stumbling virtue

Family Ties

A bunch of Wittgensteins, just hanging out.

Someone once said to me, "Siblings are your proof," meaning that your brothers and sisters are witnesses to what happened in your childhood. You know, the ones who will back up the story as the kids saw it, not the parents' version. The ones who know what really happened on that vacation, or that family party.

I agreed, but that's because I've always gotten along with my sisters. I imagine that there must be many families where siblings aren't proof, but rather those liars who don't really remember what happened, or who are just trying to make me look bad, or are sucking up to mom and dad. No matter which it is, though--love, hate, resentment, jealousy--you're tired to your siblings like you are to no one else, even your parents.

Alexander Waugh's "The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War" tells the story of the Wittgenstein family (hence the title), meaning the philosopher Ludwig and his three sisters and four brothers. One brother definitely committed suicide,while two others died in murky ways that suggest suicide; in fact, there were an inordinate number of suicides in the family. If you ever had any doubt that that turn of mind is hereditary, this book might sway you to the yes side.

We Happy Few

They like us! They really like us!

The Day Is Yours

Our version of Agincourt looks EXACTLY like this.

I've been absentee for a while for a number of reasons. One is that I've had some projects with difficult deadlines, making it hard for me to finish reading a book (though I did finally finish one--review coming soon!). The other is that we were coming down to the wire to get the show opened.

And yes, we did open tonight (or I guess last night, since it's after midnight here). I'd be lying if I didn't say that I thought at times that we were teetering on the brink of disaster. You'd think that "Hamlet" would be a tougher play to put on than "Henry V," but now looking back, it actually isn't. "Hamlet" is incredibly complex, but so well made that it pretty much tells the story itself. "Henry V" is tougher. The only fully developed character is Henry, and many people will even point out that he is more interesting in the "Henry IV" plays. Everyone else is pretty much just a bit part, which leads to a large, often unmanageably large cast. We had one really low point about two weeks, a week and a half ago where I wondered if anyone was even trying, if anyone understood what we were trying to do, and if anyone had the ability to do it.

But tonight we opened, and put on a cohesive show, one that is (I think at least) entertaining to watch, and one that seems (mostly) professional. And it comes in at just around two hours--pretty good for a Shakespeare history play if I do say so myself!

More soon--

Heroes

 

James Agee's screenplay for Chaplin wistfully featured the actor's long-abandoned Tramp character.

I read a book. I don't have much to say about it.

(Update: I was wrong. Consider yourself warned.)

That's not to say that I didn't learn anything from Chaplin and Agee: The Untold Story of the Tramp, the Writer, and the Lost Screenplay by John Wranovics. For starters, I had known nothing about James Agee other than that he was a film critic, wrote "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" (which I haven't read) and that he and Whittaker Chambers had worked together at Time magazine and admired each other's work. Now, though, I know that he was close to a saint, everyone loved him, and he worshipped Charlie Chaplin.

Let's get to that first item, the sainthood thing. I'm not going to write a biography of Agee here--there are many better ones out there than anything I could sketch out here and even after reading this book, I don't feel like I've gotten the whole story .What I do know, though, is that Wranovics is a very diligent researcher who quotes from Agee's correspondence and his friends at great length, with all of the quotes being of an extremely positive nature. My point is that this isn't the place to find a full-out, critical biography of Agee, nor is that the intent. It's just the story of how Agee left film criticism to go to Hollywood and work as a screenwriter, an action that--in Wranovics's version--seems to be almost solely motivated by Agee's desire to get a screenplay he'd written to Charlie Chaplin.