Hitchcock Explains His Cinematic Techniques and Themes

There is a great documentary of Alfred Hitchcock’s film techniques on Google Video.

Alfred Hitchcock explains his movie themes and cinematic techniques. Hitch explains how his cinematic techniques affected audiences at a subconscious level and looks at examples from some of his greatest films. He touches on many of the elements of the Hitchcock legend, including the use of the “McGuffin” and our common fears.

The documentary includes video clips of some of Hitchcock’s most suspenseful and thrilling scenes:  the biplane in “North by Northwest,” the skeletal Mrs. Bates in “Psycho,” the gathering of the crows in the schoolyard in “The Birds.”  It’s a fascinating documentary and we are treated to an actual conversation with the great director himself as he explains it all.

Click on this link to watch it.

Skeeter Davis’s Letters to God

Back in 1963 I was in love with a pretty little blonde named Joe Anne Wade.  Joe Anne was a student at Wilcox High School in Santa Clara, California.  I was a freshman in college.  We loved a song by a singer named Skeeter Davis (pictured at right) who was big that year.  Skeeter sang a song called “The End of the World.”  It was about how someone feels when the one they love has departed their life.   When Joe Anne’s previous boyfriend got out of the army, she decided she liked him better than me.  Soon Skeeter’s song was more to me than pretty music:  it described exactly how I felt about losing Joe Anne.

The years have passed and I forgot about Skeeter Davis until tonight.  My wife and I were at the “Jazz Bash by the Bay,” a meeting of jazz bands  in Monterey, California.  In the last performance of the evening, the drummer of one group told a touching story.  His name is Danny Coots and he lives and records in Nashville. 

Danny said his wife had been a fan of Skeeter Davis.  Skeeter lived in Nashville and died there of breast cancer in 2004.   Mrs. Coots went to Skeeter’s estate sale and bought a bunch of things, including boxes.  Inside one of the boxes Danny found some letters that Skeeter had written to God in 1962 and 1963.  The letters were handwritten on hotel stationery and were written while Skeeter was touring.  They were her personal conversation with God, asking him why things had to happen the way they do, why she had to suffer the loss of someone’s love.  She spoke of touring as a popular singer and how lonely it was on the road.

Danny said that, in reading these letters, he felt that he was intruding on Skeeter’s privacy.  It was obvious that when she was pouring her heart out to God, she never intended that her writings would be read by anyone else.  Danny said that the content of Skeeter’s letters could best be summarized by the words to one of her most popular songs – “The End of the World.”

The Monterey jazz group ended their performance by playing and singing this song and by dedicating it to Skeeter Davis.  It was a touching thing to do.   The audience responded with a standing ovation.  Thank you, Danny Coots, for sharing this with all of us.

Following are two things:  the words to “The End of the World” and then a Youtube video of Skeeter singing the song.  Enjoy – then say a prayer for Skeeter Davis. 

THE END OF THE WORLD

Why does the sun go on shining
Why does the sea rush to shore
Don’t they know it’s the end of the world
‘Cause you don’t love me any more

Why do the birds go on singing
Why do the stars glow above
Don’t they know it’s the end of the world
It ended when I lost your love

I wake up in the morning and I wonder
Why everything’s the same as it was
I can’t understand, no, I can’t understand
How life goes on the way it does

Why does my heart go on beating
Why do these eyes of mine cry
Don’t they know it’s the end of the world
It ended when you said goodbye

Why does my heart go on beating
Why do these eyes of mine cry
Don’t they know it’s the end of the world
It ended when you said goodbye

Will Western Civilization Pass Into History?

Let us never take our freedoms for granted, nor assume that Western Civilization will forever survive competing cultures and forces, both within and without, who would destroy it.  The poem below is one I read in college; it is by Percy Blythe Shelley, who wrote it in 1817.

Wikipedia describes it this way: 

The central theme of Ozymandias is mankind’s hubris. In fourteen short lines, Shelley condenses the history of not only Ozymandias’ rise, peak, and fall, but also that of an entire civilization. Without directly stating it, Shelley shows that all works of humankind – including power structures and governments -eventually must pass into history, no matter how permanent they may seem at the apex of their influence. Ozymandias’ short-sighted pride seems amusing at first – until the reader realizes that the lessons conveyed are equally applicable today.   

 Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Neale Donald Walsch’s “Conversations With God” Book 1

As promised in my last post, I did indeed read Book 1 of Neale Donald Walsch’s “Conversations With God.”  I had started it some months ago, decided it was boring and quit reading.  However, I became intrigued by the boiling anger the book generates in some Christians, so decided to give it another go. 

The book actually became interesting as I got more into the text.  I read some things that were almost profound; other things that were interesting; and some things that I thought were just plain dumb.  Nothing that I read was really earth-shaking.   In general, Walsch’s God (hereinafter referred to as “WG”) simply rehashed a lot of existing philosophy and religious beliefs.  Some of these beliefs come from Christianity or Judaism (the so-called “Abrahamic” faiths) and some came from Buddism, Hinduism or Taoism (the so-called “Brahmic” faiths).  The rest came from Walsch himself.

I will give Walsch a lot of credit for starting a new conversation, if not with God, about God and our concepts of the divine and the infinite.  The danger in this is that it will draw a lot of anger from devout religionists, who already have “the truth” and don’t want it messed with.  They see any new examination into the nature of God as blasphemy and the work of the devil.  I, however, have an open mind.  I think it is a healthy exercise to brush several millennia of dust from ancient religious texts and to reexamine their premises.  Man’s ideas about science, government, business, art and other aspects of culture have continued to evolve over the centuries.  It is only our concepts of the infinite that are fixed and static and not allowed to grow. 

I will largely paraphrase what WG says in the book, in order to save space.  Here are some of the things I found intriguing:

1.  WG is pantheistic.  That means that everything is God.  God is not separate from his creation; he is the universe and everything in it.  It means that human beings are part of God and not separate from him.  We are a finite expression of the infinite.  WG doesn’t always do a good job of explaining this, at one point stating that we humans are “Gods.”  That won’t sit well with many readers.  Personally, I don’t have the lightning bolt thing down pat yet.  

2.  You existed before this life.  When you took physical form in this world, you caused yourself to forget who you really are.  While in this world of form, your major spiritual quest is to remember and recreate who you really are. 

3.  Death is no big deal.  It is failure to doctors, tragedy to those left behind, but relief and release to the soul.  The soul is clear that there is no great tragedy about leaving the body.   We are all immortal right now; immortality is not something you have to earn by following a religious script; we never do die, we only change form.

4.  God is not the vengeful, punitive God that many Jews, Christians and Muslims believe.  There is no Hell.

5.  Souls can reincarnate many times, be born into this world many times.  The decision to do this is made by the soul itself, so it can continue to grow.  Karma is not an obligation of the soul, but an opportunity of the soul to continue to grow, looking at past events and experiences as a measure of that growth.  [This contradicts eastern beliefs that karma is a debt of the soul to be repaid by successive lives on earth.  I like the original concept better.]

6.  Don’t envy someone who is very fortunate nor overly pity someone less fortunate.  “Judge not, then, the karmic path walked by another.  Envy not success, nor pity failure, for you know not what is success or failure in the soul’s reckoning.”  [I found this an interesting concept - that one's lot in life was chosen by his own soul for its own spiritual growth.]

7.  Killing is evil, killing for God is the highest blasphemy.  However, you are not to be either a victim or a martyr; war is sometimes necessary and you have a moral obligation to prevent aggression against others and yourself.

8.  The purpose of life is joy.  WG says “Life should be a joy, a celebration…Four fifths of the world’s people consider life a trial, a tribulation, a time of testing, a karmic debt that must be repaid, a school with harsh lessons that must be learned, and, in general, an experience to be endured while awaiting the real joy, which is after death.”  [I agree with this.  Anything that destroys joy, including various religious beliefs, should be excised and thrown out as rubbish.]

9.  Money is good, not evil, not “the root of all evil.”  Being rich is good – there is nothing spiritually advantageous about poverty and want.

10.  Sex is one of man’s highest joys.  It is not shameful or evil.  Being attracted to the opposite sex is not “committing adultery in your heart,” it is following the dictates of nature that were programmed into us to procreate the human race. 

These are some of the ideas I found interesting and worthy of futher study and discussion.  There are others but this will suffice for now.

Some of the ideas of WG that I didn’t like or accept are these:

1.  Man is the greatest source of harm to nature and the environment.  Nonsense; man is part of nature and man’s imprint on nature, for good or bad, is negligible.

2.  Man could immediately end world hunger and cure disease in an instant if he really wanted to.  Balderdash.  This is moon-battery of the worst order. 

3.  Man could end war if he really wanted to – all we have to do, all we have ever had to do, is to agree.  Ri-i-i-ght.  All we have to do is reconcile many different cultures, religions, political systems, philosophies and world-views and we can begin beating our swords into plowshares.  When did any two humans ever agree on anything?  This comment is just plain dumb. 

4.  There is no such thing as evil – even Hitler went to Heaven.  I have a lot of trouble with this one.  WG implies that there are no consequences for mass murder, tyranny, cruelty and oppression.  Although I do not believe in the vengeful and punitive God nor do I believe in Hell, I find it unjust that Hitler, or others like  him, can merely skate on into paradise at the end of their lives.  Here’s where the older version of karma makes sense – where Hitler may redeem himself through many more lives on earth, experiencing the same horrors he visited upon others, or mitigating such punishment through better deeds.

Conclusions:  Walsch’s book is worth a read.   It does reexamine some religious concepts that need reconsideration.  It should not be considered a religious text or a new religion, nor should it be viewed as a literal expression of God’s mind.  If it helps you along the path to enlightenment and spiritual growth, that’s a good thing, but don’t take it literally.  Reexamining one’s religious beliefs is not a bad thing – it is necessary for your own spiritual growth. 

Here’s a quote I found on the web.  I think it says a lot that is related to this post:

God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and religions.  -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

Here’s another relevant quote:

We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty humans, and then blames them for his own
mistakes. – Gene Roddenberry

Inventing Your Own Religion

Many people go ballistic at the very mention of Neale Donald Walsch, the author of “Conversations With God.”   In 1995 Walsch wrote a book about his private conversations with God, i.e. Walsch asked God questions and God replied as a voice in Walsch’s mind.  Walsch wrote down both the questions and the answers as they were happening, or so he claims.  Through Walsch, “God” thereby explains the meaning and purpose of life and what God does and does not do in regard to humans.

I started reading this book some months ago, got through the first three chapters and gave up.  Although I agreed with a lot of it, I decided Walsch’s God was a bit too flaky for me.  Furthermore, he sounded like a Democrat.  No thanks.

However, I’ve decided to give the book another look.  A book that causes that much anger over one’s concept of God must be worth reading.  I have decided to read the book in its entirety, underline passages that I agree with and also those I do not agree with.  I will then write a comprehensive review of Walsch’s book.   It won’t be a hit job, but it won’t be a whitewash either.  Since I am not a member of any organized religion, I have no ax to grind.   Walsch is not the first by any means to invent his own religion and so it pays to be skeptical.  Many invented religions turn out to be weird cults or scams (or both). 

Why do people invent religions and why do others follow them?  L. Ron Hubbard, the creater of Scientology, was quoted as saying that “Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion.”  If you invent your own religion and convince others that you are a prophet, you reap the rewards of both power and money. 

Last night, desperate for something to watch on TV and finding little due to the writer’s strike, I tuned into an episode of South Park, “Trapped In The Closet.”  This is the cartoon show of grade school kids in Colorado, i.e. Kyle, Cartman, Kenny and Stan.  Stan takes a Scientology test and is identified by the Church of Scientology as “the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard.”  The show describes the beliefs of Scientologists as set down by the Prophet Hubbard, and those beliefs are pretty bizarre, to say the least.  In fairness, I would have to say that they are only slightly more weird than the beliefs of Mormons.  Before there was L. Ron Hubbard, there was Joseph Smith.  No matter what fantastic stories a “prophet” might create, there will always be some who will believe and follow.  

At the end of the show, Stan disavows his prophethood to an assembly of believers.  He says, “We all want so much to know who we are and where we come from that sometimes we’ll believe just about anything.”  Well said, Stan.  It’s a good point to remember as I begin Walsch’s book. 

The Religious Icons of Alfred Hitchcock

In my previous post I discussed the small statuette of a monk that appears on a masonry wall at Alfred Hitchcock’s former estate in Scotts Valley, California.  See previous post and picture.

There is another religious icon that appears on the grounds.  On the front porch there is a Christian mosaic (see photo above) inlaid into the plaster of a wall.  At the website “Footsteps In the Fog,” there is a picture of Alfred sitting beneath this mosaic in a black and white photo (see it here).  Tere Carrubba, Hitch’s granddaughter, has a copyrighted color photo of Alfred and and Alma sitting with Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly directly in front of this mosaic.  I have a copy of it but cannot run it without Tere’s permission.

The mosaic is still there and in good shape, with perhaps a chip or two from the 1989 earthquake that damaged the house (now all repaired and earthquake retrofitted).   See picture above, right.  Today the mosaic appears inlaid into the wall, where it was flat with the wall in Hitchcock’s time.  That’s because the current owners had the estate retrofitted against earthquakes after the 1989 quake damaged the estate.  The walls are much thicker now.

I am releasing this unpublished and previously unseen picture to the public.  Judging from my hit counter and blog stats, Alfred Hitchcock continues to be a primary interest of my visitors.

Alfred and Alma owned the Scotts Valley estate, “Heart O’ the Mountain” from 1940 to 1974, when increasing age made it difficult to visit there anymore.  The estate is now owned by Bob and Judy Brassfield.

Alfred Hitchcock: A Good Catholic

Many people don’t know this, but the famous film director Alfred Hitchcock was a believing Catholic.  As one of few people who have seen his mountain estate in Scotts Valley, California, I was surprised to find icons of his faith on the grounds.  At the far end of the trestle walkway, leading away from the house, one comes to a masonry wall with a small statuette, a figure of a monk.   See picture above.

The statuette is like something you might see in a church.   Did Hitchcock put the statue there or was it there when he bought the estate from Bruce Cornwall in 1940?  This I don’t know.  Nevertheless, it is a peaceful and reverent touch to the grounds.

See my next post, above, about a religious mosaic inlaid into a plaster wall. 

I am releasing this unpublished and previously unseen picture to the public.  Judging from my hit counter and blog stats, Alfred Hitchcock continues to be a primary interest of my visitors.

Alfred and Alma owned the Scotts Valley estate, “Heart O’ the Mountain” from 1940 to 1974, when increasing age made it difficult to visit there anymore.  The estate is now owned by Bob and Judy Brassfield.

Silence: The Voice of God?

I read somewhere that “silence is the voice of God.” I believe it.

A year ago I was taking a walk through some fields filled with yellow grass stubble. It was Fall and there is something about Fall that I always notice but never verbalized before. Fall has a kind of quietness to it, as if all sound is somehow muted. It’s as if nature itself is listening for something, watching and waiting. This always brings a feeling of peace to my soul.

We all hear about the “still, small voice within.” In fact, many philosopers believe that this voice within is God’s usual means of communicating with us. I think we best hear the voice during moments of quietude, when we listen not just with our ears but with our hearts. I guess that’s why there is so much spiritual benefit in meditation. It is the process by which the active and noisy mind is quieted, allowing a higher voice to be heard.

Our Christmas Lights are LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes)

Everyone knows the common light bulb is doomed.  It has been in use, almost unchanged, for over 100 years.  It features a glass bulb with a carbon filament and a metal (brass?) socket that screws into the lamp.  I have some light bulbs that are over 100 years old, have a little point on the top, and still work.  Pretty cool.

Well, not so cool.  Light bulbs generate a lot of heat and are painful to touch when they’ve been on for a few minutes.  That’s why they are made of glass — glass won’t melt or burn from the heat.  Plastic bulbs would burn or melt fairly quickly. 

In the future, light bulbs will be replaced with LEDs, or light-emitting diodes.  LEDs are some kind of substrate that glows when a current is passed through it.  By impregnating the substrate with different elements, scientists can change the color.  So LED’s glow red, blue, green, yellow or white.  All those little tiny lights on your computer are most likely LEDs, not bulbs.  The light in your computer mouse is also an LED, as are the lights in your automobile dashboard.  I understand that stop lights are made of LEDs – take a look and you will see that traffic lights are made up of hundreds of tiny components, not one big bulb.

The great thing about LEDs is that they may be operated with very low power, generate much less heat, and last much longer than traditional light bulbs with filaments.  The move to LEDs for a light source has already begun.  Our Christmas lights this year are actually LEDs, though they look much like old-fashioned bulb lights.

We have LED lights strung around the exterior of the house in blue, red, and green.  All of these lights are about 60 watts in power, the same as a single low-power light bulb.  Our Christmas tree has the same lights and consume about 12 watts of power in total.  Pretty small power outlay, I’d say.

Last night I checked the heat of these bulbs by touching the ones outside.  They are in plastic, not glass, bulbs and were cool to the touch.  The lights on the tree inside were about room temperature.  They are not quite as bright as traditional glass bulbs, but they come close. 

We didn’t convert to LEDs because we fear global warming (a hoax if there ever was one), but because we like saving money and taking money out of the oil Sheiks’ pockets.   Our Christmas lights are totally cool, in more ways than one.

How Age-Bigot Employers Discriminate and Get Away With It

I am currently working with an older woman consultant who keeps hoping for a “permanent” job. There is no such thing, of course. She really just wants a job with an indefinite end. I know the feeling. When you are a consultant you are always searching around for the next gig. Contract jobs rarely last more than 2 or 3 months.

My friend doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting a “perm job” in Silicon Valley, unless she wants to apply at McDonald’s or become a greeter at Walmart. High tech corporations in Silicon Valley avoid older workers at all costs. I have the same problem. In spite of several interviews for positions for which I was highly qualified, I haven’t been hired either.

Why Do Employers Fear Older Workers?

Why do employers fear older workers? I really don’t know if there is an economic or legal reason for it or if it’s simply a form of bigotry (“you’re different than me so I don’t want to work with you”). Are they afraid we’ll get sick more than other employees? Are they afraid that, since we are a protected class of people, we are more likely to sue or make EEOC complaints? Do they fear that our benefits packages will cost immense amounts of money? Do they expect a younger person will work for them for a longer period of time before a replacement must be sought? (What, in Silicon Valley, where job turnover is already high? Ha!) What’s really going on here?

How Age-Bigots Avoid the Issue

I suspect that behind every age bigot there is an attorney telling him how not to get sued. Here are some possible scenarios that I have inferred from the age bigots who interviewed me.

1. At the conclusion of the interview the age-bigot will give you his business card and tell you to call him if you have any questions. He will be totally non-committal about your chances of getting the job.
2. You will never hear from the interviewer or his company again. You won’t get the standard form rejection letter, you won’t get anything. That’s because if they don’t send the letter, then technically you haven’t been rejected. What are they going to say if they do? That you’re not qualified in spite of 30 years of impressive experience? No letter means less evidence to use against them in court.
3. If the interview was set up by a search firm, you will never hear from the recruiter again, either. There will be no explanation or feedback as to why you weren’t hired. They could easily make some excuse, but excuses can be checked out. If there is no feedback at all, the recruiter and employer won’t be put in a position of having to lie about it. If they lied, it could prove embarrassing if they have to explain it later on the witness stand.

How Decrepit Are You, Really?

Well find out what other people have accomplished at your age.

What have people my age accomplished? Well, a few small things.

Physician, author and running enthusiast George Sheehan ran his fastest Boston marathon ever.

James Parkinson, an English surgeon and paleontologist, described Parkinson’s disease.

J.R.R. Tolkien published the first volume of his fantasy series, Lord of the Rings.

Clergyman and writer Jonathan Swift wrote A Modest Proposal, possibly the best satire ever written in English.

John Dryden undertook the enormous task of translating the entire works of Virgil into English verse.

Countess Rosa Branicka, a wealthy Polish noble, performed breast cancer surgery on herself and lived to be 82.

Elizabeth Kingsley created the double-crostic puzzle.

Danny DeVito, actor, is still going strong in the entertainment world.

Rod Stewart, former Rock star, recorded four albums of the most beloved love songs of the western world – from what is known as “the American Songbook.” They were a smash hit.

What Did Other People Accomplish at Your Age?

You can find out by going to this web page, “Things Other People Accomplished When They Were Your Age.”

It won’t get you a job but it may make you feel better.

As for me, I will stick with contracting and maybe form my own consulting company.