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Ralph Peters
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Wars of Blood and Faith
Ralph Peters

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Conservatives Are From Mars, Liberals Are From San Francisco
by Burt Prelutsky
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FROM THE PHONE BOOTH: The Smallest Space in  Hollywood

	FINEFROCK

First, it's inoculation time.  Loved Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally.  Both were supposed to be primary "chick" films, though the riff in Sleepless about guy movies and the universal guy "statement" of The Dirty Dozen is on par with Sally's faked orgasm.  Both will continue in cinema merité for decades.

Now, it's time to redress the imbalance, the erroneous perspective of writers, editors, producers, directors and the host of others in the pop culture who are desperately scared of admitting to Maleness, for fear of offending the women in their midst.  We survived Anita Hill accusations that we didn't "get it" and then the insistence by many that an actual rape occurred in Thelma and Louise, justifying the murder for foul language that served as that film's Plot Point One.

 "This is becoming the Unpleasant Decade for men" stated one artistic type to me recently.  A "guy" type, he exchanged notations with me and we agreed: Enuf Is Enuf.  It's time to examine, critique and CELEBRATE the guy film.
 
Best focus for this flick analysis are The Quiet Man, The Birdman of Alcatraz, Diehard and In Harm's Way.  Each has "chick" elements, but undoubtedly are watched on the Late Show by mostly male audiences.  That is sad, for this proves my key point: that chicks, too, don't "get it" because they are different.  As in not-the-same.  Dissimilar.   Unlike.  Diverse.
 
Guys feel.  Emote.  Respond to film's affective domain.  They are just "different" and "diverse".  Isn't this craving for diversity able to absorb men as worthy of sensitive, open examination?  We see the new History Standards overlook the live, human sacrifices of the much-embraced Incas, so why not tolerate Guy Flicks.  Aren't we as valuable as the Incas?
 
You wanna five-hankie film, catch a late showing of The Birdman of Alcatraz, starring Burt Lancaster as Robert Stroud, twice-convicted murderer, serving life in Leavenworth.  Hard and cold as ice when he kills the second time, stabbing a prison guard about to bean him with a club in the mess hall, Lancaster's Stroud transforms into a national intellectual treasure of scientific genius, one that the recalcitrant prison system refuses to nurture.  Commenting on the bureaucracy that is endemic to our society, this b/w film (not yet colorized by Ted Turner... so far, at least) shows a tough Guy in the midst of other tough guys, including the prison guard who befriends, assists and clearly comes to love Stroud. [But, the truth of Stroud’s brutal id that survived to his final days is left out of the film – ah, Hollywood anthropomorphizing animals, yet can’t ever portray a sympathetic conservative.]
 
Yep, it's "love" gals, not the kind of kaffee-klatch, let's cry-&-hug kinda love, but in scene after scene, shot after shot there is the exchange of looks, the subtle gestures between the two men that communicates as effectively as any five-page dialogue scene written by Nora Ephron.  Don't have the script, but I'd guess this lengthy film arose from a sparse pen.  Consider when his first bird egg hatches.
 
It's three minutes without dialogue, just a struggling critter inside a rocking and cracking egg, fighting its way out.  Stroud watches, with quiet and indeed "macho" wonder, as the progeny of another prisoner's bird makes it into the world.  At the closure of the hatching, he hollers to the other prisoner in another solitary cell, played by the priceless Telly Savalas, that "You're a pappa"... and we see Savalas smile that smirk that is as proud as any you'd care to film.  And without a placenta and breathing exercises a la Lamaze.
 
The Quiet Man is similarly full of love, affection and parsimony.  That's the watchword for guy films: parsimony.  Few words, minimum gestures, lotsa impact.  The best scenes in guy films are not word-saturated, but image-saturated, often with long, lingering closeup view of the character.  John Wayne's Quiet Man portrayal of a stricken professional boxer conveys a tortured soul, with few words, lotsa looks, and supporting actions by the other players.
 
John Wayne has been under-rated, overlooked, abused and misused by the cinema culture.  Growing up in the Sixties, I once was sucked into the anti-Wayne perspective.  Absolutely resolute, I "supported" this view by boycotting True Grit in 1969, all the better to express my solidarity against a champion of the Vietnam War.  Such foolish behavior abated as I grew up, and found what Churchill and Mark Twain meant about the silliness of youth.  
 
As I matured, I relented, "compromised" and watched some Wayne output as my synapses ripened.  Such films as The Quiet Man and In Harm's Way stunned me.  The emotion was there, subtle and gentle, but the Duke could convey it clearly.  As Rockwell Torrey meeting his estranged son in Harm, the look of pain for what might have been were there not a divorce between a career Navy man and an upscale Bostonian society chick: it was clear, saturated, and effective.  Few words, lotsa looks, intercut between faces.  Ditto thru the film, as his Harvard-bred son forsakes the shallowness of PR assignment, returns to his proper duty on PT boats, and is sacrificed in the final battle.
 
Patricia Neal helped, portraying a woman in a man's world, who assists as nurse to Torrey in the final scenes, watching Torrey's lifelong friend, Eddington (Kirk Douglas), trash his life in wastrel behavior.  But here is redemption: Eddington sacrifices himself to find the enemy fleet, dying in a gesture that everyone else at command central perceives as pure heroism.  Torrey curtly rejects every voice urging a posthumous commendation for Eddington, saying that "he wasn't looking for medals" and walks off-frame, back to duty, solve the problems, win the war.  Was there a "Guy" in the theatre who didn't get a lump in his throat?  Again, few words, lotsa action and tons of meaning.
 
For redemptive moments in modern releases, you can't go further than the closing scene in Diehard, when the emotionally-impaired police sergeant redeems his cowardice by that series of tightly spaced shots put into the last bad guy's chest.  Bruce Willis' John McClane is spent, relaxed in his wife's arms, caught off-guard when the crowd gasps, everyone ducks, Willis spins to protect his wife.  The shots ring out, EXTREME CLOSE on a gun muzzle: it's the sergeant, redeemed from his fear of shooting a child by mistake, no longer a desk jockey.  Was there a Guy in the audience who didn't get a little tight in the throat?
 
Oh, they didn't let their dates know about that.  Women say they want a "sensitive" type, but the lie is laid open, we know that if you cry more than once every, say five years, you will lose that woman.  No more than we can "get" what pregnancy, labor, childbirth and nursing is, they can never "get" what is the appeal of "guy" performances.
 
Blame evolution, or God, or the IRS: whoever did it, we were born separate and with distinct functional roles.  Who's gonna have the babies, eh, if not women?  Throughout history of mankind (er, human-kind), and until this century, a simple division-of-labor required that the high-risk, heavy-lifting jobs go to the guys, while the nurturing, gathering jobs devolved to the women.  They kept the campfire lit, men brought in the wood and raw meat, and kept out poachers, rapists and outright murderers.  Protect the boundary, that was men's job.
 
Then technology came along, thrusting into history Guy types like Thomas Edison who gave us such nifty toys as electric light, the phonograph disk and the moving-film camera.  Voilá, it was inevitable that Hollywood would emerge, thanks to Thomas Alva.  More leisure time made possible by the same "guy" creators who found that all this self-examination led to the vote for women and a host of other liberation theologies.  All made possible by "guy" stuff, the "toys" which so often are the source of derision heaped by women upon the male gender.  Toys like film emulsion, compound lenses, camera shutters, sprocket advance, zoom lenses, hydraulic cranes; you know, that stuff which makes the entire film industry possible, giving outlet to the Nora Ephrons and Callie Khouris, so they can slam-dunk the male gender.
 
And they just don't "get" why males like such films as made by John Wayne, John Ford, John Huston and all the other "john" types like John McClane.  It's about action, taking risk, going into harm's way, surviving while protecting the boundaries.  Whether that boundary is a pre-twentieth century tribal or national border, or it's the home, hearth, career or reputation of the family unit.  Men have been protecting boundaries for as long as women have been bearing children.  Technology has not yet made it possible for men to "encroach" on women's turf, but the reverse has been progressing unabated for several decades.
 
And men flock to see themselves redeemed, re-inforced and "empowered" by films such as The Quiet Man, In Harm's Way and Diehard.  [And more recently, 300 – with a queen of some stiffened femininity to match Leonidas’ loins of determination.] Each film focuses on a conflict which a man must confront with courage that is beyond what he thought he had.  Bad guys defined with clarity, the mission pursued relentlessly, victory achieved at the end.  While cinema for women has usually been about an un-realistic romantic ideal conveyed by Valentino, for the Guy it's been about an un-realistic action-directed achievement, overcoming outrageous odds with cool demeanor and relaxed competence of a James Bond or Jack Ryan.  Unrealistic, yes, but so is finding the perfect balanced-male who is both sensitive and a killer.  Powerful, but caring.  Rich but supportive.  Now, who's being unrealistic here, eh?
 
The guy film has certain elements which are laminated onto the traditional paradigm of three acts, two plot points, one cathartic climax, and resolution.  First, the protagonist, once a hero but today more often the anti-hero type, doesn't talk much.  Others may, but not he.  Talking is non-verbal, communication is by gesture.  This may be due to ancient need to move quietly, using hand gestures to communicate to the hunting party, while stalking a prey that had sharp ears and very good smell.  While the women chatter and verbalize to their heart's content back at camp, the men had to catch the wooly mammoth without scaring it off, or giving it a chance to attack and make them into his meal.  
 
Mmmmm, tastes just like chicken.  
 
Stealth, non-verbal signs; not chatty talk and exchanging feelings.  Those "exchanges" could get you killed.  At least until this past century.
 
So with the Guy in film.  Taciturn and wisecracking when he does speak, the Guy goes forth to protect the boundary, fight demons external or internal.  Few words, lotsa facial reaction, and usually subtle ones at that.
 
It is about subtlety, often unnoticed in the hurly-burly of sound effects, music accompaniment and jump-cut editing.  Maybe the supposedly more-perceptive females just don't get the looks, instead anxiously awaiting the words that will make it plain.  This may be why mostly women initiate the dating trek to stage productions, where the spoken lines dominate the narrative; film is about images, though it's taken a few decades for directors to move fully into this arena.  Many of the "best" films of the Golden Era and shortly following WWII were merely filmed plays, relying on snappy dialogue.  Did women define what is "golden" in that time?
 
Clever, witty words are what every screenwriter seeks, but film is about images.  This may be why writers are at the bottom of the food chain, directors at the top, and of course the writer-director the most sought after.  The producer doesn't have to referee fights between the two "talents" if they are annealed into one brain casing.
 
Describing those images, melding with the dialogue, establishing the emotional frame is the challenge of the screenwriter who is targeting the Guy audience.  You are tempted at the keyboard to make it all words, on the page, said outright and plain for all to hear.  My own scenes tend to be dialogue heavy when I'm yet to find the image, its description.  Then, certain other, better scenes flow like smoke, onto the page, when I get the image I want, the feeling, the sensations.  
 
Nora Ephron specializes in dialogue.  Shane Black focuses on image, feeling, sensation.  Ephron struck gold with When Harry Met Sally because she derived her male character from the alter-ego of her director, Rob Reiner, following notes from "taking lunch" with Reiner while attempting to shape a different project.  With Reiner as the model for Harry, her own views the core of Sally, she effectively conveyed, with words, the male view and female view.  
 
Ore at least the view of one particular female and one particular male, generalized to the two genders at large.  A rare achievement, a blockbuster film with little action and lots of moody cinematography.  But even there, the bulk of that film's feeling came from the lens and frame of the camera, capturing romance, that beloved appeal which New York City still holds for its adherents.  Almost made me forget what an ugly place most of NYC is, most days, in most months.  And none of that was in the script, or in the words.
 
Besides being light on dialogue, the Guy film relies on not only action but those visual clues, that require close attention.  No trotting off to the fridge during certain key Guy scenes.  Again, to Diehard:  Willis is fleeing thru the air conditioning ductwork, the nasties hunt him, look down the labyrinth of ductwork and "sees" the brief flicker of a cigarette lighter.  Off to the hunt, Willis location is known.  On seeing it the second time on TV at home, I was confused: How'd the bad guy know where to find the room where Willis' duct was located?  
 
I'd gotten up from the couch, taken a "detour" and had to await a third broadcast that I videotaped to discover that single half-second ‘insert’ of the flickering light of the cigarette lighter.  No words, no description: to know what was transpiring, the Guy watching has to really, really watch.  The editor gave the crucial tidbit, but it was nowhere on the soundtrack.  Again, images instead of sound.
 
It ain't our fault.  Check the socio-biologists.  Guys are sight-oriented, women more suited for sound.  Dating etiquette: men play the soft music for her, she wears the slinky, fitting dress for him.  She listen, Him look.  Ugh.  We beasts, right?
 
There is a third category of Hollywood "product" to be addressed, beyond the guy film and chick film: the guy movie.  
 
No matter its accolades, Pulp Fiction is a movie, not a "film"... the difference?  Memorable, lasting style, wit with wisdom, class and decency.  Rockwell Torrey is a class act in Preminger's In Harm's Way.  Vincent Vega is just plain white trash.  Interestingly written, well-played, intriguingly caught on film by Tarantino.  Even Quentin asserts that he makes movies, not film.  Many of his adherents would debate, but the test is: Time.  The only way for a "product" to gain the patina that moves it from a recent release that is at minimum a "movie" [or just a ‘flick’] to becoming a true "film".
 
And it is Guy films that intrigue me, and apparently are as baffling to women as the genre's "movie" branch.  That convey action along with emotion, feelings without a lot of dialogue, give us images that are shot, edited and accompanied with appropriate music to elicit emotions which our dates may not note, but is there.
 
Images that are symbolic without being esoteric and obscure.  McClane in Diehard saves Holly Gennaro by releasing her watchband; it flies free, the lead thug falls away, the watch itself a symbol of her bond to the corporate life that hindered their marriage also falling free, as McClane pulls Holly to safety.  For guys, that was the "statement"; for chicks, it was later, when she introduced herself to the sergeant by her married name.  We like that, a confirmation of the small victory, but it was the flying watch that did the trick.  An image, not words.
 
Old films and recent ones all have to compete with the promotion scene for Rockwell Torrey.  John Wayne's In Harm's Way performance was at its best here, as was the writing, not to mention Preminger's direction.  A simple matter, Captain Torrey delivered from obscurity at a desk after a Pearl Harbor inquiry for losing his ship to a Jap torpedo.  All the brass is there, as Chester Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Fleet (CINCPAC) announces to all that they have a new rear admiral in their ranks.  Applause, congratulatory toasts, handshakes.  Then the piece de resistance.
 
CINCPAC calls Torrey to a private chat, giving him the "sugar" first before the "medicine" of his new command complications.  Nimitz proffers the stars he wore himself when first promoted to admiral so many years earlier.  They hopefully will bring "the Rock" the luck Nimitz feels he will need.  Little dialogue here: after all, CINCPAC just gave you his rank emblem!  Chicks watching may not get tight in the throat, but for men it's as significant as a bride receiving her great-grandmother's bridal veil.  Women make the home, men fight for the border, protect the perimeter.  Except for technology, that is.
 
A woman Navy fighter pilot crashed beside her carrier flight deck, ejected too low and  died, was heralded by women's groups when she missed her carrier landing.  Equipment failure was promptly blamed by agenda feminists who insisted a woman can do anything a man can do, AND BETTER.  But some resentful men put out the typical gossip that she died due to lower standards, and as quickly women's groups just assumed she likely was the best pilot known to humanity, God's gift to the F-14.  Guys know, and few women even consider to this very date, that for men the job description of protecting the boundaries isn't a "career opportunity" but our Duty, our pledge and our onus.  As women berate men for any pretension to "understanding" childbirth and rearing children into Citizens, men are hesitant to believe that women will really make the grade on carriers, in combat or on airplanes.
 
That technology has "made most jobs neuter" these days, to quote Lauren Hutton, doesn't make men neuter.  We still appreciate the film that evokes emotion of a Guy kind, gives images of a Guy kind, and gives satisfaction of a Guy kind.  No affirmative action quotas, timetables, goals or lecturing in the public square will change that.  Even that recent reverse-guy film, Thelma and Louise, did not convince men that women will really, truly, genuinely fill the breach when necessary.  It just carried the argument from the collegiate setting to the post-cinematic, pre-coital couch discussion.
 
We know, you don't "get" it and won't likely, no matter how long we try to tell you.  After all, we're not as good at words – we like images, action, results.  But I've tried.  The guy film, and its lesser cousin, the Guy movie, will burgeon.  The Soviet Union had better luck, in the long run, stomping out Christian and Muslim religious practices than the Barbra Streisand School will have in stopping Guys, er "men", from getting their vicarious satisfaction in the darkened theatre.
 
Next time you don't "get" it gals, ask your Guy to explain it to you.  Watch him, note his face, correlate it to the images on the screen, ask him about it afterward.  Being the inarticulate apes we are, he might not convey it with all the precision you'd get from Nora Ephron.  But you will have taken a step closer to "getting" it than if you merely bray and upbraid him for being such an insensitive jerk.
 
Because if you could plug into his nervous system, you'd know he reacted just as emotionally by film's end as you did, but at different places, for different reasons, the result of different stimulations.
 
Vive la difference. ExileStreet

copyright 2007 Steve Finefrock

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