Millicent Hearst produces first-born, male heir
George Randolph Hearst (1904-1972), the oldest of five sons. William Randolph Hearst had married Millicent (1882-1974) the previous year, in 1903. He was twenty years her senior. He had been seeing her since she was sixteen.
Life is a jigsaw puzzle.
You will recall, Gentle Reader, that we had been talking about Hearst because of his close proximity, building-wise, to a parcel of land J. Paul Getty had acquired and was going to raze to the ground for the Getty Oil HQ, except the city of Los Angeles stopped him from wiping out the entire block (the current Harbor Building at the top of Crenshaw was the final result), and "in gratitude" Getty gave the city one of the remaining structures to use as an official residence for the Mayor. Think Gracie Mansion, with Hearst's investment property on Wilshire like one of those appartment buildings overlooking Gracie Square. Same kind of set up, sort of.
In any case, you all remember Citizen Kane, the 1941 RKO film Orson Welles directed which tells the story of Charles Foster Kane, who we all know was really William Randolph Hearst. In the film, an investigative journalist goes around trying to find out the real story, told in flashbacks. about this man Kane. Through this device we get to meet the lonely wife Susan, doing a jigsaw puzzle in the vast castle Kane has built, a princess in a fairy-tale prison. She refuses to tell us anything interesting, like what "Rosebud" means, which is Citizen Kane's dying word. [Note: my use of bold is random and not always sign of a link, sorry].
As an aside, Millicent never officially divorced Hearst because of his affair with the actress Marion Davies, although she did try to keep the boys out of California and away from the scandal. It's always the children you worry about, isn't it. Recently an heir of Hearst's was rumored to be attending a private party here in the building Hearst built, where he had kept a suite for himself and Marion. Call me old-fashioned, but it struck me as being in rather bad taste, after all Millicent did to protect the boys from the influence of their father's whore, and as it turned out, her great-great-grandson did not show up. Wise, I think.
Look, I read a lot of scripts which I can't tell you anything about except that lately there's been a rash of them dealing with complex current affairs -- think upcoming renditions of "Syriana" or "All the President's Men," or a new version of something as scary as "The Manchurian Candidate." You get the idea. Stories Ripped from the Headlines, coming soon to a theatre near you.
Here's the problem: without being calculating about it but more as a kind of intuitive gut response, we like a story that gives us a sense of closure. We want our audiences to leave the theater feeling as if a conflict has been resolved. Sure, might have been a tough go, might be complicated, but resolved. We don't like stories that leave our audiences feeling jittery and unsatisfied. Not the way to build a box office, when the exit polls are full of "Made me Angry. Made me want to go and kill somebody." See my point?
So, even if Hollywood tries to talk about the Big Things Going On, it is going to try and do it in a way that offers us a comprehensible vision of the incomprehensible. I mean, it's going to find answers to the Difficult Questions. Which is to say, it is on the Side of the Status Quo, whether it thinks it is, or not. Weird, huh, when all your friends and family in the middle of the country think we're out here being all radical and fomenting rebellion. No, no, no, that's what those French politicians during the period we call the Terror did. They whipped up their audiences and sent them out the door to march on Versailles, chop the head off the Princesse de Lambale for being friends with the Queen, chase down the greedy aristocracy, overthrow the monarchy -- that sort of thing. Hollywood doesn't do that. It wants its unruly mob to storm the concession stand, and knock each other down getting to Target or Walmart for the Tie-In Toys and Merchandise.
Hollywood wants to make the unacceptable into the understandable. Hollywood, you will all be relieved to know, is no friend to the Revolution. Like the Media (what used to be called "News") Hollywood is only interested in Change if it comes with a story that "has legs" -- that will run, as they say over at Faux or CNN or MSNBC, for a long long time (think Sequel and Prequel). The process in the world of Media is what we call "shaping the news" although you might want to call it manipulation, or even, "propaganda."
Call them "contractors;" do NOT call them "mercenary soldiers of fortune." See? You can get a lot of mileage out of innocent contractors just trying to make a buck, going off to do hard labor by the sweat of their brow in a foreign country in order to help spread freedom (and the Word of Our Savior too, maybe). The story that American taxpayers are being bilked by American corporations for billions in order to send sociopathic killers into foreign countries, or worse, into American cities, to murder civilians -- why, wait, that would be BOURNE ULTIMATUM, starring Matt Damon, right?
Life may indeed be a jigsaw puzzle. Whether it's being put together by a lonely woman in a sparkly evening gown may be a stretch, though. That may be giving our Divine Creator too much credit, or our Artistic Director too much license. Life isn't always that pretty, is it.
At the end of the day, movie goers, like regular people, want answers. They want the pieces to fit, they want life to be Explicable. Infuriating maybe, but at least you have an answer, and you walk back to the parking garage or into a crisp autumn night feeling thrilled or enlightened or sad, but at least you're taking with you something more than just that popcorn kernal stuck in a filling, to dig at with your tongue as you battle the exit traffic. You want to feel that for your hard-earned money you've been given a piece, even a tiny fragment, that helps you form a glimpse of the whole. That at least you found that funny-shaped bit of sky, with the rest of the church steeple, and the wing of that blackbird.
But sometimes the bastard doesn't get what he deserves.
Sometimes there isn't any closure.
Sometimes the only answer is the unthinkable.
And Rosebud wasn't a sled.
In any case, you all remember Citizen Kane, the 1941 RKO film Orson Welles directed which tells the story of Charles Foster Kane, who we all know was really William Randolph Hearst. In the film, an investigative journalist goes around trying to find out the real story, told in flashbacks. about this man Kane. Through this device we get to meet the lonely wife Susan, doing a jigsaw puzzle in the vast castle Kane has built, a princess in a fairy-tale prison. She refuses to tell us anything interesting, like what "Rosebud" means, which is Citizen Kane's dying word. [Note: my use of bold is random and not always sign of a link, sorry].
As an aside, Millicent never officially divorced Hearst because of his affair with the actress Marion Davies, although she did try to keep the boys out of California and away from the scandal. It's always the children you worry about, isn't it. Recently an heir of Hearst's was rumored to be attending a private party here in the building Hearst built, where he had kept a suite for himself and Marion. Call me old-fashioned, but it struck me as being in rather bad taste, after all Millicent did to protect the boys from the influence of their father's whore, and as it turned out, her great-great-grandson did not show up. Wise, I think.
Look, I read a lot of scripts which I can't tell you anything about except that lately there's been a rash of them dealing with complex current affairs -- think upcoming renditions of "Syriana" or "All the President's Men," or a new version of something as scary as "The Manchurian Candidate." You get the idea. Stories Ripped from the Headlines, coming soon to a theatre near you.
Here's the problem: without being calculating about it but more as a kind of intuitive gut response, we like a story that gives us a sense of closure. We want our audiences to leave the theater feeling as if a conflict has been resolved. Sure, might have been a tough go, might be complicated, but resolved. We don't like stories that leave our audiences feeling jittery and unsatisfied. Not the way to build a box office, when the exit polls are full of "Made me Angry. Made me want to go and kill somebody." See my point?
So, even if Hollywood tries to talk about the Big Things Going On, it is going to try and do it in a way that offers us a comprehensible vision of the incomprehensible. I mean, it's going to find answers to the Difficult Questions. Which is to say, it is on the Side of the Status Quo, whether it thinks it is, or not. Weird, huh, when all your friends and family in the middle of the country think we're out here being all radical and fomenting rebellion. No, no, no, that's what those French politicians during the period we call the Terror did. They whipped up their audiences and sent them out the door to march on Versailles, chop the head off the Princesse de Lambale for being friends with the Queen, chase down the greedy aristocracy, overthrow the monarchy -- that sort of thing. Hollywood doesn't do that. It wants its unruly mob to storm the concession stand, and knock each other down getting to Target or Walmart for the Tie-In Toys and Merchandise.
Hollywood wants to make the unacceptable into the understandable. Hollywood, you will all be relieved to know, is no friend to the Revolution. Like the Media (what used to be called "News") Hollywood is only interested in Change if it comes with a story that "has legs" -- that will run, as they say over at Faux or CNN or MSNBC, for a long long time (think Sequel and Prequel). The process in the world of Media is what we call "shaping the news" although you might want to call it manipulation, or even, "propaganda."
Call them "contractors;" do NOT call them "mercenary soldiers of fortune." See? You can get a lot of mileage out of innocent contractors just trying to make a buck, going off to do hard labor by the sweat of their brow in a foreign country in order to help spread freedom (and the Word of Our Savior too, maybe). The story that American taxpayers are being bilked by American corporations for billions in order to send sociopathic killers into foreign countries, or worse, into American cities, to murder civilians -- why, wait, that would be BOURNE ULTIMATUM, starring Matt Damon, right?
Life may indeed be a jigsaw puzzle. Whether it's being put together by a lonely woman in a sparkly evening gown may be a stretch, though. That may be giving our Divine Creator too much credit, or our Artistic Director too much license. Life isn't always that pretty, is it.
At the end of the day, movie goers, like regular people, want answers. They want the pieces to fit, they want life to be Explicable. Infuriating maybe, but at least you have an answer, and you walk back to the parking garage or into a crisp autumn night feeling thrilled or enlightened or sad, but at least you're taking with you something more than just that popcorn kernal stuck in a filling, to dig at with your tongue as you battle the exit traffic. You want to feel that for your hard-earned money you've been given a piece, even a tiny fragment, that helps you form a glimpse of the whole. That at least you found that funny-shaped bit of sky, with the rest of the church steeple, and the wing of that blackbird.
But sometimes the bastard doesn't get what he deserves.
Sometimes there isn't any closure.
Sometimes the only answer is the unthinkable.
And Rosebud wasn't a sled.
All of life is a question. Where did we come from? Why is Bush still president? Why did that guy run screaming when I asked him out? A movie is the one place I can get an answer -- and if somebody hunky wants to undress in the process, who am I to say no?