John Adams
Better late than never critique; and what about John Marshall and "XYZ"?

Stephen Dillane (left) as Thomas Jefferson; Paul Giamatti as John Adams,
in the episode "An Unnecessary War." Via ign.com.

You tell me: does Stephen Dillane, portraying Thomas Jefferson in the recent "John Adams" HBO miniseries sound and resemble more than a little his fellow countryman, Leslie Howard -- and especially as Howard interpreted Ashley Wilkes in "Gone With The Wind" ? You decide.



















Leslie Howard.... .....Stephen Dillane,
as Jefferson



Franklin, Adams and Jefferson discuss The Declaration of Independence:




Scarlett and Ashley in the library at Twelve Oaks:




My niggling notes:

• Holy Steadicam, Batman!

In an effort to wrest this period piece out of the category of "Disney animatronics" or "moving painting" the cinematography at times got in the way of the story. During establishment shots, in particular, the camera turned on these neck-craning "Dutch angle" positions that had me saying, "Meanwhile, back at Continental Congress Cave in Philadelphia, Adams and Jefferson, the Boy Wonder, hatch a plan for independency." Or, "Meanwhile, back at the not so stately Braintree farm, Abigail fights the bloody pox!"

The one scene in the final, "Peacefield" episode that actually turned the camera upside down while Adams went through his cornfield was a bit much. The over-indulgence used with these decisions runs the risk of making the series look "dated."

The reliance on the steadicam was also utilized to breathe life into what could've been a waxwork tableaux, but, you know, I started to feel like this was an 18th century version of "The West Wing." And, well, it was.

• Getting the buzz

The sound was excellent throughout the series, except that the humming of insects -- meaning flies as in piles of dung and filth and stench --never seemed to affect the people. Unless I missed a moment when somebody brought their hand down or slapped their cheek, "Got you, you sonofabitch!"

• "You, sir, are no Rubens."
One of my favorite scenes wasn't accurate to McCullough's book. This was the viewing Adams had of Jonathan Trumbull's immense "Declaration of Independence" painting. I thought that Adams' annoyed criticism, accompanied by a comical jig, that it was a "shins and ankles" painting, sounded familiar--but he apparently didn't say it; and I'm wondering if somebody else's harsh words against Trumbull's effort were inserted into Adams' mouth. The series interpreted what Adams may have thought, but didn't speak, and turned it into a morose outburst more indicating his state of mind--perhaps--at the time than what he said at that moment, his wistful and sad statement, "I consider the ideals of our Revolution as lost."

According to McCullough, Adams didn't turn into an art critic. He gazed upon all those faces--most of them dead men by then--and just pointed to the right side of the picture, and explained how after he nominated George Washington for commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, "he took his hat and rushed out that door."

"Just go, John."

Laura Linney. Well, what can I say. She was amazing. And she and Giamatti complemented each other and seemed to have that kind of marriage-of-equals that made John and Abigail the perfect couple. Yes, he may have looked like a snapping turtle (especially as he got older), but he respected her opinions and acknowledged her intellect, and in the 18th century, that wasn't common.

One of my favorite scenes, for several reasons, was when she was down on her hands and knees, sleeves rolled up, scrubbing the floors of the Braintree farmhouse with a wire brush. She is trying to prevent the spread of "the bloody pox." And John is getting summoned away to Philadelphia, and not for the first time, and she's got to stay back and play Mother Courage with the children.

And he's standing in the doorway, watching her bent over next to the bucket, and trying to say good-bye -- he doesn't know when he'll be back. And there's a silence. She looks up at him. And the series of emotions playing across her face: frustration and anger that an illness she can't fight is laying siege to her house; resignation and annoyance that her husband has to go off and do Great Things, and while she loves him, she cannot find any affection their predicament in that particular hour. And she's just...beautiful. And she says, "Just go, John."

Oooomph! You kinda have had to have been married to know how to say that, and why, and shove into those three words the complicated sense of what they meant to Abigail in that moment.


• The theme music kept playing in my head.

I don't know why. Struck me as, well, sounding a bit like a Captain Morgan/Pirates of the Caribbean swash and buckle about the swelling of drums and fife skirls. But the music would start up on my interior iPod, especially when walking to work in the morning; in particular the passage beginning at about minute two, when "Executive Producers Tom Hanks Gary Goetzman" appeared, to the end. If this theme doesn't get used in some montage sequence pertaining to the current presidential election, I'll be surprised.



• "I suppose I must appoint you."

John Adams never appointed John Marshall as Supreme Court Justice. At least, according to the show. This is incredible and vital moment for U.S. history, as it set into motion an entire train of events that we're still talking about. Now, I give credit to the actor portraying Marshall, and those who took care to examine drawings and paintings of him at the time.

He looked the part. But Marshall's family had been in Virginia several generations by then, and he wouldn't have had this hint of what sounded to me like a Scottish accent.

Then, the time comes, Adams is tossing documents into the fire during what is portrayed as his last night in the White House. Secretary of State Marshall comes to Adams and informs him that the balloting is over and that Thomas Jefferson is the new President. Though the history is a bit wobbly here, this would've been the time for Adams to hear how nobody either wants or can fulfill the duties of the Supreme Court Justice, and how, in almost off-the-cuff fashion, Adams makes his "midnight appointment" of Marshall. Instead, we get a joke of "I didn't mean to burn that," and Adams trying to stomp out a blazing paper.

Maybe in the re-cut, DVD version this occurs, but if it doesn't, then the utility for education of that particular episode is diminished.

Having said these things, I must underscore, that I don't know when we'll ever see a sprawling epic such as this set in the early United States during the late 18th and early 19th century. Seems to me what should happen is something akin to HBO's Rome. But--instead--track the development of Revolutionary themes up to and through, say, the 1835 death of John Marshall and the Liberty Bell cracking while heralding his demise. That's as dramatic an ending as you could hope for.

Marshall was a line captain at Valley Forge where he observed first-hand how a squabbling collection of states and their representatives couldn't make a decision. Somebody, he decided, needed to be in charge. He served in Congress, as special diplomatic envoy, and as a cabinet officer until his appointment to the court, where he sat for 35 years. He'd be a good major character for such an undertaking. The unrest that Marshall feared and predicted would arise from the Southern intransigence over the slave issue overwhelmed the nation 26 years after his death. In fact, one of the most fascinating periods of U.S. history is immediately after the Revolution and up to the Civil War, because during this time, the nation created its founding documents and grappled with the core principles of country, and what they meant. We're arguing about many of them, still.

Marshall, as a young man, cut quite a figure -- six foot two or so, dark haired, and "ruggedly handsome" as the saying goes. Women liked the look of him, ("Tall, dark, and I'll have some") then, and apparently, now, even when he's become a monument, rather than a man. As demonstated here via abovethelaw.com.

I'd like to see a theatrical treatment of "The XYZ Affair." Three unlikely and differing individuals, John Marshall-- leaving at home his beloved, pregnant and suffering Mary Ambler, "My dearest Polly"...Thomas Pinckney...Elbridge Gerry...Talleyrand...the gorgeous Madame de Villette, a protégé of Voltaire, said to be so beautiful, that even though the revolutionaries jailed her, they couldn't bring themselves to send her to the chopping block.

Marshall may have had some kind of love connection with her. And there was rumor that she was acting as spy. Secret negotiations...intrigues...personality conflicts...maybe espionage and certain sexual tensions, all in late 18th century costume in sumptuous rooms -- Prague sitting in for Paris.

Marshall returned home a hero, and the apocryphal phrase, "millions for defense but not a penny for tribute" enshrined on the public consciousness. This was supposed to be the U.S. representatives' reaction to having to pay a bribe to the French to get a meeting with Talleyrand. Pinckney is to have declared, "No, no, no, not a sixpence!" The statement doesn't possess the same dramatic ring, nonetheless, the French then understood with whom they were dealing. [The more powerful phrase was coined by Representative Robert Goodloe Harper of South Carolina during a Congressional dinner for John Marshall, just returned from France, at Philadelphia in June, 1798]

The story in good hands could be a romp of a play, or film -- just the title "XYZ" alone would raise curiosity.

There's a sexual subtext, too. Marshall, like Adams, almost stopped writing to his wife from Paris. A letter he sent, but didn't sign, mentioned a woman who spent company with the delegation and made their stay more bearable. This missive reached Polly while she was still recuperating from childbirth. "She immediately lost interest in everything," Jean Edward Smith writes, "including the new baby, and eventually had to be taken in by her sister..." Polly spent the next several decades holed up in her bedroom in Richmond unable to deal with even the slightest noise.

When Marshall each month held his famous "lawyer dinners"Polly went to stay at her sister's. But even a neighborhood dog barking at night could drive her up a wall, and John would have to, with great politeness, ask the person to do something about the mutt's noise. Polly was not made from the strong stuff of Abigail Adams. But John and Polly were married for 42 years and her death devastated him.

I've Just Been Busy
Birthdays, short stories, leaf sweeping, work, history, wondering if JPMorgan's purchase of Bear Stearns signals the collapse of the economy.


This is Amie and me at the New York Deli's photo booth during the wonderful observation of the annual anniversary of her birth this past week. I love photo booths. They are so retro, and you always look famous. In addition, I'm reminded both of Amélie and Paris, both of which Amie and I enjoyed in the recent past.

The weather here has been sunny, bright, breezy and a bit rainy in the evenings. I got some leaf sweeping accomplished during the weekend, from out of the stairwells to the basement. And the upright waste pan I use that saves untold suffering of my back fell apart during the process. My screws came loose.

The Late Henry Moss closed at the Firehouse Theatre Project and so goes an era at the company. This was Justin Dray's final performance on the Firehouse stage for the foreseeable future as he leaves this week for L.A. and director and actor Bill Patton returned to his new conjugal home in Maine. We were so happy to see our most civilized friends, the Cusacks, down from their home of about two years, near Boston.

I completed a short story and submitted it for a compilation volume; a day late, and not short, and perhaps not much of a story. We'll see. I wish I'd demonstrated some patience and gotten Amie to read the piece before I slung it through the cyber-aether.

At any rate, billion-eyed audience I'm a bit concerned--as many of you are, too , I wager-- about the financial future of the nation as today--Sunday--JP Morgan purchased the failing mortgage house Bear Stearns. I've navigated around various blogs from the sober probity of The Economist to the sassy libertarian (and pro-bankruptcy advocate, among many other things) Just A Girl In Shorts Shorts Talking About Whatever and I look forward to what Kunstler will make of the mess.

To quote Twofish:

"So what is happening is that the Federal Reserve is basically taking the role that would be played by bankruptcy court, it gave Bear-Stearns an emergency blood transfusion that could get it to the emergency room. This is quite unique and it is something that was done in the case of Long Term Capital Management. It’s really breaking new ground here, and what happens will be studied as a guide for what happens the next time this happens (which I hope will be a long, long time from now, but who knows).

One group that comes out of this looking really bad is CITIC Securities. JP Morgan ended up paying $200 million for all of Bear Stearns and total control, whereas CITIC was about to pay billions for ten (?) percent with no management control. It’s fortunate that the Chinese securities regulators failed to approve the deal otherwise, CITIC would have ended up burning $5 billion.

I think the one common thing that Spitzer, Tibet, and Bear-Stearns have in common is that it shows how quickly things can fall apart."

I watched Wolf Blitzer with U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson and all I could think of was this Saturday Night Live character from years ago; he was the Corporate Spokesman, who smoked, and sweated and got visibly more nervous as he was asked questions by a Weekend Update reporter, and his catch phrase was, "Did I say that? I don't recall saying that."

"Remain not only calm, but convivial."

As Tom Hanks admonished patrons at the Byrd Theatre last week during a power interruption, so seems the grey Establishment faces and Voices of Reason pertaining to the financial crisis. As of Monday prior to lunch, the joggled U.S. markets were actually rebounding, but concerns that this is but the beginning of something worse has curtailed outright optimism. Lehman Brothers could be on the ropes.

Steve Duncan, a poster commenting on Kunstler's blog, makes the laconic observation that,
"Market trading in positive numbers. Bear meltdown but a blip. I think if NASA scientists announced concrete proof the Earth was getting sucked into the Sun on April 1st there would be a 500 point rise in the Dow. There is seemingly no such thing as bad news. And what we think is bad news produces positive trading action. Go figger........"

And this pragmatic assessment from Tanqurena reacting to one of Kunstler's observations:

">In addition to the financing the Federal Reserve ordinarily provides through its Discount Window, the Fed will provide special financing in connection with this transaction. The Fed has agreed to fund up to $30 billion of Bear Stearns’ less liquid assets.

So. In this week's Rodney Dangerfield moment, the Fed had to tie a $30 Billion pork chop around Bear Stearns' neck to get JPM to play with them.

And to think that JPM only paid $236Million for that $30Billion pork chop (it is a non-recourse loan, which means the Fed can't go after JPM if they default on it). Ain't corporate welfare wonderful?"

By the way, Kunstlers's posting this a.m. "A Real Freak Out," is well-worth reading and until the comments deteriorate into flame throwing--why, boys and girls, why?--they, too, can provide insights.

I quote from Kunstler:

"Things are getting very weird very fast -- and will probably get even weirder, faster, as the train wreck of bad debt meets the Saint Paddy's Day Parade of bacchanalian excess at the grade-crossing of destiny. The train is carrying America's financial system, but the engine driving it is peak oil, because declining energy resources necessarily means declining capital wealth -- and declining value of all the institutions, instruments, and markers that denote that wealth or hope to profit by trading in it. The fiasco leads straight to the necessary reinvention of American life on other terms and by other means....

I'm sure our political leaders will mount a campaign to rescue the futureless infrastructure of suburbia. It will necessarily be an exercise in futility. But it has already started. That's what the swindle of ethanol has been all about. And the touting of hybrid cars, and the flimflam of "energy independence." Even the "environmental" crowd" squanders most of its attention these days on how to keep all the cars running on something other than gasoline. They don't question the assumption that we will remain a car-dependent society.

As much as I loathe the suburbs in their grotesque late-stage efflorescence, I can understand why those stuck in them would wish to defend their misinvestments. I just hate to think of the political consequences when their disappointment catches up to the reality that the suburbs will not be rescued. And by that I mean not just the houses but the way-of-life associated with them and all its accessories, furnishings, and activities. Bewilderment will soon turn to rage out in the highway-strip-and-cul-de-sac empire."

l love that phrase "grotesque late-stage efflorescence." Kunstler is all about the peak oil business and if you read him every week, his message of The End Is Near gets threadbare as the End's goalpoasts, that seem to be getting closer, are instead moved down the field a few more yards. Being a Jeremiah has its risks because you end up sounding like a crank, but doom and gloom provides odd comfort to those who see nothing but a collapsing civilization all around--much like that crane in New York, or tornadoes in Atlanta (see below).

Kunstler reminds me of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), whose philosophy hinged on how life is in the crapper and you just have to realize this without expecting events to get any better. He was a best seller, in his day. (And, by the way, I'm not saying either Schopenhauer or Kunstler are wrong.)

Schopenhauer, not content to the detail the depressing nature of things, gave his readers the following advice for-- not quite happiness, but emotional maintenance.

• Live in the present, making it as painless as possible.
• Make good use of the only thing we can control, our own minds.
• Our personality is central to our level of happiness.
• Set limits everywhere: limits on anger, desires, wealth and power. Limitations lead to something like happiness.
•Accept misfortunes: only dwell on them if we're responsible.
•Seek out solitude, other people rob us of our identities.
•Keep busy.

He sounds almost Zen here: desire is the root of all unhappiness, or even Existential: recognize life is meaningless and have a good time, whatever that means to you.

I don't know enough about Schopenhauer's views on whether art or creativity mattered in all this (I think the importance is paramount), and he seems to prefigured Sartre in Nausea: hell is other people. Which, by the way, I believe only a few days out of the year.

And by the way, Kunstler's next book is coming out. World Made By Hand: A Novel of the Post-Oil Future. Listening to the "trailer" (Books with trailers!) I am reminded of The Postman, that called up a post-oil world, too, and focused on bands of survivors and zealots. The subject seems less far fetched today than when David Brin's novel was published in 1982. That was a time of nuclear immolation fears, Reagan and the "Evil Empire." Those were far off, innocent days.

Cormac McCarthy's The Road of 2006 is even more grim; and is set in the immediate post-collapse of Everything, what Kunstler is also discussing.


From CNBC:

"There's turmoil in all markets after Bear Stearns, and equities is not the place to be," BNP Paribas strategist Edmund Shing told Reuters. "Everyone's asking: Who's next? Is there a Bear Stearns in Europe, could investment banks start to fail?"

The shock news, the biggest sign yet of how devastating the credit crisis is for Wall Street, slammed the U.S. dollar to a record low against the euro and boosted gold and low-risk bonds.

"The fear is how many more skeletons in the closet are still there in the global credit markets?" said David Cohen, economist at Action Economics in Singapore. "This is another effort by the Fed to calm things down, but the cloud on the horizon is just how much more of these credit issues are still out there."


Tornado Hits CNN -- World Stops Spinning



CNN all the sudden became the Weather Channel on Saturday as its varied correspondents went scrambling through a few blocks of blasted wreckage following the work of a tornado roaring through during the night.

[The image is via Sansego's blog that has some other arresting images and good commentary. ]

We first heard the news on Colonial Avenue when Amie's dad, watching the SEC Tournament in progress on live television, observed how the Alabama v. Missississippi State matchup was interrupted when part of the Georgia Dome was ripped away.

At least three are known to have died--a low number considering the thousands who were concentrated in midtown Atlanta that night. Stilll, behind every statistic is a tragedy, and no less so than in Atlanta. Bonnie Turner, a protector of animals, was taken by this force of nature. Many of the animals she'd rescued were loosed into the storm.

According to CNN's Wynn Westmoreland, Mrs. Tyler left this quote on her Web site, www.flinthillkennel.com: "Beauty such as this is a gift, and I'm often in awe of this world we've been given."

In other news, as they say, a gigantic construction crane operating in east Manhattan collapsed, causing wreckage that looked like that wreaked by a tornado, and killing even more than than what natural forces took out of Atlanta-- maybe four died as the device smashed to the ground. The construction of a 43-story building had been cited for 13 safety violations, five of which were pending resolution. In Bloomberg's New York, if it isn't getting turned into a Starbuck's, then it's a high-priced condo. Hizzoner never met a developer he didn't like.


The Duty Patriot

So we watched the first two episodes of John Adams tonight. The program does convey the anarchic quality of revolutions--what with goaded massacres and crowds gone crazy. That any kind of Declaration of Independence came out of such a cauldron of emotions is amazing.

McCullough was right to point out in his remarks that the 18th century was not a simpler time. From disease to the whimsical rules of a tyrant, life's qualities were far more challenging. Still, one does wonder: thinking of Adams, Washington, Jefferson, Ben Franklin...where is such brilliance in the public sphere today?

The lonesome whistle of a train in the distance, and the lateness of the hour, and work in the morning, hastens me to bed.

John Adams At The Byrd:
Tom Hanks asks us all to be convivial in the dark


Well, watch the trailer here.

Billion-eyed audience I can't tarry here long though I wanted to say that we were able to attend the preview of the HBO John Adams miniseries at the Byrd Theatre and Richmond got to see Tom Hanks hijinks. When the Byrd Theatre lost power-- for quite a brief period--Hanks seized the flashlight from Governor Kaine's security detail and illuminating himself went up to the podium and said, "Virginia has survived 300 years. You can take a power outage. Please, do not just remain calm, but convivial." For the record, Hanks is not shorter in person and can command a room like a stage actor, and he shaved a century off Virginia's founding date. Oh, well. It was Tom Hanks! In the house!

An HBO executive made reference to miniseries shot here--from Finnegan Begin Again to the Lackawanna Blues but it was Hanks who played to the assembly with Governor Kaine and legislators among those in the Byrd. He mentioned that the John Adams set near Mechanicsville was already getting used for another shoot, and that this activity should continue, adding with a wry smile, "Not that Virginia should become known as the Hollywood of the South or anything..." causing a roar from the crowd. Virginia has lost film shoots because the General Assembly stopped using incentives to tax breaks to production companies to lure them here. Hell, back in the late 1990s even I got some film work. Governor Kaine and Hanks acknowledged the effort of Virginia Film Commission director Rita McClenny, through whose good offices I was there.

Speaking of good offices, in the 1,500 or so people who filled the Byrd, I found myself one empty seat away from Joe Walton, a board member and IT guru at the Firehouse Theatre, and also an actual elected representative to the governing body of Powhatan County. We both thought that the fortuity of us ending up next to each other was quite interesting. He also urged me to shout out "Wilson!" at some point, a clever Hanks reference that I didn't get until long afterward. This is why I don't play Movie Trivia on Facebook.

Following remarks by a procession of various dignitaries and executives and a presentation by the Colonial Williamsburg Fife & Drum Corps, there was a brief hesitation about starting the film. Hanks declared, "You need to move the podium or the people up front can't see." Somebody went up and leaned the podium on its side, as Hanks yanked off the HBO decoration and handed it to an audience member in the front row.

Paul Giamatti was there, too, and he didn't say much but waved and looked quite cool with his characteristic dark rimmed glasses. He received compliments from Hanks how with in a script of 50,000 words, and Giamatti says many of them, that he never forgot a line.

We watched Episode Two, which covered a great deal of ground, involving the siege of Boston, the Battle of Concord, and drafting and proclaiming the Declaration of Independence. David Morse is a convincing Washington--stiff, well, unemotional and he seems older than Washington's then-43 years (!) -- which is maybe how we see him in this episode, and Stephen Dillane plays the somewhat dreamy/odd duck Jefferson well, too, except, by no fault of his own, he didn't seem to me as tall as Jefferson was; perhaps this was done with deliberation, so that G.W. looms over everything.

Thing is, I can't see George Washington without seeing Kevin Grantz. Kevin always played the Indispensable Man when I portrayed Jefferson at St. John's Church. That's him, on the right, in this image, from here.

Speaking of actors out of the Richmond region, the one who is most visible in this episode is Ford Flannagan, known from his stage work at TheatreIV/Barksdale here. He portrays a physician inoculating Abigail (Laura Linney) and her kids against smallpox. The long, white
curling white wig Ford wears makes him almost recognizable. Still, it's an important role in a crucial scene that shows how Mrs. Adams had to make decisions for the benefit of her family's safey when Mr. Adams was away--another scene prior to his departure when she's on her knees scrubbing the floor is every effective.

By the way, the use of wigs in this show is more realistic in terms of how people dealt with them--at one point it's so hot in Philadelphia that Adams removes his, then he forgets himself when he chooses to speak without wearing the thing. Though any comments about the Founding Fathers all resembling Vin Diesel should be kept at a minimum.

I got to shake David McCullough's hand and he provided his autograph. He was radiant in his Pultizer-prize winning historian-with-a-mniseries and old school manners. Having experienced in quite a minor way the exhiliration of exaustion of book signings, I appreciated his taking time out, standing there under the Byrd's marquee, poised to enter his limousine, to put his signature on the title page.

He also spoke this evening, in that rich Wurlitzer of a voice, and made the point that Adams advanced Washington to Congress as commander of the Continental Army, put Jefferson in charge of writing the Declaration, and appointed John Marshall Chief Justice of the Supreme Court -- all Virginians. "Adams knew a good thing when he saw it," McCullough quipped.

Much resonance in those formative debates as there are now in the current political season, and we on occasion should be reminded of whence we came. Also, if you've ever sat on a committee for any kind of administrative body, you can understand the frustration of trying to accomplish something like writing a document with the input from a group of very strong personalities.

This isn't the contrivances of The Patriot (in which Tom Wilkinson played Cornwallis, and here is a fine Franklin) or Revolution (Al Pacino! Nastassia Kinski! The white cliffs of Yorktown!--Wha?). Nay, 'tis closest you'll get this generation to an epic pertaining to the War for Independence.

And I just love me some Laura Linney (who wasn't in attendance). In the episode we viewed, she gets to heft a rifle, chop wood, raise the question about slavery and she received rousing applause when suggesting that maybe she should go down to Congress and box some ears, lay upon a bench and weep at John's writing, and play Mother Courage with her smallpox afflicted children.

Maybe the sense is imprinted upon me from my early days at Colonial Williamsburg, but I dunno, those 18th century dresses that give glimpses of women's elbows, and emphasizes their necks and clavicles...something to be said for showing little. The restrictive undergarments were for those who were required to wear them, less than desirable, though I recall one female interpreter who worked at CW when I was there, describing how stays worked something like a sports bra. Though I doubt Abigail Adams would've wanted to run a marathon while trussed up in one.

Those 18th century walk-around woman's fashions weren't as confining as, say, mid-19th century clothes would get, though the Empire period in the early 19th were quite beautiful for the women and men.