The Ninth Configuration

The Ninth Configuration (aka Twinkle, Twinkle, "Killer" Kane) (William Peter Blatty, 1980) Blatty started out his colorful career as a writer—turning out "John Goldfarb, Please Come Home!", "I, Billy Shakespeare", and the first version of this story ("Twinkle, Twinkle, 'Killer' Kane!") before turning to screenwriting for films with Blake Edwards and others. He went back to novels after flirting with Hollywood, and his first, "The Exorcist" became a best-selling phenomenon, and the resulting film, which was the first horror film to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, won him the Best Screenplay statuette that year.

 

Blatty returned to writing, taking his 1966 "'Killer' Kane!" book and re-configuring it as "The Ninth Configuration," shopping around a screenplay for a potential film but with the caveat that he direct it. There were no takers. So, Blatty put up his own money for half the film's budget—the other half funded by Pepsi-Cola*—and Blatty began shooting in Hungary without a distribution deal.

Which is crazy. But, then, crazy is what The Ninth Configuration is about. And some of it is inspired craziness.

"Some time in the 1970's" Colonel Hudson Kane (Stacy Keach) is being assigned to oversee an overcrowded veteran's mental health facility in the Pacific Northwest, with the mission to determine who's genuinely insane and who's faking it to get out of service. He is informed by the acting head Col. Fell (Ed Flanders) that the patients are all eccentric. Kane knows this already; when he arrived, the first guy who claimed he was in charge was an inmate and he was pretty convincing. It's no wonder the military staff is having a hard time keeping order. But, order is just an idea that a group of people agree upon. These guys can't agree on anything.

There's Lt. Reno (Jason Miller), who wants to put on a production of "Hamlet" but performed by dogs ("Someone has to do it!"). Maj. Nammack (Moses Gunn) thinks he's a super-hero. Then, there's Billy Cutshaw (Scott Wilson), former astronaut, who, on the way to the Moon, suffered a mental breakdown. Kane takes a particular interest in him, as Cutshaw engages him in arguments about the existence of God and who seems to really want answers and challenges Kane on his own beliefs. When Kane asks Cutshaw why he aborted his mission in space, Cutshaw merely gives hima St. Christopher medal.

Kane decides that his best strategy is to let the lunatics run the asylum, which may not be effective, but is very entertaining. Blatty has an interesting trope in his writings and The Ninth Configuration is no exception—he starts out funny, softening the audience up, and then turns deadly serious into matters that far outreach whatever set-up he has. Blatty's Configuration stretches the scenario as far as it can possibly go before it snaps. The film has divided its very niche audience for decades (a problem compounded by the various edits of the film over the years), but it has some ardent supporters among the larger film community.

It also has some fairly amazing shots, that, at times, makes you snap your head 360° with just how audacious they are (Blatty was a first-time director when he made the film) and reminds one that his later film of Exorcist III was as good as the original, and probably better. If there is a weakness, it might be in Stacy Keach's performance that was directed to tamp down any telegraphing of what was going on at the film's core. 

And there is, at the core, that theological question—why is it easier to believe in the devil because evil exists, than it is to believe in a God with the presence of so much good. That's the central theme (as in The Exorcist) and it persists here, as well, with Cutshaw challenging Kane to give an example of a purely unselfish sacrificial act to prove the point of a deity. Kane doesn't have much of a response, but his deep dive for memory may be what causes later issues.

But, there is a neatly framed argument that he gives for the existence of God:

"In order for life to have appeared spontaneously on earth, there first had to be hundreds of millions of protein molecules of the ninth configuration. But given the size of the planet Earth, do you know how long it would have taken for just one of these protein molecules to appear entirely by chance? Roughly ten to the two hundred and forty-third power billions of years. And I find that far, far more fantastic than simply believing in God."

Blatty may be fudging on the numbers, there—it's something to ask Neil de Grasse Tyson—but it's an interesting argument, even with an infinite amount of space. It's certainly easier than getting dogs to play Shakespeare...or monkeys to write it.

* Pepsi had funds in Europe that could not leave the country of Hungary, so the filming took place in Budapest, rather than the location stipulated in the Pacific Northwest.

The Line King: The Al Hirschfeld Story

The Line King: The Al Hirschfeld Story (Susan Warms Dryfoos, 1996) Graphic artists, cartoonists, caricaturists do not make interesting subjects for documentaries. There's only so much you can do with somebody drawing a line—it's not interesting in and of itself because there's always that missing element, which is the magic that goes into it before pencil or pen hit paper. It's the brain at the other end of that pencil that makes it interesting and, if the documentary is doing its job, explains the magic that results in the line.

 

Fortunately, Al Hirschfeld was still alive at the time this was being recorded (he died in 2003, just shy of his 100th birthday). Stationed primarily in New York, he traveled the world in his life and settled back in The Big Apple, where he was a fixture in illustration, primarily for The New York Times art section, but also The New Yorker, Collier's, TV Guide, Rolling Stone, even creating a cover for an Aerosmith album. He did poster illustrations in the silent era, and his art was featured in postage stamps of those same silent comedians. A segment of Disney's Fantasia 2000—the "Rhapsody in Blue" segment—is based on his precise, serpentine, and almost embroidered style. The "genie" in the studio's animated version of Alladin is also based on his work.

Then, of course, there is the puzzle of it. Readers of The Times could count on two brain-teasers every issue—the crossword puzzle and Hirschfeld's drawings. After his signature of every piece would follow a number, that being the number of times he had hidden the name "Nina" (his only child's name) into the filaments of his pieces. It became a part of New York life along with thin pizza, egg creams, and the aggressively walking blind.

At the time of first filming, his second wife—mother of Nina—was still alive. By the time filming was complete, she was dead and Hirschfeld talks about the effect on him. He would dutifully take a pad and paper to a theater before opening night to get a sense of the show, and begin the pain-staking work of getting it ready for publication.

Susan Warms Dryfoos' film is grainy—a lot of it done in low light—with far too many interviews with NY hoi-polloi talking about Hirschfeld on various opening nights before it sinks in that he was an important part of any opening.It times you know they're talking of "the talk around town"—the reputation—than any first-person knowledge, but then, there's gotta be gossip. Those elements are catch-as-catch-can, with celebs and opening night regulars gushing, champagne in hand, about their personal experience with Herschfeld, before they're attention is pulled by some other bright light. The segments with the artist are less hectic, in low-light and lower energy, which is something of a relief. It puts in sharp contrast the hermetic life of a singular artist, even if his subjects are lit by klieg lights.

Those are the parts that are gold, plus the looks at his work semi-contemporary or long past, several of which—of subjects that appear frequently on this site are below:

Three ages of Orson Welles...