Free This Weekend! 50 Must-See Movies: Mothers

Posted on May 4, 2013 at 6:00 am

In honor of Mother’s Day next Sunday, I’m making my ebook, 50 Must-See Movies: Mothers free all weekend! Post a review on Amazon and you can get any other Miniver Press ebook free as well. The book is dedicated to my own wonderful wise, witty, and always-on-our-side mother, who made all three of her daughters the stars of her story. Here’s the book’s introduction:

No relationship is more primal, more fraught, more influential, more worried over, more nourishing when good and more devastating when bad that our connection to our mothers. The first eyes to look at us with love, the first arms to hold us, Mom is the one who first keeps us fed and warm, who applauds our first steps and kisses our scrapes and takes our temperature by kissing our forehead. She’s also the one who keeps people in endless years of psychoanalysis for failing to make her children feel loved and safe. Mom inspires a lot of movies in every possible category, from comedy to romance to drama to crime to animation to horror, from the lowest-budget indie to the biggest-budget prestige film. A lot of women have been nominated for Oscars for playing mothers and just about every actress over age 20 has appeared as a mother in at least one movie.

There are innumerable ways of mothering and all of them show up in the movies. There are cookie-baking, apron-wearing mothers who always know just the right comforting thing to say. There are stylish, sophisticated, wealthy mothers and mothers who do not have enough money to feed their children. There are mothers with PhDs and mothers who cannot read. There are mothers of every race and religion and many species on earth and in outer space (remember “Alien”).

There are terrifying mothers who abuse or abandon their children or coldly deploy them like weapons of mass destruction. There are mothers who give good advice and endless support and mothers who try to push their children to take the wrong jobs and marry the wrong people. There are super-strict mothers and super-lax mothers, mothers who want to know every detail of their children’s lives even when they are grown up and mothers who barely remember that they have any children at all even when they are young. There are mothers of children with special needs who fight fiercely to make sure they have the fullest and most independent lives they can. There are children who love and support their mothers and children who break their mothers’ hearts with their selfishness and cruelty.

And there are those very special souls who remind us that motherhood does not require a biological connection. Stepmothers and adoptive mothers are as vitally important on screen as they are in the lives of those lucky enough to be mothered by them.

“A boy’s best friend is his mother,” says a character whose mother is central to the story even though she never appears in the film. (Spoiler alert: the quote comes from Norman Bates in “Psycho.”) In “Stop or My Mom Will Shoot,” tough guy Sylvester Stallone plays a cop who mother comes along on his investigation whether he wants her to or not. In “Oedipus Wrecks,” one of three short films that make up the compilation “New York Stories,” Woody Allen plays a lawyer whose mother finds the ultimate way to embarrass him. And don’t get me started on Jason’s mother in the “Friday the 13th” movies.

I have selected 50 of my favorite movie mothers, including classic films like “The Sound of Music” and “Little Women” along with forgotten or overlooked films like “Stella Dallas,” “Claudia and David,” and “Dear Frankie.” Actresses like Anne Revere and Spring Byington made careers out of wonderful performances as mothers and I have included some of their best. I have a special affection for those based on real-life mothers, especially those based on the mothers of the writers who told their stories, like Sally Field’s Oscar-winning performance in “Places in the Heart.” But it is clear that in some way each of the mothers in these movies is inspired by the unique joys and frustrations of the woman we love first.

Related Tags:

Books

Tribute: E.L. Konigsburg

Posted on April 23, 2013 at 3:59 pm

We mourn the passing of one of the greats of 20th century children’s literature, E.L. Konigsburg. Her books included two that were made into movies. In fact, From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, the story of a brother and sister who run away from home and hide out in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was filmed twice, one starring Lauren Bacall and and one known as “The Hideaways” starring Ingrid Bergman. Stephanie Zimbalest starred in Caroline?, an underrated TV movie based on Konigsburg’s book, Father’s Arcane Daughter, about a mysterious young woman who says she is the long-missing daughter of a troubled wealthy family. She won two Newbery Awards, one for Mixed-Up Files and one for The View from Saturday, the story of a team of middle-schoolers who compete in an academic bowl and their charismatic teacher.

I love them all, but my favorite is Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth, about a lonely girl who makes exactly the friend I wished I had had when I was that age. Konigsburg’s books are narratively daring. She never wrote down to kids because she knew how smart they are and how hungry they are for stories that challenge them. Her characters are complex and vivid and her themes are rich and profound. May her memory be a blessing, and may new generations keep rediscovering her work.

Related Tags:

Books Writers

Happy Poetry Month!

Posted on April 21, 2013 at 10:48 am

Happy Poetry Month!

The wonderful “pÕÎ-trÉ” blog has a terrific selection of poems about movies. And there have been great movies about poets like “The Barretts of Wimpole Street” (about the courtship of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning), An Angel at My Table (about Janet Frame) and the documentaries about Rumi, Billy Collins, and Charles Bukowski. And the movie Deliverance was based on a novel by the poet James Dickey.

I love “Alice in Wonderland’s” version of “The Walrus and the Carpenter.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4imoPRSClkE

And this beautiful e.e. cummings poem recited by Cameron Diaz to Toni Collette in “In Her Shoes.”

Many movies take their titles from poems, like A Raisin in the Sun, which comes from a poem by Langston Hughes, Splendor in the Grass (from Wordsworth), and Invictus.

Characters in movies often recite poetry. Movies are written by writers, after all, and writers love words. Katherine Hepburn quotes T.S. Eliot in “Without Love,” “April is the cruellest month, breeding/Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/Memory and desire, stirring/Dull roots with spring rain.” “Blade Runner” has a quote from Blake’s “Tyger.” In “Awakenings,” “The Panther” by Rilke illustrates the isolation and bleakness of a patient’s inner life:

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly–. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

One of the most memorable scenes in “Four Weddings and a Funeral” is the heart-breaking funeral service with W.H. Auden’s Funeral Blues:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

(more…)

Related Tags:

Books

Interview: Jay Sullivan of Raising Gentle Men

Posted on March 15, 2013 at 8:00 am

Jay Sullivan‘s new book, Raising Gentle Men: Lives at the Orphanage Edge, is the story of his experience as the only man living in a Kingston, Jamaica convent, helping to care for 250 orphan boys. It is a beautifully written and inspiring story. Sullivan generously took time to answer my questions about his experiences.

How did you first come to the orphanage in Jamaica?

I got there one step at a time. My first year in Kingston, I walked by the orphanage grounds each day on my way to St. George’s College, the Jesuit high school where I taught English. When I was asked to help run the school’s ministry program, I needed a place to take my students where they could work with less-privileged people. What better than the orphanage around the corner? From that initial interaction, my involvement with the place grew, and I eventually moved in.

What kind of training did you have in religion or education before your arrival?

I majored in English at Boston College, but hadn’t had any formal training as a teacher. In fact, only one of the dozen BC teachers sent to Kingston in 1984 came from the School of Education. The week before we landed in Kingston we went on a retreat to talk about our faith and our role at our schools. Two nuns, veteran teachers themselves, spent a day giving us pointers on lesson plans and maintaining discipline. The only line that stuck with me was, “Don’t smile until Christmas.” It’s a classic line for teachers. It means if you are strict for the first few months, you can loosen up after that. But if the kids think you are a pushover at the start, they will walk all over you. I wish I had heeded the nuns’ advice. My first year I was a disaster when it came to discipline. But I learned my lesson by the second year.

What was the biggest surprise of your time there?

Like everyone my age, I had just finished 16 years in a classroom, but had experienced that room from only one perspective. Becoming a teacher, looking at the class from the front instead of the back of the room, changed my perspective on what had been going on for the last 16 years. That alone was a huge learning curve.

How were the nuns different from what outsiders might expect?

I think most people assume nuns are serious and austere. My Aunt Dolores was a Sister of Charity. I grew up knowing her and some of her nun friends, who were the friendliest, happiest, most jovial people, always laughing and teasing each other. The nuns at Alpha were of the same ilk. There were certainly one or two that wore a dour face, and clearly, they all knew how to keep order, but their cheerfulness might have surprised people.

What did the boys want to know about you?

The boys were used to people coming and going at the orphanage, so their questions were simple. My freckles and red hair piqued their interest more than anything else.

Were the boys supportive of each other?

I was always amazed at their generosity with each other. If one of them got a special treat of some sort, he always wound up sharing it among whatever boy put out a hand. I don’t know if that’s because they each knew hunger all too well, or because they were relatively well fed at Alpha and didn’t need to worry about their next meal. They also supported each other emotionally. When one scored a goal on the field, won at a game of cards, or was praised by a staff member for a good deed, the others would cheer him on. Of course, they also teased each other, just like any other group of boys.

Do you have a favorite Bible passage or prayer?

I love the Prayer of St. Francis. Its call to action is a theme throughout the book.

What was the best advice you got while you were in Jamaica?

Sister Magdalen talked a lot, but she wasn’t into dispensing advice. Everything I learned from her and the other sisters was from watching their actions. The way Magdalen took each day as it came, controlled only what she could, and let God handle the rest was the biggest lesson I learned.

What made you decide it was time to write the book?

I thought that 20 years was enough time to “think about” writing a book. My wife and kids also let me know it was time to either write it or stop talking about it. I’m sure many men accomplish their goals in life simply because their wives tell them, “Enough talk already. Get it done.”

How does the understanding you gained in Jamaica influence your life today?

In Jamaica, I talked with the boys each evening about their lives. I gained an appreciation for how diverse the human experience can be, and yet how similar we all are in seeking the essential human needs of camaraderie, companionship and knowing that we are part of something larger than ourselves. That experience has helped me challenge my assumptions about others, and stay focused on the basics about human nature when I deal with people. Both have helped me a great deal in my role as a communication skills coach. I still have a lot more to learn in this area.

What advice would you give someone who is about to begin the kind of work you describe in the book?

Stay open to the ideas you see and hear in others with more experience. Approach the work knowing you can accomplish a great deal, but step carefully, and with great humility.

Related Tags:

Books Live Theater Writers

Interview: The Trouble With Flirting Author Claire LaZebnik

Posted on February 26, 2013 at 8:00 am

Claire LaZebnik’s latest YA novel, The Trouble with Flirting, published today, is the witty and insightful story of Franny Price, a talented teenager who gets a summer job working with her aunt, the costumer for a high school drama program putting on plays by Shakespeare. I loved it! LaZebnik was nice enough to answer my questions.

Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park inspired some elements of your story, including the name of the main character. Your Franny Price is much more confident and outspoken than Austen’s Fanny Price. What are their most important similarities and differences?

They’re both thoughtful, decent, intelligent young women who occasionally get overlooked because they’re not flashy or gorgeous—they’re the type that grows on you, rather than the type that hits you over the head from the beginning. So that’s how they’re similar.

But, like all of us, they’re products of the age they live in, which ultimately makes them more different than similar. Fanny lives in an era when a woman with no independent means either has to marry well or face a lifetime of poverty: she has no way to pull herself up except through marriage. Alone, she’s impoverished; married, she’s dependent on her husband’s goodwill. Franny, on the other hand, is a modern young woman, who’s dependent on no one but herself for her future success. She may have to work when others get to play, but that’s a cash issue, not a class issue and really just proves how self-sufficient she is. When she falls in love, it’s for fun, not to ensure her future.

One of the most important elements of Austen’s Mansfield Park is a theatrical production that ends very poorly. What do you as an author think that giving the characters a theatrical setting allows you to explore?

Actually, I think the whole idea of any summer program–not just an acting one–is that you get to escape whoever you are at home and play at being whatever you want to be and of course acting does exactly the same thing. And the contrast between getting up on stage and acting–which is fun and glamorous–and sitting backstage sewing costumes–which is the opposite–really added to Franny’s outsider status. But she’s not self-pitying or angry and I think that reflects well on her character, especially since she proves she’s as good an actor as any of them when she’s given the chance.

Your characters are very witty and it was a nice change to read a book about teenagers where the main characters were not too shy or insecure to speak up. What can readers learn from characters who have that kind of confidence and humor?

I think it’s incredibly important for boys and girls (and men and women) to feel comfortable talking to each other. Nothing makes me sadder than hearing people ask for advice on “how to talk to the opposite sex.” Really? Because in my experience, you open up your mouth and the words come out. The strongest relationships I know are the ones based on friendship, and friendship grows when you talk easily, openly, and with a shared sense of humor.

In addition to Mansfield Park, another classic literary work that inspires this book is Twelfth Night, the Shakespeare play that the characters perform. Why did you choose that play and how does it relate to the themes of the book? Is the duality and mirroring of Twelfth Night relevant to your story?

So I’m embarrassed to admit that I chose Twelfth Night largely because I knew the play pretty well and could write about it easily, although you can definitely find a lot of parallels between it and the novel (for one thing, characters have a tendency to fall in love with the wrong people in both). But it’s actually Measure for Measure that I chose more deliberately for them to discuss because there’s so much in that play about how you shouldn’t trust someone just because he appears on the outside to be good. All of that really does tie into The Trouble with Flirting, since Franny makes the mistake of judging people on how they appear and not on what they actually do.

Why is it important that Franny comes from a family with much less money than the kids in the theater program have? How does her unexpected opportunity to appear on stage affect the way the others see her?

In Austen’s Mansfield Park, Fanny can’t shake her outsider status no matter how long she lives with the Bertrams, because she’s dependent on their generosity and her father isn’t a gentleman. I decided that putting Franny to work during the summer when every other high schooler is just having fun would capture that “poor cousin on the outside looking in” feeling.

When she gets to join a cast, she can prove that she’s just as talented as everyone else, that she could have gotten into the program if she’d been able to afford it, and I think that’s important to her self-esteem. She stops being so much of an outsider at that point–but other obstacles crop up for her.

What is the hardest part of writing a book like this? What is the most fun?

Hardest part is this: promoting the book. I’m a homebody. I like to sit in my house and write–it’s trying to get people to hear about my books that I find challenging.

The most fun is that moment before you start writing, when you’re thinking about the story and phrases start popping into your head and you see everything so clearly and it feels like it’s going to all come together perfectly–like you could just sit down and the book would flow from your fingertips in a few short hours. Of course, when you sit down to actually put it on paper, everything gets obscured and confusing again. But that moment is lovely.

What were some of the books you enjoyed most when you were Franny’s age? What do your kids like to read?

YA books basically didn’t exist when I was a kid. There were children’s books and there were books for adults, and pretty early on I took a lot of pride in reading adult books. I wanted to read everything I’d ever heard of, so I read D.H.Lawrence in middle school and Virginia Woolf when I was fourteen. I absolutely loved Colette’s Claudine books, which no one reads anymore, and I reread Austen’s novels every chance I got. I really read anything I could get my hands on. (I wasn’t a very social kid, as you can tell–I was always reading.)

My 15-year-old daughter has no interest in reading adult books; she likes YA books, but nothing too heavy or too supernatural. She likes her novels light and romantic, which might explain why I write that kind of book. Anyway, it’s interesting to me that the “invention” of this whole YA genre may have made teenagers less interested in reading adult books. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing: a lot of my favorite novels from the last decade have technically been YA novels–I think some of the best writing of our times is being done in that genre.