F.C. Schaefer's Blog, page 14

My thoughts on Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

I am not a Star Wars fanboy, but have always had a place in my heart for the original trilogy for its sheer joy of film making, storytelling, and George Lucas’s intense desire to give us a modern myth to embrace. I’ve seen all of the subsequent sequels, the good and the bad, because the Star Wars universe, even in the hands of mediocre creators (especially the older Lucas), was always a wonderful place to visit for a few hours. Disney’s reboot, THE FORCE AWAKENS, got things back on an even keel by introducing a new generation, while bringing back the holy trinity of Luke, Leia and Han Solo; as for ROGUE ONE, for me, it’s the best Star Wars movie since EMPIRE STRKES BACK.

But what to make of THE LAST JEDI, a film that has enraged hard core fans; for me, it is simply overlong, over plotted, with some truly terrible dramatic arcs and choices for some of our most revered characters, and like so many big budget tent pole scifi epics, THE LAST JEDI badly needed some work done on its script before the cameras should have been allowed to roll. The last half hour has more confrontations and anti-climaxes than LOTR; RRETURN OF THE KING, and that is saying something, with Snoke vs. Rey vs Kylo Ren; Finn vs. Phasma; Vice Admiral Holdo vs. the First Order Fleet; Luke vs. Kylo Ren; Rey vs. a pile of rocks. And when the dust settled and the credits rolled, I realized that the overall story had not been advanced much at all, just a lot of explosions, captures, and narrow escapes. The whole subplot with Finn and new character, Rose Tico, trying to find an expert code breaker, pretty much came to nothing, wasting the introduction of Bencio Del Toro as the man they are looking for, a slippery character who just walks out of the movie toward the end.

Then there is the biggest objection, and that is the revelation that Luke Skywalker is now an old, embittered hermit, wanting nothing to do with his past life as a Jedi warrior; old Luke bears little or no resemblance to the young hero who took down the Death Star and redeemed Darth Vadar. I more than understand how people become disenchanted with age, but this just comes off as lazy writing. I understand why fans threw up their hands when Luke threw away the light saber handed him by Rey; there is just no way that the man who redeemed his father, the worst villain in the universe, would throw in the towel on his nephew Ben. And the movie, which makes a lot out of the telepathic connection between Kylo Ren and Rey, and the possibility that she might be seduced by him to the Dark Side or that she might get him to see the light, seems to slam the door on either such intriguing possibility by making it clear Kylo is way too far gone for either one to happen. And for a Big Bad, Snoke went down way too easy. It’s as if Rian Johnson was determined to take everything that was established in THE FORCE AWAKENS, and just trash it.

There were some good things about THE LAST JEDI, especially when it called back the earlier films by giving us a glimpse of the Princess Leia hologram and a cameo by Yoda, still voiced by Frank Oz; and the battle scenes were well done and always exciting. The reunion of Luke and Leia, was emotional for a moment, but was then quickly undone by a revelation that Luke wasn’t really there, but a phantom projection, and what should have been an emotional farewell to Carrie Fisher is also undone by the ridiculous scene of Leia floating in space like Mary Poppins. Sadly, the movie is supposed to be the end of the line for Luke Skywalker, but the untimely death of Fisher now puts all of the three original protagonists down for the count, except in some astral plain form, which has gotten to be a cliché. I will say that Adam Driver more than takes over as Kylo Ren, turning him into a compelling character and a worthy successor to his grandfather, even if the script seems to say that he is now an irredeemable villain. His ultimate fate is the one thing that interests me.

If it had been up to me, and it never will be, I would have had Luke’s first lines to Rey be, “I have been waiting for someone like you,” and then tell her about his sad history with his nephew Ben, and the misjudgment on his part that ended in a violent confrontation that resulted in Ben embracing Snoke and the Dark Side. Luke would then have proceeded to rigorously train Rey in the ways of Jedi in preparation for a final confrontation with Kylo Ren, but Luke goes not contend with the telepathic connection Snoke has arranged between Kylo and Rey, which results in her feeling a strong pull to the Dark Side. Speed through to the final battle, where Luke and Rey battle Kylo and the First Order; after a number of twists, including the death of Snoke at Kylo’s hand, it ends badly for the good guys, with Luke lying wounded on the ground, the final blow being delivered by Rey, who has now seemingly been seduced over to the Dark Side – the one redeeming thing she does is stay Kylo Ren’s hand and spare Luke’s life. As they walk off together, the wounded Luke manages to get to his feet and says, “Ben, I did not give up on my father, and I will not give up on you, neither of you, I will never give up, I will find a way.” The movie ends with the same scene of the stable boy revealing that he is Force sensitive, just like Rey, thus raising an intriguing possibility for the future, and leaving the audience with big questions about Rey and Kylo Ren, and whether they will be redeemed in the next movie, and if so, how Luke would accomplish it.

And if any of the holy trinity had to die in THE LAST JEDI, it sadly should have been Leia; of the three original protagonists of the original trilogy, it was Luke, who was the heart and soul of those films, and he deserved to be there for the final act, it simply makes dramatic sense, for he alone of all of them, still has the most work left to do. I am sure there were guidelines mandated to Rian Johnson before he wrote the first draft of the script, and keeping Carrie Fisher around for the finale may well have been one of them, but fate cruelly intervened a year ago.

Supposedly, J.J. Abrams is back in the director’s chair for episode nine, I would suggest he call in Lawrence Kasden to give him a hand on the script, for as of right now, this is a franchise badly in need of the help of the man who wrote EMPIRE. Have high hopes for the stand alone Han Solo movie.

I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
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The Alternate Secret War Against Castro.

In my book, ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964, I attempt to tell the story of what might have happened if John F. Kennedy had returned from that fateful trip to Dallas alive. Kennedy’s standoff with Fidel Castro during his first two years in office, dominated by the Bay of Pigs and the Missile Crisis was the central issue of his foreign policy. At the time of the assassination, the Kennedy brothers were still pursuing a covert policy to destabilize and undermine the Castro government, including the possibility of a coup in Havana which would have ousted the Communist dictator well before the 1964 Presidential election. In the wake of Dallas, the new President, Lyndon Johnson, quietly pulled the plug on this policy, because he thought JFK was fishing in troubled waters, allowing the Castro brothers to remain in power all the way into the 21st Century.

In my book, I speculate what might have happened if JFK’s policy had continued, not only that, but what would have happened if a link had been established between Lee Harvey Oswald and the Cuban government? Things would have been ramped up, ultimatums would have been issued, lines in the sand drawn, plans drawn up, and operations executed. In the following excerpt, Colonel Martin Maddox (USMC), a member of the National Security Council concerning with drawing up operations against Cuba, is meeting with Robert F. Kennedy, the Attorney General, Colonel Alexander Haig (United State Army), an aide to the Secretary of the Army, along with a pair of Cuban exiles, to receive a briefing on the secret war against Castro, and learn how that secret is to be brought to an end.

The excerpt:


This is when Colonel Haig explained how the Cuban Coordinating Committee, of which he was a member, had helped reconstitute the Cuban resistance after the Bay of Pigs, establishing and supporting bases in Costa Rica and Nicaragua where exiles had been planning for the day the hated dictator is deposed, and they can return to their homeland to back up a new government dedicated to a free Cuba. A return headed by Harry Williams and Manual Aritme, setting the stage for a final act culminating in their victory in a free election. The CCC had involved Cuban specialists from the State Department and all branches of the armed forces to back up the exiles and create a small army, not big enough to take on the Soviet-backed Cuban military one on one, but capable of being a force in the confusion after Castro was deposed.

Thus the curtain was pulled back even further, revealing to me what had been going on in the shadows, but unlike Harmon Butler and his Operation Mongoose, Colonel Haig and the CCC impressed me as people who knew what they were doing. I’ll admit to being more than a little in awe of the length and breadth of the secret war we had been waging against the Communist government in Havana.

Just what my part would be was spelled out by the Attorney General when Colonel Haig was finished: “You are among the privileged few now, Colonel Maddox, the very few who can see the whole picture when it comes to our dealings with Cuba. That puts you in a unique position as we go forward after a lot of arduous hard work and sacrifice by some very brave men; unfortunately, the hardest labor is yet to come, and it will call for even greater courage. Castro will never give up those three men who maneuvered Oswald into that 6th story window from which he nearly blew the back of my brother’s head off, and we’re going to use that fact to put Fidel in a vise and squeeze for all it is worth. Tighter and tighter until it appears certain we are about to send in the B-52’s and level Havana, followed by the 82nd Airborne to mop up and hand his sorry fucking ass over to a group of good Cuban patriots who will promptly stand him in front of a firing squad. Khrushchev will bellow and bluster and make all sorts of threats how if we touch even one little hair on his bearded little friend’s head, the big bad Soviet bear will show its claws and bare its fangs, but we will pay them and their threats no attention. That is because Commander Almeida will make his move at the last moment to eliminate Fidel and then install a provisional government, telling his nation how he has acted out of true patriotism when deposing their revolutionary idol, saving them from domination by the Russians while preventing a bloody invasion and an imminent occupation by the colossus of the North. That is the cover we need to give Commander Almeida so he can act on our behalf.

“Your job, Colonel Maddox, will be to get us there, to take all the tools and intelligence at our disposal, and hone them toward the goal of replacing the Castro brothers with a free government, one which will get the Soviets off that island for good. We will need from you a step by step plan which will appear to be taking us to war. But will in fact be the catalyst to finally rid this hemisphere of the Communist blight and free an oppressed people. You have just over 60 days to get the job done, as Commander Almeida has let it be known that April 1 is C for Coup Day. This is a chore my brother and I could not entrust to Langley or the Pentagon, despite all the best minds at their disposal, because we have learned the hard way, that if you really want to get something done in this town, you do it with your own people.”
These were marching orders if I had ever heard them; the end purpose of all the briefings and analysis of the past month and a half. The meeting ended, as best as I can remember with Harry Williams shaking my hand and saying he would see to it that I would be received as a hero in a free Cuba. “Before the 4th of July,” he said, “Havana by the 4th.”

My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
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My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
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My thoughts on Jean Edward Smith's bio of General Grant.

Sadly, this is another book that sat on my shelf a little too long, and with Ron Chernow’s massive new biography just being published – a book I hope to read in the near future – I thought I’d better get busy reading Jean Edward Smith’s bio of the man who won the Civil War and then went on to be President. And having read it, I must confess to some shame at having too long passed by a great book that gives us an in depth look at Ulysses S. Grant, one that goes against some of the harsher judgments of historians. At a little more than 600 pages, Smith’s book is shorter than Chernow’s thick volume, but there is still plenty of depth and detail to satisfy the most fervent history buff. I especially liked the pace of book; Smith moves briskly through Grant’s early years in Ohio and Illinois, West Point and the Mexican War (which he thought was waged most unjustly) and arrives at the opening stages of the Civil War by Chapter Four on page 99.

Despite this fast pace early on, the author takes the time to give us a portrait of a man who went to West Point to get an education, served ably under fire in Mexico, and then floundered in the peace time army to the point where a drinking problem forced him to resign and return to civilian life, where he would fail in business and be reduced to working in a general store under his younger brothers. Just before the outbreak of the Civil War, Grant was selling fire wood on the streets of Galena, Illinois, in order to provide for his family; less than three years later, Grant was accepting the surrender of the Confederate commander at Vicksburg, the turning point of the war, one of the greatest reversals of personal fortune in American history. That Grant was humbled, even humiliated, in the years between the Mexican and Civil wars, there is no doubt, yet to his great credit, it did not make him bitter or arrogant in the later years when he was at the height of military and political power. Was Grant an alcoholic, as his enemies alleged during his lifetime, and many have implied in the years since? Smith gives plenty of evidence that the man had a problem with alcohol in his early years in the army, but that it was mainly acerbated by the separation, due to deployments, from his wife, Julia, and their children.

No period of American history has been better documented than years between 1861 and 1865, where the Civil War has been told and retold and revised from every conceivable viewpoint; what Smith does is concentrate on Grant as he rose from a Colonel in a company of Illinois volunteers to General in command of all Union armies in the field. If nothing succeeds like success, than Grant won by winning, more to the point, winning where others would have quit and retreated, like after the first day at Shiloh in 1862, where the Union army was routed from the field after a surprise attack by the Confederates at dawn; Grant held his ground, gathered reinforcements over night and counterattacked on the second day. In May of 1864, in Virginia at The Wilderness, Robert E. Lee’s army would pound the Union forces for three days, nearly rolling up the line and inflicting heavy casualties, yet when the carnage was done, Grant would flank Lee’s army and continue his relentless push toward Richmond, a campaign he that would not end until Appomattox. From Mill Springs to Forts Henry and Donaldson to Shiloh, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, The Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg, Grant was cool under pressure, clear in his objectives, possessing an uncanny ability to get the most out of the forces at his command; he threw away the old Napoleonic War era playbook, and single handedly, forged the rules of modern warfare, where the destruction of the enemy’s capacity to wage war became the main goal. He would do all this, and still retain the confidence and affection of the men he ordered into battle, while earning the respect of his Confederate foes, to whom he gave generous terms and an outstretched hand on the day they surrendered.

After the assassination of Lincoln, Grant was the most universally popular figure in the nation, a position he somehow managed to retain as General of the Army through the turbulent politics of the early Reconstruction. That was not an easy feat as the irreconcilable goals of bringing the Confederates back into the Union while insuring and protecting the full rights of citizenship of the newly freed slaves brought on a clash between Lincoln’s politically inept successor, Andrew Johnson (who was Grant’s Commander in Chief) and the Republicans in Congress (who made the policy the Army would have to implement); the former wanted to restore the South to the Union (sans slavery) as if the war had never occurred, while the latter insisted on a military occupation of the Confederate states and vigorous protection by the federal government of the newly enfranchised freedman. It is not a high point in American history, and many of the prominent figures involved - Johnson, Charles Sumner, Edwin Stanton – did little to cover themselves in glory, but Grant remained true to the Constitution and the law as he saw, and straight forward in his dealings with all involved, while maneuvering his way through much political conniving. In 1868, he was the unanimous choice of the Republican Party and was elected President in a landslide, the first of two terms.

Smith does not give us a strictly linear account of Grant’s Presidency, instead giving us individual chapters devoted to how he handled foreign affairs, Reconstruction policy, the Indian Wars, and the Gilded Age. In the process, the author makes a good case that Grant was a much better President than he is given credit: patching up relations with Great Britain and settling grievances that had festered since the Civil War, establishing a harmonious relationship with the Mother country that has lasted to the present day; adapting a humane policy toward the Plains Indians as westward expansion increasingly brought them into conflict with white settlers, repeatedly resisting calls for an all out military solution advocated by Generals William Sherman and Philip Sheridan, both close friends of Grant; repeatedly using federal troops against the Klu Klux Klan and other white terrorist groups in the South, doing this even as support for Black American equality was rapidly diminishing in the Republican North. His order to the Treasury Department sell off part of its gold reserves on Black Friday (when speculators Jay Gould and Jim Fiske tried to corner the private gold market) helped stave off a devastating economic collapse, and was the first time the government in Washington had directly intervened to protect American citizens in an economic crisis. Quite a list of accomplishments, but it would be the squalid scandals and corruption of many of Grants appointees that would get the headlines, and sadly, would be what was most remembered from his administration. Grant’s own honesty was always above reproach, but in civilian life, he was not the best judge of character, and was far too trusting of men anxious to be his friend.

It was a trusting nature that would serve him poorly after the Presidency, when a part ownership in a Wall Street investment firm failed due to a dishonest partner would leave Grant penniless. He would restore financial security to his family by writing his memoirs of the Civil War years, written as Grant was dying of throat cancer. He finished the book only days before death. It was a bestseller; surprisingly, Grant was a natural born literary talent, his book is considered the benchmark against which all other Presidential memoirs are judged; it has never gone out of print. If I have one complaint, it is that Smith hurries through these last years, which are essential to understanding who Ulysses Grant was.

After reading this book, I think Grant, with the possible exception of George Washington, was the finest leader of men America ever produced, in warfare he had tenacity and drive that was simply unstoppable, put a Vicksburg or a Richmond in front of him, and it was as good as taken. He seemed devoid of vanity, and imbued with a humility and personal modesty that must have been a product of the hard times in his life, proving that the best leaders are people who have stumbled and fallen once or twice, and have had to get back up on their feet before success came their way.

Recently there have been calls by some in NYC, where Grant’s tomb is located, to remove his name from public monuments, part of an ongoing national jihad to punish the leaders of the past for being people of their times. Ulysses S. Grant deserves better from the nation he helped save in its worst crisis, read Jean Edward Smith’s fine biography and learn the story of a truly great American.
 
I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m on Amazon
http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH at Smashwords

My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb

Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmgS2

Visit my Amazon author's page at: https://amzn.to/3nK6Yxv

My take on Justice League

A lot of us comic book fans have waited a very long time to get a JUSTICE LEAGUE movie, and we certainly had high hopes for it after the smashing success of WONDER WOMAN this past summer. Does this movie live up to those high hopes? As usual, the answer is both yes and no; JUSTICE LEAGUE is certainly an improvement on BATMAN V SUPERMAN, but this latest teaming of the Caped Crusader and the Man of Steel, again directed by Zack Snyder, never quite finds the perfect pitch that Patty Jenkins found for WONDER WOMAN. There are no painfully awkward “Martha” moments from Synder’s first film, which is a very good thing, but this incarnation of the JL never achieves the easy camaraderie that comes so easy to many of the DC animated movies or Bruce Timm’s cartoon series, although it certainly tries very hard and comes close in a number of scenes. One of the joys of a JL film is seeing the interaction between Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Aquaman, Cyborg, and, yes, Superman, yet this seems to be the hardest thing to pull off for a scriptwriter on the page and the actors on the screen.

The story picks up where B v S left off as Bruce Wayne/Batman goes about assembling a team to meet the sinister cosmic threat that was hinted at the end of the earlier film. DC already screwed this premise up with SUICIDE SQUAD, and we do have to go through the requisite scenes where Bruce Wayne if initially rebuffed by Aquaman, has the novice Barry Allen jump at the chance to work with the big guys, while Wonder Woman tries to convince a reluctant Cyborg to join up. I give them credit for dispensing with a lot clunky origin exposition scenes and dialog, which keeps the movie down of a very manageable two hour running time (a Warner Bros mandate). But I wouldn’t have minded if they jumped into a story where the Justice League was already formed and ready to go; we simply do not need to waste any more time telling back story. By my count, there were at least four well staged action scenes where heroes and villains throw down, including a flashback battle sequence that will bring joy to any DC comic fan, the resurrection of Superman, and the final confrontation in a village in Russia. This is what brings us fans to the theater.

For me, the Big Bad, Steppenwolf, is a problem in that he is just another big ugly and angry super powered brute bent on taking over/destroying the Earth for no other real reason than he is just hateful and mean. Steppenwolf, a ten foot tall CGI creation, voiced by the excellent actor, Ciaran Hinds, is almost interchangeable with Ares from WONDER WOMAN, Ronan the Accuser from GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, or that other super tall guy from SUICIDE SQUAD. One good thing about Steppenwolf is that he is a brawler, so we are spared another climax where two super beings hurl bolts of energy at each other until one just gives up. I would add this, if you are going to use characters from Jack Kirby’s New Gods, go really big and give us Darkseid himself, along with all his minions, don’t hold back for a sequel that may never get produced.

And I mentioned the resurrection of Superman, which comes near the end of the second act; this is to be expected, as you can’t have a JL movie without Big Blue, but this pricks at one of the most irksome scabs for all comic book fans: that death is meaningless, and that a deep emotional moment from one film is completely undone in a sequel, just as the death of a hero in the pages of a comic is never final no matter who they are. Just ask Bucky Barnes, Jason Todd, Gwen Stacy, or Superman himself. Frankly, before the Man of Steel made his return, I hadn’t missed him all that much.

For me, Ben Affleck is the best Bruce Wayne/Batman after Michael Keaton, and Henry Cavil (and his big white teeth) makes for good Superman – at least they let him smile in this one. Gal Gadot is just as impressive here as she was in her stand alone film, in fact, I wish they had given her more to do. Amy Adams and Diane Lane are back as Lois Lane and Martha Kent, along with Jeremy Irons as Alfred. Ray Fisher makes a good impression as Cyborg, even if his character is underdeveloped. The newcomers who make the best impression are Jason Momoa as Arthur Curry/Aquaman, who is properly physically imposing, along with having a great voice, and Ezra Miller as Barry Allen/The Flash. The Flash might be my favorite DC hero, and I wasn’t bothered by Miller’s unique take on him: playing Barry as a Jewish nerd, at least he gets the best lines in the movie. Seeing J.K. Simmons as Inspector Gordon only made me hope that much more that he will reprise his J. Jonah Jameson in the next Spider-Man movie.

JUSTICE LEAGUE has underperformed, which means that if the DC movie universe is to continue, there will surely be some changes going forward; Affleck and Cavil could be jettisoned and their parts recast, along with the sacking of Zack Snyder. This is may be because of the lingering animosity from BATMAN V SUPERMAN, which earned the eternal fury of many diehard fans, so much so, that many of them wanted nothing to do with another film with the same production team and stars. One thing I would suggest Warner Brothers do is hire Joss Whedon, who did extensive reshoots on the film after Snyder had to abruptly leave (Whedon may be responsible for much of the humor in the film), and bring back Richard Donner, even if he is too old to direct another movie, he should certainly be consulted on the script and production, as his first Superman movie is still the best take on any DC hero and the one that set the mold. And go out and find some young talent to write the script.

There are two post credits scenes, one where two heroes attempt to answer and age old fan question, and another that brings back a previous villain (and his controversial casting), but also has appearance by a universally favorite bad guy. This scene alone, gives me hope that we will see the JL on the screen once again in some form.

I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
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http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH at Smashwords

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Hamilton: The Book Review!

Though I will never see Linn Manuel Miranda’s musical, nothing could stop me from reading the book that served as his inspiration. As a long time reader of history and biography, I found Ron Chernow’s epic work to be a must read, we get a full sense of the man and his place in American history. At nearly 750 pages, Chernow gives us a wealth of detail as we go from Hamilton’s early years as the illegitimate son of a Scottish born immigrant to the British West Indies, who then goes on to become a lawyer in the American colonies, then to his service in the Revolutionary War as an aide to George Washington, his role in the writing and adoption of the Constitution, through his years as the first secretary of the Treasury, and ultimately to his fateful duel over a matter of honor with Aaron Burr. Sometimes, books about the Revolution can be a tough read, in that so much of what happened has so few firsthand accounts, and historians must rely on the handwritten letter, the chief mode of communication in America at the time. Some biographers rely too much on excerpts, which can be very useful to make a point, but which can also make reading tough because they tend to break the flow of the narrative. Like the best history books, Chernow’s bio rolls with the pace of a good novel; even though we know what will occur and that the story has already been told, we still turn the page to see what happens next.

Chernow has really done his research well and gives us the most detailed look yet at Hamilton’s childhood in the Caribbean, which could be charitably called Dickensian at best. But we learn early on that he possessed great ambition and was gifted with a perceptive mind that compelled him to ever better himself, to learn and to put himself forward. Clearly he had the attributes of all great leaders: the ability to thrive on challenge and to have no fear of confrontation. More than that, he had the gift of being able to express himself well and to put forward ideas clearly and coherently. Not to mention a great deal of personal charm. And like all great leaders, Hamilton made his share of enemies, most of them his fellow Founders, who had sharply differing views from Hamilton’s on how the early American Republic was to be organized and governed. But Chernow makes it clear that it was clashing ambitions as much as anything that caused Hamilton’s irreconcilable rifts with Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams and Burr.
Chernow covers the familiar ground, such as Hamilton’s service in the Revolutionary War, where he served as an aide to General Washington, making himself indispensible to the General and becoming something of a surrogate son, but we also get a good picture of what was going on in the newly independent colonies between the surrender at Yorktown in 1781 and the convening of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, when the Articles of Confederation were the law of the land, a period of time that is usually rushed through in most high school American history classes. The part of the book I enjoyed most concerned Hamilton’s authorship of much of the fabled Federalist Papers, where he argued for an American republic with a strong central government, and his years as Secretary of the Treasury, where, as Chernow notes, he became the founder of American capitalism, and the father of the Federal government, with a sound central bank, a standing army, and a system of taxation with the force of law behind it. The book also makes a strong case as to why the young American republic needed strong ties to England, something Hamilton championed in the face of much criticism, while Jefferson, enamored with the bloody French Revolution, maintained a deep apprehension of the mother country, along with an equally strong distrust of banks and government power of any kind. There is a reason why so much of the philosophical differences in American politics can be traced back to the split between Hamilton and Jefferson while each was serving in Washington’s cabinet, an argument that makes both men the most essential of America’s founders.

The book also gives us a good look at just how venal and mean spirited American politics became when the founding generation was in charge. Though “men of honor” took pains to appear above the fray, they had no problem financing hate sheet newspapers which gleefully assassinated the character of their opponents with what we in the 21st Century would call “fake news.” In this arena, the country first learned of Jefferson’s relationship with his slave, Sally Hemings, while Hamilton’s foolish affair with the married Sarah Reynolds, and its accompanying blackmail by her husband, become the first sex scandal to be revealed to a public that would shake its head, but then read every detail. After reading all this, I am left to wonder if the infamous James Callender is any worst than Twitter.

If I have one complaint with Chernow, is that he becomes far too admirable of his subject, constantly painting him in a positive light, even when he was angling for an advantage, and grasping for glory, especially during the 1798 crisis with France, where President John Adams raised a large army with the aged George Washington in charge. The former first President insisted that Hamilton serve as his second in command, who would have then led troops into battle, thus allowing him the military glory he always wanted. Jefferson is constantly portrayed as a conniving hypocrite, a man who extolled freedom on one hand, while holding tightly onto his chattel slaves at Monticello; John Adams comes across as a foul tempered crank incapable of getting along with anyone, one who would flee his duties as chief executive in Philadelphia for his farm in Massachusetts for long months at a time. For a different view of each man, I would recommend fine biographies of Jefferson and Adams by Jon Meachem and David McCollough respectively. The most admirable character in Chernow’s book is Eliza Schuyler, who became Alexander Hamilton’s devoted wife, one who would give him many children and stand by him through his infidelity. She would keep his memory alive in the decades after his death, when his many detractors, who never tired of diminishing his contributions and blackening his character, were in power. Eliza Hamilton would live almost to see the Civil War, more than a half century after his death, and the reader finds it hard to forgive her husband for throwing his life away and leaving her and their many children to fend for themselves. This choice was especially cruel considering the grief Eliza suffered after their oldest son, Philip, died at the hands of a duelist only a few years earlier.

Of course the arch villain of any Hamilton biography is Aaron Burr, a man whose career intersected with Hamilton’s many times from the Revolution onward. Both men crossed paths in New York, where both were esteemed lawyers and crafty politicians. Burr was ultimately loyal only to his own ambition, making alliances with Hamilton’s Federalists and Jefferson’s Republicans to suite his own needs. In the deadlock of 1800, when it fell to the House of Representatives to pick between Jefferson and Burr for President, Hamilton, who had actively worked against the re-election of his fellow Federalist, John Adams, urged Federalists in Congress to pick the lesser of two evils and give Jefferson the Presidency. Things only got worse in 1804 when Hamilton helped defeat Burr’s bid to become Governor of New York. By this time, both men had fallen out of political favor with their former parties, and it had become a matter of what we would now call personal assaults. All this would lead to that fateful morning on the heights of Weehawken, New Jersey. Scoundrel is an old 19th Century word, but it perfectly suits Chernow’s Burr, a man who would never publicly express any guilt or regret for killing a man who would not have taken a deadly shot at him or any sympathy for his widow and the many children he’d made fatherless.

After reading this book, it was easy to see why Hamilton might become the subject of a pop culture phenomenon, for of all the Founding Fathers, he is the most politically correct by today’s standards – the man was a lifelong abolitionist and an immigrant who made good in America. And books like Chernow’s biography is a good antidote to the culture wars raging over our heritage, where American history has been weaponized by both the Left and the Right as heroic figures like Hamilton, and the rest of the Founding Fathers, along with the many who came after them, are resurrected onto an ideological battlefield in the service of an agenda. ALEXANDER HAMILTON lets us see these men as they were, not as we would wish them to be. And in that, I give Ron Chernow great thanks.

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The Scooby episode from Hell.

As a lifelong fan of horror films, I am ashamed to say that it took the death of director Tobe Hooper to finally prompt me to order a DVD copy of THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. Though this movie has been a horror staple ever since it opened amid enormous controversy in 1974, I’d somehow avoided viewing the film despite it being easily available for decades via videotape, and then DVD. And I must admit, I stayed away because most low budget gore movies from back in the day are just about unwatchable…think Herschell Gordon Lewis. But with the passing of Hooper, and the tremendous praise poured upon CHAINSAW, I decided to finally check out what I had been missing out on all these years, all the while wondering if the movie would still hold up.

I can definitely say that TCM more than holds its own and lives up to the hype; in fact it towers over all the remakes, reboots, and the hundreds of rip-offs that have come down the road in the years since. TCM is arguably the most perfect representation of pure terror ever put on a movie screen, and, like Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, one of the movies great visual recreations of a nightmare. One of the many genius moves Hooper made was to go heavy on the sensory overload – the jarring metallic clanging noise, the ominous breeze blowing over the hot Texas landscape, insects skittering about, a dead Armadillo in the road, a blazing red sun in a black sky, a full moon revealing itself behind wispy clouds in the night, a quick shot of listless cattle awaiting slaughter, a room filled with furniture made of human bones, the clucking chicken in a birdcage – to create a false face rural America behind which lies degeneracy and horror unimaginable. The plot, what there is of it, concerns a van full of college students traveling through the boondocks of Texas to visit and old family homestead; of course they run out of gas and walk right into the clutches of the cannibalistic Sawyer clan, where one by one, they are butchered like the cattle in the pens they passed earlier. Only Sally, played by Marilyn Burns, manages to escape, but not before enduring one of the most horrific nights of terror any character has ever been through in any movie ever. That was Hooper’s other genius move, that there be no Hitchcock like buildup of tension before the villains revealed themselves to their victims, they just walk straight into the frame without fear or hesitation and kill their defenseless prey. There had never before been a character quite like Leatherface before TCM, with his hulking frame, mask of human skin, butcher’s apron, and a roaring chainsaw that never freezes up. From the moment he steps out of the dark and guts Sally’s annoying crippled brother, Franklyn, through the relentless chase in the woods, to the ghastly family “dinner” scene with Grandpa, to the final escape on the highway, we are treated to a sequence of pure terror like no other. Yes, it is repetitive, and even today, almost unwatchable in parts, yet the very fact that it plays out like a scratched record is what makes it feel like a nightmare without end. No wonder movie goers at a sneak preview back in 1974 walked out and threatened to beat up the theater manager.

Hooper’s other genius moves were to make us believe we have seen far more gore than is really on the screen, like when Pam is hung up on the meat hook before Leatherface begins carving up Kirk; his use of dark humor, as when Leatherface looks furtively looks out the window and then sits down an beats his head in frustration, as if these kids who keep wondering into the house were interrupting him from baking a pie in the kitchen. I love the camera work by cinematographer Daniel Pearl, especially the low angle tracking shot of Pam getting up from the swing and walking toward the Sawyer house until it fills the frame, along with Leatherface’s pursuit of Sally through the country side, whining chainsaw in hand. And who can forget Leatherface’s defiant final dance in the middle of the highway? The film was shot in 16MM and then blown up to 35MM, which helped give it that classic grainy look, which is one of its most memorable aspects. So too is John Larroquette’s opening narration, where he does his best Orson Welles.

Hooper got great performances out of his cast of unknowns, most of whom were ready to kill him after the grueling shoot on location in triple digit heat during the summer of 1973, where some of the working days stretched to over twenty hours in a race to get the movie done before equipment rentals expired. One stand out is Paul Partain as Franklyn, a truly irksome character with a Texas twang. We never see Gunner Hansen’s face, but he creates the iconic Leatherface through squeals, grunts and body language alone. That he wears a tie is even more unnerving. It is a horror performance that rivals Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein Monster. That is John Henry Faulk, whose lawsuit famously ended the Hollywood blacklist, as the man at the cemetery in the opening scene. Like Tobe Hooper, most of the cast has passed on now, and it is sad to know that most of them were done out of residuals and payments over the years by unscrupulous distributors.

One of the joys of watching TCM now is the snapshot it gives us of the Nixon era 70’s, with its shaggy hair and bad fashions, it was also a time when the Vietnam War, the Manson family, the Texas Tower killer (one the first mass spree killings), and the Weather Underground bombings were in the very recent past; a dark time in an America filled with dread and random violence (sound familiar?). All of this darkness and tension is palpable in the film. As it stands, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, is a classic in the fear-the-rural-South genre, where outsiders become stranded in Dixie and at the mercy of malevolent locals; a fear that was compounded in the wake of the murder of three Northern civil rights workers in Neshoba County, Mississippi, in the summer of 1964. In that, TCM belongs in the same company as DELIVERANCE, MACON COUNTY LINE, TWO THOUSAND MANIACS, and SOUTHERN COMFORT.

There are many influences for TCM, including the crimes of Ed Gein, along with the first movie take on that character, Hitchcock’s PSYCHO. But the one influence no one seems to mention, but to me is obvious, is Scooby Doo, the cartoon where a bunch of kids travel across the country in a van encountering various monsters, who usually turn out to be some villain wearing a costume. In this way, TCM is like the Scooby Doo episode from Hell, where the mask wearing Big Bad slices and dices up the kids.

Tobe Hooper never quite got the respect of that some of his contemporaries (John Carpenter, George Romero, William Friedkin) who made great horror films back in the 70’s, but his legacy is a solid one. He would go on make a great TV adaptation of Stephen King’s SALEM’S LOT, the classic POLTERGEIST, and the unique scifi horror film, LIFEFORCE among others. But it will be THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE that he will most be remembered for, a fierce, uncompromising gift to all of us who love to be scared in the best possible way.

And bonus points to anyone who remembers the Mark Harmon 80’s comedy, SUMMER SCHOOL and that great joke whose punch line is, “New film from district, Safe Use of Power Tools.” That’s Hooper’s legacy too.

I am an indie author of horror and alternate history novels.

My latest book, the first in a series, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN is available for order on Amazon at https://bit.ly/3InqZCm.


My alternate history novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It can be found at the following:
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Hillbilly Elegy: a review.

This book has been the thing to talk about in political circles, especially progressive ones, for the past year; regretfully, I am a little late in getting around to reading it, but J.D. Vance’s short memoir is well worth the time. His chronicle of how he endured the dysfunction of growing up in a “hillbilly” family in Kentucky and southern Ohio and then ultimately achieving an Ivy League education at Yale and a law degree that will guarantee him a life far beyond the limited horizons of his forbearers. This book also presents an insider’s view of a genuine American subculture, that of the Scotch-Irish of Appalachia, a blood line that spread across much of the Old South, especially the mountains and hollers of West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. Many would drift north in the mid 20th Century to find work in the factories of the industrial mid-west, taking their “hillbilly” ways with them. These were proud and contentious people who lived what outsiders would consider a hopelessly insular life, revolving around family, work and church.

J.D. was born in 1984, after the end of the great post World War II boom that gave jobs to men like his grandfather in the Armco plant in Middletown, Ohio. Though they had achieved an outwardly middle class life, J.D.’s grandparents could never escape the worst aspects of the culture they came from, especially a tendency to fight and argue at even the slightest hint of disrespect and a distrust of strangers, not being the least among them; constant abuse of alcohol was another deadly trait. When the economic decline took hold, the lives of many in the working class would become filled with anger and apprehension, with drugs, alcohol and casual violence becoming the main forms of relief from this malaise. Young J.D.’s mother drifted from one relationship to another as her substance abuse problems worsened, while his father was not part of his life. But he had a rock to lean on in the persons of his mother’s parents, Mamaw and Papaw Vance, who gave him the love and stability to not only endure his rough environment, but ultimately, to rise above it. After high school, he did a stint in the Marine Corp, where he gained the discipline and focus to apply to the Yale School of Law.

J.D. Vance is wonderfully candid about his early life, and his retelling of events and portraits of his family are spot on and unforgettable; Mamaw Vance is one of the most vivid characters I have met in any book –fiction included – in the past year. His honest, blow by blow accounts of family dysfunction, like his mother’s repeated meltdowns, can be painful to read, but it’s impossible not to turn the page. Also impressive is J.D.’s honesty in how terribly unprepared he was for life in the world of upward social mobility, where he had not the slightest idea how to dress for a job interview with a recruiters from big law firms or even how to use a salad fork.

But what has won this book so much renown is the picture it creates of, as the book cover says, “a culture in crisis.” This is the culture of working class America that has taking a beating ever since the Reagan era when the steel mills and manufacturing plants began moving overseas in search of cheap labor; and the jobs that didn’t move away were threatened by automation. We get a picture of a community plagued with underemployment and low wage service jobs, where opportunities for a better life lies elsewhere, yet where most refuse to make an effort at a better life, clinging to the old and the familiar, even as it drags them down. J.D. makes it clear that this poverty is a state of mind, a culture of “learned hopelessness,” where everyone believes that there is nothing they can do to improve their circumstances; that the system is against them, and always will be. His life refutes this belief, but he makes it clear that it takes people like his grandparents to give children the stability and love of learning necessary to the have the self confidence – as opposed to self esteem – to make something of themselves. This is a change which must come from within; there is no 10 point government program or tax cut for the rich that will impose it from the outside. It’s a brutally honest assessment that flies in the face of the orthodoxies of many sincere liberals and conservatives.

I found myself agreeing with many of J.D.’s observations, such as how many working class Americans became disenchanted with the party FDR and JFK when it became associated with welfare and food stamps; how many in working class America felt that Obama was the embodiment of the Ivy League elitists who had been looking down on them since forever; how comments like “clinging to their religion and guns” was like spit in the face. I have many experiences in my own life that would back this up, and proves that not all the problems between Democrats and the white working class is a matter of racism. J.D. is a conservative, but he is clearly no member of the Tea Party, a rare political person capable of objective observation. He makes it plain that there is a role for government in improving the lives of the people of Appalachia, but that bureaucracy and arbitrary rules often make it ineffective.

I’ve seen on more than one online review of HILLBILLY ELEGY by readers like me on such sights as Amazon, Goodreads and Librarything, many of them having come from the same part of the country as the author or from a similar background. Some of them heartily agree with him, others take him to task for being too dismissive of blue collar workers and over estimating the benefits of college and a professional life – that those successful families have more than little of the same “hillbilly” dysfunction in them. Others dislike his insistence that it is solely on the individual to improve his circumstances, that no one can do it all on their own. Many readers relate real life experiences that either affirm or deny J.D. assertions. This is what a real discussion looks like, and it is being done in a polite, but vigorous manner, and not like one of those “national conversations” that politicians are always talking about, the kind where one side lectures and hectors the other; where no one learns anything.

I do wonder what the progressives who champion this book so much will ultimately get out of it? Do they think this explains why Trump beat Clinton so badly among the white working class? Will they stop being so condescending when they say that the white working class always “votes against their interests?” If it makes them realize that change cannot be made by a bunch of well meaning “experts” in a room in Washington D.C. and then imposed from the top down; that culture is more than an affinity for the Confederate flag, pickup trucks, and desire to listen to Toby Keith. If so, then maybe they might learn something. But I doubt it.

Back around 2006, I heard a young DeeJay on a Northern Virginia/Washington D.C. talk radio station refer to the young men and women fighting in Iraq as “dopey kids,” bamboozled by military recruiters. He could make this observation, he said, because he was a recent college graduate and listened to a lot of rap and hip hop, which meant he knew what was really going on the world. Among those so-called “dopey kids” serving his country in Iraq at that time was J.D. Vance. Not long after, that DeeJay was fired, and never heard from again. We know what happened to J.D.

I am an indie author of horror and alternate history novels and my latest book is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It can be found at the following:
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The Big Red One: A Review.

Back in the day, I rented a VHS copy of THE BIG RED ONE from my local Mom and Pop video only to get home and find that the tape wouldn’t play; this being the only copy the store had on the shelf, that was it for seeing what I had been told was one of the all time great war movies - a genre of which I am a big fan. Somehow over the intervening years, I never got around to viewing this classic until recently, when I was reminded that the end of the summer of 2017 marked 30 years since the passing of Lee Marvin; an anniversary which prompted me to seek out a copy of the 2004 reconstituted version of what is arguably Marvin’s last great film. It made me think that fate was intervening back in the day, because that old VHS copy was the badly edited version released to theaters, while the film I saw, with more than an hour of restored scenes, is a true and full vision of what famed director Samuel Fuller deemed his masterpiece. My original loss turned out to be a real back handed gain.

Fuller was one of Hollywood’s true originals, a former newspaper man and author who fought in European theater during WWII, serving with the First Infantry Division; after the war he found employment in Hollywood, first as a scriptwriter, then as a director, specializing in B movies with a certain distinctive style, that, in time, would win him legions of fans and admirers, especially among the young film makers of the '60s and '70s. A Sam Fuller film often tackled subjects and themes other directors would shy away from, and his war movies, westerns and melodramas were known for their hard edged wit and for not pulling any punches. Fuller’s dream project was to make a movie about his experiences in WWII, one that took him more than two decades to get made, but finally in 1978, he was able to obtain financing and begin filming using a script he himself authored. This movie was to be an appreciation of the men Fuller had served alongside with during the war, and, I think, his way of reminding the generations that came afterward just who had fought so hard to preserve the freedoms they enjoyed. Sadly, the producers took the film away from Fuller once it was completed, cut the nearly three hour film down to less than two and released it in the late summer of 1980, where it did very lackluster business despite a good reception at the Cannes film festival and favorable reviews from critics.

Though Lee Marvin and Sam Fuller did not live to see the 2004 reconstituted version of THE BIG RED ONE, I think both would be enormously proud of the restoration of one of their finest films. Though not a “director’s cut,” the DVD, with an exceptional commentary by critic Richard Schiekel, and running nearly three hours, gives us the gritty, infantryman’s view of World War II that Fuller wanted us to see. The longer version has a stronger narrative flow as the movie follows a unit of young American GI’s and their much older Sergeant (a veteran of WWI) through a series of battles with the Germans, starting with North Africa and ending with the liberation of a concentration camp in Germany at the war’s end. There is one marvelously staged and striking scene after another, as these young men go from one theater of battle to another, starting out as fresh and nervous recruits and ending up as battle hardened vets, sticking together and surviving one deadly encounter with the Nazis after another, outlasting most of the replacements who come to fill the ranks; and all the time led by Marvin’s tough Sergeant, in a role that fit him as perfectly as his uniform. The young men are played by Mark Hamill, Robert Carradine (as a character based on Fuller himself), Bobby Di Cicco, and Kelly Ward; all of whom should have gone on to be much bigger stars. Seigfried Rauch is Schroeder, a German counterpart to Marvin’s Sergeant, who comes in and out of the story multiple times before the fateful final scene. One of the replacements is played by Perry Lang, whose face is familiar to anyone who watched a lot of teen comedies back in the day.

What struck me most about this film is its lack of typical Hollywood war movie theatrics and heroics, as when Marvin’s Sergeant is reunited with the young men in his squad after being briefly captured during the battle at the Kasserine Pass, where most of his untested squad threw down their rifles and fled the Germans. You expect Marvin to tear them a new one when he finds them relaxing on a North African beach, which would have happened if John Wayne (who had once been considered for the part in the '50s) had played the character. Instead, Fuller stages the reunion in a long shot, we don’t hear a word, but the emotion of the moment is clear. Hamill’s sensitive Griff, has a problem with pulling the trigger when face to face with the enemy, yet in every other way, he is a competent, brave and effective soldier (especially in the D-Day sequence), yet Griff is never confronted by his fellow infantrymen, never called “yellow” and forced to prove his courage to the satisfaction of others. There is a point to this subplot and Fuller resolves it in the finale. We get the full sense of the combat soldier’s view of this world, where the ground was constantly shifting under their feet: they are charging into a German held building and taking fire in the afternoon, and then one of them is having sex with female partisan that evening; being shot at from snipers on the way to eliminating an 88 gun, and once the deadly mission is completed, sitting down to dinner with grateful Italians. There is the constant presence of children, over and over, Fuller returns to them and shows in vivid ways the impact of war upon them; this is another thing rooted in Fuller’s own wartime experience. This has to be the first film to note that American soldiers died from heat attacks on the front lines. The film had a limited budget, but Fuller did amazing things with it, they only had a couple of tanks to use, but you would never know it except from Schiekel’s commentary; the D-Day scene may pale in comparison with the one in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, or THE LONGEST DAY, but it works within this movie. There is the expected blood and gore, but nothing like what Sam Peckinpah would have done if he’d been the director; I think Fuller would have considered that exploitative and disrespectful.

With his gray hair and weathered face, Lee Marvin had his last great role as the unnamed Sergeant; he was a wounded Marine veteran of the Pacific and knew this character inside and out. Reportedly, he and Fuller were in perfect harmony on the set, each knowing what the other wanted. He clearly trusted Fuller implicitly, even going so far as to allow a degenerate German orderly to kiss him on the lips (surely a first in Marvin’s career) in the Tunis sequence when the Sergeant has been captured. I think the final sequence between the Sergeant and the small boy he has liberated from the Nazi death camp is the finest thing Marvin did in his long career; it is simply unforgettable. As the '80s wore on, Marvin’s years of hard drinking and living caught up with him, he would pass away in 1987, and be buried at Arlington. Quite fitting for the man some of us consider to be the greatest American badass ever.

Why did THE BIG RED ONE fail at the box office? By the summer of 1980, the era of the big World War II epic of the late '50s and '60s had passed and there seemed to be nothing more to say about a conflict fading into history; APOCALYPSE NOW was playing in theaters and audiences wanted to see movies about Vietnam; they wanted to see Mark Hamill fight Darth Vader with a light saber, not shoot Germans with an M-1 rifle. The only person anyone wanted to see fighting Nazis in the '80s was Indiana Jones. Another good movie had fallen victim to bad timing. After the failure of THE BIG RED ONE and the shelving of his controversial film, WHITE DOG, the following year, Sam Fuller turned his back on Hollywood for good, working in Europe for many years; truly our loss.

Yet, it stands now as one of the great American war films, and a definitive statement on the men who defeated Hitler’s war machine. THE BIG RED ONE is moving, but brutally unsentimental, horrific and funny at the same time, a film that gets better with repeat viewings. Wherever they are, I am sure Lee Marvin and Sam Fuller would be well pleased with how it turned out.

My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb

My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH

Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
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McCammon's Boy's Life

Years ago, the name Robert McCammon was well known to us horror fans, and his books, THEY THIRST and STINGER, were among my favorites. The man had a knack for writing vampire holocausts and alien invasions, but BOY’S LIFE, the first book of his I’ve read in far too many years, is a change of pace in that it is a coming of age story set in a small Alabama town in the year of 1964. This book has been out since the early 90’s and has developed a real fan following, and after reading it, I can understand why as it touches on so many things common to kids, especially boys, who grew up in the 60’s. There are a lot of novels set in little small Southern towns where everyone is a real character, but this is one of the better ones in that genre.

The plot centers on eleven year old Corey Mackenson, living what seems like an idyllic life in the town of Zephyr; he accompanies his father in his milk truck on an early spring morning run, when both of them witness the aftermath of a murder as a car plunges into a deep lake and Corey’s father is unable to save the unconscious man tied to the steering wheel. The body can’t be recovered and no one is reported missing, but the dead man haunts Corey’s father’s dreams and the boy becomes determined to solve the mystery, starting with the only clue available, a green parrot’s feather he finds at the scene of the crime. This is the framing story, as over the next year a series of adventures and incidents bring Corey, and his father, closer to the truth, and the identity of both the victim and his murderer.

Along the way, Corey encounters: vicious teenage bullies; an Old West gunslinger who still has one fight left in him; a failed author who walks around in the nude; a elderly black woman who was born a slave and who has the gift to see beyond this world; a fire and brimstone Baptist minister who really doesn’t like The Beach Boys; a murderous family of backwoods bootleggers; a small bespectacled kid who is hiding a secret talent thwarted by his parents; an older girl who gives Corey the first hint of the joys of the flesh that await him in the not too distant future; and a slow talking fix it man who really can fix anything when chips are down. Then there is Old Moses, the monster that lives in the river; Lucifer, the wild monkey on the loose; a ghost car named Midnight Mona; and the Creature That Time Forgot. There is always a hint of the supernatural that lies in the shadows, waiting to be seen by those who believe. There are also the joys of friendship and childhood, like a pickup baseball game, a camping trip in the woods, and the arrival of a new bicycle; and the sudden inevitable tragedies, like the death of a beloved dog or a hunting accident that cuts short a young life filled with promise. Along the way, Corey learns some hard truths, especially that adults are often not who they appear to be, and while life may seem to be simple on the surface, it is anything but once you take a deeper look. The big issues of the 1960’s – Vietnam and the Civil Rights struggle – are just out of sight, but an ominous future can be glimpsed in the way a new super market threatens Corey’s father’s job at the dairy with its milk for sale in plastic jugs and cartons; the rise of corporations and mass marketing is already reaching into the most remote corners of America and threatening life as it has been lived for generations.

There are some wise observations, as when one character tells Corey, “We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God's sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they'd allowed to wither in themselves.”

It has been more than 25 years since BOY’S LIFE was first published and one wonders how it would be received today in a time of intense and divisive personal politics in America, and when hostility toward the white Southern culture depicted between it pages is commonplace in the public square. Would it be accused of fostering “white supremacy” or guilty of “cultural appropriation” in its portrayal of Black Americans?

Many have unfavorably compared McCammon to Stephen King, who has written a number of Baby Boomer coming of age tales, most notably IT and THE BODY (adapted to the screen as STAND BY ME); I will be the first to admit that McCammon often lacks the subtly of King, or Peter Straub and Dan Simmons (who wrote the excellent SUMMER OF NIGHT) for that matter, nor possess anything approaching their style. McCammon is unabashedly sentimental, often uses on-the-nose dialog, and crams in too much wordy exposition, but those other guys have been guilty of those same literary crimes more than once. If King, Straub, and Simmons are HBO and Showtime, then Robert McCammon is most certainly, AMC or FX. In fact, BOY’S LIFE reads like a good TV mini-series, with each chapter an episode building to the complete whole. But what no one can take away is that Robert McCammon is a true story teller; that he has mastered the knack of creating compelling characters along with the ability to keep the reader guessing and turning the pages to see what happens next. There are more than a few autobiographical touches, such as Corey’s enthusiasm for horror films of the period, especially those starring Vincent Price and in his budding desire to be a writer, inspired in part after compilation of Ray Bradbury stories, proving that people living far from the cultural centers of America could live rich and creative lives.

McCammon took ten years off from writing after his novel GONE SOUTH came out in 1992 because of changes in the publishing industry, but since then he has been busy, and his later books can be found online.

Robert McCammon still has that magic.

My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
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My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
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My take on IT.

To be honest, I cannot not remember the last time I was really stoked to go and see an R rated horror movie in the theater, but the remake of Stephen King’s IT got me back there, and the film was well worth the matinee ticket. There are many who have fond memories of King’s novel and the 1990 TV mini-series that gave us Tim Curry’s terrifying take on Pennywise the Clown and this new movie will do nothing to sully them, but I think this new film is an improvement on both the book and the TV version, because, first of all, I thought King’s book was somewhat overwritten and bloated in length, if the story had just stayed with the kids in 1950’s Derry, Maine, it would have been a classic, but, for me, the contemporary 1980’s story with the grown up kids, just did not grab me. I know that is not a popular opinion, and I respect anyone who begs to differ. As for the old TV series, the best thing about it is Curry and his interpretation of Pennywise, a performance that has given more than one generation a phobia of clowns, but the rest of the show has not aged well. So as far as I am concerned, IT was a good subject for a 21st century reboot.

What works so well about this version, is that director, Andy Muschietti, and screenwriters Chase Palmer and Cory Fukanaga, did not forget what worked best in King’s book: the battle between The Losers, a loose collection of junior high misfits, and the awesome evil of Pennywise, an ancient entity that lives beneath the town of Derry, Maine, and feeds off the fear of children, whom it murders at will. One of King’s best talents is the ability to create great child protagonists, and Bill, Eddie, Mike, Stanley, Richie and Beverly were among his most memorable. The movie lets us get to know each one of them; what makes them unique, what makes them losers in the eyes of their classmates, what the fear the most, and most of all, what makes them heroes. One of the secrets to making a great horror movie is giving us characters we really care about and fear for when they are in peril, and in this aspect, IT delivers. Too bad so many other horror flicks fail miserably in this regard. All praise to the young actors, Jaeden Lieberther, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Finn Wolfhard, Chosen Jacobs, Jack Dylan Grazer, Wyatt Oleff, and Sohpia Lillis for bringing making The Losers such winners.

But the other secret to a great horror movie is having a compelling Big Bad, and in this, Bill Skarsgard is a great Pennywise; he won’t make you forget Tim Curry, but his take on the most evil clown of all is a winner. Skarsgard’s Pennywise is buck toothed cartoon character from hell, with a painted on grin and yellow eyes of pure evil behind a façade of childish mirth. He is good enough to lure a small child like Bill’s little brother, Georgie, into the sewers (in a harrowing opening scene), but like the big bad wolf, the older kids see right through him. There is also a gang of punk bullies hanging around to also make our young heroes lives than much more miserable. I like the way the movie’s setting is so vividly rendered, Derry is a town filled with dilapidated houses and apathetic adults who fail to notice the danger their children are in, an 80’s community where it is most definitely not “Morning in America Again.”

My biggest complaint about the movie would be that it is too dark in many scenes; lighting seems to be an especial problem with movies made in the 2000’s. Also, I do not find CGI effects particularly scary or frightening; it is just a matter of over saturation. I had no problem with moving the setting of the film forward to the late 1980’s with Tim Burton’s Batman on the theater marquee and New Kids on the Block playing on the Sony Walkman. I do commend the screenwriters for dropping one aspect of King’s book, the “problem scene” in the sewers after the battle with Pennywise, when our young heroes become lost; if you’ve read the book, you know what I’m talking about. There were a number of changes from the novel that did not sit too well with fans of King’s book, mostly having to do with an obvious plot turn at the beginning of the third act that was not in the novel.

This version of IT is subtitled, Chapter One, with the intention being that we will see the adult versions of The Losers reunite 27 years after the events of this movie to take on Pennywise once again. So we won’t be getting a lame sequel, but an actual continuation of the story. And if they want to reboot another epic Stephen King novel that was a mini-series back in the 90’s, may I suggest The Stand, it’s one hell of a story.

My latest book, All the Way With JFK: An Alternate History of 1964, speculates as what might have been if John F. Kennedy had lived to run for re-election. It can be found at: 

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