Poetry:
Lindeman, Jack
choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth, or the im- us, only to explain that they can't help it because mutual de- mediate circumstances of our upbringing" (Ambition: The ...
...Naturally, the last thing this flock wanted to hear viction that human beings are nothing if not corruptible, the about was rich folk, salvation, and eyes of needles...
...your-own-garden ethos carries the possible implication that Interpretation: no matter how horrid our situation, be it we bear no responsibility toward people who don't have any Auschwitz or Cambodia, we are still left with choices (e.g., gardens...
...draft choice who died from a drug overdose before he Tonight in my thick coat was ever able to take a single jump shot as a pro...
...Despite the nearly unanimous con- the road...
...I am not so sure...
...In order to give life to his invocation, the minister discussed 2 A.M...
...I enjoyed this performance without taking any of it truth in advertising anymore...
...Though I am not sure that he would want to take responsibility for this moral, the pastor explained that what our impecunious neighbors really need are not Good Samaritans, but rather to Jack Lindeman take charge of their own lives...
...Jack Nicholson obviously realized that he was hired to do a star turn and he picks up his paycheck n the newspaper ads for Hoffa, Jack Nicholson glow- with honor...
...Poverty, his connections to evade speeding tickets, get access to gangno less than riches, but in a different way, can severely diminish ster power brokers, and enjoy the company of high-priced call the sway we have over ourselves...
...the death of Len Bias, a college basketball superstar and high N.B.A...
...Commonweal 12 February 1993: 15...
...The actor has done his homework admirably: the ers out at us like a man with a particularly bad case of stiff neck, the bantam strut, the slavically slitted eyes, the whine hemorrhoids nearing the end of a six-hour bus trip...
...Yesterday I read of a farmer who lost his Put another way, while we cannot choose the circumstances of wife and three children to dehydration brought on our lives we cannot help but choose what kind of people we by a water shortage caused by a long and typiare going to be...
...are up against a slightly different beast than the rest of us...
...By watchto the same self-excusing purpose and as such it is capable of ing Bobby's corruption and destruction, we perceive Hoffa as undermining our sense of social responsibility...
...Had Len Bias played like a child wishfully imagined his high school ball at Phillips Exeter, summered on Martha's in the cradle of her extricated womb...
...That is why we do not want our armed robbers some of the money they were going to use for that much-needwalking free, even though they might plead that they grew up ed third vacation to help the horde of people whom life has in violent circumstances...
...He insisted that if anything outside of Len Bias's will were to a touch of frostbite...
...Bobby trots through the movie, performing one errand after another...
...El fails to do...
...Not surprisingly, the first and last thing they did hear was exactly what they wanted to hear, namely, that we all need to take responsibility for ourselves...
...But no matter how indif- think, a responsibility to acknowledge that people who have ferent the universe may be to our choices and decisions, had the rug, floor, and foundation pulled out from under them these choices and decisions are ours to make...
...Of course, if the movie had some texture, some surprises in its storytelling or its style, there would be rewards for staying with it despite its paltry cynicism...
...choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth, or the im- us, only to explain that they can't help it because mutual demediate circumstances of our upbringing" (Ambition: The ception was a way of life for their parents...
...sured about the exponentially increasing number of people with- To be sure, there is a central idea to the Ciarro-Hoffa relaout roofs over their heads...
...He's never a character, only a device to keep SCREEN the plot in motion...
...to-last thing was that as winners in the lottery of material life Yet the conceptual pressures carried by such an assumption they ought to stop groaning about low interest rates and spend are palpable...
...We choose...
...We decide...
...I am both the author and the book...
...And just in case we're such have it, more) fortunate, so will the downtrodden find it more numbskulls who wouldn't know that the cronies of union bossdifficult than others to will themselves into certain states of es enjoy certain perks, Manet obligingly and boringly spends mind (e.g., confidence about the future, or a conviction that it several minutes of this overlong movie showing us Bobby using is a just world and that hard work will be rewarded...
...And one could go on and on does cast its shadow on the inner...
...That caption perfectly encompasses the not quite breathtaking moral scope of David Mamet's script...
...DeVito's performance, though well balanced, both forceful and restrained, can't disguise the sheer functionality of his role...
...While I would hate to encourage anyone to think that they cannot control themselves, it is a mistake to pretend that the nurturing environ14: 12 February 1993 Commonweal ment which we all struggle to provide for our children is ac- pletely fictional character called Bobby Ciarro (played by ditually of no moral or characterological consequence...
...or, to put it in of his family but as the old dogma would have it, he can conEpstein's terms: trol how he is going to respond to his loss...
...And this he simply taxes them the least...
...You realize, don't you, that this will eventually lead The hero of Hoffa isn't Hoffa...
...nor do we want our friends to lie to placed against the wall...
...From this movie you will learn that the world is a corrupt place and to get anything whatsoever accomplished you have to get your hands dirty and eventually you become corrupt yourself and the hypocritical world stomps you not to punish your corruption but to save its own virtuous face...
...The nextcreedal assumption is that nothing can rob us of our freedom...
...You can see Mamet's ining the concept of free choice in order to beg out of his social tent: he is trying to portray Hoffa indirectly, through the obligations...
...But Mamet has only one surprise in store for us and I will now spring it on you...
...The church in which I heard the "take responsibiliwhether or not to live courageous, loving, honest lives) and it ty for yourself' sermon was a wealthy congregation, with conis in responding to these choices that we decide what kind of siderable resources for helping their neighbors up and down people we are going to be...
...herd of my flock would, however, have none of this meliorI offer my fingers ism...
...Don't make me laugh...
...Any more questions...
...UnderstandI am ashamed of nothing...
...The moralists a perilous master who blasts even as he befriends...
...No, of course not...
...and on...
...It is, for instance, We do choose how we shall live: courageously or in cow- up to him whether or not he will become embittered...
...Hoffa's "befriending" of Bobby always manifests itburbled that it wouldn't do any good to sacrifice public funds self as damage...
...What has happened to Mamet's sense of dramatic econSome years ago President Ronald Reagan was being pres- omy...
...Those of us in the pink of life have, I we do or what we refuse to do...
...He wins Ciarro over to the union cause first by for the homeless because most of the folks who were sleeping getting him fired from a desperately needed job and then by on grates were doing so out of their own free will...
...This man could not control the fate tingencies...
...Ciarro becomes Hoffa's tain spiritual postures than someone less (but, as faith might henchman and rises with his boss...
...And that is both self-pitying and menacing-the Hoffa carapace has underneath his picture the advertising geniuses have writ- been admirably assembled by this dynamic actor and he struts ten, "He did what he had to do...
...And yet the outer Secret Passion, Dutton, 1980...
...ardice, honorably or dishonorably, with purpose or drift...
...ably many sports writers blamed this young man's death on the I offer my hands fact that he grew up under crushing circumstances...
...Two BUMS Though he's not the protagonist, Hoffa necessarily has all 'HOFFA' & 'CHAPLIN' the show-stopping public scenes in the movie: he bellows at picket lines, punches out company goons, defies Bobby Kennedy and Senate subcommittees...
...Or is it...
...The protagonist is a com- to a Teamsters' Union...
...Class dismissed...
...And as we decide and choose so are our lives For people born into a family with a garden, the tend-toformed...
...It will, If he circumstances of our lives can render it more of course, be gainsaid that while we may not be able to control or less impossible to make certain movements of what comes our way, we can at least control our response to it...
...The wheels of justice...
...responsible for Len Bias's death it was the acceptance of just The windows are dark this kind of palaver about individuals not being responsible for like the faces of dead soldiers themselves...
...Who says there's no his stuff...
...That's exactly what happened to Jimmy Hoffa...
...girls...
...Thank you, Professor Mamet...
...What client of Club Med could chastise such a Job for cursing We decide that what makes us significant is either what the day he was born...
...Most of us having him serve as replacement for a henchman who is acciwho caught this gaffe thought the president was hyperextend- dently killed on a thuggish mission...
...The truth, as he intoned it, was that Len Bias was and I conjure my neighbor solely to blame for Len Bias's death...
...The rhetoric of responsibility is, I think, often put ultimately pernicious effect he has on a Joe Average...
...Just as rector Danny DeVito), a truck driver befriended by the upthe well-to-do will find it infinitely more difficult to adopt cer- and-coming Teamster organizer...
...But for this who preach that those without boots ought to pull themselves concept to work dramatically instead of remaining a mere conup by the bootstraps ought at least to recognize that of all pos- cept, Mamet would have had to place the viewer very deep withsible messages, this moral is, strangely enough, the one which in Ciarro's perception of his friend and boss...
...Different circumstances who cuddles her insomnia would not have made a bit of difference...
...Where character is concerned, there are no con- cally ridiculous civil war...
...All the clucking about owning one's choices notwithstanding, our lives are shaped by many contingencies...
...the will...
...The shepas a gesture to stars...
...Vineyard, had a therapist to help him work through his selfdestructive impulses, the result still would have been the same, or so this narrative goes...
...At one of these pressure points, he tionship...
...A pipsqueak only trying to prove himself to his older brother...
Vol. 120 • February 1993 • No. 3
