christopher hitchens, rip

Passing of another great orator / writer / reformed-communist-revolutionary.

I strongly recommend Hitchens' biography, Hitch-22. In all likelihood, given his slow death from cancer, Hitchens will be remembered most for his vocal pro-atheist stance, and his consistency in maintaining and defending his beliefs even in the face of a fatal disease. For me, however, the more interesting and compelling side of Hitchens was his political metamorphosis from left-wing radical to staunch pro-interventionist supporter of both Iraq wars. Like great left intellectuals of the early 20th cent. (e.g. Aldous Huxley or George Orwell) Hitchens gradually grew to realize the inconsistency between the rhetoric of the left (pro-worker / underdog) and its actual policy choices and implementation of those policies (Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, or take your pick of any practicing communist country out there). Amongst many other amusing anecdotes and diatribes, Hitch-22 details Hitchens gradual realization that the libertarian and collectivist tendencies of the "left" (communist?) ideology were in profound and inherent conceptual conflict. Facing a choice, he chose liberty, freedom, and the autonomy of individuals over the dogmatic adherence to collectivism, developing a surprisingly (disappointingly!) idiosyncratic, but internally consistent and well-motivated, stance, unique on the political scene.

He will be sorely missed, both for his courage to hold consistent and reasonable views, and for his eloquence in defending them.

Explaining what the "left" would have to be like for me to identify with it.


If there is a heaven based on merit, Hitchens will go there; and if it is based on faith alone, it won't be worth going to . . .

tabula rasa

burn this mf down

~ Killer Mike, apparently keeping it real despite my worries . . .

footnote to a reference

In Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys (1995) there is a scene where Bruce Willis awakes in the present (our future) after his second time traveling episode (to 1995) to find the "scientists" who sent him on his way arranged around his bed singing "Blueberry Hill." The scene is referred to by Wikipedia as "a direct homage to the 'Dry Bones' scene in Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective."

Scientists sing to Willis.

It strikes me, however, that the scene is more of an homage to Dennis Potter himself (and his work as a whole), a talent who, upon reflection, shares much with Gilliam and surely must have influenced him greatly.

Dennis Potter wrote a sequence of powerful teleplays for British TV, including Pennies from Heaven, Brimstone and Treacle, The Singing Detective, Lipstick on Your Collar, and Karaoke. He had a cunning knack for combining powerful drama (often drawn from his own personal experience) with fantasy and humor. A trademark of all his teleplays is the thorough integration of music into the story, often involving lip-synced routines during hallucinatory or revelatory experiences by the primary characters.



In the Wikipedia referenced "Dry Bones" scene, doctors are indeed arranged around a patient (a standin for Potter himself, who also suffered from a debilitating skin condition) experiencing a combination of nervous breakdown and dissociation from reality, much as in the Twelve Monkeys scene. In Twelve Monkeys, however, the song being sung is not "Dem Bones," but "Blueberry Hill," a song referenced by Potter in the later teledrama Lipstick on Your Collar (where the Fats Domino version is lipsunc by a young, debuting Ewan McGregor):



[For completeness' sake, it's worth noting that in Gilliam's scene the doctors actually sing (relatively poorly) the classic tune, while in both Potter scenes, the songs are lipsunc.]

A crucial datum here is the dates: Potter died in 1994, succumbing to pancreatic cancer a mere 9 days after his wife's death from breast cancer. Given that Twelve Monkeys appeared in 1995, it was likely being shot or written in 1994 when Gilliam must have heard of Potter's demise. What better way to memorialize him than to insert scenes (not just the singing itself, but the setup when Willis hears "Blueberry Hill" in 1995) combining Potter's love of period music with his realization of that love through musical numbers?

Most telling of all, however, are the thematic continuities between Gilliam's work and Potter's. Of course, Gilliam is a mature artist in his own right, with a very distinctive style, so it would be a mistake to attribute too much of his voice to the influence of Potter. Nevertheless, there are telling similarities—at the very least, Gilliam must see himself as participating in the same tradition, realizing the same spirit, as Potter.

Most compelling to me is the example of Brazil (1985). Brazil, in both theme and execution, is strikingly Potter-like. Gilliam combined personal experiences of a harrowing sort (albeit with bureaucracy rather than disease) with a passionate love story, all transported to a fantastical setting. He unifies these diverse thematic elements with a compelling musical subtext, in this case the song "Brazil":



Brazil is notable for a) the smooth juxtaposition of humor and horror, and b) the rich inner life of the main character, as illustrated through numerous surreal episodes indicating his dreams / fantasies / imaginations. Both elements are found in all Potter teleplays, yet are (unfortunately) rare in cinema as a whole.

Of course, only Gilliam himself could tell how great Potter's influence, and the exact significance of the telling scene in Twelve Monkeys—what seems clear is that the scene serves as an homage to more of Potter than just The Singing Detective, and that the deep thematic coincidence in the works of Gilliam and Potter deserves further scrutiny.

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life is life

i'm sure they didn't mean that

"No smoking regulations are enforced."

~ Sign in a Philadelphia subway station