Artists on the Big Screen

Hollywood loves artists because they're observant, flawed, eccentric and vulnerable—qualities a main character must have to win over the audience. 

Artists also allow directors to smuggle scores of "beauty shots" into their films. Always a plus.

Here's my list of the top films depicting artists (in chronological order). Take advantage of the lockdown to watch them.

Rembrandt (1936). Suddenly widowed, the Dutch painter's life—and work—take a dark turn.

The Moon and Sixpence (1942). A British stockbroker rejects middle-class comfort for la vie de bohème. Paul Gaugin as seen through the eyes of Somerset Maugham.

Lust for Life (1956). A day doesn't go by when painter Vincent Van Gogh doesn't struggle with self-expression. We get an earful. (And eyeful.)

The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965). The Pope relentlessly insists that sculptor Michelangelo completes a mural. The surly sculptor hits the ceiling.

Savage Messiah (1972). Sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska will do anything to gain an audience. Anything. A raucous art-adventure directed by Ken Russell and starring the young Helen Mirren.

Vincent and Theo (1990). Proof that every artist needs a devoted patron. A stunningly filmed passion project from director Robert Altman.

Pollock (2000). Proof—80 proof—that whiskey will wreck an artist's life. A chilling passion project from the star and director, Ed Harris.

Renoir (2012). Old age can't stop a determined artist, especially when his household revolves around him.

Mr. Turner (2014). To some artists, romance arrives late in life. A charming and beautiful period film.

Big Eyes (2014). A wife paints pictures the public loves, but her husband takes the credit. A surprising period romp from director Tim Burton.

Final Portrait (2017). Giacometti can't seem to finish the portrait of a friend. A joyful film about creativity—my favorite on the list—directed by Stanley Tucci.

Red (2018). Mark Rothko tackles his greatest challenge: the meaning of art—and of life.

Helene (2020). A Scandinavian painter falls in love with her art student, but he thinks of her merely as a good teacher.  

There are dozens more fine films about artists I'd include on a list of runners-up, including Moulin Rouge (1952), Caravaggio (1986), My Left Foot (1989), Basquiat (1996), Surviving Picasso (1996), Frida (2002), Modigliani (2004), Rodin (2018) and Sin (2019).

What film tops your list?

NOTE: Be sure to visit my website. Paintings make great gifts.

Me and My Stubb's

I'm not a hypochondriac, I'm an alarmist.

— Woody Allen

How many times a day have you decided you've caught the coronavirus? 

In my case it's four, at least.

But I've managed to avoid routine trips to the emergency room thanks to the sage advice of a Detroit-based MD.

Dr. Susan Malinowski published her advice in Medium back in early April, when the pandemic was new and tests nonexistent. 

She had already caught the virus and lost her sense of smell.

"Until we have adequate testing, don’t ignore this simple symptom," the doctor wrote.

"Yes, there are other causes for loss of smell, but take it from someone who’s been there, the loss of smell is profound. 

"Get a jar of chopped garlic and monitor your sense of smell along with temperature every day. If you can’t smell the garlic, even in the absence of other symptoms, quarantine for 14 days and wait for it to return."

I had no garlic at the time, but I did have have a bottle of garlic-laden Stubb's. 

So I unscrewed the cap and took a whiff from the conical bottle first thing every morning—plus any time my inner alarm sounded (again, about four times a day).

Stubb's became my Covid-19 test kit.

Stubb's doesn't need outside marketing advice; but I'll give it, anyway. 

Should sales of BBQ sauce ever decline, Stubb's might take a page from Arm & Hammer, which boosted flagging sales of baking soda with the claim that it kept refrigerators smelling sweet.

Although at-home Covid-19 tests may soon be plentiful, you can't store them in easy reach, alongside the baking soda.

Nor use them to spark up a burger.

The Late Hunter S. Thompson Answers My Question

NOTE: I awoke today to find this mysterious note on my bathroom sink.

Bob,

You addled bastard, you approached me in your fetid dream last night and asked my advice. 

At least, I think you did—I had the Cowboys game on at the time, and Washington was stomping them, like they were a gang of sick junkies.

My attention wasn't fully yours. 

If I grasped your question, you asked what America should do with 45, now that the maddened crowds—like Bond in the grand finale—have dispatched his fat diapered ass.

The Ephedrine supply is practically nonexistent here, so I must keep my answer brief.

America doesn't have to do anything about 45. 

Come mid-December—too chilly for tubby to golf in Virginia—45 will depart DC permanently for his rat-hole in Florida, announcing by Tweet a "hard-earned" Christmas vacation. 

From there, Snowden-like, 45 will flee to Moscow, requesting permanent asylum.

Putin will grant the asylum, glad for yet another thing to lord over fatso. 

But when Putin learns 45 is broke and knows no Top Secrets the Kremlin doesn't, he'll graciously deliver one of his infamous gifts.

The only question for America: where to dispose of the remains?

I suggest the ruins of Reactor 4 in Chernobyl.

— Hunter

Anything You Want

You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant.

— Arlo Guthrie

Last year, my wife and I spent three late-summer days in leafy Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the home of the now-derelict Alice's Restaurant. The restaurant's front door was padlocked, but I managed to sneak inside through the adjoining building (another greasy spoon, this in full operation). Not much to see of Alice's Restaurant except dust, cobwebs, and a few splintery tables and counters.

This year, I'm grateful for many things, not the least of which include the annual airplay of Arlo Guthrie's anti-war song—the only song about Thanksgiving that isn't insufferably schmaltzy. I'm also grateful Covid-19 hasn't ripped family members and friends from my life or denied me a cozy, if crimped, lifestyle.

Millions of other Americans can't say that.

Behavioral scientists believe gratitude, the "affirmation of goodness," survives from our primate-days, when we thrived by helping others and being helped in return.

Psychotherapists believe gratitude is as much a "practice" as an inborn emotion. Counting your blessings makes you upbeat, sociable and generous; combats depression; and wards off many unhealthy emotions, including envy, resentment, anger and contempt. AA calls the practice an "attitude of gratitude."

Although few Americans know or care, Gettysburg is the reason we celebrate Thanksgiving every year. The holiday—intended by Lincoln as a "day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficient Father who dwelleth in the Heavens"—was instituted by executive order three months after the Federal government's Pyrrhic victory outside the Pennsylvania town. 

Seven score and seventeen years later, we mark the holiday not by thanksgiving and prayer, but by overeating, watching football, and avoiding any mention of the "party of Lincoln."

Quite the comedown.

So let's set things aright.

This week, I challenge you to write down three good things that have come your way in 2020, and imagine your life without them. The items you list are up to you: they can be can be people, ideas, objects, or events. Anything you want.

Fishy

Holocaust deniers love a red herring.

A red herring is a statement meant to divert our attention from evidence. For example:

All Jews weren't exterminated. So there was no Holocaust.

The Holocaust-denier's favorite, this red herring ignores the fact that victims have survived genocides throughout history.

Right now, Rudi Giuliani is peddling red herrings. He employed one in a federal court this week:

Republicans weren't present for every ballot-count.
So Trump won the election in Pennsylvania.

Rudi's red herring ignores the fact that the election results in Pennsylvania were carefully audited by state and county election workers. Republican poll watchers, although they should have, failed to visit every election-return warehouse in the state. But Republicans' laziness doesn't reverse the outcome.

The noun phrase red herring dates to the early 13th century, when, to compensate for the lack of refrigeration, fish peddlers would salt and smoke fresh herring. A red herring was smoked so long—usually 10 days—it would turn from white to red. Poor people and British sailors lived on the tangy treats; so did Catholics throughout Lent. Red herrings were—and are—known as kippers, a favorite British breakfast food.

Two centuries later, writer Gerland Langbaine noted in The Hunter that you could train your hounds to follow the game's scent by trailing a kipper on the ground.

A century after Langbaine's handbook appeared, newspaper journalist William Cobbett related a fable about a boy who used a kipper to distract a pack of hounds from their prey. Cobbett compared the hounds to sloppy journalists who chased after "false leads."

Cobbett cemented the metaphor in English speakers' minds when he wrote that a false lead is a "red herring," because "its scent goes cold" in a day.

In Nonsense, grammarian Robert Gula defines a red herring as "a detail inserted into a discussion that sidetracks the discussion." It's purely and simply a logical fallacy.

Red herrings are bull—and bad for you. 

And, frankly, Rudi's are giving me a haddock.