PATERNO, THE MOVIE

By Charles Snow

AL PACINO AS JOE PATERNO

Recently I watched Paterno, HBO’s made-for-TV movie. I couldn’t tell for certain from the previews what this movie was going to be about. Would it focus on the child sexual abuse scandal at Penn State caused by Jerry Sandusky, Paterno’s long-time assistant coach? Would it be about Paterno the fallen hero, a legendary football coach being brought down by the Sandusky scandal and Penn State’s handling of it? Or, perhaps, would it be a standard biopic of Paterno the man – his childhood experiences, five-decade leadership of the Penn State football program, and his many accomplishments as an individual? Remember, also, I was a faculty member at Penn State during much of this period, so I could not approach the movie with any pretense of objectivity.

As movies go, I did not find Paterno to be riveting drama. In fact, I did not think the movie was emotional or moving at all. Al Pacino did a good job of imitating Paterno’s gruff voice and limping gait, but the other performances were as average as one would expect from a TV movie. The Sandusky scandal had all the makings of a very interesting movie – if a screenwriter unleashed his or her imagination and created a fictional movie using the real characters and context.

Paterno was an icon: great football coach, Catholic churchgoer, fundraising chairman of the campaign to expand the Penn State library, possible Republican gubernatorial candidate after retirement, and much more. Sandusky was a great defensive coach who many credited for Penn State’s two national football championships. He also started the Second Mile, a charitable organization that helped more than 10,000 underprivileged kids (and also served as his conduit for finding boys to groom).

The local District Attorney who decided not to press charges against Sandusky in one particular incident mysteriously disappeared and has not been heard from since. Penn State’s Board of Trustees fired Paterno without bothering to follow the norms and practices of due process. Three top Penn State administrators may or may not have covered up portions of this mess (the court decided they did not and convicted them of the lesser charge of child endangerment). And, all of this behavior occurred over a period of many years in a small Pennsylvania town where virtually everybody bleeds Blue and White.

The movie I saw seemed to be Paterno the ‘conflicted man’, apparently unaware of Sandusky’s criminal behavior until he is confronted with it by Sandusky’s indictment and, later, in some stiff and awkward conversations with his family members. If this was the movie’s intent, then it should have been tightly focused on the various conflicts that Paterno wrestled with: his own failings in helping a child in need, his relationship with Sandusky, and his role as an ambassador of Penn State University. Pacino could have portrayed the pained and struggling Paterno with the emotions needed to make this a movie truly worth watching.

PATERNO AND SANDUSKY

CHARLES SNOW RESPONSE TO HAROLD AND MAUDE COMMENTARY

Blog-mate Charles Snow posted the following response to my Harold and Maude commentary.  My  response follows his.

“Ron could be a professional film critic. His reviews not only capture the essence and quality of a film, but he is also able to validly place a film's message in its historical context.

Regarding his review of Harold and Maude, I would like to comment on his point about anti-war movement violence. He says that at the time (early 1970s), he became disillusioned with the anti-war movement's preoccupation with violence and death. I was in Berkeley during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and I witnessed first-hand many incidents of violence during political protests. There were violent incidents involving the bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam war, riots over People's Park near the Berkeley campus, and so on. Usually, protesters' violence was directed at inanimate objects not people (even the police).

My observation at the time was that change did not occur unless there were violent protests. Peaceful protest was not seriously listened to by the power structure, whether it be politicians, university administrators, or businesspeople. Protests were routinely and appropriately allowed, but meaningful change seldom resulted. Only when peaceful protests escalated into unruly crowd behavior and violence did the protests succeed in gaining the attention of the people in charge and perhaps in influencing them to pause and consider the arguments being made.

Thus, based on my personal experience, some of the things we value in America today would not exist without violent protests. America of the sixties was not ready for peaceful protests, and violence was the main weapon used to achieve desired change.”

Fox Response:  I don’t deny the utility—even imperative--of violence when it is used in a purposeful way.  Trouble is, as the social movements of the 1960's evolved, a growing number of activists began to deploy violence as an end in itself, which in my view harmed the cause.  Sadly, one of the blow backs from the violence and anti-American bashing during this period was an invigorated extreme right-wing movement, which rose from the ashes of the Goldwater defeat in 1964.  This culminated in a shift of white working class voters to the Republican Party, where they have largely resided ever since.  For an excellent treatment of this history, see Geoffrey Kabaservice’s book, Rule and Ruin: the Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party.

As the anti-war movement evolved, the love, compassion, humanity, idealism, and simple good cheer I found among its followers began to erode.  It was this erosion  I  believe Harold and Maude spoke to.

HAROLD AND MAUDE: A FILM COMMENTARY

By Ronald Fox

 

 

When I first watched Harold and Maude, shortly after it was released in 1971, I recall it triggered a full range of my emotions, from side-busting laughter to profound sadness when Maude died. Like other counter-culture adherents, I was in the midst of a value crisis, which found me questioning the values of our materialist consumer culture. I had also become disillusioned with the preoccupation of the anti-war movement with violence and death. It seemed that Harold and Maude, which offered viewers an alternative vision of life and living, was speaking directly to me. Watching it again recently, I found it to be just as timely today as it was in 1971. It remains one of my favorite films.  

 

Harold and Maude is a simple story about a young man, Harold Chasen (played by Bud Cort), living an affluent life with his materialistic, controlling single mother. Harold so hates his materialistic life, he becomes obsessed with death. To entertain himself and aggravate his patrician mother, he regularly stages fake suicides, which are notably creative and hilarious, especially when his intent is to frighten women his mother has arranged for him to meet, and hopefully marry. His suicide acts include self-immolation and self-mutilation, which, as predicted, causes the potential brides to flee in horror. To further exasperate his mother, Harold converts the XKE car his mother bought him (he did not ask for it) into a hearse-- all the more to connect to his morbid fascination with death.

 

Harold’s preoccupation with death leads him to attend the funerals of people he doesn’t know. It is at one of these funerals he meets Maude (played by Ruth Gordon), a vivacious 79-year old woman who also has a hobby of going to funerals, except she goes to celebrate life, not death. Maude is everything Harold isn’t: she is perky and carefree, has a sunny outlook on life, refuses to conform to society conventions, and disdains holding on to material things. Strangely the pair bond and as their relationship progresses, Maude teaches Harold to respect living things, place less emphasis on material possessions, enjoy the pleasures of music (she gives him a banjo), art, and nature, and cherish each new day. Mainly, she teaches him to love life and living.  

 

SCIENCE FICTION FILMS OF THE 1950s: OR HOW I LEARNED TO START WORRYING AND HATE THE BOMB

By Ronald Fox

 

Like many youngsters in the 1950s, I watched science fiction movies. I don’t remember being very scared by the monsters and aliens, but what I do recall is that the films got me, an inquisitive kid for my age, thinking about atomic security—or more correctly, atomic insecurity. I wondered why our glorious A-bombs, which were supposed to protect us from evil, didn’t work so well against invading aliens, who always seemed smarter and more technically advanced than us. The aliens would dish out mass destruction, only to be thwarted at the last minute, not by our weapons, but by the brilliance of some scientist who figured out how to defeat them. This may have produced a happy ending, but it was little consolation for my skeptical mind. My lesson was to worry about our atomic future.

Throughout the early years of the atomic age U.S. security officials went to great lengths to convince the American public that nuclear supremacy would not only protect us from military attacks, but also enable us to control world events, large and small. We would be omnipotent. We were told that atomic weapons were a godsend, bestowed upon the United States, and not our enemies. This numinous quality would prove highly seductive, luring millions of Americans in the early post-World War II period to worship at the altar of nuclear power. In the tightly controlled and conformist Cold War atmosphere of the time, few dared to challenge the pro-bomb orthodoxy. Among the few, however, were science fiction film-makers.

HIGH NOON: A FILM COMMENTARY

 

 

By Ronald Fox

I recently re-watched the 1952 film, High Noon, starring Gary Cooper.  I'd seen it before, years ago, but hadn’t remembered much about it other that it was introduced by a catchy tune sung by Tex Ritter and that the good guy, Cooper, prevailed in the end. The film won four academy awards, including a best actor for Cooper and a best song for Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darlin', which was written by Ned Washington from Dimitri Tiomkin's haunting melody.  It might have won more had it not gotten swept up in the anti-Communist hysteria of the time.  Watching it this time, I was able to apply a broader perspective that comes with age as well as insights drawn from many years of studying and teaching post-World War II cultural history. There’s much more to this film than I originally realized.

THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES: A FILM COMMENTARY

By Ronald Fox

Occasionally Phronesis will offer film commentaries. Though we are not film critics, sometimes a film with a strong political message may inspire a commentary. Such is the case with the 1947 film, The Best Years of Our Lives. I’ve seen this film many times before, but only after watching it again recently did I come to fully appreciate what a great and enduring film it is. This isn’t just my opinion, as the film won seven Academy Awards, including best picture, and earned as astonishing, for the time, $11 million.

Best Years tells the story of three soldiers returning to the same town from World War II: Captain Fred Derry (played by Dana Andrews), an Army Air Force bombardier, Army sergeant Al Stephenson (played by Fredric March), and Homer Parish (played by Harold Russell), who was in the navy. Each is gripped with fear and uncertainties about returning to “normalcy.” Fred returns to a beautiful wife (Virginia Mayo) who has been working in clubs while he was away, Al to a loving wife and family and position in a bank, and Homer to his family and fiancé. Each, however, has been scarred by the war. Fred has recurring nightmares about his bombing missions. Al has taken to drinking, and Homer has lost his hands in an explosion on ship and now has two hooks for hands. Their chance meeting after the war turns into a close friendship and a sharing of their respective post-war difficulties.

 

The film centers on the struggles of Fred, Al and Homer trying to readjust to civilian life. Fred has difficulty finding work because his skills, “killing Japs,” are not relevant to a new workplace environment that now places a premium on education, training, specialized skills, and experience. He can’t please his party-animal wife, whom he finds has developed a taste for the good life, and, other men.

Al returns to his family and job at the bank, but he is uneasy re-connecting emotionally with his faithful wife (Myrna Loy), and his son, who doesn’t seem to appreciate the war relics he brought home and pesters him with questions about Hiroshima and atomic energy, which his high school teacher had told him needs to be controlled, “or else.” At the bank, Al discovers it has adopted a policy of requiring collateral before granting loans, something most of his fellow returning soldiers lack. He is pressured to deny loans to veterans whom he believes are of strong character and can be trusted to repay.

Homer’s fiancé and parents are uneasy with his disfigurement, though they try hard not to show it. All three are returning to an America they find cold, unwelcoming, and less optimistic about the future. They all feel like misfits, unneeded relics of the past, a point that was powerfully illustrated in a scene near the end of the movie when Fred is strolling through a junkyard of dismantled B-17s, the planes he flew during the war. Like Fred, they had served their purpose, but were now unfit for the new era.