Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears this Week?

I.

Always.

Like.

THE.

Chicago.

Bears.

Notes on the Indianapolis Colts

• The Colts are allowing 237 yards per game on the ground through two weeks, and ironically have found themselves in two very close ballgames. If the Bears are going to find their rushing legs in the early part of this season, it is going to happen Sunday.
• The Indy media is on the assault, and thankfully some of that criticism is being levied at their GM, Chris Ballard. Ballard has been playing the sports media for a decade, leaking more than any other personnel man in the league, and receiving unwarranted kudos for mediocrity as a result. Said a friend (in the league) to me, “I like just about everybody, but I don’t trust Ballard.”
• Colts took injury hits to their defense, as well, including DeForest Buckner.
• It is not a stat to which many point but opposing passer rating does tell a story and Colts’ opponents through two weeks are pitching to 120.7 rating. Only three teams are worse: the league’s worst team (Carolina), the league’s worst defense (Washington), and a team Kyler Murray just publicly embarrassed (Los Angeles).

Lumet II: Early TV Aesthetics and 12 Angry Men

Sidney Lumet is not a cinematic stylist; there is no signature, visual aesthetic attributable to his work. His camera is a collaborator in service of the story. This is one of the reasons he has not received proper consideration.

But to understand Lumet’s technique, per se, one must understand where he began as a director: live television. Throughout the early 50s, Lumet directed hundreds of live specials for shows like Playhouse 90 and Kraft Television Theater. These had minimal sets (often one), small budgets and tight production schedules. Lumet learned the craft of filmmaking – camera movement, lighting, handling actors – in what amounted to a cinematic bootcamp.

How does one show this? Lumet does it brilliantly in his must-read book, Making Movies:

12 Angry Men, Boris Kaufman, photographer. It never occurred to me that shooting an entire picture in one room was a problem. In fact, I felt I could turn it into an advantage. One of the most important dramatic elements for me was the sense of entrapment those men must have felt in that room. Immediately, a “lens plot” occurred to me. As the picture unfolded, I wanted the room to seem smaller and smaller. That means that I would slowly shift to longer lenses as the picture continued. Starting with the normal range (28mm to 40mm), we progressed to 50mm, 75mm, and 100mm lenses. (p. 81)

When you watch 12 Angry Men, pay close attention to what we in the sports world might call “the thirteen man” – the camera. (The film is available to stream everywhere but it’s free on Roku Channel and with your MGM+ and Criterion subscriptions.)

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Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears This Week?

I.

Always.

Like.

THE.

Chicago.

Bears.

Not Nitpicking Caleb.

Evaluating a rookie quarterback after his first game is much like evaluating a limerick after the first line: nonsensical. (“What do I care if this guy is from NANTUCKET?!?!?!”)

Caleb Williams is going to have bad games. More bad games, I should say. He’s also going to have good games. And by the end of the season, one would hope the player in Green Bay come January bears little resemblance to the player at Soldier Field last weekend.

We must see progress, incremental yet noticeable progress. But I’m not going to be using this space to dissect every quarter, every drive, every snap of his rookie season. At the bye, with a six-game sample size, we’ll chart his progress. Then around Thanksgiving, we’ll chart it again. At the end of the season, he’ll have a body of work to analyze and a list of distinct issues to address this offseason. That’s how it works with rookies, despite the now cottage industry of former backup quarterbacks trying to earn their living analyzing every throw on social media. Rookies, man. They’re up. They’re down. They make special plays. They make dumb plays.

What do we hope for? That there are more ups than downs. That the special outweighs the dumb. That by the end of this campaign the organization is confident this is the guy. It’s not an exciting approach but it’s only prudent way to approach rookies playing this position.

Lumet I: The Group Theater

Relevant Books:

• The Fervent Years by Harold Clurman
• Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931-1940 by Wendy Smith
• Waiting for Lefty by Clifford Odets
• The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act by Isaac Butler

Summary:

• From the East Hampton Star, in a piece about the 2015 documentary By Sidney Lumet: “Lumet mentions that he was often criticized for not having a thematic line in his work and for doing many different kinds of movies. “It’s nonsense,” he said. “There is always a bedrock concern: Is it fair?”
• Lumet was the son of Baruch Lumet, a popular actor in the New York City Yiddish Theater, and Sidney was an incredibly successful young actor on Broadway. But it’s his connection with the Group Theater that provides the foundations of his ideological preoccupations as a filmmaker.
• The Group Theater was founded by Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford and Lee Strasberg as a response to what they saw as an exceedingly commercial and unserious theater scene in and around the crash of the stock market in 1929. Their intention was to do work that mattered, and they would reflect on their stages the struggles of those aimlessly wandering on the NYC streets outside. This intentionality, this political purpose, defines the career of Lumet as he consistently grapples with the social peril of the moment, constantly challenging institutional authority.
• The Group gave theatrical life to the work of Clifford Odets, and the early stage plays of William Saroyan. Their company members would forge a cinematic political legacy that included the works of Elia Kazan (On the Waterfront), Martin Ritt (Hud, Norma Rae), and John Garfield’s anti-McCarthy film productions under the Enterprise label (Force of Evil, The Breaking Point). The political legacy of American cinema is born on the stages of The Group.
• The Group’s most famous moment comes in the closing lines of Waiting for Lefty. When the play’s maligned cab drivers stepped to the front of the stage to yell “Strike!” they were greeted with an audience in solidarity. It has been widely reported that each performance of Lefty included an audience joining those pro-worker cheers, so much that those passing by the Longacre worried there was a riot taking place inside.
• Stanislavsky’s “method” acting approach was brought to New York by the founding members of this company after visits to meet the master in Russia; thus, their reach expands to the greatest American actors of the 20th Century: Pacino, DeNiro, Newman, Brando, etc. (We’ll discuss Lumet’s issues with the method in the auteur section later.)
• The Group failed for many reasons, but the essential one was financial. These were the days before the non-profit theater model. Companies either sold tickets or perished. The Group didn’t sell enough tickets, but their legacy remains. (Turns out people wanted, in the years of the Depression, to be distracted by the stage, not reminded of the tears at the fabric of American society.)

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Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears This Week?

I.

Always.

Like.

THE.

Chicago.

Bears.

An 18-Week Sidney Lumet Syllabus

This season, I’m trying something different. Instead of using this space to randomly comment on culture, there will be a recurring theme: the work of Sidney Lumet. Lumet is one of America’s most prolific cinematic artists, and yet is dramatically underrepresented by the critical and academic communities. My long-term mission is to remedy that injustice, and I’ll be using this space to work through concepts, notes, etc.

There’s a poetry to this decision, as well. Lumet was born in 1924, making this his centennial. As my book on Lumet is still years from reaching the desk of a publisher, I’m thrilled to celebrate his 100th birthday right here on this little old blog Noah and I started two decades ago.

Below you’ll find the syllabus. Why am I publishing this? Because if you’re interested in taking a “class” on Lumet, this is your opportunity. There are fourteen films listed and each of them is rentable on one platform or another for a few bucks. If you want a thorough appreciation of a great filmmaker, and also to understand what we do in the Cinema Studies world, I welcome you to watch the films each week and follow along. And any questions you might have along the way, simply email me: jeff@dabearsblog.com.

Week 2: Lumet and The Group Theater

Week 3: Early Television Aesthetics and 12 Angry Men

Week 4: Stage Adaptations

Week 5: The Pawnbroker and Post-War Memory

Week 6: Fail Safe and the Cold War

Week 7: The Sean Connery Collaborations, or Lumet Abroad

Week 8: Serpico, Prince of the City, and the Police

Week 9: Dog Day Afternoon

Week 10: Network and Auteur Theory

Week 11: New York City in The Wiz

Week 12: The Verdict

Week 13: Garbo Talks in the Middle of Ronald Reagan

Week 14: Sins of the Father: Daniel, Running on Empty, and Family Business

Week 15: Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead and Post-9/11 New York

Week 16: The Legacy of Lumet’s Seminal Book, Making Movies

Week 17: Final Thoughts and Bibliography

Three Thoughts on the Titans

• Tennessee had arguably the strangest offseason is the NFL. They fired their well-respected coach and looked poised to enter a rebuilding period. They did not. Instead, they were one of the most active teams in free agency, bringing in a collection of expensive veterans and role players. After all of those moves, the Titans still find themselves, according to DraftKings Sportsbook, with the longest odds to win the NFC South at 10-1. (For comparison, the Colts are the third favorite at about 3.5-1.)

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