The Fisher of Men and The Rock

© Pan Books Ltd

Christmas is still a month away and I have made up my mind what books I am going to read leading up to my favourite season of the year. Obviously, the two novels I have selected reflect the spirit of Christmas—The Big Fisherman by Lloyd C. Douglas (of The Robe fame) and Upon This Rock by Frank G. Slaughter (who wrote The Thorn of Arimathea).

As the titles suggest, the books tell the story of Christ’s life and teachings through Simon Peter, his foremost disciple and leader of the Apostles. He was the man to whom Christ spoke the twelve famous words that changed history—“Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.”

The Big Fisherman, which is set before The Robe, and Upon This Rock together recreate the life and time of Simon Peter in an age that saw faith and forgiveness on one hand and tyranny and brutality on the other. 

© Pocket Books

I have read a few books by Douglas and Slaughter and each time I have been impressed by the depth, research, and scholarship that has gone into their biblical novels. I have marvelled at the imaginative and lucid prose as well as the superb plot and characterisation. The stories, as far as I can remember since I read the books a long time ago, are truly inspiring. There are few parallels in religious fiction.

Postscript: While I haven’t seen The Big Fisherman (1959) starring Howard Keel as Simon Peter, I have seen The Robe (1953) with Richard Burton as the unforgettable Marcellus Gallio and Michael Rennie (The Day The Earth Stood Still) as the Apostle.

Ray Bradbury to the rescue

© Bantam Books

With day turning into night and time running out, for the post of the day, my eyes fell on the three Ray Bradbury novels in my modest collection–Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles and The Halloween Tree–which I purchased from a used bookstore a few months ago. They cost me Rs.20 each, just under 50 cents. The three covers that I have posted here are exactly the ones sitting on my bookshelf.

Out of the three books, The Halloween Tree has some fantastic black-and-white illustrations by the late Italian artist and illustrator, Joseph Mugnaini, who was associated with Bradbury since 1952. If the cover catches your eye, so does Bradbury’s dedication inside which says, “With love for Madame Man’ha Garreau-Dombasle met twenty-seven years ago in the graveyard at midnight on the Island of Janitzio at Lake Patzcuaro, Mexico, and remembered on each anniversary of The Day of the Dead.’ I had to read more on this.

© Corgi Books

Apparently, the well-known author met Madame Garreau-Dombasle in Mexico in 1945, during the Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) holiday celebrations in October. The war had just ended. Bradbury, who was only 25 years old at the time, established a lifelong friendship with the wife of the French Ambassador to Mexico. In 1972, he dedicated his novel to Madame Garreau-Dombasle, in memory of The Day of the Dead.

I didn’t know the story, or the history, behind this particular dedication until I read it again and looked it up on the internet.

I am also scouting cyberspace to find out who illustrated the cover of Fahrenheit 451 displayed on the right. In case you know then write to me.

It is possible to get a sense of satisfaction by merely looking at the various covers of a book even before you read it. The covers of Ray Bradbury and Agatha Christie novels evoke such a sense. (For vintage Christie covers, check out http://yvettecandraw.blogspot.com/2011/11/more-vintage-agatha-christie-covers.html where you will get your eyeballs worth of some great book jackets.)

© Bantam Books

Also, don’t forget to check out Todd Mason’s blog for the weekly dose of Tuesday's Overlooked Films written by him and other bloggers. You won't be disappointed.

Stamp of an Actor: James Dean

© USPS

"When an actor plays a scene exactly the way a director orders, it isn't acting. It's following instructions. Anyone with the physical qualifications can do that.""Being a good actor isn't easy. Being a man is even harder. I want to be both before I'm done."

"An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so must be willing to accept all the experiences life has to offer. In fact, he must seek out more of life than life puts at his feet."

"I think there is only one form of greatness for man. If a man can bridge the gap between life and death. I mean, if he can live on after he has died, then maybe he was a great man. To me the only success, the only greatness, is immortality."

"Trust and belief are two prime considerations. You must not allow yourself to be opinionated. You must say, "Wait. Let me see". And above all, you must be honest with yourself."

"Being an actor is the loneliest thing in the world. You are all alone with your concentration and imagination, and that's all 
you have."

"Dream as if you have forever. Live as if you only have today."

"Live fast; die young; leave a good-looking corpse behind."

Take a look at some of the previous celebrity stamps:

Groucho Marx
Bette Davis
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Arthur Conan Doyle
Fyodor Dostoevsky

'Keep your jacket on, your dad’s here' 

This morning I read the news of actor Gerard Butler's revelation that he cried for hours when he was reunited with his father after 14 years. Apparently, Butler's dad left his mother when he was only two years old and turned up, unannounced, when he was in his mid-teens.

"My parents split up when I was young, so my mother was left with the task of being both my mum and my dad. My mother was everything to me. I used to have these horrible nightmares about something happening to her. I didn’t even know my father for many years. He lived in Canada and I didn’t know he was alive. One day when I was 16, I came home from school and my stepfather, who at the time was just my mother’s boyfriend, said, 'Keep your jacket on, your dad’s here,'" Butler, now 42, has been quoted as saying.

Butler said he went on "great adventures" to his dad’s house in Toronto, Canada, and spent quality time with him before he passed away.

Gerard Butler's reunion with his father is perfect fodder for a movie script, a theme the Indian film industry, particularly Bollywood, has pounded into dust. Hollywood, too, has its fair share of father-son duets (which, if I'm not mistaken, surpass mother-daughter combinations). Which ones would those be? I have selected five out of a dozen father-son movies, all tearjerkers, which is not to say they are bad films; in fact, they are all standouts for me. By a sheer coincidence, three of these movies portray the wife-mother in a negative role — running out on the family.

1. Kramer vs. Kramer (1979): Work-is-worship Ted Kramer (Dustin Hoffman) learns to love and cherish his son Billy (Justin Henry) the hard way — when his wife Joanna (Meryl Streep) leaves him. Ted brings up his son and discovers his familial responsibility till, one day, Joanna returns to claim their son, a custody battle that knocks on the court's door. Ted loves his son too much to give him up. Robert Benton, who directed this movie, ensures that you blow into your hankie. 

2. The Champ (1979): Billy Flynn (modern-day villain Jon Voight), a former boxing champion and now horse trainer, is bringing up his son T.J. (Rick Schroder) with bare hands and just enough money. His wife Annie (Faye Dunaway), who had left Billy seven years earlier, returns to take their son away. The final scene between father and son is heartbreaking: as Billy lies dying after a boxing match, T.J. cries out in anguish, "Champ, wake up, Champ! Hey, don't sleep now. We got to go home. Got to go home, Champ! I want Champ!" Director Franco Zeffirelli hits you below the belt with his film.

3. Dad (1989): Working man John Tremont (Ted Danson) teaches you how to be the ideal son and friend to your aged and ailing dad. As John takes care of his father Jake Tremont (Jack Lemmon), he realises what he has been missing between him and his dad — and between him and his own son Billy (Ethan Hawke). A fine movie by Gary David Goldberg.

4. Life is Beautiful (1997): What more can anyone say about the WWII film that had the ecstatic director-actor, Roberto Benigni, walking over seats and shoulders to claim his richly deserved Oscar? The film has the most endearing relationship between a father and his son.

5. The Pursuit of Happyness (2006): Director Gabriele Muccino casts Will Smith in the role of a lifetime, possibly. This true story revolves around salesman Chris Gardner (Smith) and his desperate battle to give his son Christopher (Jaden Smith) and himself a better life, one off the streets literally, after he loses his job and his wife leaves him. Gardner comes back and how.

Which father-son movies make your list?

FILM REVIEW

Frank Sinatra in Suddenly

"Don't...please," are the last desperate words of John Baron (Frank Sinatra) as widow Ellen Benson (Nancy Gates) and love-interest Sheriff Tod Shaw (Sterling Hayden) shoot Baron to stop him from assassinating the US President who is passing by train through the small town of Suddenly in California.

Baron is a hired assassin without a political agenda of his own – he kills for pleasure and for a smart fee. As Baron tells his hostages who, apart from Ellen and the Sheriff, include her son Pidge (Kim Charney), her father-in-law Pete 'Pop' Benson (James Gleason), and TV repairman Jud (James O'Hara): "The thing about killing you or her or him is that I wouldn't be getting paid for it and I don't like giving anything away for free." Baron kills, all right.

The psychopath in assassin's disguise and his two henchmen pose as FBI agents and enter Ellen's home facing the train station, a perfect site for the ambush.

When the Sheriff warns Baron of the potential risks and consequences of assassinating the President, Baron shrugs it off saying who and why he kills are the least of his worries.

"Tonight at five o'clock I kill the President. One second after five there's a new President. What changes? Nothing!" Baron lays it out for the Sheriff.

Sheriff Tod Shaw says, "Don't play God just because you have a gun." To which, Baron replies, "You know when you have a gun you are in a way sort of a god. If you had the gun then you would be the god."

At one point when Ellen asks Baron if he didn't have any feelings, he retorts, "No, they were taken outta me by experts."

John Baron (Sinatra) and Ellen Benson (Nancy Gates) in Suddenly

Baron proves that he is a psychopath when he kills Jud in cold blood and knocks out Pop Benson before Ellen and Jud shoot him as he takes aim through the sniper rifle mounted beside the window facing the train station. The President’s train passes by but does not halt, the local police having alerted the FBI and the Secret Service of the imminent ambush. Baron goes down pleading "Don't... please." He dies a coward in the end.

Directed by Lewis Allen in 1954, Suddenly is perhaps one of the earliest films with a plot to assassinate the US President. As I watched it on TCM, Sunday, November 20, I couldn’t help admire Sinatra’s ability to portray the bad guy as convincingly as he plays the good guy. However, the tagline “Sinatra…as a savage, sensation-hungry killer!” just doesn’t fit in with the singer-actor’s image as we know it. You expect him to come good even as he pulls the trigger on Jud and wallops Pop Benson on the head.

He’s trying to tell the audience, “Look, I don’t want to do this but I can’t help it.” Frank Sinatra will live to see another day.

The death of the dictionary and the directory

Two mighty books you are no longer likely to find in your home, particularly if you are not a writer or educator, are the English dictionary and the telephone directory. These thousand-page reference books, when they were lying around the place, served two useful purposes: you referred to them to look up a genuine word or meaning and phone number or name or if you did not refer to them, then you used them as dumbbells to develop muscles. Really, I am serious.

While the dictionary has been replaced by the more sophisticated online version, sitting on your desktop or cellphone (I recommend the free version of WordWeb from Princeton University) and thesaurus in MS-Word, the directory has been replaced by the virtual phone book — number-names that you find everywhere — on corporate websites, personal blogs, social networking sites, contact lists in mobile phones, bottom of emails, and chat.

I remember, when I was in school, the father of a friend of mine used to throw the dictionary at his son every time he asked the meaning of a word. "Look up the word first. If you still don't get it, then ask me," his father said. The repetitive lexical act helped build my friend's vocabulary and spelling. How many fathers throw the dictionary at their children? Inversely, how many kids ask their fathers the meaning of new words? 

Today, Google a word or sentence and it will throw about 8,300,000 results in 0.20 seconds at you — something no dictionary on earth can match. While I admit to Googling words and phrases in office, I rarely do so at home where I prefer to refer to the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary and A Dictionary of Modern English Usage by H.W. Fowler (Second Edition revised by Sir Ernest Gowers, 1975). I also refer to a fifty-year old pocket-sized Collins English Gem Dictionary (for sentimental reason) and a recent edition of The Economist Style Guide: The best-selling guide to English usage (for my newspaper), both very handy and useful.

So, has Google killed the dictionary? No, it hasn't, we have. Google has only made the task easier and faster and enriching. The choice of referring to the physical or virtual lexicon is still ours. It's like saying I don't meet my friends anymore because we meet on Facebook. You can still meet your friends — who’s stopping you?

Replacing the physical directory with a virtual phonebook makes more sense. Unlike the dictionary, you have nothing to lose if you refer to one or the other. You need a number and you need it fast — only Google or Gadget can give it to you in 0.80 seconds.

In the 1970s and 1980s, people in India used to wait in long queues to pick up their legitimate two-part telephone directory from state-owned telecom companies. Then, a year later, you went in for the revised edition provided you surrendered the previous year's lot. That's how it worked. The government phonebooks were replaced by the yellow pages which gave you an elaborate list of products and services as well as classified advertisements. These were handy, too, particularly if you were looking for a plumber or painter.

All this was a long time before the telecom revolution swept India and put multiple phones in the hands of every Indian.

The phonebook had other uses, though. For instance, in John Irving's The World According to Garp, the writer T.S. Garp got the names of his characters out of the phonebook. Did writers in real life do that? I am sure they did. I know parents of newborns leafed through the telephone directory looking for unusual names for their babies. No one bothered to check the numbers.

Forgotten actors: Bolo

Bolo, the Girth, in Enter the Dragon

There is a class of actors, within the category of character actors, who I find particularly fascinating because no one notices them or writes about them. They are heard and seen throughout the movie and yet they remain unheard and unseen. In spite of acting in scores of films, they are neither famous nor popular and, I suspect, not very wealthy either. They rarely talk on screen. When they do communicate, it’s usually through an unspecified mix of grunts and snorts, pointing of the finger, heaving of a muscle or facial contortions. They play the hero’s butler, the major’s private, and the villain’s sidekick with equal ease. They make you laugh without being funny. When they are serious, they are dead-serious. And they are entertaining.

One such character actor caught my eye on television last weekend when I was watching a part of Enter the Dragon (1973). Now this is a film I must have seen at least fifty times yet I barely noticed the evil Hans’ man-for-all-whippings Bolo–the bare-chested martial arts hoodlum with a muscular girth that would make a bear jealous. He’s the guy who Roper (John Saxon) kills towards the end of the movie.

Bolo doesn’t just fight; he fights to kill. He kills even when a man is down. In one scene, Bolo, mad look on his face, holds a minion between his powerful biceps and folds him up like a book, breaking his spine into two, and throws him on the ground.

Frank Dux (Van Damme) and Chong Li (Bolo) in Bloodsport

Enter the Dragon is one of three films that gave Bolo (Bolo Yeung) a reputation for brutality and little else. The other two movies are Bloodsport (1988) where he is defeated in the ring by Frank Dux (Jean-Claude Van Damme) and Double Impact (1991) opposite Van Damme in a double role. The half-crazed look and the bear-like girth greet you in both the films.

In Bloodsport, Frank Dux (Van Damme) and Chong Li (Bolo Yeung) are bitter rivals who meet in the ring for the fight of the tournament. Bolo mouths exactly two dialogues, both addressed to Dux: “You break my record, now I break you, like I break your friend” and this singular gem “You are next.” You don’t need brains to say those lines, brawn is enough.

If I were Bolo’s opponent in a film, I would have melted like butter on a hot platter; watching him from the other side of the screen, I can’t help laughing at his antics. I said char-actors like him were entertaining, didn't I?

If Van Damme is known as “The Muscles from Brussels’, Bolo Yeung is nicknamed ‘The Beast from the East’. The 5' 6" Bolo was born in China. He took interest in bodybuilding and became Mr. Hong Kong bodybuilding champion at the age of 21, a title he held for ten years and earned him another nickname, ‘The Chinese Hercules’. Bolo and Bruce Lee were foes in Enter the Dragon but they were close friends in real life. In fact, Bolo trained under the legendary martial arts icon. Bolo Yeung is 65 and lives with his family in Los Angeles, California.

Character actors like Bolo are the unsung heroes of popular cinema, a fact Bolo knew only too well. He once said, “There are plenty of times people will come up to me for an autograph and tell me they enjoyed my work on Enter the Dragon. But people just know me from the movie; they don't really know who I am.”