Hubris Greed Politics vs. Genius.

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
— Richard Feynman, “Report to Congress on Challenger Investigation 1986.”

Indepth chronicle of Dr. Richard Feynman’s investigation into the Space Shuttle Challenger’s 1986 explosion.

When I first heard about the TV movie, THE CHALLENGER DISASTER, I shrugged it off, thinking it would be a shallow, politically-correct tribute to the people who died in the Space Shuttle Challenger’s 1984 post-liftoff explosion. Surely it would not be about the ensuing investigation into the disaster and surely it would go nowhere near one of my heroes, physicist Richard Feynman’s integral role in unveiling the mystery behind the explosion, and there wouldn’t be a chance in hell it would mention O-ring failures…

I was beautifully wrong. As it happens, this movie is all about my hero Richard Feynman, based on a section of his entertaining and informative book, What Do You Care What Other People Think? (1988), and delves deep into how Feynman alternately intuited and was fed cryptic info to unlock the mystery behind the Shuttle explosion due to O-ring failure! Movie portrays him as quite the hero – to which he himself would have reacted with utmost chagrin – as he doggedly pursues the truth against a political juggernaut where the word failure was not an option.

On January 28, 1986 (the 25th shuttle mission), Space Shuttle Challenger did not liftoff from Kennedy Space Center on just another routine mission, but on a public relations circus, crowing to the world the munificence of the American government and the progressiveness of the U.S. space program by including civilian schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe among its seven astronaut crew. 73 seconds after liftoff, the shuttle exploded, killing all onboard.

A Presidential Commission was quickly assembled to investigate, made up of bureaucrats, lawyers, astronauts (Neil Armstrong, first man on the Moon, and Sally Ride, first American woman in space), and for technical credibility, called on 1965 Nobel Prize winner for Physics, Richard P. Feynman.

The incomparable William Hurt stars as the iconoclastic Feynman, immersing himself in the role with his unkempt hair, earthy attitude and quirky dignity. (Feynman was an atheist – but his soul defiantly surfaces in Hurt.) Joanne Whalley is supportive wife, Gweneth. Feynman is hesitant at first to involve himself with Washington in any way for all its “political” obstruction – fears which are realized almost immediately when he arrives ready to work and the investigation committee seem committed to stagnating in bureaucratic quicksand. Feynman becomes the most outspoken and seems to be getting the most work done because he is the only true “independent” on the committee, as everyone else has affiliations with the institutions they are investigating.

Bruce Greenwood is General Kutyna, who is sympathetic to Feynman charging forward against difficult odds, who cannot reveal incriminating information himself due to his allegiance to the military and other astronauts, but who feeds Feynman clues without Feynman even realizing it, banking on Feynman’s brilliance to unravel his clues.

Brian Dennehy is Mr. Rogers, head of the commission and a born bureaucrat; at first, almost an opposing force to the truth, seemingly grinding the investigation into gravel when it wants to move forward. Later, he would verbalize the paradox the commission faced: “We have a major difficulty – the people who best understand the shuttle are the people giving evidence – but they have the most to lose by explaining it clearly.”

No one – not NASA, not the numerous contractors, not the government – wants to take any blame, yet no one wants to rat out their colleagues either. It makes everyone look bad, and not just to grieving Americans; to “enemies” of the United States who have a vested interest in the space program vis a vis the weapons program failing, and to those who simply wish to laugh in the face of the self-proclaimed greatest superpower on Earth.

…either the guys at the top didn’t know, in which case they should have known, or they did know, in which case, they’re lying to us.
— Richard Feynman, from “What Do You Care What Other People Think?”

At the time of the inquiry, Feynman was also battling liver cancer, spreading throughout his body and occasionally incapacitating him. There was nothing his doctor could do except stopgap dialysis.

Ultimately, cause of the Shuttle explosion was whittled down to the compromised “O-rings” – rubber seals that were supposed to expand to stop the outflow of gasses from the Solid Rocket Boosters, but which were affected adversely by extremely low temperatures on launch day. Due to the politics of NASA being forced to launch another Shuttle to retain their funding, they barged ahead with what they knew to be an unsafe condition. It was not a unanimous decision, and many techs gave evidence that they advised against the launch. Feynman was instrumental in pinpointing these factors during hearings, culminating in his now-infamous practical real-time experiment – performed while cameras were rolling and while sitting at his place on the panel – of putting an O-ring in his ice water to prove it was not resilient at cold temperatures.

I am so glad this movie was made. Up to now, scientists like Hawking, Sagan, Michio Kaku, have had their deserved time in the sun. But Feynman has been one of my heroes for years (unfortunately dying in 1988 before I really got to know him through his books), and he’s never really received his due from mainstream media. Now we see how respected and loved he truly was. There is even a new 2013 documentary, FEYNMAN: THE CHALLENGER, which breezes through Feynman’s life, work and philosophies, featuring many interviews with Feynman himself, narrated by none other than Bruce Greenwood. They keep calling Feynman “America’s most respected physicist.” Well then, give him a little more sugar, Hollywood bastards!

The tragic dichotomy here is that I have utmost respect and sympathy for NASA also. The organization is constantly misunderstood, maligned and defunded by the public and the government. After proving their utility in rocket science (i.e. weaponry), the United States didn’t have much use for them after the Apollo program. To avoid being discarded, they’ve had to prove time and again their credibility, even though sometimes they have nothing to offer the budget hawks except pure research. They even had to come up with a slogan, which they KNEW was unworkable in any real-world environment, to placate the whining government red-tapers: “Faster Cheaper Better.” (The rejoinder to that credo is as famous as the credo itself: That only two of those conditions can be achieved at the expense of the third; i.e. you can have it faster and cheaper, but it won’t be better, you can have it cheaper and better, but it won’t be faster, and so on.) After promising an unattainable quantity of Shuttle launches and under threat of their funds being siphoned to the military, they had to launch that cold day in 1986. With fingers crossed instead of 100% safety guarantees.

The deaths of the seven astronauts is as much to blame on the mouse-minded government as the officials at NASA who greenlighted the launch. May those responsible – you know who you are – take that burden to your venal graves.

As the credits roll, we see real footage of Feynman giving his O-ring testimony over his ice water. Giving a new meaning to super cool.

Sadly, this would be Feynman’s last adventure. Two years later, he would die of cancer.

After President Reagan is presented with the official Challenger report, with Dr. Feynman’s notes included as an Appendix, General Kutyna walks with Feynman. He laments and apologizes for the time Feynman had to spend away from his family, knowing he had so little time left, “This took your time…” Feynman, the atheist, the pioneer in quantum electro-dynamics (QED), philosophically replies, “I guess there is a kind of afterlife. The few bits and pieces that we do… might get remembered.”

END

The OTHER Rocky.

Hey, all you skatepunks and facebookers and under-30 neo-hippies: you know that word “Rambo” that you toss around to describe tough guys? It’s an unquestioned part of modern worldwide vernacular: you use it as sarcasm, insult or deflective compliment; newscasters use it to sprinkle their reports with humor; sociologists use it to identify unnecessary brutality; the word is in the Oxford English Dictionary, fer chrissakes!

Rambo. This is where that word came from – FIRST BLOOD. It didn’t originate with any of those misnamed sequels sporting the “Rambo” dog tag. It originated in a novel by David Morrell (First Blood, 1972), subsequently made into this effective, primal, unlikely hit.

FIRST BLOOD would not only augment Sylvester Stallone’s existing toughguy career (by this film’s release, he was already up to ROCKY III), it was a tectonic cultural groundslam, spawning the sequels that would bear the “Rambo” moniker and entrench the archetype in world consciousness. “Rambo” virtually wiped out the other metaphors for tough guys: Hercules, Samson and Tarzan.

Viet Nam is over. A bedraggled ex-Special Forces operative, John Rambo, (Stallone) tramps into a hick American town, searching for long-dead friends and a hot meal. The antagonistic sheriff, Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy) wants Rambo to keep walkin.’ When Rambo refuses, Teasle (that name just kills me!) hauls him to jail, where all the smalltown redneck officers (including Bill McKinney and David Caruso) beat, berate and bully the compliant Rambo to his breaking point.

And then all Italian Stallion breaks loose.

It is established that Rambo is a “war hero” (whatever that means – maybe that he has big muscles) and the movie is a slight nod to post-war trauma and the difficulty in assimilating back into society – especially redneck Amuuurican society that is the least likely to accept you, that you are most apt to have come from. But that theme will only surface towards the end, when Rambo gives his Grand Soliloquy. For the most part, FIRST BLOOD is an adrenalin punch in the face, appealing to our primal revenge instincts.

Escaping the police station, Rambo flees into the forest, Teasle on his tail (I kill me!) and the whole sheriff’s department as posse. Like a baleful wolf blending into the forest, Rambo stalks the namby-pamby officers, putting them out of commission one by one. And as surprising as it may sound, Rambo actually “kills” no one! Though this movie has a violent reputation (garnered in retrospect by its sequels), in FIRST BLOOD, only one officer falls from a helicopter and dies accidentally. Body count: 1!

This sends Teasle into a tizzy (I’m dyin’ over here!) – even though he was the one who started the conflict by provoking Rambo. The story ignites our sense of perverted Justice very well indeed. We’re on Rambo’s side from minute one.

I’m sure David Morell did not intend to rip off CHATO’S LAND (1972) – Bronson’s Apache picking off his white pursuers one by one – but that is the brutal template FIRST BLOOD is fashioned on. The hunters becoming the hunted.

After Rambo puts his infamous gigantic hunting knife to Teasle’s throat and warns, “Don’t push it…or I’ll give you a war you won’t believe!” – the military are called in. Hoo-rah! With them comes Colonel Trautman (Richard Crenna), who was Rambo’s trainer, therefore someone who can presumably hit Rambo’s PAUSE button. Unfortunately, Trautman can only talk in clichés and dynamic one-liners that involve doing a camera-turn before he exits the room; he overacts so much that five extras got their SAG cards just by standing near him.

Trautman can’t do much with Rambo over the walkie-talkie, except cause more flashbacks for him. Rambo maintains to Trautman that he didn’t start this fracas – that “they drew first blood!” After destroying the whole town, Rambo comes face to face with his beloved commanding officer and cries like a baby. He’s trying to fit in, he says, but the society that he fought to preserve refuses to conform to his new PTSD lifestyle. Oh, so it’s OUR fault the military trained the humanity out of you and lied to you that you could one day return to humanity psychologically unscathed…

You gotta respect Stallone for his business acumen, and how he turned two shallow movie characters into worldwide phenomena. But it was here, in FIRST BLOOD, where we also realized what a grand orator Stallone is, when he gives an impassioned monologue in the finale, on the death of innocence, that went something like this:

“Nothing is over! Nothing! Yucan swish it oohh Wozen my waar I didn’t ask you And the wooma gooma maggots protesting and the waahoouy baby murderer code of honor! You wash my back, l wash yours! Heahh, there’s nothing! All dese gray guys Chevy Convertible we wonna drive until the tires fell off And the woouy mogam oosh body parts flying everywhere! Ouuuy l wanna go home, Johnny! But l coonafy hih legs! l can geeah oww my head oyoou…”

And Lawrence Olivier wept.

END

Righteous Swill.

Dream cast, nightmare script. What a shameless waste of Acting’s two elder statesmen.

RIGHTEOUS KILL re-unites Robert de Niro and Al Pacino as two New York cops on the trail of a killer who is wiping out the city’s vilest criminals. The plot of MAGNUM FORCE resurrected, except in this movie, it’s Dirty Harry without the Dirty. Or the Harry.

While Pacino and De Niro turn up and wisecrack at a rash of murders where the killer leaves behind a saucy poem every time (hence, dubbed the Poetry Killer – can I get another pitcher of Obvious Ale over here, thanks?), suspicions arise within the force as to the killer being De Niro. The New York police force, by the way, seems to only consist of four other people – smokin’ Carla Gugino, snappy John Leguizamo, languid Donnie Wahlberg and unintentionally funny Brian Dennehy.

I’m sure director Jon Avnet thought he’d scored his GODFATHER breakthrough when De Niro and Pacino signed on to this uninvolving murder mystery. I could see visions of sugarplums and THE GODFATHER PART IV dancing through his head – if not for the bland dialogue, limp setups, one-dimensional characters, and a twist so obvious that if you can’t figure who the killer is within the first ten minutes, you’re not getting enough blood to the brain.

Poffy does de Niro doing de Niro

Written by Russell Gewirtz (obviously with help from a thirteen-year-old who thought the “twist” was cool and original), there is no chemistry at all between the two leads, even though they are quite obviously friends offscreen with decades of legacy to lean on. De Niro is looking pretty old, Pacino, even older. Every time they make their famous facial expressions, it just seems like they’re doing Robert De Niro and Al Pacino impersonations.

Neither actor is at the top of their game (Pacino was nominated for a Razzie in this role), and the mixed up script doesn’t save them; what the director and writer think is misdirection is merely handing us plot giveaways on a platter.

And the De Niro and Pacino impersonations? Well, I’ve seen better.

At least we can laugh at Ajay Naidu (OFFICE SPACE) in his Indian doctor cameo – he’s not really trying to be funny, it’s just that priceless Indian accent. And Brian Dennehy – well, he’s been unintentionally funny since F/X – MURDER BY ILLUSION (1986).

20 years ago, Robert and Al starred in a powerhouse that established them as O.G.s (THE GODFATHER PART II, 1974), but they had no scenes together to showcase their overlord acting skills; twenty years later, they starred in the vapid HEAT (1995) sharing one major scene with above average acting; now thirteen years later, they share almost every scene in RIGHTEOUS KILL and there is no acting to speak of.

I think there’s a clear message here: for these dudes to stay righteous, You gotta keep ’em separated!

END

Leonardo DiCaprio: Girl Gone Wild.

More Comedie Than Tragedie.

All I’m saying is: Leonardo DiCaprio should stop being prettier than his female co-stars. In ROMEO + JULIET, snub-nosed Claire Danes bravely steps up to out-femme Leo’s manly prettiness. And fails.

Leonardo is Romeo (kinda archly poetic, no?) and Claire is his Juliet. Shakespeare‘s retelling of Ovid’s Pyramus and Thisbe is retold with creative conceptualizing and high-voltage visuals by Australian thunderboy, director Baz Luhrmann, as an urban gang battle with a decidedly MTV-ian thrust.

Alas, Luhrmann’s noble idealism in re-inventing the Bard’s most famous play for a generation weaned on music videos and boy bands unfortunately falls on ears deaf to irony, sarcasm, double entendre, punning, words larger than six letters and intelligence. Which pretty much rules out Shakespeare’s oeuvre.

Throwing out major portions of text (“Text? What’s that?” mumbles Generation X), yet elocuting the remainder verbatim, performances are unevenly astounding, for when the actors can stop shouting at each other in the manner of Entertainment Tonight hosts declaring showbiz headlines, their occasional fluidity creates pockets of crystal clarity that move with the rhythms Shakespeare intended. Alas, it is unsustainable for most of them.

Thrown into this mix of varying talents, Dash Mihok, Jamie Kennedy (it was all I could do to stop imagining them prefacing everything with “Yo yo yo…”) and DiCaprio stand out like ailing speechaphobics against the menacing fluidity of John Leguizamo, the simple sincerity of Claire Danes and the authoritative Shakespearean veteran, Pete Postlethwaite (still pushing 55, as he was 20 years ago).

As Mercutio, cross-dressing Harold Perrineau steals the show in his mini-skirt, bra and command of Shakespearean rhythm. And look at those legs!

The precursor to all Chick Flicks, you know the old story: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, girl drinks poison, boy kills himself, girl wakes up, girl kills herself. Ain’t love grand?

END