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the breakfast table: An e-mail conversation about the news of the day.

Eric Mendelsohn, Daniel Mendelsohn, and Jennifer Mendelsohn

the breakfast table
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from: Eric Mendelsohn

How To Love the Oscars

Posted Wednesday, March 15, 2000, at 4:00 PM ET

Dear Jennifer and Daniel--

I have to say I have always loved the Oscars--all my life--although my excitement rarely, if ever, has had anything to do with the actual films nominated. It doesn't even have to do with the supposed glamour or the tawdry aspects of the ceremony. In truth, I find there is something hopeful about the event.

Even when I was a kid and I hadn't seen any of the movies, I loved watching. I loved those brief clips they would show of all the films nominated for best picture. Even films that I would later see and dislike seemed great shown like that--and I don't mean simply because you didn't have to watch the other hour and a half of tedium. There is something about those clips that is exciting and in a very "filmic" way inspires you to peer around the corner and imagine what's not being shown. It didn't matter that no film could live up to the "punch in the eye" quality of a solid clip. It's that what I was not seeing was the first taste I ever had of what movies could be, without limiting me to what they actually were.

Also, I've always thought there was something thrilling and glorifying about human beings getting dressed up and coiffed to go and sit and watch other human beings projected onto a screen as large as a house. Even as a kid that gave me chills. It was such a treat to see all the things that I normally got into trouble for during the course of a day--acting like an idiot, crying my eyes out, making everyone crack up--celebrated by adults. And not only just celebrated--but in furs and with jewels--in front of the eyes of the entire world! It was the exact opposite of those "Special Reports" Mom would drag me in from outside to sit and watch on a summer day. "This is history!" she would scream, my eyes rolling back into my head as another Apollo mission went up into something called outer space. But the Oscars seemed to be about human beings--often extreme human beings--both the actors and the characters--and that was interesting.

When I got older and realized that much of the work that was actually being celebrated at the Oscars wasn't to my taste, it didn't matter. I have absolutely no problem with Hollywood. They appear to have been doing just fine all these years without my input--they pay their electric bills, they seem to always have spending money--what's to complain about? Even the fact that people like Fellini and Antonioni are relegated to sidebars at Hollywood's annual event seems OK to me. Their films will stand the test of time without the honor of having inspired a dance number choreographed by Debbie Allen. And going back over the history of the awards more often than not will turn up winners with names like "Million Dollar Gums!" that have now been completely forgotten. Who cares? It's never been about the unassailable quality of the product.

When I watch the Oscars I still hope that the voters have "done the right thing" even in years when it's choosing between the lesser of two evils. I still hope someone great will say something smart. I still hope that someone will be surprised. I still hope that the next year will be a lineup of films like Rosemary's Baby, The Magnificent Ambersons, Beauty and the Beast, and Psycho. The idea of what the Oscars could be is far more interesting and inspiring than what they actually boil down to year after year--but for some reason this hasn't stopped me from watching them.

Yours truly,
Eric

the breakfast table
entries
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from: Eric Mendelsohn

How To Love the Oscars

Posted Wednesday, March 15, 2000, at 4:00 PM ET
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Eric Mendelsohn is the writer/director of the film Judy Berlin, currently in theaters and starring Madeline Kahn, Edie Falco, Barbara Barrie, and Julie Kavner. Daniel Mendelsohn is a regular contributor to the New York Times Book Review, and the New York Observer, a lecturer in classics at Princeton University, and the author of The Elusive Embrace: Desire and the Riddle of Identity (click here to buy it). Jennifer Mendelsohn is Slate's Washington, D.C.-based "Keeping Tabs" columnist.
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Highlights from The Fray:


Don't the Mendelsohns remind you of J.D.Salinger's Glass family of precocious children?

--Patti

(To reply, click here.)

[Eagle80 was of the opinion that the Mendelsohns were in fact The Sopranos of the literati. Stacy Grover asked How did so much cleverness end up in one family? and this brought the Missing Mendelsohn brothers to The Fray: Andrew said I often wonder that myself. And you haven't even heard from the rest of us yet!
And Matthew responded:]
I have to agree with my brother Andrew. I've been feeling like Zeppo Marx all week. I think Slate should host a Breakfast Table with the forgotten Mendelsohn brothers. Jennifer, Eric and Daniel can host a discussion about gay culture while Andrew and myself discuss biotech stocks. You'll learn more with them but you'll make more with us.

(To reply--or to follow the thread in more detail--click here.)


Thursday's entry: As for Jennifer and marriage, I believe she is the star of an upcoming Fox special called, Who wants to Marry A Mendelsohn? Should be good.

--Bill Watrous

(To reply, click here.)

[If you want to read the marriage proposal for Jennifer (and her response) click here. Yet another member of the Mendelsohn family, Jay, entered The Fray here. Marriage proposal for Dan is here. Sorry, Eric, no proposal, but lots of Fraygrants did like your film and one of them liked your photo.

But there were also Fray readers who wanted to discuss serious issues, or at least give a short, thrilling history of religion down the ages:]

Typical drivel from the pseudo-intellectual phenoms. Here's some of my drivel. Let's see: there were 12 tribes waiting for the Messiah, He comes, they kill kill him because he wanted to give Caesar what was Caesar's, they wanted power, all he wanted was your faith and devotion to a Greater Good. The various churches spring up, (no-one mentions the Orthodox Churches and the atrocities they committed), Popes are killed, moved to France, etc., they offer forgiveness of sins for money, and kill, all for power using the popular religion of the time. Then we have Protestantism, (no one mentions the 2.5 million Catholics Cromwell killed and the killing that has gone on since then in Ireland) Let's leave for the New World, Puritan brothers, so that we the church leaders can have the power over every bit of your life (Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Al Sharpton, Pat Buchanan, et al) Oh yeah, you're a witch, die! (You also had a piece of land I wanted...)I am going to skip a century or two now... lets see Joseph Smith, ex-con, sees an angel called Baloney, no Maloney, no, Moroni... yeah that's the one. Yeah, Yeah, that's my wife...Morgan Fairchild...all 11 of them...God told me I could, I swear!

Well enough of this. People are the problem, not God, not Jesus, no matter what religion, faith, creed.

--St Pat

(To reply, click here.)


Is it possible that the pope's "doctrinal rigidity" and "gestures of expansive humanity" [Monday's entry] are of a piece? As I understand John Paul II's thinking, the humanity Mendelsohn admires arises almost entirely from the pope's dogmatic beliefs about God, man's nature, and the consequent requirements for living a good life. Liberals (and I don't intend that as a lazy epithet) should consider the possibility that the "humanity" they praise must rest either on certain irreducible truths or on a collection of insubstantial, albeit attractive, sentiments.

--Michael Pollard

(To reply, click here.)


Many have decried the pope's apology as a political ploy. I doubt it, if only for the reason that if it were, he would have vaguely referred to the Crusades and Inquisition as "youthful indiscretions" of a church that is now much more mature and therefore knows better as a result of the important lessons it has learned.

G Wiz

(To reply, click here.)


1. Gays (yawn). How over. How '90s.
2. Catholics. "Anti-Catholicism is the anti-Semitism of the intellectual."

--P.J.O'Connell

(To reply, click here.)


To P.J.O'Connell: Let's jump back in time to 1960...
Negros (yawn). How over. How 50's.
2. Jews. "Just ignore them and they'll go away."
It ain't over by a long shot!

--Dave

(To reply, click here.)


I'm glad Eric Mendelsohn cleared up the confusion over Beauty and the Beast. But I'm still not sure which Psycho he had in mind. Perkins or Vaughn? Or Christian Bale? I hope he clears this up before the Breakfast Table is wiped clear of bagel crumbs, the dishes go in the dishwasher, and he goes off to film The Magnificent Mendelsohns.

And, by the way, the poet Catullus [see Wednesday's entry] was really the Matt Drudge --or maybe Fray contributor--of his times. How low can you get?

--Eagle80

(To reply, click here.)

[The Catulluses of the modern age also discussed dogs, names, the Oscars, The Sopranos and many other Breakfast Table topics in The Fray this week.]

(3/17)

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