Happiness & Personal Reality - Friday Video Distractions with Mike Norton

 

      Happiness, control, and reality. The connections between them, their nature, and the subjectivity of each are a set of themes I realize I've come back to again and again all my life.
     I turned ten in 1971, the year that James Goldman's 1961 play, They Might Be Giants, was released as an occasionally absurdist, ultimately sentimental film starring George C. Scott and Joanne Woodward.
     In it, Scott plays a man who believes himself to be Sherlock Holmes. I was immediately taken by its wrestling with the question of the subjectivity of reality, happiness, and which of the two is more important. The title plays on Don Quixote - which also looms large in the film itself - and that benighted knight's view of the world, and in that specific instance, windmills. The film was released fifty years ago last week. Time continues to hammer me with reminders.
     Here's a trailer from the period -- perhaps a bit too much from that time, in part because Scott was the marketing focus at the moment, and most strongly associated with the previous year's Academy Award sweeper Patton. It's not the best ad campaign for a comedic film I still find so charming.

     Nearly a decade later, in a college psychology class, I brought the premise up as part of a discussion. It was largely in response to the aims of psychology to integrate a personality with all aspects of verifiable reality. I was posing the alternate view that adopting and embracing a personal fiction could lead to a fuller, happier existence than living with the losses and tragedies life has dealt. How much is the baggage of objective reality really worth in one's life? If one's home is gutted by fire, are we obliged to rebuild there? If fictions allow us to be better versions of ourselves - better beings, ideally uplifting the lives of others - isn't that more important than a slavish attachment to one's Permanent Record?
     Here's what appears to be the standard version - the original running time was 98 minutes, but so far that full version only exists on an Anchor Bay DVD release, with a few minutes late in the film having been trimmed - sitting on YouTube. Not top visual quality, of course, but that's part of what allows such fare to stick around on YouTube for a while.

     I hope you enjoy it, be it as a revisit or a first viewing. Aside from the main story there are the pop cultural highlights of period New York City, it's a small sea of familiar faces thanks to a supporting cast that includes Jack Gifford, Al Lewis, Oliver Clark, Eugene Roche, Theresa Merritt, Michael McGuire - the faces will pop even if several of the names don't - F. Murray Abraham, and a typically delightful turn from Rue McClanahan, playing the sister-in-law to Scott's character, who is delighted by his Holmes.
     I should eventually try to track down the full, original, release, even though what I believe was cut was nothing really essential. Still, I'd like to have it all back.
     As a conceptually loosely-related digression, I offer this Biography piece on Jonathan Harris. Someone who started in childhood to fully reinvent himself, aspiring to a life and a self grander than his impoverished, Brooklyn, Jewish roots.

     Certainly, it's a somewhat different matter than the extreme posed in They Might Be Giants, as Harris never forgot who he'd been. Still, he embraced his fabricated persona -- and as a result, so did all of us.
     As a side note, somewhere on my list of hypothetical time travel stops, I think I'd enjoy finding and stopping by the drug store where he worked during the time when he was a pharmacist.
      Having arrived on Amazon Prime back in February, I recently got around to watching director Mike Cahill's latest sci-fi drama: Bliss (2021, 103 minutes). Arguably, one can simply view it as a drama with a science fiction theme, as one decides the nature of the lead characters' reality, or perhaps comes to the conclusion that the experience of reality is ultimately subjective, and happiness is a choice. Here's the trailer:

     I'm not sure what brought me back to remembering that I'd not gotten around to this -- maybe just enjoying Owen Wilson so far in Disney+'s Loki did it -- but I don't regret having made the time for it. Wilson and co-star Salma Hayek pair off well, and over the course of this film and its shifting sands of reality they get to demonstrate some range while giving us more of an opportunity to ask ourselves what makes us happy and sad, and how much control - and control over what - we truly want.
     General audience reaction to this appears to have been mixed, leaning negative, and I can understand why many would prefer a clearer narrative path, but I don't feel deceived by the film. A key element is established very early in the story, and one can choose to either see that as a clue to what's really happening or simply an element in the narrative Hayek's character poses.
     The war between objective reality and the subjective, patchwork versions we each wrap ourselves in, and the happiness in our lives is a personal choice. One we make every day, whether we believe it or not. (Literally, that.)
     While a simplistic, forced dichotomy - a choice between two, opposite and absolute conditions - there's some value in pausing to quietly ask one's self the question: Would I rather be stupid and happy or brilliant and miserable? It's best kept as a personal meditation, because in most discussions (and nearly guaranteed in social media) it becomes a pedantic battle of egos. Besides, in the end, your answer is the only one that truly matters, and because the offered choice is intentionally restrictive and limited, it's not meant to be the whole picture.

     Off that topic, I want to note that next Friday, June 25th, the seventh and final season of Bosch will appear on Amazon Prime. Titus Wellever has been portraying Michael Connolly's detective Harry Bosch in this series since 2014. It's an odd fit for me, as Bosch isn't a person I'd like to know - we'd be unlikely to get along - but he's a man suited to his job as a homicide detective. He's dedicated to finding out the truth, and in particular seeking justice for those most of the world barely noticed, or wrote off as footnotes.

     While not really in the mold of most of her tv and movie favorites, my mom was a fan of the detective genre and likely would have enjoyed this series.
     Some additions, as it's still Friday:
     There are a couple shows returning for new seasons starting this Sunday.
     On Paramount+ (formerly CBS All Access) we'll have the 13-episode second season of Evil beginning. I'd caught up on the first season last year over on Netflix, I believe. Very much enjoyed it, and hadn't been aware it had been moved to Paramount+ rather than be aired first on the broadcast network.

     Katja Herbers, Mike Colter, Aasaf Mandvi play the investigation leads, hired by the Catholic church to investigate possible instances of supernatural evil. Christine Lahti and Michael Emerson are also regulars on the series. Solid cast, all the way down to the child actors, and engaging scripts. Finding out at nearly the 11th hour that this was about to start again was good news. As I'm subscribing to Paramount+ (I did a full year buy back heading into December, ahead of the start of The Stand) I'm all the more behind this because the streaming platform treats the release schedule like a juggernaut, airing each episode on consecutive weeks, heedless of holidays and ####ing sporting events.
     As a related (CBS) aside I would have loved it if they'd negotiated (apparently everything's a damned negotiation these days - in this case it was one between Viacom and MGM) a similar move for Clarice (currently Thursdays 10PM EST), letting season two go to Paramount+. I've enjoyed the layered characters and story arcs there, but have been maddened by the frequent, multi-week breaks between episode airings. I don't resent a weekly release, but I damn well want it to be a steady, weekly flow once they begin. The broadcast tv model has come to tick me off. The commercials are reasonably well handled by my time-shifted, DVR-implemented viewing, but I can't record and watch what isn't aired, and the jagged breaks in a season are unnecessary and annoying. Unfortunately, the latest word is that a jump to Paramount+ for season two isn't happening, and CBS' fall lineup is reportedly already fully-stocked with new and returning shows. How much this is hampered by series ratings and how much by the complications of  MGM's recent sale to Amazon is unclear. So it is that the 13th and increasingly likely final episode of Clarice is set to air next Thursday.
     Meanwhile, Over on Cartoon Network, at 11pm EST Sunday night, the new season of sci-fi action adventure comedy Rick and Morty will begin.

     Yes, a vocally significant portion of the audience is toxic and best either avoided or taken in very small doses, like a poison one's trying to build up a tolerance to, but I've never not enjoyed an episode.

     That's enough for this week. I hope you can find some time for yourself this weekend, and are getting to enjoy a little more of life outside as summer officially arrives Sunday -- as sanely as your region allows. I know in many places, particularly out West, the day's heat's already been getting into the surreal, oppressive and truly dangerous triple digits. Take care.     - Mike