Sitdown Sunday: ‘Praying is good, but penicillin is better’ – Mel Brooks on life, Hollywood and happiness
Good Sunday #GoodSunday
IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.
We’ve hand-picked the week’s best reads for you to savour.
1. ‘The Compassion Guy’
A heartbreaking read about David Breaux, a well-known communal therapist in California who was found stabbed to death on a park bench in April.
(The New York Times, approx 9 mins reading time)
Amid a hub of energy, he offered calm. Anyone who asked about his day got the same response: “Peaceful.” “I was always in a rush, running a business, parking the car, carrying stuff. And he was just sitting there absolutely happy and content in life,” said Yelena Ivashchenko, 49, the owner of a nearby consignment shop. “It did affect me — the reassurance that everything is OK.” A 2010 student documentary shows Mr. Breaux marveling over the acquaintances he amassed. “I knew one person coming here in May last year, and now, I think — I tallied it one day — I waved to 103 people,” he says. The owner of Crepeville, a popular eatery, commissioned an artist to paint Mr. Breaux as he was seen outside the restaurant window. Some mornings, Mr. Breaux wandered in and ordered potatoes with a side of pesto and a mint tea, sitting not far from where the painting hung on the wall.
2. Marvel
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has taken over Hollywood. Michael Schulman writes about how it began, and why it has grown to be so popular.
(The New Yorker, approx 42 mins reading time)
Twenty years ago, few people would have bet that a struggling comic-book company would turn a bunch of second-string superheroes into movie icons—much less swallow the film industry whole. Yet the Marvel phenomenon has yanked Hollywood into a franchise-drunk new era, in which intellectual property, more than star power or directorial vision, drives what gets made, with studios scrambling to cobble together their own fictional universes. The shift has come at a perilous time for moviegoing. Audiences, especially since the pandemic, are seeing fewer films in the theatre and streaming more from home, forcing studios to lean on I.P.-driven tentpoles like “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.” Kevin Goetz, the founder of Screen Engine, which studies audience behavior, pointed to Marvel’s sense of “elevated fun” to explain why it gets people to the theatre: “They’re carnival rides, and they’re hefty carnival rides.”
3. Trump
The former US president was indicted on federal charges this week. In this article, his attorneys speak about the chaos and dysfunction within his legal team and the negative impact it could have on his case going forward.
(Intelligencer, approx 12 mins reading time)
Some of the lawyers I spoke with acknowledged how strange it is that an ostensibly wealthy former U.S. president finds himself with such a professionally and geographically fractured group, but they cited a variety of explanations, all having to do with Trump himself. One reason, they said, is that Trump is cheap and has apparently been reluctant to spend the sort of money his legal circumstances would seem to demand. Another is that he seems to have a high tolerance for chaos and dysfunction and perhaps even enjoys being able to shuffle lawyers around based on his whims, however unwise it may ultimately be. There is also a very serious question about the number of sizable, reputable law firms that would even take Trump on as a client at this point, particularly since most of them are based in Manhattan (where Trump is widely loathed); since so many lawyers have gotten into major trouble working for Trump; and since the media have cast a harsh light on large firms like Jones Day, whose legal work was integral to Trump’s first campaign and administration.
4. Lost time
A powerful piece about the impact of addiction, dementia, loss and grief, written by someone with first-hand experience.
(The Guardian, approx 16 mins reading time)
When I drank, I would sometimes wake up with bruises I couldn’t account for, hours of lost time. Whole nights had to be pieced together from other people’s memories. This detective work was shared with friends the morning after, over more drinks, our hungover thirst irrepressible. We would reconstruct from our combined scraps the shape of the night before, as though we were playing a game of consequences. Sometimes, this collective remembering brought me no spark of recognition, and I would feel a creeping dread as I listened to my friends tell a story I did not recognise, knowing they were talking about me. In our different ways, my father and I were both suffering from diseases of forgetfulness. Though I didn’t yet have a name for what was happening to him, there was some comfort in the thought that I understood a little of what he suffered. I knew the terror of lost time, and I wanted to protect him from it.
5. Wildfires
Richard Fisher explores whether the effect of Canada’s wildfires on New York City’s skyline this week will be enough to change people’s beliefs about climate change.
(BBC Future, approx 6 mins reading time)
According to construal level theory, people’s awareness and willingness to act on climate change should, in principle, be influenced by how psychologically close they perceive its impacts to be. If they formerly believed climate change was mainly about melting ice caps, drought in the developing world or disappearing island nations – and all those are far away in space and time – then their concern should be lower. In 2011, one psychologist referred to psychological distance as one of the “dragons of inaction” for preventing climate change. This isn’t necessarily callous behaviour, according to psychologists. In Bruegel’s painting, the farmer has more immediate needs and priorities – perhaps he’s intent on feeding his own family – so it’s harder to notice and extend empathy towards Icarus’s suffering in the ocean far away. People’s circle of concern is often drawn near to them, meaning that they will care more about someone close to home, rather than on the opposite side of the world.
6. Mel Brooks
Judd Apatow spoke to the legendary director ahead of his 97th birthday about fighting in World War Two, his extensive career in Hollywood and the secret to happiness.
(The Atlantic, approx 27 mins reading time)
The wonderful part was camaraderie. The day the war ended, or was going to be ended, it was May 7. And they said, “Tomorrow, the war ends.” A buddy came with me from Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where we both learned how to be radio operators for the Field Artillery—we both located into the combat engineers. He said to me, “Come with me.” We were in a little schoolhouse. And in the basement, he had set up a table with white wine. And he said, “We’re going to sleep here tonight and stay here all day tomorrow.” And I said, “Why?” He said, “Because tomorrow is going to be V-E Day. And knowing soldiers, they’re going to shoot their rifles up and yell and celebrate. Shoot a lot of stuff up in the air, forgetting that some of those bullets have to come down. So we’re going to spend all of it here.” Until when the celebration was over. Years later when we made The Elephant Man, we had a 20-day break because we were going to a location in London, and the writers had roughly 20 days where we could rewrite. I said, “How would you guys like to see where I was stationed?” So we took the ferry and then hired a car in Paris, and we went to Normandy. I knocked on the door of the farmhouse. And the door opened: a bear of a man with a great big black beard. Scary guy. “Que voulez-vous? ” “What do you want?” And he said, “Un moment, un moment.” “One minute.” [Gasps] “Ah, Private Mel!” he shouted. I said, “Oh my God. You were that little—” “Yes! Je suis l’enfant.” “I was the little boy.” He was a monster. He was a big, beautiful guy. And it was a great afternoon.
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
An article from 2019 about the unsolved murder of Sweden’s then-prime minister Olof Palme, who was assassinated in Stockholm in 1986. You can also listen to it here.
(The Guardian, approx 23 mins reading time/37 mins listening time)
Following Palme’s death, the country was cast first into turmoil and then into confusion. Over the past three decades, one chief investigator after another has failed to solve the case, and today the official inquiry remains open. In 2010, Sweden removed the statute of limitations on murders, specifically so that investigators could continue their search for Palme’s killer for as long as it takes. More than 10,000 people have been questioned in the case, whose files now take up more than 250 metres of shelf space in Sweden’s national police headquarters. It is the largest active murder investigation archive in the world.
Note: The Journal generally selects stories that are not paywalled, but some might not be accessible if you have exceeded your free article limit on the site in question.