Thomas F. Cook

I think it will be pretty much agreed when all is said and done in Christopher Nolan’s long career, that Oppenheimer will be the greatest movie he’s ever made. And it will also most likely be Cillian Murphy’s greatest performance.

The look on his face at the end of the movie (it’s the last shot but it’s not a spoiler because it’s in so many images that have already been released) is the look of someone who has haunted himself to complete mental destruction. I don’t know if that’s a little embellishment — he spent his final years in St. John’s and did a lot of sailing — eventually died of throat cancer.

But as far as an arc of a movie, it’s an absolutely brilliant ending because of course, he and his scientists created the atomic bomb and ever since we’ve been in an arms race: first between Russia and the U.S. but then other countries — North Korea is the latest. And I think the movie very clearly points out that it was a terrible thing that nuclear weapons became part of the world’s killing arsenal. We live under its threat to this day.

That there was no choice but to go ahead and create it isn’t too debatable. Russian scientists were working on it and the Nazis were also working on it.

But the movie goes much deeper into the main character and his terrors as a young student, his womanizing, and later, his expulsion from the government agency that was established after atomic weapons were made — and the congressional enemy that got him investigated and rescinded of his Q level clearance.

Still what’s most impressive about the entire movie is the long arc of going from enthusiastic scientists and technicians basically having a Mickey & Judy “let’s put on a show,” moment, to finally realizing, in fascination and horror, at what they had done or accomplished, or maybe both. Joseph Campbell talked about how certain horrific things can be sublime — probably one of the reasons we are drawn to buildings imploding — or explosions. The trinity bomb was the biggest explosion ever made. 2 more were to come. 220,000 people were killed or died of radiation poisoning.

I had a teacher when I first entered college who claimed he had a PhD from Yale or some place, in theatre. He had been hired based on that credential. The University of Cincinnati had a small theatre department, but one of the reasons I went there, initially, was so that I could have a double major, which UC allowed.

I always knew I was going to move to NYC, and after I got accepted at NYU, I moved there for my Junior and Senior years. Many of my credits didn’t come with me — only some of my English and French credits, so I had to go for an extra half year. I also discovered that the GPA in my minor (Journalism) was not high enough. I really hated journalism and wans’t good at understand the concepts. I was too complicated and journalism is about simplicity. The simple, well written sentence.

Anyway, I chose English because NYU didn’t do double majors and that was a good thing. But I heard later that Larry Myers, the teacher I was talking about, had been fired from UC because he hadn’t, in fact, obtained a PhD. He was a fraud. After firing him, U.C. took what was left of the department and absorbed into its much more successful and vaunted CCM (Cincinnati Conservatory of Music), which spat out Broadway stars writers like there were too many of them. One, in fact, was my music partner in Men’s Glee, who went on to become a Tony winner: Stephen Flaherty.

But Larry Myers was now in New York, supposedly teaching at Johns Hopkins in Jamaica, (although you can never quite tell) and over the years he’s just become one of the most insane and vainglorious people on earth. He continually makes up identities so he can comment on issues in the New York Times and it’s always the case that what he writes, as this other person, never has anything to do with the article. Over these 30 years or more, I’ve come across probably 20 to 30 “comments” in various places and in various disguises.

I used to see him when he lived on Commerce Street (I lived nearby) but the last time I saw him he looked terrible — stricken — and he was walking down the street and seemed to be in a daze. He made up a story about having two laptops stolen at Port Authority, but there was police footage showing that he didn’t have laptops when he entered the building. He called it a senior moment.

But the real fraud for me was that I had been taught by this shipwreck of a human being for 2 years — and nothing he said was true. We had a book in which we studied ever play in it, EXCEPT for the black writer: Amiri Baraka, which Larry said was “just a black anger play.”

We used to go see his performances, but Larry would laugh the loudest at the jokes because he said it got others to laugh. I finally decided not to go anymore, because I didn’t like him. He remains one of the worst teacher, if not the worst, that I have ever had and although it was decades ago and he’ll never talk about the people he misled from that part of his life, it’s a damn shame our paths crossed.

I have Covid by the way. Almost no symptoms except fatigue. No fever or cold or flu. Somewhat achy neck and upper back.

The one sheet (poster) for this movie explains just about everything . Tons of stars that all want to work in a Wes Anderson movie, and motionless people. Even the character who is in a jet pack of some type is being held down — not allowed to fly.

Some day, I suppose, I’ll come across an article about Wes Anderson and his movies and this brilliant critic will finally explain to me what his movies mean, and I will understand why it is I can’t see his brilliance or genius.

But until that critic arrives and finishes my education, his movies feel like a kid that’s playing the game Minecraft. Or in the real world, building something from Legos.

For me it’s simply pointless. I do not understand them. The last one I saw (The French Dispatch) was impossibly boring and I finally decided I had had enough of his wasting my time. I’m no fan of Pauline Kael, but when she agreed to a private screening of his first movie Rushmore (1998) she said to him, “Well I don’t know what you have here,” or something to that effect. I looked for the quote online but couldn’t find it. So I guess it’s not a quote.

I did like The Royal Tenenbaums and The Grand Budapest Hotel. But I think I will probably be extremely high if I ever see another of his films.

This is a short story which I believe was one of the last things Stefan Zweig wrote. (Update, it is the last thing he wrote.) And it was so interesting because it started out as just a story about a remarkable chess player prodigy, but one who could only play when he had a board in front of him. He can’t imagine or “see” a board in his mind to anticipate future moves. The “Shannon Number” is the number of possible moves in a game of chess and it is somewhere between 1o to the 111th factor and 10 to the 123rd factor. That’s more moves than there are atoms in the universe.

Now on some sort of cruise ship that the narrator (an observer of the story, like Tom in The Great Gatsby), notices an arrogant man that can’t believe this prodigy could win every game, so he starts betting and doubling down when he loses each time. On one of these games another observer butts in and says, “no don’t do that, you must do this,” and so on, and more or less explains the best he can hope for is a draw.

This man is Dr. B. and the narrator prods him to explain how he came about his extraordinary knowledge of the game. Dr. B., it turns out, is a holocaust survivor — having been isolated in Austria with absolutely no outside interaction. The only interaction he has is with a guard who brings the good. To prevent himself from going crazy, he swipes a book on chess with all the most famous games. He starts playing them, but unlike the prodigy on the ship, he “sees” these games in his head. He doesn’t need an actual board to play them. Finally, when he finds himself bored by having memorized all the games, he starts making up games in his head between himself and an alternate version of himself. This leads to more insanity, and once he is free, his doctors advise him never to play chess again.

The story is a very fine story I think, and it really captures the way the mind can trip itself up, especially when Dr. B. gets to the explanation of how he had to try to think with two personalities and try to pretend he did not know what the other was thinking. So a little story like this ends, which was originally titled, “The Royal Game,” ends up being another condemnation of the Nazis.

Stefan Zweig killed himself (his wife killed herself also) about 3 days after he sent this story off to his publisher. The story doesn’t really depict the despair he felt about Europe and the end of the Hapsburgs, but it doesn’t suggest he was struggling very hard with his mind when he was in Brazil.

Not the Reality TV show, but my own discovery that I’m a hoarder. I’ll post a few pictures, maybe, at the end of the post. This originally started as a letter to my sister, but then I realized I was talking about despair and some pretty deep emotions.

This is the part from the letter: “You know I can look at these pictures and actually feel the despair that hoarders must feel when they start to fill rooms up and throw stuff as far to the back as possible. But what I still can’t understand is why they want to keep everything. Even though this looks horrible right now, I’m so eager to have it gone. And it’s probably not apparent, but I’m actually sorting out everything so that the white bedding I had in my “hotel” room in Newburgh is in the same box and the bedding I had in the “warm” room, is also in the same box. I’m throwing out tons of clothing that I’ve collected over decades but I have to allow them (the building) to empty the bin so it can’t all go tomorrow. But I’m definitely feeling the sadness of hoarding because I was a bit of a hoarder, I just didn’t realize it. I didn’t clean out my stuff — I just kept buying bigger and bigger storage units. And why did I have to buy so much? To have the sharpest cotton shirt. I didn’t buy anything…”

I was going to say “spectacular” or “unique.” I bought a lot of clothes from Eddie Bauer, which is just a shop that almost never changes its design and therefore, appeals to stupid men. But 30 to 50 shirts and long sleeved things? I have so much clothing stacked on the floor but, exactly like Hoarders, I can identify every fucking piece of clothing and bedding. So, like those idiots, I can look at piece of wrinkled fabric and say, “Oh that’s from my Hotel Room in Newburgh,” where I designed a guest bedroom with almost entirely white fabric. The chair and the desk were also white. Why am I trying to convey that message to anyone? It was a white room, and nobody liked it.

The room that I designed that I called the “warm” room, was designed for greys and blues and almost everyone wanted to stay in it. So now, I’m sitting here trying to fold and press and put the blue and grey (they warm room) into another couple of boxes.

But what I’m really trying to do is boast. It should all be thrown out, and I finally realized why Trump is so fucking stupid. He took all those classified documents, knowing he had lost the election, and then said, “Here’s what they did for me. Look at this. I wanted to know how we could attack Iran. And look at this. The Pentagon gave me some papers that showed me how to bomb Iran.”

The moral of the story, is that I’m sitting here trying to justify sending bedding and such to Ohio, when the fact is I’m a hoarder. I’m like Trump, trying to say “this is what I had access to…” but when the truth is, I’m just a hoarder with money.

BUT NO ONE WILL EVER TOUCH MY STAMP COLLECTION>

Hoarder’s last words. hahahahahahahahhaha

The annual spelling bee for students was just concluded and it’s worth looking at the video of the young boy who won. Dev Shah.

In the Times article, they had a list of words which knocked out the competition. But one of them, I’m pasting it here and it might include the links, had a definition that was one of those that you have to look up the other words in order to understand it.

crenel: one of the embrasures alternating with merlons in a battlement.

I don’t know what Crenel means, and I don’t know what embrasures or merlons mean, and I only have a slight sense of what a battlement is.

So embrasure is usually a slit in the wall of a castle that is wider on the inside than on the outside to shoot arrows through. It is also the gap on the parapets on top of the castle that allow canons to shoot canon balls, or just a bunch of men with bows and arrows.

Merlons are the solid portion of that defensive wall, or battlement.

A battlement is a parapet meant for defense against an enemy, but can also be for decoration.

So now we know what a crenel is.

The word he spelled correctly was psammophile. An organism that thrives in sandy soils, like a cactus. He, an 8th grader, knew that psamm or psam was Greek for sand and phile was Greek for lover. Very impressive.

It’s so ridiculous, but some number of years ago the post office, strapped with ridiculous rules by congress to fund the retirement of employees that they hadn’t even hired, decided on a Forever stamp. Speculators and people that enjoy loopholes didn’t realize that even if you bought 10 million stamps at the Forever price and sold them later for 10 cents, you were betting on the fact that the post office has to raise prices almost every year.

But what the “Forever” label has actually accomplished, is a blindfold. Nobody knows what it costs to send a letter. (As of this writing, in June, 2023, it’s 63 cents for a single sheet of paper, usually a bill.) The “Forever” label on stamps has hidden the true value, except to collectors.

And I haven’t said this much, but I’ve said it enough, collecting is an important part of living. On television cable shows they show the results of hoarding, but collecting is not hoarding. Collecting — I’m going to grab at something bizarre — Horse saddles from the 1800s. TV also likes to show the riches of collecting. But that’s also rare. The importance of collecting is the concentration your tiny brain gives to this one thing.

So I collect stamps. I stopped a very long time ago with my American collection, because they were issuing one collectible after another. Every week, like an impoverished country or Island which have always relied on stamps to bring in some money. Once the US started acting like Bermuda, I realized our postal service had turned into a business that was supposed to make money. And they had to do it because of Congress and the Republican’s attempt to destroy the post office and privatize the service.

I wasn’t half wrong. I was half right. The only “service” outlined in the constitution of the U.S. is the postal service, which says it will run (a post office, I’ll look it up later), but the postal service was so important back then (1770’s) in its battle with the British, that the agency was written into the constitution. It required the U.S. to maintain a postal service. This was written, by the way, before the 1st or 2nd Amendment or the following 8 that make up the bill of rights. It’s part of the original constitution. IMHO, it would probably be unconstitutional to privatize the post office. But I don’t think it’s ever come up because it’s so deep inside our constitution. It’s not even one of the amendments which are usually the subject of cases the make it to the supreme court. The most recent “threatened” amendment was the 14th. And it still is, with Trump declaring that he will eliminate birthright citizenship with a scratch of his psychotic signature. (He does not know how to make a curve.) He doesn’t have that power, but like all tyrants, he will try to claim it.

Anyway, the “Forever” stamp is just a way of hiding postage rates. Our government uses tactics of the casino to govern, because casinos have had a very long history and have done a lot of research into human psychology. Replacing real money with casino chips, and making every chip just about the same size, allows you to forget that you are betting 40$ on a hand that you are likely to lose. “Forever” is the equivalent of the casino chip. It means nothing. It’s not a denomination. The small amount of money the post office loses on people who buy thousands of forever stamps and then sell them at a perceived discount when the price goes up is peanuts for the p.o.

The end of Barry was literally the end of Barry. And the end of everyone except the one truly despicable character, Monroe. There’s not as much to discuss as there was with Succession. But one interesting story telling device is that there were two flash fowards: one of about 5 years and another of maybe 10. The first was at the start of the season when Barry and Sally are living out in the desert somewhere and have a 5 year old son. Second was in the last episode which jumped about 10 years and the boy is now about 15. He might be a little younger. I couldn’t tell. Anyway, Sally has just directed Our Town for a high school where she works at (it snows there so it’s got to be midwest, I think). Her son John asks if he can sleep over his friend’s house and his friend keeps saying it’s time. You think they might be talking about cigarettes or drugs or beer. But what he’s talking about is a movie that was made of his father’s life. In it, Barry is portrayed as a hero that is brutally gunned down by Mr. Cousineau. Mr. C. is also blamed for the cold blooded murder of his girlfriend. And the final credits tell us that Jean Cousineau is being held in a maximum security prison for life. Sad ending, but he did kill Barry.

Succession has finally ended.

It didn’t end EXACTLY as I predicted from the first time I wrote about this show, but it was close enough that I give myself 3 stars out of 4. I always believed that a story like this is about the father and the son, or the oldest daughter if he has no sons. So I always looked at this series as Kendall Roy’s story. You can bring in lots of other characters (like Gerri, Maddsen, or the white supremacist who won the presidency because this family decided to call the election in his favor) — but ultimately it comes down to one person — the main protagonist — and it started and ended with Kendall. In the series opening, and in many subsequent openings, he was always on his way to work, as the heir apparent.

In the last scene of the series, he is sitting at the tip of battery park, the southernmost point of Manhattan but also the spot where trade began and even though lots of money managers and traders, etc., have never been to Manhattan, it’s still called WALL STREET. As a bizarre story about mergers and acquisitions, and buying politicians who will let “deals” go through, or backing other politicians who will “regulate” the hell out it, it’s utterly boring. But combine that obscene wealth with sibling rivalry and anger, and the fact that Logan Roy apparently left no will except as it related to his apartment, there’s a reason everyone became addicted to this show. It was an absolute triumph of writing. (There were 8 or 10 people in the writers room by the way, just to add a little support to the writers strike).

The One And Only Thing I Didn’t Understand… was Shiv’s change of heart. They could have kept the company 7 to 6, Ken-doll would have been CEO and she and Romulus would have had their own branches of the empire – that’s basically what it is.

(I’ve had time to think about Shiv’s change of heart, and though it wasn’t uttered, I think she went where the power was. She was livid that Tom was going to take her job as the CEO of the new GoJo or whatever it was going to be called, which caused her to temporarily side with Kendall. But when it came down to it, she’s pregnant and her baby is biologically part of the Roy bloodline, a fact that Romulus made while they were fighting. Kendall’s daughter is adopted and Kendall’s son probably has a different father. There’s hints throughout the series that Kendall is impotent and can’t father a child, and just like the despicable man his is, Roman’s father does not see them as “real.” Shiv also brought up the fact that Ken had killed that waiter — I was desperately waiting for that submerged fact to come up — and finally Romulus, having learned his lesson, calls all three of them “nothings.” “We’re nothing, this is nothing.” Shiv, finally, instead of letting Tom be hand puppeted by the Swede, will be in the background doing the handpuppeting herself. And because he put one of those ridiculous stickers that Connor handed out on Greg’s forehead, Greg is still in the mix too with Tom and Shiv. The three boys [including Connor] are out.

This all depends of course, on whether regulatory approval will be granted, and there’s no guarantee that the horrible Menken will regulate it up because of his xenophobia, and there’s no guarantee that the Wisconsin Courts will call for reissuing the mail in ballots that were destroyed, most likely, by one of the fascists.)

I just didn’t buy the fact that she turned on Kendall and suddenly, as the last vote in the room, decided to change. They gave her some dialogue and she said something like, “You can’t run this business.” (She’s right, btw, but neither can her husband, who ultimately became the CEO and put a sticker on Gregg’s forehead.)

The one thing that Tom said to the Swede is that he could absorb an enormous amount of pain, and I think he was trying to explain that if he won control of the company he was going to fire an enormous number of people, (like Musk Suck’s Twitter. And earlier in the episode Tom had said to Greg something like “Your salary is going to be castrated.” {Not the first time Tom has used the word castrated on Greg.})

But, my heart goes out to the killer Kendall, who was doing drugs in the first season and accidentally killed someone in the mode of Chappaquiddick. At the start of the series, he was trying very hard to overcome his father’s influence and become the heir apparent. At the end of the series, he had lost that battle. His father won. Because his father was an absolute bastard and an abusive piece of shit.

One thing I was curious about is what the deal was that their mother’s husband was trying to offer. It was probably better than anything they could get and I think she said, “I’ve wanted you to get rid of that evil piece of garbage.” And she actually gave them an out. But we didn’t get to hear what it was because all of a sudden, Shiv discovered that her name was XXX’ed out of the press release. Which led to the happiest moment in the series, until the choice Shiv made in the end.

The Murdoch children should take note!

*******

A bit more commentary as a writer: I would not want to write a season 5, even though the whole television world has turned its head to watch this series. It was a great series, almost as good as The Sopranos and Breaking Bad. But do you really want to follow Romulus as he keeps calling people fags and threatens to fuck grannies. Do you want to follow “Shiv” (knife) as she prepares for a life with Tom Mushroom. It was kind of fun to see Gregg slap Tom in the bathroom, but their life is for life. And Kendall… I don’t know… I think that’s the one great mystery left. By my calculations he got about at 45 billion from the deal, but as children of extremely wealthy parents, they probably haven’t learned how to make a dollar. And they don’t need to. We can empathize with his failure as he stares south toward Staten Island, but he’ll never have to take that boat — and the show made it clear that he still has a body guard and a driver. Heavy implications of suicide in his future. But fuck them all. They’re all hateful people and Yeah, yeah, yeah, “Imitating the awful acting,” Okay, okay, okay, are you with me, yeah, yeah, yeah.. Let’s go, let’s go. Good riddance.

One thing that will be missed by almost everyone, and it relates the title of the episode: “With eyes wide open.”

The opposite is “With mouths quite shut.”

And that’s what happened. Shiv tried to touch the hand of her husband, who is now the head of Rayco, but she could barely touch his palm, as if he was radioactive. She said nothing.

Romulus went to the bar and started drinking. He said nothing to the bartender and nothing to the others around him. It was as they knew what he had to drink.

And or course Kendoll went to Battery Park and stared at the setting sun. (Hint, the sun doesn’t set there except in the winter.)

None of them beat their horrible, abusive father — all of them victims of how horrible vicious and despicable man who they all wanted to love.

I sincerely hope that these characters find some love. They should look to their older brother from a different mother, who is probably the only one who understands how abusive the patriarch was.

I’m so glad the composer for the Succession opening music and theme music is getting some recognition. I noticed how stunning it was in episode 3, the famous episode where Logan died on a plane. I just rewatched that episode to see when it happened — this majestic sweeping classical strings and I noticed a couple of extra things. Logan says, before he gets on the plane, “Today’s the day.” There’s a slight pause before he says “when we do whatever blah blah blah and fire Syd and kill Gerri and tell all my kids to fuck off.” In retrospect, of course, today’s the day he dies. The last sight of Logan is perhaps an homage to the chilling end of The Godfather, except in reverse. In the Godfather, it is Diane Keaton’s face that the door is slowly closed on. In Succession, the door is closed on Logan and the living people where the camera is, start to work on a statement. All you see of him, before the door shuts, are his feet. There’s no camera in that room.

I tried to pinpoint, without much success, where the kids were the moment Logan had his heart attack in the bathroom of the plane. (Did they ever say what finally done him in?) It could have been at the exact moment that Roman Roy was leaving a pretty foul message for his father, for making him tell Gerri, the grandmother he lusts for, that she was going to be fired for some made up reason. I think he called his father a fucky fucky fuck face. But Tom’s first attempt to reach Shiv came 5 to 10 minutes after that moment so he might have died when they were boarding the boat that’s supposed to take them to the wedding. It’s just hard to know unless the writers had a specific ironic moment in mind. But it also explained why Roman asked, “Did anybody check his cell phone messages?” Because HE thinks he might have killed him with his message. (Doesn’t really know his father that well. Only one of the four kids knows that man and everything he is, and the name of the episode has his name: Connor’s Wedding.)

Logan left the world as shittily as he lived in it. His last acts were to fire Gerri and Syd; to scream at his son Roman for not being on his side; to skip Connor’s wedding with the excuse that they got them a… “what was it,” he asked his lovestruck assistant. She answers, “Napoleon letters to Josephine,” or something like that.

Really Connor had the most honest and interesting reaction to Logan’s death. He says, quite simply, “He never even liked me.” The other three all reacted in the different ways that abused children react. They all professed to love him. (Only, possibly, Roman actually does.) Kendall says (in his dead father’s ear), “I can’t forgive you.”

Anyway, the point where the music soared to the level of a great concert was when the plane with the corpse was landing at Teterboro, the children were driving up in their black Suburbans and the emergency vehicles were gathering around the plane. Anyway, here is the article behind a paywall about the soundtrack of Nicholas Britell.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/25/arts/television/succession-soundtrack-classical-music.html#commentsContainer