I once talked to Budd Schulberg, who died yesterday, on the phone; a mutual friend put us in touch in the Fall of 2003 – I was eager to put on an event to mark the 50th anniversary of ‘On the Waterfront’, and, innocent/enthusiastic/grasping and annoying film fan that I was, figured I should just call up the screenwriter and see if he wanted to come to a poetry club on Bleecker Street to talk about it while we showed clips. He was 90 years old by the time I called – and if he had felt significantly older by the time the call was over, I couldn’t blame him. Grace and conciseness don’t always come easy to me. It’s even harder than usual when I’m talking to someone whose identity – although he was just an ordinary guy (and Schulberg would have been at pains to remind people of that fact) – had become mutated and mingled with my memories and experience by virtue of having written a myth that had gotten under my skin. ‘I coulda been a contender’ is, of course, now a cliche – but that’s not Schulberg’s fault: someone had to write it down first, someone had to create it.

Now, who knows what kind of man was Budd Schulberg?

We know that he wrote ‘On the Waterfront’. We know that his life span was such that he was able to collaborate with both F Scott Fitzgerald (on a film called ‘Winter Carnival’) and Ben Stiller (who may turn ‘What Makes Sammy Run’ into a movie). We know that he established the Watts Writers Workshop in the aftermath of the civil unrest. We know he named names after he himself had been named as a Party member. We know that he made documentaries for the army. We know that he’s in the Boxing Hall of Fame. And I know that, a few years ago, even though my plans for the poetry club event didn’t get beyond the idea stage, on the phone, at the age of 90, he was gracious, sweet-natured, generous and patient with a northern Irish film critic who thought – presumably like many others – that he had some special magic, just because he carved a cinematic myth into stone. Rest in Peace.

I’m going to watch ‘On the Waterfront’ today. Five of its principals have died in the past few years – a fact which only makes it seem more important: Rod Steiger, Marlon Brando, Elia Kazan, Karl Malden, Budd Schulberg. It may not be a subtle film; it may have come from all kinds of ambivalent or complicated motivation (a film that justifies ratting on your colleagues); its dialogue may sound more theatrical than realistic…It may be all these things: but, and I don’t know how much this should count for anything, other than the fact that it’s true: every time I see it, it moves the hell out of me.

‘On the Waterfront’ is a simple story in which Brando stands up for what he believes in by refusing to give in to the corrupt oppression of gangsters who control the New York docks. He is caught between a rock and a hard place, because his brother is a mob flunkey. Brando’s character Terry is broken on the wheels of circumstance, his dignity stripped by not being able to follow through on the only natural talent he believed he had – boxing – because his brother’s job depended on Terry throwing a fight. He’s a man who wanted ‘class’, who ‘coulda been a contender’, has been let down by his own choices, by the one guy he should have been able to trust, ultimately, he feels, by the whole world. He feels that he embodies failure, although his priest, played by Karl Malden, understands the difference between ‘success’ and ‘honour’, says that ‘Every time the mob puts the squeeze on someone that’s a crucifixion; and those who keep silent about it are as guilty as the centurion.’

When Terry agrees to testify against the people who might kill him, ‘On the Waterfront’ is dealing with the sacrifice that is often required to be of any use in this world. When he takes the risk of honesty, to do the right thing, his peers initially only stand by and watch; at which point, ‘On the Waterfront’ is about how easy it is to get into bed with evil. It is a well-worn cliché, but like many clichés, it’s true: all it takes for evil to prosper is that good people do nothing; or, as one character puts it: ‘I don’t know nothing I’ve not seen nothing and I ain’t saying nothing.’

That kind of silence, of course, kills. It makes me think about what it would mean if we really were to speak out for those who have no voices. Human beings everywhere are capable of terrorising others. But human beings are also capable of crossing boundaries, loving people who are different, forgiving those who have hurt them. It takes a huge psychological leap to be able to kill another human being – or even just to deliberately hurt them. You have to pretend that the other person is less a ‘self’ than you are.

You have to wipe the slate clean before you can break it.

Human beings become broken slates because we have made it too easy to erase any sense of unique dignity from others. The stories we tell teach us to devalue, and dehumanise others because of who they are, or who we think they are. It is a tragedy that religious, political, and cultural mavens (like, I suppose, churches, governments or movie studios) reinforce this myth by implying that people need to become more like us before they can be part of us. I imagine that Budd Schulberg knew this; and that it isn’t stretching a point to also guess that he knew that it was not the path he imagined for a person who really wants to be a person – to contend as a human being – someone able to welcome and accept everyone, to relate to them with confidence, and not to put people into ideological boxes. Schulberg knew that if we devalue the humanity of others, we cannot be fully human ourselves.

So, here’s the thing about Karl Malden.

Best role? Playing a liberationist priest in ‘On the Waterfront’. The priest may not know that he’s a liberationist, but Malden does. It’s an astonishing, grounded, fiery performance of balanced light and heat. It makes you want to believe.

Last role? Playing a priest in ‘The West Wing’. I always liked to think that this was how his ‘Waterfront’ character ended up – giving pastoral advice to Presidents. Fifty years on, he’s mellowed, but the theology hasn’t developed any nuance; which, in his case, is only a good thing: Love your neighbor. Love your enemy. Do good to those who persecute you. Don’t take no for an answer when the world is crying out for yes.

Beyond that, I know little or nothing about Karl Malden; other than the fact that he was married for almost 71 years.  I think we can assume that that is a statement about his humanity that bears repeating.

As the Film Talk’s founder and driving force, my genial co-host prepares for his own nuptials this weekend, we shall raise a toast to Karl Malden, to the priests he embodied, to the truth that he told. Rest in Peace.

I had a dream the other night in which I was visited by my The Film Talk co-host Jett Loe as an old man –he  didn’t seem to remember me; but he gave me a transcript of a statement which he asked me to read on the show.  I duly complied, but demand for a text version of the statement has been so high that it seemed useful to publish it here.  Apply some mournful music and you’ll get the picture:

“No one would have believed in the first years of the 21st century that human affairs were being watched from the timeless mists of space.  No one could have dreamed that we were being scrutinized as a scientist studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.  Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets.  And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded us with envious eyes and slowly, and surely drew their plans against us.  [With deep thanks to Mr Wells]

It was in early summer 2009 that the tipping point was reached; an event so pure in its rage against the right of human beings to the pursuit of happiness that one would be churlish to deny its particular genius.  The race had lived through moments of such fear and trembling in the past that its mavens did not at first fear the worst.  After all, a culture that had endured the spectacle of ‘The Mummy Curse of the Dragon Emperor’, the films of Tony Scott, the willingness of whole populations to buy Tamagotchi virtual pets, and the appearance of Ricky Martin at President Bush’s first inaugural ball, could sustain any assault.  Couldn’t it?

But that was before the virus.

It began during the last full week of June, when millions of people suddenly became detached from their otherwise sensible existences.  In large groups, they marched as if drawn by the tune of a distant drum or piper, to their out of town shopping malls, their town centers long since hollowed out by the so-called ‘vision’ of the elite political cohort euphemistically named ‘developers’; they paid their eight bucks, bought their popcorn tonnage, were carried into the salons of death by forklift trucks, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

It all seemed so safe and tranquil.

Had they only listened to the warnings.

Shadowy figures had recently emerged on the landscape; figures known only as ‘bloggers’ – as with any class of angels, some were fallen, and not only did they not see the danger, in fact they welcomed it, wide-eyed and ginger-bearded.  It fell to a remnant to see clearly the doom to come.  It has been difficult to determine just who these people were, but what surviving records we have indicate theirs was a pyramid structure; tribal chiefs with regal names such as Ebert, Kael, and Sarris gave way to younger avatars.  One sect in particular – the TFTs – were known for their sacrificial attempts at saving their brothers and sisters.  TFTs would allow themselves to be exposed to the horrors of the multiplex in the often vain hope that their visible scars would serve as harbinger enough to prevent others from suffering the same fate.  TFTs were the true unsung heroes of this time; now known in mythology as the ‘Captain Jack Sparrow Forward Slash Orc Era’.

Nothing is known for certain of the TFTs after June 26th 2009, when the Fallen rose to infect the culture; it has been rumoured for decades that a couple of the TFTs simply disappeared; they donated what little property and money they had to the poor, and underwent an experimental procedure known as ‘soul-cleansing’: by which means a human could be liberated from their memories of awful movies.  The unfortunate side effects included loss of other memories, but the benefits far outweighed the costs; TFTs may have escaped to caves on the Mexico-Texas border, where they remained in hiding til it seemed safe to emerge, fifty or sixty years later.

As for 2009, the T1N1 virus, known colloquially as ‘Robot Flu’ multiplied disproportionately after its introduction to the biosphere.  Audiences across the world were captured within minutes, unable to move from their luxuriant deep seats, weighed down by popcorn buckets and dread; forced like Alex in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ to gaze upon such horrors as a tiny mechanical dog dry humping a girl’s leg, John Turturro’s naked rear end, twin robots whose ethnic stereotyping would have looked out of place in a black and white minstrel show, images so scorched it made some viewers afraid that the celluloid would spontaneously combust, and a woman portrayed as so plastically beautiful that she deserves a snake like tail to emerge from her buttocks.

The destruction of all extant human culture seemed inevitable.  Within weeks of the release of ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’, most cities were full of zombies, people detached from their brains, their souls, and all rational thought.  Some took to watching Michael Bay’s films repeatedly, in underground clubs, in the hope that re-traumatisation might somehow diminish the effect.  It didn’t.  Others took to the hills, creating liberal survivalist communities; members were only allowed to bring the writings of either Noam Chomsky or Kurt Vonnegut, and all the tofu they could pack in a hemp bag; but the hills revolted.  Nature abhors a vacuum, and once it became clear that some of the liberals had already been infected by the virus, having tried to convince themselves that seeing the movie would be an experience of postmodern pastiche and therefore justifiable as the basis for an article in salon.com, the trees emitted a poisonous sap that expelled the desperate.  Those who were not zombies or the now displaced liberal survivalists did the only thing that seemed possible in their circumstances.  They took up World of Warcraft, which, of course, means that they were dead already.

And then, destruction.

It appears that the aliens from James Cameron’s ‘The Abyss’ had been waiting for just such a moment – a moment when they could justify ending the human race.  They had looked for a reason to ignore the earth; and indeed, for several thousand years, human beings had proven themselves capable of a myriad of miracles: freedom struggles, medical advancements, the exploration of unknown places, love between people.  But the effects of the release of the second Transformers film could not be reversed.

It was a simple decision, reached by the alien council in mid-August 2009.  A junior civil servant alien reported on the film thus:

“There once was something called human culture.  Then ‘Transformers’ was released.  This Racist, Homophobic, Robot-disparaging, Anti-human, Metallic-fetishistic film misappropriates the theme tune from Jaws and has a Snake-like tail coming from the rear end of a plastically beautiful woman.

Michael Bay is one of only two film-makers I can think of whose work has got less mature as he has gotten older.  If we act quickly we can spare the human race from having to endure the release of the other one’s next film.  ‘Inglourious Basterds’ is due for release on the 21st August.  We can put them out of their misery if we execute the plan now.

Like I said, Michael Bay’s work gets less mature as he gets older.  But it’s too easy to blame him – ‘The Rock’ and ‘Armageddon’ were a lot of fun.  This is the fault of an entire culture that doesn’t demand to be treated with respect.  It’s everyone’s fault, for allowing the worst big budget film ever made to be released.

Save yourselves.”

Film Making is a collaborative art.

Want proof?  Check out this description of this ‘Bound for Glory’ panel gone awry, (link courtesy of Higgins who made my day with this link), featuring the late David Carradine and revered cinematographer Haskell Wexler:

Bound for Hell, Or Glory? David Carradine and the Feistiest Film Panel Ever

In case you wonder how fraught the evening actually was in the text linked to above here’s a sample MP3 from the event:

“Hal, just take a minute and stop sniffing that stuff up your nose”

It’s tough to make a film – and not everybody is going it get along.  The author of the piece at top seems surprised that David and Haskell hug at the end – but that’s what you’ve got to do – you’ve got to get along if you want to keep going on.  And make more movies.

Sad to report, but David Carradine has left us:

Actor David Carradine found dead

The bluntness of the report above and the url of this post belies his gentle presence on screen.  If you haven’t seen his work I recommend a double bill of ‘Bound for Glory’ and ‘Death Race 2000′.