Rakish.

Ever wondered what rakish (ray-kish) meaning smart, sporty, flashy, breezy, jaunty, dapper, natty, debonair, dashing, snazzy, raffish, devil-may-care (according to Collins Essential Thesaurus 2nd Edition 2006 © HarperCollins Publishers 2005, 2006 cited by The Free Dictionary: http://tinyurl.com/65zmrm) looks like? All right. Follow me closely. Insert a Royal Wedding (1951) DVD into a DVD player. Press ‘Play’. Fast-forward to the scene where Fred Astaire, after accidentally bumming a light off her on the street, follows Sarah Churchill (right, Winston’s second daughter) to the theatre not knowing she is in his show, spots her among the actors waiting for the audition to start, asks an assistant to find out who she is and to start dancing. He then parks his butt on the back of the nearest seat in the auditorium and turns his torso slightly forward so can he watch her. Happy with her performance, he tilts his hat – there you go – at just the right rakish angle and grins rakishly. He has found love. Also, not to be missed is the Fred Astaire solo You're All The World To Me in which he literally dances on the walls and ceiling of his room. This optical illusion was made possible by a custom-made set quipped with mechanical rollers. Incidentally, Royal Wedding was directed by Stanley Donen who also co-directed and choreographed Singin’ in the Rain.

Which brings us to the second place to look for the perfect visual interpretation of “rakish”: the Broadway Ballet interlude in Singin’ in the Rain (1951). Here’s an account of it from my unpublished novel, The Last Gandhi Movie (pp. 28 -29):

“What a fabulously marvellous place for my hat to perch on?’ is the question writ large on Gene Kelley’s face as he glides to an abrupt halt on bended knees. He stares dumbfounded at his hat as it dangles invitingly from a green pump on an arched foot emanating from 1952’s sexiest stockinged leg emanating, in its turn, from Cyd Charisse’s emerald green-sheathed torso. Wow! This is what CC does in reply. She blows smoke through her nostrils with a half smile. She puts her hand on her hips. She elevates said leg, foot, pump and hat from a horizontal to a near-vertical position, sending all over collective BPs soaring in the bargain. Once Gene has retrieved his hat and his breath, she arises majestically from the chair she’s straddling to join him in an erotic – by the fifties’ standard! – rendition of the Broadway Ballet in Singin’ in the Rain. Born with an appetizing given name, Tula Ellice Finkles (for Pete’s sake) in Texas, this statuesque and icily chic combination of Scottish, Irish, French, English and Red Indian bloodlines had had ballet training that she put to good use in so many MGM musicals in the heyday of that genre in Hollywood. Va-va-vroom!, as Uncle Sam would eloquently put it. Me too.

Somewhere along the way in the action described above, Gene Kelley too does a Fred Astaire (whom he admired tremendously and co-starred with in Ziegfield Follies in 1946) with his hat, tilting it at a rakish, devil-may-care angle, if memory serves. Check it out.

Lie detector. (An inconvenient truth?)

I’ve always been wary – nay, downright suspicious – of the role of the so-called creative workshops much touted in magazines like Writer’s Digest and Fiction Writer and various websites for writers as the ideal way to master the art and craft of creative writing. The saga of the Blacksburg mass murderer has however given me solace by throwing up a hitherto unimagined alternative use for the panacea for wannabe writers. Join the Virginia Tech Creative Workshop this Fall to find out if you’re a killer in the making – even if you have not a chance in Hell of evolving into a potential Pulitzer Prize winner! I’m kidding, of course. Because all this talk of how Cho’s English teacher and course mates sensed that something was not quite right, if not downright wrong, by reading his workshop output is just that: so much talk. The two scripts posted at http://news.aol.com/virginia-tech-shootings/cho-seung-hui/_a/richard-mcbeef-cover-page/20070417134109990001 and : http://news.aol.com/virginia-tech-shootings/cho-seung-hui/_a/mr-brownstone-title-page/20070417141309990001 ape the way contemporary American writers write. Explicitly even at the risk of offending the reader. No different from what a Stephen King, a David Mamet or a Quentin Tarantino would do. And then it’s called a stroke of genius. Even granting these know-alls and see-alls knew all and saw all, why did they not insist on doing something about it? Yeah, I know, I know. Cho refused all offers of friendship and help. I guess nobody could have prevented what was meant to happen. The DVD of Destiny had already been burnt.

Strictly for voyeurs.

That’s correct. Watching movies is in essence a voyeuristic avocation. Not in the prurient but in the broad sense of the term. After all, when you’re watching a movie, you’re looking at or witnessing what’s happening or what someone is doing without (apparently) their knowledge and consent – in order to derive pleasure. Except, in those once-in-a-while asides, when the character actually addresses the camera, that is to say, (by proxy) you. In every voyeuristic encounter, the subject’s privacy is violated, intentionally or otherwise.. In the strictest psychological sense, voyeurism is a sexual disorder where “sexual arousal … involves the act of observing unsuspecting individuals, usually strangers, who may be naked or in the process of disrobing. Even engaging in sexual activity.” The so-called x-rated blue films meet this psychological definition of voyeurism. http://www.psychnet-uk.com/dsm_iv/voyerism_disorder.htm. (The other side of the voyeuristic coin is exhibitionism. In other words, the actors who perform for the camera are exhibitionists.) Voyeurism of the prurient variety is believed to be caused by childhood trauma such as sexual abuse or accidental sighting of naked adults, copulation, etc. Voyeurism of the movie-watching kind may be caused in the present times by the parents’ excessive addiction to television and movie watching on VCDs and DVDs as well as in the multiplexes. Once infected, seldom freed. It’s a lifetime addiction. And heaven help those victims who are abysmally devoid of taste and discrimination. They end up watching the worst kind of trash spewed by the film makers out to make a quick buck. [P.S.: Tangentially speaking, you’ve got to consider a real huge difference between real life and reel life. In the latter, you have close-ups, zooms (in and out), freezes, quick cuts and so on to help the story telling which the former lacks. So what you see on the screen cannot be compared strictly speaking with what you see – and ‘experience’ – in life. Even in dreams, for that matter. Have you noticed how far removed the dream sequences in movies are from dreams in real life? Keep all these things in mind, boys and girls, the next time you think of cinematic reality.]

Worth zillions.

A few days after the much-hyped Indian Oscar contender ended an also-ran, my eye and attention were caught by an e-mail ad. Hollywood films are now produced more and more by independent producers, it said. They, in turn, depend for funds to 'develop' the project (the story, the talent package and the producer's ability to get the production financed) on legitimate individual investors (not money launderers). If one invests in the development of a movie, one can well recoup one's investment including interest as soon as production starts. What's more, one's 'stake' in the profits to come after the film is released remains untouched. Consider the multiple revenue streams now open to feature-length movies (theatre release, television, pay-per-view licensing, DVD/video release, merchandising and niche markets such as airlines, the armed forces, schools and colleges). Even alien also-rans may access all these money-making avenues once they're inside the magic circle. I also came across another instructive news byte. Looks like Hollywood is now using online auctions (Yahoo, eBay) to encash on movie memorabilia - instead of stashing it in a store room to gather dust and cobwebs - as well as to promote forthcoming projects. (Hollywood studios are sold on Web auctioneering by Doug Young) chicagotribune.com. (Free registration essential.) There are the studio-owned auction sites too, such as auction.newline.com where props from Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring came under the gavel and disneyauctions.com (or pages.ebay.disney.com).

Full Marx.

In late August 2006, I got a set of eight Marx Brothers DVDs as a birthday gift from my son Ashu who works and lives in New Jersey. Watching them made me look for my copy of a book by Joe Adamson (Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Sometimes Zeppo). I had bought it years back in Delhi and absent-mindedly tucked it in one of my cabinets. Written with great wit and charm, it’s a wonderful narrative woven around the Brothers’ career on stage, screen, radio and television. Sample extracts: http://users.pandora.be/mx/adamson.htm and http://www.geocities.com/spazprez/cfaust.html. Read them and decide for yourself.