6/30/22
Newsletter27
The Ass Crack of Dawn
It’s already starting to get light. I got a late start.
A few years ago on my movie, “Morning, Noon & Night,” we were shooting a scene in a suburban backyard with three actresses talking. If a plane comes over while you’re shooting the sound man calls, “Plane,” and you stop until it’s passed. So, just as we’re about to shoot, the sound man calls, “Plane,” we stop and all look up: it’s a WWI bi-plane slowing putting its way across the sky. It passes, we get ready to shoot, the sound man calls, “Plane,” we all look up, and we hear a much different-sounding motor, and it’s a WWII Mustang fighter. We try again, “Plane,” look up and it’s a British Spitfire. Try again, “Plane,” it’s a big, lumbering B-17. We try again, it’s now a German Fokker tri-plane. This went on for over an hour; each aircraft different than the one before. Obviously, though we didn’t know it beforehand, there was an airshow at a small airport right nearby. My final rejoinder was, “What, no zeppelin?”
When I was about twelve I was watching some black and white movie from the 1940s and it showed an elementary school class standing, covering their hearts, and reciting “The Pledge of a Allegiance.” They said, “I pledge allegiance to the flag, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” I sat up straight. What the hell? What happened to “Under God”? Well, that didn’t get put in until 1954, twenty years after the “Pledge” had been written and introduced. It was in response to the intense wave of anti-Communism that had swept the nation, resulting in the Congressional House Un-American Activities Committee, and the conviction of the “Hollywood Ten.” One of the ten was Dalton Trumbo, about whom they recently made a good biopic with Brian Cranston.
George Washington wrote in one of his school copybooks when he was twelve years old, “All actions taken in public must take everyone present into account.”
Bob Balaban, the actor with the beard in “Close Encounters” who translates for Francois Truffaut the whole movie, first appeared in “Midnight Cowboy” as a kid who gets a blow-job from Jon Voight then won’t pay him. Bob Balaban’s uncle was Barney Balaban (formerly Birnbaum) the eldest of the seven sons of Bessarabian-Jewish immigrants, who was the president of Paramount Pictures from 1936 to 1964.
Kiichiro Toyoda produced his first automobile in 1936. After WWII, Mr. Toyoda decided to seriously begin manufacturing cars. One of the first things he did was to contact Henry Ford and ask if he could tour Ford’s giant River Rouge Plant (not far from here), where they proudly stated that iron ore went in one end of the plant and cars came out the other. Mr. Toyoda and his people spent a month touring the plant, arriving every day at the start of work and finishing at the end of the work day. Mr. Toyoda’s assessment was that was entirely the wrong way to make automobiles. He then devised a new method of production called “The Toyota Way,” and by 1974 was producing the largest-selling automobile in the world, the Toyota Corolla.
As both a screenwriter and part Polish, I feel that I have the right to tell this unwoke joke [note: we used to ridicule Polish people as though they were dumb and called them Pollacks]: Did you hear about the Polish girl who went to Hollywood? She fucked the writer.
It’s now fully daytime. And a lovely day it is.