Drawing from Life in Today’s Iran

Marjane Satrapi died this year, at the early age of 56. I knew her originally through her landmark graphic novel (she preferred to call it a comic book) which provides a vivid picture of her own eventful life story. Persepolis became an international bestseller, launching Satrapi on a major career as a writer, illustrator, and eventually filmmaker. From her adopted home in France she pursued her art, making sure none of us forget about the brutally disrupted lives of Iranian citizens who had once suffered under the Shah’s regime and then, even more so, under the theocratic rule of the radical Islamists who took power in 1979. Today, with the current U.S. actions against Iran threatening to become a “forever war,” there’s all the more reason to pay attention to Satrapi’s artistic legacy.

 It took me until now to watch the film version of Persepolis. I was prepared for the film’s story, but not for the beauty of its artwork, much of which conveys Satrapi’s eventful younger years in stark black & white. Her drawings, often done in silhouette and from distinctive angles, capture the stark lives of Iranian citizens, weighted down by heavy garments and denied the pleasures of secular music, dance, and jokes. She depicts herself as a perceptive and bold little girl, one who is quick to question a status quo she can hardly be expected to understand. Though her parents and wise grandmother love her dearly, they see how dangerous life can become for a child who is inquisitive and sometimes defiant. That’s why, at age 14, she is sent off to Austria, where she struggles to fit into a culture that’s hardly her own.

 Satrapi’s lively drawing pen shows young Marjane seeking companionship among Austrian dissidents and weirdos, initially pretending she is French-born. As she gets older, she goes through a series of not-very-welcoming landlords, and even finds herself  homeless for a time. A love affair ends in bitter disappointment, and at last—now a young woman with a distinctive beauty spot near her nose —she begs her parents to let her come back home.

 On go the chador and hijab. Like her Iranian friends, she tries hard to conform externally, while  secretly finding fun pursuing her western-style passions (which in childhood have ranged from monster movies to Bruce Lee to punk rock). But the government goons are always around, people important to her are disappeared or killed, and eventually she finds herself—after a tearful farewell to her parents and her soon-to-depart-this-earth grandma—boarding another plane, this time to France, where the real Satrapi happily lived out the rest of her life.

Frankly, I’m in awe of the skill that went into making this film, whose story is simple but whose artistry is certainly unmatched by anything Hollywood has to offer. That’s why the movie version of Persepolis (whose title reflects the ancient ceremonial capital of Persia) is so stunning. At the 80^th Academy Awards ceremony in 2007 it was nominated for Best Animated Feature, making Satrapi (who co-directed with French artist Vincent Parenmaud)) the first woman ever to receive an Oscar nomination in this category. No, it didn’t win: the statuette went to another very special—and much less disturbing—film, Pixar’s Ratatouille. In Europe, though, Persepolis earned prizes galore, at the same time that it was banned (as anti-Islamic) from several international film festivals.

 I’d love to say that Satrapi lived happily ever after. But after her Swedish husband died of cancer in 2025 she had no will to continue living. The word is that she “died of sadness.”    

 

 

 

 

The Soul of a Senator: “The Seduction of Joe Tynan”

Election Day 2026, which may prove to be the most consequential midterm contest in our nation’s history, is a good time to check back on an Alan Alda film from 1979. It was made during the period when Alda was starring on television’s M*A*S*H, and it showcases the multitalented Alda’s work as a writer as well as an actor. The Seduction of Joe Tynan is a clear-eyed look at the challenges faced by an idealistic young politician whose aspirations just might include a run for the White House.

 Alda’s hugely popular M*A*S*H role as Hawkeye Pierce, an idealistic young surgeon operating near enemy lines during the Korean War, led audiences to view him as an idealistic young actor who just might make an appealing liberal politician, in a movie or perhaps in real life. In the film, directed by Jerry Schatzberg, Joe Tynan is a U.S. Senator from New York. He’s smart, witty, and squeaky-clean, with a brainy therapist-wife  played by Barbara Harris. Early on the two are seen cuddling in bed, engaging in sexy banter. It’s clear they truly dig one another, but the fact that Joe keeps gloating over on his latest triumph in the halls of Congress hints that he has more on his mind than marital bliss. There are also two kids at home, including a teenaged daughter bent on rebellion against her parents, come what may, so clearly Joe has a lot to think about.

 Then a crusty old colleague from the other side of the aisle (a late-in-life performance by Melvyn Douglas) asks for Joe’s help regarding a rival’s nomination to the Supreme Court. In the course of deciding whether this new nominee can meet his own high-minded standards, Joe is introduced to a feisty Southern labor lawyer played by a very young Meryl Streep. Thougb she too is married, she and Joe quickly fall into a torrid affair, helped along by their mutual yen for politics as well as for one another. For a guy on the national political scene, it’s all too easy to be discreet: wife and kids are safely at home in New York, while he tools around DC, scheduling “meetings” with his pretty new “advisor.”

 Frankly, I had expected to see Senator Tynan’s political dreams come tumbling down as a result of his sexual misstep. But Alda the writer has other ideas. Joe quickly sees the error of his ways when his wayward teenaged daughter gets into a small medical crisis. (She develops hepatitis after getting her butt tattooed—and tattooing in 1979 was a REALLY big deal.) Yes, what’s been going on suddenly becomes clear to his wife, but she’s enough of a good political spouse to look past his indiscretions and keep her anger to herself.

 We end with the confetti and the hoopla of the Democratic Party’s national convention, at which Joe shakes off his jitters in order to wow the delegates with a rousing speech, while his wife does what a political spouse is supposed to do: look on proudly from the sidelines. Apparently, they’ve both been seduced by the promise of future glory. Fade out.

 The Seduction of Joe Tynan is not a great film. I believe Alda, as a writer, did better with another story about sex and marriage, The Four Seasons. (Yes, it was the source of the current Netflix miniseries, which  in its opening episode graciously gave the now elderly Alda a nice cameo role.) But I like the way Joe Tynan takes an Alda-like liberal politician and shows what makes him vulnerable . . .  and it’s not just sex.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pumpkin Spice Time

Since I have a late October birthday, I’ve always had great affection for Halloween. It was always an evening of fun  and candy for American kids, but these days it seems to have much expanded, and drawn in a great many more people of all ages.

In the U.S., Halloween hijinks generally involve things that go bump in the night. We’re expected to enjoy being a little bit scared, sometimes by visiting elaborate pumpkin patches, sometimes by tuning into scary movies like Halloween (of course), Nightmare on Elm Street, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Each year seems to bring a new crop of cinematic scare-stories. But, as a new exhibit at the Academy Museum points out, horror is not exactly a recent movie phenomenon. Universal Studios, for one, made its name back in the 1930s by introducing eerie horror films like Frankenstein and Dracula (both 1931). Even earlier, German Expressionists launched disturbing silent films like 1922’s Nosferatu.

One small hint of the long-range attraction of horror is the continuing survival of the Michael Jackson’s Thriller music video. Though it was introduced in 1983, it is still very much alive almost 50 years later. For anyone who’s been living under a rock for the past few decades, here’s a brief summary.  We begin in what looks like the 1950s, as Jackson and a pony-tailed cutie (Ola Ray) drive home from a date. He runs out of gas,  and they’re forced to get out and walk through a spooky forest. Suddenly she discovers he’s turning into what one source calls a “werecat,” with eerie eyes—and he seems determined to pursue her. Cut to a contemporary (by 1983 standards) movie theatre. The two are now modern kids watching the ghoulish film, But she’s frightened and wants to leave, and he’s chivalrous enough to accompany her home. That’s when ghouls and ghosts suddenly appear, and he becomes one of them, shimmying to a creepy ditty set against the voice of Vincent Price. So we’re in a reality vs. fantasy world, and Michael’s unfortunate date is terrified by the dark possibilities ahead.

What’s amazing to me is how that ghoulish dance number has endured. A member of my family has been practicing a slightly toned-down version of it, the better to join with a lot of costumed would-be ghouls who’ll perform together Saturday night under California’s Manhattan Beach pier. From what I’ve heard, a really large performance of the number shows up annually in New York’s Times Square, with all comers welcome. On a much lower level, some distinctive moves from the routine made their appearance today at my weekly gym class, led by an instructor decked out for the occasion in a pink poodle skirt, frilly bobby socks, and pearls.

Halloween is of course also the time to remember our dead. So let me take this moment to hail two of Hollywood’s finest. Sir Patrick Stewart of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame passed away this week at the ripe old age of 86. But I was personally more shaken by the demise of 93-year-old Tom Skerritt. Most fans will remember him from his award-winning role on TV’s Picket Fences, or from one of his many big films (like 1979’s Alien). But I worked with Tom on Roger Corman’s Big Bad Mama (1974), on which he vied with William Shatner to romance (sans clothes) a sexy Angie Dickinson. There was not much dignity to the role, but Tom told me how his brand-new agent was prepping him for better things. I guess it worked. A Halloween farewell to both men.

 

 

 

 

Five Finger Discount: “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York”

I freely admit that I’m lousy with modern technology. Yes, I use a cell phone, but it’s hardly my favorite mode of communication, and the subtleties of texting sometimes baffle me. I’ve written three books on a personal computer, but I can be thrown into a panic by documents that aren’t where they’re supposed to be. Smart watches are for me a total mystery. All of which makes me feel really old.

 That’s why I’m able to identify with John Turturro’s character, Harry Lehman, at the center of the new indie, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. Harry doesn’t even own a cellphone, and the electronic transfer of money via cryptocurrency is as much of a mystery to him as it is to me. (When Harry mentions that a particular computer disk might be “sick,” even I know he’s trying to indicate that perhaps it has a virus.)  Then again, I can’t pretend to know anything about Harry’s special area of expertise. He’s an old-school pickpocket, roaming the five boroughs of New York in a wonderful old salt-and-pepper overcoat, delicately relieving passers-by of their wallets and watches.

 Well, it’s a living. But time is rapidly passing him by. No one seems to carry cash these days, and expensive designer wristwatches are giving way to mysterious electronic timepieces that can perform their own complex transactions if you know the right codes. So Harry’s skilled fingers, far behind the times, are nearly as useless as a buggy whip. Which is not to say that he’s stopped trying. At home in a shabby Bronx walkup lies his comatose wife, whom he tenderly keeps trying to feed, clothe, and entertain with musical numbers from the old days.

 The Only Living Pickpocket in New York has been called a heist picture, and so it is, but not in the usual sense. Harry’s daily routine is shattered once he delicately lifts a wallet from a young man in a flashy vintage car. This hot-headed young man, Dylan, turns out to have underworld family connections, and he’ll stop at nothing to get back what he’s lost, particularly his watch and a mysterious card that turns out to be a crypto wallet. With a little help from a street surveillance camera, Dylan connects Harry with the theft, and announces there will be hell to pay if that “card” that Harry has tried fencing isn’t returned to him, pronto. So Harry is soon scurrying all over the city to locate a device whose use he never quite understands.

 While trekking to Queens, he stops to try to re-connect with his estranged daughter, and takes time to instruct an aspiring pickpocket in the best way to steal a wallet on the subway. He also calls in favors from some longtime friends, among them a pawnshop owner played by the always welcome Steve Buscemi. But the fact remains that, because he’s shaken the complacency of some very scary people, his days seem to be numbered. So there’s a poignancy to this movie; the sense of time passing him by.

 A list of Turturro’s screen accomplishments includes some fascinating portrayals: like the title role of a talented but haunted writer in Barton Fink and the part of a brainy but hangdog contestant who’s part of a rigged TV competition in Quiz Show. Turturro is immensely talented, especially in quirky material, but he’s never quite been at the epicenter of the proceedings as he is here. His Harry may be a crook, but somehow his heart remains pure. He fully deserves all the acclaim he’s likely to get for this unlikely film. 

 

Going to the Car Wash

Boy, do I need a trip to the car wash! My trusty sedan badly needs a good cleaning. A recent overseas plane flight allowed me to re-watch a 1976 comedy that’s essentially an ode to the joys and sorrows of working at an urban locale designed for the cleansing of automobiles. This was the era when young Black filmmakers seemed to take special pride in singling out the idiosyncratic venues that anchored their own communities. (The trend stuck around: see the Barbershop series that debuted in 2002.)

 Car Wash was the third feature directed by a talented young African American named Michael Schultz (his father was German), following the success of another classic of Black cinema, Cooley High. I was surprised to discover that it was written by Joel Schumacher, his third produced screenplay before he moved on to a major directing career. (See, for instance, his The Lost Boys, and a number of action hits.) Car Wash features pretty much every established Black actor of that era. Ivan Dixon, Bill Duke, Garrett Morris are some of them, along with a splashy appearance by Richard Pryor as a shyster evangelist, Daddy Rich, who shows up in a stretch limo with the Pointer Sisters in the back seat. There are familiar white faces too, like George Carlin as a taxi driver who’s been fleeced by a passenger and “Professor” Irwin Corey, as a mysterious little man who might or might not be carrying a bomb.  

 The film takes place over the course of a single Friday, from opening to closing. Dee-Luxe Car Wash, an East LA. establishment that features old-fashioned handwashing, is owned by a white man with all the troubles of the world on his shoulders. (Among them is his college-age son who has developed an affinity for Chairman Mao and keeps trying to recruit his dad’s employees to the cause.) These employees are a motley crew: among them a jokester; a cowboy; an Indian; a guy with romantic troubles; two would-be song & dance men who keep rehearsing the new opening of their act. Most memorable is a flamboyant gay cross-dresser (played by Antonio Fargas) who disses one of his co-workers, “ "Honey, I am more man than you'll ever be and more woman than you'll ever get."

 The film pokes fun at the variety of customers who show up in expensive cars, such as the Beverly Hills matron who obsesses over the paint job on her luxury sedan while her young son endures a spate of projectile vomiting. There’s also fun to be had as patrons scurry in and out of the car wash’s public bathrooms with all sorts of deviltry on their minds. The film ends, though, on a serious note. Lonnie, the car wash foreman (Ivan Dixon) has a long-ago criminal record, but he’s trying hard to stay clean while raising two young children. As he’s closing up at the end of the day, he’s suddenly confronted by Duane (Bill Duke), an angry young Black man who, looking for a new approach to his apparently dead-end life, has discovered radical Islam and insists that he be addressed as Abdullah Mohammed Akbar. I won’t go into what happens between them, but it puts into perspective the fun & games of the rest of the film.

 Car Wash is hardly the sort of movie that wins Oscars. But the good folks at the Cannes Film Festival nominated it for the 1977 Palme d’Or, and director Schultz was given a Technical Grand Prize, with Norman Whitfield‘s funky musical score also hailed.

 

 

 

Saint Eva

Art by Robert Williams

Long ago, well before home computers, I lucked into a wonderful phone interview with Eva Marie Saint, who passed away recently at the remarkable age of 102. A search through my paper files has not (darn it!) turned up a copy of my published article. It appeared, I think, in the Hollywood Reporter, tied to Valentine’s Day.  But I’ve always remembered the words I chose to start the article: “Imagine kissing Cary Grant. Or being locked in a passionate embrace with Paul Newman.”  My focus was on how an actress manages to stay professional during a convincingly hot love scene. What was it like, I asked Saint, to play a mysterious Hitchcock blonde smooching Grant on a moving train in North By Northwest? With characteristic matter-of-factness she answered: her biggest concern in kissing Cary Grant was that she might accidentally step on his feet.

 Eva Marie Saint (what a wonderful name!) captivated Hollywood because she projected a unique combination of fire and ice. A natural blonde from a Quaker family, she seemed cool and reserved, but excelled at roles in which she was bowled over by passion. Her film debut, after some successful Broadway appearances, was opposite Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront. The role of Edie, whose beloved brother has been killed by corrupt union bosses, won her an Oscar for best supporting actress, and gave her lifelong respect for Brando’s unique film presence. The statuette was handed to her two days before the birth of her first child, and she quipped on stage, “"I may have the baby right here!”

 Practically unique for a Hollywood star, Saint was married for sixty-five years to her first great love. TV director Jeffrey Hayden. Her career might have been even bigger if she hadn’t insisted on putting family first. I never met her son, but daughter Laurette was a Roger Corman employee in the 1980s, between my own two Corman tenures. In researching my Roger Corman: Blood-Sucking Vampires, Flesh-Eating Cockroaches, and Driller Killers, I had a long, instructive chat with Laurette about life as a Corman assistant. Though she lacked her mother’s platinum hair, Laurette had some of Eva Marie Saint’s basic dignity. Which was why it was hard for me to imagine one facet of her job: helping with office “breast checks,” in which some leading ladies were asked to bare themselves above the waist to prove that their bosoms were suitably photogenic. For a while Laurette didn’t question the propriety of what she was being required to do.  Gradually, however, after working on Corman flicks like Slumber Party Massacre (1982), she came to feel that the New World Pictures attitude toward women and sex was tougher to justify, and that it was “harder to keep a sense of humor.” That’s why she moved on, first assuming executive posts at Lifetime Television and the USA Network, before quitting showbiz to evolve into a marriage and family therapist. Given that her father died at age 90 and her mother lived past the century mark, I send her condolences on her mother’s death and wish her long years of success in her chosen profession.

 Eva Marie Saint’s great era encompassed the years 1954 through 1960, when she was cast opposite Paul Newman as a romantic lead in Exodus. Thereafter she played smallish parts in big films like Grand Prix (1966) as well as bigger parts in smaller ones (The Stalking Moon, 1968), before taking a long break and then appearing mostly on television. (She played Cybill Shepherd’s mother for six episodes of Moonlighting.)  I’m certain she remained classy through all of it.

 

Jack Cole: The Jazz Dancer

Eons ago, when I was a small child, I was privileged to study modern dance at a West Hollywood mecca known as the Lester Horton Dance Theater. Among my early teachers was a lovely woman named Carmen de Lavallade, who would go on to have a solid career as a dancer and actress, and would take home a Kennedy Center Honor in the days before the fate of the center was headline news. I was thrilled, many decades later, to share a meal with the still-beautiful eighty-year-old Carmen in New York City. I was also thrilled that, at a reunion event in L.A., the great Alvin Ailey remembered my childhood nickname. Alvin, Carmen, and I were all, of course, huge fans of the creative work of Dance Theater’s founder, Lester Horton. So were the writers at the New York Times, one of whom wrote a rave review of the Horton troupe under the headline, “Genius on the Wrong Coast.”

 Back then I heard fleetingly about other L.A.-based dancers and choreographers, In particular I heard about Jack Cole, whom I associated with sexy movie routines. But I never considered myself knowledgeable about Cole’s contributions to the art of the dance, until now. I’ve just finished reading Debra Levine’s exhaustive (but hardly exhausting) new Jazzed: Jack Cole and Twentieth-Century American Dance, published by the University Press of Kentucky. Levine, a longtime dance writer whose lively prose contributes hugely to the success of this book, seems to have dug into every corner of Cole’s eventful life: his nightclub adventures, his years in Hollywood, his forays into choreography for the Broadway stage, where Man of La Mancha was his biggest hit. Having interviewed what appears to be everyone who ever danced under Cole’s tutelage—a group that includes Gwen Verdon, Barrie Chase, Alvin Ailey, and Carmen de Lavallade—she is also able to convey the complexity of Cole’s on-stage and off-stage personality. (He inspired love, fear, and pretty much everything in between.)

 Cole’s first contribution to dance lore was his invention of something called “Hindu swing,” which evolved out of his serious study of Indian dance, combined with a jazzy uptempo beat. Throughout his career he (like Lester Horton) explored dance forms from many cultures, then demanded of his dancers a grueling technique that few could master. But he also, in Hollywood, found himself obliged to create effective movement for non-dancers like Marlene Dietrich and Jane Russell. Levine credits him with significantly energizing Rita Hayworth’s portrayal of the title role in Gilda (1946): his uncredited staging of Hayworth’s “Put the Blame on Mame” in that film turned her into an unforgettable silver-screen vamp. 

 But most of all, Cole  was known for his work with Marilyn Monroe. Throughout her troubled career Marilyn trusted him implicitly as both a choreographer and a drama coach. Levine says Cole taught her how to move onscreen, and led her through her sexiest and most famous musical number, “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” from 1953’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. (He was responsible for every aspect of that number, including its bold red-and-shocking-pink color scheme.) Years later, he struggled to coach her through the troubled Let’s Make Love as well as Something’s Got to Give, which remains unfinished because of its star’s sudden death.

 Though Cole never won a major award for his choreography, Levine insists that such later greats as Bob Fosse learned from his stylistic experimentation. Count me as a new fan . . . of both Jack Cole and Debra Levine. Though Cole (1911-1974) is long gone, may they both keep on dancing.  

Marilyn Monroe sings "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend"