The Bombardier is Dead
I don’t know what came first, the bullshit chicken, or the absurd egg. What I know is, the America I learned about as a child is on an absurd path. It always has been. The way women and minorities were written into our Constitution was bullshit, and the modern interpretations causing the removal of rights held for half a century is completely absurd.
This absurdity is disorienting and crazy-making. We have a moron former President running to become Emperor, and a good 30% of the electorate more than willing to have him assume that role. The de-evolution of public sanity has gone beyond satire and farce. Something as silly as Trump admitting on tape that he is committing a crime, and to still be walking free with multiple contradictory excuses couldn’t be written into a screenplay because of how nonsensical it is…yet, it is. There is no comic relief because this is actual news.
And, to taunt us further, the fates have taken our anti-hero who raged against the farcical bullshit, Alan Arkin. The great Alan Arkin passed away yesterday. And while Arkin played many roles over his long career, for me he was, is, and always shall be Yossarian from “Catch-22”, by Joseph Heller.
When I first read the book several decades ago, Yossarian was the moral center in a fictional insane world. He was noble in his determination, and relatable in his emotional fragility. It was easy to think, yes, that would drive me nuts too. Then, upon seeing the film, I got to witness Arkin’s brilliance in portraying this complex blend of experiences and emotions. Heller’s story is brilliant in its mixing of horror and humor, hope and disillusionment. In my view, never was an actor more perfectly suited to a character than Alan Arkin with Yossarian.
Spring forward several decades and Catch-22 is no longer merely historical fiction in a farcical fable. In today’s banal madness, Catch-22 has become instructive and prophetic. Catch-22 is America’s “1984”, with a more relatable hero than Winston Smith. Alan Arkin’s portrayal of Captain Yossarian is my favorite portrayal of any literary character, and the character is my favorite character portraying the American experience. The character is so good, so real to me that it bleeds, it breathes, it feels. I just do not know how to take the fact that the actor who played the character so well no longer does.
06/30/2023 @ 2:43 pm
Arkin and Heller were both arts people, which is why we need more, not less of the creative arts.
Do you have HBO? I succumbed to their streaming service during covid. Recently I started (re)watching Aaron Sorkin’s serial drama Network. In the first episode, Jeff Daniel’s character gives a monologue that’ll blow your head off. No spoilers except to say it’s his answer to a symposium question about what makes America the greatest country in the world. I think this show aired in the 2010s sometime, but man, is it prescient. Sorkin dialogue is a style, and kinda lecture-y, but he has some crystalline observations. I think you’d enjoy it.
P.S. My Arkin favorite was Little Miss Sunshine 🙂
06/30/2023 @ 2:51 pm
I LOVED “Little Miss Sunshine”. I will miss Arkin like he was family.
06/30/2023 @ 5:41 pm
I watched Network and I’m quite familiar with that monologue.
Personally, I love Sorkin’s dialogue. I was into him back during Sports Night.
06/30/2023 @ 6:15 pm
Suzanne, are you referring to “Newsnight”? I tried looking it up a couple of hours ago, but could not find a stream for it. I did watch it several years ago, but I do not recall Daniels’s monologue.
06/30/2023 @ 5:40 pm
Great eulogy.
06/30/2023 @ 7:28 pm
Bitey, my brain is turning to feeble mush. ‘Network’ was the movie where Peter Finch screams he’s mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore! A good watch also.
It’s ‘Newsroom’ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1870479/. You might be able to find the scene on you tube, but if you can watch it in context, it’s more powerful with the set-up and the context. It’s the first time the audience meets the Jeff Daniels character, and in five minutes, you learn pretty much where the whole show is going.
Kosher, during the Trump administration, I rewatched The West Wing because it felt soothing amid all the crazy. Part of Sorkin’s style is super rapid dialog that requires a level of intelligence. Even so, it’s difficult to keep up. I could never seem to get all of it. Many soapbox speeches, but I subscribe to his views, so it’s fine. One of my favorite scenes is where James Brolin plays a candidate running against Sheen for a second term. They end up some place just the two of them, talking. Maybe you remember… “Crime? Boy, I don’t know, about crime”.
06/30/2023 @ 7:37 pm
“Newsroom”, yes. That’s the one I meant to ask about. I saw it when it ran originally.
As for Sorkin’s dialogue style, I have…I’m not his biggest fan. It is enjoyable at first, but seems like a gimmick after awhile. It is no doubt clever, but it seems to be saying, see how clever I am, which wears on me. Secondly, it seems like something that should be limited to a character, or certain characters…but not every character.
It’s like if someone sits down to French fries and asks, do you like ketchup? Yeah…as a condiment. But, not as a soup. And, not on cheesecake.
06/30/2023 @ 7:49 pm
He’s kind of a liberal fantasy. Your ketchup soup analogy is a good one. It’s like all the characters are him. Some of those monologues are so sharp though. The one about why we aren’t the greatest country in the world is even more relevant now.
07/01/2023 @ 2:46 am
The meaning of life is good or it would not be. I’m uncovering more creativity in so-labeled Quantum Physics than known semantics such as poetry. Now I’m subject to light deprivation. How far off I studied a snow-layered cross with symmetrically identical snow mounds adjacent. A quantification of ‘odds’ about occurrence obviously are remote. One would factor hail precipitation density the temperature of the shadowed wall wind velocity as well as the observer’s vantage. As well as the constructed metal of the image its texture windbreak location sun heat etcetera but not the profound theological liturgical ramifications of its subjective sociological anthropological influence as an holy symbol. Even an uber-retrocasuality of ‘happenstance’ per se replica observation via motion film probably ought require mathematical improbabilities as the disciplined diligence 9estimable9 would exceed civilized time.
This is not to detract from your words and magnificent image of shadow on orange, Bitney. Thanks for your presentation and space.
07/01/2023 @ 9:24 am
Jeff Daniels’ soliloquy in The Newsroom was one of the best opening scenes for any television series ever. I literally grew up in the newsrooms of New York City in the sixties. I was editing school newspapers and magazines by the time I was 15, started at ABC when I was 17 and moved to the New York Post at 18. Great series. Dated now. I haven’t read Catch 22 in years but the phrase “catch 22” entered the language and was for a while a commonplace definition of organized chaos and still remains with us now, as we live the through most incredible set of catch-22s anyone could ever have invented. We all used the phrase back then and we all knew exactly what it meant. Time to bring it back into the parlance?
09/15/2023 @ 1:12 am
Ms. Joseph Heller:
regardless the freedom of Saturday, Monday has its own guarantee: statues in the park, night wind northwest, 1305 miles, Denver to Seattle, then south a day or more, into the warm. Or Route 61, later tomorrow south, south south! To the Padre Islands, a drink or two in New Orleans, then over to Orange, its high waves, Navaro Beach, where Jaws was filmed, to Tampa St. Pete its excellent bridge (Bradenton, Anna Maria Key) if not warm, Naples, toward Alligator Way, to Key Largo, lets find a cove to play, south to the Keys, already the days an hour longer, another sundown bar, the fresh catch supper
wow: tambourine
09/20/2023 @ 12:11 am
Take a look at some Kevin Pollack YouTube videos about Alan Arkin. Pollack imitates him very well and pulled some interesting practical jokes.
09/21/2023 @ 7:29 pm
…it’s l☮nely ☮ut in space…
09/21/2023 @ 7:39 pm
She packed my bags last night
preflight