CINEMA SEEN - "The Stunning Six!"
By William Margold

     I’ve decided to wait until after the Oscar nominations (due very early next Tuesday morning) to start dealing with titles from 2009 that made the final five (or in the case of Best Film...final ten) cut. And at that point---depending on the Best Film fate of J.J. Abrams’ STAR TREK (still due an entire Cinema Seen page acknowledging it as My Favorite Movie of the 21st Century’s first decade)---I might NOT devote as much space as usual to this year’s Academy Awards. But that’s a decision to be made a couple of issues (and weeks) away.
     Herein...feeling slightly guilty for not mentioning the rest of the titles that failed to make my (2000-2009) Top Ten list (see my 12-31-09 page)---and having the press materials available---I thought that I would compliment that wildly diverse roster by revealing (in the order that I was entertained by them) the "stunning six" that just missed the cinematic cut.
     And just to confuse or clutter (depending on your point of cinema-seening) a little bit more, the four fine films that didn’t make this list were "Blood Diamond" "Hollywoodland" "The Devil Wears Prada" and "Iron Man."
     
     GLADIATOR (2000)---Away from the battlefield and out of the arena, this sinewy epic was not particularly compelling. But when Russell Crowe (as Maximus) was slicing up his competition and "fighting the good fight"...director Ridley Scott’s brutally mesmerizing images ignited the soul.
     
     A BEAUTIFUL MIND (2001)---A lyrical excursion deep within the convoluted brainwaves of a mentally gifted but equally challenged gentleman (etched achingly by Russell Crowe), director Ron Howard’s masterwork was so riveting that I was as surprised as the film’s hero that a considerable amount of what he (and I) were watching wasn’t really happening.
     
     CHICAGO (2002)---I proclaimed it "All That Fosse" and knew immediately that director Rob Marshall’s heartfelt homage to the dazzling dance master would stylishly strut its way to the Best Film Oscar. It’s interesting to note that the two titles preceding this one also won the Best Film Oscar. It’s even more interesting to note that no other titles in either this list (or on my 12-31-09 page) reaped such a prize.
     
     LITTLE CHILDREN (2006)---Easily my most perverse pleasure of the last decade (I loved listening to the audience that first I saw it with...squirm!), Todd Field’s savage, sardonic stare at characters who don’t want to grow up and those who must confront the nightmares attached to taking on adult responsibilities was an acid bath for the sensibilities. And yes...I squirmed...too!
     
     EASTERN PROMISES (2007)---Visceral stuff that made the blood boil. Viggo Mortensen’s stunning performance was laced with as many conflicts as there are confrontations. And speaking of confrontations...the shattering set piece in a steam bath will be very hard to top. I hope though that all involved with this production (including director David Cronenberg, writer Steve Knight, and, of course, Mr. Mortensen), are considering that challenge as well as that of making a much-needed sequel...because there is a great deal of "family business" that still demands to be taken care of.
     
     WALK HARD: THE DEWEY COX STORY (2007)--- As evocative as it was enchanting, the Judd Apatow and Jake Kasdan scripted (directed by Kasdan) overview of the music scene from the "Rock n’ Roll" 50’s forward---slaughtered sacred record rendering cows with glee, while waxing eloquent on the high price of attaining fame and the sacrifices that must be made to keep it. John C. Reilly sang up a storm...and in the process... produced lightening bolts of laughter along with a few clouds full of tears.
     end
     NOTE: Originally published in LA Xpress, January 28, 2010 issue.

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CINEMA SEEN - "Favorite Films...Minus One!"
By William Margold

     What I noticed as I whittled down my list of Ten Favorite Films that were released during the first decade (2000-2009) of the 21st Century, is that it really wasn’t all that difficult to come up with the nine that are mentioned here.
     Yes...GLADIATOR fell by the wayside ...and EASTERN PROMISES missed the cut...and A BEAUTIFUL MIND came up just short...but they can all be comforted by the fact that they were in "very close" consideration.
     (Please note though that as of this writing...my Favorite Film of The Decade---STAR TREK---will be dealt with after I have seen the rest of 2009’s major holiday attractions...hopefully right around the time that it is one of the TEN Best Films of 2009 nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the Oscar.)
     Desirous of not playing my "favorites" by the degree that I admired each movie here however...I’ve decided to present the nine films in the chronological order that I discovered them.
     
     ALMOST FAMOUS (2000)---Cameron Crowe’s semi-autobiographical look at the wild and wanting ways of the music world is as lyrical as it is insightful. And while a lament is wailed throughout, one can’t help envying the very youthful journalist for earning a band’s trust...and then being given the chance to become part of its traveling road show family.
     
     THE CONTENDER (2000)---The puerile practice of politics and the sacrifice of the soul (etc.) to be victorious is at the rotten core of Rod Lurie’s mesmerizing effort. Joan Allen is painfully honorable as a potential Vice President nominee over whom Jeff Bridges and Gary Oldman wage a take-no-prisoners war...creating quite a hellish Capitol Hill affair in the process.
     
     SHREK (2001)---A green boy-man and his scene stealing doggy-like donkey (voiced with hilarious humanity by Eddie Murphy) venture forth to save a princess only to discover a rainbow of emotional awakenings along the way. Hallelujah!
     
     GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK (2005)---The sobering saga of sagacious TV reporter Edward R. Murrow (acutely etched by David Strathairn) versus venomous Joseph McCarthy (artlessly evoked by the foul fellow himself...thanks to the magic of some seamless editing) was easily the most eloquent motion picture of the decade.
     
     HUSTLE AND FLOW (2005)---I saw this one three times before I felt comfortable enough to write my opinion of it: first by myself, then with a onetime pimp (and proud of it), and finally with a fellow in the rap world (and equally proud of it). Terrence Howard’s earnestly aching pursuit of success sears the sensibilities as it instills hope of the highest (and rawest) order.
     
     PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST (2006)---There’s a little of Jack Sparrow in all of us. And if there isn’t...there damn well should be. As broadly splayed out by Johnny Depp across a panoramic trio of supremely rousing and rambunctious films...Master Sparrow is a character for all ages...and all situations...and perhaps even all sexes.
     
     FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS (2006)---Clint Eastwood’s superbly solemn homage to the facelessness of accidental heroes, unfurls as a painfully perfect example of patriotic picture making. Long may it wave!
     
     THE SIMPSONS MOVIE (2007)---Extrapolated from my all-time favorite animated TV series, and expanded gleefully onto the big screen...the rascally but ever-so-wise adventures of Springfield’s first family is a film frolic worthy of multiple viewings, during which the consumption of an endless supply of do-nuts is mandatory.
     
     TROPIC THUNDER (2008)---War can be swell...when it is masterfully mocked. And Ben Stiller’s sly send-up of war movie making goes way beyond the world of special explosive effects. Politically incorrect on virtually every level imaginable---particularly the radically racial romp by Robert Downey Jr.---the film evokes enough laughter to shatter quite a number of ribs.      "     end
     NOTE: Originally published in LA Xpress, December 31, 2009 issue.

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CINEMA SEEN - "Lip-smacking Leftovers"
By William Margold

     With last week’s column being served up as a "Movie Menu"---that featured a five course Thanksgiving Day spread---this week’s sextet of offerings should be looked upon as "Lip-smacking Leftovers" although as you will read...the lip- smacking of "almost all of the titles" presented here faded very quickly...much like the taste of food dissipates after a few days of improperly wrapped refrigeration.
     (Please note that I said "almost all of the titles"...as the last production discussed is a quite a meal in itself...and more than makes up for all the rest of the rather stale cinema snacks on this page.)
     
     FOOD, INC---Appropriately leading off this page is Robert Kenner’s mind (and stomach) unsettling look at how truly unpalatable what we are ingesting really is. But secure in the knowledge that my stomach acid can melt the chrome off a VW van’s bumper, I rarely flinched as the images of callously clumped cows and cruelly constricted chickens flashed before my eyes. Indeed...while not starving after enduring the ponderous proceedings...I must admit that my only real concern a few minutes after the dim documentary ended was where I would be dining that evening.
     
     CORALINE---Some rather unnerving blather about button-eyed doppelgangers directed by Henry Selick (who combined with Tim Burton for the magnificently imaginative "The Nightmare before Christmas" back in the early 90’s) makes for one of the most tedious stop-motion animated features that I’ve ever counted the minutes enduring. Accompanied by the scrawniest cat that I’ve ever seen, cranky Coraline discovers another seemingly better world on the other side of the wall of her new home, and repeatedly escapes into it---learning with each visit however---that perhaps it really is better to stick with what you’ve already got.
     
     IS THERE ANYBODY THERE?--- At first this was somewhat evocative of the early 1960’s when I hung around the caddy shack at The Riviera Country Club in the Pacific Palisades lapping up considerable history lessons from those who "had lived them." But the opportunity for a young boy (Bill Milner) to absorb knowledge as the son of a couple who own a retirement home, and in particular, one of its most eccentric residents---Michael Caine as a rather muddled magician---dotters about way too much to have any impact...which eventually makes death the most enviable way to escape the plotline.
     
     SIMON SAYS---When flying pick axes have all the best lines in a horrifically rotten fright film...then you quickly realize that you’re being subjected to the wrong intended-to-be-scary viewing experience. Crispin Glover (who should have gotten Best Supporting Actor consideration for his role as Michael Fox’s father in 1985’s "Back to the Future") is terrifyingly dreadful as demented twin brothers who like to make a seemingly endless supply of capricious campers targets of those aforementioned axes...as well as other forms of backwoods butchery.
     
     RIDE AROUND THE WORLD---Thanks to the combined efforts of Greenleaf and Associates and Image Entertainment (www.image-entertainment.com) yet another IMAX production ("Dinosaurs Alive!" and "Mummies" have already been acknowledged in previous columns) is given credit here. But I must admit that I found this 40-minute travelogue-like look at the history of horses and their riders galloping in so many directions that by the time it was over...my mind was saddle sore.
     
     SPLINTER---Sort of "Assault on Precinct 13 Meets The Thing"---director Toby Wilkins and writer Ian Shorr have concocted a perversely plausible little nightmare about the end (and/or the beginning) result of one too many government experiments with the natural order of things. Stars Paulo Costanzo, Jill Wagner, and an immensely effective Shea Wigham (in the hero by default role) take refuge in a gas station when a ghastly beastie of questionable lineage goes on a cast- consuming (in more ways than one) rampage. Greatly enhanced by Elia Cmirai’s bone crunching, synaptic creaking score, this feisty ferocity literally gets under your skin...and stays there...no matter how hard you try to dig it out!
     end
     NOTE: Originally published in LA Xpress, December 3, 2009 issue.

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CINEMA SEEN - "A Movie Menu"
By William Margold

     Coinciding with the fact that this serving of Cinema Seen is dated to hit the street on Thanksgiving Day...I thought that I would present a quintet of recently viewed films as if they were the courses in the festive and reflective Holiday’s meal. And speaking of that meal...I am planning on dusting off my cooking utensils as I will be creating the magnificent center attraction---a massive golden bird stuffed with many secret ingredients that will insure that it will be juicy all way through---and then will be partaking of it with a cross section of associates in what I’m sure will be a warm (and festive) as well as tasty (and reflective) experience...or something like that.
     
     WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE---Wrenched solemnly by director Spike Jonze from Maurice Sendak’s apparently very popular children’s picture book---this genuinely un-cuddly creature feature is a very under nourishing combination of sour soul searching soup and soggy sentimental salad---that had me questioning my own perpetual juvenile delinquent ways throughout the ponderous proceedings. But I eventually shrugged the whole damn thing off as simply being a nightmare that I had been subjected to watching with my eyes open.
     
     2012---If ever the time was ripe for a film being labeled "a turkey"---the arrival of this foolish special effects stuffed flatulence about the (near) end of the world had me gobbling in glee---as I couldn’t wait to hack away at director Roland Emmerich’s fetid fowl. And although the visual of Santa Monica slipping into the Pacific Ocean ghoulishly fulfilled a recurring nightmare of mine (but that’s another story), the meandering misery of featuring various landmarks being decimated finally made me wish for some semblance of apocalyptic reality...even it meant that the theatre that I was squirming about restlessly in would fall down on my head.
     
     LAW ABIDING CITIZEN---Truly a hefty helping of potatoes example of filling up most of the senses filmmaking, director F. Gary Gary’s perverse offering deals with a wronged fellow (Gerard Butler) hell bent on exacting revenge pitted against the toothy determination of Jamie Foxx’s on the right side of the law character. And the grotesque gravy---slathered on thick---is the amusing way Butler rigs his seemingly endless series of traps. However...not wanting to divulge too much...all I will reveal is that from my first bite many decades ago, I also realized another use for a t-bone steak...after I’d gnawed all of the meat away. I just never met anyone worth the effort. Yet...!
     
     AMELIA--- This is a remarkably bland assortment of side dishes (overcooked peas, limp green beans, and mushy corn) eerily enhanced by the fact that Hillary Swank is the spitting image of the famous 1930’s aviatrix Ms. Earhart, whose legend still radiates because she vanished on her attempt to fly around the world. Ironically, although most of its soaring through the clouds action takes place 20,000 feet in the air, the Mira Nair directed clunker never really gets off the ground.
     
     WHIP IT---Absolutely the pecan pie dessert of this page is Drew Barrymore’s delicious look at the wrist shattering, rib-cracking, knee-dislocating world of ladies Roller Derby in Austin, Texas through the innocent, wistful eyes of Ellen Page. And the "whipped cream" on top of Barrymore’s spirited concoction are the nicknames of her roller/warrior women including Babe Ruthless, Smashley Simpson, Maggie Mayhem, Iron Maven, Eva Destruction, and my favorite, Bloody Holly.
     end
     NOTE: Originally published in LA Xpress, November 26, 2009 issue.

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CINEMA SEEN - "As Seen...Ass Reported!"
By William Margold

     The childishly drawn signs had been pestering our curiosity for over 100 miles, just as the thumb-sized gnats had been annoying us as we drove through Arkansas during a sticky steamy day in the late summer of 1967. My friend Johnny and I had embarked on a cross-country adventure that had already taken us from Los Angeles to Indiana (where I almost died from food poisoning...losing 17 pounds of god knows what in less than a half hour, but that’s another story) up to Montreal for The World’s Fair to New York City to somewhere in Tennessee (where Johnny nauseatingly discovered that okra- laced---and most likely recklessly undercooked pork sausage patties---needed to be eliminated as quickly as possible during numerous "hurry...pull over to side of the road" visits, but that’s another story), and now we were on our way back toward the Pacific Ocean. Although admittedly homesick by this time, but with many, Many, MANY miles to go before we could sleep in own beds once again, we subverted our longing for the trip to end by pretending to be eager for any new adventures that might come our way...so apparently the very homemade looking billboards proclaiming "See the incredible Two-Headed Dog just ahead!!!" were just too much for our muddled minds to resist, and as we drove along...our anticipation grew when each new billboard grotesquely loomed up on the horizon. And then we were parked in front of a foreboding looking cabin in the absolute middle of nowhere, and in retrospect, if we had already seen anything remotely related to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" or "Deliverance"---we would never have gone in!!! But there was that damn "two headed dog" barking in our brains like Circe luring Ulysses to deal with, so we each pulled out a dollar, paid it to the liver-spotted hand that extended through an opening, and stumbled into a cold, vile-smelling, very narrow hallway. WAY down at the end of it was an enclosure. As we cautiously moved closer, the sound of buzzing filled the air, and a swarm of hornets set upon us, rendering us virtually unable to really see just exactly what was hideously huddled up in the corner of the horribly dirty confining area. Between the stench and the hornets and the chilling claustrophobic misery of the situation, about five seconds of glancing at whatever was sadly peering back at us in that holding area was all that we could tolerate. We rushed from the cabin and drove away quickly. Many miles from the moment, we finally looked at each other, and could read in each other’s faces that we were never going to admit to anyone, including ourselves, that we hadn’t seen a two-headed dog.
     And while I am loathe to admit my being made a fool of in Arkansas on a sweltering day in the late summer of 1967, I am certainly not afraid to admit as to how big a fool enduring the absolute emptiness of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY made me feel a couple of weeks ago. Indeed, while director Oren Peli’s stultifying serving of ho-hum house haunting crept by, I could feel myself growing another couple of legs and a tail... and instead of yawning...my expressions of agonizing ennui were becoming brays.
     (Now that’s a sight worth I’ll bet YOU would spend at least a buck to see. And quite frankly...while I was sorely tempted to attach my face to the fellow featured here as a woeful example of just how I felt...I decided NOT to make more out of the asses that either one of us were already. But you’ll be happy to know that his cause---www.wildburrorescue.org--- has been regularly donated to by LAXPRESS staff members during the past few years.)
     However...quite angry at myself for being ripped off once...I figured to at least maximize the misery of having spent $6 for a ticket, by rushing right down the hall of the sprawling multiplex just in time to see CIRQUE DU FREAK: THE VAMPIRE’S ASSISTANT...and was justly un-rewarded with an outstandingly lame creature feature that wasted the talents of John C. Reilly, Willem Dafoe...and a bearded Salma Hayak!
     Even madder now, but determined to at least get my monies worth (at two bucks a pop...so that my penurious sensibilities were sure to be somewhat assuaged), I hunted down ZOMBIELAND in the same multiplex, and by default, found myself proclaiming the incredibly unremarkable Woody Harrelson doing away with the walking dead dullard to be best of a truly turgid trio.
     And I wasn’t through yet...although my head felt like it had been split open with an axe (two large bags of popcorn and a couple of way too sweet pink lemonades aren’t high up on the hunger abatement list) and my eyes were starting to blur---after a bathroom break that included immersing my head in a sink of very cold water...I found SURROGATES about to start up, and throughout the highly uneventful Bruce Willis versus lots of angry robots production, I spent most of the time relishing the fact that I had drastically reduced the price of my dismal day of cinematic suffering all the way down to $1.50 per each serving of utterly forgettable movie moments.
     And while way beyond feeling anything even remotely associated with being proud of such a pulling off such a dastardly deed...at least I could feel a modicum of pleasure in my perpetual pursuit of trying to get my monies’ worth during these unnervingly unstable economic days.      end
     NOTE: Originally published in LA Xpress, November 12, 2009 issue.

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CINEMA SEEN - "A 'Bunch' of 'Wild' Memories!"
By William Margold

     Its title---THE WILD BUNCH---amused me.
     Its director---Sam Peckinpah---who seven years earlier had crafted a brilliant western call "Ride The High Country"---intrigued me.
     And on a Friday afternoon in the summer of 1969, I went into The Pix Theater in Hollywood...and five hours later...because I found myself compelled to sit through the film twice...I sprang from the movie house reborn from having seen, as I would proclaim to my roommates when I got home---"the best movie of all-time."
     (It should be noted here that up until the cinematic lava of "The Wild Bunch" seared my senses...I had clung preciously to 1952's "High Noon" as my all-time favorite film. And during the many years that have followed I have simply reconciled that situation by preserving "High Noon" as the pillar of my somewhat innocent childhood and by making "The Wild Bunch" the bastion of my far-less-innocent adulthood.)
     I was so overwhelmed by my first double dose of "The Wild Bunch" that I brought my roommates back with me to The Pix on Sunday afternoon, and reveled in watching them watching it two more times.
     And although I have long ago lost count of how many times I have had the privilege of seeing the movie---on TV and in each and every one of its VHS and DVD incarnations---perhaps it is appropriate that when I attend the 40th anniversary of THE WILD BUNCH on Thursday November 12 at The Million Dollar Theater---checkout the centerpiece of this page and www.julesverne.org for all of the details--- I may well be seeing the film in a movie theater for the 40th time.
     My title for this column is "A 'Bunch' of 'Wild' Memories"...and before I reflect on a few of them...I would like to humbly present some of the very first words I wrote about the film: "There is more cinematic class in many single scenes of director Sam Peckinpah's 'The Wild Bunch' than most films have in all of their reels. And of all of the scenes, the one that shall live forever in my mind is that of a quartet of noble souls walking proudly toward their inevitable deaths. Peckinpah's tale is a sinewy series of blood-and-guts battles meshed with the throbbing of men's hearts and brains as they sweat and swear away their existences. While the cast is excellent, the film belongs to Peckinpah, and to the violence that he sees in the world. Bodies twitch, blood runs freely, shrapnel chews up men's backs and faces, human beings cry out in hideous protests to pain and death as Peckinpah has made death a paradox: lovely to look at (much of it is in a slow motion/'bloody ballet'), but hell to feel. To flinch at 'The Wild Bunch' is human. To feel nothing is certainly not divine."
     Perhaps my most indelible memory is when---during the casting of an adult movie---legendary adult industry star John C. Holmes spotted a black-and-white shot of Warren Oates on the machine gun (complete with its soundtrack) from "The Wild Bunch" on my office wall in 1977, and grew so wistful that I took it down and handed it to him symbiotically understanding the endangered species bond that existed between a couple of bigger-than-life characters.
     Amusingly a couple of years before, I had attended a morning showing of "The Wild Bunch" at the Beverly Canon Theater, and found myself sitting in front of Oates and Sam Peckinpah. And damn if Warren didn't launch into his perversely gleeful death-rattling howl as he wielded that machine gun in the image that is displayed on this page.
     And tragically speaking of death, I attended a special screening of 'The Wild Bunch' at USC in the spring of 1982 the night after Warren Oates passed away. And there was Sam Peckinpah trying to choke back his tears as he spoke lovingly about his dear friend. Of course, everyone would have understood if Sam had decided not to attend...or if the screening itself had been cancelled. But that would have violated the "wouldn't have it any other way" code of "The Wild Bunch"...and that just wasn't acceptable.
     And finally...I will never forget the plaintive cry of a little boy behind me in the cool dankness of The Fairfax Theater many years ago who exclaimed "Mommy, all the good guys are dead" as the last member of "The Wild Bunch" let out his final sigh.
     My eyes started to glisten while at the same time I couldn't stop from smiling at the wisdom of the child's words.
     That's why I'll be at The Million Dollar Theater on Thursday evening November 12 to pay homage to "The Wild Bunch"...as "the good guys" come alive...by dying all over again.
     end
     NOTE: Originally published in LA Xpress, November 5, 2009 issue.

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CINEMA SEEN - "Fore-Skinned!"
By William Margold

     It’s taken me well over a month to finally deal with the film on this page. And although Quentin Tarantino and I have never met...our lives have wandered down way too many similar paths for me to simply dismiss his latest effort...and move on in the hope that perhaps he will eventually create something worthy of my praise.
     Quentin and I share reflective screen time in the recent documentary NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD (Mark Hartley’s amusing look at Ozploitation), and recently I noticed that his name is attached to a press release announcing the 40th anniversary showing of THE WILD BUNCH (www.julesverne.org) which just happens to be one of my two all-time favorite films (the other being "High Noon"). Since I am planning on attending the event at The Million Dollar Theater on Thursday November 12, and will, in fact, dedicate my November 6 page to it, I figure that this page needed to be out well in advance of our possible meeting. You see...I strongly suspect that we are also linked at the mental hip by the fact that our only escape from the geekdom of our last-to-be-chosen-unless-we-created-the-game-ourselves childhood was the salvation that could be found as we spent many, Many, MANY years of our lives in comforting movie theaters...and a certain amount of validation in our ability to provide evidence of that immersion into movie-going...as we are both obsessed "film fanatics."
     But those factors alone---plus the modicum of pleasure in the knowledge that I’m sure he has been reading my cinema review columns for the past three plus decades---are not enough to prevent me from the following laceration of his current attempt at movie making.
     An imitative intolerability...Quentin Tarantino’s INGLORIOUS BASTERDS was such a miserable viewing experience for me...that by the time I staggered out of The Vista Theatre into the eerie loneliness of Labor Day’s cool twilight, I couldn’t resist the urge to scream out "I want my foreskin back."
     Tarantino has obsequiously fashioned a career out of cinematically salivating over the entrails of many film masters, and has fooled quite a number of easily pleased movie reviewers---who lamely think that homage is art---in the process.
     Well...this time out...Quentin’s folly is a clutterment of lame Leone, puerile Peckinpah, awful Aldrich, and krappy Kurosawa.
     Pitting a "Dirty Dozen-esque" squad of Nazi-killing and then scalping (for good measure) dullards under the command of a constipated looking Brad Pitt against the cool machinations of a fellow known as The Jew Hunter (played with tongue in more than one cheek broadness by Christoph Waltz), and placing lovely but doomed Parisian cinema owner Melanie Laurent in the muddle...I mean, middle...Q.T. capriciously exploits the horrors of World War Two, with a rank form of wishful thinking/revisionist history, while rather lewdly displaying all the concern of a fellow competing in the board game of Risk.
     And by the time most of the cast find themselves trapped in a burning theater, I found myself wishing for the same fate. But surrounded by a gaggle of giggling ninnies in The Vista, who were apparently overwhelmed by Quentin’s underwhelming images, I realized that I wasn’t going to be so lucky.
     Yeah...but if I were given my foreskin back...perhaps I could fashion it into a noose.
     And I’ll leave it to you to figure out around whose neck I would place it.
     end
     NOTE: Originally published in LA Xpress, October 22, 2009 issue.

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CINEMA SEEN - "Hiking My Way Through Life"
By William Margold

     I fell in love with seeing the world upside down 50 years ago.
     Right around my 16th birthday (October 2, 1959) I was taught how to hike a football in order to play on the flag football team that Vista Del Mar (a home for kids who needed slightly more supervision that their own families could provide) was fielding to participate in a Culver City league, and my life changed for the brotherhood bonding better as well as for the broken bones and torn tendons worse...forever.
     Of course, since I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed the repeated presence of a guy’s hands on my ass...I was spared that pressure as my centering career was always that of alignments that required me to hike the football back quite a number of yards with precise accuracy at maximum speed. And because I couldn’t afford to break my glasses repeatedly, I invariably hiked the ball to the blur that was my quarterback.
     My duties after hiking the ball were to simply get in the way of whoever (or whatever) tried to rush my QB. Lacking a considerable amount of coordination, but being gangly (and/or clumsy) enough to simply get in the way, I managed to frustrate quite a number of defensive linemen. They in turn would take out their anger on me, and I quickly became used to various degrees of pain. But it was all part of the game. And quite frankly---while my hands make the sounds of broken watches when I close them quickly, a few ribs in the middle of the left side of my chest have ached for over 30 years, and my left knee has had little or no interest in joining the rest of my body since it was brutalized in 1982---if I didn’t slowly stagger off the field at the end of every contest, I felt that I hadn’t really done my job.
     All of this recollecting was ignited by watching HARVARD BEATS YALE 29-29...by far the best film about football ever made...particularly for anyone who has ever "cleated up" and forsaking their physical health, has ventured onto the gridiron competitively. Kevin Rafferty’s demanding documentary (available through www.kino.com) is a tremendously touching time capsule that transports the viewer back to a Saturday afternoon in the fall of 1968 at a time when America’s history books was being ripped apart by assassinations, and there was a great restlessness by a generation that was in the process of trying to become adults by retaining their youthful outlooks so that they wouldn’t wind up like their own parents.
     By now...faithful readers of my column have come to realize that what has transpired here for 37 years (as The Hollywood Press morphed into THE LAXPRESS) is my life story thinly disguised as movie reviews. And herein, since this column coincides with the celebration (or at least recognition of my 66th birthday on October 2), I cannot resist overdosing on my self-servitude as, if certain life and death factors had played out differently, there’s a very, Very, VERY good chance that I might have wound up playing in the game that Rafferty so gloriously captures through the vivid memories of those who played in it. You see...my father, Nathan Ross Margold (a highly respected member of the legal community during the first half of the 20th Century) was a Harvard graduate, and I’m sure that I would have "legacy’d" into the hallowed halls. Of course, by 1968 I would have been 25 years old, but I also might have been perfectly suited to play, if after graduating from high school in 1960, the Marines had allowed me to join their ranks for at least a four-year stint. But my father died in 1947, and my formative years, until I wound up in Vista Del Mar in 1956 (fresh from over three months in Los Angeles’ Central Juvenile Hall) masterminded by my mother (a lady who I respected but never had a chance to love), became a myriad of military school and private educational establishments (haphazardly mix mastered with a number of public institutions), wherein I learned just enough to get by, but was never really driven toward learning how to get along. And I suspect that’s what The Marines sensed when they turned me down in 1960.
     So I didn’t wind up at Harvard. But I did manage to get through college. And in fact, I graduated from Cal State Northridge in June 1968.
     A few years later, I became aware of various local flag football leagues, and that quickly rekindled my centering ways, and throughout the next decade---because I was "very good at my job"---I wound up snapping my way through as many as four games a week.
     But finally I realized that my damaged left knee made me more vulnerable than valuable, and I trudged away from the game, while I could still at least trudge.
     Many, Many, MANY years later, Jim Holliday cast me in the role of a retired football player/lumbering college janitor in one of his always amusing as well as arousing adult films...and challenged me to hike a football right at the camera. I grunted and groaned as I assumed the position. Indeed, with a belly and considerable brittleness, bending over wasn’t as easy as it used to be. But then...it was a sunny Saturday afternoon all over again. And, although I was on a sterile sound stage, damn if I couldn’t smell the grass as it mingled with drops of my sweat. And when Holliday yelled "Action"...I rocketed off a perfect spiral that, as I intended, just grazed the top of the camera, but almost took the cameraman’s head off in the process.
     As I intended!
     end
     NOTE: Originally published in LA Xpress, October 1, 2009 issue.

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