Louis Reyna

Proposal – Men and women can never ever just be friends without the ‘sex thing’ coming into play.  That idea was the focus of Rob Reiner’s 1989 film When Harry Met Sally (yes, the one with the famous faking-your-orgasm scene).  So how true is the proposal and how good is this film in dealing with the issue?

When Harry Met Sally…
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  I’m 45 years old. I have no wife, no kids, and no family- at least I have no family here in Kansas City. They’re all back in L.A., a mere pinpoint in my rear view mirror.  I have one male friend, Tim. He writes for this website. I am, for all intents and purposes, a loner- except for the many female friends I have: Suzy, Jaime, Beth, Ashley, Shauna, Cheryl… They’re all much younger than me. I believe the main reasons why they like hanging out with me are because I spend money on them, I make them laugh and I give them brutally honest insight into the male psyche. I tell them that men- especially men between the ages of 16 and 35- are hard-wired to have sex with multiple partners; that we become bored with our partners after about a year, and this boredom results in resentment because we see our partners as obstacles to all the other women who want to have sex with us.

  In other words, we’re delusional. Delusions of grandeur are what keep us from asking for directions when we’re lost or looking at the printed instructions when we’re assembling a propane grill.  Delusions of Granduer are what brought us out of the caves and onto the high seas… It’s what motivates us to go across a crowded bar and approach a table full of women.  I also tell them about the other truth of relationships that none of us can get around: Men and women can never ever just be friends without the ‘sex thing’ coming into play.

If you’re familiar with that truth, then, like me, you probably heard it crystallized in Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron’s 1989 film “When Harry Met Sally”. Or as the critics called it when it was released, “When Rob Reiner Met Woody Allen”, because of the similarities to “Annie Hall”.

Like “Annie Hall”, anyone who has ever been in a relationship will identify with at least one of the razor sharp observations penned by Nora Ephron and delivered with impeccable timing by The King of Curmudgeon’s , Billy Crystal. While Rob Riener’s direction and the performances of Meg Ryan, Carrie Fisher and Bruno Kirby are first rate, it’s Billy Crystal’s show. Just as he had proved in films like “Running Scared” and “Throw Momma From The Train”, Crystal can generate chemistry from a crash test dummy.

When I saw the film when it premiered, I wondered which lines were written by Ephron and which ones were ad-libbed by Crystal. Now, 17 years later, I don’t care. That’s all just film scholar ‘zanna’. In this day and age, filled with military and corporate euphemisms, and E-Harmony and My Space ‘hook-ups’, it’s refreshing to go back to a film that doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to sex, love and relationships.  “Annie Hall” and “When Harry Met Sally” are the tag-team champs of relationship films.

My marriage lasted for ten years. I could add a few truths and observations to the repertoire: finishing each other’s sentences; fighting over who’s going to tell the story of a shared experience to friends at a party because the other got it all wrong the last time. These are some of the things I tell my young friends they can look forward to in a long term relationship.
I also tell them why my marriage didn’t last. It’s one of the other truths in life: Women expect men to change- and they don’t. And men expect women to stay the same- but they change.  It’s one of the ironies of life.

Which brings me to one of the great moments in the film- the last scene. No character in film has ever- or, for that matter, will ever- say the words “I hate you” with such heartfelt irony as Sally Albright does.

So buy or rent this film, and keep the pillow in the bedroom because you’re girlfriend (or wife) will not fall asleep halfway through it. It’s a great comedy that meets at least one of my criteria for a great film: people quote it.
If you don’t believe me, try not making references to the lines “Don’t f—- with Mr. Zero” or “Baby Fish Mouth” after you’ve seen it.

In the last thirty years much has been written about “The Godfather” films and their social relevance, Part I having been released toward the end of The Vietnam War, and Part II being released just after the Watergate scandal blew up. It’s been said that the Corleone family’s story is an allegory for Big Business in America and also The American Dream in general; that the films helped usher through the most cynical generation- my generation.

The Godfather Trilogy
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I’d been with Barnes & Noble about a year, working part-time in the music and DVD department. I was ringing a purchase for a young man. He was wearing a tie and slacks. He appeared to be in his late twenties- a businessman, probably on his lunch break. While I was scanning his CD’s he looked over my shoulder, at the wall of DVD box sets behind me. After a moment he furrowed his brow and lifted his chin. “How much for the trilogy?” he asked.
I looked behind me, confused. For a second, I thought, The Star Wars Trilogy? I turned back to him. “Which trilogy?”

He let out a deep, frustrated sigh. “‘The Godfather’,” he replied. And then he added, in a condescending tone: “When someone refers to The Trilogy, they’re talking about ‘The Godfather’”.
I was both stunned and offended.
There I was, forty-two years old. I had seen “The Godfather” on the big screen- when it first came out. Since then I have seen Parts I and II at least 100 times each. I can quote whole passages from both films. Hell, I could even tell you that the actor who plays Genco Abbandando in Part II is an extra in Part I, just a face in the crowd in the scene where Sonny beats the crap out of Carlo. Yet that morning I was being educated by a twenty-something on the finer points of ‘the trilogy. He probably first saw the films when he was a teenager, on USA Network during a holiday marathon.

I shouldn’t have been offended, though. He was a guy. And “The Godfather” is a guy thing. Ever since it shot out of the gates in 1972 as a blockbuster, Francis Ford Coppola’s “Godfather” films continue to be a cultural phenomena among men. And the reason why is because it portrays serious men doing serious business for high stakes, namely big money and murder. And all of this business is done outside of the law. As much as “The Art of War”, “The Godfather” films have become a primer for conduct and strategy among businessmen, from gangsta rappers to Trump-style boardroom exec’s. Who among them aren’t familiar with the phrases “Keep your friends close, but your enemies even closer” or “It’s business not personal”? Sure, “The Godfather” romanticizes violence among those ‘businessmen’, much the same way “Saving Private Ryan” romanticizes battle among soldiers. But in “The Godfather” films there’s a reason behind the murders. There’s even a reason for how the victims are killed: Paulie Gatto’s body is left in the car (poetically, with The Statue Of Liberty in the distance) to be found as a message that the Corloeone’s knew he was a traitor. And even the Don’s oldest son Santino’s massacre is a message from his enemies: he was a violent man in life. It was only fitting he should suffer a violent death.

But more than being a cultural phenomena, “The Godfather” (Part I) is just plain and simply a GREAT FILM. And for many reasons. It’s a great story told in sweeping, operatic style: After the opening wedding sequence, the villain- a shrewd drug trafficker named Virgil Solozzo (Al Lettieri)- exploits the crime family’s weakness by attempting an assassination on the aging and myopic Don (Marlon Brando) in an attempt to open up the heroin trade on the east coast. Because of that assassination attempt, the youngest son, Michael (Al Pacino), is inexorably drawn into the family business, a life he had chosen to reject, setting him on a course where he finds his One True Destiny.

In addition to the logic behind the bloodletting, there’s also the human element in the films. Yes, there had been many fine gangster films before “The Godfather”, but none of them had so effectively contrasted the business of murder with the family lives of the men pulling the triggers. There are small touches: the way Vito brushes the face of the little boy as he’s taking his daughter out to the dance floor during the wedding scene; when Clemenza tells Rocco Lampone to watch out for the kids while they’re backing out of the driveway… the get well cards strewn on the Don’s bed after he’s brought back home from the hospital. But the most effective scene is when the Don is gunned down on the street outside of his office. A lesser director would have ended the scene when Vito finally slumps to the ground. But Coppola shows Fredo, the wimpy son who had been subbing as the Don’s bodyguard, weeping openly over the body of his father. Sure, Fredo was ‘weak and stupid’, but he was also a soldier in Clemenza’s regime, yet there he was, sitting on the curb and sobbing like a child. It’s a touching and tragic scene because of the performances of Marlon Brando and the late John Cazale.
Which brings me to the acting.

There’s an old saying that acting is REacting. And this is true in “The Godfather” films. If you’re an aspiring actor- or if you’re an actor whose career is going nowhere because you suck- then study the actors faces in the films, especially the scene at the beginning of Part II, where Michael is pleading with Connie to stop whoring around and stay at home, close to the family. Connie knows that Michael was responsible for her husband,Carlo’s, death- which is exactly why she’s whoring around. In the scene, Talia Shire’s face is pregnant with both longing and contempt- longing because she wants to do what Michael is asking, and contempt for his calculated and ruthless tactics.
The films, especially Part I, are a clinic for acting and writing. If you’re an aspiring screenwriter, read the book and then compare what Coppola did with the script; how he took Mario Puzo’s sprawling pulp novel and made it into a lean, efficient film. There aren’t many three hour films that clip along as easily as this one.

In the last thirty years much has been written about “The Godfather” films and their social relevance, Part I having been released toward the end of The Vietnam War, and Part II being released just after the Watergate scandal blew up. It’s been said that the Corleone family’s story is an allegory for Big Business in America and also The American Dream in general; that the films helped usher through the most cynical generation- my generation.

I can’t write authoritatively about any of that. All I know is that “The Godfather” Parts I and II are immensely entertaining. They’re filled with great acting, writing, drama, action, intrigue and scandal. People get shot up and shit gets blown up. The films taught me, at an early age, to “try to think the way people around you would think” and that “behind every great fortune there’s a crime”. They also taught me that behind every trigger there’s a human face with a family that they love, and that they may weep openly or quietly if a member of that family is harmed- and avenge that harmful action, either with cool calculation or wild ferocity.

Oh, yeah… and the films also taught me that a director should not cast a not-so-good actress in a lead role in the third installment of a film series that has become a cultural phenomena- even if that actress is family.

DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW HOW “THE SOPRANOS” ENDS!

It was the beginning of the year 2000 and I had just gotten my second DUI in five years. When I got the first DUI I thought, I just won’t drink and drive anymore. But after that second one I thought, Well, it isn’t the driving that’s the problem… So I quit. Cold turkey.
Since I knew I was going to be spending my nights at home and not at Harry’s in Westport or at Charlie Hooper’s in Brookside I called Time Warner Cable and told them to fix me up with the works, the whole shebang: HBO, Showtime, Cinemax… My cable bill was a hundred dollars a month but that was still cheaper than paying a lawyer to keep me out of a federal penitentiary for that third DUI.
I had read about the HBO shows in the newspapers and had heard about “The Sopranos” from friends. “Have you seen ‘The Sopranos’?” they’d ask. “No,” I’d reply. “YOU HAVEN’T SEEN ‘THE SOPRANOS’?!”
Hmmm… Now that you’ve asked me again- LOUDER, let me think… NO, I HAVEN’T SEEN “THE SOPRANOS”!
I always get that. Friends tell me that I HAVE to see this show or that movie. Plus, they know that I’ve had a thirty-three year love affair with “The Godfather”. So I started watching “The Sopranos” on Sunday nights. But it wasn’t because of the comparisons to “The Godfather”. I started watching because it was a TV series with no commercials and the characters cursed and got naked. Hey, if I’m going to PAY to watch TV, then I don’t want anything pimped to me and people better curse and get naked. And HBO knows that most of its viewers feel the same way I do. They’re not stupid.
I loved the show immediately. I had been living in the Midwest for seven years. It was nice to visit once a week with a bunch of greasy outlaws with style and balls. (Sorry, you Westport and Hyde Park hipsters. All the store bought tattoos and piercings don’t give you brass balls. You have to be BORN into the culture.) But the one thing that never sat well with me with the show was the Dr. Melfi angle. On a nit-picking level, no psychiatrist would’ve shown her legs off the way she did unless she WANTED to get laid. On a wider scope, she never would have continued trying to treat a patient who couldn’t talk openly about a major aspect of his life, namely his crimes.
But like the man said, If you want reality, go stand on a street corner.

The show that impressed me more than “The Sopranos” was “Sex and The City”. It was on just before “The Sopranos”. What “Sex…” lacked in swagger and violence it more than made up for in quick wit and style- and in half the time. Every thirty minutes was a jewel of insight into sex and relationships- from a woman’s perspective. (Let’s face it, guys, we look at women… but women observe us.) The problem I had with the series is how it ended. After five years of watching these women being independent and questioning traditional roles the writers seemed to wrap it up by saying, OK, you’ve all had your fun. Now put on your aprons and get into the kitchen. They all seemed to settle. Especially my hero, Miranda. Sure, I know that life is about settling. But did she have to settle for STEVE?!
Then a year later, in the summer of 2001, came “Six Feet Under”. It rolled into that Sunday night lineup elegantly, like a shiny, black Hearse at a funeral for an old dude who died of natural causes and left everyone in attendance a ton of money. The pilot episode was amazing, as close to perfection as any TV show or even a film is ever going to get: The patriarch of a family run funeral business is killed after being hit by a bus while driving the new Hearse. From that moment on, every character is introduced in context and without clumsy exposition- Ruth, the repressed, control freak mother; David, the button down consummate professional and reluctant heir of the family business; Claire, the wild child high school student and youngest sibling… and Nate, the center piece of the ensemble, the restless and free spirit who just flew in from Seattle to celebrate an always surreal holiday season in L.A. After the first few episodes, I realized that “Six Feet…” had more in common with “The Godfather” than “The Sopranos” did. Like Michael Corleone, Nate is drawn into a family business he has rejected after a tragedy involving his father, and the family business is something outside of the norm for the average person. For The Corleones it’s crime and murder. For The Fishers it’s death, “Natural or not”, to quote from “The Godfather Part II”.

As I write this I realize there are many fans of the show who don’t get HBO and haven’t even seen the fourth season let alone the last episode, so I won’t give anything away. I will commend the writers of the show for not resorting to an easy and obvious device like therapy for any of the characters, especially when those characters dealt with death on an almost daily basis. Also, I’ll say this about the character of Nate: In the first season he’s shown in a flashback as a boy, running out of the embalming room after his father tries to get him to touch the body he’s working on. At first I thought that Nate was afraid of death, which may explain why he left home at a young age. But the way I see it now, Nate was an eternal soul who was repulsed by the way our culture deals with a reality as profound and, ironically, as life affirming as death.
I think the appeal of the show is that most of us can identify with Nate’s conflict, at least on a sub-conscious level.
Oh, and about the acting: JEREMY SISTO SHOULD BE GIVEN AN EMMY EVERY YEAR FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE FOR HIS PORTRAYAL OF BILLY CHENOWITH! When he was dark and criminally disturbed, you could never believe he could be sane and balanced- and vice versa. No one ever played both sides of the spectrum as convincingly as he did.
Since I started watching the shows I tell anyone who will listen that twenty-five years from now, when critics are writing about The Second Golden Age of Television, they’ll mention “Sex and The City”, “Six Feet Under” and “The Sopranos” in the first paragraph.
Screw it. I probably won’t be alive in twenty-five years, so I’ll do it now.
During that first Golden Age of Television, Paddy Chayefsky made a name for himself by writing the classic live drama “Marty”. Twenty some odd years later he went on to write “Network”, the most scathing attack on television that ever was and ever will be. In one of the opening scenes, William Holden, in a drunken state, describes to Peter Finch just how low TV may sink if Finch’s character, Howard Beale, kills himself on the air during his last broadcast as the UBS anchorman. “I can see it now,” Holden’s character declares, “mad bombers… suicides… The Death Hour. Great Sunday night show for the whole family.”
Who knew that Paddy Chayefsky was prophesizing “Six Feet Under”.
DO NOT CONTINUE READING IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW HOW “THE SOPRANOS” ENDS!
I’ve considered Tony’s fate, and the witness protection program is the only logical choice for the writers. Think about it. He can’t die of a heart attack or be executed. That would be too obvious. He can’t go to prison. He’d OWN the joint. He’s killed too many people for the writers to let him get away with murder. Our American viewing morality won’t stand for it.
But just imagine… it’s the last ten or fifteen minutes of the last episode. There’s a few exterior shots of some shit-hole like Omaha or Cedar Rapids during a gray, bone-numbing winter. We’re shown the dealings of some low level Wiseguys and we start thinking, Who the fuck is this? Just like we did during those first few episodes of “Six Feet…”, whenever they showed the people who were going to die. One of the Wiseguys has to take his kick-up to his capo but he’s out of envelopes, so he goes to the local shit-hole office products store- and there’s Tony, behind the counter, living a real life nightmare, a fate worse than prison or even death. He’s flipped so he could protect Carmela and the kids, but there’s no more crew, no more good gravy, no Escalade or Esplanade… just a lifetime of 9 to 5’s and mowing the lawn.
During the transaction the Wiseguy shoots Tony a few knowing glances and then leaves the store.
You had a good run, T. That’s all you can ever hope for.

An aging movie snob pulls rank on the DVD and multiplex generation.

Let’s get one thing straight- I’d rather not be writing movie reviews for a website. I’d rather be living off the royalties of my books and poetry and basking in the glow of a Pulitzer Prize. A couple of years ago The Kansas City Star ran a series of articles where their arts critics pontificated on why they love doing their jobs, and each one of them, especially the pop music critic, tried to make us believe that they had always wanted to be a critic. Bullshit. No one who’s ever strapped on a guitar as a teenager or caught the winning pass for their high school football team ever wanted to be in the crowd at a concert or on the sidelines. Like most people, they realized that life is not about getting exactly what you want. Life is about settling- and not being miserable.
So I’ll settle for writing for this electronic rag as long as they’ll let me. Why? Because I love movies. I grew up in Los Angeles, an industry town. I spent my childhood, adolescence and early 20’s leafing through page after page of full page movie ads in The Los Angeles Times. I saw “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Planet of The Apes” when they first came out- on the big screen. I saw “Blade Runner” when it premiered at The Mann’s Theatre in Westwood. I saw Mel Brooks scurry out of the theatre as I was waiting to see the ten o’clock showing of “The King Of Comedy”, his friend complaining that the movie “could’ve been funnier.” When I was sixteen, my brother-in-law, Phillip, was in the crowd at The Olympic Auditorium, part of a casting call for a new fight film. When he got home that night my sisters and I asked him if he’d seen any movie stars. He said the only one he recognized was the guy who played The Penguin in the ‘Batman’ TV series.
The actor was Burgess Meredith and the film was “Rocky”.
Most of the movies I saw affected me because I was young, the theatre was dark and the images were vivid and larger than life. Also, I was at “the show” and not at home, bored. Let’s face it, that’s why most people go to the movies. Movies, like television, are, in the words of Paddy Chayefsky in “Netowrk”, “boredom killers”. Since we humans don’t have to worry about food, clothing and shelter on a daily basis, then it’s all about killing the boredom. Also, movies give us a reason to sit close to someone else in the dark, and they give us a reason to talk to them later.
When I was a kid and a teenager I was serious about movies. And like a serious drinker, I did it alone. There were second run theatres in the towns I grew up in: Compton, South Gate and Huntington Park. The Arden Theatre in Compton had a ‘crying room’ at the back- a sound proof room where mothers could take their unruly children and still watch the movie through the glass and listen to the sound piped in through a speaker on the wall. On Pacific Boulevard in Huntington Park there were three theatres: The New Park, The California and The Warners. Like The Arden, they showed double bills for .50 to .75 cents and the ticket sellers were ok with kids like me watching rated ‘R’ movies. I ate a lot of Flicks and saw some great doubles at those theatres: “Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid” and “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”, “Bullitt” and “Bonnie and Clyde”, “The Godfather” and “Skin Game”…
As a young man I frequented the grand palaces in Hollywood and Westwood. My favorite was The Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard, especially when I could get the center balcony seat on the rail. There were also ‘revival’ theatres around town: The Beverly Cinema in The Fairfax district, The Nuart on Santa Monica Blvd., and The Four Star on Wilshire Boulevard, where you could see films like “The Wild Bunch” and “Sunset Boulevard” in all their larger than life glory. And unlike a multiplex, at these theatres when the movie was over you walked out to the lobby and into the street with the crowd, still carrying the mood of the film and a shared experience.
I took a screenwriting class in the early 80’s. The only thing I learned that was useful was how to copyright your work- cheap. (You just mail it to yourself in a manila envelope and if someone steals your idea, then you open it up in court and prove, with the postmark, that you’d had the idea earlier.) Of course, when one of the students asked the instructor about having an idea for a movie stolen, he replied, dryly, “You should be so lucky.”
I went through my ‘scholarly’ phase soon after that, the period when I was into the French ‘New Wave’ and the silents and American film noir. Most of it bored me. Now, when I watch a movie, I think, if one of my co-workers saw this, will they come up to me in the breakroom, wide-eyed and grinning, and ask, “Have you seen——–?” Or I think, if they showed this to the boys in the joint, will they sit through it, with their tattooed guns folded across their chests, and nod in approval when it’s over, or will they be tossing chairs at the guards and slicing throats before the second act? Will frat boys be quoting from it ten years from now?
Is it killing the boredom?
Then there are the films with a ‘payoff’- that moment at the end where character and plot come together in an immensely satisfying rush: Clint Eastwood standing at the saloon door and pointing that Scofield at Gene Hackman, with a whiskey fire burning in his eyes and a taste for revenge on his tongue; Max, barely standing and broken up, next to the wreckage of the overturned tanker, holding out his hand only to catch sand rushing out of the pipes and realizing that “the juice… the precious juice” had been in the school bus all along.
Moments like that can only be fully appreciated on the big screen with an audience.
Now we live in an age where the turnaround time for a movie going from the big screen to DVD is faster and tighter than an ice skater’s single axle. And I think it’s a shame. It’s a shame because movies have become as small as we are. Watching a film like “2001” or “Planet of The Apes” on a television- even a 42″ hi-def plasma screen- is like listening to a Beethoven symphony on AM radio.
Yes, I’m a snob.
The pioneers of organized religion- those old dudes in two story hats- had it right. They knew gods were meant to be worshipped in grand cathedrals. They knew they were putting on a show for the commoners, and they expected the faithful to make pilgrimages to “the show”.
The way I see it, movies, like gods, should be worshipped in grand palaces, not dispensed over the counter in plastic bags and taken home.

The grand daddy of all wise guy films.
Stick and move, Bobby, stick and move.

Robert DeNiro bobs, weaves, curses, spits and earns a Best Actor Oscar in Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull”, playing prizefighter Jake La Motta.
Released in 1980, it’s a brutal and beautiful film that probably wouldn’t get past the pitch stage today let alone be filmed. I can just see Scorsese at the lunch meeting, on the edge of his chair and spilling salad all over the table: “This guy was middleweight champ in ’49. Sure, no one outside The Bronx has heard of him, but he knocked Sugar Ray Robinson on his ass! We’ll shoot it in black and white. Every other word will be diry, and Joe Pesci…Who’s Joe Pesci?! So, he’s an unknown NOW, but you just wait…He’ll say, ‘Yo’ mutha sucks fuckin’ BIG fuckin’ ELEPHANT DICKS!'”
Yet it was made. And even more unbelievably it was nominated for Best Picture. But that isn’t saying much considering the Academy gave the award to “Ordinary People”.
The 2 disc collector’s edition is essential for anyone who loves “GoodFellas” and “The Sopranos” because this is the granddaddy of all modern day wiseguy films and your girlfriend will fall asleep halfway through it. In addition to mini-documentaries on the making of the film, the special features include the theatrical trailer, which, at the time, was like no other trailer I’d ever seen. In fact, I went to see the film when it was released on the strength of the trailer. There was no cheesy narration, just a few scenes with dialogue followed by images of the film set to the opening Intermezzo. I forgot what movie my girlfriend and I went to see when I first saw the trailer (I think it was ‘Ordinary People’), but after it was over, there were none of the usual murmurs from the crowd, just silence. A few people looked at each other, as if saying, “What the hell was THAT!?!?!”
I saw the film at least twenty times after it was released. It was a mesmerizing roller-coaster ride, rising with the ferocious fight scenes, both in the ring at at home, levelling out with Michael Chapman’s beautifully shot slow motion images, and sinking to the gritty and just downright depressing end of La Motta’s fight career, where it blurs to his stint as a nightclub owner and entertainer and his second term in prison. Sure, the film was famous for De Niro’s gaining fifty pounds to play La Motta in retirement, but it’s the sinewy, hunched over, stick and move, stick and move De Niro that stands out after all these years. (Here’s what I think is a sad comment on De Niro’s career: I was at Blockbuster recently and two college women were browsing through Drama and one of them commented: “I just can’t see Robert De Niro as a bad guy.”)
So buy, rent or steal this collector’s edition and watch Joe Pesci become a star, watch De Niro play tony Soprano years before that character was even a gleam in David Chase’s eye, and try to figure out where you’ve seen that guy who plays Mob Boss Tommy Como…
It’s ‘Coach’ in the TV Sitcom “Cheers”.