REAL MEN – by Gary Smolker

I recently spent 5 days watching 18 films at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival.

While I was in Toronto – attending the Film Festival – and having a stress test, my Toronto based cardiologist Christopher Buller, MD (whose office is at St. Michael’s Hospital, in Toronto, Canada) asked me to send him a list of the movies I liked most at the end of the festival.

Below is a copy of the note I sent Dr. Buller early this morning about my three favorite movies.

The reason I chose each of the three movies discussed below is simple.

Today the concept of being a manly man is something everyone should contemplate.

The truth is most people are not clear about what it means to be a real man.

The heroes Vinny Paz in the movie “Bleed for This”, Pablo Neruda in “Neruda”  are real men  and the hero Dane Jensen in the movie “The Headhunter’s Calling” is a factional character; each of these three men are an exemplary example of real manhood.

In each movie a dramatic tense portion of the life story of each man is presented.

One can tell by watching these movies that each of those men (Vinny Paz, Pablo Neruda, and Dane Jensen) was a man who had settled the question of what he is most about and what he is prepared to make sacrifices for.

In addition to knowing what they were most about, Vinny Paz, Pablo Neruda, and Dane Jensen had the strength of character to stand by their convictions.

That is what makes each movie so compelling.

These three movies reaffirm of two things I believe very strongly:

• A transcendent cause must exist in a person’s life if he or she is to reach his or her full potential as a human being.
• A transcendent cause must exist in a person’s life (i.e., in your life) to bring meaning to who you are as a person.

Americans are about to elect a new President of the United States.

Today, the United States is in a crisis of discarded honor, dubious integrity, faux manliness and extreme confusion of what it means to be a manly man.

Today every American male should contemplate the concept to being a manly man.

It is not manly to sexually assault a woman.

I strongly recommend that everyone male in the United States go see “Bleed for This”, “Neruda” and “The Headhunter’s Calling” when those movies are released for showing to the general public.

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Below is a copy of the letter I sent to my cardiologist Christopher Buller, M.D., on Wednesday morning, September 21, 2016.

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Wednesday morning, 4:15 a.m. PST, September 21, 2016

Chris,

I saw 18 movies in 5 days.

My three most “favorite” movies:

1. “Bleed for This”
2. “Neruda”
3. “The Headhunter’s Calling”

Bleed for This

“Bleed for This” is my favorite movie.

“Bleed for This” is about a maniac.

“Bleed for This” is a true story about a boxer (Vinny Paz) who was a champion with a great future ahead of him until he got into a horrible catastrophe car accident which left him with a broken neck.

The prognosis is that Vinny will never walk again.

Instead of electing to allow a highly recommended surgery – fusion of vertebrae in his neck/spinal cord – Vinny elects to have a halo — a metal contraption put on his head to keep his head straight while his neck “heals” and vows that he is going to get better and go back in the ring to fight.

Vinny is told if he goes back in the ring one punch could paralyze him from the neck down for life.

The movie follows the true life story of what Vinny did next.

Vinny goes on to hold world boxing championship titles in three weight classes.

Vinny is awesome.

The movie about Vinny’s life is awesome.

I “hope” I am as pig headed, single minded, and driven by ambition to realize my dream as Vinny.

Neruda

“Neruda” is my second choice – second most favored movie.

“Neruda” is a “true to life FABRICATED account” of that portion of Neruda’s life when Neruda was forced to go “underground” – to go into hiding  – because Neruda was being pursued by the Chilean government for being its most outspoken critic.

What I like about Neruda, and this movie about Neruda,

• Is that Neruda was an unapologetic hedonist,
  
• Is that Neruda was not good looking and yet was loved by countless women,
  
• Is that Neruda had/has a poetical and rousing way with words — which he used to be the voice of the voiceless oppressed people in his native country (Chile) .

This movie depicts how his ideologically charged poems roused the people of Chile and gave voice to the voiceless.

My ambition is to have a Nerudaian [is there such a word?] power to spellbound and arouse people when I communicate and to put that [my] power with words to the same use as Neruda.

The Headhunter’s Calling

“The Headhunter’s Calling” is my third choice – my third most favored movie.

“The Headhunter’s Calling” is a movie about a man who “worked” all the time, came home exhausted, didn’t go trick or treating with his young children because he was busy working, yada yada yada – a typical story of the family life (or non-family life} of an ambitious man with a wife and two children who – from his wife’s point of view – is ignoring his children and her.

I love that movie for two reasons:

• The most memorable line I ever heard spoken in any movie: “Foreplay does not begin in the bedroom.”
• The man’s speech to his wife about why he is working so hard — is very eloquent — in response to his wife’s plea for him to spend more time with his children.

This movie is about

• A man torn between the dictates of his ambition and the needs of his family,
• Domestic stability, and
• What really matters in life.

The story told in that movie hit me between the eyes.

Gary

Gary S. Smolker, publisher, movie reviewer, social commentator

Gary S. Smolker Idea Exchange Blog

http://www.garysmolker.wordpress.com

Gary Smolker, fashion blogger

Dudes Guide to Women’s Shoes

http://www.dudesguidetowomensshoes.com

 

I Agree with the Following Messages in Those Three Films

Dane Jensen

Life is action.  Not speculating, not debating, but doing.

When called upon to do so, the most important thing in Dane Jensen’s life was to protect his family.

It is part of a good man to do great and noble deeds, though he risks everything.

Dane “sacrificed” his career to protect his family.

What You Do Is Who You Are.

What you do lasts, lasts in you.

What you do, that, and only that, is how you are.

Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda’s sense of justice and moral courage were his cornerstone characteristics.

His sense of right and wrong gave him the moral compass that guided his life.

Vinny Paz

Vinny Paz knew what was important to him and what he was unwilling to compromise.

Vinny’s physical strength was impressive.  Yet this did not make Vinny manly.

Moral Strength Is What Makes A Man Manly

Physical strength is not what make makes a man manly.

Rather, it is moral strength that identifies the true man.

Pablo Neruda and Vinny Paz had moral strength,  the strength of character to stand by their convictions.

People like Neruda and Paz will be the leaders of the future.

The Future of the World

Husbands like Dane Jensen and wives like Dane’s wife will make family life work.

The world’s future depends on it.

Theodore Roosevelt’s Letter to His Son Kermit on January 27, 1915

“If a man does not have an ideal and try to live up to it, then he becomes a mean, base and sordid creature, no matter how successful.”

 

Copyright © 2016 by Gary S. Smolker, All Rights Reserved

“Manners” and “Family Life” Reflected in “Changing Times” and “Polite Society” by Gary S. Smolker

Modern History of Civility, Propriety & Taboo Words in American Culture

Below is a copy of a string of emails I exchanged with some friends over the past few days on the interrelated topics of manners, the way people speak and propriety.

The most recent email is at the top.

The first email is at the bottom.

I have deleted the name of the woman Bob refers to in the copy of his email to me which appears below.

Polite Society and Civility in Thought and Practice in Changing Times

A friend of mine has a big bowl in the entryway of her home.

She requires everyone who comes to visit her at her home to put their cell phone in that bowl before proceeding to the living room or the dinning room in her house.

Family Life in America in Changing Times

A higher percentage of women age 18 to 24 lived with their parents or other relatives in 2014 (36.4%) than at any time in data going back to 1940, a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data found.

Among young men, the 42% living with their parents is the highest since World War II.

Just 24% of young women were married in 2014 vs. 40% in 1990.

Harvesting and Freezing Eggs, Using Sperm from Sperm Banks & Hiring Surrogates

Young wealthy unmarried women are having their eggs harvested and frozen to be used at a later time in their lives when they are “ready” to have a child.

Busy professional women who are too busy to be pregnant, women who don’t want to have their bodies become “disfigured” by pregnancy and/or by giving birth to a child are hiring a surrogate to carry their fertilized egg to term.

Women who want to have a child in spite of not being married and/or in spite of having an impotent sexual partner incapable of getting them pregnant are obtaining sperm from sperm banks to fertilize their eggs.

 

 

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E-mail this morning (November 2, 2015) from Gary to Bob:

 

Bob

I see things are changing, too.

I saw the new movie “Steve Jobs.”

I briefly “tried” to discuss the story told in the movie “Steve Jobs” – the life Steve Jobs lived as portrayed in that movie – with two women.

My conversation with one of them veered off her telling me she still sets her dinner table with fine crystal and china and eats in the dinning room in her home.

She brought this up as part of a broad conversation and discussion she initiated on the topic of many families not eating dinner together.

I remember my friend Jason’s mother serving Jennifer and me tea out of a silver tea pot at “tea time” about fifty years ago.

I have a friend who gets dressed up and has dinner by candlelight every night with his wife, when they eat at home.

I have another friend who goes through an elaborate tea ceremony, as a matter of the way he and his wife live, every time I have dinner at his house.

We have a lot to discuss.

Gary

—–Original Message—–
From: Bob
To: Gary Smolker <gsmolker@aol.com>
Sent: Mon, Nov 2, 2015 7:13 am
Subject: Re: Recruiting Your Expressive Faculties to their Fullest: In Re: Narrative Vividness

There is a strong argument that our culture has been coarsening since the fifties. As I am old enough to remember the fifties very well, my own observations support this. When I was in my teens it was extremely rare and shocking to hear the vulgar four letter words come from a woman.  Today it is common to hear those words used by women at the dinner table!  Women’s lib and radical fem has certainly freed the restraints on language of a “polite” society.

The culture has embraced this coarsened path for better or worse, as have I.  Still, it is sad to notice that something has been lost, left behind in this good and doubtless march to liberation.

The culture may be coarser, but likely better in sum.  As a fine example, I note our mutual friend YOUNG WOMAN’S NAME describing herself as a “badass woman”.  She is, and I love that she is able to be.

Bob.

Sent from my iPad

On Nov 1, 2015, at 7:43 AM, Gary Smolker <gsmolker@aol.com> wrote:

Bob

The Use of Words is a beautiful skill.

Gary

—–Original Message—–
From: Gary Smolker <gsmolker@aol.com>
To: A Limited Number of Friends
Sent: Sun, Nov 1, 2015 7:35 am
Subject: Recruiting Your Expressive Faculties to their Fullest: In Re: Narrative Vividness

My best guess is Lyndon Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover knew/know “piss” is a [mildly] offensive taboo word so they  purposefully use[d] the word piss to signify their disgust with the person they were talking about.

THE TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGING

At the time (1948) Norman Mailer wrote his true to life novel about World War II (The Naked and The Dead) it was unacceptable to use the word FUCK.

Mailer knew it would be a betrayal of his depiction of the soldiers to have them speak without swearing.

As a compromise to the sensibilities of the day he had them use the pseudo-epithet fug.

When Dorthy Parker met him she said: “So you’re the man who doesn’t know how to spell FUCK.”

—–Original Message—–
From: Friend
To: gsmolker <gsmolker@aol.com>
Sent: Sun, Nov 1, 2015 3:07 am
Subject: Re: Narrative Vividness

Why were they so fixated on piss?

In a message dated 10/31/2015 10:23:44 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, gsmolker@aol.com writes:

By the way, Lyndon Johnson had a way with words when it came to summing up people he distrusted, including a Kennedy aide (“He wouldn’t know how to pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel.”) and so did J. Edgar Hoover (“I’d rather have him inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in.”)

Copyright © 2015 Gary S. Smolker, All Rights Reserved