When OPEC had Watergate as Histrionic Distraction

 "You mocked it."-- Bruce Davison, failed mutation

Upon the announcement of George Segal's death last week at the ripe, well lived age of 87, the requisite undertow of melancholy can lead to one’s mind , shrinking as it may be for those without benefit of subdural injury, into attempting to strong arm the algorithm to retrieve more underappreciated vehicles like Born to Win, something of a hybrid for 1971, a cross between Didion’s rigor in … Needle Park  and the tension embedded in The Desperate Hours.  A viewer of my beleaguered age may have seen Born to Win in network syndication up through the early eighties, but its appearance had a delectable rarity, where Segal’s depreciating lines end up having a menacing edge; in this contemporary streaming environment of today, it is sometimes difficult to find movies not so grandiose, with a lighter center  of gravity, without being too corny, which are of my time, and of familiar grainy quality, with subdued olive and brick red tones in its wake, that which made the Me decade authentic behind the lens, even if in actual fact the physical environment of childhood and old age had negligible differences, whether in style or palette: one can laugh at Segal’s 71 hairstyle as being too hip because it was an artifice. The same can be noted for Natalie Wood and once divorced husband Robert Wagner two years later, in their made for television romantic drama The Affair. In the sense that matinee idols can impede an actor’s artistry, Wagner was always dismissed, a well groomed action figure whose two dimensional aspects were suitable for the desperate heroism of towering infernos. Wood received more sympathy for a lavish dramatic sadness, but was more a career glamor girl than more recent signatures. Julianne Moore, in her current aging grace, is able to inhabit more complexity, and this is what makes The Affair interesting. This little bit of televised slice of life inhabits complexity in a flawed mediocre fashion, which means that Bruce Davison, like most younger brothers of crippled lameness, is an asshole, and the script has inconsistencies. Viewers can ascertain, however, that Wagner and Wood make an effort to move beyond their casting portfolios, and attempt to open the door, with some success.

I too can be kind to stock figures, perhaps under the burden of having taken too many blows, being deflated in retreat, scaling back. I am not afraid to go long form in my blog posts, but I will apportion this into shorter segments, especially now that we have so many research tools at our disposal. I have been a long way away from myself as a writer, and while I cannot hope to have the resilience of Strether in The Ambassadors, like a Victorian sensing a new epoch, there is a stride to be reclaimed, even if disposable underwear will be banned from landfills to save the sewers.