Muhammad Ali's Birthday, Goodbye Columbus, The Stupid Oscars -- I Don't Think I'll Call these Journal Entries Anymore

(Please note: I've decided to scrape the whole Journal thing. From now on these are just regular old blog posts.)

Happy Muhammad Ali’s birthday. The champ would have been 78 today. Ali, like The Beatles, has been a hero of mine since before I was even a teenager and has thus been a huge influence on me.  Here are some adjectives that only began to describe The Champ: brash, colorful, exciting, powerful, out-spoken, brave, resilient, charismatic, profound and the greatest. Ali was magnificent both inside and outside the ring. He could make the brutal sport of boxing seem almost elegant. Muhammad was quick with his fists and fast on his feet, could deliver terrible punishment and do it with a wink. Outside the ring he defied the US Government and refused to fight in the immoral war they were waging in Vietnam or participate at all in the military-industrial complex. He called out the nation’s racism and its disregard for the poor and oppressed. Ali was in many ways as important a figure in his time as Dr. King and Malcolm X. Ultimately he was accepted by the very “establishment” that he challenged. His wisdom and bravery recognized and his exploits celebrated. Muhammad Ali was an extraordinary man (as a middle school teacher I always made a point of telling my students just how extraordinary he was) and one of the great privileges of my life was shaking his hand.

Last night I watched Goodbye Columbus (1969) a film based on the novella by Philip Roth. It has just been released on DVD and I’m going to take the opportunity presented to me by having a blog to recommend you — in modern parlance — check it out. Like The Landlord (1970) which I alluded to on here earlier this week, it is very much of its time. It too holds up well after 50 years. Richard Benjamin stars. He was a big thing in the late Sixties and early Seventies, perhaps most notably for a TV show called He & She that he starred in with his wife, Paula Prentiss. His star faded rather quickly although he had numerous directing, writing and co-starring credits and is well-remembered today by old fogies such as myself. He had a nice career.  Benjamin’s co-star in Goodbye Columbus was Ali MacGraw, then an absolutely gorgeous 30 year-old on the brink of short lived stardom (the fact that she wasn’t a terribly gifted actor limited her career). She followed Columbus with the mega hit, Love Story (1970), a terrible film if wildly popular, then starred opposite Steve McQueen in The Getaway (1972), a terrific film. She subsequently was married to McQueen for five years. After the Getaway she had only 11 more acting credits, four of which were in television and none of which were in notable films.

But Benjamin and MacGraw had it going on in Columbus which was an unusual love story about a young man from The Bronx who is content to work at a public library and his love affair with a Radcliffe student from a well-to-do family. It is a funny, charming movie with hints that things could get very dark and you’re better left to see it yourself to find out whether their love flourishes or collapses. Best of all Goodbye Columbus is a surprising, quirky movie with a very different look at young love.

Greta Gerwig directing Little Women

Speaking of films, the Oscar nominations were announced a few days ago and as usual a lot of people are getting their panties in a bunch because one of their favorite films or performances failed to secure a much-deserved nomination. There are a few things to remember if you find yourself raging about an Oscar injustice. 1) It’s a goddamned awards show and therefore is a subjective process that in the general scheme of things is not important and shouldn’t effect your love for a film or your blood pressure. 2) In acting categories there are only five nominees and for best picture no more than ten, this inevitably means that some favored movies and performance are left out. It's math and again, it’s no big deal. 3) You’re going to take the Oscars seriously? For the loving of god do you know the academy’s track record? Here are some samples: They gave best picture awards to Crash, the King’s Speech and Slumdog Millionaire (and those are just injustices from the last 20 years). The gave the best picture award to How Green Was My Valley over Citizen Kane, Going My Way over Double Indemnity, An American in Paris over A Streetcar Named Desire etc. etc. etc. Consider too that the following directors and actors never won a competitive Oscar: Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Charlie Chaplin, Howard Hawks, Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Sidney Lumet, Peter O’Toole, Cary Grant, Richard Burton, Robert Mitchum, Claude Rains, John Cazale, Max Von Sydow, Montgomery Clift and Orson Welles -- to name but a few.

In recent years people have — justifiably — complained about women and people of color not receiving Oscar nods. (When you consider that Spike Lee’s brilliant, Do The Right Thing (1989) was not even nominated in the year that Driving Miss Daisy was named best picture and that last year Green Book beat out Lee’s BlackkKlansman for the award, you can see that this is neither a new nor a rectified problem). However the bigger issue — much, much bigger — is the lack of women directors and directors of color and the lack of good roles for women over 35 and for people of color. This year — like many others — there’s not a lot to choose from. Also people sometimes get it wrong when — very very justifiably — complaining about Greta Gerwig not getting nominated for best director for Little Women, they also add all the other good films directed by women. Yes they are right, several other good films were directed by women but only Gerwig was a realistic choice for a nomination (the failure to nominate her is yet another example of how little credence the Oscars should be given).

The gist of it is, screw the Oscars, they’re not worth the aggravation.