In France, the afternoon hours from five to seven are known as the hours when lovers meet. On this afternoon, nothing could be further from Cleo’s mind than sex. She is counting out the minutes until she learns the results from tests she believes will tell her she is dying from cancer. Agnes Varda’s “Cleo from 5 to 7” is 90 minutes long, but its clock seems to tick along with Cleo’s.
Fair warning: I begin with a parable, continue with vast generalizations, finally get around to an argument with Entertainment Weekly, and move on to Greek gods, “I Love Lucy” and a house on fire.
The parable, The lodestars of John Doe’s life are his wife, his children, his boss, his mistress, and his pastor. There are more, but these will do. He expects his wife to be grateful for his loyalty. His children to accept him as a mentor. His boss to value him as a worker. His mistress to praise him as a sex machine. His pastor to note his devotion. These are the roles he has assigned them, and for the most part they play them.
In their own lives, his wife feels he has been over-rewarded for his loyalty, since she has done all the heavy lifting. His children don’t understand why there are so many stupid rules. His boss considers John Doe as downsizable, and fears he may also get the axe. His mistress asks herself why she doesn’t dump this creep and find an availableman. His pastor has a pretty good idea what goes on during the other six days of the week.
Eternal sun shines on the Malkovich mind
I said the other day my first professional newspaper job was as a sports writer. It was the autumn of 1958, and I was writing for the high school paper. Urbana High sports were being covered for The News-Gazette by a young writer named Dick Saunders, who was promoted and asked to “name his own successor.” How grand that sounds! He liked my stuff and hired me at The News-Gazette for, as I said, 75 cents an hour. To see my byline in print in a real paper for the first time was an experience not unlike winning the Pulitzer Prize. Better, probably.
“Nobody on the web has figured out how to make any money,” I said one day before a screening at the Sundance Film Festival. I was talking to another movie critic whose reviews were also online.
“My wife has,” said a voice behind me. I turned around and saw a robust man in a ski sweater who seemed to be bursting with things to tell me.
“Your wife?” I said.
“She has a Web site that’s making a lot of money.”
“Who is she?”
“Her name on the Web is Danni Ashe.”
Danni Ashe! The name rang more than a bell. Danni Ashe, proprietor of Danni’s Hard Drive One of those few webmasters capable of taking their shirts off without driving down the hit count.
“Mary, give me one of your Kleenexes,” my mother told my aunt one morning long ago when we were entering Holy Cross Church. She held a bobby pin in her lips, reached up to part her hair, and fixed the Kleenex on top of her head. My Aunt Mary already had her handkerchief in place.
“Why do you have to do that?” I asked.
“Because we are going into the house of the Lord,” my mother explained, “and we have to spare him from the sight of us.”
“But why?”
“It’s because we’re women, honey,” Aunt Mary said.
That’s the hard-boiled Dragline, speaking of Cool Hand Luke.
After she read my obituary of Paul Newman, my wife Chaz asked me, “Why didn’t you write more about his acting?” She was right. Why didn’t I? I’ve been asking myself that. Maybe I was trying to tell myself something. I think it was this: I never really thought of him as an actor. I regarded him more as an embodiment, an evocation, of something. And I think that something was himself. He seemed above all a deeply good man, who freed himself to live life fully and joyfully, and used his success as a way to follow his own path, and to help others.
I don’t have any answers in this entry, which will calm those who think I never do. I have questions, and the answers will appear in the comments. I want you to share your experience with acupuncture.
I saw an extraordinary documentary a few days ago titled “Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare.” It argued that when we speak of “American health care,” we should in fact be calling it “American sickness care.” There’s more money to be made in making healing sick people than in keeping them well in the first place.
I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can’t say it wasn’t interesting. My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.
It has been one of the great honors of my life to be a friend of Muhammad Ali. We met first when I was chosen to accompany him on a good-will tour to Japan. After a week together in Tokyo, we were friends, and after that I spent years traveling the world with him. On humanitarian missions and promotional tours, and even twice on secret diplomatic missions covertly arranged by the White House.
