Leo Grin's Comments

Big Hollywood : RIP: Legendary Oscar-Winner Elizabeth Taylor Dies at 79

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 16:52:44 +0000

One of the last of the old Golden Age of Hollywood crew, meaning she was just as prone to the many personal foibles of today's Hollywood spoiled and rich, but with an underlying spine of public class, dignity, and beauty almost completely lacking in stars from the modern era. I quote from an old Big Hollywood piece I did on Burt Reynolds:

Back in 1985, when AIDS was first entering the nation’s consciousness, the activist group AIDS Project Los Angeles asked Elizabeth Taylor (a close friend of the then-dying Rock Hudson) to organize a fundraiser that would help create mainstream awareness of this feared disease. Taylor called everyone she knew asking for help, but according to her virtually everyone balked. “The people in this town didn’t give a damn!” she remembered many years later. “That made me cynical about Hollywood. What a sad lesson. It’s a very sad comment on this town.” Actually it’s par for the course — today many of those same people fly private jets while lecturing the rest of us about carbon emissions. But it says a lot that — with Rock Hudson having only weeks to live, and everyone else afraid to attend an AIDS fundraiser that might hurt their careers — Burt Reynolds was one of only a small handful of stars to say “yes” to Taylor’s request. Not only that, he took upon himself the most thankless task of the event: reading aloud the pledge of support that the hated Republican President, Ronald Reagan, had generously sent from Washington. Let it be noted for the record that, on September 19, 1985, actor Burt Reynolds stood up at Taylor’s event and read Reagan’s letter, while being roundly booed by a mass of angry activist attendees. That counts for something in my book. (as an aside: at a similar event some time later, Reagan showed up in person to once again graciously pledge his support for AIDS research. The same classless ingrates from ACT UP who had booed Reynolds began doing the same thing to the President. To Elizabeth Taylor’s everlasting credit, she grabbed the mic and shut them all down, yelling, “I don’t care what your politics are, I don’t care how you feel about the President or what he’s not doing, he is still the President of the United States of America and you owe him some due respect, so shut the f*** up!” Properly chastised, the buffoons did shut up, and Reagan was able to give his speech.)

Elizabeth Taylor was one of only a few actresses to win a Best Actress Academy Award not once but twice. Look at her on the screen in her heyday, and then try to think of anyone among the modern era's assortment of gawky emo-pygmies, bikini-clad Miami Beach and Jersey Shore tramp-stamped whores, and short-haired, purse-lipped feminist scolds who is worthy of holding her brassiere.

Big Hollywood : Eucatastrophe: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 3

Mon, 7 Mar 2011 04:37:46 +0000

jennyhatch says: "I've tried to read some Conan and a few of his short stories, they just haven't grabbed me yet." You might consider getting a hold of some of his many comedy stories, or poetry -- that's the sort of stuff that female REH fans tend to gravitate to. His two series centering around Sailor Steve Costigan and Breckinridge Elkins are laugh-out-loud from start to finish. jennyhatch also says: " I would love to attend a conference some time... " REH Days is not a conference, more like a laid back convention/family reunion. A long, lazy weekend filled with BBQs, tours, fan and scholar panels, historical relics and landmarks, and meeting and hanging out with lots of other fans. You'd get to tour the house where Howard lived and wrote (it's currently a museum listed on the National Register of Historic Places), visit his grave, et cetera. A great (and fairly cheap) vacation. Plenty of other ladies attend each year. My pal Michael Scott Myers (the screenwriter of The Whole Wide World) makes it down there many years, so if you went you could pick his brain about the movie and about Novalyne, whom he knew well (she was his teacher).

Big Hollywood : Eucatastrophe: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 3

Mon, 7 Mar 2011 04:25:31 +0000

Wesley69 says: "to make a movie that would do true justice to LOTR, it would have to be over 30 hours in length." I disagree. They would have done great justice to LotR had they stuck to Tolkien's dialogue instead of the drivel Mrs. Walsh and Mrs. Boyens wrote, and had they left the characters with the personalities and motivations they had in the books, especially Faramir and Théoden, both of whom were portrayed in the films as total betrayals of who they were in the books. And had they not included several hours of utterly useless "new" scenes, they would have had plenty of time for much of Tolkien's original stuff that they cut out. The tired old "they didn't have time" argument is a poor cop-out.

Big Hollywood : Eucatastrophe: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 3

Sun, 6 Mar 2011 17:51:28 +0000

Wesley69 says: "The movies of Peter Jackson are a tribute to the works of Tolkien," I hated the films, and thought they ham-handedly got wrong just about everything I love and cherish in the books. That would be a whole other series of essays all by itself.

Big Hollywood : Eucatastrophe: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 3

Sun, 6 Mar 2011 17:48:30 +0000

jennyhatch says: "I watched the movie and read his bio, one who walked alone this past year, then bought both movie and book. Had a tremendous impact on me... " Yeah, Howard's primo, a true classic American author in the mold of guys like London, Twain, Hawthorne, Melville. The condescension he gets from the clueless elites only makes how far he's come over the last century all the sweeter. A lot of women have come to Howard over the last fifteen years due to The Whole Wide World. You should head down to Texas this June for Robert E. Howard Days in Cross Plains, the Mecca for REH aficionados. You'd have a blast, meet a lot of fans and scholars, and gain an even deeper appreciation for his work.

Big Hollywood : The Order of Grace: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien, Part 2

Tue, 1 Mar 2011 08:23:49 +0000

Ashdreg says, "Sauron and Melkor the Morgoth were never kind or good, they had souls of utter darkness and greed." In The Silmarillion, Tolkien writes of Melkor (i.e. Morgoth) that (emphasis mine),

From splendour he fell through arrogance to contempt for all things save himself, a spirit wasteful and pitiless. Understanding he turned to subtlety in perverting to his own will all that he would use, until he became a liar without shame. He began with the desire of Light, but when he could not possess it for himself alone, he descended through fire and wrath into a great burning, down into Darkness."

And of Sauron, Tolkien wrote in an ultimately unsent 1954 letter to Peter Hastings (a Catholic bookshop owner) that:

Sauron was of course not "evil" in origin. He was a "spirit" corrupted by the Prime Dark Lord (the Prime sub-creative Rebel) Morgoth. He was given an opportunity of repentance, when Morgoth was overcome, but could not face the humiliation of recantation, and suing for pardon; and so his temporary turn to good and "benevolence" ended in a greater relapse, until he became the main representative of Evil of later ages. But at the beginning of the Second Age he was still beautiful to look at, or could still assume a beautiful visible shape -- and was not indeed wholly evil, not unless all "reformers" who want to hurry up with "reconstruction" and "reorganization" are wholly evil, even before pride and the lust to exert their will eat them up.

Melkor's descent into evil happened long before even the creation of Arda, untold ages before, and so even in the very first pages of The Silmarillion he's already a terror -- but it seems clear that, buried in the mists of pre-Time, there was indeed a gradual descent from the Good. Sauron, in his turn, was slowly corrupted over uncountable ages of pre-Time by Morgoth, along with many other formerly good spirits (many of whom became Balrogs).

Big Hollywood : The Order of Grace: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien, Part 2

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 20:04:48 +0000

whiskyhangover says, "I think you meant Saruman." Ouch! Yes, that's a typo, one that stings like Sting. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Big Hollywood : The Order of Grace: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien, Part 2

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 19:52:18 +0000

Stephen_Tilson says, "But surely "not born into the Church" would've been clearer, no?" Yes, it would have, and I'm always grateful for stylistic and contextual suggestions of this sort, as they make me a little more careful (and hence clearer) the next time.

Big Hollywood : Countdown to the Oscars: Looking Back at Hollywoodâs Worst Communists

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 06:52:00 +0000

filmklassik says, "Leo would you please provide a link to your Bob Hope article." Don't have a Bob Hope article -- I said "Buster Keaton," who I wrote about in re: him vs Chaplin here: http://tinyurl.com/64685l2 I do mention Hope and the way NBC squandered his troop-loving legacy here: http://tinyurl.com/q6uyu7

Big Hollywood : Countdown to the Oscars: Looking Back at Hollywoodâs Worst Communists

Sun, 27 Feb 2011 06:56:00 +0000

Davecat84 says, "Donna Reed not being a dupe doesn't square with her organizing efforts against US involvement in the Vietnam War. Does that elevate her to Jane Fonda status or is she just anti-war? I say Reed was a commie." Nah, she was more of a typical pacifist. Big diff from commie.

Big Hollywood : Countdown to the Oscars: Looking Back at Hollywoodâs Worst Communists

Sun, 27 Feb 2011 06:50:38 +0000

Luisced says, "[Chaplin was] the Anti Bob Hope." And as I pointed out in a previous BH article, the anti-Buster Keaton.

Big Hollywood : Countdown to the Oscars: Looking Back at Hollywoodâs Worst Communists

Sun, 27 Feb 2011 06:48:00 +0000

WMInfidel says: "Cagney was a genuine liberal who was duped. But he wised up. Later in life he supported Reagan in his political campaigns. So, take it easy on the Yankee Doodle Dandy!" And Cagney starred in one of the greatest anti-Communist movies of all time, the uproarious Billy Wilder comedy One, Two Three (1961). Yeah, a lot of stars flirted with Communism in the 1930s when they were young and stupid, and before the totality of the ideology's murder and mayhem became apparent. But most of them quickly wised up and slunk away once they learned the truth. And others -- John Ford, Ronald Reagan -- changed their party affiliations when the Democratic Party lost its liberal roots and became too synonymous with Commie Lite.

Big Hollywood : Sanity and Sanctity: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 1

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 07:39:26 +0000

Esgaroth says: "Do you think an audience not used to seeing a Christ-like character would have just accepted a flat out refusal without any insight into the power struggle going on...or was it perhaps a subtle point that needed to be illustrated so that when he does finally refuse it, the audience has gone through the struggle with him?" I'll be writing more about Faramir specifically in a later installment, but for now I'll just say NO, Tolkien and the character he deemed the most like himself did NOT need to be "improved," dramatically or otherwise, by the arrogant, bumbling, outrageously out of her depth Miss Walsh.

Big Hollywood : Sanity and Sanctity: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 1

Sun, 20 Feb 2011 19:47:55 +0000

Evil_Otto says: " Kind of describes the current culture, doesn't it?" In many ways, yes. (You guys keep foreshadowing ideas and quotes I'll be using later on in this series, which is a good sign -- a sign of health and intellectual rigor).

Big Hollywood : Sanity and Sanctity: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 1

Sun, 20 Feb 2011 19:44:21 +0000

El_Gordo says: "Good to see that you have Moorcock´s number. One only has to read The Warlord of the Air / The Land Leviathan / The Steel Tsar to know how Moorcock thinks about us." Yeah, Moorcock's one of the true embarrassments of the field. Elitist, sloppy, virulently anti-conservative. His white hot hate for Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Heinlein, and other greats is legendary. For those who've never read them, try to get through his two most famous essays: "Epic Pooh" (where he dismisses Tolkien and Lewis as insipid Christian nursery school writers) http://www.revolutionsf.com/article.php?id=953 "Starship Stormtroopers" (where he says that "If I were sitting in a tube train and all the people opposite me were reading MEIN KAMPH with obvious enjoyment and approval it probably wouldn't disturb me much more than if they were reading Heinlein, Tolkien or Richard Adams.") http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/moorcock.html I wish Robert E. Howard publishers would stop using him for intros. He's a disgrace.

Big Hollywood : Sanity and Sanctity: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 1

Sun, 20 Feb 2011 19:30:21 +0000

TimAZ says: "It's as if Tolkien is commenting specifically on Martin and Abercrombie." Oh, he was. Troll through books of that era, and there's plenty of similarly themed, if not as graphic stuff. Writers and artists have been trumpeting nihilism for a long time. The Lewis review I reprint above is talking to them too -- even in the 1950s he saw a tidal wave of anti-romantics and "abnormal and contorted souls" filling our heads with nonsense and bile. That's what kills me about the attempt to be "edgy" -- it's nothing new, and in a few decades it's going to look as silly as the "edginess" of the 1950s does today. If Conservatism is defined by defending Lost Causes, Liberalism is defined by defending Dead Ends.

Big Hollywood : Sanity and Sanctity: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 1

Sun, 20 Feb 2011 19:18:13 +0000

Bill_Brandt says: "I have noticed that as a rule great works tend to simmer in obscurity and lack of appreciation for some years before the world finally catches on." Well, while Tolkien was worried about its reception, actually the first printing sold out quickly despite the many negative reviews from various highbrow circles, and the trilogy was always a success from the beginning. I've heard people say otherwise, comparing the numbers to what J. K. Rowling does with the Harry Potter books and finding the wanting, but that's misleading, it's a different industry now. When you look at the print runs, Tolkien was selling tens of thousands of copies in the first years of release, which in hardcover is great, very healthy, and those numbers only grew. Of course once the fantasy paperback boom of the 1960s kicked in (Burroughs, Tolkien, then Howard), the sales figures went into the stratosphere. Bill_Brandt also says: "Then I have learned that the movie Casablanca was considered just another Warner Brothers B movie - one of the one-a-week produced movies - until 20 years later when film aficionados began to get it ." Well, it did win Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Writing at the Academy Awards the year it was released, so I don't agree that it was some unheralded gem that took decades to catch on. I think people thought it was going to be an assembly-line production before it was made, but after it was released they realized it was something special. For questions like this I like to dig into contemporary newspapers and magazines, and not trust what some essayist wrote on the DVD liner notes or for TCM. It's amazing what you find when you dig, and so much of our inherited knowledge in wrong. Leonard Maltin says in the introduction to his new Classic Movie Guide that his staff ended up having to double-check basic information on thousands of movies because IMDb and the Internet were littered with errors and couldn't be trusted, even about simple things like actual titles and release dates.

Big Hollywood : Sanity and Sanctity: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 1

Sun, 20 Feb 2011 08:40:22 +0000

SMeloche says: "In the aforementioned movie, Jackson turned the decisions of the Ents, Faramir, and Theoden on their heads, making them selfish and weak, and having to be dragged or tricked into doing the right thing (not to mention destroying the wonderful friendship between Aragorn and Eomer so that he could add *yet another* scene of Aragorn having to be convinced to be a king). Anyone who would cut out "I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway. Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory. No, I do not wish for such triumphs, Frodo son of Drogo," DOES NOT GET IT. (Now I'll get off my soapbox) " Yes, yes, yes. Agreed on all points.

Big Hollywood : Sanity and Sanctity: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 1

Sun, 20 Feb 2011 08:29:00 +0000

Manji88 says: "What they do with Faramir is so awful, incorrect, out-of-place and just plain WRONG it comes within a hair's breadth of destroying the entire film trilogy...[Fran Walsh] should have been unceremoniously chucked off the screenwriting team for even daring to suggest she is a better writer than Tolkien." Agreed. There's a Grand Canyon-sized gap in quality between Tolkien's dialogue and theirs, the effect is jarring. And yes, Faramir was by far their greatest sin, although there are so many others. The definitive LotR, or anything even close, has yet to be made.

Big Hollywood : Sanity and Sanctity: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 1

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 19:49:47 +0000

Stickwick says: "A nitpick: [LG -- actually, it was the 1980 Bakshi cartoon that did that: "Where there's a whip!" (ssss...crack!) "There's a way!"] The song you refer to is from the Rankin-Bass production of The Return of the King, not Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings." You're right, of course -- the perils of composing and proofreading bleary-eyed at four in the morning after a long day's work! I've popped in an email asking Nolte to make the correction. My apologies to Mr. Bakshi.

Leo Grin's Comments

Big Hollywood : RIP: Legendary Oscar-Winner Elizabeth Taylor Dies at 79

Big Hollywood : Eucatastrophe: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 3

Big Hollywood : Eucatastrophe: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 3

Big Hollywood : Eucatastrophe: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 3

Big Hollywood : Eucatastrophe: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 3

Big Hollywood : The Order of Grace: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien, Part 2

Big Hollywood : The Order of Grace: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien, Part 2

Big Hollywood : The Order of Grace: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien, Part 2

Big Hollywood : Countdown to the Oscars: Looking Back at Hollywoodâs Worst Communists

Big Hollywood : Countdown to the Oscars: Looking Back at Hollywoodâs Worst Communists

Big Hollywood : Countdown to the Oscars: Looking Back at Hollywoodâs Worst Communists

Big Hollywood : Countdown to the Oscars: Looking Back at Hollywoodâs Worst Communists

Big Hollywood : Sanity and Sanctity: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 1

Big Hollywood : Sanity and Sanctity: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 1

Big Hollywood : Sanity and Sanctity: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 1

Big Hollywood : Sanity and Sanctity: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 1

Big Hollywood : Sanity and Sanctity: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 1

Big Hollywood : Sanity and Sanctity: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 1

Big Hollywood : Sanity and Sanctity: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 1

Big Hollywood : Sanity and Sanctity: The Ennobling Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien Part 1

Big Hollywood : Countdown to the Oscars: Looking Back at Hollywoodâs Worst Communists

Big Hollywood : Countdown to the Oscars: Looking Back at Hollywoodâs Worst Communists

Big Hollywood : Countdown to the Oscars: Looking Back at Hollywoodâs Worst Communists

Big Hollywood : Countdown to the Oscars: Looking Back at Hollywoodâs Worst Communists