For confidentiality reasons, I won’t tell you the exact location of Jackie Gleason’s house in Hialeah. I will tell you that Miami Country Club built the house especially for him, Jackie Gleason, the big Hollywood movie star. You see, he was part of their business plan: build a golf course in Hialeah, weave an affluent gated community up and down the fairways, and make one of them a three-lot compound for Jackie Gleason. His gravitational pull would make Miami Country Club the spot. Soon everyone would want to live there. Genius. It was the perfect plan. Apart from being a pool shark, Jackie Gleason knew his way around the links, and he loved Miami’s sun. Who doesn’t love Miami’s sun? Man, I love Miami’s sun.

But getting back to Gleason, what a character. He carries his own gigantic history around his belt line. And to think that I saw the machine he strapped himself into as he attempted to jiggle his butt into shape. That seems like the appropriate kind of exercise for Gleason. Not too serious, but just enough to make him feel like he wasn’t being complacent. You probably want to hear about the house. Well, a lot of the original interior still stands, out of respect for the original homeowner. There are black and white framed pictures of Jackie Gleason playing golf with the likes of Arnold Palmer. In one, he’s sinking a putt off the fringe, and while Palmer stares at the movie star, his arms wrapped around his waist in disbelief, Gleason is about to deliver an almighty fist pump à la Bang, Boom, Straight to the moon. Original wallpaper stands in the foyer and dining room, the intricate velvety kind that gives you goosebumps when you run your forefinger across. Inside his office, one can only imagine what kind of history took place. I found myself thinking about Gleason rehearsing lines from his many episodes, but then I remembered that Gleason never rehearsed his lines, or at least that’s the myth I’ve been fed since a kid, and now I take it for fact, out of principle, my fact: Gleason always came to the set of The Honeymooners fresh and unrehearsed. He liked spontaneity. He didn’t underestimate the value of being spontaneous, even when in the crossbeams of the camera. In fact, that’s when he liked spontaneity the most, that’s when it really counted. Gleason had a way of understanding things that I really admire. He understood the masses. He knew exactly how to get them laughing. Laughing until Belly Ache.

He knew how to write scripts,

he knew how to deliver lines,

he knew how to entertain guests,

he know how to get country clubs to build beautiful compounds for him,

he knew

how to be 

A GOLDEN GOD.

What a storied life. I haven’t even researched his whereabouts. I know nothing about his parents, or if he had siblings. I only know that I know of him and he knows absolutely nothing of me. Or does he know about me? Yes, somehow, in his vast understanding of the masses, he knows about the likes of me. How else could he have made me laugh until Belly Ache?

Tags: ::ESSAYS ABOUT REAL LIFE::, ::FILM::, bang boom straight to the moon, golden god, in search of truth, jackie gleason, miami, the honeymooners, things to do in miami

I ♥ CUT PAPER

&

I ♥ STOP MOTION FILM.

THEREFORE, I REALLY ♥ THIS VIDEO!

by jjjjjjjjoe

Tags: ::ART::, ::FILM::, cut paper, kirigami, papel picado, paper, paper art, sanjhi, scherenschnitte, stop motion, video clip, wycinanki

“That’s the sparkle.”

::For a movie review of Gran Torino, link to Three Cheers for Darkened Years! here::

Tags: ::FILM::, clint eastwood, drinking, gran torino, movie review, pabst blue ribbon, pic, porch

Not that long ago I shared my opinion on Blindness, both the novel and the film. Now here’s Saramago’s:

Tags: ::FILM::, ::LITERATURE::, blindness, fernando meirelles, jose saramago, movie review, video clip

A long long time ago, in another part of the country, under a different name, I read my first Saramago novel, Blindness. I will always like Saramago not only for his ability to create a world that operates under the same laws as ours and mercilessly break it down, but also for his block writing. Very few paragraph breaks litter the page. Saramago likes how words look. Words as opposed to spaces and emptiness, sounds and drawings, images and video. Saramago loves words, and why shouldn’t he? Words have given him everything. As I read Blindness, sometimes at home, sometimes on the beach, sometimes in a bookstore or bar, I was aware of the filth involved in a world where everyone has suddenly gone blind. Saramago didn’t shy away from describing the rapid decline of hygiene, the savage conflict for food rations, and the overall desperation involved when such a plague sweeps across the land. But he does this using only words. There are no gruesome images, videos, or sounds, just words. Words, words, and words. That is all. I wouldn’t even go so far as to say his words are gruesome. While it is true that he is a writer who is unwilling to sacrifice accuracy for watered-down stories, Saramago has enough in his arsenal of prose to accomplish this without resorting to vulgarities. In this way, Blindness is a book I would recommend to anyone who likes to read other than little kids who still make use of the children’s section at the bookstore. I say this without reservation. But Blindness, Fernando Meirelles’s movie based on Saramago’s novel, is an entirely different story. The truth is, movies resemble reality too much. Words will always be words on the page, detached from the world of images, but movies are pretty much the real world. I know people walked in their own feces in Blindness. I know there was stentorian rape and murder in Blindness. To be honest, I know there was even worse. But reading about the feces, reading about the rape and murder, is entirely different, and, I’ll argue, much more wholesome, than watching it on the big screen, where everything is just too close to home, too sullied and graphic. I did not like the movie. I didn’t like it one bit. On the other hand, I liked the novel. I liked it enough to read more from Saramago’s opus. The movie, however, was embarrassing to watch with the people I invited over to watch it with. The movie made me avert my eyes more than once. The movie was harsh and gratuitous. The novel, a masterpiece.

Tags: ::FILM::, ::LITERATURE::, blindness, fernando meirelles, jose saramago, movie review