The Nation's Pulse/Borne in the USA
Mysak, Joe
THE NATION'S PULSE BORNE IN THE U.S.A. by Joe Mysak Consider the following: A young woman at the conclusion of labor has the startling presence of mind to tell her husband to turn up the tape of...
...Raiders of the Lost Ark and its sequel, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, take this to extremes...
...A friend interrupts a painstaking examination of Bob & Ray's oeuvre by spontaneously bursting into song, effectively replicating his hero's inexplicable multiglot baritone drawl...
...Most of all, they emphasize the clouds on the horizon: Jaruzelski is hunkering down...
...But then, it is Spielberg's chief theme, and it runs through all his films...
...in an effort to keep her from telling their mother about the alien...
...In Close Encounters, Roy the electrician is leading a suburban life of comic desperation, complete with shrewish wife and noisy children, when he is given a psychic command to come meet an alien spaceship...
...Steven Spielberg is one of them...
...He is wearing a blue shirt and a brown sweater, over the left breast of which is pinned a miniature of the icon of the Virgin of Czestochowa...
...This idea∔that children are morally and spiritually superior to adults∔is a peculiarly American madness...
...There was the murder of Father Popieluszko, of course, and the subsequent trial of Polish security officers that the regime turned into an attack on the church...
...It's a good thing Buddy Holly died before they could get to him," once observed the Honorable McCabe, speaking of those contemporary philosophers who, apparently devoid of religion, moral virtue, or spine, insist on searching for heroes in rock stars and other male models, and for the truth in the imbecilic babble of their bad songs and worse lyrics...
...It also established its director firmly as a "genius" in the eyes of all but the most cynical of American movie critics, and to American audiences he became the inheritor of the godlike mantle of Walt Disney...
...Elliott, the hero of EX, is a miserable little boy whose divorced mother is an emotional wreck...
...Only little kids can see him," Elliott tells his sister when she first sees E.T...
...I mean, really...
...he must also save the world...
...Sad to say, I am intimidated enough that 1 almost believe him...
...And none of it makes any sense, but wherever Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band play, the above scenes are repeated, and of course chronicled in newspapers and magazines in the graves?, most serious Joe Mysak is assistant managing editor of the daily Bond Buyer...
...In the lounge, a heavy-set LOT official sits drinking coffee and finishing a sticky pqczek...
...The "war" on Polish lips appeared to be winding down...
...In Florida, establishment-party types have formed an "Anybody but Martinez" organization...
...And he is not so bad at all when one or more of the girls puts him on, on t.he jukebox, and starts to shake around to the music...
...To my surprise, and in contrast to news photos that often make him seem by William McGurn otherwise, Walesa looks neat, trim, and alert...
...Those few critics who have actually gone after Spielberg∔Robert Asahina in particular∔complain that his world view is preposterously optimistic...
...but does not know of his existence...
...I was elected by 10 million people," he continues...
...movie about Walesa's life...
...it was rather like a religious experience, and you can't make fun of that...
...But there it is...
...citizens who are print journalists with at least five years of professional experience...
...This is important...
...The GOP's gains in the South continue to be evolutionary, not revolutionary...
...There is much to this charge...
...She photographs him...
...In each case a deus ex machina∔an alien in EX, a ghost or two in Poltergeist, and a magical treasure map in The Goonies∔enters the lives of our protagonists and transforms them from mere suburbanites into transcendent heroes...
...and documentary tones...
...The producer, Ralph Andrews, is about halfway through a list of questions for columnist Jack Anderson...
...The Goonies of The Goonies are children with a taste for adventure but a relatively bleak life...
...But he goes one better than that...
...This means something," he tells his horrified wife as he grows obsessed with decoding the message the aliens have implanted in his brain...
...He gives them miracles...
...practically trips over him on several occasions...
...tomorrow perhaps...
...What defines these people is that they are adults...
...There is a faint whiff of contempt for all those who are simply getting by∔the mother in EX...
...Then, too, the government had agreed to a plan allowing the church to channel badly needed Western aid to Polish farmers, even William McGurn is editorial features editor of the Wall Street Journal/Europe and a European editor of The American Spectator...
...I do not consider myself a 'thorn,'" says Walesa in reply to one question, concerning his relationship with the government...
...That will change slowly, not overnight...
...And E.T., his greatest triumph, has not only set a box-office record that will be hard to rival...
...There is no mistaking the room for anything but a rectory...
...Give me a break," she responds...
...Spielberg is a master of characterization, but he does very poorly with villains, usually making them faceless and ominous and therefore lacking in force...
...That gives me some right to represent them...
...Steven Spielberg is 37 years old...
...Raiders of the Lost Ark, EX, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom have together earned nearly $800 million...
...In Texas, many old-line Republicans are incensed that a newcomer like Hance can switch parties and run for governor...
...Always excepting 1941, the movies he has himself directed have received critical encomiums to rival their box-office receipts...
...Unthinkable...
...by Joe Mysak Consider the following: A young woman at the conclusion of labor has the startling presence of mind to tell her husband to turn up the tape of the song "Born in the U.S.A.," a move orchestrated for the benefit of the baby...
...Jones is a mild-mannered archaeology professor who doubles as a swashbuckling adventurer...
...It is like some ywood dream of a successful career∔even the slight dip in his fortunes that was 1941 provides the tiny bit of failure that makes his triumphs seem all the more extraordinary...
...His mother does not see E.T...
...Elliott before E.T...
...A valuable history of the origins of Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife's House of Toast is thus lost...
...20005 or call (813) 962-6060 Third Kind, which earned $150 million...
...At 27 he made his second feature, Jaws, which became the most successful movie ever...
...So important, in fact, that he leaves his wife and children on earth to go with the aliens...
...And Spielberg would do well to have a little less contempt for those of his contemporaries who have had a more difficult time than he...
...Following a flop called 1941, his career has continued to spiral into the rarefied heights...
...Predicting the nation's future political dynamic is a risky proposition at best...
...The mother and father in Poltergeist are a happy but complacent suburban couple...
...He has branched into producing with generally spectacular results: Twilight Zone: The Movie, Poltergeist, and Gremlins...
...It is all absurd . . . unseemly . . . pathetic...
...The question is how strong or weak people are: Do they rise to adventure or do they decline it...
...This is New Jersey...
...occasionally they take a peep out the window...
...Dariusz Filar, who speaks perfect English, brings me inside to meet Lech Walesa...
...The opportunities for the party to break through in the South, and then nationally, are better now than they have been in decades...
...The movie generated such extraordinary good will among its audience that its essential ugliness∔the theme that life is basically worthless without a deus ex machina to give it meaning∔went unnoted or unmentioned...
...Those of us who did not like E.T.∔ all seven of us in the continental U.S...
...A his is not to say that the Bruce is not a lot of fun when he is writing about girls and Cadillacs...
...The various Solidarity members in the room whisper...
...ALICIA PATTERSON JOURNALISM FELLOWSHIPS 21st Annual Competition Applications are now being accepted from U.S...
...Official talk was of economic reform and Poland's joining the International Monetary Fund...
...He is the rare bird of our time, the entertainer with an almost mystical understanding of how to move an audience...
...Unlike a lot of popular entertainers, he also possesses a brilliant sense of how to stir critics, who usually take the gloves off when a Spielberg comes along...
...As for his private life: He lives with Amy Irving, one of the world's most beautiful women, and they have just had a son, named Max...
...fans the moral equivalent of telling a three-year-old there is no Santa Claus...
...For one thing, the more than 600 jailed members of the outlawed trade union Solidarity were about to be released from prison under a general amnesty...
...And example and experience are what builds character...
...Tom Loeffler or former Governor William Clements instead...
...until the bad government men come to experiment on him...
...And when pols like Senator Bill Bradley, Mayor Ed Koch, and the President feel they have to invoke the Bruce's name, or dignify one of his performances with their presence∔well, the sight of Ed Koch's glittering 60-year- old pate bobbing in the fifth row of the Brendan Byrne Arena is really too much for words...
...The Democratic party in the South continues to be the party of the establishment at the local level," says Hastings Wyman, editor of the respected Southern Political Report...
...The year has brought many changes, they say, all bad...
...He is now returning to television as the producer of "Amazing Stories," an anthology series for which he received an unprecedented commitment from NBC that it will pay for, and air, at least 44 episodes even if it proves to be a ratings disaster...
...In South Carolina, two Republican congressmen, Carroll Campbell and Tom Hartnett, will likely slug it out for governor in a divisive primary next year, possibly losing both seats to Democrats...
...at 30 he made Close Encounters of the John Podhoretz is an editor and critic at the Washington Times...
...It is, of course, profoundly wrong-headed...
...It is one thing for sixteen-year-olds to caper about in such fashion...
...He generally goes the old government-bashing route, expecting that the sight of someone in an American military uniform∔or a Nazi uniform, for that matter∔is so horrifying in itself that he need not give us any further reason for hating his bad guys...
...2uite a life...
...In the Spielberg universe, children are the last defense against cynicism and despair, an eternally optimistic group of people who wait for miracles to save them...
...Brygida's Church, a short walk from the Lenin Shipyards and the three-crosses monument to the Polish workers killed during the 1970 food-price protests...
...And it is not enough that Jones faces huge rolling boulders, swarms of bugs, and legions of killers...
...Then Andrews∔ who with his shaved head and open silk shirt looks every bit the film producer∔pulls out his own questions and fidgets with his tape recorder...
...I'll even accept apologizing...
...today, it might even be expected of them...
...It is quite another for those who ought to know better, those in their twenties and thirties, to carry on so...
...deep reds compete with heavy black-wood furniture that no woman would ever tolerate...
...He made his professional debut as a television director in 1969, when he was 20, and at 24 he was making the highly praised Sugarland Express, his first feature film...
...The eminent First New Jerseyite has gone from a rock and roll composer and singer whose ditties were certainly no worse than those by, say, the Monkees or the Cowsills, to the Author of an Anthem for Today's Disaffected American Youth, who knows "There's something very wrong with America...
...EX, Poltergeist, and The Goonies all make clear the point that supernatural adventure is broadening...
...In Jaws, Police Chief Brody is snapped out of his lugubrious shell by the disastrous appearance of a shark near the shore of the town he is to protect...
...THE TALKIES KIDSTUFF by John Podhoretz A here are few people in the world worth envying...
...it would be good for children to emulate Spielberg, who made his adulthood fantastically worthwhile, and not secretly wish for an alien to give their lives a meaning it otherwise lacks before their lives have even begun...
...He and his friends lead life on the edge: When he breaks his girl's 30 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1985 heart, she goes off to open a bar in Tibet...
...The deadline for filing applications is October 1. For applications and further program information, write: Program Coordinator The Alicia Patterson Foundation 655 Fifteenth St., N.W., Suite 320 Washington, D.C...
...His heroes therefore tend to be children, and here Spielberg scores his most telling points with his audience...
...senator gushes about Bruce Springsteen as a happy patriot in the pages of a national newspaper...
...An older academic there spoke of his memories of Stalinism...
...passing special legislation to smooth the way...
...There follow a few other queries, about Polish membership in the IMF, about the possibility of a benefit telethon in the states...
...alone∔faced pressure not unlike the kind one feels when one raises certain questions about a telethon, or a campaign to end world hunger...
...They're backing Rep...
...A polite inquiry about my bag elicits a militant indifference...
...another cited the declining standard of living in Poland, the country's staggering debt, and the Jaruzelski regime's intention to use IMF-sponsored "reforms" to increase its grip on society...
...Filar explains that Walesa is being interviewed by a man from Columbia Pictures regarding a made-for-TV...
...Children need to be protected by adults precisely because they do not understand how the world works, and need to be taught by example and experience...
...They note that the trumpeted Western aid for farmers has never been permitted to get off the ground...
...And once transformed, somehow their previous lives seem utterly valueless to the audience...
...And "Operation Open Door" notwithstanding, there remains intra-party resistance to the crossovers...
...They have lost the capacity for wonder, or the expectation that something extraordinary will happen to save them from their lives of quiet desperation...
...was more than just a movie to a great many people...
...EUROPEAN DOCUMENT LECH IN LOTUSLAND Gdansk airport: Even the planes are run-down...
...I'm free to sit in and ask any questions of my own...
...But during an evening among a group of Solidarity people in a Gdansk workers' project, I hear a different story...
...He turns back to his pgczek with a gusto that implies the loss is my fault...
...Father Henryk 31...
...In Poland for less than two hours, and already General Jaruzelski's state airline has managed to lose my one suitcase...
...He mentions too that Walesa is tired, from the pain-killers he is taking for a foot problem...
...A year ago this time, Polish hopes were beginning to bud after the long winter of martial law...
...One-year grants are being awarded for the pursuit of independent projects of significant interest...
...Fame, success, the respect and even worship of his fellow man, and at very little cost...
...and it is the key to Spielberg's great success...
...But the Republican party below the Mason-Dixon line seems well on its way to achieving critical mass, in both the number of politicians willing to run on the ticket and of voters willing to support them...
...And it must be said that when he is onstage and when he is singing those songs about girls and Cadillacs, he is a performer not without a sense of humor...
...A U.S...
...Thousands of well-fed, denim-clad concert-goers, many wearing headbands, stand up and raise their fists to show their solidarity in resentment and bitterness with the American Oppressed...
...and this summer's duo of Back to the Future and The Goonies has solidified his position as one of the industry's canniest producers...
...Over thick black coffee, the men talk about the need for the West to stick by them, especially on the little things...
...who is struggling to keep her family content in the face of her own emotional rollercoaster ride, the father in Poltergeist who smarmily sells houses in the suburban development where he lives, and the parents in The Goonies, who are prepared to sit by and watch their homes torn down for a new housing development...
...But that's not enougn for today's young Yanks, obsessed as they are with the trivial and the inconsequen29 (although the total number of local Republican elected officials in that state increased slightly...
...it is a cheap but powerful form of wish-fulfillment, and is all the better for its exclusivity...
...And she does not know because she is an adult...
...And it is true that in the final analysis, almost everybody is nice∔his aliens, the ghosts in Poltergeist, even a grotesque missing link who ultimately saves the day in The Goonies...
...But Elliott is right...
...They take the cards they have been dealt, and for this Spielberg will not respect them...
...I am ready for the battle of arguments...
...By film's end he is a hero, and likes to swim...
...To complain against the cloying moment when the title extraterrestrial's space ship leaves a rainbow across the sky was to E.T...
...It's easy not to compromise when you have the world at your feet...
...The attack on adulthood present in all Spielberg films since Close Encounters is odd, coming from a man who has had the kind of adult life that we all dream of having...
...Early the next afternoon (still sans a change of clothes), I am waiting by a statue of the Pope outside St...
...At the end of Raiders, again a supernatural visitation, this time from the Old Testament God, gives Jones's life meaning...
...Brody is a perfectly pleasant fellow, but a little dull, and even afraid of the water...
Vol. 18 • November 1985 • No. 11
