Will The Circle Be Unbroken?
This is young Paul Newman in the film that made him a star, his first role as the Greek craftsman chosen to make a silver chalice like the one that Christ used at the Last Supper, engraved with the real images of the men who sat at the table with Jesus. He was a Greek, and he took it seriously, he studied these men and their reasons for following a man who claimed to be the Son of God, and their faith in the teachings of Jesus that led them to travel to his world to preach the Word of this new Faith, in a new God, who claimed to love all men.!
Here is a review of the worst film about religion ever made which talks about a guy who knows bad acting. Paul Newman kept a copy at home and showed it over and over to his friends. Apparently he was fond of bad movies? I liked it too, when I saw it at the Varsity theater at Marquette university in my freshman year, 1959, when I went out the back door of Schroeder Hall and into the back door of the Varsity without paying the 50 cents at the box office. It was more fun than studying at the dorm, and I learned a lot more than if I had!.
Last Sunday, Father Dan, my pastor at St. Jerome's Church in Houston Texas proudly showed us the new silver chalices that people had donated to our Church. I thought of that and of Newman's life and his movies, and how this one made an impression on both me and Paul Newman.. I like Paul Newman, and he wasn't right for the cry baby role of the second son in John Steinbecks East of Eden, James Dean was. He was the lost little kid in Rebel without a Cause. He only made threemovieswhere he played scared kids. He was even the punk coward in Giant who sucker punched Rock Hudson and ran like one instead of standing like a man to face him, Newman played men. Paul Newman was the young Philadelphian. he was the Hustler. He was the stranger who came to town in The Long Hot Summer, the guy that Joanne Woodward fell in love with. He was the guy in On The Terrace as well as the guy in Cool Hand Luke and the no account half breed savage who gave his life to save the ignorant people who looked at him like he didn't know what he was doing when he did his best to save their lives in an excellent western, Hombre"!
Joanne Woodward understood the girl in the Three Faces of Eve, and the women and the men in Paris Blues. She was the woman in Winning na d the lonely school teacher in a movie the he directed. They are alike and made a good team. Theye walked the talk that they expressed on the screen. It is this kind of talk that I wrote about today to the people that I see at church in my parish. Like most people, it is hard today to live the kind of life that Paul and Joanne did before they met each other, as well as the Hollywood life that they continued to live together.. The kind of life that I am trying to live today as a nobody in Houston Texas looking for my Joanne!
In the 30's they made a lot of very good sci-fi/horror fantasy films, Charles Laughton, the hunchback reject in the Victor Hugo's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" made one of the best, when he played the mad doctor with a dream of making human men and woman out of beasts of the jungle by surgery, which he performed in the House of Pain on his island paradise in the 30's film version of H G Well's "The Island of Dr. Moreau". The only animal that he had a lot of luck with was his personal bride of Frankenstein, the original cat women panther lady, Lupe Valdez. This film made her a star. I saw the Burt Lancaster, Michael York version in the 60's. I liked York in a similar film, where he lived in a world of youth, love,and perpetual fun, where everyone truly believed that they would go on to a better life when they reached thirty, whether they wanted to or not!
Nobody could live long in the dangerous world on the surface that had been poisoned by the radiation of the weapons in the war that people had fought to save mankind. When York and his 30 year old girl friend reached the world on the surface to face the air that they were told would kill them, it was like Arnold Schwartzennegger and his girl on the surface of the planet Mars where no one could live without air in the final scene of "Total Recall". York and his girl found they found an old man, Burgess Meredith who had never left the world above. He was old and lonely,and was glad to see them. He had been breathing the "poisoned" air since mankind went underground. Another great film!
Lancaster performed the role a lot better than Laughton, he wasn't a "hunchback", he was a Hemingway man. he was a young girls hero, as well as a young man's dream of a man, he played a very crazy Dr. Moreau!
Laughton was the part, Lancaster played the part, both saw it the same way!
Times change, society changes, but great stories and people don't change. We all live on islands, this church is an island, and whether you believe it ,or not, no man is an island!
We can't survive in this country living on the Island of Dr. Moreau. Charles Laughton saw this when he made films like Agatha Christie's 'Witness for the Prosecution" with Tyrone Power and Marlene Dietrich" and the film "The Best Man" , or was it " Advise and Consent" about the battle behind the scenes that the men in charge of a political party went through to choose a candidate. Laughton played a U S senator who understood human frailty, so did the other possible candidate, Henry Fonda, when they both tried to help the other good man, played by Cliff Robertson, Flowers for Algernon, and the Devils Brigade,, a man with a secret that he couldn't live with. He did the wrong thing trying to fix it, because he did it out of fear knowing that we, the American people could never forgive a man with this kind of secret, even though he was no longer the guy who mad this "horrible" mistake when he was a scared kid in battle as a soldier, alone, and frightened. He was alone on an island then and now as a candidate for higher office, and like the old joke," Suck one cock etc", you know the story!
Iit's just like making any other unforgiveable mistake. It all depends on who isn't willing to forgive you , even you forgive yourself.. Will your wife, your kids, your church, your community?. Can you forgive someone like Jesus can? Can you live if others don't approve of you if you are doing the Christ like thing, by forgiving a guy like this when you may or may not see the same potential in yourself? Even if you can't, can you be friends with a guy who can?
Life as a candidate for higher office was now impossible for Robertson. He thought that he was a deserving man, but in this film, a Gore Vidal film, and also an American film. Henry Fonda won the Prize. He always did. Gore Vidal was a left wing extremist., an ideologue. Right wing extremist, William F. Buckley's intellectual dueling buddy in the 60's. I used to enjoy watching these guys talk on TV, they didn't scream at each other, they fought like ladies!
Gore Vidal's main claim to fame is the book 'Myra Breckenridge". Remember sex goddess, Raquel Welch in the Bruce Jenner role, as Myra? As for Buckley, I bet that any of you who can remember him, never understood a word of the pompous preaching that he seemed to think represented the manners and breeding of an intelligent leader, a society man, like the great Gatsby, a guy who was a cut above. Did any of you see either guy this way? I like the story in "The Best Man", a contest between two men with the same vision, one who appeared to be clean, and one who knew that he wasn't. Both knew his secret, everybody did. Did anybody know Fonda's secret. He didn't have one right? A good guy doesn't have one, right. We are all good guys. None of us have one, Right!
What is a secret. Something you have done, or something that you want to do? if it's something you have done or something you kow that you are capable of doing. If you don't see the possibility it's impossible to codemn somebody for something that you don't understand, Gatsby!
If you did it, do you want to do it again? and if not, why in the hell do all the people with nothing to hide want you to live in The House of Pain on their island, the one that you see as paradise!
What have I done that allows me live without fear. Why do you worry about a guy that doesn't worry, if he cares enough to reach out to you in friendship? Who cares? Have I done what you fear that your kids might do. Make it hard forthem to do what all scared people do "get along". How are you getting along? it's your fear of the fear that drove me crazy, that you see in others that you share with them, not me!
You might call this common sense if you share this fear with with other people. It [s not something that I share in common with anyone. It is fear that I saw in myself when you looked at me with this fear in you. Fear of something that I accepted in me because I loved others. .Something that wasn't in me but was feared by the people that I loved. A fear that you see in your fearless young kids, especially kids who are aware of sex even if they don't see it like you do, or even if they do and share your fear. Kids at the Age of Reason that we called it when I was young.in K-12 and beyond. Do you really think you know about sex, about friendship and adulthood and the kind of unconditional love that true friendship of any kind requires? Int a world where every relationship has sexual overtones? Where do you think that kids get fear from? From me? From strangers? They get it from you, mom. From you dad. From you fellow parishioners, from you neighbors, from your community From people who share and cling to this fear.. People who teach it to everybody, by trying to ease their own fear, the same fear that exists in the heart of all men who don't trust others. You are scared shitless that you won't be able to "get along" if you speak about your fear!
We all have this secret, which isn't a secret. Modern kids, and kids of all ages and all generations have laughed at it. It's in every sitcom, every movie, every song, every sermon form the bible. We laugh and talk about it in our actions and those of others. Some of us don't laugh at themselves, they are us and cause us to fear them. They cause us to fear and not stand up for the guy that they look down on, because they can't laugh at themselves and might laugh at you if you support the guy they don't, the guy that they laugh at, the guy that they ridicule. The guy that they fear. If they had any sense, they would fear you, mom!
I don't mind ridicule from somebody who can laugh at himself. I can talk to someone like that!
Most of you can't if you live in fear of guys who might cause you problems if you live like I do, if you don't look down on somebody or fear anyone who looks down on you!
Laugh yes, but what do you do about it? Most of you left the nest and tried to live as open and honest citizens in the jungle that is this nation. Many came back to, or never left, the home of their fathers. Most us never do in our hearts. Remember graduation day. You were young, you were the future. Look around you in this auditorium, look at at your friends and neighbors, look at your parents. They were your future, and life isn't the same today, but it really is. It is the same as it was on your graduation day. In more ways than one, we are all our kids fucking future, here today in the good old USA!
Here in Houston, Texas at St. Jerome's, in this, our own island against the world, we live in our own House of Pain, only now you run the house and you are the cause of the pain, as well as the outcasts who live in the kind of pain. Pain that we cause each other by hiding the terror that some of you cause in each other!
If you find a friend and neighbor who can't laugh at life, no matter what happens,if they lose their sense of humanity and act out their pain, be a friend!
Talk to them, talk to anybody like them, talk about it, like you would with a friend! like you wold with your own kid. Ask him or her, what's up? There's a funny side to everything. Look at Blazing Saddles, Dr. Strangelove, Born Yesterday, Some like it Hot, The Rat Race, Irma la Duce, or a thousand other stories that talk about a humorous view of life, here and now, not in a better world in the next life, but here and now in River City!
The Lord our God is very capable of handling the next world and our future in it!
Take control of your own future in this world right now. Stand up like a Catholic and walk the talk that you teach your kids. Help a downtrodden neighbor to walk and talk like you want your kids to do. Help me to do this. I try hard, but I am downtrodden, I walk this town in the steps of Jesus, and while I am fully prepared to die if I have to, I don't want to. I need a friend, at least one. I am not trying to "get along" and please you all. i am trying to please myself. To live like Christ and find a friend. You can't believe how hard this is for a guy like me, and if you can, you can see what it takes to walk in the steps of Jesus. I don't see many of you who are willing to stand with me. A lot of you might want to, but wanting and wishing isn't getting it done, kids. Just like that wimp. James Taylor, I want a friend, but more like Russell Crowe, not Jmaes Taylor. Russell Crowe, in Cinderella man, Gladiator, The Insider, L A Confidential, the film that made him an American star, and A Beautiful Mind, the movie that gained him real fame. If you can't be this kind of friend, don't push me if I act like one, if try in vain to be a friend to you. This is who I am!
Father David, This is unedited, without checking any of the stuff in it. It is as it is, written without change just like i am speaking to you. this is the kind of stuff that I told you that I will speak about on five minutes notice!
YBIC,
John Meier
p.s. All right guys, so I changed it a little to clarify stuff when I just wrote this article. The message is the same. The circle of understanding that I speak about remains unbroken. It just depends on who is allowed in the circle? As I see it everyone is, but I'll settle for a circle of two!
p.p.s. In the movie "Demetreus and the Gladiators", a sequel to
"The Robe" the first cinemascope movie that used three cameras to fill the wide screen, a crazed emperor had one of his guards kill a man to see if he could use the Robe of Jesus that the soldiers at Cavalry had rolled dice to see who would get it, to bring him raise him from the dead In the film, "The Silver Chalice" mad man, lunatic Jack Palance at his craziest, does him one better. He uses the Chalice to jump to his own death trying to prove that any man who drinks from it is a God. He really believed that he could fly. He believed in the Father of the Son who drank from the original chalice and that his chalice made in that image by Newman made him a god like Jesus the son of our God. In a way he was a true believer and his faith led others who knew that he was mad to believe too as Paul Newman came to do!