The Hitchcock, Capote, and Toby Jones Mystery

Help!

This is funny — and kind of weird.

I watched the film Hitchcock on pay per view the other day: it’s the story of the making of Psycho based on the fascinating 1990 non-fiction book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho by Stephen Rebello, which I read and enjoyed many years ago. The movie? It’s not bad. Its take on the Hitchcock marriage is rigged and sentimentalized. But the cast is amazing — Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, Scarlett Johansson, Jessica Biel, Toni Collette — and the glimpses of the true story that survive are still very interesting. It’s a small, satisfying entertainment about the movie biz.

However…  The movie is about ten times better than last year’s unfortunate HBO production The Girl, which starred Toby Jones as the Master of Suspense, and told Tippi Hedren’s version of their relationship during the making of The Birds. Hedren claims Hitchcock sexually harassed her, mistreated her, and ultimately destroyed her career — although my memory is that Hedren was an awful actress, which may have also had something to do with it.

Why I’d Give the Oscar to Ang Lee’s Beautiful Life of Pi

It’ll be a pretty rich but not unexpected irony if the Oscars freeze out Zero Dark Thirty because it tells the truth about waterboarding, and reward Argo because it covers up the fatal incompetence of the Carter administration. Personally, though, I thought the charm of Silver Linings Playbook outweighed either of them and, if I had to choose among the movies I’ve seen, I’d pick Ang Lee’s Life of Pi.

Spoiler here: I’ll try not to give away the trick to Pi, but if you haven’t read the book or seen the film, you might want to move on.

I really enjoyed the Yann Martel novel but in the end, the whole Pi deal is really kind of spiritually twee — cute and dear, I mean. All religions are a path to God. Which explanation of life do you prefer? Really??? Who cares what you prefer? What about the truth? And what about the fact that the truth tends to be exclusive? That is, if one thing is true, frequently another, opposite thing cannot be true. The sky can’t both be red and blue at the same time. God is either there or not — and he either wants you to love your neighbor or slay the infidel, but probably not both. The theology of Pi is comforting nonsense when you get right down to it.

So while I enjoyed the story of the novel, and while I enjoyed the surprise ending, I couldn’t help but give a shrug when it was over. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I thought, and then pretty much forgot the whole thing.

Ang Lee’s movie version is different. That is, it’s exactly the same — same story, same trick, same twee approach to theology. But the feel is different. First of all, the thing is just freaking beautiful. Not beautiful in a heavy-handed way, but it actually captures a sense of the wonder and beauty and terror of nature. The special effects are beyond belief — and not like the special effects in a monster movie; they really mean something. And finally, the choice Lee makes about how to play the ending, which at first put me off, actually serves to give the film a sense of tragedy and depth and sorrow that the book simply doesn’t have. It’s really a hell of a film. I loved it. I think it’s the best by far of the ones I’ve seen.

And hey, speaking of the controversy that, they say, will cost Zero Dark Thirty the trophy, Lee’s Brokeback Mountain got similarly smoked in 2005 for showing gay cowboys. Instead they gave it to Crash, which stank. So even though they gave Lee the director statue, they owe him a best picture film.

Never mind. I’m a minority of one here judging by all the previous awards this season. I guess I’ll just skip the Oscars and let time prove me right.

*****

Cross-posted from Klavan on the Culture. Visit for additional comments.

More recent movie and book recommendations from Andrew Klavan at PJ Lifesytle:

Proof of Heaven Isn’t… Still… 

Damnation Street The Movie?

What I guess is now the leading show business trade “publication” — Nikki Finke’s blog Deadline Hollywood — had a nice mention of a project of mine this week. And — cool! — this is my blog, so I get to link to it here:

Fox Hill Productions has optioned development and production rights to Andrew Klavan’s mystery trilogy Dynamite Road, Shotgun Alley and Damnation Street. Klavan has adapted the trilogy into a screenplay titled Damnation Street,described as a neo-noir thriller about a private detective and a serial killer in pursuit of the same mysterious woman. Producers on the project will be Samantha Lusk, Andrew Hyatt and Seth David Mitchell of Fox Hill (The Frozen, The Last Light and the upcoming The Stanleys).

Christian Toto at Big Hollywood picked up the piece and quoted me talking about how I’d condensed the trilogy into one story for the script, and how some of the approach of the book was derived from Clint Eastwood’s film Unforgiven:

“I always felt that was a great western that was also a movie about the western, an examination of the heart of those stories. Likewise the Weiss-Bishop books were meant to be top-flight detective stories that were also about detective stories, that held the genre up to the light so to speak.”

Anyway, an option is only one step on the long, long road to getting a film made, but it’s a good script and I hope it makes it to the screen.

***

More from Andrew Klavan at PJ Lifestyle:

Excellent Advice For a Cop’s Wife

Justified: The Best Crime Series on TV

Excellent Advice for a Cop’s Wife

If you missed the exciting LAPD film End of Watch in the theaters, it’s worth getting it on DVD. Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena play a couple of hot dog cruiser cops on L.A.’s mean streets. The film, written by Training Day guy David Ayer, is done “found footage” or documentary-style, which sometimes leads to some distracting moments when you’re thinking — “Wait, who’s holding the camera now?” But aside from that — a minor problem — it’s gritty, well-acted and moving. And it represents the cops fairly and well.

Being me, I especially liked the macho ethos of it all. Lots of good cop partner moments, and high respect for marriage and wives in the manner of real men. There’s a funny and touching wedding scene in which one cop’s wife explains to the newbie how she’s got to give it up without restraint if she wants to keep her husband from straying. Excellent advice. Plus, the bride was played by Anna Kendrick, who was the high point of the overrated George Clooney film Up in the Air. She’s a superb and extremely appealing actress. She ought to get a lead role soon.

Recently, I was blown away by Heather Mac Donald’s City Journal piece “Courts v. Cops.” It tells how the NYCLU and other self-appointed defenders of black rights are interfering with the NYPD and thus insuring more black people get murdered and victimized. Heather — one of the best reporters in the country — points out that the law-abiding black citizen who is grateful for the police “seemingly lies outside the conceptual universe of the advocates and their enablers in elite law firms and the media.” So it was nice to see a film in which the true guardians of the lives of the poor get some props.

Read the article, watch the movie.

****

Cross-posted from Klavan on the Culture 

Related at PJ Lifestyle on masculinity:

7 Types of Dudes Who Annoy Everyone Just By Their Very Existence

Justified: The Best Crime Series on TV

If you’re not watching the new season of Justified (Tuesdays at 10 on FX), you’re missing the best crime series on TV and what may be about to become one of the genuinely great crime series of all time. For me, most TV shows reach their highest level in the first year. Stories have a theme. The theme works itself out in the first year. Everything else is a sequel, second best. Sometimes by the fourth year a new theme is discovered and the show gets a second wind, but it’s still rarely as good as that first season. Dexter and The Wire, two great shows, come to mind as examples.

But while the first three seasons of Justified have been distinguished by terrific acting, spectacular dialogue, excellent characters and moments of violence that were terrifying without being unnecessarily disgusting (usually), the year-long arcs of the plots have not been as great as the rest of the package. The show is inspired by an Elmore Leonard short story, and while Leonard’s genius for dialogue and his hilarious and realistic approach to human corruption are what inform the show at its best, his satiric and sometimes rambling plotting doesn’t translate that well to TV. (Or maybe it’s just that he’s not writing the show — though the creator Graham Yost has channeled him wonderfully.)

In its first two episodes, however, this season looks to me to have moved to an even higher level. The yearlong plot, which involves the unearthing of a long-lost messenger bag, is inherently compelling and makes a great hook on which to hang the sub-plots. And the main characters seem to have found themselves in ways that give them fresh life. The appealing, out-of-his-time hero Raylan Givens (played with a pitch-perfect blend of irony and valor by Timothy Olyphant) is in a relationship with a barmaid that promises some really interesting complications, especially as his ex is about to give birth to their child. The small-town gangster Boyd Crowder (played by The Shield‘s Walton Goggins, one of the best actors on TV, if not the best) is now in a relationship with his widowed sister-in-law Ava (played by the excellent and heart-meltingly beautiful Joelle Carter) that is as genuinely affectionate and touching as it is murderous and corrupt. Nick Searcy’s perfectly played Chief, world-weary but compassionate, is struggling with retirement. And all the new characters — a tent preacher, a constable, the barmaid’s ex — look to be richly drawn and promising.

Really, watching the first two episodes was bliss.

The second golden age of American crime writing, which lived in the novel during the 80s and 90s, has moved to television. Justified is an excellent part of that excellent trend and just seems to be getting better.

****

Cross-posted from Klavan on the Culture – Visit for additional comments 

More recent writings on TV at PJ Lifestyle:

Doomsday Preppers Week 9: In the Hurt Locker

Dear Sister Wives Star Kody Brown: Love Should be Exclusive, Not Divided

5 Covert Conservative Lessons in Downton Abbey

Proof of Heaven Isn’t… Still…

Proof of Heaven is the sort of book I almost never read, but I’m glad I made an exception. I don’t really follow the whole Near Death Experience, is-there-or-isn’t-there-an-afterlife debate. I’ve come to believe there is more to life than life, but I don’t think about it much. Life itself seems a pretty urgent business and I want to pay attention to it before it’s gone. If there’s nothing afterwards, I’ll never know. If there is, I’ve got an excellent lawyer.

But a friend gave me the book for Christmas. I started it, and found it weirdly compelling. As you’ve probably heard, it’s Dr. Eben Alexander’s memoir of how he, a neurosurgeon, went into a coma and saw the next world. According to Alexander, who should know, he was so brain dead at the time it happened that it’s virtually impossible for this to have been any kind of a dream or hallucination. And as the experience went on for days, there is a lot of detail, including some stuff that struck me as convincing. Nothing he sees on the Other Side is particularly startling. It’s all in line with the instincts of the best sort of faith. We’re loved; we’re forgiven. Oh, and there are angels. I’ve never been so sure about angels, but apparently there they are. Dogs too. I’d be very disappointed if there were no dogs.

Now as one of my novel characters once remarked: There’s a reasonable explanation for everything and that’s the one some people choose to believe. One of the things I liked best about the book is that Alexander is honest enough to allow us into some of the darker places in his psychology. If you want to construct a psychological explanation for his Near Death Event you can. And he even gives several “scientific” explanations of greater or lesser plausibility — the best being that the whole experience was basically the dream he had when his brain was rebooting.

All the same, I found the book oddly believable. It’s not pious or treacly like so many books about faith experiences are. And even though the doc gets pretty new age and woo-woo by the time he’s finished, it wasn’t alienating if you kept an open mind. It stuck with me for several days after I finished it.

So while no one can offer you a guarantee, I would say this book constitutes a piece of circumstantial evidence for the defense of heaven. Which makes for an interesting read, even if you decide to dismiss it.

****

Cross-posted from Klavan on the Culture – visit for another thread of ongoing discussion and debate.

More perspectives on God and religion at PJ Lifestyle:

Whose Morality Is It Anyway?

The Society of St. Pius X and Antisemitism

10 Secret Reasons Why The Avengers is The Best Superhero Film

3 Positive Trends That Might Transform Our Country for the Better In the Next 2 Years

Conservative at work!

So last week, in what was perhaps a moment of madness, I posted a request on my Facebook page: Tell me your political predictions for the year. Among the more restrained answers: “Hyperinflation,” “Civil War,” “financial collapse,” “terribly awful things.”

Optimist though I am, I can’t help feeling there’s something to this downhearted consensus. After living through the most peaceful and prosperous half century that any nation has ever experienced in the history of humankind, it seems impossible to believe we would re-elect a mediocre reactionary out to “fundamentally transform” our success into failure. But we did, and that’s — well, let’s call it “less than cheering.”

On the other hand…

One of the central weaknesses of radicalism is that radicals seem to lose track of the causes and foundations of the things even they value. They don’t understand that peace is always and everywhere the end result of superior firepower, improved health the result of greater wealth, wealth the result of hard-headed and often greedy business dealing, and liberty deeply linked to a specific concept of man’s relationship to God. They never consider that it may at least be questionable whether the cornerstone can be removed without the structure toppling over.

Conversely, one of the central weaknesses of conservatism is that conservatives see all too clearly how every good thing we have is linked to everything else. They can trace in a moment how any change in the system might lead to disaster. Expand the definition of marriage and civilization falls. Raise taxes and end up in chains. Allow women to vote and government will become an all-embracing, over-protective mother state infantilizing the population. Okay, maybe that last one’s true, but you see what I’m getting at.

The Case for Restricting Artists

As everyone knows, the director’s cut of a film is never anywhere near as good as the cut released to theaters. You may think you know of an exception, but you’re in error. No shame; we all make mistakes. In some cases — Blade Runner comes to mind — the director’s cut can actually turn a great film into a crashing, solipsistic bore.

And this is not really surprising. Restrictions on art — whether it’s the rigors of the sonnet form or some idiot studio executive screaming, “Make it shorter or you’re fired!” — force artists to use all their skill to say what they can in the space and manner provided. There is a reason no one reads new poetry; a reason paintings, which once served to express the deepest levels of the human experience, can now do little more than decorate bank lobbies. No restrictions. Poems are free form; paintings are abstract. And they suck. Restrictions make artists better, more resourceful, more clever, more artistic. Without them, art becomes free — and dull and meaningless.

Which brings me to The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. When director Peter Jackson made the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I understand the studio forbid him to go over three hours on any one of the three films. The result is a nine hour masterpiece. Unfortunately the success of that film seems to have made Jackson more or less untouchable. Now every movie he makes is essentially a director’s cut. And they’ve suffered for it. Everybody hates Jackson’s King Kong, but watch it again: King Kong would be a terrific movie about manhood and femininity — if you cut twenty seconds to a minute out of every single scene… and then cut some of the scenes.

As for The Hobbit — well, the first seven hours are a little slow, but it picks up in the final third. I mean, really, it’s one book, make one film. Use some skill, make some choices. Be an artist.

That said, the picture, though endless, looks lovely. The final hour really is exciting. And Martin Freeman, who plays Bilbo, is so incredibly good he almost kept me awake through the opening hours. Or days. Or whatever.

Now what they should do is release “The Studio Cut.” Let some executives into the editing room to pare the thing down to the entertaining bits. One hour long and brilliant. Can’t wait.

****

image courtesy shutterstock / Willierossin

Cross-posted from Klavan on the Culture

The Hobbit: More Restrictions on Art!

More perspectives on The Hobbit at PJ Lifestyle:

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Chore

Why J.R.R. Tolkien’s Enduring Popularity Is a Cause for Hope in Our Popular Culture

Les Miserables‘s Old-Fashioned Values

I went to see the new film version of the musical Les Miserables on a Boxing Day outing with family members of various ages and different degrees of familiarity with the show. One of us loved the musical so much she literally (and I do mean literally) had it memorized word for word. I’d never seen it and have always disliked the thumping music and standard, soppy lyrics — though (as you might guess) I’ve read the novel.

The results: the younger folks tended not to like the film because of the bad and auto-tuned singing and because of Tom Hooper’s ham-handed, close-up-heavy direction. My wife and I liked it. It’s sentimental and overblown but, as we both remarked, at least it deals with issues of importance: faith, grace, justice, the experience of God through love. Obviously, old Vic Hugo brought these themes — and the rollicking, compelling story — to the table, but the musical doesn’t sweep them aside and they are dealt with honestly and entertainingly throughout. Also, I confess I liked the songs much better when I saw them in context.

Acting-wise, Anne Hathaway steals it. She basically gives an acting class on how to deliver a screen performance of a stage part. I liked Russell Crowe, auto-tuned though he was — but a lot of our party hated him. We all agreed that Hugh Jackman, whom I generally like, was miscast and couldn’t handle the soft tenor singing. Samantha Barks, a third place finisher in some British music contest or other, was also a standout: good actress, adorable to look at and with a strong, pop voice.

In sum: a sentimental, entertaining old-fashioned movie musical that brings Hugo’s classic story to musical life.

*****

Cross-posted from Klavan on the Culture 

Related at PJ Lifestyle, from John Boot: 

Les Misérables: The Grand Musical Epic Does Not Disappoint

Don’t Miss Silver Linings Playbook This Christmas

Here’s a lovely picture that may have slipped by you: Silver Linings Playbook. You might have been put off by its subject matter (bipolar disorder) or scared away by its R-rating (for language mostly, I think) or just missed it because it’s on the small side. But it really is delightful — an uplifting Christmas romance of the old school, albeit dressed in modern dysfunction.

That modern-to-old-fashioned storytelling strategy seems to be something director David O. Russell developed for his last fine film, The Fighter. That one opened with half an hour of such realistically depicted familial cruelty that I nearly stopped watching — until a startling scene of grace and redemption about a third of the way through transformed the entire picture into a stand-up-and-cheer fight film of the first water.

Likewise here, Russell starts out depicting the travails of a man with bipolar disorder (played by Bradley Cooper) with searing honesty and humor — but then sets him in a love story with all the charm and style of a movie on TCM. Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence (of Hunger Games fame) play a couple of self-destructive misfits, deploying all their modern acting skills to get them right. But as their characters teach each other tolerance and kindness — and learn to take their medication — the actors unleash their inner movie stars and walk into a Christmas finale with all the self-assurance of Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn.

It’s not just good storytelling, it’s smart movie making with a real understanding of how the medium works. Not something you see too often, I know.

Excellent supporting cast too: Robert De Niro’s great; Chris Tucker steals every scene he’s in — he had me in stitches.

If you’re going to grouse about the four-letter words and realism, don’t go. But if you like uplifting entertainment for adults, this is really good stuff. One of the better movies I’ve seen this year.

****

Cross-posted from Klavan on the Culture – visit for additional comments.

A contrary view at PJ Lifestyle from John Boot:

Silver Linings Playbook: David O. Russell’s Syrupy Sprint for Oscar

5 Secret Conservative Messages Hidden in Angry Birds

Can anyone tell me the difference between playing Angry Birds and getting hooked on methamphetamines? Okay, I guess with Angry Birds you don’t lose your teeth. And you don’t have to sell your body to keep up the supply. In fact, after the nice Angry Bird people sell you the app for around five bucks, they periodically stock it with new levels for free. Try to get your meth supplier to give you a deal like that!

But has anyone besides me ever tried to give this thing up? It’s virtually impossible. Fortunately, however, playing teaches you a ton of conservative virtues. That’s what I tell my wife anyway. Because she thinks I’m just, you know, goofing off.

But here’s a few of the things you can learn flipping birds at pigs:

1. It’s not nice to steal what other people produce. The pigs are the villains because they take the birds’ eggs. Could the symbolism be any clearer? Pigs = Government. Eggs = The Productions of the Productive. Ayn Rand couldn’t have said it better — except maybe in her brilliant scene where a boomerang myna bird flies backwards into a beach ball.

2. When in doubt, turn to the wisdom of those who’ve gone before. If you want to score three stars on every level and pick up the golden eggs, sooner or later, you’re going to have to consult YouTube. It’s what we Angry Birders have instead of the Federalist Papers.

How Ben Affleck’s Argo Screws History

The Mission Was Real. The History was Malarkey.

One of the better movies I’ve seen this season is Argo, directed by and starring the talented and appealing Ben Affleck. The movie tells a fictionalized version of the true story of how a CIA operative helped six Americans escape from Iran during the hostage crisis of the Carter administration.

I, of course, had no problem with the filmmakers adding fictional dollops of drama, danger and adventure to the story. But I did object very strongly to the rewriting of history purely for purposes of pro-Democrat propaganda. The running gag in the movie concerns a make-believe sci-fi film called Argo that the CIA uses as a cover story. The battle cry of the good guys is, “Ar, go, f*** yourself.” But, as so often in Hollywood, it’s the political truth that gets f***ed.

Bad enough that the entire hostage crisis was subtly and not-so-subtly blamed on America in the movie. Even worse is the fact that the Democrat president’s idealistic incompetence in withdrawing American support for the Shah is completely passed over. It was this bone-headed Carter play that opened the floodgates of Islamo-fascism, allowing Ayatollah Khomeini to come to power — a bone-head move that Obama stupidly repeated when he withdrew support from Mubarak in Egypt and essentially handed the place over to the Muslim Brotherhood. As the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens recently said, “In the middle east there are two kinds of regimes — those that could be worse, and those that couldn’t be worse.” Carter and Obama both opted to abandon the former and allow the latter.

Also smoothed over in the movie is the president’s fatal incompetence in allowing a poorly planned rescue operation. At one point in the film, Affleck’s CIA agent is told to ditch his mission because the White House is mounting a rescue of its own. This is a suspenseful moment because we know Carter’s Eagle Claw plan will be a fatal failure, leaving eight U.S. servicemen dead in the desert. But the disaster is never mentioned in the film. Why not? Guess.

Taking a Stroll with Evan Sayet through The Kindergarden of Eden

Hey, I just noticed that if you sign up to PJTV, you get a free copy of Evan Sayet’s E-book The Kindergarden of Eden: How the Modern Liberal Thinks.  This is a good deal — which I know because I’ve actually read The Kindergarden of Eden and it’s really good! Evan, of course, is a stand-up comic by trade, so not only does his work contain excellent insights into the state of the liberal’s mind, it’s genuinely funny — doubled me over with laughter more than once. The chapter on Bruce Springsteen would make Chris Christie weep…  again!

Here’s a taste:

The retardation that comes from self-adulation was the very centerpiece of the True Believers’ Blueprint for Utopia, and for this reason they made self-love paramount and reinforced it on a near constant basis through incessant programs of wholly unmerited “self-esteem”-building. You were perfect just for being you, which meant that the only way not to be perfect (and perhaps even turn into one of those evil bigots and phobics) was to attempt to change (i.e. better) yourself in any way.

“Be yourself,” “do what feels good,” and “esteem nothing more than yourself” were the new pillars of society in the Modern Liberal era, and they were in every way the exact opposite of what had made Western Civilization great and the very antithesis of what was needed for a functioning, happy, healthy, prosperous and progressing society.

In fact, not only were these concepts not progressive, but they couldn’t possibly have been more regressive (just as the True Believer wished) as they made “feelings” — the same “feelings” that every child since the dawn of man was born with – into the arbiter of all truths; while they eliminated that which does progress with time – personal and collective wisdom.

*****

Cross-posted from Klavan on Culture

Coming soon at PJ Lifestyle: David Swindle will review The Kindergarden of Eden and include it in a future edition of his ongoing collection of recommend books for Counterculture Conservatives.

Related at PJ Lifestyle:

The 15 Best Books for Understanding Barack Obama’s Mysterious Political Theology

Why Is Identity Politics Evil?

How Long Does It Take to Shift All the Way from Left to Right?

This Year Be Thankful You Don’t Have an Orange for a Head

Did someone say eat Turkey?

Be thankful you used to live in the greatest country on earth. Until, you know, it was fundamentally transformed. Which reminds me of an old joke:

A man walks into a bar. He has an orange for a head. The bartender pours him a drink and says: “So—you want to tell me about it?”

“Well, I was walking on the beach,” says the man with an orange for a head. “I found an old lamp in the sand and took it home. When I polished the lamp, a genie came out and offered me three wishes in return for setting him free. Thinking it was some sort of trick, I offhandedly wished for a million dollars. Instantly, the doorbell rang. A man had arrived to tell me I’d won a mail-order sweepstakes for exactly a million dollars. So I returned to the genie and wished I could have sex with every Playmate of the Month for last year. The doorbell rang again—and all 12 pinup girls came prancing in, at my service. I went back to the genie a third time,” says the man with an orange for a head, “and I think this may have been where I made my mistake.”

“What did you do?” says the bartender.

“I wished to have an orange for a head.”

For the connection between that and the election, read the rest here. And more seriously, have a great day.

*****

Cross-posted from Klavan on the Culture

It’s All Over. Not.

First, some wisdom from Deadwood, via the wonderful Jonah Goldberg at NRO:

I think it was Orson Welles who said, “If you want to tell a story with a happy ending, it all depends on where you stop.” To put it another way: every story is a tragedy, if you tell it to the end.

As with lives, so with republics. Freedom is a living thing. It dies. Conservatives are like doctors. They can only win for the moment, the day, the year, the election cycle. And no matter the victory, time only goes one way. The republic grows older every day, the people travel further from their founding values and nothing lasts forever.

There are many responses to that situation. Only one of them is wise: good cheer and defiance. Keep laughing; fight back; fear nothing. Mortality makes time too precious for despondency and death makes a fool of fear. There’s nothing to worry about: disaster is certain. And nothing can be that serious since, whatever it is, it’s guaranteed to end.

Since Tuesday, I have heard enough conservatives saying, “It’s over! We’re through!” in serious, important-sounding voices to last me the next four years. I don’t care how important you make it sound, it’s whining; any child can do it. I’ll let you know when it’s over by putting you in the ground and throwing six feet of dirt onto your face. Until you get that secret signal, really, pull yourself together.

Why The Master Is No Master-Piece

[I'm not sure a film like The Master actually has spoilers, but if so: spoiler alert.]

Near the beginning of The Master, Paul Thomas Anderson’s much-acclaimed new film about an L. Ron Hubbard-style cult leader, alcoholic WWII vet Freddie Quell, played by Joaquin Phoenix, takes an ink blot test and sees penises and vaginas in every image. By the end of the film, director Anderson is doing pretty much the same thing.

The brilliantly acted and well-made film, though watchable through its more than two hour running time, has left even its admirers baffled. Reviewer after reviewer heaped the film with praise while admitting they did not really know what it was all about.

Personally, I thought it was about less than meets the eye. In following Quell’s fascination with cult leader Lancaster Dodd, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Anderson has presented us with a dated, not to mention worn out, vision of humankind. The film struck me as a final helping of late modernism, with a dollop of reductionist Freud on top. Thanks, but we’ve had enough.

As I read it, the film seems to say that reality is so harsh that people will drink anything from rocket fuel to paint thinner — and will likewise follow even the most completely implausible savior — in order to avoid “taking life straight.” Only by freeing oneself from such drugs and illusions can one set sail masterless on the trackless sea of meaningless existence and thus achieve the ultimate goal of human spiritual development: getting laid. Quell’s journey takes him through several sexual stages: from a masturbatory encounter with a sand-castle dream girl; to a sexless, subservient relationship with a “Dad” who seems to him to hold the key to sexual power; to a final acceptance of the loss of his real dream girl (now hilariously named Doris Day); and a courageous break with Dad that frees him at last to put his penis in the vaginas of real, live women he meets in bars. Um, huzzah.

Steven Crowder Has Sex

Scientists working in a secret laboratory around the clock have created an amazingly realistic female android programmed to show life-long affection for conservative comedian Steven Crowder. No other narrative is sufficient to explain the photograph above in which a young woman of breathtaking beauty seems for all the world actually to be marrying the guy. Believe me, Steven is a friend of mine and I can tell you from personal experience: There is absolutely no other way he scores a babe like that.

Now normally if a thought about Crowder’s sex life entered my mind I would naturally try to put out my eyes and pour boric acid into my ears in an attempt to clean out my brain. But hey, he started it. Writing at the Fox News Opinion blog (where apparently they let just anybody weigh in), Steven produced this provocative and extremely interesting post-marriage column called “Waiting for the Wedding Night — Getting Married the Right Way.”

Steven begins by confirming that, yes, he and his new missus waited to have sex until they were married — and then goes on to say that this is the right thing to do, as opposed to, you know, the wrong thing to do:

Feeling judged? I couldn’t care less. You know why? Because my wife and I were judged all throughout our relationship. People laughed, scoffed and poked fun at the young, celibate, naive Christian couple.

We’d certainly never make it to the wedding without schtupping, and if we did, our “wedding night would be awkward and terrible,” they said.

Turns out that people couldn’t have been more wrong. Looking back, I think that the women saying those things felt like the floozies they ultimately were, and the men, with their fickle manhood tied to their pathetic sexual conquests, felt threatened.

The column is worth reading in itself, but even more fascinating is the predictable reaction: the filth, hatred, and rage with which floozies and fickle manhood men have been responding in comments, blogs and on the entertaining @scrowder Twitter feed.

Obviously, such reactions tend to confirm Crowder’s outlook. Why hate on the guy if you don’t secretly feel ashamed of yourself?