"Luck"

Luck is not something you can brag about because you had nothing to do with making it happen. It is also unlike “blue eyes” or a “cute nose”, because those things are permanent – you do not suddenly grow a gigantic honker one day and your old nose reappears a day later.  Luck, on the other hand, is not permanent.  Nobody I know is always lucky.  If they were, they’d be living permanently in Las Vegas, or, more likely, own it. 

I consider these thoughts because I am aware what I am about to write and I do not want it to sound like I think I am congenitally lucky.  I do not believe in that.  And even if I did, I would not talk about it, for fear it would be bad luck.  I know that’s a contradiction, but so, on various occasions, am I. 

Having said all that in italics, I want to talk about luck.  And the role luck plays it the way things turn out.

So here goes.

I have written about “It’s who you know” in the context of show business success.  “Who you know” is a real and helpful advantage.  It can often get you “in the door.”  But if you stink, it cannot keep you in the building.  At least not for long.  Unless you stink but you’re charming.  In which case… man, I hate those ingratiating successes.

I have also written – at least I think I have though I can’t always remember – about talent – the meat and potatoes of extended careers.  There is only so far you can go on connections or an impeccable wardrobe featuring pastel-colored sweaters in a surprising array of colors.  In the end, you have to do something.  Skillfully.  Again and again and again.   

Even so, beyond “Who you know” or how appealingly you present yourself, or even how naturally gifted you are…

You gotta have luck. 

Three brief personal stories from earlier days but within a contracted period of time when things went happily, repeatedly and inexplicably…

My way.

In my mid-twenties, I had virtually no money whatsoever and two roommates.  Because I virtually no money whatsoever.  We split the rent three ways, my contribution coming from a twenty-five-dollar-a-week writing job.  (Before that, I was living alone in a basement apartment next to the furnace and the other tenants referred to me as “The Mole.”  Rent:  A mere fifteen dollars a week.  I know it was a long time ago, but even then, fifteen bucks was a cost of a medium-priced breakfast.  (If you left a generous tip, and you rounded up.)

Then, one of my roommates got married and moved out, meaning that the rent would now have to be split two ways.  When that happened, however, suddenly, without warning or any effort on my part, I was offered another writing job.  With the combined income from, now, two jobs, I was able to afford half the rent.

Luck.

Then, the second roommate got married and moved out.  The two of us had been living in a two-bedroom apartment, and with my roommate’s departure, the rent was now entirely on my shoulders.  I was thinking seriously about moving.

“Un-expected-ly”, as the lyric goes in “Beauty and the Beast”, a third writing job materialized to supplement the other two.  I could now cover the rent on my own.

“Luck”, Part Deux.

FLASH SOMEWHAT FORWARD:

I am now working on a Canadian variety series, making seven hundred and fifty dollars a week, the most money I had to date ever received in a single paycheck.  I get a call from Lorne Michaels who had a year earlier relocated to Hollywood.  (This was long before Saturday Night Live.)

Lorne informs me that he is producing a special starring Lily Tomlin, and he wants me to come down and write for the show.  The salary would be twenty-five hundred dollars for four weeks’ work.  (And then I’d be done.)

I explain to Lorne that I am currently making seven hundred and fifty dollars a week, and that the job is expected to last for four months.  (And even longer, if the series is picked up.)  Opting for the higher paycheck and the greater job security, I turn down Lorne’s invitation to work in Hollywood.

And they said on the show Ren and Stimpy­ – I no longer recall if it was “Ren” or it was “Stimpy” –

“Eeeeediot!”

But that’s what I did.

Four month later, the Canadian series I was writing for was cancelled.  I was now entirely out of work.

I swear to you, two days after the notification that our jobs would be ending, I receive a second call from Lorne Michaels.

The Lily Tomlin special had been postponed and would be going into production the following week.  Was I interested in working on it?

I enthusiastically said yes. 

(When I related this story, my daughter Anna observed, “Whoa, Dad.  ‘Opportunity’ knocked twice!”)

“Luck” a fortuitous third time, as my work on the Lily Tomlin special inaugurated a television-writing career that proceeded for thirty years. 

I have no idea how luck works.  But when it does,

It is well worth noticing.

And perhaps saying, “Thank you.”

"Speaking About Having It Both Ways..."

Which I did not too long ago about “movies based on actual events”…

This, however, is a different form of “having it both ways”, one providing a distinct, and often surprising, strategic advantage. 

Wanna hear about it?  Great!

Let me see now.  Should I start with the more recent example, injecting contemporary currency into the undertaking and then work backwards?  Or should I start where the phenomenon originally came to my attention and proceed forward?

                                    

Flip a coin?  Okay.  I’ll be right back.  I need to find a coin.

…………………………

Okay.  I flipped the coin, and its determination is that I work forward.  In the interim, however, I have decided to do the opposite.  I am sorry I wasted your time.  I just could not allow a flipped quarter to determine my writing strategy.

Okay, so here we go.

The surprising commercial success of Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper – which broke box-office records during the recent Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Weekend – a film whose title alone should have repelled the female contingent of the audience but did not, catching even its financial backers off guard –

“These are the moments in your business where you don’t see these things coming; they are certainly few and far between.” – Dan Fellman, Warner Bros, head of domestic distribution – 

exemplifies how a “Killing Machine” movie with an injection of moral ambiguity can appeal to the entire range of the moviegoing spectrum.

American Sniper caught heat for having it both ways – depicting the violent sniper activity on the one hand, while showing the personal damage the sniper’s actions inflicts on himself and his family on the other.

Although offending the purists on both sides – 

“Glamorizing violence is always unacceptable.” 

“Violence in the service of country need never be apologized for.” 

the majority of the audience departed the theater believing that the movie represented and supported their own personal (in reality, entirely disparate) beliefs. 

Which is a neat trick.  And an assured moneymaker.

This phenomenon may be a product more of artistic ambivalence than of commercial calculation.  Responding to the criticism, Eastwood admitted, “I’ve been on the left and on the right in my lifetime.  Now I don’t know where I am.”

The approach may not be deliberate.  But it unquestionably works.

The first time I saw the “having it both ways” arrangement succeed was with the TV megahit, All in the Family (1971-79).

Adapted from the successful British situation comedy Till Death Us Do Part, All in the Family comedically debated the “hot button” – from racism to Women’s Lib – issues of the day, spearheaded on the Right, by Archie Bunker and on the Left, by his live-in liberal son-in-law, Mike Stivik. 

(The arguments were ostensibly balanced, but there may be a glimpse into the creators’ bias when they insert the word “bunk” into the name of one of the adversaries.)

As with American Sniper, All in the Family delivers an ideological “Rorschach Test”, each segment of the audience believing the series to be in sync with their personal perspective.  The show’s co-creator Norman Lear is committed liberal.  But if his personal “Mission Plan” was persuasion and conversion, these intentions were entirely overlooked by a substantial (arguably, the majority) portion of the audience, as exemplified by my grandfather, whose undiminished enthusiasm for what Lear would call the “mistaken perspective” was transparent in his referring to the long-running series as “Archie.”

“Did you see ‘Archie’ last night?  That guy knows what he’s talking about!”

A single program, showcasing opposing beliefs.  Everyone watches, and All in the Family, successful in every imaginable manner, has it both ways.   

Bonus Tidbit:

Historical Counterpart:  (overheard on some NPR broadcast).

When the delegates left the Constitutional Convention, though many retained opposing views on significant issues, due to the cleverness of the Framers, they departed confidently believing they had gotten what they had wanted and that they could therefore recommend the constitution to their constituents. 

“We got ‘States Rights.’”

“They just think they do.”

The constitution was ratified, and we became a country.  Which would never have happened if that hallowed document’s careful wording had not deliberately had it both ways.

So it is not always a bad thing.

Unless you think we should not have become a country. 

"Thinking About Selma"

The movie based on the historic civil rights demonstration, not Selma Eisen, one of my mother’s closest friends, who was also Rick Moranis’s aunt.  Just to be clear about that.

You have probably heard the saying, “You cannot have things both ways.”  Well, in the movie business, it appears that you can.  Which is arguably appropriate, since movies are a place where dreams come true and who of us hasn’t dreamed of having things both ways?

“I ate six sundaes and I didn’t throw up.”

“In your dreams.”

“I know.  But still.”

I have not seen the movie Selma, and have no plans for doing so.  I shall have to content myself with recollections of the original, searing news footage of police dogs attacking defenseless demonstrators.  (I know that wasn’t Selma, it was Birmingham, but it was enough.  I remember sitting in Toronto, watching people skittering around in the face of powerful water hoses and wondering,  “What the heck is going on?”  That experience is memorably sufficient.)

Stipulated Going In:  The movies have never been mistaken for actual life.

Arthur (1981)

“You get the girl and the enormous inheritance.  I know we told you you wouldn’t, but this is a movie, so you get both.”

Paraphrasing a song lyric from Cinderella:

“A film is a wish your heart makes.”

As with movie scenarios, so with the movie business itself.

Having not seen Selma, I am unqualified to evaluate its artistic merit.  I am focusing today on its reception; specifically, the accusation of the film’s “having things both ways.”  I realize this is hardly an original perspective, but if I waited to be original… I don’t even have an original way of finishing this sentence.   Having said that…

How does the movie Selma have things both ways?

“Tis story is based on historical events.  But we readily admit that we changed stuff.”

That’s having things both ways.

“Based on historical events.” – “Check it out.  This really happened.”

“But we changed stuff.”  – “So do not expect it to be accurate.”

The question is,

Is that dichotomy acceptable, because it’s a movie?

The kerfuffle is ignited.  Heavyweights are solicited to weigh in.

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inner significance.” – Aristotle.

Big man, Aristotle.  And he’s saying it’s okay.  More than okay.  It’s actually better. 

“The truth is dramatically fascinating enough.  Why twist it? – Maureen Dowd, columnist, New York Times.

Maureen Dowd understands what the deal is.  She just wants the filmmakers to leave the history alone.

“I wasn’t interested in making a white-savior movie.” – Ava DuVernay, director, Selma.

Replied in response to accusations that LBJ was portrayed as being more adversarial in the proceedings than he historically was.  Inviting the next question, “What movie was she interested in making?”

Defending her creative selections, Ms. DuVernay shot back:

“This is art; this is a movie; this is a film.  I am not a historian.  I am not a documentarian.”   

A point thoughtfully examined by Ms. Dowd, who had seen and loved Selma –

(RE:  A GENERATION OF YOUNG MOVIEGOERS WHO WILL “SEE LBJ’S ROLE IN CIVIL RIGHTS THROUGH DUVERNAY’S LENS”):

“And that’s a shame… Artful falsehood is more dangerous than artless falsehood, because fewer people see through it.”

Finally,

“I think people who are as shocked as Capt. Louis Renault was to discover that there was gambling in ‘Casablanca’ when they find errors in films are missing the point…    Because of the intrinsic nature of the medium, film inevitably glamorizes and mythologizes.” – Kenneth Turan, film critic, Los Angeles Times.

Meaning, “It’s the movies.  We dramatize.”  And, “It’s the movies.  We distort simply by projecting things onto a really big screen.”

My wish is that moviemakers, respectful of the responsibility of their undertaking, would place the highest priority on getting the real life events they have chosen to depict as historically accurate as possible.  (Understanding that even historians often differ in their interpretations.)  But I understand the artistic obstacles working against that objective.  (Just in this story, with an eye towards “presentation”, I have moved quotes around and have deleted the “extraneous” parts.  Though the speakers’ intentions, I believe, remain intact.)

The thing is – and this, to some degree, makes this excursion a classic exercise in “Ho hum”:

The situation comes up again and again. 

And nothing ever changes.

Lincoln.  (“They had Congressmen voting against the amendment who historically voted in favor of it!”)   Zero Dark Thirty.  (“Torture helped in locating Bin Laden.”  “No, it didn’t!”)  The Imitation Game.  (“Alan Turing was a lot nicer!”)  The Theory of Everything.  (“They screwed up the science, for heavens sakes!”) 

A familiar three-step process:

They make a movie “based on actual events.”

There is a furor concerning its historical accuracy.

It is defended as a creative undertaking.

End of story.

Till it happens again.

"A Missed Connection"

Comedians talk about bombing in front of an audience, comedians possessing such inflated egos that, to them, failing to elicit laughter from an audience is equivalent to the detonation of an entire city. 

That’s why they’re comedians.  They are out of their minds.

Today’s story concerns a recent “bombing” by yours truly, not before an assembled gathering but in front of a telephonic “Audience of One.”  Which, to me, felt exactly the same way, proving that I’m out of my mind.  And also too terrified to bomb in the traditional manner, preferring instead to fail miserably one person at a time.  

Which, by the way, I usually don’t.  I have often bantered successfully with sympatico service representatives and wait-people.  And during our recent visit to Turkey, as I mentioned, I would, on occasion, smiling goofily, position myself beside a person whose loved one was about to take their picture, my “Mr. Bean”-inflected gambit meeting with chuckling approval from tourists of all nations.  Make no mistake.  My mirth-eliciting batting average is remarkably impressive.  (I am a professional, after all.)  But I am hardly batting a thousand.  

As shall immediately be proven.

I am calling a lawyer to ask him a question.  His specialty is “Estate Planning.” 

Inheritance laws are confusing in this country.  Dead moneymakers – or, more accurately, the surviving heirs of dead moneymakers – are required to pay a designated percentage of the estate as an “Inheritance Tax.”  However, an “Estate Planner” can devise strategies allowing you to legally pay less.  In some cases – though not in mine – nothing.

This strikes me as being simultaneously a schizophrenic Inheritance Tax policy and a “Make Work” activity for Estate Planners.

Oh, and by the way, Canada, the most compassionate country in the Western Hemisphere, does not have an “Estate Tax.”  We have one, but if you pay an attorney, you can get around it.” 

Canadian Taxpayer:  “We may be greedy.  But at least we’re honest about it.”

Anyway, I have a question for the attorney, so I call the guy’s office.  The woman who answers – I can instantly sense it in her “no nonsense” intonation –  

“Good morning.  Hoffman, somebody and somebody else.” 

is all business.  An immediate challenge to comedians. 

One I shall ignominiously fail.

I begin.

“Paul Hoffman, please.”

“I’m sorry.  He’s in a meeting.”

“Can I leave a message?”

“I can transfer you to ‘Voice Mail.”

“Will it be his ‘Voice Mail?’”

“Yes.”

she responds, with not a hint of conspiratorial playfulness.  “Beware, Earlo!”  But I foolishly forge ahead.

“Could I leave the message with you?  I feel happier talking to a person.”

No reaction.  (Even though there is an unmistakable twinkle in my voice.)

“I can take your message.”

“Great.  It’s Earl Pomerantz – E-A-R-L…and ‘Pomerantz’, spelled the usual way.”

An unforgivable “reach.”  But by now, I am experiencing “flop sweat.”

 “Mr. Pomerantz, I will give him the message that your called.”

“I know you will.”

A decidedly hostile “No reaction.”  In response to my unnecessarily aggressive “I know you will.”

And that was it.  An abbreviated post for an abbreviated conversation. 

And you know what?

The attorney never called me back.

I don’t think she gave him the message.