Seth Kupchick's Blog: Bet on the Beaten, page 7

I saw the light, and felt the Bern!

In October, 2012, I knew the world was changing, and I couldn't believe it after a very disillusioning first term of the Obama Presidency, that he's slightly redeemed in his second termbut not enough for anyone to care. I'd given up on Obama and the ridiculous notion that you had to vote against your will and between the best of two bad options, a stance I accepted only once in my life as an American voter, that really didn't start well into my '30's. I voted for John Kerry against George W. Bush and still feel stung by his cowardice when he didn't challenge the election night results decided by a slim W. victory in Ohio, that John Conyers, of the Black Congressional Congress, wrote a report on called "What Went Wrong in Ohio." (Plenty!) I'd never felt so politically cheated in my life, and it was a moment that proved to me Kerry really was a dishonorable man, when the chips were down, but I digress.

By 2012, I'd given up on the two party system for the second or third time but this time instead of being an apathetic Gen X loner I decided to vote Green for the first time in my life. Sure, I wanted to vote for Nader in 2000, but didn't have my shit together, and frantically went to the Nader headquarters in the Central District days before the first Tuesday in November, election day, to see if I could do anything about it but I was too late. I'm sure the Nader supporters saw my dedication and gave me a lot of "Nader dollars" that I used in a collage of the 2000 election, so you could say I made my vote heard but not literally. The same wasn't going to happen to me in 2004, but I was an ardent Dean supporter and spoke up for him at the 2004 Washington State caucus in a room of people, and had the support of a neighbor couple in my apartment building from Vermont, the same state Bernie Sanders is from, but I knew all was lost because the Kerry supporters were rallying support quickly on the issue of electability in the general election, a favorite Clintonian/Second Wave Boomer trope, that always used the failed campaign of George McGovern in '72 as proof positive that you had to sell out to Republican principles to win a Presidential election, a stupid idea that Bubba played out until the late 90's when he got bored and had Lewinsky, an office intern, wet his whistle. In 2004, I first remember the idea floated out there that triangulation might only work for Clinton, and maybe that was true because we didn't get to see Kerry play it out.

So, this brings me to the Green Party political event that I paid $10 to attend, and bought a couple of buttons. It was in Town Hall, a great old building in First Hill (Pill Hill, where the hospitals are), that must've been a church at one time, since there are several old great Catholic Churches around it. The place was packed and I went alone because Jenny was taking care of our diabetic cat, and though I attended most every shot he ever had in one way or the other, I took the night off in the name of Oliver because he was in cohoots with Fidel Castro, and would've liked nothing more than for me to attend a socialist gathering, that would've gotten me busted in the McCarthy witch hunts, if I was a famous Hollywood screenwriter, but I'm not. I was wearing a "Bobby Kennedy for President '68" button that I wore for at least a year or two when I was a "Bagist" with Seaside Johnny (check out the FB page for Ataraxia), and all but started an art movement. Not a day would go bye without someone talking to me because of my button, and that was remarkable, absolutely remarkable. I can't explain it but I became something more than me.... I became "Bobby Kennedy" for every lost sad left wing soul hoping for a better world, and it was an overwhelming feeling.

I live in Seattle, and have been on Capitol Hill for what feels like a lifetime and would literally speak on behalf of Bobby Kennedy EVERYDAY, so I may have well been running for President, as much as Obama, a sell out in 2012, or Mitt Romney, a shape shifting flip-flopper for time immemorial. Most everyone filtered the beautiful Saint like effigy that Bobby and John Kennedy have become for every dreamer, and I let strangers project their ideas of Bobby Kennedy on me, an unbelievable feeling. I was only ridiculed or taken down by a right winger twice: once was in Peet's coffee shop on the Sunset Strip (now gone, and forgotten!), and once was at a Firestone Tire Dealer in Seattle, but this was NOTHING compared to all the approval I got but wasn't seeking. I became a Catholic/Jewish well for suffering over the fate of the U.S.. and when the Occupy movement started, the feeling only got bigger. Artistically, I knew I was the only person in the world who could pull this off, because the Kennedy's are my heroes, like some claim Bowie is theirs, and I lived and died for them, as an American. I admired revolutionary leaders more than politicians but every agent of change is judged by his culture, and in the U.S. the Kennedy's ruled, as far as I was concerned. The Kennedy Curse was also an insanely fated and weird narrative to digest and understand watching my Country crumble in the Go-Go Reagan '80's, and this makes me think of the revolutionary post pop punk rock group "The Go-Go's" who every L.A. pre-pubescent girl thought were the best thing since sliced wonder bread, so the boys thought they were pretty cool too.

I sat in a front pew with Kashana Sawant right in front of me before she had won her city council seat that has all but changed the face of Seattle, and was on the cusp of success, and saw her speak and sat next to her family. I can't rightly speak it but I broke down in absolute tears in the pews with my Bobby Kennedy button on like always and just couldn't stop crying. The only other time I remember feeling like that over a political event is when Jenny and I watched a documentary on Bobby Kennedy in the nightmarish "W" years, and when they showed all the Americans along the Eastern Seaboard running from D.C. to Massachusetts (?) to be near him one last time, and feel his hopeful eternal soul. The assassination and martyrdom of "Bobby" and was just too much for us to bear, and we started wailing. It didn't help that I was infused with stories of the greatness of Bobby since I was a kid because my Mom lived in New York City and said one day she dropped her groceries, and Bobby Kennedy picked them up for her, and was struck by his translucent blue eyes, that she called the most beautiful she ever saw. But my Mom was no socialist she just loved beauty of the Kennedy's and they had that in spades making them popular to a vast breadth of the American psyche.

I came home to Jenny with new buttons all over me and told her that I had seen a new world after balling in tears for a good hour to every speaker, feeling like every socialist dream I'd ever had for America, starting in childhood, and extending into my youth, had finally been realized. A real democratic socialism was possible in spite of one of the lamest Presidential elections in history, Obama vs. Romney, a half black man seeking reelection against a Mormon, and that alone should've made it memorable, but to no avail. I knew a new America was coming and that I had literally felt it so strongly and truly I couldn't stop crying for pain, joy, loss, hope, forgiveness, fear, and every other emotion that there are no words for, because the feelings reached deep into my very being, to my childhood at a hippie school in LA. to my F.D.R./Truman era Grandfather living through the Great Depression and shooting down a cherry blossom squadron in WW II. I felt every political emotion I ever felt that night even if Jill Scott, the Green Party candidate for President, wasn't the best speaker of all time. I could tell by my tears that there was hope, because I wasn't expecting to feel anything, but a forlorn wish that I didn't have the organizational skills to mobilize.

Well, my vision has come true only four years later in the visage of Bernie Sanders and not even I could have predicted it. The Democratic Party strategist in me really thinks that Hillary Clinton is not going to be able to pull this one out for a number of reasons, but mostly because she's run out of gas, and even though she might be a couple of years younger than Sanders, she has lived a lot more, and has nothing more to give. She can't even make being the first woman President the gestalt of her campaign and this is troubling for her. She's now trying to run as Obama's third term, making her the third Black President in the history of the U.S. behind "Bubba" Clinton, her husband, and Obama, a half black man torn between Hawaii and Kansas. But Hillary is neither woman or black now and has nothing to run on, but good Benghazi hearing that nearly took her down a few months ago, and that she wants to forget. Her emails are also going to be dropped throughout the campaign season by a judge's order, a Clinton appointee, ironically.

I wear a Bernie Sanders pin that I bought for $5 the day that Bernie got the microphone taken from him by the Black Lives Matter group, and hope that anyone I change with it is changed by me, but I'm no martyr for a dead idealist like I was for Bobby Kennedy. Bernie is alive and well, and about to win the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary prepping him for a long protracted Democratic Primary with Hillary that will drain the Clinton Vampires of all life, because they can't figure out how to suck their fangs into Bernie, and are "Feelin' the Bern.' Not even Chelsea could do it trying to take down Bernie over Health Care and Women's Rights, but she's not as cute since she makes about a Million a Year because of nepotism, and married an investment broker like a good Clinton. The day's of triangulation are over.

An astrological take on "Heaven Can Wait"

"Heaven Can Wait" had an all star cast worthy of a disaster movie like the "Poseidon Adventure," or "The Towering Inferno," but it was an adaptation of "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" from my Grandparents time and starred Warren Beatty, Dyan Cannon, Charles Grodin, Buck Henry, James Mason, and Jack Warden. The first act of "Heaven Can Wait" was about a very 1970's L.A. Rams hippie era quarterback played by Warren Beatty, who jogged in the canyon, practiced clarinet at night, a humble servant of football, with no ego. He was best friends with Jack Warden, the trainer for the Rams, and if memory serves me well Beatt gets into a game when the starting QB gets hurt and shows his stuff, presumably at the onset of a great career. Then, he goes for a bike ride the next day in his grey sweatsuit and is hit by a car in a tunnel. It turns out that the young innocent's death was a mistake when Beatty boards an airplane for Heaven and lands on a fog machine set where he meets his angels. It appears a bumbling angel, Buck Henry, took Beatty away too soon, and this is explained by the chief angel, James Mason. It seems the afterlife doesn't function this way and the two angels concoct a plan to bring back Beatty's spirit to life, but in another body, and he incarnates a very wealthy man, Leo Farnsworth, who is dying, and takes over his life.

The second act turns into a hilarious romantic comedy about Warren Beatty's hippiesh spirit and character in the body of a very wealthy man, living with a conniving couple trying to take him for everything he's worth. The woman in the couple (Dyan Cannon) is also his wife, and is cheating on him with Dyan Cannon, but Beatty who still has the personae of "Joe" could care less. He has been reincarnated, or newly embodied, to see out his destiny, but no one gets this, and thus the screwball comedy. In some ways, the movie really gets into the innocence of a hippie archetype and how ill fitted he is for wealth, a rare moment in time around 1976, before the Boomers struck it rich, and Beatty plays it perfectly. He ends up falling in love with Julie Christie, a reporter trying to take Farnsworth's businness (?) down for being unethical, and a lot of the humor plays on Farnsworth agreeing with her that his business practices are unethical, and she starts to fall in love with him, and he with her, disregarding his marriage entirely, another big theme of the day. A lot of the humor plays on Farnsworth surprising everyone with his 'new character' because he's not really Leo Farnsworth.

Beatty resurrects his football career by hiring Jack Warden, the Rams trainer, to train him on the Farnsworth estate, where the second act takes place, and where Leo Farnsworth surprisingly becomes a very good quarterback who wins a tryout with the Rams and makes the squad. Farnsworth becomes L.A.'s hottest story, but dies on the field of battle because the angels have a master plan: they tell "Joe" Beatty, that he has to give up Farnsworth's body to inhabit the body of a new Rams quarterback, Tom Jarrett, and leads them to victory through Jarrett's corporeal transitory temporal state. Admittedly, I had to wikipedia the end of this rather cosmologically profound film, but Beatty becomes Tom Jarrett, not Joe, who he was in the 1st act, or Leo Farnsworth, who he was in the second act. In terms of plot movies often run on faith, and I can only imagine Joe can't come back to life because he's dead, and Farnsworth is dead too, leaving Tom Jarrett, who dies on the field also, so two deaths for the Rams in a very short time, but now I remember and Jarrett doesn't die. He's fatally injured but the angels of mercy bring him back to life to win the Super Bowl in the coliseum, the stadium where I watched the Rams and SC kick ass!

According to wikipedia, the angels also told Joe that he'd have no memory of what he'd just gone trhough but because his spirit's inabitation of Farnsworth's body was never meant to be the QB was still aware of his past. I am a student of the Myth of Er, Plato's version of the afterlife, that appears at the end of the Republic, a treatise on government, and I found the part about memory interesting, though on second thought if you believe in reincarnation part of the theory is that you have no memory of your past lives unless you have a mystical experience through past life regression or rebirthing. Of course, Beatty doesn't want to hear that he'll never have another memory especially since he's fallen in love with Julie Christie as "Joe," but in the body of Leo Farnsworth, a very rich man, who were lead to believe the hippie woman doesn't want to marry for his wealth but his ideals, another hippie trope. This is solved at the end when Tom Jarrett, Beatty's new identity, runs into Christie in the tunnel to the stadium like Mean Joe Greene did with that kid in the famous coke commercial. They both have a fleeting moment of romantic acknowledgement because in classic Hollywood fashion they promised each other they'd remember this moment forever when they were still conscious but "Joe" as a consciousness through the body of Farnsworth was only temporary, and he was awaiting a full transsubstatiation.

"Heaven Can Wait" must've been the first movie to map out a cosmology for me since I had no formal religious education, and everything about it made sense. I'm not sure if this was because the movie was comic gold, written by Elaine Maye and Robert Towne, with unforgettable performances by everyone, but the art of the film must've helped the message come across, or maybe the message guided the art, but either way the cosmological interpretation of events for the life of a Rams backup QB was clear. The movie said we all have a destiny and are guided by a preordained life chosen for us by a higher power, and that was a really big idea, especially since the notion of God or all the world's major religions was somehow skirted in the place of a couple of angels who seemed all too human themselves, capable of human error, but also capable of correcting it. I'm not even sure "Heaven Can Wait," was about reincarnation, but it firmly established the transsubstantiation of the soul, a vedic idea, also in Plato's Myth of Er, and yet put the word "Heaven" in the title, so that it wouldn't alienate western audiences, a brilliant move by the producers!

I can't say for sure that "Heaven Can Wait" shaped my vision of the afterlife but by making Beatty a football player in '70's L.A., my home, and then turning his spirit's plight into a classic romantic comedy, the kind they don't make anymore, made the idea of destiny plausible. It may have been my favorite movie for a season or two, and one that I'd watch over and over and over on the Z channel, because it was a crowd pleaser, further making its spiritual allegations all the more appealing. I can only imagine the popularity of "Heaven Can Wait" let people acknowledge 'there may be more in this life than our philosophy can account for,' in the words of Hamlet, also popularized by the Hamburger Hamlet, an L.A. hot spot. Indeed, one could talk about how much they loved "Heaven Can Wait" and it was almost like saying they too had a glimpse into the memory of their past life that was repressed, but could be glimpsed from time to time in moments of romantic wonder and transcendence.

This takes us to the Lot of Fortune and the Lot of Spirit, two key components of Hellenistic astrology. Together they account for the timing technique called 'zodiacal releasing,' or ZR, and completely fit with the cosmological premise of "Heaven Can Wait," a movie about how angels time events to match destiny. In the context of "Heaven Can Wait," the Lot of Fortune would literally symbolize what we are supposed to become, or how we're supposed to conclude our life, how we're supposed to be remembered, and that to tamper with this would upset the cosmic order, so one can imagine that the plan of destiny is ordained not by the angels but a higher power, and the angels are mere servants. I'm not sure an astrological chart shows you God, but it shows where you're going, the Lot of Fortune, and how you're going to get there, the Lot of Spirit. Buck Henry and James Mason were the Lords of Spirit, guiding the life's events, and the Lot of Spirit itself must be the orders they are working to fulfill Fortune. In our own personal life, I'm not sure we have much contact with our Lords of Spirit, just like Beatty didn't have much contact with his, until the plan for his life got fucked up, and they had to interfere and come down the earth to confer with him. The best metaphor we have for this are those people who appear and disappear rather quickly and yet seem to play a significant role in how major events in our life play out like car wrecks, near death experiences, or meeting the love of your life!

The Lords of Spirit and Fortune come down for a moment to alter the course of our destiny, and then just as quickly disappear, but they are simply fulfilling the Lot of Spirit, that is inextricably linked to the Lot of Fortune. So, the Lot of Fortune is God's plan, and the Lot of Spirit is the implementation of the plan, with the Lords of Fortune and Spirit both working on behalf of God. In "Heaven Can Wait," the Lord of Fortune would be akin to James Mason, Buck Henry's superior officer, who chastises Henry (a classic bumbling angel from which predenced had been set) for not following the divine order to take plac by taking out "Joe" too soon, something Buck Henry, the Lord of Spirit, may not have been able to see too clearly, since he's more a pupeteer pulling the strings of "Joe's" fate, and may not see the grand plan. In both cases, the Lords of Fortune and Spirit are able to materialize on the earthly plane and talk to Beatty about his Lots, so that might be an astrological insight into how to look at this rather complex Hellenistic equation with a favorite movie of my youth. I do believe the more you look at Hellenistic astrology through the lens of movies and three act structure the clearer it will become.

On the verge of failure/success

I just published a book, "If so carried by the wind" on kindle and create space and in some ways feel like my life is done and I can settle into middle age waiting for someone to discover me like I wrote about in my introduction, but I've come back alive in the form of a self published author and this has its own anxiety. I find myself checking my amazon/create space page for sales everyday, sometimes by the hour, even though I've only sold about ten books, and this feels compulsive even though it takes practice apprehending the tools of my trade. I always imagined a publisher selling my books but I had an inkling that wasn't happening even in the '90's with all the ubiquitous book signings/readings that made me embittered towards the world thinking writers were lonely creatures preferring to hide under the covers between passages rather than acting in front of the public but life isn't fair.

I have all the worries any sensitive person has when they release their work into the world and expect both literary immortality and strong book sales, nor am I sure which I'm feeling stronger. I've gotten a lot of good feedback on "If so carried by the wind," so I should be feeling confident, but if sales ever go through the roof (a thousand copies!) there will invariably be bad reviews and people who find my book insufferable, and I'll have to be strong enough to withstand criticism, but my problem is worse. I get down when I haven't changed peoples lives or at the least enlightened them to the meaning of art and this is a huge expectation that can only let me down, and yet this hope is so wound up in my character disassociating it from me would be impossible.

East Coast Beats vs. West Coast Beats

Here's my biggest literary success ever, so hats off to David Wills for giving me a shot and pumping some adrenaline in my veins. Beatdom is his brain child and I really get the sense that Wills had no idea where it was going but had the faith to let his online readers and writers guide the direction of the website, that started off political, but has ended up as an intellectual dissection of the Beat landscape as perceived from the perspective of 2015, with no one from the Beat Generation commenting, or making hay. It's freedom.

In my most romantic moments, I see David Wills as a young Ferlinghetti running his own online City Lights Books publishing house, but doing it unconsciously. He's Scottish and moved to Korea to teach English and I think currently lives in China, so he's not smoking tea in North Beach contemplating infinity from the Existential Bagel, but he's alive and well, making his own name in Beat mythology, and who knows what larvae will spring from the pool. David Wills has been very gracious to publish my essay but I realize that I am the next generation of Beats who can keep the tradition going and while this might not have seemed like much of an undertaking when I was younger it does now. The Beats will go on, but they need help, and their story will be told and retold so many times that hundreds of years down the line we'll all be remembering the retelling as much as the actual events, the re-questioning. And even if we are still reading On the Road on reefer it will be a new reefer in a new time.



http://www.beatdom.com/east-coast-bea...

What is the middle class?

When I was growing up the U.S. was famous for its 'vast middle class,' and it was the cultural make up that defined the '50's, and the suburban man barbecuing in his backyard, but the barbecue may have come in the '60's, but you get the idea. The poor and rich represent the political extremes of the spectrum, with the poor being characterized as having more revolutionary, or left wing ideas, while the rich represent the establishment. The middle class are usually striving to be rich, with the poor sometimes striving to be middle class, and it would seem that very few people at any given time are veering towards the revolutionary ideas of the poor, to overturn the State in its favor, unless economic times are dire. It's what the poor see the rich doing with the laws tilted in their favor, while the middle class tend to see the rich as generally holding the Country together, in which they are heavily invested, so again the middle tends to identify with the rich more than the poor. The only exception comes for those middle class people who started off as poor, which may not be happening as much in America anymore, but was the norm for awhile, and often these are the poor people that don't dream of being rich, and have guilt for having so much more than those they grew up with, and that's called 'white liberal guilt,' since the middle class is a very white idea.

Economically, the classes mix more than ever now, although the distinctions are still there. I grew up in the '70's at the end of the F.D.R. era even though he'd already been dead for 30 years, and I remember being taught that there was a lower middle class, a middle class, and an upper middle class. I guess the economists of the day made these distinctions because the middle class was so big by then that it was starting to differentiate from itself, with its own quirks and tendencies. I haven't heard anyone on TV or radio use the words 'the lower middle class,' or the 'upper middle class' since the '80's, if even then, and I guess that's because the middle class just isn't big enough anymore for three layers, and lord knows the phrase 'the vanishing middle class' is boiler plate at this point in Democratic Party politics, and Republican Party politics too, but not with the same gusto. I'd also argue that Gen X is probably the most college educated generation in history, but not economically topping their parents for the most part, so the cultural assumptions that people used to make about being a boring uncultured middle class guy aren't as rigid anymore. More often than not it implies a two income household with no housewife, and very possibly a divorce, but the middle class are the homeowners and in local elections they tend to be the ones who vote since so many ballot initiatives have to do with property tax measures. I don't own a house but I can only imagine many a liberal arts homeowner who once had revolutionary thoughts but now is settled down cringing at having to compromise his/her ideals over whether or not to pass a levy to help schools or to vote for their pocketbook.

In the '90s, the millionaire class became a new Clinton era phenomenon, and this has wreaked havoc on the culture in general. I don't have statistics, but I highly doubt that more than the 2% or 3% er's of the society are raking in over a millionaire a year, and yet the idea became popular enough in the culture that I'm pretty sure the Republicans successfully ran on it for most of my twenties and into my thirties, if you can believe that. Sure, their rank and file is made up of the working white poor, but that didn't stop them from thinking they were geniuses in business and finance who could figure out a way to make a million if they just put their brains together (think the Duck Dynasty), so they sold the poor on tax cuts for the rich, and attacks on their unions and benefits, because those policies would benefit them one day. I'm not sure even the Republicans can sell their voters on this circa 2015, but the idea of making a millionaire class has created a nouvea riche tastelessness that didn't exist en masse when I was growing up, and was labeled 'upper middle class' because wealth ran in the family. I'm still amazed at how when I grew up there was a real middle class, or working class, disdain for the rich. They thought they were pompous and just kind of weak in general, while the working man, the lower middle class man, who watched football and drank beer, thought he was the real American representing the thoughts of the Country, and in general this was the political mood of the day. I don't need to tell any Gen X'er but boy did that change come the '80s when the idea of wealth was glamorized and approved of in a way that would've made the Roosevelts sick to their stomach, even though they came from money. Richie Rich was the hero of the day and the working class grunt, the lower middle class guy, was stripped of his money, and hardened in his attitude. As for the middle class man, he was threatened by feminism and his wife having to go to work and maybe top him, since he was brought up thinking that was failure. The real winners were the upper middle class who culturally became rich.

In case you couldn't tell, I'm not an economist, but I think a big idea to come out of this era is that everyone except the rich, and that would include much of the nouveau riche, or what used to be considered the upper middle class, have become a debtor class. Very few people in the U.S. can afford their extravagant consumer driven lifestyle on their yearly wage, so they've taken to debt and credit cards for their survival. Traditionally, this is more of a feudal economic system, than anything to do with capitalism, where the average man was told he could start at the bottom of the ladder, as a working class grunt, or a guy in the mail-room, and work his way on up the economic ladder if he had the initiative and will. Sure, that still happens from time to time even though 'interns' are a much more popular form of slavery right now and they don't even get paid half the time, and I wonder how high they ever make it up the economic ladder, but times have changed from the days of the vast middle class with less poor, and less wealth among the highest and lowest among us. In some ways, we're all poor now because of the debtor society and I think that's what the Occupy Wall St. movement was getting at, but just because we're in debt doesn't mean our middle class assumptions have left us, since most Americans consider themselves middle class, because they don't want to be thought of as poor, with a low self esteem. Most people want to see themselves in the middle, normal citizens of the state. As for the wealthy, they are storing their money overseas, or in tax shelters, because they are the money lenders, and they know better than anyone how poor the Country really is, even if we're all imagining ourselves bourgeoise bohemians, talking philosophy in coffee bars like poor beatniks, and driving around in a Lexus.

So, where does this leave the poor? Well, they seem to be an institutionalized class circa 2015 much like the wealthy, and are born into their circumstances. This certainly flies in the face of one of the great American myths when I grew up that we lived in a society with free movement between the classes, but economic circumstances change, and this one certainly has. I also have a feeling there are a lot of people who'd also classify as poor nowadays even though they are well educated, and from the perspective of my World War II Grandparents, these folks should've been shoe-ins to make it in America. This is partly their doing through a philosophy of 'voluntary poverty' that many artists and intellectuals took to heart in the '60's and '70's when the wealth of the Country was so great that one could imagine 'voluntary poverty' as a cultural stance, but I'm not sure that's as popular anymore. I'd imagine the institutionalized poor, whether white or black, are less educated than their parents were, because of how low the American educational standard has sunk since the '80's, so I'd imagine their ability to think of themselves as anything but poor is harder than ever, and by poor I mean intellectually impoverished' as well as economically. In the weird politics of the day, the white over-educated masses who may be poor tend to take on many middle class attitudes, since they aren't accepted by the poor, because they aren't from a middle class or nouveau riche family. I probably fall into this category but when I was younger I was confused why more of the newly poor weren't more revolutionary in their thinking, and self identifying as middle class, but culturally it makes sense, since the rich survive.

Exhibiting Talent

I really thought when I first wanted to publish that all I had to do was exhibit talent and the publishing world would come knocking on my door and be thrilled to take me into their own and cultivate the hidden worth they saw in me, drawing it out for legions of readers, but boy was I wrong. I'm not sure what lead me to think this exactly, except that I'd studied the works of lots of great artists and saw that their early works were often inferior to their later ones, and that they had time to hone their talent, or gift, for the world to see. I'm sure this feeling was exacerbated because I was born in the late '60s and was a film buff so I got to learn that a lot of the great directors actually started making schlock, or shorts, that they'd never be remembered by, and then I thought of the life of great athletes who rarely broke through in their rookie year, and I thought the same thing would happen to me. At the same time, I intuitively knew it wouldn't because when I started writing in earnest I also knew that not that many people were reading anymore, and there was also no market for experimental fiction that challenged the reader to do their best to understand what I was saying, much like abstract poetry. I'm not sure this kind of writing was ever really popular, but there was a time in the late '50's and '60's with the rise of the Beats and the Hippies, that I imagined a certain amount of publishers who actually looked for hard to read works with poetic glimmers, and would do their best to take those glimmers and give the writer's in their stable the confidence to go on with their artistic experiments until they hit gold, and paid off for the publisher, but I was to learn I'd have to go through all of that experimentation alone, with no fanfare.

I started tackling the idea of publishing when I first moved to Seattle, and would spend days poring over books not only looking for publishers, but testing out what the market was like in New York City, since that's where they all were, and it wasn't good. The first thing I learned is that I couldn't even submit my manuscript anymore to at least 90% of the publishers in the U.S. because they didn't accept unsolicited manuscripts, and this was very depressing. I was told by the books and the experts that I needed a literary agent to even begin to tap the publishing world, which I guess in and of itself wouldn't have been so bad, except that I learned that getting a literary agent was almost as hard as publishing, not to mention the agent didn't even guarantee you would get published, only that your manuscript would get read by some anonymous editor, who'd do the same thing with it they would've done in the '60's except that you'd have to pay your agent 10% or something like that, and then write them endless thank you notes for just getting your manuscript read, even though in theory they were supposed to be working for you, and that's what pissed me off.

I grew up in L.A. in the '80's and the big joke for bands on the Sunset Strip was that they had to pay club owners to actually get a gig, and it was called 'pay to play.' My friends and I made fun of it but the joke was on us, and I was to learn that the publishing world was no different, and that the agents weren't looking for talent they could cultivate for their paycheck, but rather were taking on the status of an author, a man or woman of importance, and held the cards for success or failure, not the other way around, as if the agents and the publishers didn't need you, but you needed them, a weird reversal of fortune. I'm not sure what caused this in America, but I'm sure it had something to do with advertising and the thought that the artist was worthless and all it took for record companies, publishers, and movie studios, to make money was massive amounts of advertising, and that they could sell anyone a piece of shit, especially if it fit into a likable genre. Now fantasy is the genre of the day, but back then it was cookbooks and self-help manuals that I was told to write, and there was no market for literary fiction, my genre. I was never comfortable with the words literary fiction but I guess they threw in the literary part because most of the popular fiction of the day wasn't particularly literary (think fantasy, sci-fi, etc.). I remember spending several hours one day at Borders drinking coffee and reading about the correct way to address an agent in a form letter, and how agents were very sensitive to whether you wrote 'dear,' 'mr.' 'ms.' or 'miss' and you had to be very careful not to offend their feelings or they might not read your letter. I literally read testimonial after testimonial of what a prickly lot literary agents were and how the tone of the letter would all but seal your fate, not your work, and these weren't even publishers. Don't get me wrong, I realize it's important to present yourself well, but these books were 'kiss-ass' manuals, and they made me sick.

I'm sure I sent my stuff to a few literary agents and a few publishers even though it became clear that the agents didn't accept unsolicited manuscripts, either, and it all had to do with who you knew, so welcome to the publishing world circa the '90s, kid. At the least, I realized that the days when all you had to do as a novelist or a story writer was exhibit talent were completely gone, and that no one was going to pay you a small wage to cultivate your stories for the world to see. Then there was the self publishing world, or what they called the vanity press, but that seemed completely worthless in a pre-internet world, where corporate book retailers like Borders, where I did my studying about the publishing world, were all but destroying the idea of new literary fiction. I'm not sure if there were any self publishing literary successes in the '90's, but I'd seriously doubt it, since there would've been almost no way to get anyone to see what you'd written, since a self published novel, was just another unsolicited manuscript, and the big boys in New York would've demanded you lick their boots, buy them dinner, maybe write them a love letter or two, and do a back flip, before they'd even consider rejecting your manuscript. I'm not against the idea of responsible gatekeepers but the literary establisment had a lock on the market that completely went to their head.

This brings us to Kindle, Create Space, this blog, and all the other avenues of social media that exist with a click of a mouse on an icon that say's publish. I realize that becoming a successful author via these avenues is not easy and yet they let you be your own agent, publisher, and ad man, to a degree, all without the bullshit of having to wait a year or two for a rejection slip (this really happened to me more than once!). The new technology has made being a writer much more empowering, and I feel very lucky to have caught the wave at all, since I couldn't even forsee this happening to me ten years ago, or more. I realize that I may die in the same obsurity I would have if the internet was never created, but now I have a fighting chance for survival that is exciting unto itself, and something the publishing world was unable to offer me, and this would include punk rock influenced 'zines' that I also felt strangely locked out of and alienated from, but that's probably another subject for another day. The boomers were fond of saying, 'publish or perish,' and then my mentor punned, 'publish and perish,' but this feels like some new kind of perishing, and one that promises life. That said, I'm going to click on the publish icon and become my own printing press this cold afternoon.

The reader

"Fuck the reader, who cares about the reader, the reader is stupid, if your book is popular that means it's bad, readers are stupid, the public is stupid, they only like shit, they wouldn't know a poetry if it bit them in the ass," etc., or so went my thoughts for years, even though I wanted a readership more than anything! A paradoxical and confusing position.

Thank God, my bad attitude has changed, but not without hard work, and the internet. The internet has made me realize what it means to have someone read what I write, and that has changed me. I want to think it has made me a better writer, and I'm inclined to think it has, but the only caveat is that my best work of art was done about 17 years ago, and is a novella called "If So Carried by the Wind," and if that title sounds long, it used to be longer! It was the kindest thing I'd ever written to the readers out there, and I knew it when I wrote it, because up until then it was almost impossible to read anything I wrote, because I wasn't thinking of a reader. I was a poet turned into a story writer, living in a time where even conservative literary fiction from students matriculated at elite universities wasn't being published, and in hindsight I'm sure this affected my writing, but I didn't think so at the time. I saw myself as a 3rd generation beatnik free of my society but this was folly. No one was free of their society, not even the beatniks, because in the end we are the times we live in, whether we want to be or not.

While We're Young, the A side

While We're young and Mistress America were both movies directed by Noah Baumbach and they came out within six months of each other and this is rare in any era but even more so now when the industry is gauged on the big blockbuster. The two movies are definitely similar in style, and after seeing Mistress America I wanted to say that it was a compendium to While We're Young, and the two really should be seen in a double feature, or as one long continuous whole. For starters, they both take place in contemporary NYC, and both are obvious attempts by Baumbach to join the maninstream, or to make movies more accessible to more people. It's not that Greenberg or Francis Ha were inaccessible, and if anything one of Baumbach's saving graces is that he always seems to have an audience in mind and doesn't try to alienate them too much, but his movies can be more or less artsy, and While We're Young and Mistress America fall into the less artsy category, but boy does that sound degrading to art. Regarding Noah Baumbach, what I mean by artsy could probably best be summed up by Margot's Wedding, a movie he made in the early 2000's, that I doubt many people saw. It was influenced by the darker movies of Woody Allen and definitely had a literary feel to it. It was also a very depressing movie about two sisters battling it out for men, and maybe in the '70's one could imagine people paying money to see it, critics debating it, film scholars making a living deciding how important it was, but we live in a different era of extended media, and I don't think anyone was doing this with Margot's Wedding. It had a strong cast of Gen X actors (Jack Black, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Nicole Kidman), but one could easily argue that Margot was a rebuttal against the soft indie pop of "The Squid and the Whale," that launched Baumbach in my mind.

I'm not sure where Greenberg sits on the Baumbach continuum but I think without a doubt it is the movie he is going to be remembered for, the one that was a game changer, and that people may watch years from now to understand what it was like to be an aging Gen X'er. Personally, it's my favorite movie by Baumbach, but I have a feeling I'm not the only one. It really is Baumbach's most singular work, the one where he took all of his influences, and made them into something completely personal, by literally creating an unforgettable character out of thin air. I think a lot about how artists are often remembered for one important work, one game changer, and if they are lucky maybe they have two or three, and then a spattering of work that falls under the umbrealla of their pivotal pieces. Greenberg was Baumbach's pivotal work both in his life and his art, though I don't know much about his life, except that he ended up dating (living with?) Greta Gerwig after it, and she was Greenbergs love interest, so that's big right off the bat. I get the sense that all of his work is going to be compared heretofore to Greenberg, and his earlier work is going to be largely forgotten, no matter how entertaining, quirky, or brilliant. I just wiki'd his oevure (oh, the shame), and I'll hold to my opinion.

While We're Young and Mistress America taken together seem like a really big movie to me, and the real stardust to come out of Greenberg. Gerwig was absent from While We're Young, but starred in Frances Ha, a movie that the critics loved but very few people saw, and though it had Baumbach's stamp of authenticity, there was something about it that felt derivative, no matter how good it was. Frances Ha was shot in black and white and without doubt Baumbach was going for the revolutionary filmmaking style of Jean Luc Godard, and the French New Wave, a group that Tarantino has also taken on (along with blaxploitation and karate movies), and in that way just doesn't feel as personal. Sure, it's Greta Gerwig's big coming out as the greatest indie actress of her generation, so it feels weird to bad mouth Frances Ha, especially since I enjoyed it immensely, but it felt like it was under the umbrella of Greenberg. I don't think Baumbach knew how he was going to follow up Greenberg, so decided to do another generational character study but this time of a Gen Y woman, and what a woman she is. I don't talk much about acting in these reviews but Gerwig is really something to watch, the best of Gen Y, and I'd say I'm in love with her performances in Greenberg, Frances Ha, and Mistress America, all equally, though MIstress America may have been her tour de force.

Frances Ha was a very tasteful movie that my parents generation could really get behind, but I felt that somehow Baumbach was missing what it felt like to be Gen Y living in New York City in the early '10's. I'm pretty sure he cowrote the script with Gerwig, but I felt somehow Baumbach's intellectualization of Gen Y was like reading a book, rather than living a story, but this made sense. Baumbach is Gen X, Baumbach is a man, Baumbach was in love with Jennifer Jason Leigh (she has a small but potent role in Greenberg, especially given the divorce), and Baumbach is in love with Gerwig, like Roger Greenberg. No, Baumbach wasn't a guy in an '80's post-punk band that didn't sign that big record contract because of his ideals against corporate rock, but Baumbach was an artist in the '80's like Roger Greenberg, and this was the charater he was meant to portray. Frances Ha was an invention to me but a brilliant one that I don't want to dissuade people from watching, but it felt like an anomaly, a pretty little picture alone on an island, about an artist losing her ground quietly.

While We're Young looked like the second coming of Greenberg because Ben Stiller was the star and playing a Gen X guy going through a mid life meltdown like Greenberg. But they weren't the same character. The guy in While We're Young was a documentary filmmaker who had promise once, but clearly had lost his moment, so maybe he actually was just like Greenberg, and I got it all wrong. The difference is he's a middle age man clinging to his dream of finishing his life's work that he's spent way too much time on, but must now see to its end. Greenberg didn't have anything like this, and instead had basically given up on music to be a carpenter, though there was a part of him that wanted to play guitar with his old band mates, but it was a remote part. The character in While We're Young was fully engaged with his documentary about Turkish politics, or something like that, and is living the life of a Brooklyn artist. The protagonist in While We're Young hasn't even come close to hitting Greenberg's despair, and yet there is Greenberg within him, because he's played by Ben Stiller and the character on the page has similar dimensions, but not exactly the same. For starters, Greenberg was alone, but the main character in While We're Young is married to Naomi Watts, and even has a father in law who was a famous '60's documentary filmmaker, played well by Charles Grodin.

Then there's the plot, or the second act, that's nothing like Greenberg. The protagonist basically meets a younger version of himself, or what he wants to be, and starts a friendship with some Gen Y'ers. I can't say this is a part of the film I think about too much six months later, and I should also say that parts of the film just bored me in a way that Mistress America didn't. I thought Stiller's performance was off, though not belligerently, but just enough to skew the vision. He was playing Greenberg but not getting the laughs because it was a different movie in many ways. It wasn't an art movie like the others striving to be something original, but rather a cliche striving to be true, a mainstream hit. I didn't laugh as much as I wanted to and whenever I'm watching a comedy the first criteria is 'is it funny?' If it's not, it has failed, and While We're Young wasn't funny. In fact, what tied it all together for me was the 3rd act, and that's rare because I don't usually think of the 3rd act as bringing home the bacon, but really that's what it does. I think the second act was supposed to show how Stiller and Watts getting seduced by the Gen Y'ers and there is even a drug scene where they all take a weird psychedelic, and are changed, but none of these scenes worked for me. The only movie that comes to mind is "I love You Alice B. Toklas," where the square straight Harold Fine (Peter Sellers) meets a hippie and becomes one but the generational struggle here wasn't as intense. For starters, Stiller and Adam Driver, the Gen Y'er, are both documentary filmmakers, and it's not like one is a corporate lawyer and the other a free spirit, a more '60's story. It's almost like they are the same person but at different ages in different times of their life, so Stiller is looking at a reflection of himself that he wishes he could capture, nothing like Harold Fine abandoning the old life for the new.

The really defining moment of While We're Young comes in the 3rd act because Stiller sees how he was played by the Gen Y'er as an in to his father in law, a famous documentarian, who could vaunt the young and ambitious Driver. Of course, Stiller was caught up in his ego and really thought that he was teaching his Gen Y protegee, but the opposite was happening, and he has a series of flashbacks over the scenes we had just seen, and is reinterpreting them as a hustle. This may have been one of the best parts of the film, actually, and though I don't believe this entirely, a part of me thought the boredom of much of the movie, the missed jokes, or broken plot, were all intended to show what a ruse the whole friendship had been, but that's theoretical. While We're Young was a comedy/drama, but not a dramedy, though it slipped into that for a montage or two and the drama worked for me in the 3rd act.

Stiller goes to a big film festival bash to find his stepfather in bed with Adam Driver, his protegee, and even though Stiller has proof that Driver plagiarized part of his film, no one really cares, and the disillusionment that Stiller feels is very real. It may be his most Greenberg like moment in the movie. He didn't let a record contract go but to give Greenberg credit he didn't like the corporate record companies, and in the end the character in While We're Young is the same, but much more dim witted. He realizes he's an idealist compared to his father in law, or Driver, and you have to do what it takes to make it in the documentary film world, even if his movie sucked. The truth was it didn't matter if your movie sucked or not, what mattered was who made it. The problem with While We're Young aside from not being funny enough, was that Stiller and the script in general was too tied to Greenberg to be original enough, and the tone was thoughtfully mainstream, as if it was conceding to a norm that it deemed worthy. It was never going to be as good as Greenberg, so why not make it a hit.

Mistress America had almost none of this connection to me. Ben Stiller was nowhere to be found in the cast, and more importantly the focus wasn't on Gen X, but Gen Y, and how it interpreted Gen X. It really felt more like Gerwig's movie to me, and I found it much funnier than While We're Young, and more charming. It also felt like a real Gen Y story through the eyes of a near millennial, and in that way felt much truer to Gen Y than the very artful Frances Ha, that was more French New Wave. I'd say Mistress America is one of those instances where the B side tops the A side.

Mistress America, an homage to the teen movies of my youth

Mistress America is about a young girl who moves to NYC, and is a frustrated creative writing major at what I'd guess is NYU. She's going through all of the usual letdowns an introverted freshman goes through: she's involved in an unsatisfying and ambigous love relationship that never gets off the ground, and she's unable to make any friends. Her Dad or Mom (don't remember, and that's a tip off to a plot device) tells her to get in touch with Mistress America, an older woman living in the city, because she's the daughter of her potential spouse. The freshman holds off at first seeing it as a family obligation but her life is pathetic enough that she gives in, and makes the call. Greta Gerwig, the indie actress of her generation, meets the freshman coming down a neon red staircase, her red carpet, and she continues to steal the show, but Gerwig doesn't appear until a good ten or fifteen minutes into the story, and in movie time that's half of the first act. It sets up that the movie is all from the freshman's point of view, and this is buoyed up by narration she has on Gerwig, not the other way around.

I don't remember much of what happens in the 2nd act, save that it's a monologue by Gerwig's confused extroverted character and there is a move or two for her to open a restaurant, or do something important with her life, but nothing ever seems to pan out. You could say Gerwig's character is a dreamer and a romantic, but she's also kind of a bitch, and just unlikeable, but I'm sure this was part of Baumbach/Gerwig's design as a screenwriters, because they were trying to make a complete character, but in the end Gerwig is likeable enough. The key is she is ten years older than the freshman, and is going into her thirties and officially leaving her youth behind, so the ways that she got by for a decade just aren't going to work anymore, for whatever eternal reason. The narrator catches Gerwig in her last flash of desperate ever hopeful bohemainism, and in turn she gives the freshman a story, something every young artist desperately needs, though Gerwig is too oblivious or narcissistic to probably care. The freshman even has some narration to the effect that Gerwig's dreams of how she's going to make it in the Big Apple are so far flung and fanciful that she often wants to intercede but doesn't out of deference for Gerwig's artistic grandeur, because it was more fun to get lost in Gerwig than to question her, and just dreaming with her about life made life worthwhile, a very artistic idea.

The 3rd act winds up the movie in silly screwball comedy fashion and makes it clear that Mistress America was trying to strike some balance with art and mainstream entertainment. Gerwig goes to the home of an old boyfriend who was stolen from her by a contemporary rival, because he has money and she needs him to invest in her restaurant, or just save her from mounting debt, or both, but that's secondary to the romantic confusion that is coupled with the freshman/narrator taking her boyfriend from the 1st act, to the nouveau riche house outside of the city on a road trip. So Gerwig and the narrator, not quite a team, but of a like mind, are each in a house for the weeken with ex boyfriends with their girlfriends/wives, and this reeks of screwball comedy, and may be the most memorable plot movement of the movie, but Mistress America is not really about plot. It has classic three act structure: young girl moves to the city, meets an older muse, gets enchanted by her, and then follows her on a road trip to the last desperate move of her twenties. The movie completes its final act and has the narrator write about Mistress America and get everyone pissed off at her for telling the truth, the writer's curse, because I'm sure what we've been hearing all along through the narration is the freshman's story, adn though there is a great love for Mistress America's poetic qualities, there is also the grounded realist's sense that she is flying out of control, and that all of the Mistresses dreams are delusions, something no one ever wants to hear. But the pain for the writer isn't too thick because Mistress America is trying desperately to not be too depressing or sad, and is ultimately a light movie, that's almost forgettable, except that I loved it.

The tone that Baumbach and Gerwig got in Mistress America was a kind of early '80's B teen/young adult trashy comedy with actual structure, plot, and character, a style of movie that isn't often made anymore. It wasn't exactly realism, but it was way more realistic than, say, Clueless, a movie going for the same audience, or many like it. The story is actually about the artist and the actor, a classic polarity, and they did it light to make it accessible, but the irony to Mistress America, or where it subverts itself, is that the lightness is an aesthetic homage to a kind of early '80's movie that may have been influenced by Annie Hall, but was going for a much different effect, a different audience. I really felt like I was watching a movie playing with the style of "Foxes" or "Smooth Talk" with Laura Dern, something I saw come on the This network at 3 am the other night. In the same way that Tarantino immersed in blaxploitation and Karate movies of the early '70's to get his feel, you can almost feel Gerwig and Baumbach submerging in trashy teen romance from the late '70's/early '80's to get the feel of Mistress America. I'm pretty sure the movie had a subdued almost early '80's synth/pop soundtrack that would come on whenever Gerwig and the freshman went out in public, and listening to it I remember thinking it may have been the most surreal thing in the movie, because it was literally like Baumbach lifted the songs from another era without any aesthetic qualification. I'm not sure I've ever seen a movie try so hard to replicate trashy early '80's cinema without being a spoof or a satire, or if I had, I never saw it done so lovingly, and that was a treat.

Review: American Sniper in 3 acts

American Sniper was a simple but classic example of three act structure, with only a twist or two interrupting the obvious flow between a 1st act, a 2nd act, or a 3rd act. The movie is the story of Chris Kyl, a boy raised in Texas and taught to hunt and be aggressive by his father. It turns out Chris is a naturally good shot making him a perfect cowboy but it's the modern age so he joins the rodeo where he finds life very unfulfilling. One day he sees a terrorist attack on the TV, and this alone leads him to seek his calling and join the Navy Seals. Once in, he stands out as a sniper, and becomes the best sniper in Iraq. Chris Kyl doesn't go through a "Born on the 4th of July" disillusionment with America while overseas, but rather becomes the "legend" for being the best sniper in the military, the best shot with the most kills. Of course, he struggles some when he has to kill women or children, but at bottom Chris is a very patriotic guy and really sees himself doing his duty in Iraq, and protecting America from the bad guys.

The conflict, the second act, emerges between Chris Kyl's 4 tours of duty and being a family man with a wife and children, who desperately want him home and don't understand his legend status. Maybe the most experimental thing Eastwood does in Sniper is actually start the film from the pivot point between the first act and the second act; while Kyl is on a rooftop looking for kills, he's flashing back to his life, or the first act, the conceit of the movie. A good American boy who is a little lost, joins the Seals, finds his wife in a bar, and then finds his calling after 9-11. But like many movies before it once the first act catches up to the second act, the movie moves forward and the flashbacks stop, the experiment is over, we've gotten the back story, the first act, and know Crhis Kyl a little better. We see how he was raised, what he's like, and what went into creating this eminent soldier.

Chris can't stop going back to Iraq and the movie is kind of vague on this. I know that the soldiers in Iraq saw many more tours of duty than those in Vietnam because there was no draft, but Sniper implies that Chris is going back on his own, because he's addicted to war, and this may be a little of the Eastwood touch, a Republican mayor from Carmel. On his 4th tour of duty, Chris almost dies and he finally realizes it's time to go home, but predictably suffers from PTSD. The movie doesn't overdramatize this but simply shows Chris having the problems anyone would in his shoes, but he's a quiet, simple, patriotic man, not given over to intense disillusionment, and handles his PTSD in stride. He goes to a VA shrink who gets him involved with helping people in the hospital because the thing haunting Chris more than anything is that he can't help his fellow soldiers dying on the battlefield, so the the shrink recommends he help vets in the hospital. Kyl takes the shrink up on it and takes the vets to the shooting range where he excels, and they are privileged to be in his company since he's the 'legend,' a myth to Iraqi soldiers. Miraculously, Chris Kyl resumes his role as a good family man, but we read at the end that a vet he took out on the range turned the gun on Chris Kyl and killed him, a jarring finish.

"American Sniper" may be the most realistic Iraq war movie, and really takes you into what it must feel like to be an Iraqi soldier. That said, there haven't been many Iraq war movies, though it is a genre that I'd argue started with all the documentaries against the Iraq War that came out in the W. years, and then melded into fiction, but the genre is thin on greatness, unlike the Vietnam War movies that saw such masterworks as "The Deer Hunter," and "Apocalypse Now." I'm not sure American Sniper ever reaches these levels of dramatic intensity, or if it was even trying to, since the movie in no way made a statement about the Iraq War. Rather, it's a movie about war in general and how certain men are called to be soldiers. In some ways, "Sniper" reminded me of Arjuna's plight in the Baghavad Gita, the great soldier on the eve of battle who is questioning the moral dillema of killing. Krishna comes down to Arjuna and explains that war is part of life, or God's plan, and that he is a great warrior, who will best serve God by being a great warrior, and doing his duty in war. Essentially, this was Chris Kyl, though I'm not sure he ever had a grand moment of questioning like Arjuna, or a visitation from Christ, his Krishna.

Clint Eastwood was the director of American Sniper and I know that the Hollywood left came out against him for various reasons. One tweet I remember from Seth Rogen had something to do with a sniper being an ignoble duty in war, akin to shooting a man in the back, but I really think the limousine liberals wanted Chris Kyl to go through a complete renunciation of the war like Ron Kovic in Born on the Fourth of July, but that doesn't happen. Instead, it's the story of an eminent soldier who is neither obnoxiously patriotic, or particularly rebellious, and who comes to no great awakening, save that he has found his calling, he is the legend, and like all callings it's a burden. The second act may have been a little weak as it juxtaposed Kyl's service with his family life, which on paper needn't be weak, but his wife is a thinly painted character at best, nor does he have any good buddies in Iraq. It really isn't anyone's story but Chris Kyl's, and with any movie, or script, it's nice to have another character or two buoy up the plot.


From a political perspective, the only thing I could really critique the movie for was that it was an advertisment for the NRA: Chris Kyl is a hunter in a classic sense and the gun teaches him. He is incredibly responsible with his weapon and seems to understand the deep responsibility that comes with taking a life. Then he comes home after the war and helps veterans rehabilitate by taking them out to a shooting range, but here's the twist. Kyl himself is killed by a veteran with a gun at the end of the movie, which could be saying that soldiers returning from war with PTSD shouldn't be entrusted with a firearm, an anti-NRA message. Sure, American Sniper doesn't feel like this considering the second act, the war, is riddled with gun fire, and at a certain point in the movie I started to feel like I may be getting PTSD watching it, nor does Eastwood show Kyl getting killed at the end, he tells it, and this doesn't have the same visceral effect.