You've probably already seen this story, which Yahoo has highlighted. It's about a man trying to exchange $20 million dollars in decaying bills, which were apparently unearthed somewhere on the Texas-Mexico border.
The lucky fellow who "found" the loot has given sketchy and contradictory details as to the money's origin. If you've seen the film No Country For Old Men, you may want to hazard a guess.
That movie (and Cormac McCarthy's novel) takes its inspiration -- if that is the word -- from a real-life drug smuggling operation involving (among many others) Jimmy and Joe Chagra. The film, set in 1980, references the then-recent murder of a judge in Texas. This would be Judge John Wood, "Maximum John," who was all set to try one of the Chagras. Wood was killed by hit man Charles Harrelson -- father of actor Woody Harrelson. In the film, Woody plays a character apparently modelled after his father.
Since we're being discursive, perhaps I can take this opportunity to mention that There Will Be Blood -- last year's other great film -- also reflected real life in interesting ways. The character Daniel Plainview was derived (by way of Upton Sinclair's very different novel Oil!) from the real-life oil baron Edward Doheny. See the list of similarities here.
The private bowling alley at the end of the film is located within Greystone Mansion, built by Doheny money.
I've seen that bowling alley, though only through glass, since the doors were always locked. As a young man, I spent many an hour at Greystone Mansion, then the home of the American Film Institute. (The Los Angeles Film Exposition also held critics' screenings there, and I was pretty good at sneaking into such things.) During my college days, I liked to study on the veranda and imagine becoming as wealthy as Plainview/Doheny. Things turned out rather differently. Still, for a few years there, I drank Doheny's milk shake.Those gorgeous grounds have appeared in many films, including X-Men, the original Batman series, and The Bodyguard. Believe it or not, most of Eraserhead was filmed there. Somehow, David Lynch (who, like Plainview, loved a good milk shake) created that grimy, nauseating alternate reality within a makeshift studio surrounded by opulence and beauty. That accomplishment must be the strangest of all the many strange things Lynch has done.
The photo above shows the patio which became my "home." Lynch's studio was, if I recall correctly, at the foot of that hillside.
(I'll be back to political stuff within hours. The urge to ramble sometimes proves overpowering.)
2 comments:
As a boy I roamed where Rachel Carson walked. As a man I walked past Glenn Gould's house listening to him on my Walkman, imagining him practicing with the windows open.
I read No Country for Old Men in an evening and watched the movie the following evening. McCarthy's pity and compassion and their perversions were perverted by the Coens' hip contempt, made obvious through their strict, verbatim fidelity to McCarthy's text. Their purposeful omissions, though, betray their nastiness.
When they ever try Shakespeare or Wagner, Mr. Cannon, you'll understand them better.
Padraig
That Glenn Gould thing is too cool. Sometimes, you have to "nudge" reality a bit so that you can tell the story the way it ought to be told: "Yeah, I would pass by Glenn Gould's house and hear him play..."
"Hip contempt"? Really? I didn't get that vibe from the film. Well, looks like I'll have to read the novel.
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