Once in a Blue Moon
Blue Moon, blew me away. But I’ll refrain from any cliché, about how this reminds me of the kind of movie “they” used to make back in the old days. Despite the time and place and mood within which this movie is set.
In truth, they never did. Cinematically and thematically speaking… make this sort of film. One filled to overflowing with words; virtually every one a gem? All in the absence of even a hint of a plot or smattering of action? Not even a raised voice? Yes. Blessedly refraining from any old Hollywood tropes, as this movie at first glance, would seem to be about show business. Say the likes of, “YOU’LL NEVER WORK IN THIS TOWN AGAIN!” Though this would turn out to be true for the real Lorenz Hart. As played by Ethan Hawke. Alcoholic and broken at age 47, he would die just a few months after the time in which this film is set.
While the ads and promotion might suggest it being a biopic— not a favorite genre of mine— it is what I’ll call a bio-mo. As in, a biographical moment in a life. And here, an imagined one at that by screenwriter Robert Kaplow. A moment that takes place in "reel life," lasting about an hour and a half at the famed Broadway theater haunt, Sardi’s.
The movie had me at the front door. Sardi's is a place of some personal connection. I had a sizable 60th birthday party there on the uppermost floor, have dined there at off hours on non-occasions and will drop by the bar from time to time for a classic martini when I feel like stepping back into the 1940’s. Which is the era depicted in the film. Specifically, March 31, 1943. Following the opening of Oklahoma! A night on which Lorenz Hart recognizes, much to his dismay, that his one-time collaborator of 24 years, Richard Rogers, with his new partner Oscar Hammerstein II have created a smash hit. A game changer in the realm of the Broadway musical.
As might a jilted lover, Hart tries desperately at this ill opportune moment to reconnect with Rogers who has come here to celebrate his great achievement. Certainly not to discuss a business relationship which ended owing to Hart’s alcoholism. Resulting in a deterioration of his work habits and creative output. Which had included scores from successful Broadway musicals and well over 200 songs. “My Funny Valentine,” “The Lady is a Tramp,” “Manhattan,” “Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered,” and yes of course, “Blue Moon.” A few refrains of which will slip into the proceedings by way of a singer at a baby grand that once was in the main room at Sardi’s back in the day.
Beyond trying to reunite with Rogers, Hart is also in the process of pathetically trying to transform a mentor relationship into one of romance, with a bright Yale student 27 years his junior (played by a stunning Margaret Qualley). Out of which I can imagine a catch phrase one day as uttered by this character Elizabeth, if the movie were ever to catch on…”Just not in that way.”
At the end of the day and the beginning of scrolling credits, what you have seen is not really a movie about show business or song writing or the Broadway stage. Themes of seeking love and acceptance, and the jealousy and loss that can come about in that pursuit, are universal. Yet it all could not have resonated as it does, but for the tour de force performance by Ethan Hawke.
Replete with wit, charm, heartbreak, loneliness and an underlying tortured intensity, he delivers an Oscar worthy performance. Ultimately, he is the movie. Linklater had held onto the script for ten years waiting for Hawke “to age into the part,” before deciding to begin shooting it.
Nominated four times in total as a writer and an actor, Ethan Hawke has come up empty. Perhaps the Academy does love him. Just not in that way.
La Baguette
1.
Narrow streets converge at a corner
where food merchants are plying their trade;
a hubbub in the stillness of a postcard depiction.
A woman had then sashayed on by
on Rue Dauphine
as only French women can.
Who has directed her diagonal cut
across this Parisian street? Buñuel?
Hip thrust forward, la vie d’amour
implicit in the every step,
her dress on this sultry day clinging;
her hand encircling an unbagged baguette
long and lean and lancing the air
a master stroke in alliteration.
A man stands transfixed in speculation.
With whom would she share it?
Taste it? Tear it?
Leaving specks of crust on pouty lips
the soft dough filling her mouth?
2.
He crosses Pont Neuf, a bridge built in halves
becoming enjoined after twenty six years.
Not long a span of time for stone
but a good-size chunk of a marital life.
That cliched better half lies languid in a room
of long-stemmed walls and painted roses
time having passed in beige.
She notes as he enters,
his trench coat twistingly belted;
a would-be Bogart in that parting scene.
Autumn winds on this ashen day,
have had their way with his desperate hair
resulting in enchanting disarray.
Eyes turn to the baguette he has brought unexpected.
She gives him a smile as long as the Seine.
Subtitles follow in the space beneath them.
Word of the Month
Etymology
Latin, hum, whisper
First Known Use
1826, in the meaning defined above
Used in a Sentece
Dread creeps in; the ear instinctively fastens on anything, whether fire-hiss or bird call or susurrus of leaves, that will save it from this unknown emptiness.
—The Economist, May 17, 2018
Veterans Day
Originally called Armistice Day, which had become a legal Federal holiday in 1938, it was officially changed to Veterans Day in 1954, by a proverbial stroke of the Presidential pen. Eisenhower’s. A day of remembrance of those who served in all wars of American involvement.
I especially think of it as this November 11th approaches, what with this year being the 50th anniversary of the conclusion of the Viet Nam War. One which had begun on another November day in 1955, ten years before America’s entering it. Ending on April 30, 1975, with Americans being airlifted out of it. Which left an indelible imprint on our national psyche. Certainly, for those who went. But also for those who chose not to. Causing schisms within families, peer groups and political parties. This last, might be said to be the beginning of the Democrats losing its core blue-collar constituency. One that has tended to subscribe to the axiom, "My country right or wrong." Put to the test by that war.
In was a cold day in November when I along with three friends took to the National Mall in Washington in protest. A protest that for us was never against troops who were serving in, and the many who had died in, what we saw as an aimless war. But rather a plea to end it; to bring them home. Though that was not the case for all present that day unfortunately, and on other days of protest that would follow. But this is not a November day on which to litigate that war. Yet again. But to remember and honor those who served in it.
I felt honored when Marvin Wolf—who served in Nam as a combat correspondent and photographer, who along with Joseph Gallagher, New York Times bestselling author of We Were Soldiers and Once…and Young—asked if I might write a poem for their 2020 collaboration, They Were Soldiers The Sacrifices and Contributions of Our Viet Nam Veterans.
A book about which legendary filmmaker Ken Burns has said:
“We have conveniently and collectively erased the Viet Nam War from most of our memories---it didn’t work out the way our myths tell us American wars should---but we cannot erase the experience of those who fought in it. They are brought to life magnificently in They Were Soldiers, which is a vivid and heroic reminder that we forget at our own peril.”
Here is the sonnet I submitted, as it appears at the opening of the book.
Veteran Reflections at the Wall
Remains of casualties were sent back home;
Their names now in Optima typeface in granite.
The whys and wherefores of war end in tomes
While inscribed in this black wall, mirrored and mammoth,
Tapered head to foot and full:
58,000 who signed up or were summoned.
For vets who come here there's never a lull
In remembrance of Nam nor their shabby homecoming.
Faces lined with living through generations
Sons turning into fathers; the American dream.
Though others still wounded seek compensation
Denied the proverbial peaches and cream.
"Those who forget history..." we know the rest
Sloughing through rice paddies they passed that test."
—Ron Vazzano
Quote of the Month
"A rowboat is the only form of transportation where you are not facing the direction you are going...this would be good for people who are obsessed with the past but are afraid of the future."
--- Steven Wright
(from his novel Harold)
Ah, Distinctly I Remember
It Was in the Bleak November
On November 9, 1965, as we were about to sit down to an early family dinner of spaghetti and meatballs, the apartment suddenly went black. “What the…?”
Our first thoughts were to blame it on the faulty maintenance that characterized our tenement building. Then looking out the window and seeing we were not alone in the dark, shifting the blame to our faulty neighborhood. But upon turning on my trusty transistor radio, we immediately realized that what came to be called The Great Northeastern Blackout, encompassed parts of eight states and extended into Ontario, Canada. Yes, something far beyond the small world in which we lived.
There was some initial concern that this eternal Cold War with the Soviets had suddenly turned hot? We were about to be attacked? Not so farfetched, for just three autumns prior, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought us as close as the world had ever been to a nuclear war. But thankfully, and soon enough, we would learn that this blackout was due to oldest of reasons for when things go awry: human error. Someone asleep at the switch. But whatever inconvenience this caused 30 million of us on that night and into morning, I’ve come to view it on a personal level, as an omen of the familial trauma of what was to come just three days later.
The week had started off rather weirdly. On that Monday the 8th, front and center news announced that Dorothy Kilgallen was dead. Apparent overdose? Suicide? For those unaware, she was best known as a panelist on the wildly popular live Sunday night show, “What’s My Line?” And had she not appeared on there just the night before? And all seemed well. The usual. I frankly don’t remember that particular program in real time but have since looked it up.
As a famed national columnist of Hearst newspapers for 27 years, she'd long
been alleged to have had critical information behind JFK's assassination. Which according to many conspiracy theorists, is the reason that she was murdered. Though the cause of her death was presumed to be suicide. Or to give her the benefit of the doubt, due to some unintended overdose of medication?
According to Catholic teaching, at least at the time, a person who dies by suicide was automatically denied a funeral Mass. Suicide was considered a Mortal sin (capital M). Such a transgression would be automatic grounds for denial of this sacred rite of the church.
Kilgallen got the benefit of the doubt. Whereas my uncle, owing to the bad press following his death alleging him to have Mafia ties, was denied such a funeral mass. Which takes me to that Friday November 12th. And my uncle's murder.
Enroute home from his job as a bouncer at Trude Heller’s (“…operated from the early 1960s to the early 1980s, it has been described as the only truly "in" spot in Greenwich Village…”), he was shot dead while seated in his car by an assailant(s). Who were never identified.
The story as reported in the Daily News—along with his picture—described him a someone “…who had never achieved the lowest rung on the Mafia ladder.” I’d written to the editor saying, “Whoever said he was trying?” (To climb such a ladder). To which of course, I never got a response.
Owing to such presumptuous press, my uncle was not given any benefit of the doubt by the ecclesiastical powers that be. In the "eyes of the church," he was living a life in mortal sin. Ergo, denied a funeral mass. Kilgallen on the other hand, though possibly committing the egregious sin of suicide (a view thank God they no longer hold), did get the benefit of the doubt. Such was at the crux of my plea at Cardinal Spellman's residence on Madison Avenue behind St. Patrick's Cathedral. Which was denied. Though I was told that my uncle, the son of loving immigrants from Calabria, could be buried in consecrated ground. In other words, a compromise of sorts. "So, don’t blow it kid.” Not voiced, but implied, by the pompous priest hearing my "case," as it were.
I don’t know if one can ever pinpoint loss of innocence. But at age 20, that bleak week of that November comes pretty close. So many lessons on how life and the world really works. Filled as it is with so many wrongdoings and inconsistencies. On so many fronts.
We buried my uncle that following Tuesday, November 16th, at St. Raymond's Cemetery in The Bronx. But the memory of it all on this dubious 60th anniversary week coming up, remains very much alive.
MuseLetter \’myüz-‘le-tər noun
1: a personal message, inspired by a muse of one's own creation, addressed to a person or organization, in the course of which, the sender becomes absorbed in thought; especially turning something over in the mind meditatively and often inconclusively.
2: a letter from a poet, or one who envisions oneself as such, in which he or she “muses” on that which is perceived to be news, or newsworthy, usually in some ironic or absurd way.
No September 2025 issue.