==================================================================== Stuck In Traffic "Current Events, Cultural Phenomena, True Stories" Issue #32 - March, 2000 Contents: Madeline Kahn: RIP A great actress and demander of lemonade passes away Movie Review: The Astronaut's Wife Movie Review: Mission To Mars Movie Review: Wonder Boys The Pope's Pilgrimage For all the Pope's goodwill gestures, there still isn't a framework for Peace in the Mid East. ======================================= Cultural Phenomena Madeline Kahn: RIP After fighting ovarian cancer for almost a year, Madeline Kahn succumbed to the disease and passed away in December of 1999. Fortunately for those of us who have been her fan over the years, she left a long legacy behind in film, on stage, and TV. To the highbrow crowd, Madeline Kahn was probably best known for her Tony award winning role in "The Sisters Rosensweig" and her Tony award nominations for her roles in "The Boom Room, "On the 20th Century," and "Born Yesterday."But most of us knew Madeline Kahn from her numerous movie roles. The Internet Movie Database lists no less than 35 movies in which she played a role and several television shows. She won an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress in 1973 for her role in "Paper Moon" in which she played a floozy woman named "Trixie Delight". But her most famous role, the one most people remember her by, is probably in Mel Brooks' "Blazing Saddles", which came out the following year and also won her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Who could forget this saloon singer with the Elmer Fudd voice? No doubt it stretched her opera-trained voice to the limit to speak in Elmer Fuddish for an entire movie! And no doubt it was all she could do to keep a straight face during filming. Just imagine a "Miss Kitty" style bar maid in her saloon get-up singing in an Elmer Fudd voice: Here I stand, the goddess of desire Set men on fire I have this power. Morning, noon, and night, it's dwink and dancing Some quick womancing And then a shower. Stage door Johnnies constantly suwwound me They always hound me, with one wequest. Who can satisfy their lustful habits? I'm not a wabbit! I need some west. And of course anyone who's seen the movie can't for get "It's twew, it's vewy vewy twew!" But if you don't get the joke, well, you have to go rent the movie yourself. Madeline Kahn also made wonderful contributions to movies like, "Young Frankenstein" (another Mel Brooks classic), "Clue", "Yellow Beard", and "The Muppet Movie." But my favorite Madeline Kahn roles were never the floozy women roles. My favorites were the movies where she played the reserved, up tight woman. Take, for example, "Mixed Nuts." Not an entirely successful movie, by any stretch of the imagination. In this movie, Steve Martin plays Philip who, along with Madeline Kahn's "Mrs. Munchnik" and assorted other oddball characters, run a crisis help line during the Christmas season. She plays a rather conservative, reserved woman with a big heart who just wants to help people. Or is it really that she herself is desperately lonely. You have to decide for your self. But in the one of the movie's few brilliant comic moments, Mrs. Munchnik is trapped in one of those old fashioned cage elevators with a toy karioke machine and she proceeds to call for help to the tune of a rap song. It's schtick that could never have worked without Madeline Kahn's ability to convincingly play a woman who's never once "let go" all her life. And somehow that's the Madeline Kahn character that has always appealed to me the most. My all time favorite Madeline Kahn movie is "What's Up Doc?" She plays Eunice Burns opposite Barbara Streisand's Judy (aka Burnsie). Streisand plays the carefree, happy-go-lucky, starving, professional student who is constantly acting on impulse and improvising. Kahn's character, Eunice, plans her and her fiancé's life (Ryan O'Neil) down to 5 minute intervals. She wears white gloves and sensible shoes. She's of the sensible shoes brigade. She's the type that stands in front of doors waiting for gentlemen to hold the door for her. Of course, the comic element is that the world never quite lives up to Eunice's world of manners and etiquette and she slowly goes nuts. At one point in the movie, in the middle of a hotel lobby, exasperated at Burnsie's intrusion into her fiancee's life, Eunice shouts, "Don't you know the meaning of propriety!!??" It sets the tone of the Eunice character for the whole movie. I have a soft spot in my heart for people who demand to deal with the world on their own terms. Sometimes I get sick and tired of this prevalent attitude of "go with the flow" and "take whatever comes." Yes, it's very useful to know how to make lemonade when life gives you lemons. But it's also good to send the lemons back and shout, "I ordered lemonade dammit!" That's why I will always have a soft spot in my heart for the Eunice Burns' and the Mrs, Munchnik's of the world. And that's why I will miss Madeline Kahn. RIP. ======================================= Cultural Phenomena Movie Review The Astronaut's Wife You usually think of Johnny Depp as playing kinda wimpy characters. Sleepy Hollow, Edward Scissorhands, Benny and Joon, What's Eating Gilbert Grape are all movies in which the male lead isn't the alpha-male type. But In The Astronaut's Wife, Johnny Depp plays a he-man astronaut that could have fit into the Right Stuff no problem. But while on a Space Shuttle mission to repair a satellite, Something Happens. NASA loses radio contact for 2 minutes. Johnny Depp and his fellow he-man astronaut are lost in space for a very short time. They are terrified. Once home, they seem ok physically, but neither of them wants to Talk About It. But as the movie title suggests, the story is told from the wife's point of view. First there's the terror of nearly losing her husband to the vacuum of space, then the joy when he comes home safely. Then there's the slow, but ever mounting realization the Something Isn't Right with her husband. After the wife of her husband's fellow astronaut commits suicide, more and more stuff happens and a full blown conspiracy theory begins to unfold before her. The more she knows, the more she begins to realize her life and the life of her unborn twins could be in danger. Unfortunately, she can never seem to get a step ahead of the Bad Guys. It seems like it should be a good movie. It's certainly an interesting cinematic exercise to tell the story from the wife's point of view. Most other movies would have centered on the Astronaut. . And I'd have to say that the script is pretty tightly plotted. And I'd say that the movie is a good character study. The script does a good job portraying the wife's mounting terror. And yet, at the end of the movie, I didn't walk away with that sense of wonder feeling you expect from a science fiction movie. Nor were there enough plot twists to count as a really good drama/suspense movie either. I give it three stars out of five. Worth seeing, but it's not going to change your life. ======================================= Cultural Phenomena Movie Review Mission To Mars It seems that the execs at Disney told someone to go dig up all the successful science fiction movies of the past 15 years, slice and dice them together until you had something resembling a movie. Then they hired a director and told him to fill the movie with as many Taster's Choice Moments as could be fit in. The result, is Mission To Mars. A wreck of a movie. Some scenes are painful they are so bad. Of course, all the eye-candy was really good. But so what? Long gone are the days where stunning visuals are enough to make a movie worth seeing. Hey Hollywood, we're done with that, ok? Can't we just all move on and start thinking about story lines again? It's unfortunate because they had some top notch acting talent in the movie. And there are a few minutes of the movie that are actually interesting and dramatic. Just as the "rescue mission" enters orbit around Mars Bad Things Happen and the crew's dealing with it is pretty interesting. But overall, the movie is not worth a full price ticket. Maybe a second run theater, if you've really got nothing better to do. 2 stars of 5. ======================================= Cultural Phenomena Movie Review Wonder Boys You can argue that the best kind of story telling doesn't necessarily involve epic adventures or mythic heroes. Maybe the most inspiring stories are those that are just a little bit larger than life. Stories that are about deceptively normal people who manage to make something slightly wonderful out of life. Thus, the movie Wonder Boys. The central character is Professor Trip, an English professor who as managed to make a mess of his life. After achieving some degree of notoriety with his first novel, he never quite seems to get that second one completed and it's been seven years. His editor is getting nervous. And hs students are beginning to think he's "all washed up". His wife has left him due to lack of attention from him. He's been having an affair with the School chancellor who is now pregnant. Just how did his life get this way? It's not really obvious. He just keeps trudging along through the Pittsburgh winter slush and trudging through life. And to top it all off, he has these blackout "spells" at the random moments. The movie takes place over a weekend at the school where a writer's conference is being held. Professor Tripp, his editor, and one of his students schlep themselves through the weekend for one of Professor Tripp's messes to the next and we get a great view of just how messed up all their lives are None of which would be much of a movie, by itself. The amazing thing about the movie is just how believable all of their troubles are. You really feel like this could happen to someone. And yet there's something about the these three characters that's just a little bit larger than life. Just a little bit. There's also a dark, deadpan humor running through the film. We get a whiff of writerly superstitions, like wearing a ladies bathrobe while writing. A transvestite wanders in and out of the plot. We meet a cocktail waitress named Oola who "never forgets a drink." We're chased by a James Brown look-a-like who think Professor stole his car. A dog gets shot. No, really, it's funny in the movie. Trust me. Since the characters are just a little bit larger than life the conflict resolutions don't come in big dramatic, "Aha!" moments. They come a little bit at a time as the characters come to grip with themselves. Again, more or less like they would in real life. And so the "Wonder Boys" are not Super Men. But they do manage improve their lot in simple, but dramatic ways. 3.5 stars out of 5 ======================================= Current Events The Pope's Pilgrimage Watching the news stories covering the Pope's pilgrimage to Jerusalem this month reminded me of a business trip I took a few years ago to Israel and brought back impressions of just how simple and just how complex the situation is in Jerusalem. My host in Israel, Sam, drove me and a colleague to the Old City one afternoon to give us a personalized, guided tour of the area. He was Jewish and claimed to be liberal with regard to Jewish -Palestinian relations. And indeed, on the door of his apartment was a sticker indicating his membership in some sort of Jewish-Palestinian outreach group. But the whole area can be unnerving for an American who's never experienced animosity between groups of people who have to live together. As we stood on the balcony of Sam's apartment, we looked down on neighborhoods from the top of a hill and he proceeded to tell us about when this block and that block were settled by whom. What years there were riots in this neighborhood and what years that neighborhood was evicted, Esc etc. One of the things that surprised me the most was just how close everything is. On the news the violent conflicts sound like countries attacking each other. And in some sense this is exactly what is happening. The psychological scale and importance of these conflicts are huge. But the physical scale is small. We're talking blocks, not miles. We're talking neighborhoods, not states. As we started out tour of the city, Sam carefully inquired about our religious affiliations. The tone of his voice didn't indicate that this was idle, get-the-conversation-going small talk. It was obvious that he wanted to make sure he wasn't going to accidentally offend either of us. Interestingly, Protestants are just barely on anyone's radar screen in that area. "Oh, yeah, those dissident Roman Catholics" seems to be the prevailing attitude. Again, this is quite the shock for Americans used to being the Center of The Universe! Early on in the tour, Sam instructed us in one rule to be aware of while walking through the Old City. "It's highly unlikely that we would run into any sort of trouble," Sam said, "but just in case we run into any kind of violent conflict, remember this: Get your back against a wall and act like a tourist." In response to our uncomprehending stares he added, "No one, on either side, wants the bad publicity of hurting tourists." Woefully ignorant of religious history of Christianity and even more clueless about the history of the Jewish and Muslim faiths, the whole area came across as a chaotic mess. Sam was good and patient, repeating facts and figures as often as necessary to impress upon us the significance of this. Toward the end of my trip, I began to get a feel for it. And frankly, it is chaos down there. Take for example, the Wailing Wall, long a symbol to Jews of their dispersion and suffering. This is the remnant of the Second Temple that was destroyed by Romans in 70AD. And later Muslims built one of their most sacred Mosques right on top of the site. So the wall is all that remains. And these two holy sites are right on top of each other. Neither is going to give it up. At one point there was an exit door from the mosque that Muslims used to leave from after their afternoon prayers and due to the position of the wall it cause Muslims to cross paths of Jews on their way to the wailing wall. There were many fights. So one day the Israeli's just bricked it up. I'm not sure how it was handled diplomatically. As another example of the chaos, take a look at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Ok, at least here everyone's a Christian, right? At least here we can all get along right. No. Not even close. The Church is jointly occupied by about 12 major Christian churches from around the world. Branches of Christianity that I had not even heard of before this trip. And each of the Churches can't seem to agree on anything. So the building is divided up among the churches and each section is run by a different order of Christianity. It's so bad that one of the Roman Catholic Pope's gave the keys to the Church to a Muslim family, who for centuries has had the responsibility of unlocking and locking the door every day. So you can imagine the heightened tensions when the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church decides to tour the area. But it's great to see that there were no major confrontations during the visit. Sure, there was a little bit of grating rhetoric. But mostly the trip was peaceful. The Pope, to his credit, held his hand out to reconciliation with the Jewish Faith with his prayers at the Wailing Wall, including the age old tradition of writing them on paper and sticking it in the cracks of the wall. He toured the Mosque, and empathized with the plight of the homeless Palestinians. But is the Pope's visit going to do anything to help bring peace to the region? Sadly, probably not. First and foremost, everyone has to learn to respect each other's religion. Easier said than done. But there is an undercurrent of attitude that I sensed in Israel about attitudes toward each other's religion. I can't explain it, but there seems to be this attitude of "I'd get rid of you if I could." I don't know. Maybe it's the riots we see on the news that give me that impression. But before a peace process can get started for the area, I think everyone has to come to the table with an attitude of, "OK, it's crowded here in Jerusalem. How are we going to arrange everything so we can all practice our religion together?" Which brings up the biggest obstacle to peace in the region. The intermingling of civil order and religious order. If the civil infrastructure of the area were religion neutral, there would at least be a framework for the various religions to work out arrangements for living together in the cramped quarters of the Old City. But such a civil infrastructure doesn't exist in any real capacity. It's a lesson we in the United States learned a long time ago. In order for religions to coexist with each other, there must be a separation between the practice of religion and the civil infrastructure of the State. ======================================= About Stuck In Traffic Stuck In Traffic is a monthly magazine dedicated to evaluating current events, examining cultural phenomena, and sharing true stories. Why "Stuck In Traffic"? Because getting stuck in traffic is good for you. It's an opportunity to think, ponder, and reflect on all things, from the personal to the global. As Robert Pirsig wrote in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, "Let's consider a reevaluation of the situation in which we assume that the stuckness now occurring, the zero of consciousness, isn't the worst of all possible situations, but the best possible situation you could be in. After all, it's exactly this stuckness that Zen Buddhists go to so much trouble to induce...." Contact Information All queries, submissions, subscription requests, comments, and hate-mail should be sent to Calvin Stacy Powers via E-mail (powers@ibm.net) or by mail (2012 Talloway Drive, Cary, NC USA 27511). Copyright Notice Stuck In Traffic is published and copyrighted by Calvin Stacy Powers who reserves all rights. Individual articles are copyrighted by their respective authors. Unsigned articles are authored by Calvin Stacy Powers. Print Subscriptions Subscriptions to the printed edition of Stuck In Traffic are available for $10/year. Make checks payable to Calvin Stacy Powers and send to the address listed above. Individual issues are available for $1. Online The Web based version of Stuck In Traffic can be found at http://www.StuckInTraffic.com/ Trades If you publish a 'zine and would like to trade issues or ad-space, send your zine or ad to either address above. Alliances Stuck in Traffic supports the Blue Ribbon Campaign for free speech online. See http://www.eff.org/blueribbon.html for more information. Stuck In Traffic also supports the Golden Key Campaign for electronic privacy and security. See http://www.eff.org/goldkey.html ====================================================================