‘The Help’ strikes a chord

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At some point while we were watching “The Help,” my wife nudged me and pointed out a restaurant in Jackson, Mississippi, in the background in one scene of the movie, where’s she eaten. Her old high-school got name-checked, and so did a familiar grocery store chain, Jitney Jungle.

Yes, you might say the movie — and the book on which it’s based — is familiar territory for her. Literally.

And those who know my family know that its topic — relations between the races in the broadest terms — is one that’s dear to us.

I haven’t read the book, by Kathryn Stockett, but my wife liked it pretty well, although she was boggled by the idea that its events — the struggle of black maids in pre-civil-rights-era Mississippi — took place only a few years before she grew up there.

The movie — which showcases some wonderful actresses, from Viola Davis to Octavia Spencer to Emma Stone to Bryce Dallas Howard, who plays a reprehensible and pathetic racist — is good and manages to avoid the pitfalls of movies like “Mississippi Burning,” which relegated its black characters to the background in favor of the adventures of heroic white FBI agents.

There’s some comfort in watching the movie and not only feeling smug about the foolishness of racism but thinking about how much attitudes have changed. Even in Mississippi.

As someone with an abiding interest in tolerance, I think I was struck most by sympathy for the people who suffered, many mightily, through the depths of segregation and racism in the south as well as awe at how different our lives might have been if attitudes hadn’t changed.

“The Help” is a moment, frozen in time. Thankfully, that time has passed.

Falls of the Ohio

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One of the best things about a trip to the Louisville area is on the Indiana side of the Ohio River: The Falls of the Ohio State Park.

If you’ve never been, it’s more than worth a visit. Remember learning about trilobites in science class? Well, thousands of the fossilized marine creatures are embedded in the rocky floor of the falls area. The nearly-400-million-year-old fossil beds are the main attraction of the park.

Depending on the time of year and level of the river — which is usually held back by a 30-foot dam — visitors can walk far out onto the floor of the falls.

When I was there for a visit last fall, the river level was low and you could very nearly walk out to the dam. This week, the water level was quite high and the water was rolling violently.

The effects of the variable water level are obvious in the photo below. High above the water level we found this week were piles and piles of driftwood that had washed up onto the banks.

While the fossil beds are cool and the raging waters were impressive, one of the best reasons to go to the Falls of the Ohio is the peace and beauty of being close to nature — but still close to civilization, with New Albany on the Indiana side and Louisville on the Kentucky side.

Here’s the website for the DNR park if you want to explore further.

(Photos with this blog were taken by me in October 2011.)

It’s Sammy Terry time

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Two weeks from tonight is Halloween. It’s a night for tricks and treats, as they said on the old “Peanuts” special, and it’s Sammy Terry’s night.

With just two weeks to go, I was afraid time would get away from me and I wouldn’t write about the Indianapolis TV horror movie host before it was too late. So here are my Sammy memories, a little early.

I’ve talked to Sammy in phone interviews a few times and met him once. It was the mid-1980s and I did a story about Sammy for the newspaper. I spoke with Bob Carter, Sammy’s mild-mannered, music-store-owning alter ego, over the phone in advance of an appearance at Muncie Mall and then met him when he was putting on his makeup at the mall before going on stage.

An earlier interview with Sammy remains one of my most nightmarish newspaper experiences. I wasn’t working full-time at the paper yet so I went to the office to make the long-distance call — remember those? — and took along a tape recorder and suction-cup-type recording device to attach to the phone.

I had used it before but this time something — the way I connected it to the phone, the florescent lights — fouled up the recording. I didn’t know until after I ended the conversation, of course, and was panicked when I couldn’t hear anything but a low hum on the tape when I tried to listen to it.

I wondered for a moment about calling Sammy back, but I decided not to. Instead, I sat down and furiously scribbled notes of everything I could remember from the interview. The resulting article was pretty lackluster and had virtually no quotes.

The later interview, before his Muncie appearance, went much more smoothly. Nothing notable, really, but Carter — who spoke in normal tones but whose voice was instantly recognizable as the TV ghoul who had presented classic monster movies and scared a couple of generations of  Central Indiana kids to death — was friendly and modest.

By the 1980s, Carter had a lot of great stories. He claimed to have invented the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan “finger lickin’ good” during a live commercial, and who’s to say he did not? He talked about how the company that donated the casket from which he rose at the start of each show IN NO WAY wanted to be identified or credited because of potential complaints from the families of customers.

Carter was a pro long before this point, having done the show on WTTV Channel 4 since the early 1960s. He was gracious to a young journalist who was also a fan.

When my friends Jim and Derek and I went to meet him at Muncie Mall, he let us come into a back room while he applied his makeup and even posed for a picture right before going on stage at center court, where he delighted a lot of parents and kids — and probably scared a few too.

These days, Carter’s son is appearing as Sammy Terry. The younger version was in Muncie back in September and is probably making a few bucks — and making a lot of people smile.

More power to him. And more power to the original.

Pleasant nightmares, Sammy.

My worst Halloween memory

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More than 40 years later, I remember the trauma if not the details: When we were elementary school kids at Cowan in the 1960s, we were allowed to wear our Halloween costume to school for that most wonderful of kid holidays.

Most of my memories of Halloween are happy ones: Trick-or-treating with my cousin Mary and friends in her neighborhood, showing off our costumes and collecting great treats.

One year  at Cowan, we got to put on a Halloween costume parade for the entire school.

What a treat … or so it seemed at first.

The teachers lined us all up, in our costumes, and led us through the school. Since all 12 grades were in two big buildings, we got to show off for everybody, even kids as old as high schoolers.

The damn, damn high schoolers.

I don’t remember what my costume was this particular year. But it was  a typical 1960s-era costume like those made by Ben Cooper or Collegeville: A hard plastic mask, secured to my head with an elastic band, and a cheap plastic tunic. If it was an Aquaman or Spock or any number of other similar costumes, the tunic, as you can see from the photos here, was anything but subtle. Instead of being an accurate recreation of the character’s costume from comic books or TV, it was emblazoned with the character’s name in big, dorky letters.

I loved it.

Well, the mask left something to be desired, but I ran into the same problems with every Halloween mask. I was a kid who had worn glasses since the middle of first grade, and masks didn’t work out very well. The masks got warm and my glasses fogged up and I tended to walk into things.

But that year, the parade was going pretty well. I could still see through my glasses as well as the narrow eye slits of whatever the heck costume I was wearing.

I could see well enough, in fact, to notice — too late to do anything about it — one of the high schoolers reach out and pull my mask off my face as I walked past his classroom desk.

He pulled the mask out far enough, of course, that the crappy elastic band broke and my mask came off.

I’m pretty sure I completed the rest of the Halloween parade with my now-useless mask in my hand. I say I’m pretty sure that was the case because I don’t really remember it. The final part of the parade was a blur of tears and frustration.

There’s no final twist, ala Rod Serling, to the story. It didn’t turn out that the offending high schooler was my big brother or anything. I never knew his name. I can still kind of see his laughing face as he pulled my mask off.

I wish I could say that when I became a teenager I found the now-grownup miscreant and soaped his windows. That didn’t happen, though.

If anybody reading this was a high-schooler at Cowan in the 1960s and remembers ripping the mask off a little dork with glasses, I have just just two things to say to you:

Do you remember what my costume was? Because I can’t for the life of me.

And what nursing home do you live in now? Because I just might come by and put a kink in your IV drip.

‘Avengers’ assemble

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The trailer for “The Avengers,” next summer’s Marvel superhero team-up movie, hit the Internets today.

And it’s pretty cool.

I’d like to embed the video here, but as is typical of WordPress lately, it won’t let me.

So, rather than have you take my word for it, I’ll post a link here.

iPhoneography: Latest Halloween pics

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You know the drill by now. I check out Halloween stores for masks, costumes and spooky decorations. I take pictures with my iPhone. I post them here.

We’re still about three weeks out from Halloween, but I’ve explored most of the Halloween stores in these parts.

Anybody else remember those Don Post Studios ads in Famous Monsters and other old monster magazines? The masks were head and shoulders — no pun intended — above the beloved but cheesy Collegeville and Ben Cooper costumes most kids wore.

Here’s a Don Post vampire mask:

Each year some of the most popular masks are those depicting political figures. There are a couple of really good ones among these, but what’s the deal with Hilary Clinton near the upper right corner? Her face is so red it looks like she’s going to explode.

Personally, I think the Bill Clinton mask is great. And look at the nose on Nixon, down on the bottom row. Nice.

Costumes for kids are fascinating to me, although I think many of them are too gruesome and otherwise “edgy” for most kids. Not to mention for their parents.

Here’s one for the sports enthusiast: The zombie referee.

There are so many inappropriate costumes out there for young girls. This one isn’t scandalous but sends a strange, mixed message with its name alone.

‘Nuff said. That’s all ’til next time.

Richard Matheson: More than just ‘Real Steel’

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The Hugh Jackman-starring robot boxing movie “Real Steel” is at the top of the box-office charts this weekend, just where it deserves to be. The movie features the “X-Men” star as a washed-up boxer who takes custody not only of his 11-year-old son but also a sparring partner robot literally pulled out of a junkyard.

In this future U.S., humans don’t box anymore but robots do. Their fight-to-the-death bouts are the logical extension, in some ways, of the current bloodsports enjoyed by many fans. The dad and son’s faith in each other and their  battlin’ robot pays off, of course.

The most enjoyable element of all this, to me, is that the movie is based on “Steel,” a short story from 1956 written by Richard Matheson. The story was previously adapted — with a lot less high-tech wizardry — on the classic TV series “The Twilight Zone.”

Matheson, born in 1926, is enjoying some renewed interest as a result of the movie. There’s this good interview at aintitcool and just the mention of the octogenarian writer’s body of work is enough to send geeks tripping through decades of favorite movies and TV shows.

Putting aside that Matheson wrote some wonderfully creepy short stories, like “Born of Man and Woman,” and terrific novels, like “I Am Legend,” if you just consider the number of good movies that had been made from his stories — “Omega Man” and “I Am Legend,” “Stir of Echoes” and “The Incredible Shrinking Man” to name a few — you’ve got a source of big-screen inspiration that might be second only to Philip K. Dick (“Bladerunner”).

But the TV shows and TV movies Matheson wrote. Oh my.

“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” for “The Twilight Zone.” “Trilogy of Terror,” famous for its segment about a tribal doll come to murderous life. And “The Night Stalker,” one of the greatest combination horror movies/cop dramas/newspaper movies ever.

Yeah. Oh my.

I enjoyed “Real Steel” today, but I’ve been thankful for Richard Matheson’s talents since I was a kid.

A man ahead of his time

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Charles Fort blew my mind. For a guy who died nearly 30 years before I was born, that’s no small accomplishment.

Fort was a New York resident, born in 1874, who collected odd bits of information.

If a man was reported to have burst into flames in his New York apartment, Fort made note of it. If the man’s burned body was found in an un-singed armchair in his equally untouched living room, that was even better fodder for Fort.

How about a rain of frogs? Fort was all over it.

For a couple of decades, Fort scrutinized newspapers and scientific journals and haunted libraries and museums, looking for reports of disappearing people and objects that appeared in places they didn’t belong.

Fort collected these strange tidbits in a series of books, including “Lo!” “Wild Talents” and “The Book of the Damned.”

The books were reprinted in paperback in the 1960s and early 1970s, when I — like other fans of what became known as Fortean phenomena — discovered them.

It’s possible, I think, to draw a line from Fort’s oddball reports to classic TV shows like “The Night Stalker” and “The X Files,” and certainly Fort’s bread and butter, baffling happenings and unexplained events, are the stuff of modern-day shows like “Fringe.”

So it’s appropriate and perhaps inevitable that Fort would be the the subject of a movie. Robert Zemeckis, who directed the “Back to the Future” movies as well as animated films like “The Polar Express,” is bringing Fort to the big screen.

Zemeckis sees Fort as something of a real-life Ghostbuster, according to recent news stories. I don’t recall Fort ever reporting busting any ghosts or getting slimed, but considering that all modern movies must be boiled down to a pitch like “It’s ‘Twilight’ meets ‘Star Trek,'” I guess it’s as good a comparison as any. It’ll be interesting to see how Hollywood treats Fort.

 

So long, Charles Napier

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One of the benefits of being a habitual film credits reader is that you get to know the names of unsung actors who play memorable parts in movies.

Guys like Charles Napier.

If you hadn’t already recognized him from the picture at the top of this blog, I would only have to say “You remember, Murdock, the guy who sent Rambo on his mission in ‘Rambo: First Blood Part II,’ or Tucker McElroy, the cowboy-hat-wearing guy in the RV from ‘The Blues Brothers,'” but I could name a couple dozen more as well.

Napier died the other day — the same day as Steve Jobs — and a few movie and TV websites have made note of his passing.

Napier, with his distinctive voice and square jaw, could have played good guys more often but usually played bad guys.

One of his earliest, silliest roles came in the original “Star Trek” TV series, in which the Enterprise crew encounters space hippies. Here’s Napier:

You gotta admire a guy who takes a role that requires him to look like that … and keeps coming back for more.

RIP, Charles Napier.

Steve Jobs, books and time’s passing

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I heard about the passing of Apple visionary Steve Jobs just a little while ago and, of course, I heard the news through my iPhone. I imagine I’m one of millions of people who found out through one of Jobs’ many ideas-brought-to-life.

Then, after watching a few minutes of a TV special about Jobs, I settled in and finished a book. It was Craig Johnson’s “Death Without Company,” the second in his series about Wyoming lawman Walt Longmire.

I just closed the Johnson book — it’s good, and typical of the Longmire stories, which feel like Westerns even though they’re crime novels and, above all else, character studies — and feel philosophical. More so than usual.

Part of that is because of the tone of the book, which is all about death and friendship and family and long-forgotten passions rekindled. Part is due to the passing of Jobs, whose inventiveness changed things for a couple of generations of people.

It’s important, for some reason, to note that I read “Death Without Company” not on Jobs’ iPad or Amazon’s Kindle or even BN’s Nook but on paper. I don’t have a tablet or e-reader, at least not yet. I’m not rushing to get one, in great part because there’s something that feels so right about reading a book on paper. Hardback, paperback, whatever. The experience of opening a book and getting lost is one that I’ve loved since I was a grade-schooler. I’m positive that love will never pass. I’m pretty positive my devotion to the old-school book experience will likewise stick around.

Jobs was the kind of guy who was always moving ahead, always innovating. I found myself wondering tonight if he still read books — or newspapers, or magazines — on paper. Was that ever an important thing to him? Did it ever stop being important?

I’m not sure what I’m going to read next. I have only one of the Longmire books left. I might crack that open or I might dip into a book about the Civil War in an attempt to remedy my woeful ignorance about that period in our history.

Maybe I’ll start reading “Killing the Blues,” the latest in a series of books about small-town New England cop Jesse Stone. Jesse was created, you see, by Robert B. Parker, a longtime mystery author who passed away last year.

“Killing the Blues” exists because Parker’s wife chose a successor. Michael Brandman is continuing the series after Parker’s passing.

Parker, like Jobs, was a master at his own game. He’s gone now, like Jobs, and others will try to fill the void, like they will with Jobs.

Parker’s successors — because it’s hard to imagine a replacement — will continue his various series, hopefully with some success and artistic accomplishment.

Jobs’ successors — because it’s hard to imagine a replacement — will continue his work, hopefully with some success and artistic accomplishment.

Books will still be published. Incredible advances in technology will continue to be made.

And the world will keep on spinning, albeit perhaps diminished.