How to Turn a Mediocre Biography into a Terrible Biography -- Stan: The Life of Stan Laurel

Even the cover sucks.

I'm a huge fan of biographies and autobiographies. One of the best books I've read in the past ten years is The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (seriously, that man was a champ!). Until recently, I don't recall ever being unsatisfied by one*. Obviously, I choose the books based on an interest in the subject, but after reading Stan: The Life of Stan Laurel, it's apparent that an interest in the subject is not all you need.

Stan (the book, as opposed to Stan, the man, who will be referred to as Laurel) is certainly an easy enough read and mildly informative, but the author, Fred Lawrence Guiles writes from the perspective of an uninformed fan. He assures the reader that he has done research, yet there are no foot/endnotes and it isn't apparent he interviewed anyone for the biography (or even culled past interviews if he couldn't get in contact with key characters). Guiles continually asserts that Laurel was nearly as great, if not equal to, Charlie Chaplin** in writing gags, yet gives no insight into how. The reader is told that Laurel was a driving force in his career, yet there is no one there to confirm the claim. Guiles' authority is undermined by his vagueness. Basically, all I got out of Stan was that Laurel had a trouble with women and alcohol. Pretty bland.

If the above represented the worst of the book, that would be fine. I'd put it back on the shelf to be forgotten. An easy, mildly interesting, ultimately fleeting read. Then, the reader begins to get insights into what kind of person Guiles is, culminating with (and this will be a long quote):

Jean Arthur is important to this chronicle of the fortunes of Stan Laurel because she as much as anyone was a transitional figure. She was in some ways as innocent as Stan and Babe. She was daft in ways that were akin to those small madnesses that set Stan apart from Lloyd and even Chaplin. If she had ever appeared as Mrs. Laurel in one of their comedies, she would have seemed almost too much at home. There would have been nothing for Stan to play against, since she was as much not-of-this-world as he. But Jean was attractive, warm and in every way enchanting. Beginning with her role opposite Gary Cooper in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), she was the first -- albeit quite innocently -- to bring down the curtain on slapstick as a favourite movie mode. Shortly after word, Irene Dunne joined her with Theodora Goes Wild (1936), and Carold Lombard, whose My Man Godfrey (1936) had come out at about the same time as Theodora.

Laurel and Hardy would survive this female revolution for another two years, but after 1938 it would be downhill for the rest of their careers. Some writers remarked that the movies had "grown up." Actually, as we survey the devastation and loss, the movies suffered a grievous wound that would never heal and audiences a deprivation of incalculable dimensions (emphasis mine).

There's a lot to unpack here, and I'm not sure I'm up to the task, so I'll start with the obvious: how can one possibly claim that women gaining prominence as comedians ruined Laurel and Hardy and CINEMA AS A WHOLE? Guiles leaps to the most extreme conclusion possible ignoring the fact that Laurel and Hardy had been making films as a team ten years by that point and that Laurel had been making movies since 1917. Perhaps they were just running their course and it's meer coincidence that women were making popular, funny movies at the same time. Additionally, Guiles book was published initially in 1980 and released again (with some additional commentary from the author) in 1991. Is the author suggesting that the 1970's, often held up as the greatest decade of filmmaking alongside the 1930's, would have been EVEN BETTER if funny women hadn't become so damn popular? And these lists are by no means comprehensive or even authoritative (as it's all subjective), but is he suggesting that it would be filled with movies of an incomprehensible greatness if only Laurel and Hardy had remained on top?

I've got news for Fred Lawrence Guiles (whose works include not one but TWO biographies of Marilyn Monroe alongside Jane Fonda, Tyrone Power, Marion Davies and Andy Warhol), movies were just fine. Simply because your preferred funny people stopped*** making the funny as funny as you liked and other people's funny was preferred, that doesn't mean cinema broke. And it certainly doesn't mean you get to write stupid things for other people to read in your mediocre book.

Some joy to cleanse the palate:






*As a side discussion, I find that I'm generally satisfied with all the books I read. At least to the extent that I have no qualms finishing them, thought there are some I struggled through ( On the Road and other that I finished simply to claim I finished them (Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day, which, of its 1000+ pages, I remember dirigibles and the Chicago World's Fair. But I finished it!). I chalk it up to knowing that a book can be  a significant time investment so I try to stick with things somewhat in my taste wheelhouse.


**From my perspective, this could easily be true. I find most of Chaplin's work to be fairly dull, overly saccharine, and immensely on-the-nose. The man wasn't subtle. His most interesting film (to me), Monsieur Verdoux, offers many good ideas and he kills them all with a terribly obvious and awkward speech at the end. Give me Buster Keaton any and every day, followed by Laurel and Hardy, then the Marx Brothers, Harold Lloyd, Abbott and Costello...


***Did you know stoppled is a word? It means plugged or clogged. Do with that what you will.

Book Recommendation: Monsters in the Movies

John Landis has made a few of the most purely entertaining movies ever in several genres. An American American Werewolf in London, The Blues Brothers, Three Amigos, etc. He's also responsible for overseeing a shoot that ended in the deaths of two child extras and Vic Morrow (someone wrote a book about it). I'm not going to lie that learning about this and his flippant responses soured me a bit on the man who is incredibly interesting to listen to when he talks about movies but can seem like kind of a dick (unlike Joe Dante, who seems like the coolest guy on earth). I've learned to separate the man from his movies (as I'm sure most Roman Polanski fans have done).

Fortunately, Monsters in the Movies is all Landis talking about movies, horror movies at that! So it's right in my wheelhouse for enjoying the man and the material. The book is filled with hundreds of fantastic images be they promotional material or scenes from the movies. And the book is exhaustive! From Georges Melies to Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, it covers basically everything. It also features interviews with some of the greatest people to work in horror: David Cronenberg, Joe Dante, Sam Raimi, Ray Harryhausen, Rick Baker, and so on. There are fun observations (I love the collage of the Monster Carry), acknowledgement of tropes (i.e. Scary Kids), and details the evolution of some icons (Godzilla and King Kong).

Normally, I hate reference books, but this one has enough commentary and visual stimulation that it practically forces me to pick it up. And at 10"x12", that's a feat.

Dustin Pedroia: Short and Hard-Working

My grandma and I have a playful relationship when it comes to baseball. She's been a Tampa Bay Rays fan since the beginning (back when they were bad and called the Devil Rays). You can see Tropicana Field from their apartment in St. Petersburg, and, if you really wanted to, you could walk to and from the games. She also has season tickets. I, as you may know, am a Red Sox fan. Watching the games is a bit less convenient and attending games is nearly out of the question since I moved from Boston to Portland. The nearest American League stadium is Safeco Field in Seattle. Hell, we don't even have a Minor League team anymore. I bought MLB TV just to keep up with the Sox this past year, something I have to do because I know my grandma is going to be talking smack to me throughout the year (and, to be fair, just as much smack about her own team who I frequently have to defend against her attacks).

Last year she sent me Dustin Pedroia's autobiography because she really likes the guy she thought I might be interested. Of course, she couldn't resist sending a few items along with it:

 

To be honest, I probably never would have read Born to Play if someone hadn't bought it for me (as I previously mentioned, I can't ignore things loved ones gave me). I love autobiographies/biographies, but I have little interest in reading about someone's life who is my age. It feels like the only thing I'm going to get out of it is yet another "struggled against adversity to become successful" story, the idea of which bores me to dry heaves. Somehow, though, Pedroia's book is much worse than that.

Before I go on, I should make it clear that I love Pedroia as a ballplayer and am very happy he's playing for the Red Sox. He's fun to watch and is solid all around. I don't think I've ever been annoyed, exasperated, or angry watching him play. But dear god, he sounds like an insufferable person to be around in his book! The overall impression of him from the book is a relaxed, considerate, and friendly person, reading about how competitive he's been his whole life and how much he hates losing strikes me as a total lack of perspective on life in general. Thinking about being around that type of attitude puts me on edge.

But all that only points to a larger issue: the man has a MASSIVE Napoleon complex. Seriously, this seems to be the only reason the book was written. The adversity in Pedroia's life is that he's short and that feeds into everything in his life. At every stage, someone tells him "you're too short to be a ballplayer" (except, for some reason, his high school football coach put him in at starting quarterback). I get that he doesn't fit the mold for a professional baseball player, but about half of the pro ball players don't fit that mold. I love baseball to death, but there aren't many sports that have more variance in body types. So, Pedroia literally makes a list of all the people who doubted him so that he can rub his success in their faces. That's not really healthy behavior or a very good lesson to inspire with. He spends much of the book discussing how he trash talks to everyone (even coaches when he first meets them) like we're supposed to view that as an admirable trait. 

Pedroia says in the Acknowledgments that "I want to share my story because I know a lot of fans will be able to relate to it in a positive way," but really, his story boils down to "I'm short and I worked hard." Sure, I guess there's a good message in there, but it's boring and totally unnecessary. Do you know how many pro-athletes worked hard to get there that didn't write books? Me either, but I do know it's lots. The short angle is really the hook for the whole book. His family was loving and supportive (which is awesome, for real) and his only struggles were broken bones that he obtained playing sports. Even his wife's battle with cancer seems artificial (I may got to hell for this). She spent her life baking in the sun and in tanning beds without proper protection. In a time when we know very well the danger of that, it feels like she knowingly brought on her struggles herself. Also, it just pushes forward the fallacy that if you work hard, you will be rewarded. That's the sort of mindset you can have when you're already successful (whatever your definition of success is). Many people work their asses off just to stay afloat.

Finally, because it's an autobiography, it has to detail his life to the point of writing except that the story was the same each step of the way so the book is incredibly redundant. I can't believe his co-writer, Edward J. Delaney didn't edit the text accordingly. Things will be repeated three times on the same page, even. Born to Play is a chore to read and kind of makes Pedroia seem a little insufferable. Fortunately, I only have to watch him play.

When Nazis Aren't the Only Bad Guys: The Keep

Conventional wisdom is that the book is better than the movie. Always. But can a movie be so inept and poorly conceived that it makes one want to avoid the book at all cost? Surely the odds are in the books favor that it will be better. But here I was, wondering how bad the book has to be to yield a movie so uninteresting. There was no benefit of the doubt even though I've seen Will Smith version I Am Legend and it's a travesty of an adaptation that totally misses the point of the novella. Yes, people screw up adaptations all the time. Why was I already hating on the novel? It does my mind good and makes me curious about source material that the writer, F. Paul Wilson found the film to be incomprehensible (in it's theatrical release. Allegedly, the first cut was 3.5 hours[!]).



The plot, as near as I can tell, is that Nazi soldiers are stationed at a deserted citadel in which no one has ever died, but no one has ever lasted spending the night either. Some greedy treasure-hunting soldiers dig out a silver cross and unlock something from within that seems only set on killing Nazis. There's a Jewish historian brought in from a death camp to help figure out what's going on. A guy with glowing eyes has sex with the historian's daughter. Smoke billows, heads explode, one man is healed... it's a mess.

There's a surprising pedigree involved with The Keep, or I should say much of the cast and the director would go on to much bigger things or at least consistent work: Michael Mann, Ian McKellen, Gabriel Byrne, Jurgen Prochnow, Scott Glenn. And the acting is mostly good (though Ian McKellen somehow looks like he's dressed in his father's clothes even though he was in his 40's when this film was made). The directing his accomplished and there are some Michael Mann flourishes. The sets are pretty cool and there's a number of sweet mattes (and an awesome laser show at the end).

But as I said, the story is a mess. Nothing makes sense and not in the good way when something supernatural is happening. There really is no specific place to begin. You just have to watch the movie, but I don't recommend it. It's a movie that takes the bold step of making the Nazis the bad guys. It's got some pretty bad dubbing even though everyone is speaking English and it was shot on a set. There's a go-nowhere love story and the final duel is anticlimactic, laser show or no. And it breaks one of the cardinal rules of the movies: never explode a head before the finale. Everything that comes after that moment is just a letdown. It happens in Scanners and it happens here.

Still... awesome poster.