"Van Gogh's ear was cut off by friend Gauguin with a sword."

Hot news.

Although the historians [Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans] provide no "smoking gun" to back up their claims, they argue theirs is the most logical interpretation, and explains why in his final recorded words to Gauguin, Van Gogh writes: "You are quiet, I will be, too".

They cite correspondence between Vincent and his brother, Theo, in which the painter hints at what happened without directly breaking the "pact of silence" made with his estranged friend.

He mentions Gauguin's request to recover his fencing mask and gloves from Arles, but not the épée....

He also pointed to one of Van Gogh's sketches of an ear, with the word "ictus" – the Latin term used in fencing to mean a hit. The authors believe that curious zigzags above the ear represent Gauguin's Zoro-like sword-stroke.

Yeah, well, Gauguin was such a jerk to Van Gogh. Just look:

Gender-based...

... wrinkle assessment.

AND: Make sure to click through to the story about the "fresh-faced" men. The original photos might be funnier that the caricatures at the first link. Did you know Kirk Douglas looks "years younger" than his age? His age is 90.

"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

You can see that last night we came up with a choice of four movies to watch and -- you should be able to tell from my set of favorite quotes -- we chose "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Is that a Christmas movie? If I had to argue it was, I'd point to the party scene. It's a Christmas party. The music playing is "Jingle Bells," and we see some Christmas decorations, including a little Santa Claus. And you could say -- cornily -- that it's a movie about the triumph of the human spirit, and you could contend that that's Christmasy. Or do you think it's a movie about the triumph of the masculine spirit over the feminine? McMurphy arrives to show all those mere shadows of men how to be men. That's what the book -- which I can't stand -- was about.

IMDB has a lot of interesting "trivia" -- their word -- about the movie. I knew that many of the extras were real mental patients. I didn't know Will Sampson got the role of Chief Bromden because he was the only person they could find who had the two qualities they needed (Native American and physically huge). [NOTE: He wasn't an actor.] I didn't know that Jack Nicholson and Milos Forman (the director) were at odds with each other:

...Nicholson and director Milos Forman had very different ideas about how the narrative should play out; for example, Forman thought that the ward should be in bedlam when McMurphy showed up and Nicholson posited that his character would have absolutely no effect on the mental patients if they were already riled up, which would have negated the purpose of his character and therefore much of the plot. Nicholson and Forman both refused to give an inch, both believing they were right and the other was wrong. The two months that Jack Nicholson disappeared for was more like two weeks, and he didn't disappear. In actuality, Nicholson spearheaded a coup among the other actors and refused to let Forman run rehearsals, running them himself instead.

Wow. Nicholson got it right. Other evidence of how wrong Forman could be: He wanted Burt Reynolds to play McMurphy! But he was right -- I think -- not to want the fishing scene. He thought -- I agree -- it interfered with the claustrophobic atmosphere of the rest of the film. I detested the fishing scene in the book. It's exactly where I stopped reading. I liked the movie McMurphy as an anti-authoritarian, counterculture guy. The McMurphy in the book was Mr. Masculine Energy. Let's fish, let's watch baseball, let's play basketball, let's drink, let's have sex with prostitutes... and isn't the nurse a bitch?

Other evidence of how much credit Nicholson deserves:

Most of Jack Nicholson's scene with Dean R. Brooks upon arriving at the hospital was improvised - including his slamming a stapler, asking about a fishing photo, and discussing his rape conviction; Brooks's reactions were authentic.

Brooks actually was superintendent of a mental hospital. This scene reminded us of the office interview scene in "The Shining," which Nicholson made 5 years later.

Kirk Douglas owned the rights to the book for a long time and wanted to play McMurphy. When I read the book -- which was after I saw the movie and knowing Douglas wanted the part -- I fell into picturing Kirk Douglas. He was much more the sort of person (the author) Ken Kesey had in mind. Nicholson made the movie into something that resonated in 1975. The book was published in 1963... and feels like it.

Ken Kesey was pissed:

Ken Kesey wrote a screenplay for the production, but Forman rejected it because Kesey insisted on keeping Chief Bromden's first-person narration....

[Kesey said] he would never watch the movie version and even sued the movie's producers because it wasn't shown from Chief Bromden's perspective (as the novel is)....

Author Ken Kesey was so bitter about the way the filmmakers were "butchering" his story that he vowed never to watch the completed film. Years later, he claimed to be lying in bed flipping through TV channels when he settled onto a late-night movie that looked sort of interesting, only to realize after a few minutes that it was this film. He then changed channels.

"After a few minutes"... hilarious.

Watching the movie last night, I had to stop and think who Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) was reminding me of. Something about that voice. Then I realized: Condoleezza Rice! Oh, no! So steady, so calm... so infuriating. And I like Condoleezza Rice! Louise Fletcher did a fine job with her role. Has anyone ever won an Oscar for showing so little expression? She was not -- as Nurse Ratched was in the book -- an embodiment of matriarchy and women's repression of men. She was horrible, cold, and controlling, but she also had some humanity. She was in a predicament trying to deal professionally with some very trying individuals. She made all the wrong decisions, but she was recognizably human.

The actors who played those patients did a fine job portraying seriously ill men and making them dramatically effective and immensely entertaining. We felt free to laugh at them a lot without getting the nagging guilty feeling that we weren't showing enough respect for the mentally ill. There's bonus entertainment in the fact that two of them are actors we came to love in bigger roles: Danny Devito and Christopher Lloyd.

"If they made this movie today, they'd ruin it with music," I said halfway through. There was scene after scene with no music, other than the occasional record that a character in the movie played. Jack Nitzsche got an Oscar nomination for the score, and his music is memorable and evocative, but I think it only plays over the opening credits and at the very end. There was never any of that sort of movie music that instructs us on how to think and feels our emotions before we get a chance to feel them for ourselves. When Nurse Ratched puts a syrupy, soporific version of "Charmaine" on the record player for the ritual of dispensing the psychotropic drugs, what we feel is in counterpoint to the music. (With all the special features on DVDs today, I wish there was one that let you turn off the score.)

Such are my scattered thoughts on Christmas morning about "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," watched on Christmas Eve.

Lust for Lunch.

We had some lunch today at Crave, which seems to be a worthy new restaurant, just off State Street on Gorham (easy to miss if you're walking up State Street, but just a few steps away):



Walking back to the Law School, I saw a man preaching from the concrete pulpit that overlooks Library Mall:



He was holding up two signs and imploring people to open their hearts to religion.



A man with a long white ponytail, sitting on a metal bench just in front of the pulpit, was trying to eat his box lunch in peace:



Suddenly, the white ponytail man starts shouting back at the preacher man: "Why don't you just shut the f*ck up? What makes you think you have anything to say to me?" The preacher yells back, getting quite passionate, saying he was trying to teach love. The white ponytail man taunts the preacher, he shakes a plastic fork at him and dares him to come down from the pulpit and confront him face to face. The preacher man gets angry and throws down his signs and turns but then stops himself. The white ponytail man gets more heated up, saying, "You are so f*cking arrogant! You have nothing to offer me!" Sounding uncannily like Kirk Douglas playing Vincent Van Gogh in Lust for Life, the preacher seethes, "I want to help humanity!"

So I watched the first of the Ed Sullivan Shows with the Beatles, intriguingly intact, including commercials. How strangely sedate the commercials of that time were! Each one emphasized closeups of the product with a voice earnestly, quietly making assurances about how well it would perform. A "shoe wax" would make your shoes look like they had been coated with a new layer of leather, shaving cream would stay moist for the entire duration of a shave, pancakes would rise quickly after flipping. A headache was represented by a closeup of a man's face with one white dot after another appearing on it as the voiceover intoned "pain, pain, pain." The headache remedy ad came on immediately after The Beatles had opened the show with three peppy songs, and surely gave many parents around the country the chance to make wisecracks about rock and roll causing headaches. At the end of the commercial, his headache gone, the man tightens up his tie and combs his thinning hair--as if he had never heard of The Beatles! But he was happy, in a pleasantly serene way, because he didn't have a headache, and he didn't know that he looked all outmoded after the three songs that had preceded him that night.

After the ads, Ed tells the kids in the audience to be good and pay attention to the other acts, because The Beatles would be back in the end of the show. Then out comes a comic magician in white tie who does a long card trick that depends heavily on the continued reappearance of a black card in a group of red cards. But it's black and white TV! And The Beatles were just on! Then he does a long trick involving pouring salt from a salt shaker!

The next act is the cast of Oliver! No, I'm not excited. The exclamation point is part of the title, Oliver! The first person to sing is Davy Jones, future Monkee, who played the Artful Dodger in the musical. How sweet that little Davy is the first person to sing on TV after The Beatles. He does just fine.

Next is Frank Gorshin who does about ten impressions in his few minutes, turning into one celebrity after another in a routine based on the wacky notion, what if movie stars held political office? He starts with Broderick Crawford, in an impression that I've also seen Jim Carey do. Jim Carey clearly copied Gorshin's Broderick Crawford, though Carey, when I saw him do it, made it seem as though it was a special Carey sort of madness that he would make a weird choice like Broderick Crawford to impersonate--especially interesting since Carey played a role Gorshin had made famous, The Riddler. Anyway, Gorshin was just brilliant, doing Brando, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, and more.

The true horror of the evening is Tessie O'Shea, a very large woman who belted songs and played the banjo in a way that must have made sense when people still remembered vaudeville. The strange time overlap represented by this show reaches its height as Tessie tosses her white fur boa about and sings about her "curves" while stroking her huge abdomen.

Then there's a comedy routine, a lesser Stiller & Meara called McCall & Brill, and finally The Beatles come back for two more songs, ending with "I Want to Hold Your Hand." But there's still more time on the clock, so out comes a comic acrobat, a woman encased in a costume that makes her torso appear to be a face. Somehow she's able to make the eyes look back and forth as she does a little dance and ends by taking off the costume hat, which had been covering her head. Great! Then The Four Fays come out and do comic acrobatics for a few minutes, ending with their finale: one woman lies down on a table, gripping its edges, and two other women each grab one of her feet and run around the table several times in opposite directions. The audience loves it!

That's the big show!