6/2/23
Newsletter #355
The Crack of Dawn
Although I’ve just stumbled upon the term, Meta-modernism, and it’s meaning of self-referential, tongue-in-cheek, insincerity, I’ve certainly felt it in my gut for years. I’ve also always had a bias against the idea of being self-referential my whole life. I absolutely can’t stand discussions in films about films, TV or comic books. I’m also not a fan of films about films. This was basic Hollywood wisdom for many years: movies about movies were generally death at the box-office. As a writer, I’ve always felt that if you have to resort to characters discussing movies, you have blatantly run out of character ideas — something has got to be more important to these people than movies.
But now that I see it in its proper light — I’ve seen the light — more things make sense to me. I swear, I was wondering about this just a few days ago. Proving that their advertising doesn’t work, there is presently a commercial for some medication whose name I can’t remember that is a big, meaningless musical number. Halfway through the commercial, the cast of the musical number is now on a break from filming this very commercial and is now aimlessly wandering around among the film crew and equipment, until, I suppose, the break is over, and they return to performing the spectacular musical number about colon cancer, or whatever. But they’re being self-referential about making a commercial while making a commercial. Why? Because when you don’t have a good idea, or any idea, you fall back on the cliché. And winking at us and letting us know that you’re completely aware of the fact that what you’re doing in the first place is stupid, so by pointing it out, you’re alerting us that you’re in on the joke. Therefore, it’s ultimately not funny to anybody because we’re all in on the joke. But thank goodness we’re not idiots.
Insincerity. Worse still, intentionally being insincere. It is an anathema to me. The entire point of spinning a tale is to get the listener to go along with it; to believe it; to buy it, if you will. From whom does it make more sense to buy something? From someone who is sincere, or someone who is insincere?
Long before any of this, the key word was “believable.” As my buddy Rick said many years ago any number of times, “If I can believe it, I can have fun; if I can’t believe it, I can’t have fun.” It doesn’t matter where or when it’s set, but you must believe that it’s actually happening.
Which brings me to one of my favorite, and sadly overlooked, writer-directors, George Seaton. I have written of him before. I may write of him again, who knows? George Seaton is best-known as the writer-director of Miracle on 34th Street (1947), for which he won an Oscar for Best Screenplay. That’s not the movie I want to discuss, but it’s a perfect example of “either you find a way to be sincere about this story, or you have failed before you’ve started.” Seaton succeeded by taking the point of view of the skeptical little girl (Natalie Wood). It is a brilliant piece of sentimental manipulation, and it’s based on the sincerity of belief.
The other film for which George Seaton is fondly remembered is Airport (1970), the first and the best of the 1970s “disaster” movies. I love that movie. And on the Sincere-O-Meter regarding disaster movies, Airport wins hands down. But that’s not the movie I want to discuss, either.
George Seaton made a lot of movies, bless his soul, and maybe the most forgotten is, Anything Can Happen (1952), with Jose Ferrer and Kim Hunter, and I found it to be a fascinating and unique dramatic experiment, if nothing else, except that there is something else. And I think it works in its own weird way, although Leonard Maltin disagrees. Uh-oh, too bad.
The black & white movie begins with two eager young men – Jose Ferrer, who’s great; and Kurt Kasznar, who’s also very good (who ended up on Land of the Giants) – from Georgia, Russia, who are immigrating to America. They don’t speak English, have no money, no family to meet them, no jobs awaiting them, but they are sincerely pleased to be here. In fact, they couldn’t be happier, and keep telling each other, “Anything can happen.” The theme of the movie is basically the old expression, “Only in America,” and it’s taking it very sincerely.
The two of men do all of the usual things that eager, young, ready-to-work, immigrants must do: get jobs, meet girls, make friends, get other jobs, buy houses, etc. Here’s the thing – since obviously “anything can happen,” George Seaton decided that nothing bad happens to anyone. And since drama is based on conflict, and there is no conflict, it’s a strange, unnatural situation. Yet it’s entirely believable. Most people run into a lot of conflicts all the time, but not everybody. There absolutely are people out there who simply don’t run into a lot of conflicts. I’m certainly not one of them, but I do believe such things happen.
However, I think that George Seaton had another dramatic idea going on with Anything Can Happen (which only makes that silly poster sillier). If there are no conflicts at all, although every single person in the audience, young or old, knows that there must be at least one, there always is, you’ve got the audience in the palm of your hand. At some point, everything in the movie seemed to me like the set up for an upcoming disaster, except that none of them were. Spoiler Alert: At the end of the movie everybody gets everything they want. Well, I think it’s a fascinating idea, and I liked it (no matter what Leonard Maltin thinks), but once again, for that idea to work at all, it had to be completely sincere. This story could happen. It’s believable . . . not probable, but believable.
I will return to George Seaton, who has not been forgotten. Not by me, anyway.
The dawn as arisen.