Disqus - Latest Comments for Mannion

Re: Daddy-Daughter Dance

Mannion — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:25:28 -0000

Why a dance? Why not a father-daughter picnic? Or game night? Or movie night? And if you have to have a dance, why have one that mimics a prom, the dance after which most these fathers must know quite a few of those girls are going to lose their virginity?

Re: Daddy-Daughter Dance

Mannion — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:23:41 -0000

Why a dance? Why not a father-daughter picnic? Or game night? Or movie night? And if you have to have a dance, why have one that mimics a prom, the dance after which most of these fathers must know quite a few of those girls are going to lose their virginity?

Re: They rob banks

Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:44:36 -0000

11:40 and things have quieted down. Rick Perlstein's probably up on stage at that bar doing more of his Goldwater jokes. It was great of him to stop by. Read Nixonland, folks. Heckuva book. As is Mark Harris' Pictures at a Revolution. This has been fun, not just tonight, but all five threads. If you're arriving late, remember these threads never shut down. Lots we didn't get to talk about.

Re: They rob banks

Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:34:39 -0000

Sorry to hear that. I've been planning to watch American Gangster. I thought we'd gotten beyond the My Darling Clementine and They Died With Their Boots On approach to history in the movies.

Have you seen The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, though?

Re: They rob banks

Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:29:32 -0000

Cagney sort of does a version of that in Ragtime, come to think of it.

Re: They rob banks

Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:23:44 -0000

I hadn't thought of the Gus Van Sant connection. But I wonder if Van Sant was aware of this: Clyde wasn't impotent in the original script, he was bisexual.

Re: They rob banks

Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:16:46 -0000

Interesting. Which is she? Did she go the Jerry Rubin route or did she stay true to her ideals?

Re: They rob banks

Campaspe — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:13:30 -0000

I love Flatt and Scruggs. Mr. C. likes bluegrass too, it's just about the only country he will tolerate.

Re: They rob banks

Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:12:20 -0000

Probably not a relation to William F.

Re: They rob banks

Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:10:55 -0000

Oh, and one for the Siren, about the music:

C, I never would have thought of you as a Flatt and Scruggs kind of Southern gal.

Re: They rob banks

Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:04:42 -0000

klg19, I was the same way when I saw it the first time. I was probably about the same age. I didn't have a single political thought about the film. I just was ready to go anywhere for a girl in a beret.

Re: They rob banks

RickPerlstein — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:03:16 -0000

I'm about to Google the letter (Time's archives are online) and trying to find out.

Re: They rob banks

Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:03:02 -0000

I hate to say it, Rick, but there were times when I was reading your book when I wondered if I would have voted for Nixon! Reading that quote was one of those times.

Re: They rob banks

Campaspe — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:00:15 -0000

Yep! It's interesting and quite skilled, but not as good as Bonnie & Clyde. There, don't say I never go for the newfangled stuff.

Re: They rob banks

Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:59:57 -0000

"We are Bonnie and Clydes." I wonder who wrote that and where they are now.

Re: They rob banks

Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:54:11 -0000

Your students are shocked? I'm shocked! But I'm glad. It's nice to know. Means they are really watching the movie.

What do they make of Eva Marie Saint's tiny razor?

Re: They rob banks

RickPerlstein — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:52:44 -0000

Another quote from my book; the black guy is also mentioned in Mark Harris's:

Director Arthur Penn also broke the old production code's most ironclad rule: show all the shooting you like, but never show what happens on the receiving end. In Bonnie and Clyde, the bullets were shown from first to last--not least in the final shot, Bonnie and Clyde riddled from law enforcement tommy guns in a lowdown and dirty ambush. The New York Times' schoolmarmish film critic Bosley Crowther, aghast that "so callous and callow a film should represent [the] country in these critical times," led the party of the outraged with not one but three attacks in the Paper of Record. Newsweek called it "reprehensible." Film in Review tagged it "dementia praecox of the most pointless sort." Others recollected a generational primal scene. If "you want to see a real killer," Jimmy Breslin wrote in disgust, "then you should have been around to see Lee Harvey Oswald." Tom Wolfe compared its "pornoviolence" to the Zapruder Film. Arthur Penn led his own defense by, more or less, agreeing. He boasted of the black man who emerged from a preview screening and said, "That's the way to go, baby. Those cats were all right." Pauline Kael published 9,000 words saying much the same thing: that "Bonnie and Clyde brings into the almost frighteningly public world of movies what people have been feeling and saying and writing about." Afraid of Bonnie and Clyde? Then you were afraid of the abundance of life.
New Left Notes, the theoretical journal of Students for a Democratic Society, devoted a quarter of <<<an>>> issue to its meaning for the struggle ("We are not potential Bonnies and Clydes, we are Bonnies and Clydes"). ...

Re: They rob banks

Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:51:20 -0000

AKA "Deadly Is the Female"? Not me. But C. must have.

Re: They rob banks

Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:50:32 -0000

Not to mention fitting the actual history.

Re: They rob banks

Campaspe — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:49:21 -0000

**narrows eyes** Who, who?

Re: They rob banks

tomwatson — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:49:03 -0000

Man, I disagree - it holds up. The editing is superb and perfectly modern. Sure, Beatty and Dunaway are gorgeous and we know they're now old, so perhaps their youthful looks make it seem a little dated, but stepping back, it's just a beautiful film - the least dated of the five, to me.

Re: They rob banks

Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:45:14 -0000

Here's one for you, Rick. One of the points you make in that passage about Bonnie and Clyde is that people on the left also identified with Bonnie and Clyde as actual criminals, as opposed to free spirits or avengers of the little people. Their violence was attractive. That's a theme that comes up at a number of points in Nixonland---that people on the Left could be as bloody minded as anyone on the Right. Violence was kind of infection of the times. Bonnie and Clyde must have scared as many people as it excited.

Re: They rob banks

Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:40:59 -0000

Funny, you should say that, Tom. Commenter over at my place thinks that Bonnie and Clyde's dated horribly.

Re: They rob banks

Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:39:28 -0000

Mark Harris has some good stuff on the editing and the editor in Pictures at a Revolution.

Re: They rob banks

Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:38:09 -0000

That's the quote!