Teenage MJ holds his own with the legendary tap gurus The Nicholas Brothers:

McCartney & Michael do the flash act:

Apollo Theater, 6/27/09

To reflect upon a past age is to cast that age in innocence. “It was thus… that New York managed its transitions: conspiring to ignore them till they were well over, and then, in all good faith, imagining that they had taken place in a preceding age.”

Newland Archer is an impassioned man ensnared by the age that bred him, and however advanced in mind he engages his own age, he fails to transcend it.  The Countess Olenska entrances his innermost being, but the shared attraction which evolves between them is only consummated by a few desperate clutches and kisses in the outlands of a West 23rd Street salon and winter carriage-ride from Jersey City.

Were the “early seventies” so innocent?  Janey Archer, Newland’s unmarriageable sister, is a congenital shut-in, but the girl harbors an imagination easily incited to luridness by the merest table gossip.  The family withholds scandal from Janey and have grown to politely ignore her strange exclamations apropos of nothing.

And Edith Wharton is unmerciful in the girth of naiveté she affords May Welland, Newland’s betrothed.  Newland is somewhat in awe of May’s prodigious ignorance of human despair and corruption, likening her perception to a certain eyelessness. “’And all the while, I suppose,’ he thought, ‘real people were living somewhere, and real things happening to them…’” Only when May is near death does Newland sympathetically recognize the nuance of her untouched vision, and the force of an ancient sexism of manners, wondering “how many generations of the women who had gone to her making had descended bandaged to the family vault?” There is something Absolute regarding May’s existence within the old Fifth Avenue habitat, as if the high fabrication of tradition which she is the corporal ideal is only its most realistic foundation, surviving by fittest falsehood.

Society is not without its interlopers, usually imported from Europe, like the decadently principled Olenski, and Julius Beaufort, who “passed for an Englishman” and lives with his wife (a South Carolina belle) in a stupendously opulent mansion.  The Beauforts are the first to roll a red velvet carpet down their steps for invitees come from the opera house, and the guests are tended by footmen in silk-stockings.  Newland is ingratiated by the site of Beaufort’s “library hung with Spanish leather and furnished with Buhl and malachite, where a few men were chatting and putting on their dancing-gloves.”

Newland knows well that scandal is vital to this world, and with Madame Olenska he commits a subterfuge of appearances, heated but unwilling.   But “there was always a traitor in the citadel; and after he (or generally she) had surrendered the keys, what was the use of pretending that it was impregnable?“  Beaufort carries on an affair with Madame Olenska that disgusts Newland however much to him it makes sense - Beaufort is bohemian in ways that Newland is not: “his habits were dissipated, his tongue was bitter, his antecedents were mysterious.” For the Countess these Eurosleaze qualities are akin to those of Olenski, her “abominable husband.”

Beaufort may be a Madoffesque lech, but at least he is a liver of life among a community of naysayers to the human species.  This community is most severely exampled by Mr. Henry van der Luyden, whose New York genealogy, now “faded into a kind of super-terrestrial twilight,” is one of several family histories described by Edith in vivid circuitous colors.  The van der Luydens are “direct descendants of the first Dutch governor of Manhattan,” and Mrs. Louisa van der Luyden’s “mother had been the granddaughter of Colonel du Lac, of an old Channel Island family, who had fought under Cornwallis and had settled in Maryland, after the war, with his bride, Lady Angelica Trevenna, fifth daughter of the Earl of St. Austrey.” Even in this esteemed lineage there is treason.

When Mrs. Archer arrives to the van der Luyden house Upstate seeking the help of Henry on behalf of Countess Olenska, Louisa is hesitant to disturb him – he is in his room upstairs reading the newspaper.  “She said ‘reading the newspaper’ in the tone in which a Minister’s wife might have said ‘Presiding at a Cabinet meeting’ not from any arrogance of mind, but because the habit of a lifetime, and the attitude of her friends and relations, had led her to consider Mr. van der Luyden’s least gesture as having an almost sacerdotal importance.”  Of course, Henry van der Luyden is charmed, too, by the Countess, as chastely as Beaufort is beastly, and his sanction gains Madame Olenska her re-introduction to Society.

Newland is a cerebral libertine, leanly heroic in his insistence to hold fast to a society which caused him, no matter how loathsome he grows of it. He dips eagerly into the books of Herbert Spencer, and Edith uses figurative language that evokes terms of evolutionary theory and molecular science.  Newland broods, “And of what account was anybody’s past, in the huge kaleidoscope where all the social atoms spun around on the same plane?”  And when faced with a certain alienation from his wife, “he shivered a little, remembering some of the new ideas in his scientific books, and the much-cited instance of the Kentucky cave-fish, which had ceased to develop eyes because they had no use for them. What if, when he had bidden May Welland to open hers, they could only look out blankly at blankness?”

Newland’s acts of self-denial are steadfast, hurtful, complex. As a literary figure, Newland assumes mammoth sociological weight – the embodiment of a bridge between eras and the experience of being a first, lone walker of that bridge, while the dark and windy vistas of the old world recede in relevance, in reality. As a story character, Newland bears such weight with the artistry of one who equivocates the world’s pain at major psychic cost. In the end, a refusal to enter a French appartement summates Newland’s test in which the final turn of the key locks the experience of memory forever.

In 1930, competing American car mavens Chrysler and General Motors were directly and indirectly responsible for the two tallest buildings in the world. Walter Chrysler would have the diamond-studded, spear-shot spire of his titanic building designed in the style of the front-grill of a 1928 Chrysler automobile. John Jakob Raskob, the former V.P. of GM (and credit aggravator of the stock exchange) would corral the financing of the Empire State Building.

Today, in consequence of events down at the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Customs House nee’ Southern District Bankruptcy Court, the moguls of these auto behemoths might have thrown themselves from the tops of their own towers and splattered at the foot of the Capitol building – their dismemberments seized and beholden to Union retirees and Canadian taxpayers.

The present discourse has repeated more times than John 3:16 that the world is in financial crisis of such magnitude not felt since the Depression.  The Depression began as the Empire State and Chrysler buildings capped off a major wave of idealistic skyscraper construction in NYC - in the first 30 years of the vertical century NYC built the tallest building in the world every few years, and was the only city enlisted in that race.  Rockefeller Center notwithstanding, new office buildings in the city would abate up through the early 1950s, when Bauhaus refugees were commissioned for glass quadrangles like the seminal United Nations, and the Seagrams Building on Sixth Avenue’s midtown corporate media gulch.

It would seem that the bankruptcy of Chrysler & GM and their assumption by the Federal government, though perhaps unprecedented in United States annals, is the sort of fail-safe by which neoconservative fiscal morality always knew its bloated policies could safely fail - that such a prodigious lack of respect of centralized government should result in the saddling of citizens with the fat limp dick hot potato that these businesses have become.  The Empire State Building had turned to the public, too, but took its cue more from Coney Island than Congress: the infamous “Empty” State Building would compensate for its initial 77% vacancy rate by selling tickets as a tourist attraction, as if its office space were as inconsequentially rentable as the Eiffel Tower.  The observation deck has been visited by everyone from King Kong to Castro.

In the early 20th century, before the buffer of the Depression and World War II wiped out the slang and jargon of the roaring twenties and hobohemiando thirties, skyscrapers were still influenced by old Europe:  The Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower in 1909 modeled upon San Marco in Venice, the Gothic kracken scales of the Woolworth Building in 1913, the Art Decoratif of Empire State and Chrysler.  It might only seem appropriate that, as eighty years ago American industrialists sought Italian stonecutters to adorn their entranceways with grotesques and gargoyles, now Chrysler supplicates for the investment of Fiat - a company whose spoof acronym is the epitome of continental post-WWII devolution - Fix It Again Tony!

Also, regarding Art Deco skyscrapers, the tallest building in Lower Manhattan since 9/11, at 952 ft, is the American International Building at 70 Pine Street.  It is a Machine Age syringe from 1932 that, though the tallest, does not command the skyline and has afforded zero New York mythology.  But insurance fraudster AIG resides here, only a few months ago Bailout Public Enemy #1.  Old President Bush always called the original economic stimulus plan “a shot in the arm.”   Who knew that shot might be the 200 foot antennaes of New York City’s tallest towers?  The AIG building just sold for about a little more than a three-story townhouse on East 64th St. in 2006 - its plush executive observatory newly inhabited by the up-flown polyglot phantom wharf merchants of 1640s Nieuw Amsterdam. . .

Martin Mull, the comedic persona, plays best the sardonic professional whose common sense is tyrannized by an unruly, nonsensical world. In Serial that world is the New-Age ethos turning everyone into Esalen zombies; in Rented Lips it is Hollywood, a stand-in for all forces that apparently stifle creative expression. Mull does not countenance idealism and his call for order is not puritan or status quo. His characters are ever quicker than the audience, and no matter how self-deprecating or schlubby, he always has a smart-ass line that, even if it isn’t his cleverest you want to laugh because it is Martin Mull saying it, from just below the tawny primmed mustache and professorially deadpan eyes, like a fed-up Roast-master. Much of Mull’s schtick is derived from his starring TV turn on Fernwood 2 Night, as campy and haughty wide-collared talk show host Barth Gimble. He has a rich pedigree as a supporting character in 80s comedies, like the smarmy prick boss in Mr. Mom - and in TV, having showed up on the likes of transgressive sitcoms Dream-On (1990) and Get A Life (1990). Mull’s way is the believable weirdo with a bit of dimension: Pat Coletti, the millionaire next-door neighbor in OC & Stiggs (1985, R. Altman) who, when asked “What do you do?” answers, “Basically, I drink;” or Gene Parmesan, the abject master of disguise on Arrested Development (2004). This author has yet to view Mull’s performance as Colonel Mustard in the Clue adaptation (1985), but it suits the man that he would enliven a boardgame character.

Serial unravels in Marin County, CA, at the aftermath of the Me Me Me Decade. Martin Mull, as Harvey Holroyd, is the straight guy whose life comes homeopathically crumbling down: daughter joins a psycho love cult; a silly affair with the sultry orgy-queen; the old-fashioned friend with whom Holroyd commutes by ferry to work that ends up on a debauched suicidal Quaaludes binge; Tuesday Weld, as Mrs. Holroyd, beholden to the coked-out pill-pushing Frederick Perlsesque shrink; and a gay biker club headed by closet CEO Christopher Lee a/k/a ‘Skull.’ The romp is well-tinged by the Lalo Schifrin cheeseball lite FM theme song, and the Catskills zinger-style comedy applies to an ultra-contemporary satire which, today, almost 30 years later, has removed the movie from the pop discourse in ways that no-brainers (though classics) like Caddyshack and Vacation have lingered in influence. Very rarely has Mull been given the star power with which he shines in Serial, with a most apt predicament of the loose and sunny sham 70s stiffening into the glitzy and shammier 80s.

In Rented Lips, Mull is Archie Powell, a loser who makes socially conscience documentaries and still lives with his mother. Shady investors agree to give Archie money to make his dream movie about Native American farming, on the condition that he also make a porno flick, and the hack actors involved will star in both productions. It is a problem for the movie that there is never any sex. A Mull fan would expect prodigiously smart and smutty gags upon such a premise, but a whole swath of pertinent trashy gags is lost. Instead, the movie does The Producers vein: silly musical numbers with Navajo and Nazi costumes set to a score by Van Dyke Parks. The script is credited solely to Martin Mull – perhaps the calamity in the movie apes its own making. The principled Artist stands for the purity of his Art within the shackles of an unfair and cruel system. It’s the actor’s territory surely but not one for the Mull canon.

It is easy to forget that Woody once was married to Louise Lasser, and accordingly she was featured in his early films. In Bananas, she is a young collegiate dabbling in lefty politics and Zen Buddhism and women’s lib. Woody, as Fielding Mellish, just wants to get her in the mood: his response to Louise expounding upon her study of philosophy: “Do you like Chinese?”

Shamelessly knockabout when ladies are mugged on the subway:

Mellish is shamefully knockabout transacting porno:

Bananas is a ripe example of Woody putting his nightclub act into movie form - scenes are tied together with punchlines and zingers. Mellish has a recurring dream, where he is bound to a cross and carried on the shoulders of cowled figures down a NYC sidestreet - but his fantasy of religious sacrifice is thwarted when a rival crucifixion comes along and tries to take his own death pageant’s parking space. It is as if a scene from a Woody Allen short story finding life in the script.

Woody’s directing style is vintage late 60s/early 70s, hip and slapdash, delightfully old-fashioned though the political schtick is timeless - especially in the wise use of Howard Cosell, color commentating the Mellish honeymoon:

Mellish is put on trial for his treasonous activities and goes pro se:

Louise Lasser’s Nancy is whiny, humorless, shallow and is only interested in Fielding when she mistakes him for a courageous revolutionary leader - she is one of Woody’s least cerebral female relationships and the most marginal of his infamous companions; and it only emboldens Fielding Mellish as a classic total hysterical loser.