The three women haven't yet met, and we instead first see them making their way in the world, soon to have each of their lives change that will set them on the path to Paris. So it is that we come upon Racine Tarascon, a gypsy, wandering on her own.
* In a small country village, a couple was eating lunch inside a café. Outside, Racine Tarascon watched as the wife washed down a mouthful of cold chicken with some red wine. Her husband swallowed half a croissant. It all looked good to the hungry gypsy. A bite of the roll would have looked good. She strolled down the street past an épicerie, the groceries inside lining the shelves almost seemed to be laughing at her. An apple cart stood out front, piled high. As she passed by, it became short one apple. Racine was quick with her hands. She’d been on her own for too many years, and ever since that day – she only cared to think of it as “that day” – it was live by her wits and quick hands. A lot of apples had given themselves to a greater duty, she laughed. So had a lot of things that hadn’t protected themselves well-enough. Walking on, she bumped into a wealthy man. “Watch it, mon frère!” she snapped at him aggressively. The man took one look at the ragged clothes of the ragged young woman and scoffed. “You have no right to speak to me like that.” “And you have no right to think you own the street.” She would take no affront from anyone. It didn’t matter who they were, how fancy they were. “You walked into me!” the man challenged right back, saying he had half a mind to call the gendarme for assault. Racine threw her hands up in disgust, and said something about being absolutely sure he had half a mind, and walked on. And turning the corner, she pocketed the wallet she had just picked.
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Here's the opening title sequence to The Twelve Chairs. It starts abruptly because there's a little prologue scene, which is eliminated here, but then this begins with the main song, "Hope for the Best, Expect to the Worst." The person posting this put in subtitles, some of which seem to fall off the screen, but since it's all in English anyway, you should be able to follow it just fine. Tonight (Wednesday), TCM will be broadcasting perhaps the least-known (and one of the two best) of Mel Brooks' comedies, the wonderful The Twelve Chairs. If you haven't seen it, set your DVR. It starts at 6:30 PM in Los Angeles, and so I assume 9:30 PM in the the East. And if you have seen it, revel in it again. It's all personal opinion, of course, and it's hard for me to say that The Twelve Chairs is better than The Producers. The Producers is simply too hilarious to suggest otherwise. But I think that The Twelve Chairs is the best-made of Mel Brooks's movies -- the best acted overall, the best written, the best structured, and the best directed and produced. It stars Ron Moody (not long after getting his Oscar nomination as Best Actor for 'Fagin' in the movie musical Oliver!), Frank Langella (at the peak of his popularity, after having starred in the Broadway play and film version of Dracula), and Dom DeLuise, in perhaps his best performance. Mel Brooks is in it, as well, but in a very small supporting role as a former slave peasant, and it's probably his funniest performance, as well. The movie is also not a pure comedy per se, but dramatic in parts and very touching (something hardly typical for what became known as A Mel Brooks Film), with a great deal of social commentary. In fact, The Twelve Chairs is the only Mel Brooks movie that's based on another source. In this case it's the Russian novel by Ilf and Petrov. The writers Ilf and Petrov were unique -- the best way to describe them is sort of as the Russian version of Mark Twain. They were satirists, not the most common or safest of professions in the early days of the Soviet Union -- or the later days -- and hugely popular. In fact it's their massive popularity that kept Soviet officials hands-off. The first story I read by Ilf and Petrov was The Fatal Egg, a very funny short story about a lab experiment with an egg that starts off with the best of intentions that gets wildly out of control and goes all wrong. It's clear when reading it that the "experiment" they're talking about is Communism. The fact that, with stories such as that, Ilf and Petrov were allowed to keep writing is testament to their extreme popularity. The Twelve Chairs is about the change from Mother Russia to Communism after the Revolution, and it's no less satirical and scathing, all round. It tells the story of former nobleman Ron Moody (as Vorobyaninov) who's struggling and unable to deal with the new world of equality brought by the Revolution. Then, as his mother is dying, she whispers to him that before the Revolution, she sewed all the family jewels into the seat of one of their twelve chairs that have since been taken off -- somewhere. The thing is, she has confessed all this to her priest, played by Dom DeLuise, who opts for financial gain over piety, and like Moody decides to go off and track the chairs down. And Moody's quest to find the chairs (amid Soviet bureaucracy, since the full set of 12 has been split up) gets him teamed with a charming thief, played with incredible grace by Frank Langella. Their competing greedy quests take them across the country, and the concept of rank, position and friendship all begin to overap. As you can see, this is hardly the typical Mel Brooks comedy. It's also perhaps the direction of movies that Brooks had planned to take. But the movie was a huge failure at the box office. And even his first film, The Producers, hadn't been especially successful. But his next movie, Blazing Saddles, was a massive hit. So, from that point on, he only made movie parodies. I liked many of them, was disappointed in too many, as they got progressively worse, and would have loved to have seen how his film might have been, because I loved The Twelve Chairs so much. The movie also gave an indication of what was to come in another regard, and not necessarily for the best. As I mentioned, Mel Brooks is hilarious in a very small role as a former slave, Tikon, now just a peasant, who longs for the days of security, even if he was treated poorly by his master, Ron Moody, who he loved. You'll recall that Brooks didn't appear in his first film, The Producers. And he just gave himself a tiny role here. But a few years later, I heard an interview with him saying, "If I'd known how funny I'd be in The Twelve Chairs, I'd have made the part bigger." Though it might have been fun to see more of him here, sometimes less and wanting to see more works best. More to the point, he did give himself a bigger role in his next film, Blazing Saddles (a double role, in fact, as the governor and an Indian chief). And then after Young Frankenstein, which he made with Gene Wilder who starred, Brooks began making himself The Star. I like Mel Brooks as an actor -- but I think he's best as a character actor and in supporting roles. I'm not convinced he did his movies justice by starring in all of them. (As you'll note here by how wonderful the acting is in The Twelve Chairs with Moody, Langella and DeLuise.) But his being so wonderful in The Twelve Chairs started that path, I think. One last tidbit of note. I absolutely the song over the opening credits, "Hope for the Best, Expect the Worst." It's one of Mel Brooks' best. The number sets up the movie perfectly, with great lyrics and music.
Hope for the best, expect the worst. The rich are blessed, the poor are cursed. Go take your chances There are no answers. Hope for the best, expect the worst. And you'll see the screen credit as -- "by Mel Brooks." Except...it's not. The music is almost exactly note-for-note Brahms Hungarian Dances #2. (Which is itself adapted from old Hungarian folk songs.) While I can understand the desire to take full credit yourself, and the original work for far out of copyright, I think it would almost be a more wonderful credit to have, "Lyrics by Mel Brooks, Music by Johannes Brahms." Plus, it would have been honest. Anyway, do yourself a favor and check out The Twelve Chairs today. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) has suggested shutting down the entire United States government in order to block the Affordable Health Care Act.
Great. Because nothing says, "We open our welcoming arms to all and come join to our Party," like shutting down the government during a recession because you're against affordable health care. On the exciting news, though, Sen. Lee says that he's gotten "13-14" senators to say they'll join him and a "host" of members of Congress. As small as "13-14" senators sounds (and it sounds really, really tiny, when you need at least 40 to filibuster measures), but a "host" sounds significantly smaller. So small that he won't even say how few he has -- which is a major problem when in the House you need 218. And an even bigger problem when something like voting to shut down the United States government risks your political career. “Congress of course has to pass a law to continue funding government -- lately we’ve been doing that through a funding mechanism called a continuing resolution," Lee said. "If Republicans in both houses simply refuse to vote for any continuing resolution that contains further funding for further enforcement of Obamacare, we can stop it. We can stop the individual mandate from going into effect.” Alas, somehow I suspect that "simply" refusing is not quite as simple as he's trying to make it sound. Though I'll bet it's swell for raising money for your campaign funds. Mind you, even if shutting down the government over affordable healthcare doesn't sound like a really great idea (and it doesn't), that doesn't mean Republicans won't give up trying to terrify the public over affordable healthcare. Indeed, this cockeyed plan is seemingly just one prong of a many-pronged prong. This summer, for instance, during the Congressional recess, the GOP has another plan, this one to hold town hall meetings and terrify voters over some mythical healthcare "emergency." (Personally, I think this plan risks backfiring bigtime even more, because if you get voters together for a town hall there's a good chance they might actually speak out vociferously on subjects other than the one you want -- like, how the sequester is hurting them. Or also, as long as we're here, why do you want to shut down the government during a recession, rather than working with the President of the United States?) Then again, if Republicans really, truly, honestly do want to shut down the government (and I suspect that some really, truly, honestly do), they have so much better weapons at their disposal, like the insane, good old standby, voting against raising the debt limit. And hey, it turns out that the GOP is talking about that one, yet again! I'll bet it's well for raising money for your campaign funds. Really bad for everything else, but still... I didn't think it was possible, but two people actually have reviewed The Wild Roses on Amazon. I believe that the official response is "Whoo-hoo!"
One may think that writing a novel is difficult. Trust me, it doesn't compare with trying to get people to review the freaking thing. In fairness, the book has only been out for a little less than a week (thank goodness, apparently, for speed-reading classes), but I'm speaking in part from the experience of my last book, but also from talking with other writers. To be clear, I don't have any expectation that anyone will review the book. Hey, just the fact that they bought it is stunning enough. And then picking it up to read -- and making it all the way through -- that's almost more than one could ask for. Except...well, you do ask for the reviews. You don't ask from any sense of validation (after all, you have no idea what the response will be -- and unlike going to a movie theater or being in the audience of a play, where if half the people hate it, that still means that half enjoy it. But with reading, that person's reaction is 100% of your audience...). However, the reason is because readers are wary about buying a book until they've read other people's comments. Not just wary about buying it, but spending the time to read it. So, all the more reason it was so nice and appreciated to see the two reviews. No doubt John Grisham feels the same when he gets his second User Review on Amazon... Question.
If a gang member in Florida felt threatened and shot someone in self-defense, could they claim Stand Your Ground? |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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