Movie Quote of the Day (‘Murder by Death,’ With a Character Who Resembles His Actor)

Lionel Twain [played by Truman Capote, pictured]: “That drives me crazy!”

Sam Diamond [played by Peter Falk]: “Sounds like a short ride to me.”— Murder by Death (1976), screenplay by Neil Simon, directed by Robert Moore

The murder mystery spoof Murder by Death premiered 50 years ago today, featuring a cast of highly accomplished film veterans like David Niven, Maggie Smith, Peter Falk, Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers, Elsa Lanchester, and James Coco.

But wouldn’t you know it, a mere tyro caught most of the attention of the public: In Cold Blood author Truman Capote, in the only film where he played someone other than himself. (He provided voiceover narration of his stories “The Thanksgiving Visitor” and “A Christmas Memory,” and played the Capote look-alike in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall.)

I bet that you were as surprised as I was to learn that for his performance, Capote was nominated for a Golden Globe in Best Acting Debut in a Motion Picture. But remember, these were the awards that notoriously handed Pia Zadora a statuette as “New Star of the Year” for the 1982 bomb Butterfly. In other words, you have to wonder which Hollywood powerbroker influenced such ridiculous recognition.

I doubt that Neil Simon thought that Capote turned in a noteworthy performance, though I have read a couple of versions of his reaction. When interviewed for George Plimpton’s 1997 oral biography Truman Capote, the playwright-screenwriter, while admitting that hiring the author was more producer Ray Stark’s idea than his own, said that he “had no problem with him.”

Well, except for two: Capote was “very ill at ease with the dialogue” and “didn’t know how to move,” as he was always looking for his marks.

On the other hand, in commentary for a 1999 DVD release of the movie, Simon said he and director Robert Moore wanted to replace Capote as Lionel Twain, the rich eccentric who invites the world’s greatest detectives to his home for a contest to solve a murder. In the end, that desire didn’t come to pass.

Two rather different reactions, as I say. But when you think about it, both were united in one belief: Capote was making mistakes that professional actors would not have committed, and it was deeply frustrating.

Besides lack of experience, there was another reason why the creators of Murder by Death should have thought better of hiring Capote in the first place: he was already well along in the drink-and-pills spiral that led to his death by liver cancer in 1984.

A couple of years before, he had been in such terrible condition when commissioned to write the screenplay for The Great Gatsby remake that he had to be replaced before he could finish. Gossip spreads fast in Hollywood, and nobody involved with Murder by Death should have been surprised that he would be a handful.

Flashback, June 2001: Early Alarm Sounds About Enron

John Olson (pictured) is not a well-known name, but when he died a few weeks ago, this retired energy analyst was remembered in obituaries for his warning 25 years ago this month about one hot stock—which the object of his skepticism tried to tamp down.

Too bad that others didn’t perform proper due diligence on Enron, which six months later collapsed, in the largest bankruptcy filing to that point in U.S. corporate history.

The initial outsized expectations about Enron’s stock reminded me of a phrase coined by the otherwise colorless former Fed chair Alan Greenspan (who also died this month): “irrational exuberance.” Though Greenspan was discussing speculative market bubbles as a group, I think it applies just as much, maybe even more so, to individual stocks today.

Take a bow, Elon Musk.

You heard about that guy, right? World’s richest person. World’s first trillionaire, courtesy of a very generous compensation plan approved by shareholders of his company, Tesla.

More about him in a minute. But first, a refresher on Enron:

Through much of the Nineties, Enron was a Wall Street darling for advancing from a natural-gas provider to an energy-trading colossus. It reported incredible returns, reaching $90.75 per share on August 23, 2000 with a market capitalization of more than $70 billion, making it the seventh-largest publicly traded corporation in the U.S.

Who wouldn’t want to invest after a management guru like Gary Hamel had praised it for creating “a capacity for perpetual innovation” with an organization consisting of “potential revolutionaries”? Even pundits across the political spectrum like Bill Kristol and Paul Krugman took fees to serve on the company’s advisory committee.

Wall Street was particularly enamored of Enron head Kenneth Lay, a corporate leader used to being listened to. That respect derived not only from the eye-popping numbers he produced but from his cozy relationship with George W. Bush, a rising politico so grateful for the $122,500 contributed to his Texas gubernatorial campaigns that he nicknamed the gray-haired businessman “Kenny Boy.”

In March 2001, Lay and his successor as Enron president, Jeffrey Skilling, were annoyed when a young financial journalist, Bethany McLean, wondering how the company made its money, asked, in a Fortune Magazine article, if Enron was overpriced.

But they really grew incensed when Olson—a local analyst with long experience monitoring the energy industry—told U.S. News and World Report three months later that Enron was "not very forthcoming about how they make their money" and said no "analyst worth his salt . . . can seriously analyze Enron."

Olson chuckled over a misspelled handwritten note that Lay dashed off to his boss in the wake of that interview. The analyst’s equanimity was justified: other observers were soon pursuing the hard questions that he and MacLean had posed about Enron’s operations.

By year’s end, it had all unraveled in a massive bankruptcy and corporate scandal. In May 2006, Lay and Skilling were convicted of fraud and conspiracy charges.

So now you may be wondering, how could Lay possibly relate to Elon Musk?

Some of you reading this might see my eyebrow lifted derisively in his direction because of my distaste for his involvement with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) at the behest of Donald Trump.

Or you might argue that, unlike Enron, Musk built something that can be seen—rockets, an AI startup fueling data centers, and, through Tesla, the EV, the most significant contribution to the American auto industry since Henry Ford’s assembly line.

You can even accept (as analyst Jeff Sommer does here, before swatting it down) that Tesla can build a successful colony on Mars and reap a bonanza from its military contracts.

But there’s a simpler yardstick for measuring how close Musk comes to the now-infamous Kenneth Lay: What did his prior financial reports promise investors, and did he achieve those goals?

That’s where matters become slippery. A New York Times analysis from earlier this month found that Musk was late or did not deliver on his company deadlines roughly 35 percent of the time. In 33 percent of his more than 600 claims, his companies did not provide a public update—or the plans were too vague to know if he succeeded.

And five years ago, Consumer Reports compiled a telling timeline of his continuous claims that Tesla models would shortly become fully autonomous, along with deaths of people who accepted these assurances that turned out to be—well, let’s just say premature.

In other words, if Musk were a musical, it would be Promises, Promises.

Unlike with Enron, nobody has yet proven that Tesla’s accounting practices are fraudulent. But it would be enormously difficult to decipher even if anyone tried to do so. Now with Vanity Fair, Bethany MacLean has questioned the ethics and governance behind his complicated 2019 acquisition of Solar City.

Testifying before Congress in 2002, Olson cautioned that “It is axiomatic on Wall Street that if a stock price is rising arithmetically, management egos tend to rise exponentially.”

That was the case as Lay pressured editors and analysts for better press coverage, and maybe even more so with Musk. He was only half-joking when he said, while hosting Saturday Night Live in 2021, “To anyone I’ve offended, I reinvented electric cars and I’m sending people to Mars in a rocket ship. Did you think I was also going to be a chill, normal dude?”

Put that together with his use of ketamine, a dissociative drug, and you’ll understand why in The Atlantic last year, Shayla Love wrote that Musk’s “cognitive and psychological health is of concern not only to shareholders of his companies’ stocks but to all Americans.”

One last resemblance between Lay and Musk: each backed a successful candidate who then followed through on the ballyhooed businessman’s policy prescriptions. Lay, for instance, influenced Bush’s gubernatorial policies on electricity deregulation, taxes and tort reform.

Musk’s Presidential beneficiary-patron has permitted him even more latitude. Past robber barons were content to bribe and sway officeholders, but in taking his position with DOGE, Musk joined the government, if briefly.

That takeover was so swift and audacious that observers could hardly rouse themselves to ask if self-interest might be the principal reason for his lightning strike against the agencies that regulated his enterprises. Were he alive today, Kenny Boy might be asking, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Quote of the Day (Mel Brooks, on a Source of Jewish Humor)

“When the tall, blond Teutons have been nipping at your heels for thousands of years, you find it enervating to keep wailing. So you make jokes. If your enemy is laughing, how can he bludgeon you to death?”—Oscar- and Tony-winning American comic actor-writer-director Mel Brooks, Playboy interview, October 1966

Happy birthday to Mel Brooks, born 100 years ago today in Brooklyn!

Spiritual Quote of the Day (St. Titus Brandsma, on Love Over Neo-Paganism)

“Neo-paganism may reject love, but history teaches us that, despite everything, we will be victorious over this neo-paganism through love. We will not abandon love. Love will win back the hearts of these pagans. Nature is stronger than philosophy. Let a philosophy reject and condemn love and call it weakness, the living testimony of love will always renew its power to conquer and captivate the hearts of men.”—Carmelite priest, professor and journalist St. Titus Brandsma (1881-1942), Spiritual Itinerary of Carmel (1936)

Exhibit Review: "‘Born To Run' at 50," Passaic County Arts Center, Hawthorne NJ

Fifty-one years ago this month, when Eric Meola came to photograph Bruce Springsteen for the upcoming song collection, Born To Run, the Columbia Records singer-songwriter had two albums under his belt that attracted little interest. It was a real question how long the label would retain this young musician whose talent hadn’t yet registered with the public.

That sense of everything riding on the present moment permeated the studio where Springsteen had been reworking his songs for months. Not surprisingly, Meola found “someone who had put his soul on the wire for the better part of a year to make eight songs.”

The intensity of one artist was matched by the one viewing and capturing his image. “I had a sense of the history unfolding in front of my camera,” Meola remembered. “I wanted to photograph that history more than anything I have ever worked on.”

The product of that session featuring Springsteen and saxophonist and onstage foil Clarence Clemons is at the heart of “Born To Run at 50,” an exhibition at the Passaic County Arts Center (PCAC) in Hawthorne, NJ, containing a sampling of items from the recently opened Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music at Monmouth University.

Three months ago, at the time the exhibit opened, I clipped an article out of my local paper, The Bergen Record, about this commemoration of that landmark album’s cultural impact and the aftermath of its success.  The other day, picking up that piece again, I wondered when I should see it.

At that point, a lyric from another Springsteen LP went through my mind: “Summer’s here and the time is right.” There was no doubt that I had to see this.

One photo plucked out of the Meola session, folded in half and wrapped around, ended up on the cover of Born To Run and found their way, Springsteen noted, in “the windows of every record store in America”: the one with him leaning on the cover of Clemons—“the big man with the big smile,” in Meola’s words.

But in truth, almost any of the more than two dozen outtakes displayed on the walls of the PCAC would have made for a compelling visual image of this turning point in The Boss’s life.

My favorite shows the same Springsteen attire (black leather jacket, tweed cap) as the album cover, but with sneakers hanging off the guitar and an “Elvis Fan Club of NYC” button on his jacket.

In addition to the evocative Meola photos, the exhibit contains other artifacts documenting Springsteen’s time in New Jersey in the two-year period between Born To Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town, such as:

*A handwritten note addressed to the “landlordess” of the cottage where he composed Born To Run, apologizing for a later payment of a water bill (two humorous postscripts ask, “Do you like my classy writin’ paper?” and “I’m practicing my autograph. Whadya think?”

*An artistic recreation of the customized guitar featured on the cover of the album;

*A video from his acclaimed 1978 performances at the now-defunct Capitol Theatre in Passaic;

*A now-ragged sweater worn by The Boss thrown into the audience at one of these shows, then caught—and now displayed, like a precious relic, all these years later.

For longtime fans like myself, the exhibition (which runs through July 19 at the PCAC (in the John W. Rea House, 675 Goffle Road, Hawthorne) offers the opportunity to relive when the New Jersey rock ‘n’ roll scene (including good friend Southside Johnny) burst with vitality and the seemingly endless promise of being young and alive.

For later generations, it tells a story of how music was recorded, promoted, and performed long before the digital era utterly transformed how the industry reached millions of listeners worldwide.

The exhibit has whetted my interest in seeing what other events may be sponsored by PCAC. And, at some point, I’ll have to drive down to Monmouth County and spend a few hours at the Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music.

Quote of the Day (Philip Roth, on the End of a Summer Love)

“What was it inside me that had turned pursuit and clutching into love, and then turned it inside out again? What was it that had turned winning into losing, and losing—who knows—into winning? I was sure I had loved Brenda, though standing there, I knew I couldn't any longer."— Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist Philip Roth (1933-2018), Goodbye, Columbus and Other Stories (1959)

(The image accompanying this post shows Richard Benjamin and Ali MacGraw in the 1969 adaptation of Goodbye, Columbus.)

Britain’s Gamble 10 Years Ago—and Ours

I don’t imagine the British know much baseball history. More’s the pity, because if they had, this week’s major political event might have reminded them of the adage of the great New York catcher and philosopher, Yogi Berra: “It’s déjà vu all over again.”

For my mostly stateside readers, I’m talking about Monday’s announcement by Keir Starmer (pictured) that he would step down as Prime Minister. Wouldn’t you know it, it was almost 10 years to the day that David Cameron did likewise.

Cameron’s decision immediately followed his failed gamble that a defeat of a referendum calling for Brexit would deflate the anti-free trade movement within his Conservative Party.

Instead, the yes vote to withdraw from the European Union precipitated his own fall from power, and overshadowed the terms of five subsequent PMs (including, now, Starmer) who eventually stood in front of 10 Downing Street to say, too, they would be stepping down.

Six leaders in 10 years represent no way to run a government, let alone a business. Coalition fractures mean at minimum that long-term projects won’t start, and that unscrupulous leaders will make a money or power grab while they can. At worst, they encourage a voter perception of anarchy and the need for a strongman to quell the chaos.

Sifting through the controversies that eventually engulfed Starmer in an article last month in The Financial Times, Anthony Seldon, co-founder of the Museum of the Prime Minister, summarized questions related to this streak of ineffective British leaders:

“Is it the incumbents or the system that is responsible? Are the problems the prime minister faces simply greater than before? Has the job now become impossible?”

Seldon cites three government structures in decline that are contributing to the current “churn at the top”: the replacement of Members of Parliaments motivated by the public interest by ones acting in their own private one; a deterioration of the civil service; and an electorate susceptible to instant gratification.

He also fears current developments in the two established parties, the Conservatives and Labour: “It is entirely possible that one or both will cease to exist as exist as mainstream parties in the next 10 [years]. If that happens, another source of national stability will be swept away.”

Seldon’s sweeping historical overview is fine, as far as it goes. But it doesn’t take into account how the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-09 stoked popular resentment on both sides of the Atlantic against international trade arrangements that millions came to regard as inequitable.

That popular unrest was manifested in the successful Brexit campaign, which produced its own inevitable lamentable consequences in the public sphere, according to The New York Times’ Michael D. Shear and Megan Specia:

“Perhaps no part of British society was changed more by Brexit than its political landscape, which has fractured into a chaotic tug of war in which no party seems able to satisfy the demands of an angry and disillusioned public for long.”

With all the hang-wringing by Seldon, Shear and Specia over volatility in the British government, they should cast their eyes “across the pond.” Here, unsteadiness over the past decade was generated not by six people, but by just one, driven by rage and retribution?

Yes, just as Britain took a flyer on a major shift in government, so did the United States 10 years ago this fall, when it elected Donald Trump—a candidate with no governmental or national security experience—President. Anger over two major issues that landed him in the White House also propelled the Brexit campaign: immigration and unequal class outcomes over trade policy.

In the last 10 years, Britain has only had one leader who remotely resembles Trump: Boris Johnson. As I wrote in this post from 10 years ago, when it looked like Johnson would not seek the brass ring, their shared traits include brashness, lying, an overactive libido, non-ideological conservatism, irresponsibility, a brand name, and faux populism.

Even so, Johnson has been no match over time for Trump, who, even after being cast out of the White House in the 2020 election, darkened American politics with ceaseless conspiracy mongering and his bid to return to power to avoid criminal and civil responsibility for his misdeeds.

And now, when he’s not busy earning nicknames like “Landscaper in Chief” and “The Creature From the Green Lagoon,” the Trump Presidency has created a vortex of instability characterized by longtime friends and allies insulted and alienated, promises made and broken, policy positions taken before being forsaken, including:

*Republican Senators cozy up to him unashamedly, only to find themselves “primaried” and losing their seats for no reason they can account for.

*The same senators are assured by White House aides that Trump will support a housing bill they’ve been working on with Democrats for over a year, only for the President to cancel the signing event at the last minute, insisting he won’t put his signature on it until Congress passes his pet voter ID legislation.

*Trump publicly speculated about making Venezuela the 51^st state.

*Even as the Trump administration negotiated with Iran, it prepared and launched a surprise invasion.

*With the “Memo of Understanding” (not yet a treaty, let alone one fulfilling initially stated war aims), Trump is teaching Israel’s Bibi Netanyahu what US observers have known for years: don’t count on his loyalty when he finds it disadvantageous.

*By exempting many agricultural commodities he announced last year, Trump has “raise[d] questions about the coherence of the president’s tariff initiatives as a whole,” according to a report this month by the American Enterprise Institute.

*At the start of the Iran War, he called for “unconditional surrender”—a demand long-since dropped.

I wish the British all the best as they look for a competent leader who’ll last more than Boris Johnson’s three years or Starmer’s two. But it could always be worse. They could choose a Trumpian leader desperate and able to stay on longer, perpetrating untold damage in the process.

(The image accompanying this post, of Keir Starmer, is his official portrait, taken July 5, 2024, on his appointment as Prime Minister, by Simon Dawson/ No 10 Downing Street.)