Confronting “The Beast in Me”

Since around the time that my Roger Corman biography came out, I’ve been part of a lively group called Biographers International Organization. This group, officially founded in 2010 by the indefatigable James McGrath Morris and some of his biographer peers, is devoted to the art and craft of biography. BIO’s advisory council has included a who’s who of famous biographers (including Pulitzer Prize winners like Debby Applegate, Robert Caro, Ron Chernow, and Stacy Schiff), but anyone who finds biography of interest is welcome to join for a nominal fee. Perks include an annual conference, an informative monthly newsletter, and Zoom gatherings galore. And, of course, a Facebook group in which biographers from around the globe trade info, cheer one another on, and generally stay in touch.   

 I bring this up here because of a hot recent topic on the BIO Facebook page: the limited Netflix series called The Beast in Me. The dauntless biographer Carl Rollyson (who’s credited with almost as many books as Heinz has varieties) was, I believe, the first to encourage his fellow members to check out the eight-part series. It’s a cracking good thriller, featuring two of filmdom’s finest, Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys. Danes plays Aggie Wiggs, a best-selling author grieving the loss of her young son in an accident involving a drunk driver. Rhys (a Welsh actor who speaks flawless American English in this series) plays Nile Jarvis, a wealthy entrepreneur notorious in the press because of the mysterious disappearance of his wife.

 One reason Rollyson and other serious biographers are keen on The Beast in Me is because Aggie’s fame comes from her publication of a non-fiction book about her late father. When the series opens, she’s struggling to move ahead on a joint biography of two recent Supreme Court justices, Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who were both courtroom adversaries and personal friends. A fertile topic for a book, perhaps, but maybe not one that Aggie’s equipped to handle. So when her new neighbor, the cheerfully sinister Nile Jarvis, proposes himself as her new biographical subject, she pays attention. Next thing you know, they’re having long tête-à-têtes in which, while proclaiming himself innocent of serious crimes, Nile Continues to find ways to get under Aggie’s skin.

 The series is riveting, though maybe its wrap-up is not quite as effective as it might be. It’s exciting to see Danes (who surpasses even Keri Russell of The Diplomat in looking worried and disheveled) struggling to know how to handle the disarmingly chummy new next-door pal she’s pledged to present to the world on the page. As Carl Rollyson has pointed out to his fellow authors, biography can also be seen as autobiography. The way a biographer approaches his or her subject is very much a secret glimpse into that biographer’s own psyche. Aggie, for instance, must ultimately admit to seeing in herself something resembling Nile’s cold-blooded approach to the world.

 I agree completely. I’d even say that my three books reveal to the reader three very different aspects of my own path through life. Writing about my longtime boss, filmmaker Roger Corman, I was something of a cynic: sassy and even snarky. My Ron Howard bio brought out the optimist in me. Suddenly I was hopeful about the human capacity for goodness. My 2017 study of The Graduate, officially titled Seduced by Mrs. Robinson, saw me as a member of a youthful generation  hugely influenced by this smart little comedy, but also—fifty years later—as someone who had learned a great deal about life as the decades wore on.

 

 

 

Hemingway and Dos Passos: Frenemies to the End

Almost 50 years after his death in 1961, Ernest Hemingway remains an American icon. Schoolchildren continue to know (or at least I hope they do) such masterworks as In Our Time and For Whom the Bell Tolls. Cineastes revere films based on Hemingway novels, like To Have and Have Not, which gained fame as the first and sexiest on-screen pairing of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. In various picturesque parts of the globe there are Hemingway statues as well as watering holes named after his favorite drinking spot, Harry’s Bar in Venice. I once made a pilgrimage to a Madrid restaurant called Botín because Hemingway’s Jake Barnes had feasted on suckling pig there, washed down with a nice rioja, in The Sun Also Rises.   

Not only have many of Hemingway’s works been filmed (as far back as 1932, Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes starred in a screen version of A Farewell to Arms) but he himself has appeared as a character in numerous Hollywood movies and TV series. Some were intended as seriously biographical, but he has also shown up in several fanciful projects. A Hemingway character was featured in TV’s Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. does not actually materialize in an offbeat 1993 indie called Wrestling Ernest Hemingway, but I still treasure Corey Stoll’s robust portrayal of the author in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris. 

When Hemingway was just starting out, the talk of the literary world was John Dos Passos, a Harvard graduate with an exotic upbringing, a talent for art, and strong leftwing leanings. The two met in Paris in the 1920s, and quickly bonded. One thing that drew them together, aside from their literary interests, was that both had experienced the bloodshed of World War I while serving as volunteer ambulance drivers on the battlefields of Europe. The twists and turns of their relationship are chronicled by my friend and colleague, James McGrath Morris, in a short but fascinating  book called The Ambulance Drivers: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and a Friendship Made and Lost in War. The sad truth of the matter: Hemingway was not easy on his friends. At the beginning, the chum and drinking companion he called “Dos” performed an invaluable service by bringing Hemingway’s work to the attention of New York publishers. But later, as the esoteric works of Dos Passos (who experimented with using cinematic techniques like montage on the printed page) earned more respect than money, Hemingway resented needing to make loans to keep Dos and his wife afloat.  Eventually, as he came to do with all his (former) friends, he was cruelly lampooning Dos Passos in print

Jamie Morris is at his most captivating when he compares Hemingway and Dos Passos in terms of their feelings about war. Dos Passos, says Jamie, “had come away from the experience with the belief that war was a macabre and purposeless dance of death.” By contrast, Hemingway looked to war as a place for a man to prove himself, as well as a prime opportunity for romance. Hemingway’s own wartime experience of near-death followed by a passionate love affair is the stuff that movies are made of.  Hollywood heroes, like Hemingway himself, tend to find that the closeness to death make them feel more alive, and the vicarious excitement makes moviegoers feel alive too. 

There are also a lot of famous Hollywood movies that chronicle wartime friendships: see, for instance, the Vietnam era films The Deer Hunter and Platoon. From the example of these movies and others, friendship in time of war doesn’t fare so well in the long term.