Moneyball

I saw Moneyball earlier this week on DVD.  (Thank you, Library.)

I want to start out my description of this film with some passionate outburst, to convey enthusiasm and to be persuasive, but my feelings about this film are kind of subdued.

I haven't read the book so I can't say how the screenplay differs from the book.  I have begun reading The Big Short, with which I am already deeply in love, so I'm inclined to think that a) I would probably enjoy Moneyball, too, were I to read it, and that b) Aaron Sorkin's screenplay is probably somewhat faithful to the book.

I guess what I really enjoyed about this film was that Brad Pitt's character, Ben Beame (if that's his name; I'm not sure) was really passionate about winning but he didn't always show his passion; he wasn't given a girlfriend in the screenplay (although he did have a daughter who worried about him and said irreverent things to him).  The drama of the screenplay was chiefly about whether he would succeed using an alternative strategy with has since changed baseball (for the better, I think, but I can't really comment but I'm not really a fan as an adult).

I think Jonah Hill's performance has been praised and it was good.  I felt that it was missing something:  variety, intensity, something.  I do think that an actor has to play the music he's been given and that the role didn't give much scope for the expression of a range of emotions.

I really liked Brad Pitt's performance and liked it so much because it was naturalistic, and so believable.  I like highly realistic movies.  There's a wonderful scene where Pitt, as Beame, lays out the new strategy to the assembled scouts who are giving him their recommendations for new, untried talent with a lot of potential.  I'm guessing that the scouts were not actors but scouts.  But, if they were actors, they sure were good.

Between Men by Fiona Lewis

This novel was published in 1995, and I discovered it because it has an attractive cover which reminded me of Matisse.  (It was a Matisse; it's annoying how sleepy I am, sometimes.)

Alice Wilder is the novel's protagonist, and as she herself would admit, she's in flight from her past, which includes a failed marriage. As a result, she doesn't have much direction or focus and I think this is part of how she comes to find herself, or to see herself as being, "between men." Alice is strangely passive, and torn, in the face of her lovers' behavior; but she sees clearly how unsuitable they both are.

One reviewer complained that the character of the two men is not fleshed out enough; true, but the novel is a tale told from Alice's point of view, and to her I believe both men are rather opaque.

I think it's this novel is a strange-but-understandable hybrid .. a meditation/burlesque on Alice's life and lifestyle.  

When Alice arrives in Los Angeles, she sees herself in flight from her failed marriage.  Her new job at a newspaper as a tremendous gift she's only able to obtain through her father's connections, but one she views  nevertheless as a distraction.  By the end of the novel, she's still very distracted and it seems that the busy surface of her life will prevent her from ever making the art she dreams of .. but, of course, it's in your hand.

The reviewers I read seemed feel this novel was dated or perhaps didn't live up to their expecations for what was, admittedly, only a first novel.  I felt that I perceived a sophisticated comic sensibility underneath the surface of a novel that seemed to be only about how a marginal member of our community lives now.  I'm saddened that Fiona Lewis hasn't written any more novels.  While the world neither needs more novels nor more comics .. wait, I think I'm wrong! -- I think we do need more comic novelists and I think I see potential here.  A girl who can't say no?  You don't think that's funny?  I do.  Wait, didn't they write a song about that or something? ..

Life Itself by Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was a small town boy who made good in the big city. He's had a very interesting life, and that gives him plenty of material to write about.

I was very interested in the chapters on Ingmar Bergman, Martin Scorsese and Werner Herzog. Ebert visited Cannes every year, for his job as a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, and has fun anecdotes to relate about that experience.

Possibly my favorite chapter is his chapter on Robert Mitchum. I'm sure this is partly because, like Ebert, I'm impressed by Mitchum. I'm impressed by Mitchum's charisma; Ebert is impressed by his lack of pretense. Ebert recounts a couple of visits to Mitchum on location, one in the Dingle Peninsula of County Kerry, in western Ireland, while Mitchum was filming Ryan's Daughter. Another visit was to a set in Pittsburgh; Ebert accompanied Mitchum on a drive to the set during which Mitchum's driver became badly lost. Not coping well with being either late or lost, I'm impressed by Mitchum's sang froid as he hums "76 Trombones" under his breath.

Ebert loves London, and reports that he visited London at least once a year (if not more often) for many years. His account of Jermyn Street, and especially 22 Eyrie Mansion, is funny and engaging. He has a newspaperman's eye for characters and the telling anecdote or detail.

This book is clearly a collection of blog posts. One of the reasons that Ebert is so prolific, I think, is that it is fairly easy for him to continue writing despite the lasting effects of his surgeries, and writing is something that he connects him to the outside world. I'm guessing that continuing to be connected with readers and new fans helps to sustain him. As this book shows, his life before illness was busy and full of work, relationships, travel and socializing.

He talks about going to an annual conference in Boulder, a conference he attended each year for many years. It sounds fun. He acknowledges at the end of this chapter that, as the conference is really a forum for people to talk to each other, he won't go again.

In many ways, this book is a summing up of a full life. It's mostly about the joy of knowing interesting people and telling fun stories about them. In fact, that is what the word "memoir" means to me: a collection of stories about people one has known. But he does reflect on what he's learned and his conclusion is that life is mostly about creating happiness for others and by doing so, for oneself. I think that's a sentiment that Gretchen Rubin would endorse.

One of my favorite bits of this book is when Ebert is working for Russ Meyer, writing the script of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, an X-rated film. Ebert and Meyer are working in a suite of offices:

"We fell into a routine. At nights we would dine like trenchermen, Russ insisting on large cuts of beef to keep my strength up. On yellow legal pads we made up the story day by day. I would write from ten to six. Russ kept all the office doors open. He equated writing with typing. When my typewriter fell silent, he would call, "What's wrong?" One day, at about page 122 of the screenplay, an inspiration struck. I entered Russ's office dramatically.

"I've got news for you," I said. "Z-Man is a woman. He's been a woman all along."

"I like it," Meyer said.

Before I close, I must share with you what Ebert shared with his readers: the secret of his speed as a writer is not that he writes more quickly than others but that he spends less time not writing than others. I think some of the writers I know would warmly endorse this bit of good advice; I know I always struggle over my beginnings and often cut them by two thirds or rewrite them entirely. A journalist he worked with on the Champaign News-Gazette told Ebert not to waste time working over his lead before he wrote the story: after all, he said, how do you know what the story's about until you get to the end? So write your story or your paper and then go back and rewrite the beginning to make it one that matches your ending.

Reading Now

I've read the Steve Jobs biography up to his founding of NEXT; I think I wanted to put it aside, a little bit, because on a certain level I felt a need to digest the notion of his having succeeded, and failed, and been fired from his own company, all by the age of 30.

As Isaacson points out, starting NEXT is just the second act of a great three act drama. He mentions that Arthur Rock, an investor and Apple board member, said that getting fired was the greatest thing that ever happened to Jobs. Isaacson goes on to say that that's not exactly true. Instead, he says, starting NEXT was the learning experience that helped Jobs the most: he had in NEXT, Isaacson writes, a kind of laboratory in which he could indulge all his whims and obsessions without restraint and when his ideas flopped, spectacularly, he had a chance to learn. I read the beginning of this chapter twice, and as I read it the second time, I realized that it echoed something Daniel Pink said in his Johnny Bunko book: dare to make spectacular mistakes. I find myself feeling that as readable as Isaacson's book is, it tells the story of very eventful years at a great clip and this is why, I think, I need to put it aside for a while so that I can digest it.

Meanwhile, I'm reading Ebert's book. He's a journalist, and writes in a straightforward style that is not as stylish, perhaps, or as passionate, or even as interesting, as that of some other memoirists I've read in the past twelve months. But he tells stories, and the stories he tells are interesting. I enjoyed reading his chapters on alcoholism, Robert Mitchum, Martin Scorsese, and Zonka (Zonka is no one you've ever heard of before - not a celebrity - and that's part of the charm of this tale: it's just a guy, telling a story about his friend, Zonka; it's like when you're at a bar and someone tells you a story so fine, or so surprising, that you're tempted to say, "You should write a book" but you don't, because you'd better have a pretty good reason to write a book).

What I'm reading now

Over the past few weeks, I've been occasionally picking up and rereading How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill (is that his name? I can't remember). Except for his discussion of Plato, a very readable book. His discussion of St. Augustine reminded me of the fabulous set piece in Flann O'Brien's The Dalkey Archive. Since Sunday, I've been reading Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, which is an incredibly readable and entertaining book. I've just read about his ouster from Apple, and I think I want to re-read it again. Today I read a little of Left Early, Took My Dog and also a little of Adam Gopnik's From Paris to the Moon. Gopnik's book seems very entertaining. It reminds me that I've just been dipping into Life Itself, Roger Ebert's memoir, which has some fabulous memories of London, Cannes, and some other parts of France. I look forward to returning to it.

Clare Tomalin's Pepys

Reading around in Clare Tomalin's biography of Pepys. I started to read about his early life, before and up to attending St. Paul's school; then the next time I picked up the book I found him at 1684: planning to propose reforms of the Navy and Charles dying, suddenly, of a stroke, and then working with James until his unpopular Catholicism led to William of Orange being invited to take the English throne and Pepys settling into an active retirement. The effect of this is that I've read several references to Elizabeth, and more to her brother, Balty, but haven't actually read about her marriage to Pepys.

Tomalin's book is very readable and engaging; obviously, I don't have the thread or a thread. The Pepys who knows everyone and is everywhere, including court, is here but the Pepys who cared passionately about reforming Naval practices is at the forefront in what I'm reading now. After James departs the scene, Tomalin answers the very question I'd been wondering: why was Pepys so loyal to James? Tomalin says it was because James gave him preferment. It seems a barely adequate explanation, yet I'm sure that it's right.

Two things I admire greatly about this book:  the pictures and the captions, and Tomalin's prose style (OK, that's three things).  Tomalin's prose is so easy; also, it's apparent that she's done so much research but does not feel a need to share it all with us (Thank You - "Clare Tomalin reads the boring bits so you don't have to!").  Finally, she clearly thinks that Pepys' diary is a work on the same level with the most important works in English literature and I guess she's saying that he really invented the genre.  I definitely have seen Pepys as a kind of rubbernecker/groupie extraordinaire, and then, more recently, as a dutiful and pioneering civil servant in a golden age for the contributions of astoundingly gifted albeit middle class men (Milton, Wren, Newton, etc.).  (Although it must be said that he seems to have been part of a group of civil servants who, dismayed by the Stuarts' lassitude, looked upon the Cromwell Interregnum as an era of good and efficient government.)

In fact, the question of social mobility:  what it is and how to get it, is almost a subplot in the story of his life.  Pepys is a great striver.  The ardor of his striving both makes me feel that all of our aspirations are, at the same time, ridiculous and woefully inadequate.  It must be noted that Tomalin is unafraid to point out that Pepys was inconsistent, jealous, vain, very controlling, lecherous, occasionally cold and dishonest.  (It is his coldness I mind most.)

What I love about this book is that I believe that if you picked it up, with no knowledge or interest in either Tomalin herself or Pepys, you would quickly find out that it doesn't matter.  You don't have to share Tomalin's respect for her subject to find her dizzying summary of an insanely busy and well-connected life interesting.

An issue, of course, is that the diary itself is so interesting and that Pepy's life is somewhat lopsided:  his early career offers rising action but the approximately ten years covered by his diary is electrically compelling and, while his career as a civil servant continues until James II's exile in 1688, after that point his career ends and his life is far less interesting.

So Pepys' interest for us is primarily his role as an observer rather than as a doer.  But his naval career did give him an opportunity to play an important role and be a doer and it occurs to me that would be well worth loyalty to a highly flawed manager.

You perhaps know that Tomalin has also written well-received biographies of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens.  I can't help feeling that I would enjoy these, too.  This year is the 200th anniversary of Dickens' birth, and yes, I find myself feeling more respect for him, too.