Terra Extraneus

Arrogant, contentious, vain, verbose, bookish, boorish, strident, cantankerous. Sound like anyone you know?

Those are a few of the less complimentary descriptions that have been made about founding father and second president, John Adams. Biographer David McCullough described Adams as “high-spirited and affectionate, vain, cranky, impetuous, self-absorbed and fiercely stubborn.”

Eclipsed by the revered Gen. George Washington, Adams was the distant runner-up to be our nation’s first president. As President No. 2, Adams failed to win re-election, defeated by his own vice president, the much more charismatic Thomas Jefferson. Now modern Americans have an opportunity to get acquainted with our most cantankerous founding father in the HBO mini-series, “John Adams,” which was released on DVD on June 10 (see my first post on the mini-series here).

However, John Adams as portrayed by actor Paul Giamatti is never as volatile or inflammatory or irritating as the real Adams apparently was. There are a few glimpses — Adams snapping angrily at his children; Adams’ congressional comrades rolling their eyes when he makes a historical reference — but overall, Giamatti’s Adams is rather likeable.

Giamatti’s performance has received mixed reviews. David Hinckley of the N.Y. Daily News calls it “an extraordinary performance,” and Matt Rousch of TV Guide says Giamatti was “splendid.” Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times, on the other hand, didn’t like anything about Giamatti as Adams:

John Adams is the weakest part of “John Adams.” … Giamatti is the wrong choice for the hero. … Giamatti is a prisoner of a limited range and rubbery, cuddly looks — in 18th-century britches and wigs, he looks like Shrek.

I have been enjoying the mini-series and Giamatti’s portrayal. Stanley’s critique is way over the top. Absurdly, Stanley actually laments that the great Charles Laughton (who died, oh, about 46 years ago) was not available for the part. Still, I agree that Giamatti did not give us the Adams described in the history books. If Adams was a haughty and mouthy hothead, he just doesn’t come across that way in the HBO series. The result is a few scenes that are a bit puzzling and fall flat, in which the people in Adams’ life respond to him as if he were that firey man, even though in the film he has never been portrayed as such.

Did Giamatti or Director Tom Hooper fear that a more obnoxious Adams would be too much to endure for an 8-1/2 hour series? If so, I disagree. I’m thinking of George C. Scott in “Patton.” All of the same negative adjectives apply to Scott’s Patton, but Scott found a way to put all of those negative attributes on grand display, and yet still give us a Patton who comes across as a great and admirable man. I am guessing that Adams was something like that — a man with many obvious faults, and yet, a man of such intellect and personal power and devotion to the cause that his contemporaries found a way to admire him nonetheless.

Giamatti’s John Adams is more of an ordinary guy, neither provoking our anger or achieving our high regard. It is an interesting portrayal in a very interesting series, but it fails to do justice to the man Jefferson called: “The Colossus of that Congress — the great pillar of support to the Declaration of Independence, and its ablest advocate and champion…”

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I have been enjoying the HBO mini-series “John Adams” since it was released on DVD June 10. Parts of the film are quite entertaining, even riveting; some segments are a bit more tedious. That being said, I enthusiastically recommend the entire 8-1/2-hour series to anyone who appreciates the importance of history, particularly our own revolutionary history.

You will also like “John Adams” if you enjoy a great character study. Interesting characters abound in John Adams’ world. Paul Giamatti as John Adams, Laura Linney as Abigail Adams, and Tom Wilkinson as Benjamin Franklin are all outstanding. David Morse is visually striking as George Washington, though his portrayal fails to do justice to the man who commanded the adulation of his countrymen. Stephen Dillane offers a puzzling portrayal of Thomas Jefferson.

The script is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 2001 book by master historian David McCullough. The score, especially its theme, is magnificent and infectious. The seven episodes (on three DVDs) range from 60 to 90 minutes each.

John Adams was a Massachusetts lawyer and farmer who became one of the most vocal proponents of the American Revolution. After independence was won, Adams was a chief architect of our new republic and the second president of our united states. At this writing, I have watched the first five of the seven episodes. I greatly enjoyed the first two. The third, fourth and fifth episodes are less noteworthy and sometimes dreary, though they have their moments. I am hopeful the final two episodes will equal the first two. I will comment on “John Adams” in a series of four posts, beginning with this, my reaction to Part 1, “Join or Die.”

“John Adams” begins with the Boston Massacre, Mar. 5, 1770. Five civilians including one teenager were killed by British soldiers who occupied the colonial seaport. Much of the first episode is devoted to the trial of the eight British soldiers charged with murder. Adams defied the public’s wrath by defending the soldiers, and proved his legal prowess by winning acquittal for six of the soldiers and reduced charges for the other two. Adams was 34 years old.

Focusing on the Boston Massacre was an ingenious way to open the series. We viewers are immediately plunged into the bitter and volatile relationship between the colonies and Britain in the years shortly preceding the Revolutionary War. From the start, John Adams is at the center of things and torn by both sides, as he continued to be for the rest of his life.

Adams believed strongly in law and government. He would later be labeled a “federalist,” and by some, a “monarchist,” because he believed in the strong arm of government. At the end of the trial, when all chant, “God save the King,” Adams does so heartily. It is telling, in a later scene, when the phrase is chanted again, but Adams can no longer utter the phrase. What an agonizing decision those colonists faced, many of whom considered themselves loyal British subjects, their anger provoked because they were being denied their rights as free Englishmen. The decision to declare independence from the crown was not made easily, and it was not made by anarchists, but by citizens of law who felt the king and his tyrannical dealings left them no other choice.

The most startling scene in “Join or Die” is the tarring and feathering of a British customs agent. Stripped naked, his head and body covered with hot tar, paraded around town on a rail — the scene shows that normally civil people can be driven to acts of terror and revolution when they are denied the basic rights due them as citizens and human beings.

This first episode will have a special interest for attorneys, since so much of it takes place in the courtroom. (“Join or Die” becomes an interesting partner piece to “Amistad,” the 1997 Steven Spielberg film in which Anthony Hopkins plays John Quincy Adams, who served as defense attorney in the trial of slaves who mutineered on a slave ship). I would be interested to know how accurate is “Join or Die’s” depiction of a colonial-era trial. In the gallery and balcony, observers stand rather than sit, and frequently sound their opinion about the proceedings.

I think Giamatti is excellent in this series. However, his over-the-top depiction of Adams the trial lawyer struck me more as an actor playing an attorney than an actual trial lawyer. As Adams famously said in his closing argument, “Facts are stubborn things.” Adams had the facts on his side, and facts are made no more factual by being shouted so loudly and dramatically, as Giamatti’s Adams does throughout the trial. A good orator knows that a little dramatics goes a long way, and that too much histrionics is counterproductive.

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See second post: “John Adams: Great and Grating, or Ordinary and Likeable?”

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I attended the showing of this great movie twice, so far, with a bitter sweet attitude. The movie brought back many memories of my own debate career. My debate partners were among the finest people and greatest minds I have ever known. One would be famous during one of America’s most tragic times, one would be commercially successful beyond the ability of an Oklahoman to comprehend and only able to achieve that success away from the limitations we have placed on ourselves, one would be a great debate coach, and another would be a well respected minister. I met my wife because of debate. I travelled the United States because of debate and saw the great universities of the day. In the National Debate Tournament of 1976 in Boston, my partner and I, representing “SE Okie,” debated not one but two Harvard teams. While I may be unable to place myself in the shoes of the first nationally recognized black debaters, or comprehend the black experience in America, debate is another matter.

The movie, The Great Debaters, also reminded me of the fact that at one time in things intellectual, Oklahoma universities, like Oklahoma City University, were leaders. That has been lost and replaced by sports.

In part, it was lost because forensics education in Oklahoma was systematically dismantled. Without a forensics education system, no debate coaches were trained or qualified.

In Oklahoma, the large universities have always lagged behind the smaller ones in debate even if they excelled in sports.

While the University of Oklahoma attended the National Debate Tournament eleven times during the history of the tournament, from 1947 to 2007, Northeastern Oklahoma State University attended fifteen times, University of Central Oklahoma (formerly Central [Oklahoma] State University attended fourteen times and Southeastern Oklahoma State University attended ten times. In other words, to become the preeminent debate power in Oklahoma, OU must qualify teams to the NDT at least four more times. Also, the University of Oklahoma would have to do one more thing: win it at least once.

Only Southeastern Oklahoma State University has won the National Debate Tournament among Oklahoma higher educational institutions.

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One thing that distinguishes a “great” film from a “good” one for me is the discussion it prompts on the drive home, and whether I’m still thinking about the film the next day. Was it merely entertaining, or did I learn anything from it? Did it make me think?

I saw Denzel Washington’s The Great Debaters last night. It is a thoroughly entertaining movie, well acted and beautifully filmed, with a decent script. Even better, the movie continues to make me think, and has prompted me to dig a little deeper into the history of race relations and civil rights in 20th century Texas and Oklahoma.

The Great Debaters, which has received a Golden Globe nomination for best dramatic movie, is the true story of the debate squad of Wiley College, an African-American school in Marshall, Texas, in the Depression-era 1930s. Washington plays the debate coach, Melvin B. Tolson, and Forest Whitaker is a campus theologian and local minister who is the father of one member of the squad. Under Tolson’s tutelage, the Wiley debate squad gains national attention, and in a day when separate but unequal was the norm, invitations to compete against white teams (in the movie, when his debaters refer to white collegians, Tolson corrects them, saying they are “Anglo-Saxons”).

I competed in high school debate, and my blogging partner, Rod Heggy, went to college on a debate scholarship and competed in the National Debate Tournament. In an early scene, Tolson draws a square with chalk on the classroom floor, the “Hot Spot.” Students step into the Hot Spot to speak extemporaneously and field cross-examination questions. It reminded me of an exercise my own speech coach employed in which students were called to the platform, handed a large grocery sack which contained numerous items, and required to reach into the sack, pull something out and give an impromptu speech about that object.

However, despite the title, The Great Debaters is not primarily about collegiate debate. Debaters may complain that the movie fails to reveal much about the process and art of debating. They may observe, as some reviewers have, that the African-American debaters were conveniently assigned debate topics that always involved race relations and civil rights, and that they always drew the “right” side of those topics. True enough, but such comments miss the point.

The Great Debaters is not a story about college debate; it is about race relations in the generation immediately preceding the modern civil rights movement. The film uses college debating as a story device to illuminate the great race debate that has always been a prominent thread of American history. When the majority uses the force of law to deprive a minority of their God-given rights, how should the minority respond? Should they exercise moderation and patience? Should they employ civil disobedience? Resort to violence? The debaters wrestle with these questions on the platform and in real life. If the modern civil rights movement began in 1954 with Brown v Board of Education, The Great Debaters gives a glimpse of the sickening Jim Crow days of the segregated South in which the great civil rights leaders were born and raised.

Some (including Washington himself) have compared The Great Debaters to the slough of sports movies about small schools that win state championships against great odds. Others have placed it in the “great teacher” genre (To Sir With Love, Dead Poets Society, countless others). But most of the The Great Debaters does not occur in classrooms or at debate tournaments, but in the real world. One of the most haunting scenes is a confrontation between white and black families after the black family accidentally hits and kills a pig while driving down a country road. As that scene and others illustrate, a black man in the segregated South literally had no rights, for the “law” was squarely behind the white man, regardless of what he chose to do to a black man.

Another emotion-charged scene is a conversation between two young African-Americans, as they recall an earlier scene in which they witnessed a lynching. Volumes are spoken in the question one of the black teens asks: “I wonder what he did wrong?” referring to the man who had been lynched. What an atrocity to foster a culture in which racism is so pervasive that when a black teen witnesses the gruesome murder of a black man by a hate-filled white mob, he is led to wonder what the black man did wrong.

The movie prompted me to learn more about Melvin B. Tolson and James L. Farmer Jr. I was surprised to discover that Tolson spent the last 20 years of his life teaching at Langston University in Langston, Okla., just 30 miles from my home. James L. Farmer Jr., who in the movie is a prodigious 14-year-old college student, went on to become the founder of the Congress of Racial Equality. Farmer was a courageous freedom fighter who championed non-violent civil disobedience and who had a huge influence on the civil rights movement and on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Farmer’s philosophy of civil disobedience is foreshadowed in a stirring speech the young debater gives in the movie’s climactic scene.

The Great Debaters is a great movie. It is not a great exposition of college debating or classroom mentorship, and it brings nothing new regarding underdogs rising above humble beginnings. What it does do is depict an important chapter in race relations in our not-so-distant past, and introduce us to remarkable men like Tolson and Farmer. The inspirational story here is not about a debate contest won or lost, but about men and women such as these who did not allow legally enforced racism to prevent them from being the people God created them to be, and making their mark in this world.

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MORE NOTES ON THE GREAT DEBATERS

• Another memorable scene is an argument that erupts between Farmer Sr. the theologian and Tolson the debate coach. The minister is concerned about Tolson’s left-wing politics. Tolson responds, “Jesus was a radical,” to which Farmer shouts back, “Are you comparing yourself to Jesus?” According to my research, that scene may misrepresent Farmer Sr. His son, Farmer Jr., did say that his father advocated a more moderate approach than the path of civil disobedience Farmer Jr. pursued. However, according to Tolson’s writings, it was in fact Farmer Sr. who presented “a vivid picture of Jesus the young rebel” in a 1938 Mother’s Day sermon.

• Denzel Washington also directed The Great Debaters. It is his second time in the director’s chair (after Antwone Fisher in 2002). The Great Debaters has some beautiful shots. One that particularly caught my eye is toward the end of the movie, when the debate team boards a train in Texas to head for the climactic debate at Harvard University. As the train leaves the station, it moves into the heavily wooded terrain of east Texas. Washington gives us an aerial view of acres of green trees into which the train disappears, except for billows of gray smoke pouring from the engine, marking the train’s path through the lush greenery. I loved that shot.

• Jurnee Smollett plays the first and only female member of the Wiley debate squad. I see from her bio that Smollett, 21, has been playing TV roles since she was 5, so she is already a veteran actor. She is not only beautiful but quite talented, and I expect her to become a star.

• Denzel Washington recently gave an interview about his Christian faith and the role his faith plays in his movie career. See: Denzel Washington’s Ministry of Movies.

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George Clooney tells Tom Wilkinson that if he wants to
keep his bar license, he better stay on his meds.

If lawyers were really as powerful and influential as depicted in the movies, then everyone would be a lawyer, or no one would be. By the end of the current release, Michael Clayton, lawyers look like Wild West gunslingers, evil cattle barons, or cowboys. In politically correct speech, the word “cowboy” has of late become a pejorative term meaning “reckless.” After viewing Michael Clayton, people may begin to think in the same terms when they hear the word “lawyer.”

Nevertheless, Michael Clayton is an enjoyable movie. I must even admit that for a moment or two, I thought I caught George Clooney acting. He was not, however, portraying a lawyer, at least not one that exists. While Michael Clayton has less in common with the real legal profession than did Judd for the Defense, it is still a movie to see.

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World Trade Center, a movie about the 9/11 attack, opens Wednesday, Aug. 9. Directed by controversial filmmaker Oliver Stone, the movie is already getting rave reviews and Oscar buzz, more than two weeks before opening night.

Stone loves to make movies which address modern history: from the Vietnam war (Platoon, 1986, and Born on the Fourth of July, 1989) to JFK (1991) and Nixon (1995). Stone has won three Oscars: two for best director (Platoon and Fourth of July) and one for best screenplay (Midnight Express). His last film, Alexander (2004), was his biggest flop, grossing just $34 million despite the all-star cast of Colin Farrell, Anthony Hopkins and Angelina Jolie.

Many people have expressed concern about trusting the controversial Stone with the delicate subject of 9/11. The filmmaker has made no secret of his ultra-liberal views. He has lauded Fidel Castro as being “one of the Earth’s wisest people,” and he has credited LSD and peyote as fueling his creative process.

Nevertheless, surprisingly, the film is getting raves from some uexpected corners. Cal Thomas, the conservative Christian columnist, after an advance screening, wrote:

It is one of the greatest pro-American, pro-family, pro-faith, pro-male, flag-waving, God Bless America films you will ever see.

Nicholas Cage leads the cast of World Trade Center. The movie tells the true story of Port Authority police officers who go to the rescue of Trade Center victims and become trapped in the rubble themselves. The movie’s official website is here.

We haven’t had any truly great movies so far in 2006, and quite a few disappointments (e.g., The Da Vinci Code, Superman Returns). I don’t know anything about Cal Thomas’ taste in films – but I hope WTC is at least half as good as Thomas says it is.

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I haven’t seen The Da Vinci Code yet. I had planned to be there opening weekend, but then I came down with a bad case of Da Vinci Code burnout. I read the book a few years ago. More recently, like most Christians, I’ve been forced to define my faith in terms of my response to Dan Brown’s fictional musings. (I offered my two cents on that silly controversy in “Don’t Let ’Em Fool You…Churches Love Da Vinci Code.”)

I also got wrapped up in a Da Vinci Code contest sponsored by Google and Sony Pictures which involved answering trivia, doing Google searches and working puzzles each day for 24 days. I was among the 10,000 finalists who qualified to compete in the Final Challenge, but no such luck — I didn’t win the $125,000 grand prize. I did win a nifty cryptex valued at $40 (if you don’t know what a cryptex is, you’re definitely out of the Da Vinci Code loop).

By the time The Code opened last weekend, I had had Da Vinci Code up to here. So when I saw that the critics were giving the film almost universally bad reviews, I just lost interest in being among the first wave of Code-watchers. Despite my truancy, The Da Vinci Code did well. $77 million U.S. box office and $224 million worldwide. That’s huge.

Now what I’m interested in seeing is how The Code does on Weekend 2. Everybody knew that nothing was going to keep The Code from ringing up a great opening weekend. It had a built-in fan base created by the sale of more than 40 million copies of Da Vinci Code: The Book, making it the biggest selling hardcover fiction in history. Add to that a hot controversy generating so much free publicity. Sony and Dan Brown must be thanking churches all the way to the bank for doing such good P.R. for them. Some churches were simultaneously denouncing the movie and giving away free movie tickets. That’s so smart it’s just plain dumb. Unbelievable!

With all the build up, even when the critics reported that the movie was long, dull and convoluted, there was no way The Code wasn’t going to have a phenomenal opening weekend. But how many of the millions who saw the flick last weekend came away agreeing with the critics? How many have spread the word to friends and family that The Code is not as good as the book, is not up to Ron Howard’s usual standard, and is Tom Hanks’ worst performance since The Burbs (oops, I forgot about The Lady-Killers)?

Actually, The Code will probably do quite well again this weekend. Many who heard what great box office the movie had last week will be eager to follow the crowd. And it’s a holiday weekend, which is always good news for the movies. The only major new release this weekend is X-Men: The Last Stand, which will do well, but not enough to dampen the Da Vinci Code’s prospects. Too bad Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston’s The Break-up doesn’t open this weekend instead of next; I think the movie-going mood is just about right this weekend for a romance-related comedy to do well against the same old chase scenes, bombs and blood-letting offered by The Da Vinci Code, Mission Impossible 3, Poseidon and X-Men.

Anyway, I look forward to seeing if The Code’s Weekend 2 box office results hold any “surprises.” And yes, there’s a good chance I’ll be among the second weekend crowd. Even though I already know every twist and turn of Hanks’ Search for the Holy McGuffin.

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