The Founder

The Founder (John Lee Hancock, 2005) "Build a better mouse-trap and people will beat a path to your door." That's how the old saw goes to inspire a capitalist economy. But, old saws can become rusty with the new tools of business acquisition, mergers, takeovers (hostile and non) and buy-outs. They're enough to take those better mousetraps and have their builders snapped by their own inventions.

 

Take McDonald's. The world-wide phenomenon had humble beginnings...but few locations. At the beginning, it was successful—the efficiency and fine-tuning that went into it producing Mcburgers on an industrial scale like Henry Ford's assembly lines almost insured it. But efforts to expand it fell by the way-side like so many paper wrappers due to consistency issues, as in quality control or an arbitrary change of menu on the part of the manager. The originators—Richard and Maurice McDonald—could manage their one San Bernardino location. But, out of sight/out of managerial control was the order of the day. Without the McDonald boys riding herd, the others were the Wild, Wildly Unprofitable West.

Which is when Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton) wanders into town. John Lee Hancock's peripatetic little film tells the story of how Kroc made a multi-national corporation out of a hamburger stand and created an empire that straddles the oceans with golden arches. Kroc starts the film out as a salesman for "5-spindle" milkshake mixers for the company Price Castle. We watch as he goes down the road, lugging his mixer sample going from drive-in to drive-in, delivering his message of positivity and opportunity: "You increase the supply, and the demand will follow... Increase supply, demand follows. Chicken, egg. Do you follow my logic? I know you do because you're a bright, forward thinking guy who knows a good idea when he hears one."

But, even Ray is starting to sour on it, as he goes from crappy drive-in to crappy drive-in where the service is shoddy, the wait is frustrating, and the scenery is a bunch of JD's hanging out with nothing better to do. He props up his no-sales attitude with "Power of Positive Thinking" motivational records until he follows up an order for eight of his multi-spindle milkshake mixers at a location in San Bernardino, California. What he sees is different. People are lining up to get food. He goes up to a window, orders a burger, fries and a shake, all for 35¢...and it's given to him right there right then. "What's this?" "It's your food." Knife, fork? Nope. Just eat it. Where? "Anywhere you want."

Ray is dazzled, not only by the efficiency, but also the line of people who get served pretty darn quick. He goes to meet the managers Dick (Nick Offerman) and Mac (John Carroll Lynch), who are only too proud to show him their set-up (and grateful for the mixer order being delivered), but also are dying to tell him their story of failure after failure...movie theaters, other restaurants...until they came up with the formula, their "Speedee Service System" a designed, engineered, even choreographed assembly line that guarantees a steady supply of product with no customer-waiting and an iron-grip on quality control that ensures cleanliness of the facility and consistency of product.

Kroc is besotted with the earning possibilities of the restaurant and spends his return trip thinking up angles. The McDonald's formula is basically set-and-forget and is a money-maker and he wants in. But, these guys, the McDonalds, have shown him everything, every secret that they have, and detailed plans for a prototype restaurant design (with attention-getting "golden arches") that is small, efficient and easily copied. He doesn't steal all of this information. Instead he suggests franchising the thing with the McDonalds in a partnership—they already tell him that franchising doesn't work, that there are other "McDonalds" restaurants, but with varying menus and a lackadaisical approach to efficiency and quality control. Kroc convinces them, after info-gathering visits to those owners, that their success CAN be repeated...if only their plans are followed to the letter. To the very proud and meticulous thinker Dick, this is music to his ears, and they go into business with their apparently like-minded partner. 

Kroc mortgages his house (without telling his wife, played by Laura Dern) and starts to make plans to open those "golden arches" restaurants in the mid-West to much fanfare, with his face as the main booster for the new locations—with Dick and Mac already busy with their original place in San Bernardino. He follows their plans, their hiring practices, their choreography, everything, but insinuates himself with the powers-that-be that okay the locations and see him as each community's "rain-maker," a role that the salesman in Kroc likes. He wants to expand further, faster, but the profit margin of each restaurant is too low to build at the pace he wants, so he proposes changes. He gets firm "no's" to the changes by Dick, but Ray goes ahead with the changes at every location...except the brothers' San Bernardino location. 

Already the partnership is starting to fracture. But, it was doomed to fail from the beginning, even as it began to explode. Dick and Mac are inventors; Ray is a salesman. Dick and Mac take pride in their work and are content to maintain the status quo; Ray never had to do the work they did, but appreciates the brilliance of the ideas, recognizes it's a winner and wants to be the man behind the dream. Dick and Mac are thinking about McDonald's; Ray is thinking about himself. A quote in a book I just read* says "Ideas are the trash of the business. Execution is everything." And Ray knows how to execute...in all senses of the term.

Ray will eventually and literally "drink their milkshake" (in the psuedo-profunditry of the line from There Will Be Blood) through a series of agreements and one out-of-the-box thought given to him by an accountant (B.J. Novak)("You're not in the hamburger business...you're in the real estate business") that would never have occurred to the original McDonalds, so concentrated are they on maintaining their original business that they can't see the future for the present. It's the difference between givers and takers and evolution is a bitch. And learning new lessons can be hard.

It's a wonderful film about the American Dream and the Individual's Nightmare, and how a good idea can be stolen right out from under you. Hancock's direction is straightforward and fast-moving, enhanced by a wickedly fast-paced editing style. And acting honors go to Offerman, but especially Keaton, who easily transitions from huckster to shuckster to diabolical kingpin without seeming to show the difference between them. Keaton is always fun to watch, even when his characters turn your smile into a toothsome rictus, and the film is an amazing thing to watch.

Just don't be surprised that your next meal at MickeyD's might have a bitter taste you didn't notice before.

 

* The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series" by Jessica Radloff 

The Trial of the Chicago 7

"'Fictionalizing History and Sorkin It Out"

 or

"Give Me a Moment, Would You, My Friend? I've Never Been On Trial For My Thoughts Before" ("It's a Revolution. We May Have to Hurt Some Feelings")

The Trial of the Chicago 7 has been in the works since somewhere around 2006 when Aaron Sorkin was introduced to the idea of writing it by Steven Spielberg, who wanted to make it as a directing project. Seemed like a good fit; Sorkin is the "dean" of writing compelling court-room dramas and has a knack for putting emotional juice into "wonk" arguments. That work results in some rapturous writing, even if one feels like opposing arguments are given short shrift for the "slam-dunk" moment. With him, it's a—you know—"a thing"

One wonders what Spielberg would have done with it. One knows it would have been a much more precise directing exercise. One hopes that Spielberg might have taken the script and roughed if up a little, textured it with a bit more grit, and thus friction, and thrown in some ambivalence to make the thing more of a courtroom "shit-show" (as it was) than anything too neat and tidy. Maybe an "anti-polish" of the script by the Coen Brothers could do that.

Because the way Sorkin tells it, it's all very neat and tidy with a wildly "boo-yah" finish, where the defendants are convicted on one of the charges—to incite a riot (rather ironic post-01/06/2021)—but their post-conviction statement is such a rousingly heart-felt protest that the crowd in the court-room (and even the prosecution!) gets up to applaud in solidarity.

In a word..."Nah!"

To be fair, trying to organize the ramshackle case number 69 Cr 180 The United States v. David Dellinger et al. into a coherent timeline of pertinent facts that has "a wow finish" is an almost impossible task. Yes, the case was a slap-dash collecting of "usual suspects" at the behest of the Nixon Administration, so that a consistent charge was specious at best. Yes, the trial went on despite one of the defendants not having the benefit of counsel. And, yes, that defendant ended up being bound and gagged for a good section of the trial. Yes, Judge Julius Hoffman was out of his depth trying to juggle the cats involved, ending up charging 175 combined contempt charges among the defendants and their lawyers, indicating not so much that there were violations, but rather that the judge had no control over his court.

What actually happened, you can find here and here. There are so many feints, fibs, and sleights of hand in Sorkin's "portrait" (rather than "a picture" he's said about the script, something he also said about his script for Steve Jobs) that I could write the rest of the review going over them. But, they're well-documented (the least of which is that there were eight defendants counting Bobby Seale, not seven—the man was only in Chicago to give a speech, but he was lumped in with the others because putting a Black Panther on trial was "good optics" for a cynical Department of Justice, until the optics turned horrifying).

It is a "given" that, unless someone is making a documentary, film-makers will swerve away from the facts (and even documentary film-makers will cherry-pick from their sources). No one was there in the room taking down notes for dialog (although, in this case, Sorkin did have the trial transcripts), so we don't know what was said behind closed doors. There's a writer's term/cop-out for making things up: "Writing to Silence," because there is no one around to object.

Except, of course, the audience.

What is the creator's responsibility—to the audience or to truth? Tough question. It should be kept in mind by any discerning audience member that when the line "Based on a True Story" appears that it is a hedge against accuracy: the actual Perdicaris taken hostage in The Wind and the Lion was a man, not a plucky widow, and we don't know what Neil Armstrong was doing by that moon crater, even though First Man has him completing an emotional story point in the film. It might be some dramatic license to make a better story, to tie up a dramatic loose end. Or, changing the facts might be some cathartic wish-fulfilment as Quentin Tarantino provided in Inglourious Basterds or Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

John Ford famously used the sentiment "when the legend becomes fact, print the legend" even as, in his later films, he sought to negate it.

Sorkin is not above re-writing history for the perfect dramatic punch-line...he did it quite a bit in "The Newsroom," blending real-life events with a parallel universe news organization. And one can't forget the point in A Few Good Men when he ginned up false drama by making Tom Cruise's defense attorney appear unsure and faltering before delivering his final gavel blow. It makes no sense, other than to show his protagonist at his lowest point before his turn-around to triumph. He "had" to get one more dramatic beat in to make the ending suitably triumphant. Audience manipulation. Nothing more.

But, now—after this particular Inauguration Day—perhaps we should reflect on the responsibilities to Truth. Even if it makes the side you favor look bad...or less righteous. False narratives and wishful, even magical, thinking does not make it so. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion, but that art has to stand on the fundamentals of truth. Not just how we want the truth to be. No matter who's side you're on.

Well! "Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?"

Sorkin does a good job mixing in contextural news footage (and some of Haskell Wexler's footage from Medium Cool) from the times, with his DP Phedon Papamichael. Given the amount of material he has to cull from, Sorkin, as both writer and director manages to keep the personalities he's interested in—that is anybody except John Froines and Lee Weiner, who are given short shrift—engaged and sparring. Acting stand-outs negotiating the dialogue are Eddie Redmayne's Tom Hayden and Mark Rylance's William Kuntsler (Jeremy Strong's Jerry Rubin is a bit of a buffoon, unfortunately). But, the stand-out is Sacha Baron Cohen's Abbie Hoffman, not so much in how good he is portraying the trial's Merry Prankster, but in how good he is in the dramatic scenes, when the veneer drops and the words become measured and sharp as a knife.

Gran Torino

Written at the time of the film's release...which is why there's an afterword about the significance of the movie, which I couldn't mention in the original review because it would have been a major (major) spoiler.

"...Beats a Lonely Rhythm All Night Long"
ot
The Full Circle

Walt Kowalski—retired Ford employee—has just become a widower, hates his kids and despises his grand-kids. His late wife asked the fresh-faced parish priest to keep an eye on Walt and he despises that, too. And his Hmong neighbors? He's a Korean War vet, so that's a no-brainer..

What he loves you can count on one gnarled hand, merely: his old dog Daisy, a cooler of PBR on his porch in the evening, his mint-condition 1972 Gran Torino...and his privacy. Invade that, and his face, frozen into a perpetual sneer, starts to show some teeth, and...if you're lucky...he may respond to you with merely a low growl. Usually, what he issues forth is a stream of obscenity and invective with a few choice slurs thrown in. He's a reflexive racist with one saving grace—he hates everybody. He's not a happy man, and in perpetual attack mode, but leave him be on his front porch with a half-rack, a pack of Camel straights and Daisy, in the evening, and it's okay.

Leave him be. He has guns. Lots of them.

Clint Eastwood said he was retiring from acting at about the same time that Paul Newman announced his own retirement. For Newman, it was a quick decline to the grave. But Eastwood directed Angelina Jolie in the fine Changeling and after its premiere at Cannes began working on Gran Torino as both director and lead actor. He's 78 years old, and he's released two movies this year. That's impressive, but you can see why he wanted to do this role. The film, spare in its scope, hearkens back to the cinema of the 70's, when Eastwood began his directing career. And the themes raised in the film are similar to other projects he's directed, specifically The Outlaw Josey Wales and Bronco Billy, with their accumulation of "family" by accident. Additionally, Walt Kowalski is a neighborhood version of Eastwood's previous snarly outsiders who stand apart from polite society, acting--at the very least--impolite. Then, there's the vigilante aspect; Eastwood was pretty much the poster boy for taking the law into your own hands in the era before spandex superheroes on-screen. But, just as he's done in about every film since his Oscar-winning Unforgiven, he has turned expectations of what to expect from him and his movies on their ear.

One critic has opined (and been roundly criticized, I think, unfairly) saying that this is Eastwood's version of a "Rooster Cogburn" role. And it is. Just as John Wayne channeled a bit more theatricality into that role beyond his usual screen persona, Eastwood does the same, amping up the comic aspects of Kowalski a few degrees beyond the surly men of few words and violent actions of his previous roles. The growling may be laid on a little thick at times, but Eastwood, his hair spare and almost completely white now, his body slack with age, the furrows in his face as deep as canyons, and a voice full of gravel, still possesses a power few actors can carry off on-screen. Even approaching 80, he can still scare the crap out of you, as in a scene where after cold-cocking a gang-banger and repeatedly slamming him in the face, the camera looks up at his crazy-buggy eyes and bared teeth. "If I have to come back here, it's going to get fucking ugly!" he spits. And you believe it.

The story is about a Michigan resident set in his ways and his house as his neighborhood changes in ethnicity. To him, it's an invasion. But it doesn't stop there. After the families come the gangs targeting the kids, and Kowalski's neighbor Tao is assumed by his gang-member cousin to be a natural recruit. His initiation: steal Walt's Gran Torino.

Bad move. And only another bad move on Walt's part prevents somebody getting killed. Tensions escalate among the neighbors, and when Tao is nearly pulled into a gang-retribution for screwing up, Walt does some boot-stomping—they're on his lawn—and he becomes a reluctant hero to his neighbors, who begin piling his porch with flowers and food for saving "Toad"-Kowalski's kindest word for the kid.

What's great about this movie is that any other writer (Nick Schenk did the script) or director would begin softening up Walt's character and turn this into a nice, comfortable sentimental goo for general audiences. But Eastwood doesn't go there. His Walt is a bully, who knows that you intimidate by getting into people's faces and slamming them fast, making him on an equal aggressive and moral footing with the gangs (nobody mentions that Walt's bar-crowd and perpetually barbed shit-slinging—all done to ribald comic effect—is a parallel to the tough-talking hoods in their gangs, as they're both cliques and community sub-sets). It's just a matter of who's got the most cajones and least ability to blink under stress—like a Western gun-fight. Walt's history in Korea has given him body-bags more experience than the street-toughs will ever know. He understands intimidation.

Tao's sister is a smart, tough kid who stands up to the gangs...and to Walt...and she's the conduit to what understanding of the culture he can scrape up. He respects her strength and her sense of Family, far more than his own family can. But all this standing up and tough-talking and chest-expansion comes down to conflict and escalation and given Walt's history...and Eastwood's...it can't come to any good.

Except for this movie. There's going to be complaints about insensitivity and stereo-typing and bad language and slurs and lack of respect for the Church and all sorts of other drivel. There's going to be sniping about amateurish acting among the ethnic, young cast and, to be sure, there are flaws. But call me a troglodyte, I loved this movie, and it made me nostalgic for the stripped-down story-driven ones of the past.

And I couldn't help thinking "Jesus Christ, let's give the old bastard an Oscar for his performance in this one, can't we?" Mickey Rourke is basically stretching the same muscles as Eastwood does here, although less sentimentally, and much as I love Sean Penn's performance in Milk, he's already got an Oscar.

Eastwood was the guy who gave it to him...finally.

Afterword: As I wrote about in this "Don't Make a Scene" article, Gran Torino is the perfect "closer" for Clint Eastwood's acting career—one that really began with his starring role in Sergio Leone's  A Fistful of Dollars. That film marked the beginning of the Eastwood persona as "The Last Man Standing"—the trope where he'd stand off against a clump of gunslingers and mow them all down without so much as a scratch to himself. It's a joke, a conceit, and would run—somewhat consistently—through a great many of Eastwood's films (which always had a current of comedy of the gruff, beady-eyed variety) and sometimes softened (for the sake of verisimilitude) by distractions, or geography, or choreography, but boiled down to the idea that Eastwood was just the one with the most will to pull the trigger effectively despite the odds against him. Gran Torino turns that joke on its head: when Kowalski goes to confront the gang-bangers at the end of the film, he does so, deliberately, unarmed, and...for the first time in an Eastwood movie...ends up the victim, dying in a hail of bullets. In so doing, as was the plan, he manages to attract police attention and, in sacrificing himself, solve the problem of the bad guys mistreating his neighborhood. Just, like in so many of his movies where he was the unlikely victor. But, this time, he dies doing so.

It would have been the perfect "capper" for Eastwood's acting career (but, he did another movie—Trouble with the Curve and he's in his new movie-in-progress, The Mule. Oh, well. Who am I to argue with him?