Read Good Shit On Musings

During the last months of his life, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ordered that the mantelpiece in the White House’s state dining room be inscribed with John Adams’ prayer: “I pray Heaven to bestow the best of Blessings on this House and on all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise Men ever rule under this roof.”

Adams, the second president but the first to inhabit the Executive Mansion, as the White House was more often called in those days, couldn’t have known how much urgency we might attach to such a prayer in an age of terrorism, global warming, and nuclear weapons. Nor could he have anticipated the way that the passage of time might alter and sometimes outright distort our perception of presidential honesty and wisdom; our definitions of both might be radically different from his. Our films on presidential politics are a snapshot of our hopes and fears, a way to work out our anxieties through fiction. Two films that emerged in reaction to the election of 1960, Advise & Consent¸ directed by Otto Preminger, and The Best Man, written by Gore Vidal, reflect those anxieties as acutely as any ever made. 

Like Freud’s cigar, sometimes a film is just a film, of course, and not every presidential portrayal on celluloid betrays a hidden wish or worry—maybe Bill Pullman’s fighter-flying Thomas Whitmore in Independence Day (1996) or Harrison Ford’s combat-veteran James Marshall in Air Force One (1997)—both chief executives who take matters into their own hands—have a subtext in partisan gridlock during the Clinton years, but more likely they’re just action heroes going with the flow in outlandish films. Sometimes, though, the relationship is on the nose, such as in the 1933 fascist fantasy Gabriel Over the White House, which appeared at roughly the nadir of the Great Depression. Walter Huston plays a lackadaisical playboy president who suffers a near-fatal accident and is reborn as a Mussolini-like figure who solves the country’s problems through sheer force of will (and guns). At about the same time, there was also The Phantom President, a Rodgers and Hart musical, in which no less than the Yankee Doodle Dandy himself, George M. Cohan, reminds convention delegates about to nominate him for president:

My friends, this land is sad today,
It faces want and dearth.
But government of the people,
By the people, for the people,
Shall not perish from the earth.
The chorus answers, “Hey, hey, hey—that’s a new thought.” 

On the calmer end of the spectrum, at a time when Roosevelt was saying he was less concerned with being a great president than with not being the last president, the years 1930-1940 brought no less than three major films about Abraham Lincoln (D.W. Griffith’s Abraham Lincoln, starring Walter Huston; John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln, with Henry Fonda portraying Lincoln as lawyer; and John Cromwell’s Abe Lincoln in Illinois, with Raymond Massey as the titular character) each bearing the reassuring message that when the Republic was last under threat, a hero arose to restore order.

The United States was a far more stable and prosperous proposition during the 1960 presidential campaign season, but the choice between Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy and incumbent Vice-President Richard M. Nixon made it a change election nonetheless. The previous three presidents had been born between 1882 and 1890. Kennedy, 43 years old, or Nixon, 47, would be the first president in United States history born in the 20th century. Whether one agreed or disagreed with the policies of Roosevelt, Harry Truman, or Dwight Eisenhower, in a very real sense the reassuring grandpas who had steered America through the frightening progression of the Depression, World War II, and the Cold War were going away for good. 

There were good reasons to doubt both men. If Kennedy won, he would be the youngest elected president in history. While his panache made an appealing contrast with the dowdy Eisenhower, it was also a reminder that he was inexperienced, with an indifferent record in the Senate. Old New Deal Democrats, including Eleanor Roosevelt, doubted Kennedy’s bona fides. As Arthur Schlesinger Jr. put it, “Kennedy seemed too cool and ambitious, too bored by the conditional reflexes of stereotyped liberalism, too much a young man in a hurry. He did not respond in anticipated ways and phrases and wore no liberal heart on his leave.” In particular, the Kennedys had failed to repudiate the Red-baiting demagoguery of Senator Joe McCarthy and had, in fact, supported him. 

Kennedy was also burdened by inherited doubts. He was a Catholic, and anti-Catholic prejudice was still strong in the country; it had helped defeat Democrat Al Smith in the election of 1928. There was also the looming presence of his father, Joseph Kennedy, a wealthy, unscrupulous climber who had sunk his own presidential ambitions by advising appeasement of Hitler while serving as ambassador to Great Britain at the outset of World War II.

As a Congressman, Senator, and Vice-President who had successfully debated Nikita Khrushchev and stepped in as pinch-president when Eisenhower was ill, Nixon had experience in spades, not that the old general acknowledged it. (Asked at a press conference to name “an example of a major idea of [Nixon’s] that you had adopted,” the president replied, “If you give me a week, I might think of one. I don’t remember.”) That experience, though, contained a fair share of disqualifiers. He had pioneered McCarthy’s tactics, first in his campaigns for the House and Senate, then in the divisive Alger Hiss affair. Due to the revelation of a campaign slush fund, which he combated with the infamous “Checkers” speech, he seemed to many not just an unscrupulous careerist, but also an example of tawdry, down-market venality. “No class,” was Kennedy’s two-word dismissal, an assessment that was echoed in campaign signs that asked,  “Would you buy a used car from this man?” Anticipating Donald Trump, Nixon had tried to rebrand himself so often that one commentator said the question was not if there was a new Nixon or an old Nixon, but “whether there is anything that be called the ‘real’ Nixon, new or old.” (James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations, 435.)

Tensions around the election were unsurprisingly stoked by the candidates. Kennedy’s major theme was the anodyne, “It’s time for America to get moving again,” but in his first televised debate with Nixon, he began by questioning, Lincoln-style, whether the world could continue to exist half slave and half free, asking, “Can freedom be maintained under the most severe attack it has ever known?” It was as if the Russians were about to march down Pennsylvania Avenue and paint the White House red. 

Unsurprisingly, with the old guard fading away and the new guard doing what it could to shatter any sense of serenity, public uncertainty about the election expressed itself in polemical art that asked tough questions about the integrity of the American political system and the quality of men that system produces. Among the first was the novel Advise and Consent by Allen Drury, appearing in 1959. A huge bestseller and inexplicable winner of the Pulitzer Prize, it became a Broadway play the next year, with the film version, directed by Preminger, finished in time for Oscar season in 1961 but held back for contractual reasons until June 1962. Vidal’s play The Best Man premiered on Broadway on March 31, 1960. The film adaptation, directed by Franklin Schaffner (who had directed the Broadway version of Advise) appeared on April 5, 1964. Significantly, both struggle to find an ending that does not duck the questions the stories pose, and both fail. Over 50 years later, with a presidential election of our own in the offing, we are still asking the questions.

*

In Advise & Consent, an unnamed, ailing president (Franchot Tone) nominates controversial candidate Robert Leffingwell (Henry Fonda) to succeed the recently deceased Secretary of State. Leffingwell is an intellectual who disdains kneejerk anti-Soviet policies. The former head of two federal agencies, he has made powerful enemies among the senators who must confirm his appointment, chief among them senior senator from South Carolina Seab Cooley (Charles Laughton, visibly ailing in his final role). Leffingwell also has an obsessive advocate in the sneering, peace-at-any-price junior senator from Wyoming, Fred Van Ackerman (George Grizzard). Caught between them is Brigham Anderson (Don Murray), senior senator from Utah, who will chair the subcommittee assigned to conduct the confirmation hearings. A family man with a pretty wife and a young daughter, Anderson is hiding a secret that could influence his vote if one side or the other was to get ahold of it.

In 1967, as young people from all over America were piling into Volkswagens and Greyhound buses bound for California, Agns Varda relocated from Paris to Los Angeles. Her husband, the director Jacques Demy, had just signed a deal with Columbia. As a mother pushing 40, she was a full generation older than the dropouts, runaways, and radicals amassing in San Franciscoand had already made a handful of classic films in France. But Vardas vivacious personality was well suited to her sunny, liberated new surroundings.

It was a shower of freedom, she recalled in a 2009 interview with the L.A. Times. Suddenly, everything was different. It was a peace and love time. They were trying to have sexual revolutions and colors were daring. They were eating different. I had to learn the language and we threw ourselves into the generation and we loved it so much.

Though Varda took meetings with Columbia Pictures, too, for a project titled Peace and Love, she gave up when the studio denied her full creative control. As Alison Smith points out in her book, Agns Varda, the disappointment was probably mitigated by the relative liberty that she had in her work. San Francisco was effervescent, flower-powered, idyllic, and Vardas contacts there read like a catalogue of the well-heeled counterculture.

Each of the three films she made during her three years in California is, in its own way, a product of that counterculture. In 1967, Varda traveled to the aquatic suburbia of Sausalito to make Uncle Yanco, a lighthearted documentary short about her relative Jean Varda, a beloved local painter. The next year, in Black Panthers, she documented the protests in Oakland following Huey P. Newtons arrest. Her sympathetic take on the movement contrasts white peoples irrational fear of the Panthers with activists calm explanations of their objectives. But her California masterpiece is 1969s Lions Love (…and Lies), a narrative feature that combines the joie de vivre of Uncle Yanco with the serious critique of Black Panthers.

In 1967, as young people from all over America were piling into Volkswagens and Greyhound buses bound for California, Agnès Varda relocated from Paris to Los Angeles. Her husband, the director Jacques Demy, had just signed a deal with Columbia. As a mother pushing 40, she was a full generation older than the dropouts, runaways, and radicals amassing in San Francisco—and had already made a handful of classic films in France. But Varda’s vivacious personality was well suited to her sunny, liberated new surroundings.

“It was a shower of freedom,” she recalled in a 2009 interview with the L.A. Times. “Suddenly, everything was different. It was a peace and love time. They were trying to have sexual revolutions and colors were daring. They were eating different. I had to learn the language and we threw ourselves into the generation and we loved it so much.”

Though Varda took meetings with Columbia Pictures, too, for a project titled Peace and Love, she gave up when the studio denied her full creative control. As Alison Smith points out in her book, Agnès Varda, “the disappointment was probably mitigated by the relative liberty that she had in her work. San Francisco was effervescent, flower-powered, idyllic, and Varda’s contacts there read like a catalogue of the well-heeled counterculture.”

Each of the three films she made during her three years in California is, in its own way, a product of that counterculture. In 1967, Varda traveled to the “aquatic suburbia” of Sausalito to make “Uncle Yanco,” a lighthearted documentary short about her relative Jean Varda, a beloved local painter. The next year, in “Black Panthers,” she documented the protests in Oakland following Huey P. Newton’s arrest. Her sympathetic take on the movement contrasts white people’s irrational fear of the Panthers with activists’ calm explanations of their objectives. But her California masterpiece is 1969’s Lions Love (…and Lies), a narrative feature that combines the joie de vivre of “Uncle Yanco” with the serious critique of “Black Panthers.”

People are dying so fast that its like what I imagine being in a war would be like.
volunteer nurse Hedy Straus in the 1987 documentary short Living With AIDS

By the time Ronald Reagan deigned to mention AIDS publicly for the first time in a press conference on September 17, 1985, it was known in some circles that the virus that causes it had been ravaging the gay community for more than four years. In the interim, while the medical and scientific communities scrambled to get a grip on the epidemic and fought for the government funding needed to do so properly, gay writers and filmmakers responded to the health crisis in their own wayby creating plays and films that humanized its victims and had the potential to educate the American public about the need for compassion and swift action.

One of the most immediate of these responses was Larry Kramers play The Normal Heart, which the outspoken writer/activista founding member of Gay Mens Health Crisis in 1982, when the disease was still known as GRID, or Gay-Related Immunity Diseasestarted writing in 1983 and saw staged to great acclaim at New York Citys Public Theater in the spring of 1985. Another project with a similar gestation period was the pioneering TV movie An Early Frost, broadcast by NBC that fall after co-writers and partners Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipmanwho later went to develop Queer As Folk for Showtimewent through 15 drafts with the network over a year and a half. And first-time filmmaker Bill Sherwoods low-budget indie Parting Glances was shot in 1984as evidenced by the new releases lining the wall in one scene set at a trendy record storebut didnt get released until early 1986. Snapshots of a time when there was a great deal of misinformation about AIDS and the people it affected, all three remain urgent dispatches from the front lines of the struggle. But to keep them straight, its helpful to take them in the order they reached the screen, touching on a few other milestones along the way.

Im sure youve heard of Acquired Immunity Deficiency Syndrome.

For all its good intentions, An Early Frost wasnt the first feature film about AIDS. In his seminal text, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality In The Movies, Vito Russo gives that distinction to Arthur J. Bressan, Jr.s Buddies, and hes supported by Raymond Murrays Images in the Dark: An Encyclopedia Of Gay And Lesbian Film And Video. According to Murrays book, however, Buddies was never released on video and it continues to be unavailable to stream or purchase, which has rendered it as invisible today as AIDS sufferers were to the general public three decades ago. By contrast, An Early Frost was put out on DVD in 2006, complete with a commentary by Cowen, Lipman, and lead actor Aidan Quinn, plus the documentary short Living With AIDS, which was filmed by producer/director/editor Tina DeFeliciantonio in 1985 and broadcast on PBS a couple years later. A huge ratings-getter, An Early Frost beat out Monday Night Football to be the top-rated show of the night, capturing one-third of the total viewing audience when it premiered. Today, it takes viewers back to a time when AIDS was a death sentence for nearly everyone who contracted it and effectively outed those who were still in the closet.

“People are dying so fast that it’s like what I imagine being in a war would be like.”
–volunteer nurse Hedy Straus in the 1987 documentary short Living With AIDS

By the time Ronald Reagan deigned to mention AIDS publicly for the first time in a press conference on September 17, 1985, it was known in some circles that the virus that causes it had been ravaging the gay community for more than four years. In the interim, while the medical and scientific communities scrambled to get a grip on the epidemic and fought for the government funding needed to do so properly, gay writers and filmmakers responded to the health crisis in their own way—by creating plays and films that humanized its victims and had the potential to educate the American public about the need for compassion and swift action.

One of the most immediate of these responses was Larry Kramer’s play The Normal Heart, which the outspoken writer/activist—a founding member of Gay Men’s Health Crisis in 1982, when the disease was still known as GRID, or Gay-Related Immunity Disease—started writing in 1983 and saw staged to great acclaim at New York City’s Public Theater in the spring of 1985. Another project with a similar gestation period was the pioneering TV movie An Early Frost, broadcast by NBC that fall after co-writers and partners Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman—who later went to develop Queer As Folk for Showtime—went through 15 drafts with the network over a year and a half. And first-time filmmaker Bill Sherwood’s low-budget indie Parting Glances was shot in 1984—as evidenced by the new releases lining the wall in one scene set at a trendy record store—but didn’t get released until early 1986. Snapshots of a time when there was a great deal of misinformation about AIDS and the people it affected, all three remain urgent dispatches from the front lines of the struggle. But to keep them straight, it’s helpful to take them in the order they reached the screen, touching on a few other milestones along the way.

“I’m sure you’ve heard of Acquired Immunity Deficiency Syndrome.”

For all its good intentions, An Early Frost wasn’t the first feature film about AIDS. In his seminal text, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality In The Movies, Vito Russo gives that distinction to Arthur J. Bressan, Jr.’s Buddies, and he’s supported by Raymond Murray’s Images in the Dark: An Encyclopedia Of Gay And Lesbian Film And Video. According to Murray’s book, however, Buddies was never released on video and it continues to be unavailable to stream or purchase, which has rendered it as invisible today as AIDS sufferers were to the general public three decades ago. By contrast, An Early Frost was put out on DVD in 2006, complete with a commentary by Cowen, Lipman, and lead actor Aidan Quinn, plus the documentary short Living With AIDS, which was filmed by producer/director/editor Tina DeFeliciantonio in 1985 and broadcast on PBS a couple years later. A huge ratings-getter, An Early Frost beat out Monday Night Football to be the top-rated show of the night, capturing one-third of the total viewing audience when it premiered. Today, it takes viewers back to a time when AIDS was a death sentence for nearly everyone who contracted it and effectively outed those who were still in the closet.

In 1986, David Begelman, head of Gladden Entertainment, and producer Bruce McNall sat down to watch a new cut of their latest production, The Sicilian. The anxiety and anticipation was through the roof: Sicilian director Michael Cimino had already thrown a fit when the producers had insisted the filmmaker cut down the 150-minute movie he initially delivered. Ive been cutting for six months! Cimino had railed, according to McNalls memoir Fun While It Lasted. Theres nothing more to take out! When Begelman and McNall countered that Ciminos contract prohibited him from making the film more than 120 minutes, Ciminos rage seemingly evaporated in a split-second. Fine, he replied. You want it shorter, you got it.

Now, as the projector rolled at the Gladden offices and McNall and Begelman watched the new 120-minute cut Cimino had delivered in just a few days, they were flabbergasted. Cimino had removed all action beats and forward momentum from the film, resulting in a disjointed, confusing mess. A lavish mountain-set wedding scene was supposed to be interrupted by a violent attack on the wedding party. Up on the screen, however, the wedding scene abruptly cut to a scene at a hospital, where bloody guests were being treated for wounds suffered at an attack that hadnt occurred on screen. The two Gladden executives didnt even bother to finish watching the film. The writing was on the wall: Things had gone wrong from the start with The Sicilian, and there was little chance they could improve it from here.

Both the novel and the film adaptation of The Godfather feature a lengthy sequence where protagonist Michael Corleone is exiled to Sicily after killing a police officer. Godfather author Mario Puzo penned a spin-off in 1984 that used Michaels journey as a springboard for a fictionalized telling of the exploits of Salvatore Giuliano, a real-life Robin Hood of Sicily in the 40s and 50s. In Puzos The Sicilian, Michael is sandwiched into Giulianos story: helping Giuliano travel to America. Although the bulk of Puzos novel focused on Guiliano, it was this tentative connection to The Godfather that gave Gladden Entertainment enough confidence to shell out $1 million to Puzo for the movie rights. With The Sicilian, the execs at Gladden, having few previous credits to their names, hoped that the end result would be a film with class and poisesomething maybe not the equal to but at least somewhere within the same prestigious ballpark as The Godfather. (Though due to rights issues, the film adaptation could not mention the Corleone family.)

Begelman was no stranger to problems. After rising to become president of Columbia Pictures, he was caught forging actor Cliff Robertsons signature on a check made out to himself for $10,000. Begelman was fired from Columbia, but he was not out of the business entertainment entirely. After landing at MGM and later Sherwood Productions, Begelman would go on to form his own production company, Gladden Entertainment. Perhaps it was Begelmans own fall from grace and climb back up to the top that gave him the courage to hire Cimino to direct Gladdens biggest project ever, The Sicilian. Once a highly sought-after filmmaker following The Deer Hunters success in the box office and at the Oscars, Ciminos reputation plunged drastically in 1980, when his epic, expensive Heavens Gate was savaged by critics and virtually ignored by audiences. It was eventually considered the film that sank United Artists. Yet just as Begelmans forgery wasnt enough to exile him from the movie business forever, Ciminos Heavens Gate disaster didnt preclude him from ever directing again. Although Ciminos hyper-perfectionism while working on Heavens Gate had quintupled the films original $7.5 million budget, he was was too talented and previously successful to be written off entirely. In 1985, he returned with the Mickey Rourke vehicle Year of the Dragon, which, despite a script plagued by racial insensitivities, was a meager box office success that kept him working.

In 1986, David Begelman, head of Gladden Entertainment, and producer Bruce McNall sat down to watch a new cut of their latest production, The Sicilian. The anxiety and anticipation was through the roof: Sicilian director Michael Cimino had already thrown a fit when the producers had insisted the filmmaker cut down the 150-minute movie he initially delivered. “I’ve been cutting for six months!” Cimino had railed, according to McNall’s memoir Fun While It Lasted.  “There’s nothing more to take out!” When Begelman and McNall countered that Cimino’s contract prohibited him from making the film more than 120 minutes, Cimino’s rage seemingly evaporated in a split-second. “Fine,” he replied. “You want it shorter, you got it.”

Now, as the projector rolled at the Gladden offices and McNall and Begelman watched the new 120-minute cut Cimino had delivered in just a few days, they were flabbergasted. Cimino had removed all action beats and forward momentum from the film, resulting in a disjointed, confusing mess. A lavish mountain-set wedding scene was supposed to be interrupted by a violent attack on the wedding party. Up on the screen, however, the wedding scene abruptly cut to a scene at a hospital, where bloody guests were being treated for wounds suffered at an attack that hadn’t occurred on screen. The two Gladden executives didn’t even bother to finish watching the film. The writing was on the wall: Things had gone wrong from the start with The Sicilian, and there was little chance they could improve it from here.

Both the novel and the film adaptation of The Godfather feature a lengthy sequence where protagonist Michael Corleone is exiled to Sicily after killing a police officer. Godfather author Mario Puzo penned a spin-off in 1984 that used Michael’s journey as a springboard for a fictionalized telling of the exploits of Salvatore Giuliano, a real-life Robin Hood of Sicily in the ‘40s and ‘50s. In Puzo’s The Sicilian, Michael is sandwiched into Giuliano’s story: helping Giuliano travel to America. Although the bulk of Puzo’s novel focused on Guiliano, it was this tentative connection to The Godfather that gave Gladden Entertainment enough confidence to shell out $1 million to Puzo for the movie rights. With The Sicilian, the execs at Gladden, having few previous credits to their names, hoped that the end result would be a film with class and poise—something maybe not the equal to but at least somewhere within the same prestigious ballpark as The Godfather. (Though due to rights issues, the film adaptation could not mention the Corleone family.)

Begelman was no stranger to problems. After rising to become president of Columbia Pictures, he was caught forging actor Cliff Robertson’s signature on a check made out to himself for $10,000. Begelman was fired from Columbia, but he was not out of the business entertainment entirely. After landing at MGM and later Sherwood Productions, Begelman would go on to form his own production company, Gladden Entertainment. Perhaps it was Begelman’s own fall from grace and climb back up to the top that gave him the courage to hire Cimino to direct Gladden’s biggest project ever, The Sicilian. Once a highly sought-after filmmaker following The Deer Hunter’s success in the box office and at the Oscars, Cimino’s reputation plunged drastically in 1980, when his epic, expensive Heaven’s Gate was savaged by critics and virtually ignored by audiences. It was eventually considered the film that sank United Artists. Yet just as Begelman’s forgery wasn’t enough to exile him from the movie business forever, Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate disaster didn’t preclude him from ever directing again. Although Cimino’s hyper-perfectionism while working on Heaven’s Gate had quintupled the film’s original $7.5 million budget, he was was too talented and previously successful to be written off entirely. In 1985, he returned with the Mickey Rourke vehicle Year of the Dragon, which, despite a script plagued by racial insensitivities, was a meager box office success that kept him working.

Cannes Film Festival, 2014. Among the films competing for the Palme dOr is The Search, Michel Hazanavicius highly anticipated followup to The Artist, which had won the Best Picture Oscar three years earlier (after itself debuting at Cannes). Its pedigree is flawless: based on an Oscar-winning (Best Story) 1948 drama of the same title, which had starred Montgomery Clift; a cast featuring former Oscar nominees Brnice Bejo and Annette Bening; weighty subject matter involving the Second Chechen War. When the press sees The Search, however, they rip it to shreds. A grueling, lumbering two-and-a-half hour humanitarian tract that all but collapses under the weight of its own moral indignation, Variety calls it, in one of the kinder reviews. Hazanavicius recuts the film slightly for its tour of the fall fest circuit, but it’s largely ignored, thanks to the toxic word out of Cannes. Today, over two years later, there is still no indication that The Searchwhich, lets just note again for the record, is the successor to a major box-office hit that won Best Picture, Director, and Actor at the 2012 Oscarswill get any sort of U.S. release.

Cannes Film Festival, 2015. Among the films competing for the Palme dOr is The Sea of Trees, a drama about an American man who flies to Japan with the intention of killing himself in Aokigahara, the infamous forest (see: The Forest; nah, dont see that) where locals commit suicide in alarming numbers. The film stars Matthew McConaughey, who had won the Academy Award for Best Actor just two years earlier (for Dallas Buyers Club); its director is Gus Van Sant, a previous Palme dOr winner (Elephant, 2003). Expectations are highuntil critics just about hoot The Sea of Trees off of the screen. One review accurately deems it “sub-Nicholas Sparks tripe,” a phrase that one wouldn’t generally anticipate when skimming the buzz from the world’s most prestigious film festival. Roadside Attractions, in conjunction with Lionsgate, had picked up the U.S. distribution rights in advance of the world premiere, but wound up sitting on the movie for over a year before finally selling it to adventurous new distributor A24. The U.S. trailer, released just this week, mentions the Cannes selection, but features no critical blurbs at allan almost unprecedented circumstance for an art film that premiered at a festival. (A24s trailer for The Lobster, which they picked up from financially troubled Alchemy, includes six blurbs from major critics.) Evidently, theyre hoping nobody will notice.