish/Polish neighborhood under “Daley I” were always green in various shades. Reilly said, “Market Park was the only place that physically attacked the Reverend Martin Luther King, before he was assassinated. ..Market Park and Johannesburg had to be two of the most prejudiced places on the planet at that time.”

Reilly, born May 24, 1965, did not grow up a child of great privilege. His Irish father ran an industrial supply linen company and Reilly was one of six children born to his Lithuanian mother. He made his screen debut in Brian DePalma’s “Casualties of War” in 1989 and met his wife, Alison Dickey, an independent film producer whom he married in 1992, on that film. Thanks to the various Chicago programs provided for youth by the city of Chicago, he was able to participate in drama and improv classes beginning at age 8. Music was almost always involved. His later role in the musical “Chicago” would stem from those early experiences and Reilly was even Grammy-nominated for the song “Walk Hard,” which he wrote and performed in the comedy satire “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.” In 2002, Reilly, a veteran of 50 films, was in 3 of the films nominated as Best Picture. He was also nominated for an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor in the musical “Chicago.”

With John C. Reilly at the Chicago Film Festival.

At DePaul, early in his dramatic training, Reilly was cast as the male lead in “The Way of the World,” a Restoration-era comedy by William Congreve. He soon decided, “This is boring. Being the leading man is not all it’s cracked up to be.” His discovery that character actor parts were more interesting “informed a lot of my later parts.”

Asked about whether he felt he was “a spokesman for your generation,” Reilly said, “I never felt like a spokesman of my generation.  I try to portray people who have layers of meaning that you can peel back and expose.”

Q:  What was the most fun you ever had on a movie set?

A:  “’Boogie Nights’ (1997) was the most fun. “The 1997 film where Reilly wrote and performed “Feel the Heat” and portrayed Reed Rothchild predates his partnership in comedies with Will Ferrell. (Of Ferrell, Reilly said, “Will’s America’s Sweetheart…what can I say?” He added that the two have an almost brotherly rapport and are trying to find the time to make a sequel to “Stepbrothers.”

In commenting on “Boogie Nights,” Reilly noted that large chunks of that Paul Thomas Anderson film were improvised. “Paul Anderson and I made 3 great movies together (“Hard Eight” in 1997; “Boogie Nights” in 1997; and “Magnolia” in 1999). “Paul Thomas Anderson has what a great director needs, which is (1) a great photographic eye (2) the ability to be good at motivating groups of people and (3) the ability to be really enthusiastic about the project.”

Actor John C. Reilly at the Chicago 47th International Film Festival.

When asked what actors or actresses he most wanted to work with, Reilly said that he has already worked with some of the best, including Meryl Streep and his current co-star, Tilda Swinton (“We Have to Talk About Kevin”).  He suggested that he is more likely to select film projects based on directors with whom he wants to work, citing Terry Gilliam and the Coen Brothers as some on his “would like to work with” list.

Reilly also mentioned that he was recently asked to appear in “Carnage,” which is based on the French play “God of Carnage” that recently ran in Chicago.  (The play is a dark comedy about 2 couples who meet to discuss the schoolyard fight that caused one boy to hit the other boy and knock his tooth out.)“I tried not to wet my pants when Roman Polanski called and asked me to do a movie,” said the humble Reilly.

Reilly said, “When I’m reading a script, I ask, is this how people talk?”(in helping him make a decision about whether to do a part.) “All a character can really control is the part he plays.  Film is so much a director’s medium.  You have to really focus on your part.  I’m looking for stuff that’s different from what I’ve done before.  You have to be careful what parts you choose. If you aren’t, you might find that you’ve created a big crappy snowball at the end of your life…An actor needs to try his best, show up every day with his best intentions. “

Asked whether there are any movies he is less fond of, Reilly noted, “I’ve seen them all.  I’ve returned to the scene of the crime.  You don’t put 6 months in and then don’t go see it.  You can learn from even the ones you’re disappointed in. “Refusing to name any less-than-stellar roles, Reilly said, “It’s a miracle when one of them works.  I’m not gonna’ kick a dog that’s down.”

Q:  “How do you receive scripts now?”

After noting that the usual agent-to-actor filter applies, he joked, “They come by carrier pigeon now. If they are too heavy for the carrier pigeon to carry, then I don’t do it.”

Reilly is in an intense new independent film directed by Lynne Ramsay entitled “We Have to Talk About Kevin.” Ramsay, a 1995 graduate of the UK’s Film and Television School, had not done a film for 7 years.  Reilly was interested in doing a film with Ramsay, the female British-born director of “Ratcatcher” and “Morvern Callar”), and sought her out. He found that Ramsay, as a director, knew exactly what she was wanted on set and would often call it a wrap after the first take

John C. Reilly’s advice to other would-be actors?  “Be there.  Be present.  Listen and be enthusiastic.  Notice what is going on between ‘Action’ and ‘Cut.’”

Dennis Farina arriving at the 47th Chicago International Film Festival.

“The Last Rites of Joe May,” starring Dennis Farina opened the 47^th Chicago International Film Festival, with most stars walking the red carpet for the accolades they and the film justly deserve. “The Last Days of Joe May” chronicles the final days of an aging con man, clinging to the perennial belief that he’s just one scam away from the big score. Gary Cole plays Lenny, his fence, a man Joe asks to hook him up in jump-starting his life of petty crime, talking to Lenny about “the old days,” when he was best friends with Lenny’s dad. (Cole’s characteristic cool serves his role well.)

It Came from the ‘70s

Of significance to me is the concept that the film reflects a yearning on the part of audiences for a return to character-driven films like those excellent films of the seventies, something I articulated in an entire book (It Came from the 70s: From The Godfather to Apocalypse Now). “Moneyball’s” movers and shakers (Brad Pitt, et. al.) recently echoed that thought (Sports Illustrated, Sept. 26, 2011).

Seventies films often depicted a man clinging to a code of conduct, but facing a world that had changed around him. The anti-hero arose then:  one man defying the establishment.  [Writer/Director Joe Maggio admits to being a fan of the films of Vittorio DeSica (“The Bicycle Thief,” “Two Women”) and of “The Friends of Eddie Coyle,” a Robert Mitchum movie.] The films of the seventies, when compared to CG-dominated fare of today, make you long for a return to telling a human story that touches the audience’s heart and doesn’t have to depend on an encroaching ice age, toys come to life, or asteroids destroying the earth (not to mention the “end of days” scenario of “2012.”)

Todd Brown of www.Twitchfilm.com reviewed “The Last Rites of Joe May” this way: “I’m just happy that someone out there still wants to make movies like this while there are still stars like Farina to feature within them.  This man is a true American icon who deserves far more recognition than he gets, and this is the sort of role that fits him like a glove.” That opinion was shared by the enthusiastic Chicago audience Thursday night, who gave a round of applause to a controversial line in the film (Farino and Writer/Director Maggio debated it). Joe May calls the police station to give Jenny’s abusive policeman boyfriend, Stan Butchkowski (Steppenwolf Theater regular Ian Barford), this message after he puts Jenny in the hospital :  “If I ever see his ugly, greasy, wife-beating face, I’m gonna’ rip his balls right out of their sacs and stuff them down his c********** throat.” The audience openly cheered, much as they cheered Eastwood in 1971’s “Dirty Harry” (“Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya’, punk?”).

The Plot

As the story of Joe May opens, he is being released from the hospital after several weeks of treatment for pneumonia. He’s still not really a well man. Everyone thinks Joe’s dead. The apartment he lived in for 40 years has been rented to a young mother (Jamie Anne Allman) with a 7-year-old daughter; his belongings have been thrown out or given away, with the exception of his collection of vinyl opera records (Verdi, in particular); and his 1989 Cutlass has been sold for $75. (When Joe protests the sale of his car, the civil servant on duty says, “I’d say you got off easy. You had $250 of unpaid tickets and a $1,000 storage fee,” noting that the car was officially declared “abandoned” when Joe lingered in the hospital for weeks.)  Joe’s net worth is exactly $443.56. He is irrevocably estranged from his only child, a son (Scotty) who screams at him to get out of his house saying, “There’s nothing to talk about. We don’t even know each other.”

When the young mother (Jenny, well played by Jamie Anne Allman), who works as a nurse, sees Joe homeless in the streets outside his old apartment and sleeping on a city bus and a public bench, she asks him if he would like to rent his old room for $100 a week. He agrees and moves back into his old place, but in a platonic fashion. His relationship with Jenny in the film is that of a father figure, not a lover. Farina said, “I think, for him, not becoming involved with Jenny represented a noble gesture.” Farina described discussions with Writer/Director Joe Maggio where they agreed that Farina’s old-world code wouldn’t find it acceptable for him to sleep with the young woman while her 7-year-old daughter was under the same roof.

Joe May’s Pigeons

Joe’s relationship with Jenny’s daughter, young Angelina (Meredith Droeger) develops around the pigeons Joe houses on the roof (a throwback to Marlon Brando in “On the Waterfront.”) The pigeons are symbolic of many things and their fate is pivotal in the movie’s plot. (Joe tells Angelina, “I’ll always come back,” much as the pigeons do.) The pigeons were also one of the sticking points in relocating the film from Maggio’s original New York setting to Chicago. Said Farina, “My biggest concern, believe it or not, it’s a small thing, but I wasn’t aware of how many pigeon coops were in Chicago, because pigeon coops are normally associated with the East coast.  That the only thing I’m concerned about…do we have pigeon coops?  Though it’s illegal to have pigeon coops in Chicago, there are, indeed, a lot of them.” As a resident of Chicago, Farino said, “It’s the best big city in the world.  Of course, I’m a little prejudiced, but I love it.”

Farina is the perfect choice to play Joe May.  This film—after a lengthy career as a reliable character actor—fits him like “Rocky” fit Sylvester Stallone. As Farina admitted in an interview, “I can tell you, I’m 68, yeah—there are a lot of things going on that I just don’t understand.  And it’s funny, I think maybe when you’re Joe May, your world just gets smaller and smaller and you keep gravitating to people who think like you, or are like you, because you don’t understand or can’t accept what else is going on in the world.” It’s the universal truth: “It’s hell to get old.” Or, as Bette Davis once put it, “Old age is not for sissies.” [Farino’s scenes with old friend Bill (Chelcie Ross) are great, especially one where he drops Angelina off with Bill at the assisted living facility and Bill gets the line, “Hurry up and say good-bye. Uncle Billy is freezing his nuts off.”]

Writer/Director Joe Maggio based Joe May’s character on his maternal grandfather, a short money hustler, and said, “Joe’s trouble isn’t that he fails to live up to his code; it’s that the world has changed to such a degree that, in obeying these rules, Joe is, in a sense, holding devalued currency.”

What code would that be?

Writer/Director Maggio:  “You always pay your debts. You never let anyone know when you’re down and out and no matter how bad things get, you keep your shoes shined, your pants pressed and your hair trimmed.  If you can’t afford to leave a tip, don’t go into the bar.  You wait your turn, with patience and fortitude, because better days will come, eventually.”  Joe’s character, in the film, tells his estranged son, who scoffs, “I just always felt there was something great waiting for me.”

At this point in his life, despite being down and out (“One day you’re on top of the world, and the next day you’re floating in the crapper.”) Joe is not ready to go gently into that good night. He plans to rage against the dying of the light, saying, “I still feel I have something to offer.” This is a universal theme that anyone over 50 can relate to.

After an altercation between Jenny and her violent boyfriend frightens Angelina, Joe reassures Angelina telling Angelina if her mother’s abusive cop boyfriend returns, “I’ve still got a few good moves left in me.” A scene on a city bus where Joe gets up to give his seat to a woman and is soon pushed into the senior seats by a young woman is telling.

The Verdict

Any number of Hollywood icons would have been good in this role in their day. Paul Newman comes to mind. Clint Eastwood a few roles back. But there are no actors working today who would have done the part more justice than Dennis Farina, and certainly none who could locate it as well in authentic Chicago neighborhoods in the dead of winter.

Farina’s convincing portrait of a man whose best friend Billy (excellently played by veteran character actor Chelcie Ross, co-star of “Hoosiers” with Gene Hackman) has hung it up and retired to an assisted living facility, is tinged with the sense of doom that Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman brought to their roles in “Midnight Cowboy.” Joe’s sense of being out-of-the-loop reminded me of the “Wall Street” sequel (“Money Never Sleeps”), when Michael Douglas’ character has lost touch with the present-day while in prison.  The sub-plot where Angelina is temporarily MIA reminded me of Jeff Bridges’ Oscar-winning role as Otis “Bad” Blake in 2009’s “Crazy Heart,” when he (temporarily) lost girlfriend Maggie Gyllenhaal’s child.

“The Last Rites of Joe May” opens on video-on-demand on October 28, 2011 and will open November 4, 2011 at Quad Cinema in New York City and at the Gene Siskel Film Center November 24, 2011. It’s a heart-warming, satisfying film experience with a message that resonates.

“Moneyball” is a movie about baseball that Brad Pitt wanted to make. But to say that “Moneyball is a movie about baseball is like saying that The Sopranos was a series about the waste-management business,” as Austin Murphy put it in “Brad Pitt Deals.” (September 26, 2011 Sports Illustrated).

It’s a wonder the film got made at all, since Pitt was really not a baseball player back in his high school days at Springfield (Mo.) Kickapoo High School. Wrestling. Diving. Football. But no baseball for Brad Pitt in his sports-playing days.

When Pitt read Michael Lewis’ (The Blind Side) book about baseball, he realized it was not really a book about baseball as much as it was a movie about believing in yourself and having the courage to buck the system to prove that you can do it…whatever “it” is. There’s even a scripted line from the scouts, who are critiquing the prospects for next year’s team:  “He’s gotta’ be successful to be confident, and that’s when you’ve got something.” Years ago, Steven Tyler described his own success as lead singer of Aerosmith as “Fake it till you make it.”

The concept of success breeding success is something I promoted for 20 years as the CEO of a Sylvan Learning Center (#3301) I founded in the small town of Bettendorf, Iowa.  I could relate instantly to the gamble that Oakland “A’s” team manager Billy Beane has made in deciding to revolutionize the game of baseball by  integrating statistics to determine whom to draft. The team is looking for bargain basement deals that will unexpectedly turn out to be winners, giving it the appearance, at some times, of “an island of lost toys.” Their roster has just been raided of their 3 best players, and the cupboard is bare.

Beane de-emphasized the role of dugout managers such as the character played by Philip Seymour Hoffman (Art Howe) and, instead, plucked “Google Boy,” as the plot dubs him, a young whipper-snapper dubbed Peter Brent in the movie (real character name: Paul Podesta, Beane’s fresh-out-of-Harvard assistant) who, in the movie, is a recent graduate of Yale. Brent (Jonah Hill in a nicely understated serious turn) tells Beane “Baseball thinking is medieval.”

Beane buys in to the premise that statistics can help make his struggling team (“We’re the last runt at the bowl.”) into a winner. The Oakland “A’s” at the time  had a budget of approximately $38 million to compete with the $121 million of teams like the New York Yankees. In Jonah Hill’s character of Peter Brent, Beane sees a way to even the playing field. This is not popular with the old-timers on staff. As Beane, using Texas Hold ‘Em terminology says says to his young assistant, “Just you and me, Pete. We’re all in.”

When Brad Pitt read the book Moneyball, he recognized the universal themes underlying the story of a team that, from a dismal start, went on to set the American League record for most consecutive wins in a season (20  games). In 103 years, the record had never been broken, but the Oakland “A’s broke it in 2002, using what the grizzled veteran scouts termed “statistical gimmicks.” Not unlike “Road to Perdition,” where the universal father/son theme resonated with  the Zanucks and helped propel the film based on a graphic novel written by Muscatine, Iowa native Max Collins, Brad Pitt wanted to play Billy Beane, a man he sees as someone tilting against windmills and fighting the good fight against odds that often seem overwhelming. Risking it all. Standing up for what he believes in. Being loyal to his principles and his team. The onscreen Beane says, “I made one decision based on money, and I said I’d never do it again,” alluding to his earlier player days, [when he turned down a full-ride scholarship to Stanford to turn pro right out of high school.] Although Beane’s success with the “A’s” earns him the offer of a $12 and 1/2 million-dollar contract with the Boston Red Sox, after wavering a bit he turns it down to stay with Oakland.

As the script puts it, “We are card counters at the blackjack table.  We’re going to turn the tables on the casino.” With “adapt or die” as the motto, Beane locks horns with virtually everyone, including his dugout manager, his scouts, his players, his family, his bosses and himself.

The script by award-winning writer Aaron Sorkin (“The Social Network”) and Steven Zallion (“Schindler’s List”) is clever, funny and meaningful. Much of it wrote itself when genuine baseball scouts gathered to share their wisdom. Some of the people in the room when Pitt holds a scouting meeting are real baseball scouts, but you’ll also recognize Aaron Pierce from “24″ (Glenn Morshower, 49 episodes) or Chief Jerry Reilly from “Rescue Me” (Jack McGee, 44 episodes, 2004-2007).  You may also notice that the actor playing Scott Hatteberg, Chris Pratt, is from “Parks & Recreation” where he plays Andy Dwyer (48 episodes, 2009-2011).

The most substantial role for a former TV series regular went to Kerris Dorsey (“Brothers & Sisters,” Paige Whedon, 91 episodes 2006-2011), who plays Billy Beane’s daughter Casey. She was Paige Whedon on “Brothers & Sisters” until the show was canceled recently. It is Casey’s singing of a song about being “a little girl lost in the middle,” which she performs for her dad, that frames the movie. Singing about “a little girl lost in the middle” (a la Jimmy Eat World’s “The Middle”), Casey’s pure voice speaks to her dad, who encourages Casey to share her talent and perform for others. One of Billy Beane’s scouts (Grady, played by Ken Medlock) whom he ultimately must fire for insubordination has told Beane (Pitt), “You’re going to have to explain to your kid why you’re working at Dick’s Sporting Goods,” when Beane keeps pushing his statistically-driven agenda in the face of opposition. But Beane has bought into Bill James’ book on baseball statistics, 1977 Baseball Abstract:  Featuring 18 Categories of Statistical Information That You Just Can’t Find Anywhere Else. Even before that 1977 book, there was Earnshaw Cook’s Percentage Baseball, a 1964 Johns Hopkins engineering professor’s treatise on sabermetrics.

Brad Pitt saw Billy Beane as “the voice of reason speaking against the establishment.” We all know that speaking truth to power is not popular, but it made for some great 70s films, which I chronicled in “It Came from the ’70s,” a book with 50 representative films of the era. Pitt also appreciates movies of the seventies. He explained the difference between today’s films and the films of that great movie-making era this way:  “In scripts today, someone has a big epiphany, learns a lesson, then comes out the other side different.  In these older films I’m talking about, the beast at the end of the movie was the same beast in the beginning of the movie.  What changed was the world around them, by just a couple of degrees. Nothing monumental.  I think that’s true about us.  We fine-tune ourselves, but big change is not real.” (Austin Murphy’s Sports Illustrated article “Brad Pitt Deals”, September 26, 2011). Director Bennett Miller shared Pitt’s enthusiasm for 70s movies, as do I.

As the third director on the film, Bennett Miller said, “It (“Moneyball”) seemed like a shoot-the-moon project because it was complex and messed up in 1,000 different ways.” Stephen Soderbergh had parted ways with the project when his idea for a more documentary-style approach was rejected as too expensive.  The film languished in development hell for 8 years. Pitt, who has given 2 Oscar-worthy performances this year (the other  as the father in Terence Malick’s “The Tree of Life”) says, “What we were trying to do is tell an unconventional story in the Trojan horse of a conventional baseball movie.”

Michael Lewis, in the 2003 best-selling book on which the film is based wrote, “At the bottom of the Oakland experiment was a willingness to rethink baseball: how it is managed, how it is played, who is best suited to play it, and why.” Lewis has said, “I always thought of it (Moneyball) as the biography of an idea, and I wrote it as a biography of an idea.  And you can’t make a movie of an idea.”

But you can if you’re Brad Pitt, the 800-lb. gorilla of leading men.

Pitt saw the same themes that Rachael Horovitz recognized after 12 years working for Hollywood studios:  Taking a new path.  Having belief in one’s self to risk and move forward. Loyalty to one’s principles in the face of the temptation to abandon them. Horovitz picked up “Moneyball” in 2003 as a free-lance producer and, fortunately for her,  “As long as Brad Pitt wanted to make this movie, it was going to get made.”

When Pitt talks about the film, he references 70s anti-heroes like R.P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Gene Hackman as Popeye Doyle in The French Connection and Steve McQueen, in pretty much every movie he ever made. That was the premise of an entire book I wrote (It Came from the’70s: From The Godfather to Apocalypse Now): that 70s movies were the best era for film since the 30s, precisely because of those themes and those performances. The contrast with today’s computer-generated blow-up-more-cars approach to movie-making is stark. What appealed to me as I spent 8 years of my life compiling a retrospective of  70s movies, culled from  15 scrapbooks of reviews of that decade saved in my basement for 43 years, also  spoke to Brad Pitt. (www.ItCamefromtheSeventies.com).

The result is a movie with a heart, a brain, a spine and a funny-bone. Some of the funny was provided by the scouts. A sample:  “This is the kind of guy who, when he walks into the room, his dick has already been there for 2 minutes.” Beane on the “A’s” standing amongst other teams: “There’s rich teams, poor teams, 50 feet of crap, and then there’s us.” Beane to a scout who mentions that one player “has a good face,” “It’s not like we’re looking for Fabio.”  “He’s freaky—and not in a good way,” And—one truism articulated by Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) that explains why Beane was prepared to risk it all to find a way to make his team competitive—”If we try to play like the Yankees in here (i.e., while selecting new players to draft), we’re going to lose to the Yankees out there.” And that’s what led to Beane’s radical move to using statistics to give the “A’s” a competitive advantage…something that every major league team does now, but few did then.

The Mickey Mantle quote with which the film open is apropos:  “It’s unbelievable how much you don’t know about the game you’ve been playing all your life.” (Oct. 15, 2001). Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” is used in one opening day montage, a particularly good choice,  and the entire film worked, for me, because, as Director Bennett Miller said about his sensibilities and those of his star, “Both of us were drawn to some of the same films from the ’70s where you don’t have to have a character that stops the asteroid from hitting the Earth.”

Pitt is excellent in the lead role. Jonah Hill turns in a nicely-restrained supporting performance as Google Boy (Will Hill be as funny now that he’s creepily cadaverous?), and Philip Seymour Hoffman is also good as bullpen manager Art Howe, a man at odds with the boss. Stephen Bishop also does justice to David Justice, (to savor the pun).

A fine film about heart and risk and life…and baseball.

Las Vegas, Nevada, September 23, 2011 “IHeartRadio” hit the MGM Grand tonight, bringing some of the hottest live acts currently touring together in an eclectic 2-day extravaganza billed as “the biggest live concert festival in radio history” in the September 18, 2011 Las Vegas Magazine & Show-Biz Weekly article entitled “Titans of the Airwaves” by Josh Bell. As Bell phrased it, “Clear Channel is pulling out all the stops to promote its new IHeartRadio service.”

First up singing to the audience of 12,000 were the Black Eyed Peas with Will.i.am and Fergie. Noting that they first formed in 1995, were signed in 1997 and put out their first record in 1998 the energetic group said it used to perform for $20 a gig. “Now we get paid a whole lot more zeros than that. We’ve had a great career…We’ll never stop making music,” said Will.i.am. The group invited the audience to join in signing along to the theme from “Dirty Dancing” and it was the most successful sing-along request of a 3-hour concert. Biggest impressions of the group: Fergie’s shorts were cut so high and short that she might as well have worn a thong and there was a lot of energetic jumping up and down.

That level of energy made it difficult for Kelly Clarkson to compete on an equal footing. The former “American Idol” winner and singer-songwriter sang many of her hits like “Since You’ve Been Gone” and “Walk Away” but her request for an audience participation moment resulted largely in a crowd that didn’t know the words, and she finally relented and announced, “We’re not doing any more sad ballads to bring you down.” Clarkson looked slimmer than in some previous performances and sported a flattering hairstyle.

Every so often, for no more than a total of 5 minutes, it seemed, Ryan Seacrest would put in an announcing appearance, although others, such as Joe Jonas and a local DJ (Elvis Duran) carried most of the MC-ing heavy water. Another change in the night’s programming saw John Mayer drop out due to illness.

After Clarkson’s stint, Bruno Mars, who played Little Elvis in “Honeymoon in Vegas” in 1992 when he was 7 performed, and it was as though he was channeling the high-pompadoured singers of yesteryear like Fabian, Frankie Avalon and Jackie Wilson. Mars’ big hit “Just the Way You Are” was well-received, but it was astonishing how retro his look was: dark suit, white shirt, thin black tie and a pompadour that made JFK Jr’s hairdo look flat. Mars performed a bit of fancy footwork and seemed to give off a vibe that he thought he was very cool, indeed. The middle-aged lady in front of me in the nose-bleed section began waving her cell phone and pumping her arm in the air; I wanted to tell her to cool her jets. We were a long way from catching young Bruno’s eye.  A song dedicated to Amy Winehouse (“I miss you. I love you.”) Seemed like blatant capitalizing on the recent death of the British songbird.

The next performer out of the box began by telling the crowd, “I think the IHeartRadio show is the most eclectic I’ve ever been in.” The introduction for Carrie Underwood, American Idol’s darling, was given by Joe Jonas, and Carrie was one of the strongest performers of the night. She danced around the stage, looked lovely, belted out her ballads, and all I could think of was how far she had come since the cow-milking segment featured on her early “American Idol” appearance. She is a polished performer now, much slimmer, and genuinely beautiful. It was now nearly 9:30 p.m. and the show had begun 2 hours earlier.

At this point, amongst the never-still throngs who were in constant motion, a stranger climbed over me and, as he passed in haste, something wet spilled on my leg. I could only hope it was beer. An announcement was made that Justin Timberlake plans to host something billed as an Old School Jam on October 1^st. It will feature Earth, Wind & Fire, Charlie Wilson and Vanilla Ice. All I could think of was that I had been under the impression, apparently mistaken, that Robert Van Winkle, 44, had melted years ago, and, having just seen Earth, Wind & Fire at Northerly Isle Pavilion (also known as Charter One Pavilion) in Chicago this summer, the band was now featuring the children of the original performers, after nearly as many years as a performing group (i.e.. 42). However, early word regarding Timberlake’s attempts to cross over to action hero in his newest sci-fi film makes his return to the music world timely.

Next up was 52-year-old Perry Farrell, generally regarded as one of the godfathers of alternative rock. The Farewell Tour that Farrell organized for his band “Jane’s Addiction” in 1991 became Lollapalooza, now a 2-day destination tour centered in Grant Park in Chicago. Tonight, Farrell announced that his performance represented “the rock and roll version of IHeartRadio.” With Dave Navarro on guitar, the set was excruciatingly loud and employed a Persian/Arabic-themed stage backdrop with much use of confetti canons. When Farrell talks to address the crowd, he sounds like a cartoon character with his high-pitched voice. It is now 10 minutes of 10 p.m.

At this point, saving the day and the concert, Coldplay emerges, singing “Rule the World.” Chris Martin actually lay down onstage at the end of the song and asked, “Is there anybody out there?” He also told a story that went Snippet of Chris Martin of “ColdPlay.” (See longer video clip on Facebook at my Profile.)like this: “We played down the street in a little club at 3 in the morning when we were starting out, just this band from Britain, and there were just 2 ladies in the place and one of them was deaf, and even she walked out. We said that one day we’d come back and play the MGM Grand.  I hope you’re having a great time.  And that’s all I have to say.  Don’t lose all your money.” And then, almost as an after-thought, before throwing himself into energetic flailing about that seemed almost childlike in its random-ness, Martin added, “The back is the best place to see our band.” If you gave yourself over to the pulsing, exuberant experience, Coldplay was a fantastic way to go out. They exited to huge applause. Only problem was, Alicia Keys had to follow Coldplay.

Much like Kelly Clarkson, doomed to come on after the Black Eyed Peas, Alicia Keys performed admirably (and overly loudly, much like Perry Farrell), with a backdrop of white doves flying across the projection screen behind her piano. She often stood center stage, solo, to sing songs while attired in a sparkly top like every other female performer. (Sparkles are in this season). It was now 10:30 p.m. and Alicia announced her intention to play a new song, “A Place of My Own” on the Yamaha piano, saying, “It’s an incredible night, I have to say.”

Announcements were made that Lady Gaga would perform with the just-turned-60 Sting on Saturday night, along with Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez, Rascal Flatts, Nicki Minaj, Sublime with Rome, Usher, Kenny Chesney and Jay-Z. The ticket price in the nosebleed section I was in was listed as $165, but there were 9 empty seats in my row (Section C 209) and they were going for 2 to 3 times that on StubHub. Some of the seats down front were priced in the thousands online.

Coldplay and Carrie Underwood made my seat worth what I paid for it, but when the witching hour of 11:00 p.m. came and went, with only the possible appearance of Jay-Z (he was a late addition and may never have appeared, I was happy to bolt, waiting for what seemed like hours in the taxi line outside the MGM Grand.) Stay tuned for tomorrow night’s big show, which drew fans from both coasts and  all areas in between. Big draws tomorrow are Lady Gaga appearing with Sting and Steven Tyler.