This is another LA Theater Works recorded drama. As far as I know, it hasn’t been made into a movie. But it really should be, wow! Arthur Miller knows his stuff.

The story is of a working-class Italian-American family in the 50s. Times are hard for them, and have been for a while. Eddie and Bea have been raising Bea’s niece, Katy. Katy is turning into a woman.

It’s a struggle for parents to let kids go up. Men especially have a hard time letting little girls grow into women. Some fathers are famously protective. And Eddie gets really protective of Katy.

The narrator of the play is a lawyer, who sees the whole thing play out. He talks about it, like it was a train wreck there was no way to stop.

And I believed it, as I listened to it all.

Bea’s cousins from Italy sneak across the ocean to find work. They talk a lot about how hard times are there, that there is no work and that Marco’s, the older one, children are starving and dying.

But Rodolpho is not married. He is there to work and does not have scary responsibilities. He is happy to be there, and happy about a lot of things.

He can sing.

How could Katy resist?

And the train wreck is set in motion.

This was an incredible story. It was fully compelling. I wish they would make a movie out of it. I really felt something after it was done, and it stayed with me.

I saw an interview with Danny Devito talking about, among other things, Get Shorty. He said the movie was about confidence.

That made me want to check it out.

Devito’s character in the movie was not very impressive. Maybe that was the point. Travolta, now, he was great. His character was riveting.

I don’t know if it was because the acting was so great. I can’t really think of a particularly dramatic moment for him.

It’s just he was so active, he did so many amazing things. Chili Palmer, nobody got in his way. He got the stuff done.

Confidence. Well maybe. Is that what it takes to get things done? Interesting that Devito, a movie star, would choose that aspect to focus in on.

I think it might be something else.
In the movie itself, Palmer says that he would not go about business the way Zimm did. He wouldn’t go through his shrink’s other client, who happens to be the personal trainer of the great movie star.

He says he would just go ask him.

Of course, for Palmer, little barriers like walls and locked doors are trivial.

I don’t know how attuned he was to psychological barriers. Not so much, I would think. But he never had to encounter any in the movie. Weir, the coveted star, just faded before his direct approach.

The movie put the film industry and organized crime in the same category. Position, territory, it seemed like it was all the same things but different titles.

There is so much wrong with this, I can hardly begin.

But did anyone else notice the glaring irony of Miss Princess going on and on about looks not being important (‘I been around so many good looking guys that I just can’t stand, because they rely on their looks…’)

all this, and they show footage

OF HER PUTTING ON HER MAKEUP

!!!!

Repeat after me:

DOUBLE STANDARD

It is apparently easier to be charming and literate than people think. The con artist, if that’s what he really is, in this production put on the whole thing like a glove.

He burst into the lives of Upper Middle Class families and charmed them by pulling down their guards. He had learned the details of their lives and learned the little touchpoints that made him seem deep.

Culture and class is apparently very shallow, if it can be picked up so quickly.

Paul the hero was gay, too. He seemed like a bottom, one who derives his own pleasure from subservience. He wanted to do things for the people he conned. He made Flan and Weeza dinner, and even insisted on cleaning up after.

“Such a nice boy!”

The play checked assumptions, a check like in hockey. It challenged the notion of superiority that the middle class folks had about themselves.

It also brought up the issue of what the children and the parents had to say about each other. That wasn’t really resolved, but it was interesting to bring it up.

I like Paul. I like how he turns into a ghost and floats through the walls of people’s lives.

I think that the folks who were conned should have had a better sense of humor about it. What were they really harmed, anyway? Only their self-delusions had been stolen. You’d think that Flan, being an art dealer would have appreciated the new perspective on his life.

But he didn’t.