by Peter Gill
And The Oscar Refusals Are…
Woody Allen has (with one exception) declined his invitation to attend the Oscar ceremony or acknowledge his three Oscars and many nominations. The first time was the 1978 Awards when his Annie Hall (1977) won four awards for the 42-year-old including Best Picture—ahead of Star Wars, and Best Director—beating both Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He did show once, unannounced, to support New York at the 2002 ceremony immediately following the 9/11 attack.
Three people have refused to accept their Oscar:
Dudley Nichols—The Informer (1935), Screenplay. Didn’t attend or accept his Oscar at an awards ceremony that was boycotted as part of the Screen Writers’ Guild’s eight year struggle to be recognised by Hollywood producers.
George C. Scott—Patton (1970), Best Actor. Didn’t attend, didn’t accept the Oscar, later chose to call the awards event ‘a meat parade’.
Marlon Brando—The Godfather (1972), Best Actor. Didn’t attend in support of American Indian rights—sent Sacheen Littlefeather in his place.
In 2003 the Academy awarded an Oscar to an absent child rapist, Roman Polanski, allowing him to continue to avoid justice. Many of the Hollywood ‘great’ and ‘good’ stood up and applauded. Moral fog as well as smog out there.
***Bonus trivium*** Midnight Cowboy (1969) starring Dustin Hoffman as Ratso and Jon Voight as Joe Buck won the Best Film Oscar in the 42nd Academy Awards having been directed by the English director John Schlesinger when he was 42. Midnight Cowboy was the only X-classified film ever to be shown to the President (Nixon), and is the only X-movie to ever win an Oscar.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Groundhog Day
Each morning my travels in dreamtime end in the same way. Like this:
[A bedroom in a Shropshire home]
THE VOICE It is 6.29 am and the in-mates are asleep.
F/X DISPLAY ON THE RADIO ALARM ROLLS ONTO 6.30 am.
GRAMS MUSIC: Ding-ding…Ding-ding…Ding-diding…DING…
And it’s time to start another day to the sound of—just in case you haven’t guessed—Sonny & Cher’s original of I Got You Babe. I love Groundhog Day and try to watch it every day. For readers who have been holding out on a jungle island, firstly, well done, and secondly this is the film in which a TV reporter played by Bill Murray (forty-two) is covering a perennial story about a weather-predicting marmot, expertly played by method groundhog Punxsatawney Phil (of unknown age but definitely old). If Punxsy Phil, who resides in Gobbler’s Knob (where else?), should see his own shadow on Groundhog Day the United States will have 42 more days of winter. The next day Bill Murray’s character wakes again to the sound of I Got You Babe just like the day before, and the same twenty-four hours of life starts to replay. Each morning my travels in dreamtime…
The Groundhog Day screenplay was written by Danny Rubin and high level concept stuff behind the movie resonates with the philosophical notion called ‘eternal recurrence’ which was explored in 1882 by theothanatologist Friedrich ‘God is Dead’ Nietzsche. Eternal recurrence cropped up again in the German philosopher’s most important work, Thus Spoke Zarathusa, written when he was forty-two and echoing ideas found in the Greek myth of King Sisyphus. Supposedly cleverer than the god Zeus, he (Sisyphus not Nietzsche) decommissioned Death (Thanatos), then tricked his way back from hell only to be sentenced to an eternal life in which every day was to be spent pushing a boulder up a hill only to see it roll down again at day’s end—a Sisyphean task. The method groundhog bit Bill Murray twice during filming.
‘Nobody can eat 50 eggs’
In the classic motion picture Cool Hand Luke, Paul Newman’s character is in prison and for a bet manages, just, to eat 50 boiled eggs in one hour. Mr Newman was 42. Here are some more ideas for egg movies.
Egg Number of eggs eaten and the record or possible record time Normalised to 42 eggs
Raw 13 in 1.04 seconds 0 minutes 3.4 seconds
Scrambled 30 in 45 seconds 0 minutes 35 seconds
Quail (pickled) 42 in 1 minute 1 minute 0 seconds
Soft boiled 32 in 55 seconds 1 minutes 12 seconds
Hard boiled (Sonya Thomas) 65 in 6 minutes 40 seconds 4 minutes 18 seconds
Cadbury’s Creme 10 in 2 minutes 11 seconds 9 minutes 10 seconds
Pickled 3 in 58 seconds 13 minutes 32 seconds
Crocodile 10 in 4 minutes 24 seconds 18 minutes 28 seconds
Scotch 13½ in 7 minutes 21 minutes 47 seconds
Cool Hand Luke (Hard boiled) 50 in 60 minutes 50 minutes 23 seconds
Cool Hand Luke was produced by actor Jack Lemmon’s production company. The record time for peeling and eating a lemon is 9.84 seconds.
***Bonus trivium***
It is a popular myth that Joanna Woodward, Paul Newman’s wife, was star #1 on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (which is to undergo a planned $4.2m makeover). Joanna Woodward’s star had been one of eight examples displayed before construction but the work was delayed for some two years until 1960 (in part because of a legal challenge by Charlie Chaplin Jr, his father, having been selected at first was omitted from the proposed inaugural installation of several hundred stars) and the first star fixed in place was that of the film producer (High Noon) and director (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner), Stanley Kramer. Charlie Chaplin finally got his star in 1972.
The Best Western
The Best Western is the world’s largest hotel chain with over 4,200 hotels in 80 countries, it says here on the interweb, and it is true that I have always enjoyed a topping night and spiffing breakfast but my Best Western is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, so here are six bullet points about it.
Bob Dylan, it is said, was offered the chance to sing Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head, Hal David and Burt Bacharach’s song which was to receive the Best Song Oscar for that year. If so, His Bobness passed on the opportunity, but not too long afterwards could be observed appearing in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, also writing the score for the Sam Peckinpah film and slipping in a little tune called Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door—quite easily worth two Oscars yet not winning one, not even a nomination. I do believe The Academy should be sent to stand in their own naughty corner for that one. And if it doesn’t have one, they should award itself One.
The time spent by the real Butch and Sundance in Argentina after buying a ranch in the Cholila Valley, now a ‘cowboy and fly-fishing dreamland’, is part of In Patagonia, the distinctively chaptered portmanteau English writer Bruce Chatwin based on a jaunt made after parting with some style from a job on the Sunday Times by despatching a telegram ‘Have gone to Patagonia’.
The film screenplay was written by William Goldman who researched his material for eight years and for which 20th Century Fox paid $400,000, which after adjusting for time is one of the most expensive original scripts in Hollywood history, the equivalent of some $5.3m today. The film won four Oscars at the 42nd Academy Awards in 1970.
Butch Cassidy lead The Wild Bunch from two hideouts; the Hole in the Wall gang’s Hole in the Wall which was in Wyoming’s Big Horn Mountains, and a remote Utah canyon now in Canyonlands National Park called Robbers’ Roost. In 2003 Aron Ralston, an experienced walker and climber, was exploring a narrow slot canyon in Robbers’ Roost when he became trapped after a boulder moved, pinning his arm. After five days alone a desperate Aron used a Leatherman-type multi-tool to amputate himself from his arm—after first breaking the bones of his forearm.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid lifted the already very successful careers of both Paul Newman and Robert Redford. In 1969, the year of the release of the film, Robert Redford bought land in Utah that is now the Sundance ski resort, named after his character and where he also located the Sundance Film Festival. Paul Newman founded the Association of Hole In The Wall Camps for children with serious medical conditions and co-founded Newman’s Own, a substantial food corporation that donates all profits to charity.
The final shoot-out may be fiction. Their last confirmed postal addr
ess was the Argentina ranch in 1907. In Bolivia, the police never knew the identity of either of the two men who had been responsible for a mine payroll robbery near Tupiza and who had died from bullet wounds. It was later conjecture by others that the two might have been Butch and Sundance. Searches to discover where the two did die have failed despite a number of exhumations in Bolivia and in the United States. If the two men in Bolivia had been Butch and Sundance, then Butch Cassidy had been forty-two when he died and the Sundance Kid had been forty-one.
Lost
42 was one of the six numbers in Lost. Lost was like Gilligan’s Island, being partly filmed on Oahu, Hawaii.
Some of You Ain’t Heard Nothing Yet
Elvis Presley of the 1910s, ’20s and ’30s was Al Jolson, who could with ease sell out New York’s Winter Garden, and anywhere else, before he made the first full-length ‘talkie’ to then be seen and heard by the biggest every audience of the time around much of the world. The era-ending film was made in 1927 by Warner Bros.* and called The Jazz Singer. In truth The Jazz Singer wasn’t much of talkie, comprising a half dozen songs with a couple of minutes of speech but this included the unbelievably apposite use of a Jolson line taken from his stage performances: ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute I tell yer, you ain’t heard nothing yet’. The fact was that many of the first audiences hadn’t heard anything yet as their local movie theatre didn’t yet possess the equipment needed to play the soundtrack, which meant that they got to see the silent version of the first talkie.
Al Jolson followed up the The Jazz Singer with a movie that was to be the most financially successful film with sound for the next nine years. The Singing Fool included the forty-two year old’s new song, Sonny Boy—the first million-selling song originating from a movie. One of the co-writers of Sonny Boy was the very prolific and successful songwriter, Buddy DeSylva, who had been involved in a less fortunate collaboration with Al Jolson and another writer: all three were successfully sued for damages and future royalties by the publishers of Italian composer Giacomo Puccini after they had lifted a melody from the opera Tosca.
In the Second World War Al Jolson—who had been born in Lithuania—on his own initiative began a marathon journey touring and performing to US troops around the world, part-paying the cost himself. He caught malaria somewhere on the tour and had a lung removed, but five years later when the Korean War started Al Jolson called the White House and promptly flew to Korea to give 42 troop concerts—paying himself—in sixteen days. Shortly after his return from Korea the greatest entertainer of the first half of the twentieth century suffered a heart attack and died aged sixty-four.
* The most notable tragedy in the history of making movies was the death of Sam Warner at the age of forty. Having lead and driven development of the world’s first talkie Sam Warner died of a septic sinus and ear infection the day before the première of The Jazz Singer—where it was immediately recognised that his idea was the future.
Good Vibrations
British Summer Time (42 bpm)
In the list of the one best summer records of all time the only possible choice is In the Summertime (42 beats per minute) by Mungo Jerry. Written by the Ray Dorset from Kent with wrap-around sideburns the song was seemingly at number one for the whole of the summer of 1970 and the best-selling single in the UK that year. World sales are now estimated to be around thirty million copies.
Doubting Sigismund
There is a story about Mozart that says he composed the work called Cantata on Christ’s Grave in 1767 by way of a test that had been set by Archbishop Sigismund of Salzburg who couldn’t believe that the 11-year-old was working unaided. Sigismund issued Mozart with pen, ink and paper, the story goes, and then placed him in solitary confinement. Some days later the Archbish was listening to the world première of GrabMusik (Grave Music, Köchel catalogue K. 42). The piece has continued to be regularly performed but the reality is that the tale of Mozart’s personal 11+ exam is likely to be a myth as details of the test would probably have been mentioned in his father’s extensive writings.
Remarkably, Mozart was to produce his final work while dying at the age of only 35. It was the terminally sublime Requiem in D minor (K. 626) and Mozart began realising the commission was going to be for himself when after being ill for a while and complaining of being poisoned he started swelling horribly—possibly from a streptococcal infection. He died still applying the finishing touches and the great, sad, final piece was completed by friends.
Alternative Decibels
‘Too many decibels!’ is an increasingly commonly heard cry these days. The solution is at hand in the new deciAdams scale, which in one neat pocket-sized ten point scale from 0 to 8 covers everything from the quietest to the loudest sounds you will ever hear.
dA dB Sounds like
0 x 42 0dB Hearing the sound of a mosquito 3 metres away. Perhaps interestingly the mosquito doesn’t hear itself or other mosquitoes. Using an unbelievably sensitive Johnston’s organ at the base of each antenna they detect the air being moved as a result of the rapidly beating wings rather than the changes in air pressure that we hear as sound. Then they have sex
1 x 42 42dB Whispering ‘42 decibels’ is about 42 decibels
2 x 42 84dB The sound level in a busy restaurant and on the cusp of causing hearing loss for the very frequent diner
3 x 42 126dB The Who performing in 1976 at Charlton’s football ground. For several years this was cited as the world’s loudest rock band although Mountain’s bassist, Felix Pappalardi, was probably the first musician to have retired from industrial deafness caused through his own music. Pappalardi—who had notably also produced Cream—was shot dead in 1983 by his 42 year old wife
4 x 42 168dB A cruising 747 airliner. This is the noise level outside the aircraft. The noise in the cabin varies according to how close your seat is to the proud young couple with the remarkably voluble baby
4.2 x 42 178dB Just below the loudest car sound systems. ‘dB drag racing’ folk spend thousands and thousands in their attempts to gain decimals on their decibels. Instantly causes irreparable hearing damage, of course
5 x 42 210dB One ton of TNT. Exploding obviously. Over 192dB sound energy is classified as a shockwave as it moves faster than the speed of sound in air
6 x 42 252dB Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs
7 x 42 294dB Earthquake of 8.6 on the Richter scale
8 x 42 336dB This level is louder than any sound ever thought to have been heard on earth. The Tambora volcanic explosion in Indonesia in 1815 may have been 320dB. It caused Europe’s ‘year without a summer’ leading to famines the following year. Krakatoa—west of Java—in 1883 may have been 310dB
Perfect Time
The three best-selling music albums are 42 minutes long.
# Artist Album Playtime Sales
1 Michael Jackson Thriller 42’ 19” 110 million
2 AC/DC Back in Black 42’ 11” 49 million
3 Pink Floyd The Dark Side of the Moon 42’ 59” 45 million
The Wrap Artistes
Producer Phil Spector made 42 takes when recording Be My Baby with The Ronettes (later making the group’s Ronnie Bennett the first Mrs Spector). The song was number 22 in Rolling Stone magazine’s top 500 songs and is Beach Boy Brian Wilson’s favourite song.
Phil Spector is the only person other than Sir George Martin to produce an album (Let It Be) for The Beatles. The album recorded before that was the White Album featuring the song Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da which had been a long 42 hours in the recording—being Paul McCartney’s creative baby but very strongly not to John Lennon’s taste. Within a few more months The Beatles had permanently un-grouped.
Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da was never performed live by The Beatles, and Sir Paul McCartney waited forty-one years after its release before performing the song on stage. He first sang the words Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da to an audience in Hamburg in December 2009 and the song has featured in subsequent set lists.
Not A Car Park
The English band Level 42 chose their name in recognition of The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and not as is oft-repeated after the world’s tallest car-park. This isn’t easy to locate. Contenders include the 20-storey robotic car storage facility at VW’s plant in Wolfsburg, Germany, or an interesting interleaved 8+8 design in Nottingham, England. Anyway, later, in 1985, Terry Gilliam’s film Brazil, has the central character Sam Lowry (played by Jonathan Pryce) living on Level 42.
Kings Croaking
The singing legend known to his many fans as ‘The King’ died at home aged 42. Jimmy Zámbó was a best-selling pop singer in Hungary with an, almost impossible, four octave voice. He was at the top of the charts at the time of his death in Christmas 2001. Jimmy died after apparently putting a 9mm Beretta bullet into his head.
Elvis Presley, another best-selling pop singer, was also called ‘The King’, also died at home, and was also 42. Elvis died after putting a medium-sized bowl of ice-cream and six biscuits (cookies) into his stomach.