By Heart

For the third or fourth time in as many weeks, a professor has recommended memorizing poetry to, as Susan Cheever put it, “have a gem in your pocket at all times.”


It’s not a new concept, but I haven’t been required to memorize since “Friends, Romans, countrymen...” or “Whose woods these are...” Ninth grade, maybe. 


For one class, memorization is required. Not surprisingly, it’s a poetry lecture, and it’s taught by the delightful Alice Quinn, head of The Poetry Society of America. One hundred lines before the end of the semester! Fortunately, I can perform these—sans crib sheets—in her office without twenty sets of eyes on me. It won’t be easy, although it may be good for my mental health, a la the crossword puzzle or Sudoku. 


I’m coming around to enjoying contemporary poets through Alice’s class. This week, Michael Dickman spoke with us. And The Writer's Almanac sends a poem to my BlackBerry every morning. Today's happens to be Wordsworth’s “Lines Written in Early Spring”, but the daily offering is usually a much more recent composition. Still, I may have to dedicate at least fifty of those memorized lines to Frost’s work or someone equally familiar and traditional, if only because the rhymes and rhythms, absent from much of the modern poetry I’ve read, will help me through. 


Which reminds me that thirty years ago, give or take, my college roommate calligraphed a poem I love but don’t see in most Frost collections. As I am behind on my reading for a lecture this afternoon on Grace Paley, I'll cut this short and leave you with that poem, which hangs in my office. Thank you, Patti! 

A Time To Talk

When a friend calls to me from the road

And slows his horse to a meaning walk,

I don't stand still and look around 

On all the hills I haven't hoed,

And shout from where I am, What is it?

No, not as there is a time to talk.

I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,

Blade-end up and five feet tall,

And plod: I go up to the stone wall 

For a friendly visit.

                                        — Robert Frost

Redford-movie Night: “Indecent Proposal” (1993)

Have I mentioned my Columbia thesis is an homage to Robert Redford? Because of this, I’m watching all his movies and last night curled up to Indecent Proposal (1993) in which Redford plays a middle-aged California billionaire involved in a love triangle with a young married couple (played by Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson). 


Woody and Demi—he an architect with big dreams, she a real estate agent—are deep in debt and so venture to Las Vegas to solve their financial woes (because that’s where you go for a sure-fire way to make money). As Woody triumphs at the craps table, Demi wanders the chichi gift shops where Redford spots her modeling a gown she can’t afford. He creates opportunities for more encounters with Demi (he can do that—he’s a billionaire and he’s Redford) and eventually invites the couple to a soirée in his penthouse hotel suite. After the other guests have left, Redford proffers his proposal: one night with Demi for a million dollars. As Demi and Woody have blown their winnings and run out of solutions, the proposition begins to sound pretty good. What you don’t know immediately is that underlying what looks, sounds, tastes and smells like a clear-cut business transaction is Redford’s hope that Demi will come back to him even after the night is over and the money’s been deposited in the married couple’s bank account.


Indecent Proposal has been called “implausible” and “insulting.” I don’t recall my reaction when I saw the film when it was released 18 years ago. Seeing it now, I liked it more than I expected. Redford, with his good looks and easy smile, makes the movie fun to watch. At 56, he is still handsome (although for him the lens has a softer focus than it does for Demi and Woody), his character charming and flirtatious. And who among a certain generation of women would fault Demi for giving Redford a second look, no matter what the age difference or that she is happily married? Meanwhile, comparisons to Demi’s real life marriage to a man 15 years her junior are unavoidable. So much for implausible. 


As for insulting? It’s a movie. And by the way, a highly stylized and pretty one. That the director is Adrian Lyne, who also directed Flashdance, explains a lot. Demi, in her early 30s here, is stunning and voluptuous. Even Woody, also in his early 30s, has hunky moments, and their sex scenes are—something. You can’t really call them love scenes because these interludes are all about toned bodies and perfect skin. (We’re told during strange Demi voiceovers that the two are madly in love, but their sexual compatibility seems far more interesting to the cinematographer than their emotional connection.) 

Not for nothing, whoever dressed Demi for the film is a genius with a sewing machine. From the sculpted black evening gown Demi covets in the boutique—of course, RR buys it for her—to the white tea-length dress and filmy shrug she wears to a garden party, the formal costuming is runway gorgeous. I like Demi’s day outfits even more and covet her khaki vest, which doubles as a purse.

Redford and Moore in a scene from Indecent Proposal

It makes sense that Redford made this movie. He portrays his character as more sentimental than you might expect a gambling billionaire to be. Redford loves that kind of reversal in his roles. The part doesn’t push his range as an actor, but that ship sailed a long time ago. He’s a 90s version of Gatsby here, hope embodied in a well-cut suit. I suppose to some the proposition—that money can buy anything—makes for an interesting debate, but I for one am not in this for the “deep think.”   


There is one particularly strange, out-of-sync moment in the film. In a scene at Demi’s office, a receptionist is at her desk reading Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. The controversial 1991 bestseller by Susan Faludi explains a perception (hyped by the media, Faludi argues) that feminism created more problems for American women than solutions. The camera lingers too long to ensure you see the book jacket, a familiar sight in those days. It’s a real world object, a provocation (or defense?) awkwardly thrust into the alternate universe created by the film, a universe where big thoughts carry little to no weight.

Close encounter: The screenwriter of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”

The door knob rattled as usual a few minutes before eight. Faces poked in, checking to see if the professor was really still talking. It was Monday evening, my poetry lecture, and the next class shuffled noisily in the hall, primed to start. Their impatience each week is annoying, particularly because we’re made to cool our heels as the class before ours takes its time exiting. The moment we began gathering our things, the door swung open and the next class pressed in, not bothering with the usual courtesy of letting us leave first. 


Yeesh—film students. 


Among the 20- and 30-somethings were two older gentlemen, one the professor, the other a guest—although I didn’t know which was which. Then I looked closer. One student seemed in charge, hurrying the entrants to grab seats. “Is that William Goldman?” I asked him. It was.


No wonder they were eager to start.

When I read Mr. Goldman’s novel The Princess Bride (1973) one long-ago summer, I knew that’s how I wanted to write: in a way that could marry an off-kilter fairy tale with everyday conversational style. I was glad to read that the process of creating Princess had made Mr. Goldman very happy. He writes in Which Lie Did I Tell: More Adventures in the Screen Trade: 

“You can't know what [it] means if, most of your life, you haven't been stuck in your pit, locked forever with your own limitations, unable to tape the wonderful stuff that lurks there in your head but flattens out whenever it comes near paper.” 

Mr. Goldman has written several novels, but he’s better known for his screenplays, among them Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), The Great Waldo Pepper (1975), and of course The Princess Bride (1987). His most famous line? It’s got to be “Follow the money,” Deep Throat’s directive to Bob Woodward (played by RR) in All the President’s Men (1976). The real Deep Throat (who we now know was FBI agent Mark Felt) never actually said those words, but so what—it’s a movie! 

Dustin Hoffman and Redford as Carl Bernstein 
and Bob Woodward in All the President’s Men

I’ve put in a request to sit in on the rest of Goldman’s classes this semester. (Do you know how hard it is to type with crossed fingers?) It’s one of those perks I’m really going to miss when I leave Columbia: rubbing elbows with not just great talent but artists who’ve influenced my choices in life.


Epilogue:
I talked my way into the next lecture—I could attend if I promised not to tell anyone and I could find a chair (a deal clearly struck with at least a dozen other Goldman fans). I had missed theButch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid talk. The original screenplay was Goldman’s big break, and the movie set Redford’s stardom for good. Soon I had a copy of an original All the President’s Men script tucked in my bag!


At the President’s lecture, Goldman began to speak before he’d taken off his parka: “Write this down: Stars are not your friends.” He went on to discuss the making of the movie with less rancor than his opening remark hinted at but let us know that the process had been a far cry from the honeymoon ofButch. (The April 2011 Vanity Fair spells out the troubles between the two men in an excerpt from Michael Feeney Callan’s Redford bio.) Redford produced the film, indeed decided the story of two hungry journalists on the trail of a monumental coverup had the makings of a great movie before it was a book. But he vacillated on the script, first hiring Goldman and then hearing out a version proffered by Carl Bernstein and Nora Ephron. 


Goldman was clearly pissed, and I gather it’s only recently the writer and the movie star have made peace. Frankly, much of what he discussed comes directly from the pages of his Adventures in the Screen Tradeand Which Lie Did I Tell? Nevertheless, it was a treat to hear the words at the source.

Updated 4/11