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PAGE 6-May 22, 1975
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Film Classifications
A - Section I - Morally Unobjectionable for General Patronage
A - Section II - Morally Unobjectionable for Adults, Adolescents
A — Section III — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults
A - Section IV - Morally Unobjectionable for Adults, Reservations
B - Morally Objectionable in Part for All
C - Condemned \
USCC DIVISION FOR FILM AND BROADCASTING
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CORNBREAD, EARL, AND ME (AlP) ...
explores complexity of black-white relations.
A black youth, “Cornbread,” is shot
accidentally by two policemen, one black and
one white, in the ghetto of a large city,
presumably Los Angeles. The slain youth was
a high school basketball star, a well-liked boy,
who stayed clear of the drugs and gang
activities that had destroyed so many his age.
The city administration, unwilling to admit
the police made a mistake, try a coverup
whose logical result is the dishonoring of the
memory of the dead athlete. His outraged and
grief-stricken parents engage a lawyer, played
by Moses Gunn, to clear their son’s name. The
city applies pressure upon the witnesses, and
events come to a climax at the coroner’s
inquest.
CORNBREAD, EARL, AND ME is a
remarkable film in many ways, marred,
however, by a Saroyan-like romanticism that
would have all evil vanish in the presence of a
little boy who tells the truth and by an
ambiguity regarding the state of mind of the
two policemen that obviously flows from the
demands of the plot and not from
characterization.
The film has two main virtues: first of all,
it , shows some appreciation for the
complexity of black-white relations. While the
worst villain is white, blacks, too, are shown
as willing to hold on to their own in going
along with the commission of injustice -- some
with agonized consciences, some with callous
indifference. The two policemen are
portrayed sympathetically, two dedicated
men doing a dangerous, thankless job, with a
bond of mutual esteem between them which
transcends their difference in color.
The film’s strongest element, however, is its
acting. Films with serious black themes, since
they are so rarely made, tend to attract the
very best black actors. Rosalind Cash is
outstanding as the mother of the young boy
who idolized the dead athlete, and so is
Thaimus Rasulala as her lover, Charley, whose
frustration at a system where the cards are
stacked against him breaks out in terrible
rages. Moses Gunn brings a remarkable
presence and a restrained passion to his role
of the lawyer, whose own victory over the
establishment, by becoming a success,
threatens to turn him into someone who is an
outsider everywhere. The tension evident in
his scene with Bernie Casey, who plays the
injured black policeman, is the stuff that fine
drama is made of. (A-lll)
THE TERRORISTS (Fox) ... hold a
government official for human ransom, and
hold audiences on edge.
A group of political terrorists, nationality
and cause unspecified, seize the British
ambassador to “Scandinavia” at his country
villa and demand the release of their comrades
from a British prison. The chief of security,
played by Sean Connery, a good actor but an
unlikely “Scandinavian,” reluctantly goes
along with the British request that the terms
be agreed to. The British official on the scene
assures Connery that his government is privy
to information that will enable them to
capture the terrorists once they have left the
country.
Before this operation can get underway,
however, a hijacked plane lands, and the head
of the hijacking team contacts the leader of
the terrorists, warning him that the British are
on to him. The terrorists then demand that
they be put on board the plane.
Connery is given the job of frustrating
them without spilling any blood, and so the
action shifts to the airport and the game
begins in earnest.
One has the impression that THE
TERRORISTS could have been a far better
film. The acting and the photography (by
Sven Nykvist) are good, and the suspense and
excitement so necessary to this kind of film
are well maintained. But there is no political
dimension -- a serious drawback given the
dramatic context. Had the terrorists been
Irish, for example, as one suspects had been
the intention at first, some humanity and
believable motivation might have been
brought into what is essentially a chilly,
abstract exercise.
Yet some remnants of seriousness remain.
At one point, the leader of the terrorists and
the ambassador engage in a brief exchange in
which the terrorist charges the ambassador, a
former commando, with having carried out
the same sort of activities that he blames the
terrorists for. The ambassador protests that
that was war, and the leader replies that so is
this. Later, a passenger on board the hijacked
plane, a man who is obviously a retired British
officer, risks his life in a vain attempt to wrest
a gun away from one of the hijackers. A twist
at the end reveals how futile his simple,
decent courage would have been in any event.
These are just isolated indications of what
might have been, however. Ironically, the lack
of political context not only weakens the
motivation throughout but also makes the
conclusion so arbitrary that, ope would
suspect, it will send most of the audience out
of the theater wondering what happened. The
error here is a basic one: while not
transcending the suspense melodrama genre,
THE TERRORISTS tries, in its conclusion, to
achieve a level of irony possible only if it had
done so. (A-lll)
THE MAIDS (AFT) -- Some plays should
never be produced, much less made into
big-budget movies, and Genet’s THE MAIDS
just might fall into that category. The play is
an anatomy of human cruelty and fantasy in
which two sisters (Susannah York and Glenda
Jackson) serve as housemaids to a wealthy
gentlewoman (Vivien Merchant). When their
mistress is out for the day, which happens
most days, the maids “dress up” and act out a
cruel little game of mistress-servant which
usually "ends” in the pretend murder of the
mistress. As time passes (yawningly) the line
between fantasy and reality becomes more
and more hazy for the two young women,
and the play finds its climax in an ambiguous
scene that will leave the few that care to
guessing about whether an actual murder
occurred - or was it merely playtime again?
On these merits Genet’s play stands as a
dubious lesson in perversity and repression.
Why it was made into a film is another
matter, made all the more mysterious because
of the disorienting combination of superb
acting by the three women with a lacklustre
production directed by Christopher Miles. All
in all, these maids are not very pleasant
company. (A-IV)
LIVE A LITTLE, STEAL A LOT (AlP)
Although this film is based on the bizarre
theft of the Star of India from New York’s
Museum of Natural History by a character
known as Murph the Surf, an event which
furnished newspapers with sensational copy
for months, one would never know it from
this clumsy effort. The film uses a number of
flashbacks to help us understand how and
why it all happened, and yet there is no
reason why anyone should be interested. Don
Stroud is suitably adolescent as Murph,
Robert Conrad is suitably tough as his partner
in crime, and Donna Mills is suitably blank as
his girlfriend (only Luther Adler and Paul
Stewart interject a bit of personality in their
bit parts). It is ho longer news that crime is
glamorous until the final reel and peek-a-boo
sex is dreary. The only thing which might
have saved this material was style, and Marvin
Chomsky fails to deliver that. (B)
TV Movies
USCC DIVISION FOR FILM AND BROADCASTING
MONDAY, MAY 26 — 9:00 p.m. (NBC) ~
SKY HEI$T (sic) -- Frank Gorshen and
Stephanie Powers are an unlikely but deadly
serious pair of thieves bent on relieving an
airline of a cool $10 million in gold bullion -
heavy! To enhance their nefarious scheme,
they kidnap a trio of sky cops (Los Angeles
sky cops, naturally) - Don Meredith, Larry
Wilcox and Ray Vitte. The idea is to hold the
cops as hostages, a kind of gilt-edged
insurance against interference by other police
officers. Well, when it comes to high-flying
pilot TV films, there’s nothing like thinking
big. But why do all the cops live in L.A.?
TUESDAY, MAY 27 — 8:30 p.m. (NBC) ~
PUNCH AND JODY - Repeat of a TV film
starring Glenn Ford as a ne’er do well circus
roust-about who - gasp! -- unexpectedly runs
into his 11-year-old daughter (Pam Griffin),
whom he has never seen before. Touching but
very corny.
THURSDAY, MAY 29 — 9:00 p.m. (CBS)
- GOING HOME (1971) - Somewhere
between the concept and the execution of
this film something has been lost that might
possibly have made it a mature, memorable
experience. As it is, the story of a young man
(Jan-Michael Vincent) who, as a child, saw his
father (Robert Mitchum) kill his mother in
drunken rage and now seeks out the paroled
father to avenge the mother’s death, has all
the cliches -- and none of the serious character
analysis - of a course in abnormal
psychology. Without any documentation we
are asked simply to grant that the childhood
experience has scarred the boy for life, that
the young man will now exorcise his own
demons by becoming his father’s sexual rival
by raping the father’s new bride-to-be (Brenda
Vaccaro). GOING HOME’S surprising lack of
moral perspective for the actions of its
characters and its lack of any form of
meaningful plot resolution — father and son
simply part at the end -- leave the viewer
questioning what it was producer-director
Herbert Lednard meant to say and to whom
he wished to say it. (A-lll)
9:00 p.m. (NBC) - TERROR ON THE
40TH FLOOR - Repeat of a made-for
television thriller about a fire that traps
several workers on the top floor of a high-rise
office building. The plot is one of movieland’s
oldest chestnuts, and the trick here will be to
make it all seem fresh and exciting. The twist
is that the people become trapped following
an after-hours office party, which means that
no one below realizes they are still up in the
office. John Forsythe is properly stuffy as the
executive who tries to lead the way to safety,
Anjanette Comer is a flirt from the typing
pool, and ex-Dallas Cowboy QB Don Meredith
plays the office Romeo. For stark realism, the
producers actually burned a condemned
building in Long Beach, Calif.
FRIDAY, MAY 30 — 8:00 p.m. (CBS) -
ONE MORE TiME (1970) - Possibly the
worst movie of the decade, ONE MORE
TIME stars comedy team Peter Lawford and
Sammy Davis, Jr., in a sequel to SALT AND
PEPPER. They chase about the English
countryside in a contrived and irrelevant
diamond smuggling episode that is horribly
forced and unfunny. The timing of all the
gags is off, and the plot and dialogue are
predictable and stupid. The film was directed,
if that is the word, by Jerry Lewis. (A-lll)
9:30 p.m. (CBS) - THE PEOPLE NEXT
DOOR (1970) - Teenage use of drugs in
middle-class suburbia is the subject of this
film adaptation by J. P. Miller of his 1968
award-winning program on the CBS Television
Playhouse. Miller’s screen credits (BEHOLD A
PALE HORSE, DAYS OF WINE AND
ROSES) would lead a viewer to expect an
insightful film on this national problem.
Instead, PEOPLE is a drearily moralizing,
one-dimensional melodrama making the
now-too-familiar distinctions between parents
who drink and hide their sexual indiscretions,
and the kids who smoke pot and flaunt theirs.
The story revolves around Maxie (Deborah
Winters) who grooves with the boys and
‘trips’ on LSD to escape the reality of her
hypocritical parents Eli Wallach and Julie
Harris. The people next door, the local high
school principal Hal Holbrook and his wife
Cloris Leachman are, if anything, even more
at fault because, as the film reveals, Maxie has
been obtaining her supply from the principal’s
son. The one supposedly authentic person in
the morass is Maxie’s long-haired musician
brother (Stephen McHattie), who eventually
teaches his bumbling father about life and
raising children, though the boy has been
silently aware of Maxie’s aberrations from the
start. The film’s resolution seems to imply
that what psychiatrists and drug clinics
cannot cure a good walloping by mother can.
PEOPLE addresses the issues of drug abuse,
the generation gap and the complacent
middle-aged middle-class with an
irresponsibility that does a disservice to all
concerned. Rather than make the necessary
heavy cuts for TV, why didn’t CBS simply
rebroadcast their original Television
Playhouse production? (C)
AYMARA MUSICIANS ~
Singers and instrumentalists
rehearse religious songs in Aymara
to be taped for radio broadcast. In
the front row, second from right,
is Sister Mary Peter Bruce, who is
in charge of the Radio San Gabriel
evangelization department in La
Paz, Bolivia. (NC Photo)
BOOK REVIEWS
ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA,
by Robert Nozick. Basic Books, New
York, 381 pages. $12.95.
REVIEWED BY BARRETT McGURN
(NC News Service)
Were this a perfect world, how would
it be organized?
This is the ambitious question Prof.
Nozick, a Harvard philosopher, poses
for himself. His answers are both
thoughtful and debatable. His volume is
this year’s National Book Award winner
for philosophy and religion.
The range of possible responses set
out by Prof. Nozick is broad indeed - all
the way from anarchy on the one hand
to Marxist statism and the biggest of
conservative big government on the
other. It is the author’s controversial
opinion that “a minimal state” is the
only morally tolerable formula. By a
minimal state he means one which
provides police and troops enough to
protect free men from crime and
invasion, but one which stops just there
without getting into the vast range of
official activities now familiar under
almost every sky.
The author sets out first to demolish
the dreams of the anarchists, those who
see the individual as an island unto
himself, a man undisturbed by and
unconcerned with others. Crime and
imperialism are facts of life which no
theorist can blink so there is no
question that men have the right to
close ranks among themselves, setting
up the “minimal state” as their
safeguard against wrongdoers at home
and afield, Prof. Nozick reasons.
But ought government go far beyond
that? Not in the author’s views. Should
government see to it that the health of
the people is provided for, that doctors’
services reach out to the ill of this and
other lands? Prof. Nozick has a real
problem with that. Doctors after all, he
says, are people who have invested time,
energy and wealth in the development
of marketable skills. Why should the
government step in between the doctor
and those patients able to reward him
best for the health-giving talents he has
developed? If you insist that the health
of scattered populations is indeed a
proper concern of government, then the
writer demands whether you would
carry that logic further to include
farmers. After all the starving of the
world need food. Why shouldn’t the
logic of socialized medicine be extended
to food growers, diverting the fruit of
their efforts to the hungriest rather than
to the economically strong? Should you
favor such a response then the professor
pushes it further. If doctors and farmers
are to be nationalized why should not
barbers give shaves and haircuts to the
hairiest and least kempt and why
shouldn’t gardeners be sent out to mow
the lawns which are the most neglected?
So far as Prof. Novick is concerned it is
clear that gardeners, barbers, farmers
and doctors are all free agents who
should be left unhampered by the
minimal state as they market their
individual wares. Issue will be taken
with Nozick here by the many who are
satisfied that in a world of great
extremes between haves and have nots,
and between disease-ridden and starving
populations and those enjoying luxury,
that government must supplement
private charity.
Is there such a thing as utopia? On a
planet beset with daily crises it seems an
odd academic exercise to ponder
whether there could be a perfect state in
human affairs, but Nozick tackles the
question nonetheless. His answer is a
qualified yes. There cannot be any one
formula for utopia, he says. One man’s
meat is another man’s poison, to fall
back on ancient wisdom. No one society
can be cut exactly to the measure of
such diverse persons as Thomas Merton,
Bertrand Russell, Buddha, Elizabeth
Taylor, Moses, Yogi Barra, Einstein,
Henry Ford, Frank Sinatra, Thoreau,
Gandhi and the Baron Rothschild, “or
of oneself and of one’s parents.”
Alexander Gray was right in “The
Socialist Tradition”. (Harper and Row,
1968) when he said that “no utopia has
ever been described in which any sane
man would on any condition consent to
live.” But in denying that any one
preconceived formula for a perfect
society could be devised from scratch
one ought not to conclude that there is
not a “formula” for seeking utopia,
Prof. Nozick goes on. There is such a
formula, he insist: each individual under
the umbrella of the minimal state ought
to be free to join with like-minded
contemporaries in communities of each
group’s devising, monks in their
monasteries, Israeli agricultural workers
in their kibbutzim, hippies in their
communes. By force of example each
group would be free to attract or repel
recruits as each case might be. Thus
many free choices over a long period
might work closer to the ideal society.
What would be the likely
characteristic of such a society? Prof.
Nozick cannot improve on the concept
of federations and checks and balances.
Were it not for the vastness of
present-day American big government
the utopia toward which the
philosopher gropes would seem to be
not all that different from what
Americans already have, though it is
true that Prof. Nozick’s minimal state
ideas presumably would strip the
American domestic welfare and foreign
aid programs of much of their strength
at a cost in turmoil at home and
suffering abroad which the reader can
only surmise.
The more “rrioral” world Prof.
Nozick offers will be challenged by
many who feel that they are quite
properly their brothers’ friends and
“keepers,” but the author’s ponderings
deserve attention and study. Do not
expect easy reading, however. The test'
is often tortuous. Gold can be panned
from Prof. Nozick’s stream only by
many tiring shakings of one’s sieve.
(Barrett McGum has been an American
government spokesman in Rome, Saigon and
Washington for the past decade and is the
author of “A Reporter Looks at the
Vatican ”).
<•
rf, V LIFE IN MUSIC
BY THE DAMEANS
The Bertha Butt Boogie - Part 1
Bump-Bump-Bubbadump-Bow-Bump-Bump-Bump-Bubbadump
The party was jumping when Bertha got off of her stump
The whistles were blowin’ and everybody did the bump
But all the time Bertha had been working on a goodie
Now folks call it the Bertha Bump Boogie.
Chorus
When Bertha Butt did her goodie
She started the Bertha Butt Boogie
No questions!
When Bertha got moving her hips were humming in the wind.
The ground started shaking - no grass grew where she’d been.
The music was hopping, the crowd had formed a ring -
Her sisters yelled, “Boogie, Bertha, do your thing.”
(For your information, Bertha had three sisters, Betty Butt
Bella Butt, and Bathsheba Butt)
Chorus and Bump, Bump, Bubbadump, etc.
“Hey, Leroy, get away from that woman. “That boy will never
leam, Oh, Oh!
Here comes the Troglodyte. “Come here. Sock it to me.”
Bertha stood back and yelled, “Betty, Bella, Bathsheba!”
And the Butt sisters backed her up when she yelled, “I need you!”
The Troglodyte, Leroy, Luther and the Butt Sisters
All knew that the Bertha Butt Boogie was now the thing to do.
Chorus and Bump, Bump, etc.
(Bertha “I’ll sock it to you, Daddy” (Troglodyte) “Me like. Come
here woman, woman.”
by J. Castor and J. Pruitt
Jimpire Music, Inc.
I remember when Jimmy Castor came with Troglodyte in 1972. At that time I
asked in this column if the song was the great put-on of 1972 or the type of
novelty song that is just funny. Well, he’s back again with Bertha of the Butt
Sisters and her “Bertha Butt Boogie-part I.”
Jimmy Castor tells a story rather than sings a song. He talks his way through
the record, assuming the voice of each of his characters. The musical sound
effects are funny.
Story telling seems to be a lost art these days. We seem to have lost tolerance
and time for those who could lead us through the land of make believe and the
time of once upon a time. Giants and ghosts and genies with magical powers
were so real when we were young and our imaginations ran wild through the
world of fantasy.
Some say you’re supposed to outgrow such nonsense. Others insist that there
is too much work to be done to fool around making up foolish stories. Still
others warn of the danger of escaping into the fantasies of one’s own mind and
losing touch with the “real” world.
The lyrics can, of course, be taken jn two ways. But I see the song as
something of a fantasy and Jimmy Castor as a storyteller going back and forth
between the real and the imaginary.
Reading novels is one type of fantasy exercise. Watching TV and soap operas
is another. Then there are people like Bill Cosby, Woody Allen and Mel Brooks
who tell stories which cross back and forth between the real and the fantasy.
These are the funny men who invite us to stretch our imaginations to be able
to laugh at a little disjointed reality. (I wonder, for instance, how Frankenstein
would react to meeting the Troglodyte). Things like this are laughable and help
us keep our balance when things around us seem so morbid.
Jimmy Castor may have gone a bit overboard into the possibly erotic in
making up his own funny little world, but in the middle of what we often call a
“crazy, mixed-up” time, when bad news gets more attention than good, you
sometimes have to look at the escape value of inventing fantasies and wonder
who really is crazy and mixed up after all.
(All correspondence should be directed to: The Dameans, P. O. Box 2108, Baton Rouge,
La. 70821)