I want things to stay the way they always were. This is insane, because they weren't that way in the first place. I see friends who have grown older, and want them to grow younger. In Cannes, I look around and see a new building where an old one was. A new franchise store where once there was a bookshop, or a little cafe, or a woman who thought she could make a living selling flowers. Here was a store where I bought my papers every morning, and Tintin comics so I could improve my reading French. Now it is a Häagen-Dazs, which has splendid ice cream but is a company name made of words in no known language.
I would take my newspapers to a little cafe nearby named Le Claridge. That was when all the action in Cannes was down at the other end of the Croisette, huddled in the shadow of the old Palais. Now there is a new Palais. The dusky wooden interior of Le Claridge, where you can imagine Inspector Maigret ordering a beer and filling his pipe, is a bright new brasserie, stainless steel and glass, no smoking. In the old days you could read your paper and be left alone.
I have to stop thinking like this. It will turn me into a disgruntled old man before my time. People tell me Carl Fredericksen, the grumpy hero of "Up," looks like me. Like me? That old blockhead? I was thinking of myself more as Russell, the plucky kid who kept ringing Carl's bell and insisting in helping him across the street. I was forever driving the neighbors crazy with my retail obsessions. I'd be ringing their doorbells selling greeting cards, magazine subscriptions, the World's Finest Chocolate, even midget fire extinguishers for next to the stove, ferchristsakes. What other 11-year-old do you know who subscribed to Successful Salesmanship magazine? Now I'm the old fart in "Up" who doesn't want to move to make way for skyscrapers?
La Pizza, by the old harbor. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. (Photo: Carol Iwata)
I look around this town or every town I know, and it's as if architectural shape-shifters have been operating overnight. No wonder "Dark City" rang a bell. Low becomes high, old becomes new, quaint becomes crass, tradition becomes the future of Tomorrowland. It's getting to where the oldest thing you can find is a monorail. Disney World may tear theirs down and replace it with traffic congestion. On the pedestrian market street in Cannes, I want that little rubber stamp store to still be there. You never know. I may have to buy some more rubber stamps. I got a handsome stamp there once in the shape of an upturned thumb. In those days I sent out snail mail. I rubber-stamped my envelopes with the thumb up, and they were all Returned to Sender. Funny. That's what thumbs down means.
One of my difficulties is that often enough I like the new things. When the hulking new Palais was constructed, the old Palais stayed standing for a few years, housing the Director's Fortnight. The old Palais was a decent ugly building, looking like it could have housed the Congress of Workers in a soviet state. The new Palais was immediately nicknamed the Death Star. "A machine-gun emplacement," declared the architectural critic Billy (Silver Dollar) Baxter. Then the old palais was torn down and replaced by an indecent ugly building, the Noga Hilton ("the Naugahyde Hilton," said Billy). One-upping the old Palais, the Noga located the Directors' Fortnight in a subterranean cavern, so far down there were seven flights of echoing concrete stairs to scale after a movie before you were disgorged into daylight. There were elevators, but moviegoers couldn't use them; we were barred by security guards ("gorillas") employed at great expense to prevent sensible people from doing logical things.
The old Palais, 1946.(click to enlarge)
Now I actually like the new Palais, which is approaching 30. The Theater Lumiere, with 3,000 seats, is the best place in the world to see a movie. The sound is so good it's almost disturbing. In the old palais, I saw "Apocalypse Now" and the helicopter gunships seemed to roar overhead while the "Ride of the Valkyries" played. Today in the new palais, I saw Jane Campion's "Bright Star, the story of John Keats and Fanny Brawne, and when Fanny fell under the spell of Keats' romanticism and started a butterfly farm in her room, I could hear their little wings fluttering.
I had a bit of an adventure today. We were walking over to the American Pavilion, behind the Palais, and thought to use an interior shortcut that bypasses three blocks of crowds and barricades, and aims directly from the front of Palais to the left side rear of the building. This passage was built for pedestrians. Gorillas had locked the doors with padlocked chains. You might also think to go up an escalator and walk through the lobby of the Theater Lumiere and down the steps on the other side, but of course that's also forbidden. We asked instructions, but no one employed in the building knows how to get out of it. Maybe that's why they keep their jobs.
Before the morning projection, they played the same tape they're been using for years, asking people to turn off their cell phones. I happen to know that the warm, rich voice belongs to Mrs. Storer, who with her husband runs the Cannes English Language Bookshop, on the well-named rue de Bivouac Napoleon. I hope she still runs it, that is. Last time I was there, they were looking to sell it. If they have succeeded, whatever is at that address is almost certainly not another English language bookshop.
Behind the old Palais, on the rue d'Antibes, there stood for years Le Petit Carlton, a brasserie that was the headquarters of the Left Bank of Cannes. There the New Wave got plastered and issued its manifestos. There, night after night in the 1970s, Rainer Werner Fassbinder could be seen after midnight with his coterie, dressed in leather, denim, ambition and discontent. It was only a small, inexpensive street-corner hangout. But the first time I went to Cannes, Michael Kutza, founder of the Chicago International Film Festival, briefed me it was the place where the action was. A thousand movies were launched or torpedoed there. Now it is gone, replaced by some god-damned boutique.
Le Petit Carlton, 1999. Sigh. (Photo: Roger Ebert)
And on and on. And not just in Cannes, but all over the world. In these days, traditional values have been replaced by bottom-line values. The pleasure of people who live in a place is second to the pleasure of people who invest there. In Billy Baxter's "Diary of the Cannes Film Festival" TV special, Rex Reed's narration tells us a "quaint Mediterranean fishing village is transformed once a year by the Cannes Film Festival." These days, a major Mediterranean tourist and shopping center is replaced once a year by the quaint festival.
¶Juliette Binoche was so very young in 1985:
¶
Five tips for enjoying Cannes for the very, very clueless.
¶
Roger, yours is still the only blog that can bring a tear to my eye. This is the blog post equivalent of Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot.
Thank you.
Having never been to Cannes, I'm afraid now I can never go. I'd rather revisit the one in the picture you've painted with this essay.
It's very interesting that a prior commentator mentioned Monsieur Hulot. This piece reminded me very much of Play Time, Tati's 1967 jewel that I saw for the very first time last month. Whenever I visit my hometown of Philadelphia, I cannot help but feel like Monsieur Hulot, wondering what all the new constructions are, why in God's name the new building has to be over there, and how long until the city fathers strike a deal with some godawful conglomerate to rename Independence Hall in its name.
It's edifying to know that there are more people who wish that things could always stay the same. I wish more homes did not have to be razed to build more highways that will only beget more noise and traffic. I wish Yankee Stadium were not being dismantled so that the Yanks could play in a new Yankee Stadium where only so many people could see them in person because ticket prices rank with the cost of a Calvin Klein tuxedo. And if I could go driving or walking in a mall without seeing a Starbucks, I would not be displeased.
There is a double-edged sword to the Change we inveigh against. If there were no such thing as Change, there would not be an Internet, this blog would not exist, and this message would merely be a letter to the editor, waiting for a coffee stain to grace it.
Roger, you seem a man right on the cusp of a changing world. Thanks for reporting to us your take on the darkly incoming horizon. I have never been to Cannes, and will certainly now never see YOUR Cannes... But the question remains: How much of this nostalgia we feel as humans is justified? Is it perhaps nostalgia, above all else, that separates us from the animals? How much of it is simply a fear that the world of our youths and virility has been washed away and replaced? And whoever said new incoming worlds were better, shinier, brighter? We have no standard-bearing paradigm for the kind of cultural dip this world is taking now. But perhaps hairless new half-humans will be born to love a world with no soul.
Those buildings which formed the bedrock of your memories are gone, yes, but right now, as you wander the streets of Cannes, there is a little boy or girl making memories out of the new cafes and restaurants, markets and multiplexes that have filled their gaps.
Right about now a little girl is buying an ice cream cone from that Haagen-Dazs salesman, and the chocolate is sweet, the cone is crunchy, and she will remember the friendly old man behind the counter who gently but firmly handed her the cone, and she will always recollect the sheer goodness of the sunshine of this day, and so while a part of your past has been taken from you forever it has been transferred to this other young life, mutated and morphed, yet still alive, and pulsing.
Ebert: She will more likely remember the harassed teenager behind the counter. And will she wax nostalgic about The Gap, or have they gone bankrupt already? I think she'll remember the surviving old stuff.
Sadly this is everywhere. Everything quaint makes way for the modern marketing-designed boutique. Even those fine folk who inhabit quaint villages cannot resist the power of advertising psychology. I have never been to Cannes, but your post reached me. Because I'm only 38 and already I have lost beloved places of my past to this.
This is so wonderful, getting to accompany you on the Cannes adventure, and we get to do so without the jet lag. As for things changing, yes, what a bummer. I didn't know that little stamp store existed, but I want it still to be there! I would like to walk into that store and peruse the perhaps thousands of stamps and bring one home. Thank you again for this great blog...
I think Carl Fredericksen looks more like Spencer Tracy. If this means people think *you* look like Spencer Tracy, that should gruntle you a bit.
Hey Roger,
Some things do change for the better. A friend just sent me this story on Facebook:
"I don't know if I told you this one, but my Mom was at the University of Illinois journalism school at the same time as Ebert and was told speciifically by one of her professors at the time 'Don't write like Ebert!' Years and an international reputation for Ebert later, my Mom was kind enough to remind said professor of this comment...
So there you go!
Ebert: And said professor said, "You see! I was correct!"
Wow. The old Palais looks great in high heels.
Roger, was all this a natural progression or did it happen all at once?
Ebert: Been happening all my life. I'm beyond treatment.
Cher Roger,
The fact that you're THERE again is all that matters! And thank goodness there are still newspapers to buy in France! I'm so grateful that you and Chaz can again experience Cannes and bring its magic to your zillions of fans. Namaste.
Nancy Millman
I have ordered a new laptop so that I can read your page without paying 25 cents per minute at Kinkos. So I did a quick skim of this entry, and truly relate, even at my age of 32.
If it makes you feel any better, I will bring up Dickens, Wodehouse, and Shakespeare once again. I was never such a reader in my life until I started with Dickens at your suggestion.
I was saving Shakespeare for last- I've only made moderate progress through Dickens's work- but saw "Romeo and Juliet" on my friend's table and borrowed it. In 9th grade, it seemed loathsome, shoved down my throat by a boring teacher. At the age of 32, it penetrated my soul. So much so, that I picked up at the beginning and devoured "Two Gentlemen of Verona" and "Taming of The Shrew," now beginning the "Henry VI" trilogy.
I am planning to move to Verona next year to teach English. My further feelings of alienation from society are cursed by you, Roger. My getting up and doing something with my life, and feeling something much more substantial and wonderful than I find in our times, is thanks to you.
(As a side, I always look for the "Thumbs up" quote when visiting dvd rental stores. I discovered "Raising Victor Vargas" today- you always know best.)
Ebert: Verona to teach English! Ah!
I lived in a small farm town in Wisconsin, now eaten by Wal-Mart and shopping malls. The empty fields they were built on had more value to me than anything they could possibly offer.
" . . . a woman who thought she could make a living selling flowers."
Uhhh . . . just my opinion, but: perhaps you might avoid poignant, incidental phrases like this if you want people to attend to the rest of what you have to say.
"In these days, traditional values have been replaced by bottom-line values. The pleasure of people who live in a place is second to the pleasure of people who invest there."
that is as profound a statement as i've read in many a moon.easily applies to life here in the east village where every new institution is a bank or a 99 cent store.bravo monsieur ebert
I think that's "Ride of the Valkyries," though I only point this out because the image of Brunnhilde's sisters waltzing gracefully down to pick up the fallen heroes and then waltzing gleefully together back up to Valhalla while Wagner's music blares and crashes brought a welcome chuckle to many an opera lover. Now that I think about it, you are a clever writer, Roger. So did you slip that one in on purpose? It would fit in with the rest of your descriptions of the delightfully unusual Cannes experience.
"I want things to stay the way they always were. This is insane, because they weren't that way in the first place." It's not so insane, because we're all ingrained with that feeling (at least I think we are). Even that photo of the Palais, 1946, depresses me a little (but why?), because I think about the girl covering up, the cars driving away, the night settling in on that seemingly wonderful day, new people taking their spots there . . .
I met Ang Lee once; he seemed very bored and distant. I'm sure he's tired of hearing the gushing of fans day after day, location after location. One of these days I'd like to be in the middle of it all, not just as an outsider.
The people who attend Cannes don't seem like genuine film fans but instead like high society wannabes who get a kick out of all the publicity, glitz and glamour (so-called). I have never been to Cannes. I suppose what I am trying to say is that I object to the very idea of glorifying something past the point of absurdity. The world is not glamorous anymore if you ask me. Maybe it never was. We seem to have this obsession about "the image". Maybe we should try enjoying the films more or opening doors for new talent.
I don't think the world has changed too much. It's just the attitude of people that has changed. Technology and novelty distraction has replaced our abilities to communicate with other human beings (also to avoid eye contact--yeah, remember what that is?).
To comment on Juliet Binoche, I think she's lovelier in older age than she ever was in her 20s. There's something elegant about her and yet down to earth. Though I've never met her personally.
To comment on Up, you're not the only one that thinks the kid looks Oriental. I know a few people that have said he looks Asian. Is there a reason for this?
Question: Why don't Cinemas have movies from all over the world playing in them? Wouldn't that be more interesting and end up making more money anyway? Many of the large cities in the nation are as diverse as overseas, and the people would love to see international cinema of all kinds: Indian, Chinese, Iranian, Russian, South American, Spanish and Australian cinema. Wouldn't that be nice to see foreign films in Chinatown and Japan town or Indian Town instead of forcing people to go see "Step Up 2" or "Fired Up!". Cinemas cater to the imaginary Anglo Liberal College Demographic but the country is still made up of average people of varied degrees and affluence. These are the ones buying your movie tickets not High Schoolers obsessed with Transformers 2. They wouldn't know a movie if it hit them over the head. No offense.
My generation and your generation are disappearing faster than I can Lindsey Lohan and Zack Effron. Again, no offense to them.
Hey Roger, this is completely off topic, but I just wanted to thank you for posting your Great Movies article about The Thief of Bagdad. I got it and found myself agreeing wholeheartedly with every sentiment you expressed. I too had a smile on my face from start to finish. I too was blown away by the beauty of the score, and I also appreciated the impromptu, brief lines sung by Abu. The artistry of the visuals are also incredible. It's strange how the very first colour films--Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Snow White and Pinnochio, and now I must include The Thief of Bagdad, seem to have so much brighter and more beautiful colours than anything that followed up until perhaps the 90's. Colour films of the fifties, sixties, seventies, even the eighties seem to me to be somewhat 'washed out'. And of course many films of this decade even seem to be aiming for that washed out palette on purpose.
Anyways, after watching the film myself I decided to show it to my class of ESL students, none older than 12. They loved every second of it. Even after I told them that it had been made before most of their grandparents were born.
William Blake said something like: For every Thing that lives is sacred. Reading this I thought of that, to add: every thing is sacred to a time.
Yet another good class in Appreciation Appreciation. Thanks, I appreciate it!
"And on and on. And not just in Cannes, but all over the world. In these days, traditional values have been replaced by bottom-line values. The pleasure of people who live in a place is second to the pleasure of people who invest there."
God, I know how you feel. The world has moved on, even for someone of my generation. I'm 35 and sometimes wonder if I'm not 135. Everything has changed with such brutal swiftness that I feel like a time traveler from 1987.
I grew up in a small factory town about 50 miles away from Montreal. Because of the town's proximity to a large amount of summer homes we see a large influx of city people around this time of year. Not a big deal except that since it's becoming impossible to find decent affordable housing in Montreal these same people have now begun to permanently move out here. An act that has raised home prices here tenfold, which in turn has created a veritable frenzy of construction, renovation and demolition.
The landscape of my childhood has changed so much that I wasn't able to give a proper tour of the area to my wife. From the houses I grew up in, to the parks I played in, to the video stores I haunted, almost every place I felt personally attached to has been remodeled into oblivion. Even the name of my hometown has been hyphenated with the county's name. In fact, it came close to being renamed altogether.
I probably make it sound worse than it is, but it is still a strange experience to feel as if you've moved far away without ever having gone anywhere.
Dear Roger,
Firstly I must apologise for the length and off-topic nature of this post. Secondly, for my rather limited vocabulary, rather poor grammar and sentence construction. And thirdly for this post being rather self-serving, pretentious and boring by its very nature. If you would rather not read such a post feel free to skip ahead to the final two paragraphs.
Yesterday after giving an A Level exam I was completely exhausted and despite my Physics exam towering mean, bleak and monstrous in the not too distant future I decided to relax. To do so I watched a DVD my father had given me in an attempt to convert me to his viewpoint (come, join me and together we will rule the Dark Side of the Force...)
The DVD was of Pierrot Le Fou (did you see that one coming?). My father being an ardent film lover (so much better than an enthusiast, no?) and part-time filmmaker had tried to arouse my interest in the subject numerous times with limited success, but a while back after having watched Scorcese's My Voyage to Italy and The Birth of a Nation (the most maddening film I have ever seen) I decided to give it another shot. My father provided me with the requisite materials, books and DVDs [we have very few (none?) art film theatres in Dhaka, so I must wait to watch Lawrence of Arabia] and I began on my self-taught course. One of my first experiences was Breathless. And I was turned off immediately. I despised it. So annoyed by it was I (Sanctuary! Sanctuary! The DVD got stuck repeatedly and I was but a boy!) that I immediately stopped my course. My father (the sly devil) managed to counteract my indignation soon afterwards, though. He was watching a film called Come and See and I was mesmerised in passing by the picture (it certainly is spectacular, that movie, horrifying and spectacular). And so I began again, more cautiously this time, to Brakhage and his ilk I would come eventually, but I started with The 400 Blows, then Ivan's Childhood, Wild Strawberries, Tokyo Story, Aguirre.... you know how it goes.
Still despite the fact that I adored Truffaut and the rest of the French New Wave (how in the world am I going to watch The Beaches of Agnes???) I was wary of Godard. So I popped in the DVD as fast as possible before I decided to settle on The Exorcist. And as you so aptly described it in your review of the film, something just clicked and I found that I had discovered Godard, by myself. My father was ecstatic (his favourite directors are Godard, Bresson, Tarkovsky, Eisenstein, Ozu and Kurosawa) and I was scarcely less so.
And who was to know that it would happen once more in the SAME DAY??? I discovered another prodigous talent. His name is Ted Chiang. And he writes science fiction short stories, the ones of the metaphysical speculative nature. I happened to remember you enjoyed a film about existentialism made by the director of Tyson (or I may be wrong) so I would like to introduce you to Mr. Chiang's prolific career (eleven short stories and two novellas in more than a decade of activity). The following links are links to online texts of a few of his short stories, I suggest you proceed in the order I post them.
I hope you enjoy these stories as much as I did, maybe purchase Mr. Chiang's anthology Story of Your Life and Others. I can imagine you taking a break from Cannes, going off to a secret corner cafe or in your hotel room reading these stories. i hope they give you the same feeling they gave me, one of profound spiritual pessimism mixed with a dot of hope for the ability of the human mind.
http://www.concatenation.org/futures/whatsexpected.pdf
http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/i/division/full/http://www.nightshadebooks.com/Downloads/Exhalation%20-%20Ted%20Chiang.html
Yours truly,
Shoumik Hassin
P.S. If you would reply to this, please read the stories first.
As I read your post, Roger, I was irresistibly reminded of two stories.
The first was a novella (I think) by science fiction author Mike Resnick. His particular muse is colonial Africa. Many of his science fiction stories are in a setting that is 19th century Africa writ galactically large. But if memory serves, this story was straight historical fiction, written in three parts. Each part followed the life of a person in Africa, who was inspired to go to Africa by the person before them. They went, spent their lives there, and at the end commented, "It wasn't at all what I expected. I imagine only the [person before me] saw Africa the way it was supposed to be."
The other was Metropolitan, by Walter Jon Williams. At one point, one of his major characters tells another that 90% of the effort of society is spent "maintaining that which is."
It's a sentiment that I can agree with. What the human race builds today are cookie-cutter buildings in cookie-cutter cities to fit with our cookie-cutter expectations imparted to us by our cookie-cutter popular culture products of movies, tv shows, music videos and books. It's as if we're a dying culture, obsessively trying to muddle through and ignore how we're dying. There's no respect for what has gone before, no vision of what might come.
Sorry to be so depressing.
Schopenhauer (i believe) suggested we remember our lives with the same clarity we recall the plot of a novel we once read. Ebert is not recalling life as it was, he is simply making observations on changes, and connecting meaning to those changes from his flawed perspective. However, he is good (and wise) enough to admit his flaw up front.
I second that Computerworld emotion. The comments from your readers are the best anywhere. "Yet another good class in Appreciation Appreciation," indeed.
Why am I surprised? It's true -- I DON'T know any other 11-year-old who subscribed to Successful Salesmanship magazine.
So sorry to hear the Petit Carlton is gone. Another time, another place. At least La Pizza still survives.
Roger,
I agree with the overall sentiment here and loath the homogenization of the world and the breakdown of regional identity every bit as much as Studs Terkel did (although, does anybody actually LIKE it?)
That said, it should be begrudgingly noted that these corporate investments in older buildings and quaint neighborhoods aren't always a bad thing. In some cases these investments keep those beautiful old building from falling into disrepair, and revitalize quaint neighborhoods that have deteriorated and been neglected (not the case in Cannes for sure, but in other places, yes).
I miss your account of the morning ritual of dunking the croissant into the cafe creme.
And you should bring Chaz back as your Girl Friday. Throw her a few entries.
I live in South Carolina and for my 30 mile bicycle communte I passed "Martin Creek Landing". A hole in the wall (no A/C!) with pool tables, good folks at the crappy bar with the equally crappy mirror, and the nice lady who would see me on the bench outside fixing a flat and give me a Sprite for free in 100 degree weather. Oh and, the old style gas pump...that still worked and the free air even when it was closed. They demolished it all on July 4, 2004 to make way for condos that never materialized. Well, at least there's a nice view of the lake now.
"You don't know what you have until it's gone", so the saying goes. I'm probably being presumptuous, but perhaps we ought to make it a practice at places to approach it, walk inside it for a brief moment or less and then walk away to see if it's essence stays with you as think to yourself: "I could easily do without this place...or there's something about that place". Meaning: instead of entrance signs, we should have: "Enter for a moment, walk away and see if you feel like coming back."
Also, I was working at Loews in the gardening area doing re-stocking, and I noticed that instead of stocking everything normally with only the front side showing in a row, if I could, like with the pesticide things you wear on a shoulder pad on the floor of the aisle,--if I could arrange it in a way where you could see the front, back, and sides all at one glance (I also made the whiter parts much more prominant), then I would. And, of course, they sold like hotcakes. Why? Because the customer could just look down and read the front, sides and back of the box without touching it. It was all readable Fast. It was transient and efficient. When I was in elementary school, there was a drawing contest for a free bowling pass at the bowling alley down the street where I used to always go, and my asian friend did a brilliant drawing of the building, and I did a crappy drawing of a kid bowling, and wrote: "Where the lanes are nice, for a low price", and I won! He looked at my crappy drawing and saw that it was the words that actually won and laughed incredulously looking at it and said: "what!", but I knew I would beat him that way and was just laughing my ass off. It's a business of whoring, on a blatant level. These places are looking to make suckers out of you.
Roger, go to North Africa before you come back to the US. The zinc covered bars, the good pastry, the stand-up lunch counters-it's all still there in Morocco and Algeria and Tunisia. Middle-aged waiters with handlebar moustaches, long white aprons, obnoxious Germans, fancy Italians, well-behaved children sitting in bars with their parents having a Coke, a cheerful smile, vendors on the Med beach--it's just what you need after non-stop commerce and head-snapping deja vu as the world gets malled over.
My head snapped around when I heard that Martin S. would be making the Sinatra picture. Finally he gets his revenge for the Happy Endings sequence being cut from New York New York!
Ah, Roger. When I visit France, I, too, buy a few Tintin comics to improve my French reading. Having read them also in English I can easily say that I'd much rather struggle through the brilliant French than fly through the oversimplified English translation.
As a student of Urban Planning, I have mixed feelings about new development:
On one hand, most of it is aesthetically crass, inauthentic and temporary. The design paradigm seems to be to create movie sets we can live in.
On the other hand, the development is also more efficient, requiring less energy and less resources, while at the same time creating more centralized and intense marketplaces.
Lookin for a current photo of a bathin beauty "not hardly wearin nuttin".
We all lament the demise of the Main Street we knew when we were young, we all scorn the generic big-box retailers and fast food franchises that have replaced them. But how do we vote for what stays and what goes? With our pocketbooks. And we have lost our spirit of adventure, shunning the unknown, opting for what feels safe, uncontroversial. The big franchises guarantee no surprises. We have become attracted to the no-brainer.
We drive into an unfamiliar town, note how cute that little diner or family-owned motel is, yet proceed to have dinner at Chili's and check into the Hampton Inn. Because it's "safe," and promises to be not fabulous, but at least okay.
I saw a film this week at the glorious Lido theater, built in 1938, and there were THREE people in the audience. Sure, the movie was kind of a stinker, but this was the 7:00 show! At the big theater downtown! Meanwhile out at the mall, the line was around the building at the cineplex, waiting for Star Trek, which everybody knows is a good movie.
I actually left the Lido feeling guilty that I had attended. Surely my admission ticket and box of Good 'n Plenty, along with those of the other two souls in attendance, was not enough revenue to cover the electric bill on the projector and neon marquee.
Change always happens, and there are some great things going on today that I will always be glad I was a part of. However, I do agree that witnessing the slow death of our local businesses and brutal disregard for the amazing architecture built by those who came before us is like a sharp pain. We feel those losses on a personal level. How dare they mess with our lifetime geography like that?
True story: I knew I was old when I watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit recently, and for the first time ever, saw the film from Eddie Valiant's (Bob Hoskins) pov instead of Roger's.
Roger, you've got a few million bucks, haven't you? Can't you buy some old porno shop and use the space build a place that goes backward in time 80 years, even though it was just created?
Connect your newsie past to Cannes. You know how a room full of people tapping on PCs and chattering on cell phones is an abomination? Build a place with those old French table payphones at every table and bolt an Underwood typewriter to each table. And a circular depression on each table to secure the wine or whiskey bottle. And a wrought iron archway--you gotta have an arch, man. And noir lighting....shaaaaaaadowwwws.
And maybe handcuffs welded to each table, like a police room where perpetrators give their testimony to the cops. You could call the place The Confessional. Well, maybe not. But you said once you would name a movie theater The Maguffin. Call it that.
But create a living space for the artists and critics, in Cannes, as a legacy thing. Good luck!
Ebert: I'm not gonna create no damn "living space for the artists and critics, in Cannes." I'm gonna live in it myself. Alas, this economic crisis has sadly diminished my legendary untold wealth.
Dear Roger
I find nostalgia extremely tricky in that it often fools us into thinking that the past was better than the present, when it might have not been so. I think it's actually the reason why so many of us resist social change, however I have to admit that I'm in no way above that sentiment and still wish for things to stay the same. So I guess my advice to you is to keep on hating that vile Häagen-Dazs and embrace your feelings as a natural phenomenon, just don't take it very seriously.
That Binoche clip is HILARIOUS! I'm about to see her in L'heures d'été and I'm all the more psyched now.
To know how gorgeous you are and celebrate it and simultaneously know how ridiculous it is and be able to make fun of it... that's genius. What am I doing in this body? How did this body get here? Where did this dress come from? It doesn't even fit! Look, it keeps falling off...
Roger I think you should emulate a more warm curmudgeon who did not fit with modernizations big and small, Monsieur Hulot. Just as modernization, in its demonic way, seems to simply -occur-, Hulot battled this by simply -being-, and thereby breaking, dismantling and undoing every new modern "convenience" that crossed his path.
I wish I had money, and could go to Cannes, and be horrified by the globalization's leavings. More, please.
I think one of the most terrible feelings I've ever had is the fear that by the time I am able to go out into the world, brave its heights, plumb its depths, see its sights, the heights will have been leveled, the depths filled up with non-recyclable goods, and the sights will be Starbucks in forty-two different languages--though they'll consistently use spanish for serving size. Is that an odd fear for an eighteen year old boy? It's like anticipatory nostalgia. I can just hope that if I ever get to Cannes Hagen-Daz will be bankrupt.
You've reminded me that, if things don't change, we miss out on the pleasure of melancholy. The bright side of McGlobalization is that it makes some of us--read "you"--better writers, able to join with all those who've asked one of the best questions: Ou sont les neiges de hier?
I’m almost pathologically nostalgic. I’ve grieved the paving of dirt roads and to my shame have lamented the loss of more than a few South American slums. Still, I can’t think of a decent alternative to the way things are. Enforced quaintness just creates the Disney effect which is no good either. When I was a kid, some of my elderly teachers used to pine for the days when our cities weren’t glowing with neon lights. I sure miss those neon cities of my childhood.
Reading about the story of Le Petit Carlton makes me realize the real romance of Cannes is gone, replaced by "Beach VitaminWater" as reported on Barbara Scharres' blog. Do we really live in a world without irony? David Foster Wallace really must be turning in his grave (if he hasn't been doing that million times over already).
"Ambition and discontent." What perfect words to describe a true artist! Will the world ever see another Fassbinder?
The more things change, the more they stay the same. I can recall my grandfather's laments in the 1960's and today I listen to my 81 year old father echoing similar sentiments. If I choose to, I can easily do the same at 53 and I assure you that the 20 year old of today will look back, shake his head and wonder where the "good old days" went before too much longer has passed. Whether you consider this to be a rite of passage, a mournful longing, a happy reminiscence or much ado about nothing, it does remain a constant in the river of time. Life goes on. This is just a reminder of that fact.
One of the first few comments and your reply to it suggest that kids growing up in these times will be nostalgic for "the surviving old stuff" rather than the sad, commercial crap that is replacing it. At 20 years old, I've grown up around the old and the new, and I can't say that I feel any greater attachment to the older, more atmospheric places. It sounds ridiculous, but I have a great retrospective affection for a Stop & Shop I always went to with my mother when I was very little. It was a dirty, unremarkable store physically, but it was one of the first places I went to regularly and have many memories of. I don't think that fondness would be any more intense if it had been a place with deeper roots. So the hypothetical little girl in the comment may not wax nostalgic about Haagen Dazs or the Gap themselves, but the richness of the memory will linger. I think in some sense emotional bankruptcy in kids' surroundings actually encourages - or forces - them to create their own depths, or at least it did with me. An imagination doesn't have to have experienced something to know it must exist.
That said, I'm in no way defending what's happening. In the small town where I used to spend my summers they're going to replace the little pharmacy with a CVS, and the idea depresses me tremendously. On an intellectual level, the commercial implications are infuriating, but on a gut level, I know that I'm more deeply upset by the fact THAT it's changing rather than HOW it's changing. If it had always been a CVS in my memories and for whatever reason was to be replaced with a mom-and-pop drug store, I'd probably be sad too. If they're prone to such things, people can get nostalgic about anything, whether or not the object of their feelings is deserving.
Fings ain't wot they used t'be?
Of course, now it's called The Roger Ebert Conference Center.
Congratulations, Roger!! (^_^)
Best
This is unfortunately unrelated, but we discussed in an earlier post where the true priorities of the Popes lie in regard to pressing modern issues. Time Magazine has just run an interesting article that reiterates the conjecture we together drew, and I think you might enjoy it.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1898756,00.html
However, if I were to remark on your wonderful Cannes article, I would say that we share a mutual love for Tintin and Juliette Binoche.
I want things to stay the way they always were.
Hi Roger. You are sounding a tad conservative in this post - wishing to hold on to the best of the past, and lamenting the change. I can relate. For the most part, keep the change. (Although, I am quite enjoying my new Blackberry Storm!)
I am enjoying your reporting from an an exciting event and locale that I will never be at. I can experience it through you. Thank you for that.
Enjoy the movies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0plbEFWWPA
Here's "The Old Grey Mare" song that is referenced from the title of this blog. The last one--the lyrics said "ain't what they used to was."
Ebert: I was thinking of this version from a circa 1970s British/Broadway musical:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg-Ycc-yKqY
Some things worsen, others improve. When the Palais and the Croisette and Le Claridge were built, you could not write an article about them that within hours would be read by millions of people worldwide - including someone making cheese in her kitchen in Winnipeg, who, had she been an adult in 1970, might not have heard of the Cannes Film Festival, let alone the Palais, the Croisette, and Le Claridge.
Ebert: "Winnipeg," you say? Wasn't there a movie about that?
By the way, what did your friends and neighbors think of Guy Maddin's film?
I'm currently visiting my folks at our holiday home we've been coming to for the past 30 years. The old Aegean fishing village has transformed into a third-rate carbon copy of an idea of a fishing village. It's quite sad, really.
John Patrick Shanley (in an interview with Creative Screenwriting) recently said (sardonically): "My life is a fruitless struggle to accomplish something finite."
And Henry James' "hotel civilization" has become a "motel civilization".
But I think that Machu Picchu is nonetheless worth aiming for. Like Roger Ebert has made somewhere within me. Like the best high school teachers I ever had, some people are part of me forever. I wouldn't be the same without them.
I would like to strive against being washed away in a 404 world that accepts being "File Not Found" to the point of caring about nothing.
I have to say that I didn't exactly grow fond of Cannes in the two nights I spent there this summer gone. Sixty-something males waddling along topless, presumably to display their gold chains and hyper-masculine chest hair, but only succeeding in accentuating their pot bellies and lack of taste in both jewelry and women half their age possessing.... enhanced talents. Not to mention 'la plage' was for paying customers only. The cheek of charging people to lie on a (mostly) natural creation? Nice just down the road was more to my liking. Vibrant, youthful, an excellent modern art museum with a wonderful rooftop garden and a beach which you didn't have to pay to use.
Roger, about "My Winnipeg" - it played here as a bittersweet comedy. Everybody got the jokes the critics didn't realize were jokes.
Delete my last comment: I just spoke to my neighbour and she reminded me that they were rolling in the aisles laughing over the humour. It was only bittersweet in retrospective.
Me, I didn't get it either way.
I got to say this, I never had the chance to express it before, Juliette Binoche sublime beauty is equivalent to America's Isabella Rossellini as model and actor.
Ebert: I was thinking of this version from a circa 1970s British/Broadway musical:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg-Ycc-yKqY
I was wondering why there was an f...with "Fings." Great pop song...and how apt!
I love this sentence :
"The pleasure of people who live in a place is second to the pleasure of people who invest there. "
just share , may I ?
The king and the clown , 2005 south korean film . The film was chosen by korea as its submission for the Oscars in the best foreign film category , and 12.3 million people in Korea saw this film .
"They were right after all. Cineworld made money with a film, they didn't make a film with money. And now they're on top of the mountain, like the Clowns. I think that's a pretty decent lesson to learn... " -- X @Twitch Film (July 23, 2006)
My Sassy Girl , 2001 South Korean romantic comedy film
Windstruck (Korea), 2004
I hope you never grow old.
You know, there is something 100% valid with the objection to mindless progress as it proceeds forward in terms of predictability and convenience. When taking this essay and comparing it to the contemporary frontier of (the myth of)middle America (as you invite) the point only becomes heightened. It's just a cliche now that we as a country are moving, expanding(?), progressing into the future with Target and Starbucks and whatever whatever (isn't it kind of great that "Steak and Shake" hasn't kept up with this madness?). It's just a quite tired true truism these days that this is the way things go. I could go on, but you get it I suppose... but this world will (is)be(ing) remade into a newness that strikes nostalgia, a classic-ness that will be transcendent... "I see Satan fall like lightning".
P.S. you're for sure Russell.
Oh my, that "top tip" lady is an insult to the British!
And Juliette Binoche was so adorably crazy back then!
Also, I hate how things are now. I wish it were like it was back in the Golden age of Hollywood.
Bon Jour Roger...
I don't want to add to your already considerable workload there so I'm hoping to use this post to get some much-needed practice in brevity. (People say it's the soul of wit, which must be their nice way of telling me that my own soul must lie elsewhere...)
It's been my experience that every "Carl" needs to mix in some "Russel", just as every "Russel" to mix in some "Carl". Ideally we'd be able to manage this for ourselves in a self-contained fashion. We'd avoid having our own youth wasted on the young, learning at least enough "wisdom of the elders" to appreciate all of the great things we'd otherwise take for granted becuase we didn't know any different. As we aged we'd be able to maintain enough irrepressible ebullience and child-like wonder (for things both past and present) to avoid becoming hopelessly jaded crumudgeons.
Of course, ideals so often go unrealized. This is why I think the interplay of generations is so important to the health of all concerned. We're each holding a piece of the happiness puzzle, and it's pretty hard to put together the whole picture if we don't sit around the card table together and contribute our own bit. I worry about this modern trend where the folks in the middle put young people in one set of institutions, old people in another, and then wonder why they can't seem to find nearly enough peace, fun, understanding, or excitement in their lives.
I don't know how much reassurance you're actually fishing for here, but for what it's worth, your ability to hop in your Stuedebaker at 410 East Washington Street, hang a left at Steak n' Shake, and drive across the breadth of the physical and metaphyiscal to Death would seem to indicate that your "Carl/Russel balance" is better than average (which may be why your identifications with each of them seem to be competing here). Both Carl and Russel seem to inform your writing in largely equal measures - a major reason why you're compelling enough to keep me coming back here when I have "more productive adult things" to do. (I suspect this may be true for others as well).
Still, I feel your pain. I love to travel, but as great as any new place might be I often have a hard time escaping the feeling that I missed "really" seeing it becuase I don't have a time machine. Of course Douglas Adams (another one of those writers that seems to show up a lot here) figured that travel in time would have the same effect as travel in space: Once everyone could travel to the past or the future, a lot of the point of doing so would vanish because everything would be just the same there. After all, wouldn't ancient Egypt be a lot more enjoyable with air conditioning, forzen yogurt, nightly laser light shows, and four-star hotels that took Visa?
(Looks like I still need some more practice, eh?)
GOOD OLD DAYS: A definite period in the past when everything had reached a peak of perfection, and from which everything has irreversible deteriorated (usually, if not always, the speaker's adolescence).
I had the thought that I would write a comment about all the wonderful places you'd be seeing again when you returned to Chicago, which would then turn into a list of all the good old Chicago places that have vanished in the last 40-odd years. Problem was, the preliminary list got to be so damned long that it depressed the hell out of me - starting with all the Loop movie houses, the lunch counters at Walgreen's and Woolworth's, the big Kroch's & Brentano's on Wabash (and all the little ones elsewhere in the Loop) (and Michigan Avenue too), the string of big department stores on State - had 'em itemized and everything - DOWNER. (And I didn't even get out of downtown - incredible that after all these years I still miss Riverview.*sigh*)
Even now, just looking at any of the movies that were made here in the '70s can be a major bring-down. Is it possible to feel nostalgia for the dives and dirty bookstores on Van Buren (as seen in "The Fury")? If Kirk Douglas came back to do a feature for a future DVD release, he'd never recognize the spot where he carjacked Dennis Franz...
I suppose that the lesson here is that the longer we live, the more we get left behind. Nostalgia has its place, but maybe it ought to regarded as a kind of "controlled substance" - avoid excessive use.
By the By - over this past weekend I went to one of those Nostalgia shows, which was being held at one of the big hotels in The Land Beyond O'Hare.Across the street from this particular Radisson was a Steak & Shake, so after I picked up a few items of interest, I decided to take my lunch there. The table service was great, but the food was just a bit of a disappointment. Not bad at all, you understand, but I think you let your memories of years gone by propel your salesmanship. Not blaming you, but I have had better (see references to Walgreen and Woolworth above). Maybe both our times have passed.