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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday June 11, 2001 Volume III Number 24 |
FOCUS - Pearl
Generally, I read the critics after I see the movie. Like children chasing the ball on the soccer field, critics seem to herd. It’s either thumbs up or thumbs down… across the board. I often wonder which among them sets the standard, the tone for the rest. Who are the Crowned Royals of Film Criticism?
If I read them prior to seeing the movie, their perspective all too often prejudices me and I see the film through the eyes of the critic, not mine. If they don’t like the movie, I sit there in the theater looking for the reasons why. If, less frequently, they actually like the movie then I feel an obligation to like it, too.
While critics tend to herd, they do come in categories. There are the jaded cynics who become critics because they relish taking aim in print utilizing their acid wit and piercing phrases to bring an actor or director or screenwriter to his knees, mortally wounded, exposed as a the worthless incompetent he really is. Then there are the morality police, whose mission it is to assist the reader in sorting through the ethical issues raised by a film’s message. These morality critics range from those who would impose political correctness from the left to those who would impose a prudish personal purity from the right. Then there are the technicians who disassemble, scrutinizing the pieces, the parts. These critics focus on technique and style and sound track and camera angle and character development and effects and the casting and the many distinct elements of filmmaking. The story is incidental.
Critics, in general, are a pompous crowd, full of themselves and will always be observers. Never participants. Artists live with the risk of rejection. Ridicule. Dismissal. Critics are always safe. They are simply expressing subjective personal opinion, they think. (None of them would ever dare claim in these enlightened days an outmoded standard from a by-gone era: objectivity.) They’ll never act before a rolling camera. Never write the words or phrases that will one day be put in an actor’s mouth. They’ll never find a melody line or work it into an orchestrated score. They’ll never catch the lighting and color just right and capture beauty with the camera’s lens. They’ll never debate in the presence of a storyboard over how best to tell the story. Or work with the special effects team to create suspense or calamity or caring or pathos.
This is the stuff of moviemaking. But moviemakers don’t play to the critic. They play to the audience.
Such is the case with the current big-budget mega movie Pearl Harbor.
* * * * * * *
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt told the world that December 7, 1941 was “a day that would live in infamy,” he not only asked and got Congress to make a unanimous declaration of war on the Empire of Japan, he became obsessed with the need to make an immediate, effective retaliatory strike.
His best advisors informed him that such an action was impossible. The devastating destruction of the attack on Pearl left the Pacific forces crippled. It would take months, perhaps years to retool and prepare a proper, blueprinted strategic response. There was no one capable, or ready to respond on such short notice.
With the single exception of Jimmy Doolittle.
Jimmy
Doolittle did a lot. Maybe those
who are given an unfortunate name (“life ain’t easy for a boy named
‘Sue’… My name is Sue, how do you do? Now you’re gunna die!” from
the hit single by Johnny Cash, 1969) spend their entire lives proving to the
world that their name is not a life sentence.
From the start, young Jimmy Doolittle determined to accomplish much.
By the time he hit mid-life (he was forty-five years old when the
Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor), he was a veteran Army Air Corps aviator of the
Great War (WWI), promoted to the rank of First Lieutenant in 1920, held a
doctorate in advanced engineering from M.I.T. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, well
known as an expert test pilot, flight instructor and competitive race pilot.
When Shell Oil Company asked him to take charge of their aviation
department, he continued to racing and went on to set a world high-speed record
in 1932.
Jimmy Doolittle did a lot.
As tensions heightened in the European conflict, Doolittle knew war was inevitable. He returned to active duty in the Army Air Forces. When, in the aftermath of the stunning attack on Pearl, FDR pressed his unwilling advisors for a retaliation plan, the desperate President turned a daring and popular American veteran – 1st Lt. James Harold Doolittle.
The plan was impossible from the start. The Pacific Fleet lay in ruins in the middle of the Pacific Oceans in a harbor called Pearl smack dab in the middle of the Hawaiian Islands. A buffer of seawater half way ’round the globe protected the Empire of Japan. Those Mitchell B-25 bombers were never intended to be launched from the deck of a carrier. Even if they could be ferried and then launched, they could not return back to land on the decks that launched them.
But something had to be done. Something potent, something menacing… to show the Emperor and his military machine that the U.S. of A. is a nation of resolve. That this unprovoked act of aggression would not go unanswered.
So Dr. Doolittle took the assignment. Figure it out. Make do. Get those bombers over there post haste, load ‘em up with bombs and let those people know who they are messin’ with. And do it NOW.
Those were his orders – direct from the White House War Room.
* * * * * *
Like a whole lot of other moviegoers, I liked the new movie Pearl Harbor. The critics hate it.
They say that the love story his hopelessly
clichéd and over-acted and distracting
and time consuming, that the history of this momentous watershed event is
obscured by a convoluted obsession with special effects, even worse, revised by
Hollywood script writers who care more about audience manipulation than
historical accuracy, that its pre-occupation with political correctness makes
it a bland, colorless rehash of the clash of nations, that its shiny images and
cartoon-like characters rob the film of any human depth, that it too blatantly
borrows from mega-hits like Titanic and Top Gun and Saving
Private Ryan and Twister and Apollo 13 and The Right Stuff
and we’ve seen all this before, and that we are over-exposed to
Industrial Light and Magic’s computerized special effects and basically, the
magic’s gone. They are effects,
but no longer special.
That’s a sampling of your basic run-of-the-mill movie critic’s view.
Maybe I’m just not smart enough. Maybe I’m just a sentimental sap. Maybe I’m the kind of guy who would be too easily hypnotized, too easily swayed…
But heck, I liked the movie. A lot.
* * * * * *
Doolittle rounded up a gaggle of volunteer pilots. By the sheer force of his riveting personality, with the vision of smoldering battleships and shell pocked airfields and disabled fighter planes and sailors trapped in the sunken hulls of capsized ships in the Harbor and the sound of Zeros and Dive Bombers buzzing in his memory, Lt. Doolittle convinced a pack of bright eyed aviators to do the impossible. They volunteered for an unspecified mission. They knew it would be dangerous. To the extreme.
They stripped their airplanes of every unnecessary encumbrance. They trained on the ground to get their Mitchell B-25 bombers off the ground in a mind bending four hundred feet of runway.
The planes were loaded on the deck of a carrier that remarkably, was out to sea on the fateful December morning of the attack. Sixteen of them, poised for launch, rode the waves on a bombing mission to attack Tokyo and Yokohama and several other strategic targets. On April 18, 1942, just one hundred thirty two days after the attack on Pearl, Doolittle, first to be launched as commanding lead pilot (against Pentagon orders, Doolittle personally flew in the raid saying, “I’ll not ask my men to do anything I would not do myself.”) cleared the deck of the USS Hornet, barely airborne, turned his B-25 from six-hundred miles off the shoreline toward the Empire of Japan on a low altitude bombing raid the reigning Emperor would never forget.
Most of the heroes survived. They flew over the island of Japan releasing a flurry of incendiary bombs on military targets, leaving the aircraft carrier USS Hornet behind and then landing behind enemy lines on a friendly airbase in China.
It became known as “The Doolittle Raid.”
All of America celebrated the daring-do of Doolittle and his men. The national newspaper headlines screamed SUCCESS. The operation galvanized American resolve. A grateful President presented Lt. Doolittle with the Congressional Metal of Honor, and promoted him to the rank of Brigadier General. Doolittle continued his exploits in the African and European theaters, leading the final attack on Germany in 1944-1945.
He lived ninety-seven years. In Pebble Beach, California, Jimmy Doolittle died in 1993.
An American hero.
* * * * * * *
Pearl Harbor, the movie, is a three-hour high tech portrayal of an event seared into the consciousness of any American who cares about the history of our great nation. It has the benefits of star power, a mega budget, the latest in special effects wizardry, a veteran director and a stable of period advisors.
OK. So the love story’s considered hokey, corny, by some.
But I’ve talked to some of those people who fell in love during that era. There was this thing about that final night together. About the realities of war. These guys knew they might never return. It added a potent dynamic to that farewell kiss. A lot of those couples from that night forward never once even thought about anyone else. A lot of those guys never did come back.
Sometimes the State Department reported guys dead who weren’t.
In one unforgettable scene, Rafe McCawley (Ben Affleck) explains to his girlfriend Evelyn Johnson (Kate Beckinsale) why he’s declining her invitation to come to her room late one night… one of those final nights before the departure next morning to some far-away dangerous life threatening mission. It’s a rare movie moment that makes sexual abstinence a noble choice – a scene that could well be positively reviewed by young people who are considering abstinence as a viable program for birth control and the prevention of sexually transmitted disease. You may call it mawkish. Schmaltzy. I call it a good idea.
Pearl Harbor’s visual effects are stunning. You fly through the clouds down to ground level with the Japanese Zeros, the cockpit view, in the dive-bombing and the torpedo dropping. The sound track puts you in the center of the action, with bullets zinging and bombs booming and crashing steel and radial engine airplanes zooming overhead. The detail and the sheer scale give you a lasting impression of what happened that fateful morning sixty years ago.
The mayhem and awful chaos that followed the strafing is treated with the reverence and respect due the men and women who lived and died in Pearl early one breezy Sunday morning.
But out of the pain and loss emerges Jimmy Doolittle, leading his highly motivated volunteers in an impossible retaliatory strike by sixteen B-25 bombers off the deck of the USS Hornet… when the US of A took control of a second Great War… that ultimately became known as World War II.
* * * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader. You know about critics.
As a leader, you’ve received your share. Some of the criticism has helped. It’s made you more aware, more careful, more effective. A lot of it missed the mark. It left you defensive, misunderstood, and with the impulse to retaliate.
Like a movie producer, you’ve had to learn to perform and produce knowing full well that the critics will never be mollified. They’ll not retract their assertions. They’ll hold their ground. They are ever present.
But they are not taking your risks. And they’ll never know what it feels like to try… and to win. You will.
Don’t let those critics have more influence than they deserve. Go head. Pursue your mission with passion. Make do. Consider the odds. But don’t retreat because of them.
Though it was his name, Jimmy Doolittle didn’t (do little).
Neither should you.
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2001
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
LeaderFOCUS is a service of Good Stewardship Associates
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