The Films That Have No Smokers In Them: The Movies of Nicole Holofcener by Dave Jaffe

   The Movies of Nicole Holofcener: Part One.




    Nicole Holofcener has become one of my favourite movie directors. Holofcener is in her late fifties, lives in southern California and sets some of her films in New York City. "She's a bit like Woody Allen," some people say about her films. I don't think so, though she knows Allen very well. After all, her mother's second husband was Charles H.Joffe who produced dozens of Allen's movies.
      Hiolofcener's one of my favourite directors because so far in all the films I've seen that she scripted and directed, nobody smokes tobacco. People drink a bit in her flicks and in one of her films, namely 'Walking and Talking', two people smoke pot together. Sometimes they drink alcohol. yet they don't smoke cigarettes.
   Now Holofcener may or may not be as great a director as say Orson Welles, Francois Truffaut, Martin Scorsese, Atom Egoyan, Lena Wertmuller or even Woody Allen. Yet in nearly all the films I've seen people smoke cigarettes. And smoking is dangerous. Every year 15,000 Canadians die from smoking. Smokers have strokes, or get cancer or their hearts just stop ticking. So they die often in their sixties or even earlier.
     "Cigarettes are dangerous," one of my previous doctors told me. "Stay away from them."  Holfcener's characters do.
     That doesn't make Holfcener a great director for some critics. Her films are mostly about women interacting in families or friendships and sometimes they hate each other or hurt each other. "There's no story line," one woman told me after seeing the film 'Please Give'. This may be true but the interactions that women have are the story. Still, whatever the flaws or lack of action in this woman's films, her flicks don't show glamorous film stars smoking. That can turn young people onto this most dangerous activity.
    I like this woman's work. Her films aren't violent, bloody or physically brutal. People hurt each other but mostly through words. Holofcener's main star Catherine Keener never lights up a cigarette in any of the films I've seen her in. For that, I thank them both. And I also than Ariel Levy a writer for 'The New Yorker' who turned me on to this woman' work. Holofcener is I believe an advocate of not smoking. Her films are anyway.

Inside Unity: A Poem by Dave Jaffe.

  Inside Unity: A Poem by Dave Jaffe.




    There's no kneeling
    Only healing
    Inside this church.




   No talk here of the Gospels
  Or Moses or much of Christ.
  If there is a God
  Who has trod
  On this earth
  This Creator's light
  Splashes down on our faces
   From a blue sky
  That hovers way above the church's roof.




  The words of the minister
  Aren't sinister.
  They stroke my scarred face
  Stitch up the epidermal surface
  Where a week ago
  A surgeon's knives
  Scraped cancer away
  From the dark floor of my mind.


  This minister talks of healing
  Not sealing
  Away stark memories of the past
  In locked vaults of times gone by.
  His words gently touch my skin.
  "Life if good," he says.
  To me this means
  There is no sin.



   Outside
  The city clears its throat
   From the mouths of a million cars.


  I'm sorry.
 I can't worry anymore about poisons
 That scud around in the earth, the air and the water
 Or the starving billions
Or those led  to slaughter
 In Syria or elsewhere.
 For now I am healed.
 No need to steal
 Fragile moments of happiness
 From the present of my life,
 Or look in fright
  Toward its end.


 "In unity," someone said,
  "there is strength."
  In this Unity Church I have found happiness.
  Just enough to return for another day.


 

The Elites: A Poem by Dave Jaffe.

    The Elites by Dave Jaffe




    The elites
    They don't sleep in the streets.
    They run the world
     They weren't hurled
    Into the harsh universe of to-day
    To struggle from pay cheque to pay cheque.
 


      Their eyes rest calmly
      On the huge landscapes they own.
      They want to cut
      Social programs to the bone.
      And they do.


      They run the world.
      Men and women
      Armed with endless bank accounts
     And countless stocks and shares
      They proudly climb society's stairs
       That lead to the top
       Of the block.


       They're the elites.
       They love to meet
       At Davos Bohemian Grove
       And other retreats.
       Here these few thousand few
       Plan how to subdue
      And rule the world forever
      They usually do
      They're the elites..

They Are The Young; A Poem by Dave Jaffe

  They Are The Young.
     


    They are the young,
    I am the old
    An irritable aging scold.


    They are the young
     Their hopes aren't hung
     From dying branches
     Or wrapped in brown leaves
     That scuttle in the wind on the cold cold ground
    
       Their energetic noise
        Pushes against playground walls,
       Flies through upscale malls.
       Delights itself
       Worries teachers, tense sales staff
       And preachers.


     They don't moan or cry
      Over the crimes of Stalin or Hitler
      Or the deaths at My Lai.
       They know nothing about these things.
       Or anything thank God
      About the sod beneath the grass in Vietnam.
      Where unexploded bombs,
      Some made in Canada
      Still lie and wait to explode
      In innocent human hands.


     They clutch cell phones
      Text messages of joy and sometimes hate.
      See pornography on the web
      Have names like Seb
       Melissa, Ariana Caleb and Eden.


      They don't worry
      About shrinking social programs in Sweden
      Or elsewhere.
     
       They are the young
        Immersed ion fun
        In sports, noise
        And toys
        And other girls and boys.
        They are the young
         Forever moving.


     
       
     








 
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Ends and Odds: The Ravings Of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Review Of An Old Movie

   Review Of An Old Film "Goodfellas': "Crime Doesn't Pay'




      'Goodfellas' by now is an ancient film. It came out in 1990, nearly thirty years ago. Yet I bought a DVD version of the film from a video store about a week ago.( I am lucky. This video store called 'Black Dog Video' is one of only two or three video stores left in Vancouver.)
      What is 'Goodfellas' about? Mostly crime. It's full of violence murder and bloodshed done by gangsters. Some of these men are Italian-Americans: some aren't. They live in New York City from the 1950's to the 1970's. What the film proves simply is that crime doesn't pay. "Any new criminal starting out on  a life of crime," writes the American sociologist Randall Collins, "has a lot to,learn and many connections to make."
    In this sense the young Henry Hill (Ray Liotto) is lucky. Growing up in Brooklyn in the early 1950's, he learns a lot and makes connections as a young adolescent. He runs messages for criminals, survives beatings by his father, and by his early 20's is a full fledged criminal. Now he has made friends with Tommy De Vito(Joe Pesci) and Jimmy "The Gent" Conway (Robert De Niro). These three and others do horrible things. They extort money, sell stolen goods, brutalize other people and in the case of Conway and De Vito kill quite a few people.
     As a very young man Hill admires the Mafia don played by Paul Sorvino. Near the film's end he denounces him and Conway to the police. Tommy De Vito is by now dead, killed by another gangster.
     The film directed by Martin Scorsese and scripted by Scorsese and Nicolas Pileggi is based on Pileggi's book called "Wiseguy: Life In A Mafia Family'.The movie is told in a semi-documentary style by Hill and his wife Karen (Lorraine Bracio). 'Goodfellas' is full of scenes of meals which serve up delicious food, visits to night clubs and robberies and murder. Yet  the old adage  "Crime doesn't pay" comes true. Nearly all the criminals end up killed or behind bars. Hill survives but only be turning state's evidence. "Never rat on your friends," Conway tells Hill  near the film's beginning. Hill breaks this rule and survives.
     Scorsese's film is one of the finest gangster films I've seen. Yet it's not for the faint of heart. These 'Goodfellas' are anything but good. They're mostly killers who end up dead or in prison. And its's in prison where they belong.

Ends and Odds: The Ravings Of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Two Cheers For The Hiipies. Part Four by Dave Jaffe.

   Two Cheers For The Hippies. Part Four/




         Many people didn't Like the hippies. Yet business people saw money to be made in this new group. Businessmen produced and sold bright psychedelic posters. Music companies produced rock music by the Doors, Janis Joplin, and Big Brother And The Holding Company. Drug paraphernalia was soon being sold. Meanwhile millions of men and women grew their hair long, practiced what mainstream society called 'free love',and for a time scorned marriage and lived openly with a man or a woman. The changing lifestyles were in some ways a peaceful revolution.
     Then in October 1973 the Oil Producing Exporting Countries threw the Western world a curve ball. In the wake of the Israeli-Arab 1973 OPEC countries raised the price of oil  400 per cent .This price hike set off a worldwide wave of inflation . "In France," wrote economist Robert Heilbroner, "prices rose by 75 per cent in the five years after the OPEC oil shock." In Italy, Heilbroner pointed out, prices rose by 125 per cent, while in Britain prices soared up by 185 per cent.
       "Around the capitalist world production began to fall and unemployment began to rise. In the U.S. the G.N.P. fell 9 per cent  and joblessness rose by 85 per cent." The same trends hit Canada too. The affluence of the 1960's which did exist side by side with large pockets of poverty, seemed to vanish. Now the live and let live ethic of the hippies gave way to a far harsher competitive ethic.
     Fifty years after Jack Newfield wrote his article on the hippies in the 'Village Voice' much has changed. Newfield died many years ago. So has Jerry Rubin. 'The Village Voice' has closed up  shop along with many other countercultural papers, Across the world tyrants and tough rulers like U.S. president Donald Trump. China's Xi Xinping. Russia's Vladimir Putin and other heads of state rule the roost. Yet despite all this, the hippies have left their footprints on the sands of time.
      Casual sex, casual dress, and casual drug use that the hippies pioneered, has been embraced by many people. Marijuana, the drug that hippies openly smoked , is now legal in Canada, Uruguay and many American states. Thousands of young unmarried couples, live together just as hippies did. The hippies that so many people scorned and sometimes even attacked did  help make parts of the world better places to live in.
   "Give flowers to the rebels that failed," said some early 20th century progressives. The hippies also pushed for what they called "Flower Power." They may have failed but they also in part succeeded.
 They should be remembered.

Ends and Odds: The Ravings Of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe: Two Cheers For The Hiippies - Part Three by Dave Jaffe

    Two Cheers For The Hippies by Dave Jaffe: Part Three




       " Peace and Love' may have been the motto of many hippies. Yet there were dangerous moments in the hippie world too. Bikers often visited the hippie world and bullied these young people. Some of the young  people were strung out on amphetamines or crashed after bad acid trips. Free clinics staffed by volunteers sprung up to help the injured and sick people.
     Meanwhile the great rebellions of the late 1960's provoked a reaction from conservatives. Police and National Guard people shot and killed more than 160 people in the riots that erupted after Martin Luther King Junior was killed in 1968. Police attacked demonstrators and others who came to Chicago in 1968 to protest outside the Democratic Convention. Then police raided the headquarters of Black Panthers across America in 1969 and shot and killed Fred Hampton in Chicago.
      In Berkeley California students and street people clashed with police forces in the summer of 1969 as the young people tried to defend "People's Park' from the local government. The National Guard killed four student demonstrators at Kent State University in the spring of 1970  and three students at Jackson State University. These students and tens of thousands of others were protesting the American invasion of Cambodia.
     "Just watch me," Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau told t.v. reporter Tim Ralfe in the fall of 1970 when Ralfe asked the p.m. how far he would go to suppress the terrorism  of the Front de Liberation de Quebec or the F.L.Q. In the wake of two F.L.Q. kidnappings and one murder, Trudeau announced a War Measures Act in October1970 that embraced the whole of Canada. Hundreds of people had their homes searched and many ended up in prison for a few weeks undergoing interrogation by police.
      The cadres of the F.L.Q. like many other hard core left wingers scorned the hippies. Francois Simard a former F.L.Q.'er wrote a book on his political journey into and out of terrorism. In his memoir Simard trashed the hippies. Another man but this time from the richest one per cent  swung to the right in the wake of the rebellions of the 1960's.
   Nelson Rockefeller, the ultra-rich governor of New York State or"Rocky" as Rockefeller was known, had at one time supported single payer medicare  and a woman's right to an abortion. .He had also voted to build a state wide system of hospitals and a number of universities. In Albany which was  the state's capital, massive buildings went up that helped grow support for Rockefeller among the unionized members of the building trade unions. Now prisoners in the state prison at Attica rebelled in 1971 and seized guards as  hostages.
      The prisoners invited journalists and political activists onto prison grounds. "You're doing a great job buddy," Rockefeller told journalist Tom Wicker who phoned the governor and pleaded with him to come to Attica to defuse the rebellion. Instead Rockefeller sent armed forces and police to Attica. The police and others shot and killed three guards and dozens of prisoners. The Attica uprising was the last rebellion of the 1960's and 1970's and it was crushed.
     Then a few years later Rockefeller brought in a sweeping anti-drug law that sent thousands of
   young mostly African-American men to prison. This law was a precursor of President Bill Clinton's 'Three Strikes And You're Out' law that swelled the ranks of prisoners across America in the 1990's and beyond. In any case the era of liberalism that helped fuel the number of hippies and an era of liberalism in the U.S.A. was coming to an end.