Another "Damn Good Movie"

Sometimes I like to talk about movies that you might not know, but really should. Things that deserved to be seen several times.

Damn good movies.

“A Face in the Crowd” 1957 B&W Ratio 1.85 : 1

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050371/

If you ever watched “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” (and you know I did) you heard him reference this movie all the time. He often called Glenn Beck, “Lonesome Roads.” When you see the movie its easy to know why.

Marcia Jefferies (Patrica Neal) is a college girl with a reel to reel tape recorder looking for human interest stories for a local radio station. The county jail seems like a good place to start looking for specimens, and she gets a great one within minutes. He's Larry Rhodes  (Andy Griffin), in jail for drunk and disorderly and wearing wife beater shirts."Ten thosand miles from home, and I dont even know the name of my shirtmaker."

During the interview, Larry proves to be a force of nature in his own right. He pulls out a guitar and starts ripping a a blues riff about how he's ten thousand miles from home and doesn't even know his name. It's easy to see that Marcia is smitten.

She gets Larry a regular spot on the local radio station, and right away he becomes both a local success, and quite a hand full. It doesn't take him long to discover the power of radio to manipulate the common folk. And he's finding that he has a growing distaste for these yokels .He adopts the nickname “Lonesome Rhodes”."Todo, we aint in Mayberry just yet."

Soon local television beckons, and not long after that, the big time. Before long he's rubbing shoulders with network presidents and Presidential Candidates.

Along the way he picks up a manager Joey DePalma ( Tony Franciosa ) who cinical enough to see right through Lonesome almost from the beginning. Mel Miller (Walter Matthau) a streetwise television suit is equally unimpressed.

He also finds Betty Lou Fleckum ( a young Lee Remick in her first role) twirling her batons in at a local fair ground. He sees her as the perfect accessory and marries her immediately. Marcia feels ambushed by this sudden move, as she saw herself and the woman to tale the Lonesome out of Rhodes.

Larry even puts her on his show, with batons blazing. Unfortunately, she turns out to be a one trick cheerleader..Larry looses interest in time, but she adds more to the plot a little later.

Lonesome is becoming a king maker, and he knows it. He's the one who'll show the street monkeys and snuff queens who to vote for and what to think. What Lonesome has forgotten is that he was made a king maker by that other great dispensary of power. King Television.

Over in the discussion section of IMDB.Com, there is a thread of people who compare Lonesome to President Obama. These are people who have been eating from the petri dish again. As I said earlier, Olbermann would call Glen Beck “Lonesome Rhodes” all the time. The analogy held up well. Both men were know nothings who read and believed their own press releases. Both thought nothing of telling people what to think and say . I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that the Obama thread is some sort of twisted “get Keith” meme.

Now comes the irony. The director , Elia Kazan, claims that the inspiration for Lonesome came from Ronald Reagan. Well, think about it. In 1957, Reagan's political career was barely past the Screen Actors Guild phase. On TV he was he still hadn't even hosted an episode of “Death Valley Days” yet, but he had been hosting “GE Theater” since 1954. And just like Larry, “Lonesome” Rhodes, Ronald “Dutch “ Reagan got started in small time local radio.

The movie is avalable through Amazon.com You can help me out if you buy it by clicking on that link.

Always Glad to Plug Good Stuff

I love The Great Courses Series.  It's like attending an Interesting lecture. The emphasis is on interesting if you haven't guessed. 

But the one I want to plug right now is

Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills:

The Lecture is given by Dr. Steve Novella.    

If you're an avid fan of the podcast The Skeptics Guide to the Universe, you can probably skip on ahead. If you aren't , well lets cut and paste some of Steve Novella's  resume:

Dr. Novella is an academic neurologist at Yale University School of Medicine. In addition to being the host of The Skeptics' Guide podcast, he is the president and co-founder of the New England Skeptical Society. He is also the author of NeuroLogicaBlog, a popular science blog that covers news and issues in neuroscience, but also general science, scientific skepticism, philosophy of science, critical thinking, and the intersection of science with the media and society. Dr. Novella also contributes every Sunday to The Rogues Gallery, the official blog of the SGU, every Monday to SkepticBlog, and every Wednesday to Science-Based Medicine, a blog dedicated to issues of science and medicine. He is also a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) and a founding fellow of the Institute for Science in Medicine. He has a regular column in the Skeptical Inquirer - The Science of Medicine. Dr. Novella is also a Senior Fellow for the James Randi Educational Foundation and directs their Science-Based Medicine program. Dr. Novella is available for public lectures, radio, podcast, or other media appearances. Contact him through the contact page or at snovella@theness.com to request an appearance.

All that and a real job. Whew. Remind me to stop kvetching about two jobs.

The course is great if you are new to this whole critical thinking thing. Or for that matter, even if your not. 

 I highly recommend it.

Me with the good doctor and some of the rest of the Skeptics Guide. In the background you can hear my mother say "Stop Slouching!"

Yes, I have Been Away From My Desk

As anyone who has tried can tell you, keeping up a blog demands a lot of attention. Ironically, in the winter, when I only have one job, I seem to have less time. Can you explain that?

That Makes Everything Right....

Sometimes a lyricists gets stuck." Hey Saul, I need a rhyme for jackhammer."

Then you get phrases that don't survive scrutiny . 

Christmas songs can be the worst offenders. We've talked about this before.Santa when he was signed with The William Morris Agency. Later he went to ICM.

One that always bothered me was from "Here Comes Santa Clause". Its the one that goes, "Santa knows that we're Gods children, that makes everything right."

Really? Everything? 

Then why didn't OJ use that as a defence?

I'm just asking.

Lets talk about these turkeys for a minute

Lets talk about these turkeys for a minute, and by turkeys I mean the Republican Debates.

First of all, they need some sort of elimination round. A few seemed to skip one or two, but for the most part, well, there they are. The same cast. The same answers.It seems that other nations have embraced this idea.

Yes, we've had a name struck from the list, but not by any result of these debates. Cain got tired of dancing around the answers to his "personal" questions. And keeping the steps straight was becoming more demanding.

But no one in the debate seemed interested in the fact that he didn't understand what a President does. Or more importantly, what he doesn't . Like sign constitutional amendment. 

Bachmann seemed to think that there was some sort of lever in the Oval Office that controls the price of gas . By the way, isn't that a good  working definition of .... wait for it... Socialism? What David does not seem to grasp is, if I do something, it's not Socialism.

Perry is wrong about the number of Supreme Court justices. There is no problem in the fact that Perry is not ashamed to be a Christian. The problem is, he's not ashamed of the fact that he is as dumb as a salted pancake.  Like here, when he didn't know the voting age. Or here, where he doesn't know the difference between a primary or a caucus.

Just as an aside, I was going to skip over the famous "brain fart" where he couldn't remember the third item in a list. But wait! Did you notice? One time he looked at his hand. "See. Nothing up my sleeve... and PRESTO!!!That's the difference between Palin and Perry. Both use their palms as a "teleprompter" but Palin writes on her hand. Perry thinks the answers will just appear  there.

But a more important issue, How many more of these things are scheduled? Every number I hear is in the teens. That can't be correct. Surely that's satire. Right. RIGHT?

Has no one bothered to explain to the Republican National Committee the down side of market saturation?

Or keep it simple.

Hey, RNC! Familiarity breads contempt.