I’m not saying that yesterday’ssuddenlossofcontrol of the facialmuscles on the right side of my face and my mouth in particular…I’m not saying I look like Charles Laughton in TheHHunchback ofNotre Dame (‘39) but half of my facial features, which were fairly top-of-the-line when I was younger and at least pleasant in recent years…my looks are prettymuchgonenow, and if I was scheduled to see Sutton today I would be worried about alarming her. In the space of 24 hours I have suddenly become a mildly grotesque figure…I am now RichardIII…dogs bark and howl as I pass by.
Before:
After:
Bonus points for anyone who can identify which film the above monster-in-the-mirror images are from. No, it’s not Martin Scorsese’s TheBigShave.
The exact same cosmic or celestial shift in the cathedral of the soul was experienced by Joseph Goebbels, Moses, Mouse (my Siamese cat who died of pancreatic cancer over 20 years ago), Amelia Earhart and Mother Teresa. Ascended or descended…the soup is hot, the soup is cold.
He was quite the influentialdiplomaticmaestro during the Nixon and Ford administrations, but his bottom-line reputation has been disdained or at least debated for many decades, particularly by aged and post-traumatic residents of Cambodia and Chile and their descendants.
My own brusque opinion is that Kissinger was a brilliant, audacious, cold-blooded chess player whose initiatives and achievements were generally unaffected by humanitarian concerns.
Friendo: “Neil Burger’s TheMarshKing’sDaughter (Lionsgate/Roadside, 11.3) is ostensibly a thriller, and I love thrillers. Good director, talented stars — but Bezos wants $19.99 to RENT the damn thing.”
HEtoFriendo: “The combination of Daisy (‘who’s Cary Grant again?’) Ridley and Ben Mendelsohn plus that awful title (who would want anything to do with a marsh king, much less his daughter?) sounds lethal.”
Supportingplayer #1: “So this guy rules the marshlands, you’re saying? Residents pay tribute, owe him their lives, work for him, fear him?”
Supportingplayer #2: “Yeah, pretty much.”
Supportingplayer #1: “I’m taking a film crew into the marshlands next month. We have permits from the state film commission but…what are you saying, we also need permission to shoot in this guy’s territory? We need to butter him up, pay him off?”
Supportingplayer #2: “I wouldn’t recommend not doing that. He’s a ruthless, powerful cat. You need to show obeisance.”
On the morning of Sunday, 3.25.62, N.Y. Times readers may have scanned a mild little Tom Wickerstory about President Jack Kennedy having briefly chatted with former President Dwight D. Eisenhower at the El Dorado Country Club during a weekend visit to the Palm Desert area.
Quoting press secretary Pierre Salinger, Wicker reported that the Kennedy-Ike discussion had lasted “fifty-one minutes.”
Wicker’s story discreetly observed that JFK was “spending the weekend nearby.” What Wicker meant but was professionally obliged to ignore wasn’t “newsworthy” by Times standards, but was certainly legend-worthy. For the Palm Desert dish that Wicker side-stepped was comprised of three tasty intrigues.
Two, he had decidedontheCrosbyestate and against staying at Frank Sinatra’s nearbydeserthome after being told (by either J. Edgar Hoover or Attorney General RobertF. Kennedy or both) that Sinatra had been maintaining close ties with certain mafia figures, and that Kennedy couldn’t afford the tainted association.
And three, that JFK and Marilyn Monroe had not only attended a party the night before (Saturday, 3.24) at the Crosby estate but had spentthenighttogether at a separate cottage on the property.
This is how things worked in the Kennedy era. Big-time, well-connected reporters didn’t touch this kind of material. That was the understanding.