also: la journaler confront.
Three things, however, distinguish Medjugorje from the average racketeering religious hub. First, the children claimed to go on seeing the Virgin Mary every day, and some of them keep up this claim to the present moment. Since she exists in their imaginations, and is not a weeping or bleeding statue of the traditional sort -- smeared with pig's fat or otherwise rigged -- she is harder to expose than the more palpable frauds at the shrine of San Gennaro, say. Second, the Vatican and the local hierarchy will not, as they have with similar hallucinations at Fatima or Lourdes or Knock, bestow recognition on the supposed miracle. Third, the political element of this miracle is so obvious as to do what no cowled blue lady can do: make a non-believer catch his breath in wonder.
We went to see Three Kings on Friday. Insta-recommendation: go see it. It's a really good movie. Brilliant, in fact. It's funny, it's exciting, it's not your run-of-the-mill movie.
It's the end of the Gulf War, and Sgt. Maj. Archie Gates (George Clooney) is bored out of his mind. "What did we do here? Tell me, what did we do?" Sgt. Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg) wants to get home to his wife and new baby. Chief Elgin (Ice Cube) is making time, and Pvt. Conrad Vig (Spike Jonze) just wants to be Troy Barlow. All the soldiers have to do is celebrate, though they have the slightest clue what they're celebrating: most of them never saw any kind of action.
Then they find a treasure map in...err, on an Iraqi POW. And they decide to go get themselves some of Saddam's gold. But first they have to ditch the war correspondent (Nora Dunn), who follows their every movement, looking for something new to report on. The plight of the dying Iraqis has been done, you know?
Of course, if that told you everything about the plot, it would be a pretty stupid, formulaic movie that just happens to be set in modern Iraq. I don't think the director, David O. Russell, could make a formulaic movie if his life depended on it. What the soldiers find, of course, is what the Allies are leaving in Iraq: a murderous regime that terrorizes the people. And the Allies (as is made clear in one very painful scene) are under strict orders not to do a goddamn thing about it.
One of the great things in this movie is that we only know as much as the Americans do, which means there are several scenes where what's going on is especially horrifying: why are the Iraqis doing this to their own people? Why aren't we stopping this? Who are these people anyhow--our friends, our enemies? It becomes clear that our policy of bombing Iraq back to the Stone Age isn't going to do anything, because one group holds all the cards, and we handed them those cards.
Darin turned to me after the movie and said, "Finally, an action movie where the action makes sense." And it's an action movie that's about something, as opposed to, say, Wild Wild West.
(By the way, in the current Entertainment Weekly the original writer of Three Kings, John Ridley, moans about how he only got story credit instead of screenplay credit. David O. Russell gets screenplay credit--evidently he took Ridley's script and completely rewrote it. I've been told that Ridley didn't ask for arbitration. Hmmm. I guess it's better to complain about being robbed than to actually do something about it.)
This has been a great year for movies that try just a little bit harder: Election, American Beauty, Three Kings... Evidently the upcoming Being John Malkovich is the same way. Maybe we really are getting into a renaissance of film, where you're not going to get the same old thing time after time.
Of course, this puts enormous pressure on the rest of us to be quirky. Dammit.
Last night I went to the LA journaler Gathering, organized by Meg. I almost didn't go--for some reason, I felt as though I'd been used as a doormat just outside the Russian Army barracks. Darin was in even worse shape: he'd actually done something all day. (In other words, I had no excuse.) But I said to myself, Self, you always enjoy these things more than you think you're gonna, so just go.
So I went and I had a really good time. Tamar was there, as were there Chuck 'n' Beth, Miriam, Ri, Mahrya, and of course Nancy, in whose house this hilarity was happening.
I was assured beforehand that there wouldn't be any reading, or I wouldn't have to read, or something like that. I'll tell you why I didn't want to read: I thought it might be boring. I didn't want to spend all evening reading.
Well, we didn't, and the readings were much more fun than I thought they would be. Of course, everyone else was prepared to read, some with two entries. Tamar swears she did not come prepared, but Nancy had an entry read for her to read. Tamar reads very well, by the way.
During the evening I asked Tamar what I should read and she said, The entry on cynicism. (Okay, another reason I didn't want to read is that I don't want to have to go back and choose one.) Since I had to print it out at Nancy's, I went last. I don't read nearly as well as Tamar does.
Chuck read his entry about going to see the urologist and getting an erection. I commented that of course the only male journaler would choose to talk about his penis.
Tamar has the complete list of who read what. I don't know how she remembered all of those--I have zero short-term and long-term memory these days--but reading her descriptions brought all of those readings back to me.
The rest of the time we spent in the kitchen noshing on the very delicious food everyone bought. Since I have recently recovered my ability to eat chocolate, I bought a chocolate cake at Gelson's and had about half a piece--Tamar had the other half. I also ate the various other foods people had brought--basically, party food is the best food when you have to keep from being hungry, because you just keep eating.
We didn't talk about journals much. Evidently before I arrived there was much gossip about other journalers (and I missed it, dammit). It is weird to be in a community where we know lots about one another or at least have the potentiality to know a lot about one another without ever having actually met.
The answer to Wednesday's question: The Brooklyn Museum is suing Rudolph Giulani because Giulani to cut off the museum's city financing and go to court to terminate its lease was motivated not by personal disgust but by mayoral duty. At least, he wants to cut it; I'm not sure if he has or not, because I'm not sure the Mayor can do that by fiat. Giulani, a Catholic, is offended by an exhibit at the Museum that he has deemed sacriligeous. The exhibit has received no city monies--it's totally funded privately and by donations. The museum as a whole receives city monies, as museums tend to do.
You can probably imagine what I think of this nonsense. Running for Senate, anyone?
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com