Screening a Lost Film

In a previous post I talked about the cinematic history class that I go to every week. Occasionally one of the students (or the teacher) hosts a screening that has more of a party atmosphere. For example, one of the guys in the class -- Joe -- will soon be hosting a movie night at his home where we will be watching Dario Argento's Opera. The teacher -- Keith -- occasionally hosts something similar. For example, he showed The Rolling Stones' Gimme Shelter.

But the one that I found the most interesting was when Keith hosted Ed Wood's The Young Marrieds. And it wasn't even that I liked the film. It was a rip-roaring embarrassment of a film.

A little bit of backstory...

Ed Wood was known as a director who made horror films that were scary for all the wrong reasons. Many people aren't aware, but the last film he made was a porno, The Young Marrieds. For years there was a softcore version available on DVD, but the hardcore version was lost. In 2004 the hardcore version was found in an abandoned porn theater in Vancouver by porn archaeologist, Demetrios Otis. That was released on DVD, but an uncut version was subsequently found -- I'm not clear on the difference, though I think it's supposed to be better quality. It has yet to be released. That print is owned by a friend of Keith's. The two of them arranged a screening, and invited our film class.

It was the right environment to enjoy such a horror of a film. I should point out that I've got a fascination with lost films and with lost footage from films.For example, the lost thirty minutes of circus performances in Tod Browning's 1932 film, Freaks. To be one of the few people to see the uncut version of Ed Wood's last movie was a memorable experience.

Our Unpopular Populist, Part 2

In my last post I talked about why I love Andrew Jackson. Now I will address some problems that I have with him, and some of the ways he is considered problematic. Even though I am fond of him, I want to make it clear that I am fully aware that he was not perfect.

One of the many things that people dislike him for is the fact that he owned slaves. And while that is problematic in today's world, it was not unusual for the rich elite from the South. Several of our early Presidents and founding fathers were slave owners. I'm not saying that it was good, but you have to judge them for the time.

Another thing people criticize him for is the Trail of Tears, which is popularly described as a genocidally-motivated campaign. Former Secretary of the Navy and Democratic Senator, Jim Webb, explained it better than I can when he wrote this for the Washington Post:

As president, Jackson ordered the removal of Indian tribes east of the Mississippi to lands west of the river. This approach, supported by a string of presidents, including Jefferson and John Quincy Adams, was a disaster, resulting in the Trail of Tears where thousands died. But was its motivation genocidal? Robert Remini, Jackson’s most prominent biographer, wrote that his intent was to end the increasingly bloody Indian Wars and to protect the Indians from certain annihilation at the hands of an ever-expanding frontier population. Indeed, it would be difficult to call someone genocidal when years before, after one bloody fight, he brought an orphaned Native American baby from the battlefield to his home in Tennessee and raised him as his son.

Now I'd like to talk about my biggest problem with him, which is that he expanded the Executive power. I don't feel like it was a problem for what he did, but it was a problem for later presidents. But I won't get into that here. Washington wanted to make sure that there were checks and balances. He knew that it was important to have safety measures put in place so one bad leader can't destroy everything.

The reason that I like Andrew Jackson so much as a character is his complexity. He did a lot of good. He did a lot of bad. But overall I just like him

Our Unpopular Populist

As I said in my last post, I go to a movie class every Thursday night. Everybody
seems to focus on one particular aspect of the films. My aspect is the characters. You can have a crappy film with a crappy story and a crappy budget. But if it has good characters, I don't care.

Any film with Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Charles Lawton or Christopher Plummer... If it has any of those guys I don't care about anything else. The same goes for books and videogames -- as long as they have good characters, I don't care about the pacing of the book or the gameplay in the videogame.

That's why I'm really into history. I love studying the characters of history. I don't care about empires that rose and fell. I just care about the characters.

And that's why, with given everything I've read about history, my favorite character has been Andrew Jackson. Born into extreme poverty, his father dead before he was born, mother and two brothers dead before he was 14. A child soldier in his early teens. Captured, he refused the humiliation of cleaning a British officer's boot. Accounts vary -- he was punished for that refusal either by getting his face cut or his hand sliced to the bone. Eventually, he was worth over $100 million (in today's dollars) -- of course, he married some of that. He shot those who insulted him or his family. He enjoyed violence so much that his last words were expressions of regret that he didn't kill Henry Clay and John Calhoun.

Some men in history had a knack for cheating death. Rasputin was a good example. Andrew Jackson was in several duels. He would challenge an opponent to a duel if he insulted his wife. He would let his opponent shoot first. He would be hit, and then fire back and kill his enemy. He had several bullets stuck in him his whole life. It was rumored that you could hear the bullets rattling around in his chest.

This is just a part of why I find him so compelling.

Movie Class

Back in 2010, I started taking a cinematic history course at Nassau Community College with a guy named Keith teaching the course. He had several courses -- horror, Spaghetti Westerns, comedy. My favorite was the horror class; I took it several times.

Somewhere along the road Keith got the idea to have an invitation-only class at his house, which would be more advanced and in-depth. It started in 2013, and has been the longest-running class I've ever been in.

I remember the first week, Keith showed us Tod Browning's 1932 classic, Freaks. The second week was King Dinosaur. But after that, I don't remember the exact order of the films he showed after that. For the first two years everything was 16-millimeter, but then we changed to DVDs. The class has been more exciting ever since.

Each session lasts a month -- four classes in a session, one class a week, with each session having a different theme. Some I like better than others. It seems like half of the sessions in a given year are set in stone -- meaning there are certain themes we hit each year. There's Hammer month, Giallo month, Poe month. Spaghetti Western month. and Bring Your Own Movie month (in which each student brings his own movie to show and discuss). For other sessions, Keith improvises, picking themes that he may not get back to. This year, for the first time there will be a crimmi month. And when Christopher Lee died we had a tribute month for him.

Some of my favorite films that he's shown have been:

• Island of Lost Souls
• The Most Dangerous Game
• The Flesh and the Fiends
• Don't Torture a Duckling
• Vincent Price's Masque of the Red Death
• The Witchfinder General
• The Mercenary
• Vincent Price's Fall of the House of Usher
• King Kong

Of course, anything from Hammer Films is a favorite, too.

There are also some movies that I simply would never have seen anywhere else, such as The Beast of Budapest.

For this year, I'm looking forward to seeing a month of crimmis, and whatever surprises Keith has in store.

Keratoconus: Getting Diagnosed

Somewhere, early to mid 2017 I went to my optometrist for a regular checkup. He said that it looks like I might have keratoconus.He said he's not 100% sure, but he was pretty confident. He wanted to give it six months to see if it really is.

Then about three months later I noticed my vision was getting worse so I decided to go back for another eye exam and he informed that, yes, I do have keratoconus.

That's when we decided about treatments and doctors. Apparently there is a new procedure call riboflavin-based corneal crosslinking that helps slow down or stop the progression of keratoconus. We decided it's risky because it's a new procedure. It's only about 20 years old, so nobody knows the risk 50 years down the line. But we decided it's better to go with a risk like that than with the near-certainty of eventually going blind.

At first we discussed going to Europe for treatment because this treatment started in Europe. We thought, since it's such a new procedure they probably know it better than anybody. But then we decided that going with the right doctor in the US is going to be just as good. That's when we decided to start going for consultations about crosslinking. We went to five doctors. Going in, we were pretty certain we were getting the procedure, but it's just a question of which doctor. Given that this is an issue with my eyes, I wanted to be extra-certain that it's a doctor I could communicate with and whom I trusted morally, ethically and technically.

Some doctors were better than others. In the end we went with one who was very good who went over and beyond and was very detail-oriented. Plus, she works with a university, so she's always studying the newest treatments for keratoconus. She was the best of doctors we saw.