Saturday, February 01, 2014
Maximilian Schell (1930-2014)
Schell received two other Oscar nominations in his film career as best actor: in 1975's The Man in the Glass Booth and as supporting actor in 1977's Julia. He also received two Emmy nominations for the TV films Stalin and Miss Rose White in the early '90s. He appeared on Broadway three times, the first time in 1958 in Interlock, the same year his first English-language film, The Young Lions, came out. His third appearance came in 2001 in a stage production of Judgment at Nuremberg, this time playing the role of Dr. Ernst Janning whom Burt Lancaster played in the 1961 film.
Shortly after his Oscar win, he joined the cast of thieves in Jules Dassin's 1964 Topkapi. The first exposure to Schell's work for many in my generation probably came from silly 1979 sci-fi flick The Black Hole. He also played the erstwhile villain opposite James Coburn in one of the lesser Sam Peckinpah effort, 1977's Cross of Iron. He appeared in many films and roles for television both in the U.S. and abroad, including a six-episode stint on Wiseguy.
He also directed, most notably the remarkable 1984 documentary Marlene, where Marlene Dietrich reflected on her life without ever letting herself be seen in her current state.
Of all Schell's roles though, I always maintain a soft spot in my heart for his role as eccentric chef Larry London in Andrew Bergman's great comedy The Freshman with Marlon Brando doing a pitch-perfect parody of his own Vito Corleone.
RIP Mr. Schell.
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Labels: Awards, Brando, Dassin, Documentary, James Coburn, Lancaster, Marlene, Obituary, Oscars, Peckinpah, Television, Theater
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Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Defeated by life, once again
By Edward Copeland
I apologize to anyone who looked forward to reading my take on Parts 3 and 4 of HBO's documentary series The Weight of the Nation. Once again, the fates conspired against me as they seemed to do with alarming regularity. I posted what I could. It will be airing for a while, so I hope I can finish it at some point because important things need to be said. Unfortunately, I already know that my Wednesday has been shot to hell by interlopers determined to turn me into a professional patient. I won't be able to write a nice piece about the debut on HBO of the best part of the entire series: The Weight of the Nation for Kids. Geared for families, the first installment called "The Great Cafeteria Takeover" premieres Wednesday on HBO at 7 p.m. Eastern/Pacific and 6 p.m. Central.
Unlike the mammoth project that it's connected to, "The Great Cafeteria Takeover" tells the inspiring tale of students in a New Orleans school district following Katrina who form a group called Rethinkers and fight to change the meals in the schools' cafeterias. No one feels forced to fudge statistics — they just tackle the problem and solve it. I looked forward to adding my personal tales not of school food but hospital food and what these places do to cut costs. If you've been fortunate and avoided hospital stays, you probably don't realize that patient care ranks far from No. 1 on hospital administrators' list of priorities. I wish I had Rethinkeers on my side. It made me miss Treme and reminds me how I won't be able to recap both it and Boardwalk Empire if both series air at the same time and I don't get cooperation from a lot of people.
Today. I tried my best to finish my review of Parts 3 and 4, but about 3:30 this afternoon — following a morning doctor's appointment — I started getting disoriented again and nothing I wrote made sense. I had to lie down. Sunday night, I'd forced myself to stay up until the early hours of the morning and then worked most of Monday and still didn't get the review of Parts 1 and 2 posted until about 20 minutes before Part 1 aired. Tonight, my dad came in and woke me up at 7 p.m. I'd slept all that time — what usually happens when one of these episodes occurs.
I live in a house, bedridden, cared for by aging parents whose own bodies are falling apart. They deny it, but they think what I do online is a joke. They don't understand the process of writing and when I ask to be left alone because I want to make a deadline, one of them inevitably says something along the line "It's not as if you're being paid." Apparently, there would be no other reason to do such a thing. We've also switched aide services tic give me a bath and it comes with a nurse, only scheduling is a bitch and they want to turn you into a professional patient, always trying to find problems where there aren't any.
Some of you who have followed me for a while probably notice how everything I write now seems to get longer. It isn't intentional. I think subconsciously I keep writing out of fear that when I stop, it will be for good. Then I'll really lack a point for perpetuating this farce.
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Labels: Boardwalk Empire, Documentary, HBO, Misc., Treme
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How many kids look overweight in this photo?
By Edward Copeland
One of my favorite memories involving the late, great Mike Wallace on 50 Minutes occurred when he interviewed people about the possibility the tobacco companies had the capability for lit cigarettes to stop burning if it sensed that the smoker had ceased to actively puff on it, the idea being that it would prevent people from falling asleep with a lit cigarette and starting a blaze as they slumbered. Activists accused the tobacco companies of refusing to do this because of the costs and Wallace asked the activist, "What about personal responsibility?" The outraged man replied, "We must protect the stupid consumer." I get the sense that could be the attitude of the makers of The Weight of the Nation as well. (My attitude always has asked, "Why should we protect the stupid consumer?" We should set more traps. That's evolution at work. Thin the herd.) On the official web site for The Weight of the Nation project, a new "fact" appears about every six seconds or so (including ones I questioned and/or debunked in Monday's review of the series' first two parts). Surrounding these informational nuggets of type include rectangular buttons above that lead you to either watch the films or take action, the familiar Twitter, Facebook and Google+ icons to the
right, four photos and graphics below describing related activities and, finally, to the left a blood-red arrow emblazoned with the word FACT pointing at the constantly changing message in the middle of the page. Now, if I had a full-time staff of investigators and unlimited time, I could have all these assertions, none of which come with a source, checked and verified as to their accuracy. Unfortunately, it's just me, my computer and my very limited stamina doing its best to fight my M.S. fatigue. Since Part Three of The Weight of the Nation concentrates on "Children in Crisis," I thought I grabbed one of those "facts" relating to that subject. Remember, we don't have any sources — we're supposed to take their word for it when they say, "Nearly one-third of children and adolescents are overweight or obese." I'm going to dig further since my first response relies solely on anecdotal evidence. Asking a dozen or so acquaintances with children in that age range who attend schools in all parts of the country and in different economic circles as well, not one reported an uptick of heavyset kids in their child's school with the exception of one parent in Tulsa, Okla., who said that in her child's grade, she didn't see it, but she'd noticed heavier kids starting about third grade. That's it. Otherwise, parents would report one kid with a weight problem here or there, but certainly not a third of the students. Part Three, "Children in Crisis," debuts tonight on HBO at 8 Eastern/Pacific and 7 Central followed by Part Four, "Challenges," at 9:10 Eastern/Pacific and 8:10 Central. As with the first two parts of The Weight of the Nation, the films will play on all HBO platforms and stream free on HBO.com. One curiousity before I start. For some reason, "Children in Crisis" happens to be the only segment that doesn't list Kaiser Permanente as a partner in the opening credits. I wonder why. Get to work, media.
Doing a Google search for the phrase "Nearly one-third of children and adolescents are overweight or obese" directed me quickly to the site that provided some of the other "facts" that rotated on and off The Weight of the Nation web page. It turns out to be the Childhood Obesity Facts page of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's online section on Adolescent and School Health, which lists a variety of subjects under its Health Topics index including the next immediate page, Nutrition, Physical Activity, & Obesity. Like well-trained journalists (and unlike documentarians — or at least the ones responsible for The Weight of the Nation), scientists tend to cite sources when they make declarations and each of the assertions they make in the graphic below come with numbers that refer you to footnotes that explain where they got their information. Now, not only did the makers of The Weight of the Nation decide that saying something with authority negated the need for verification, they also had no qualms about dropping or changing words that didn't suit their purposes.
CHILDHOOD OBESITY FACTS GRAPHIC FOOTNOTES
1. Ogden CL, Carroll MD, Curtin LR, Lamb MM, Flegal KM. Prevalence of high body mass index in US children and adolescents, 2007–2008. Journal of the American Medical Association 2010;303(3):242–249.
2. National Center for Health Statistics. Health, United States, 2010: With Special Features on Death and Dying. Hyattsville, MD; HHS; 2011.
3. National Institutes of Health, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Disease and Conditions Index: What Are Overweight and Obesity? Bethesda, MD: NIH; 2010.
4.K rebs NF, Himes JH, Jacobson D, Nicklas TA, Guilday P, Styne D. Assessment of child and adolescent overweight and obesity. Pediatrics 2007;120:S193–S228.
5.Daniels SR, Arnett DK, Eckel RH, et al. Overweight in children and adolescents: pathophysiology, consequences, prevention, and treatment. Circulation 2005; 111; 1999–2002.
6. Office of the Surgeon General. The Surgeon General's Vision for a Healthy and Fit Nation. Rockville, MD, HHS; 2010.
The complete phrase "Nearly one-third of children and adolescents are overweight or obese" actually reads beneath Childhood Obesity Facts on the CDC page, "In 2008, more than one-third of children and adolescents are overweight or obese." Of course, government health entities can't agree. As I reported yesterday, The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, a division of the National Institutes of Health which itself falls beneath the auspices of the Department of Health and Human Services, while agreeing with the CDC's findings that "Childhood obesity has more than tripled in the past 30 years," also commented that, "Children have become heavier as well. In the past 30 years, the prevalence of childhood obesity has more than doubled among children ages 2-5, has tripled among youth ages 6-11, and has more than tripled among adolescents ages 12-19. However, recent data suggest that the rate of overweight in children did not increase significantly between 1999 and 2008, except in the heaviest boys (BMI for age greater than or equal to the 97th percentile).
This rate, though, remains alarmingly high. Statistics show about 17 percent of American children ages 2 to 19, or 1 in 6, are obese. Further, the latest data continue to suggest that overweight and obesity are having a greater effect on minorities, including blacks and Hispanics.". Sadly, while I've been so kind about researchers citing sources, neither the CDC nor the NIH comes up with one for the 30-year statistic. I decided to take the 30-year question to Google and I found the answer in a posting on an HHS site on childhood obesity by the assistant secretary for planning and evaluation. Obviously, whoever penned this did not begin his or her professional life as a writer. I didn't attempt to clean it up. It reads, "Overweight and obesity in children are significant public health problems in the United States. The number of adolescents who are overweight has tripled since 1980 and the prevalence among younger children has more than doubled. According to the 1999-2002 NHANES survey, 16 percent of children age 6-19 years are overweight (see Figure 1). [1], [2],[3] Not only have the rates of overweight increased, but the heaviest children in a recent NHANES survey were markedly heavier than those in previous surveys." Hallelujah, we've come back to our good friends at NHANES and this link goes to their report. though this assistant secretary needs some help with adjectives, at least he or she included footnotes.HHS CHILDHOOD OBESITY FOOTNOTES
1. Childhood is defined for the purposes of this paper as 6-19 years of age
2. Overweight and obesity are used interchangeably and are defined as a BMI on or above the 95th percentile for gender and age (BMI-for-age). Downloaded from here. Accessed: February 2005. These terms have different connotations for adults.
3. National Center for Health Statistics. “Prevalence of Overweight Among Children and Adolescents: United States, 1999-2002” Downloaded from here. Accessed: February 2005.
Aside from my anecdotal evidence, which admittedly doesn't account for much, I keep coming back to several questions. First, why do the same organizations conduct and release studies that contradict other studies they've conducted? While the press material says that this project took four years to assemble, that doesn't mean they couldn't make last-minute changes if needed. What if one of the interview subjects or experts passed away in the interim? I bet that they would have been able to note that sort of thing. However, they go with
this 30-year figure, provided by the CDC's NHANES group covering 1999-2002 and released in 2005. Then, in a New York Times article by Tara Parker Pope published May 28, 2008, that same NHANES group from the CDC, which conducts its surveys continuously and revises results accordingly, releases findings that cover a wider sample — 1999-2006 — to the Journal of the American Medical Association that The Times said, "Childhood obesity, rising for more than two decades, appears to have hit a plateau, a potentially significant milestone in the battle against excessive weight gain among children.…The most recent data is based on two surveys — one in 2003 to 2004 and one in 2005 to 2006 — that included 8,165 children ages 2 to 19. In that group, about 16 percent of children and teenagers were obese, which is defined as having a body mass index at or above the 95th percentile on United States growth charts.…(T)he good news is that from a statistical standpoint, obesity rates have not increased since 1999. Estimates for the number of children who fall into the overweight or obese category also have remained stable at about 32 percent since 1999.…In fact, the number of children who fall into the obese category decreased from 17.1 percent to 15.5 percent between the 2003 and 2006 surveys, but the decline was not statistically significant. So the researchers combined data from both surveys to enhance the statistical strength of the numbers." Good news makes lousy scare tactics, so the documentary hung on to the older, more pessimistic numbers. The other thing that bugged me about that 30-year number
is that it covers my adolescence. I've been honest about myself — I wasn’t remotely in shape. There were people heavier than I was, but there were a lot more who weighed less. More importantly, the big concern at the time wasn't that teens could be eating their way to an early grave — the major worry was the possibility of teenage girls puking their way to an early grave. How is it that in the same era where eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia dominated the spotlight, supposedly adolescents grew obese? Those images of the pencil-thin models still permeate the media. Do adolescent girls today ignore them? Are they packing on pounds out of spite? Something just doesn't make logical sense, especially since you still hear cases about it and in another New York Times article, this one from 2008, again by Tara Parker Pope, she reported on normal-weight teens who "feel fat." Her first three paragraphs read as follows: "At a time when much of the Western world is focusing on obesity problems, even teens who are at a healthy weight may develop a distorted body image. That’s what German researchers found after surveying nearly 7,000 11- to 17-year-olds, asking them to describe their bodies. Options included far too thin, a bit too thin, just the right weight, a bit too fat and far too fat. About 75 percent of the kids fell into the normal-weight category. However, half the normal-weight girls and a quarter of the normal-weight boys still described themselves as being too fat." When I read that, do you know what, of all images, popped into my head? Greg Kinnear's overbearing father trying to guilt his young daughter Olive (Abigail Breslin) out of ordering ice cream when they stop at a restaurant along the highway in Little Miss Sunshine. Sometimes, the well-meaning concern for people's health does seem to cross the line into bullying behavior.Before I move on to some segments of "Children in Crisis" that most people will agree presents ridiculous situations, I need to backtrack to an issue that I didn't get a chance to cover Monday (but which gets mentioned so often throughout The Weight of the Nation that I bet some stressed-out college students already employ the word for use in a drinking game. Before I piss people off with my conspiracy theory on that subject though, I feel compelled to raise two more of the unsourced "facts: that appear on the series as well as its web page. Let's start with this doozy of an uncredited bit of information.I think I'll bring back their little arrow.
Some experts project that by 2030, between 32% and 52% of American adults may be obese.
Well, if the authoritative "some experts" employed the tried-and-true scientific method of prediction, this undoubtedly must be a fact, right? I've seen the slimiest political campaigns offer up more solid attribution for a claim than that. I attempted the Google trick again, inserting the exact phrase but all that came back was The Weight of the Nation site, Going vaguer, I typed, "U.S. adult obesity rate in 2030." That hit the mother lode as a seemingly endless array of recent news stories, blogs and marketers covered the announced result, though each place had a slightly different take and not one that I read mentioned a range between 32% and 52%, though I might hazard a guess as to where they came up with that. The Los Angeles Times used this headline on its May 8 story: 42% of American adults will be obese by 2030, study says with a lead-in below it that read, "Though the rate of the last 30 years has slowed, it's far from leveling off, and it's going to get expensive, say experts at the Weight of the Nation conference in Washington." Now that's intriguing. The conference from which the documentary series took its name admitted a slowing a week before The Weight of the Nation aired. The makers of the documentary did have time to add this fresh statistic, but not to acknowledge the slowing rate in the growth of obesity that has been occurring since prior to the start of production on the series. The body of the L.A. Times story by Melissa Healy said, "The ranks of obese Americans are expected to swell even further in the coming years, rising from 36% of the adult population today to 42% by 2030, experts
said (May 7).…The sobering projections also contained some good news, the researchers said: Obesity's growth has slowed from the record pace of most of the last 30 years. If those trends were to continue, 51% of American adults would qualify as obese in 2030. Study leader Eric Finkelstein, a health economist at Duke University in Durham, N.C., said…(t)he forecast took into account a host of factors thought to influence Americans' eating and exercise habits, including the cost of groceries, the prevalence of restaurants, the unemployment rate, Internet access and the price of gas. Most important was the aging of the population, which tends to nudge many overweight adults into the obese category — and to push many of those who are already obese into "severely obese" territory. The number of severely obese Americans is expected to grow from about 5% today to 11% in 2030, the study said. The findings are based on data collected from 1990 through 2008 as part of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a survey by the CDC and health departments in the states." We now know someone from Duke University led the study using CDC numbers, but incorporating lots of factors the usual NHANES doesn't take into account. Where the documentary concocted the 32$ to 52% range remains a mystery, especially the 32%. The 52% could at least be a typo.Tweet
Labels: 10s, Documentary, HBO, Television
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Monday, May 14, 2012
The weighing is the hardest part (for analysts)
By Edward Copeland
The inimitable Samuel Clemens, better known to readers everywhere as Mark Twain, said many memorable things in his lifetime, but I've always been partial to his definition of the three types of lies. In the unlikely event that you're unfamiliar with Twain's list, his troika consisted of lies, damn lies and statistics. That statement came to my mind quite often as I watched the epic documentary project that HBO begins airing tonight, The Weight of the Nation, concerning the "obesity epidemic" in the United States. The series marks a collaboration between HBO and the Institute of Medicine in association with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health and airs in four parts over the next two nights. Additionally, three episodes for families have been set for the
next three Wednesdays. The project, which also includes a dozen bonus shorts, a web site, a social media campaign and a book, all produced in partnership with The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation and Kaiser Permanente, a huge "not-for-profit" health care consortium whose tentacles integrate both the insurance business with physician-owned hospitals. I'll give most involved in this massive undertaking the benefit of the doubt that they mean well (especially HBO, which will allow free viewing of the program across all its platforms such as HBO.com, HBO GO, etc.) and truly fret over this "epidemic" that threatens the health of the nation far into the future unless we change our habits. Having spent nearly a full decade trapped in a Kafkaesque journey through this nation's health care system, I look skeptically upon most medical things, so while some of the series' points make logical, common sense, at the same time documentaries that don't even attempt to provide alternative points of views — if only to knock them down — trouble me. At that point, the label documentary seems less appropriate and I feel the outer letters of the word propaganda trying to crawl into my brain via my ear canal. It doesn't help in this day and age when simple computer archive searches turn up contradictory facts and statistics coming from the same organizations touted as authorities in this series. Now, you could easily presume that I've watched this ambitious venture with a jaundiced eye and a biased mind and you might be right. However, if those capable of rational thought have been paying attention to the world around them — whether that lifetime spans decades or just the first steps in a cognitive journey — having and honing that trait of suspicion probably serves a person better today than at any recent time since the media's morphing into little more than dictation machines, regurgitating as "facts" anything sources hand them, without vetting the information first. Fact checkin' — they don't need no stinkin' fact checkin'. Part One: "Consequences" debuts tonight on all HBO channels and services, including free streaming on HBO.com at 8 p.m. Eastern and Pacific/7 p.m. Central followed by Part Two: "Choices" at 9:10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific/8:10 p.m. Central. Now, don't misunderstand my intentions — this review of the first two parts of The Weight of the Nation today and parts three and four on Tuesday will not end with me endorsing a diet of Big Macs and intravenous Dr Pepper. I'm not against living a healthy lifestyle or exercise — I know I'd be walking if I could — but it's important to remember that the people who assembled this project have an agenda. It might be a noble agenda, but it remains an agenda, one in which anything that might contradict the message they want to convey won't be heard. That's what bothers me. I'm not an expert in the field, so I can't thoroughly debunk and verify everything, but I'll do what I can because in the time since I first got sick, before anyone diagnosed my multiple sclerosis and the years that followed, I've experienced a lot of the health care system first-hand. As a result, I know that the biggest mistake that all health care providers as well as this documentary series make occurs when they treat every patient as if he or she comes from a cookie cutter. That's why no two sets of fingerprints are alike. No two people match up exactly and the attempt to generalize can lead to delays in correct diagnoses, misdiagnosis and risks to people's lives. Neither a country nor an individual's health can be managed by rote and, to some extent, that message underlies The Weight of the Nation. When I began having my symptoms, which started with difficulty walking, my excess poundage became the prime suspect and my primary doctor referred me to a cardiologist. Keep in mind that my blood pressure always runs in the low to normal range, my EKG results tested fine and my blood sugar level gave no indication of diabetes. He referred me to a dietitian. I changed my diet, exercised, lost 100 pounds — and the legs got worse. It took a total of two years and several doctors before we found the right neurologist who diagnosed the M.S. — and a previous doctor still tried to get me to return to re-take a test with him that had proved negative when I'd already fired him. Before I get too far off track, I do want everyone to remember this: NEVER BE AFRAID TO FIRE YOUR DOCTOR. Remember, they are the employee, you are the employer. Most of them need a swift kick in the ego now and then anyway. The whole reason I began this part of the discussion had to do with a 1988 New York Times Magazine article by Robin Marantz Henig I found about doctors rethinking the treatment of mild cases of hypertension. It wasn't so much the content of the article that I found particularly relevant, but I loved the old saying she attributes to some physicians discussing the issue because it fits here as well: "If you give a kid a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail."
To start my review of the series' actual content on a positive note, I must admit that the behind=the-scenes team that worked on The Weight of the Nation assembled a slick, attractive product. In fact, they implement so many charts and graphics, it's as if the original USA Today had come to life. "Consequences" serves, more or less, as an overview of issues that later installments explore in more depth.
It rattles off statistics that its various experts will reiterate time and again, which does make parts of the project redundant and repetitive at times. Out of the gate, part one did teach me something I didn't know: that a man named Adolphe Quetelet, a Belgian mathematician, astronomer, sociologist and statistician who invented the infamous Body Mass Index formula in 1835. Quetelet grew notorious for applying probability laws to social issues and generally discounted the concept of free will, alienating him from some scientists. His formula, amazingly still used today, takes a person's weight (in kilograms) and divides it by the square of their height (in meters). A person who registers a BMI of 18.5-24.9 would be considered healthy, 25-29.9 get categorized as overweight and 30 or higher earns the label obese. Only, not everyone thinks that relying on an index created 177 years ago by someone who figured chance into his equations (which isn't done today) might be outdated — especially when the formula fails to distinguish between fatty and lean tissue. This issue isn't raised in The Weight of the Nation. This raises a sore subject for the CDC because it went apeshit when two separate studies not only questioned the BMI but the idea that all overweight people suffer the same health risks as everyone else came out at the same time as the CDC planned the first Weight of the Nation conference in 2009 (What probably galled them the most was that one study found publication in The Journal of the American Medical Association). ROTE DIAGNOSIS OR BUST! Press articles on the studies and the BMI proliferated."Consequences" stays very busy tossing out its statistics at the viewer. According to the collective weight (pun intended) of its gathered experts, more than 68 percent of American adults fit the definition of being overweight or obese. Now, neither the documentary nor the experts who appear within it offer up data to show how exactly they calculated this figure. The U.S. finds it hard to get rock-solid Census figures every 10 years and the form fails to inquired as to the weight of every member of a household (as if it could be confirmed with
100 percent accuracy that the person answering the questions knows the truth or tells it if they do). Not everyone visits a doctor regularly — you might remember a couple of years ago a huge political fracas over trying to get affordable health insurance for the citizens of this country — so they can't go by that. Besides, I believe there happens to be something called doctor-patient confidentiality, so your physician better not be unloading information to just anyone unless you give permission. Good grief, I've had to sign enough forms verifying that I'm familiar with HIPAA. All those signatures damn well better not have been for naught. So — where did this 68 percent figure originate? I began with everyone's favorite free search engine — Google. (In reality, I'd love access to Lexis/Nexis, but they cater to corporate clients and since I live on Social Security Disability, $200 a month would be a steep price for me to pay.) After typing in "68 percent of Americans are overweight or obese" and winnowing out the NPRs and other news stories who just repeated the statistic without asking any questions as to how anyone arrived at it, I located a site that identified the source of the number. On the site of The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which is a division of the National Institutes of Health (one of the partners in making The Weight of the Nation), itself a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, Google led me to a page labeled Why Obesity is a Health Problem. Under the heading Adult Obesity Rates and Statistics, it read, "According to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) (2007-2008), approximately 68 percent of adults are overweight or obese, with 75 million adult Americans considered obese." Now, we're getting somewhere. We know it came from surveys conducted four and five years ago. Now, I just have to find that survey. Isn't this fun? It's like being a private eye, only in public. This page also offers the statistic I'm going
to come back to later beneath the heading Childhood Obesity Rates and Statistics where it says, "Children have become heavier as well. In the past 30 years, the prevalence of childhood obesity has more than doubled among children ages 2-5, has tripled among youth ages 6-11, and has more than tripled among adolescents ages 12-19. However, recent data suggest that the rate of overweight in children did not increase significantly between 1999 and 2008, except in the heaviest boys (BMI for age greater than or equal to the 97th percentile). This rate, though, remains alarmingly high. Statistics show about 17 percent of American children ages 2 to 19, or 1 in 6, are obese. Further, the latest data continue to suggest that overweight and obesity are having a greater effect on minorities, including blacks and Hispanics." Now, when I read this, I felt compelled to jump the gun a bit because, on this official government site run by a division of the NIH it says clearly, "recent data suggest that the rate of overweight in children did not increase significantly between 1999 and 2008, except in the heaviest boys (BMI for age greater than or equal to the 97th percentile)." Nowhere, in any of the four parts of The Weight of the Nation, including part three, "Children in Crisis," which airs Tuesday night do they bother to mention this little nugget. As I said at the outset when I expressed my concerns, if some data doesn't fit the message they seek to deliver, it wasn't going to be mentioned. That did not come from a newspaper, a rival scientific journal, a blog or any anecdotal evidence I might have offered. It came from the same government institution that helped create this project and lent experts to speak. That's when it gets disturbing. It might be a lie of omission for a noble cause (as opposed to lying to get us into a war), but it remains a government lie all the same in a way, though presumably they didn't have final edit. The two organizations listed as the actual authors of The Weight of the Nation and not just "associates" are HBO and The Institute of Medicine. 
Before I begin my quest to unravel the methodology used for The National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (which, from here on out, despite my training to avoid using obscure acronyms, I will refer to as NHANES), I wanted to delve deeper into The Institute of Medicine, since, unlike the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, isn't a branch of a larger governmental agency. According to its own web site, The Institute of Medicine describes itself as, "an independent, nonprofit organization that works outside of government to provide unbiased and authoritative advice to decision makers and the public. Established in 1970, the IOM is the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, which was chartered under President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. Nearly 150 years later, the National Academy of Sciences has expanded into what is collectively known as the National Academies, which comprises the National Academy of Sciences*, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Research Council, and the IOM. The IOM asks and answers the nation’s most pressing questions about health and health care." I put the last sentence in bold since my blog's style places quotes in italics and the institute italicizes that sentence on its web site. Changing it to plain type just didn't underscore the emphasis it attempts to make. (*NOTE: The link to The National Academy of Sciences on the institute's page doesn't work. I had to find it by going through the link from the National Academies site.) Additionally, the Institute of Medicine boasts that, "Our aim is to help those in government and the private sector make informed health decisions by providing evidence upon which they can rely. Each year, more than 2,000 individuals, members, and nonmembers volunteer their time, knowledge, and expertise to advance the nation’s health through the work of the IOM. Many of the studies that the IOM undertakes begin as specific mandates from Congress; still others are requested by federal agencies and independent organizations. While our expert, consensus committees are vital to our advisory role, the IOM also convenes a series of forums, roundtables, and standing committees, as well as other activities, to facilitate discussion, discovery, and critical, cross-disciplinary thinking." So, though the institute isn't connected officially to the bureaucracy, much of its work gets funded by taxpayers. Unfortunately, I ran out of time to discern how much. If you click on the studies link though, you will discover
that the Institute of Medicine proves quite eclectic in the issues it researches. Back to the investigation about NHANES. Turns out that the CDC conducts those surveys. On its site, they describe the surveys like this: "The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) is a program of studies designed to assess the health and nutritional status of adults and children in the United States. The survey is unique in that it combines interviews and physical examinations." OK, that's vague enough. Doesn't explain how many people take part and how they extrapolate the 68% number from it, but let's dig further. Beneath that description a link written in blue reads, "Selected Participants." Let's click on that and see where that takes us. "Welcome NHNES Particpants," it greets us, followed by an explanatory paragraph that reads, "You, or a member of your family, may have a chance to take part in an important national health survey. The National Center for Health Statistics, a part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is responsible for this survey — The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). This survey teaches us about the health and diet of people in the United States. Over the years, this survey has led to improvements in the food we eat and the health care we receive." After I stopped laughing at the idea of improvements in the health care we receive, I returned to scanning the page to see if this page would offer clues to methodology or only how to become a potential guinea pig. I have to
admit that I was intrigued that one of the frequently asked questions was "What do you do with my blood and urine samples that I consented to have stored?" On the left-hand side of the page, several links look promising. Beneath National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, they have a link for Questionnaires, Datasets and Related Documentation and another for Survey Results and Products. Below that box a list of related sites includes links to Surveys and Data Collection Systems and Research Data Center. Boy, this has started to take almost as much time for me to do as a recap of an episode of Boardwalk Empire or Treme. I decided to start at the top, selecting Questionnaires, Datasets and Related Documentation first. To paraphrase what the old knight told Indy toward the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, "I chose well." The page rolled out a long list of links starting with NHANES Analytic Guidelines and including a NHANES report for 2009-2010, newer than the one in The Weight of the Nation. I'm checking the analytics first and it contains precisely what I'm looking for in terms of methodology. Unfortunately, it involves government bureaucracy, so they spell the methods out across 14 pages in PDF form. Let me add though that those pages turned out to be a delight and made me look even more askance at what these "experts" were peddling. Why do so many people feel the need to be less than forthcoming? It's not as if the agenda they push is an evil one. Eat less, eat healthier, exercise, take care of your body — sound advice anytime — but I guess they feel that Americans show themselves far too often to be too mentally deficient to hear unvarnished truth without employing scare tactics and talking down to them as if the median age of the viewer were 4."Data collected in NHANES comes from interviews, examinations, and laboratory tests based on blood and urine samples. There may also be measures taken in the home, such as dust or tap water collection. The source of a data item (interview, MEC*, sera**) is important for both assessment of quality of information and for determining the appropriate sampling weight to be used for producing statistical estimates. As with any data set, NHANES data are subject to sampling and non-sampling errors (including measurement error). Interview (questionnaire) data are based on self-reports and are therefore subject to non-sampling errors such as recall problems, misunderstanding of the question, and a variety of other factors. Examination data and laboratory data are subject to measurement variation and possible examiner effects. The NHANES program maintains high standards to insure non-sampling and measurement errors are minimized.…Despite the rigorous quality control standards, estimates produced from any data set are subject to sampling and non-sampling variation and interpretation of analysis must proceed accordingly. Data content and data collection protocols may change over time; this is another reason to read the documentation in order to understand any issues in comparability of data over time. Changes in methods may occur at any time and the user should not assume they have remained the same (especially in the continuous NHANES, conducted since 1999)."
— NHANES Analytic and Reporting Guidelines, Part 1 (last correction September 2006)
*Mobile Examination Centers **Subsample of stored serum of specimens from NHANES (1999–2000) tested to estimate
the prevalence and specificities of selected autoantibodies in the U.S. population in 2003-2004.
As most of you probably realized once the word survey appeared, the statement that categorized 68 percent of Americans as overweight or obese isn't a factual one, not in the way we say, "Two plus two equals four" and know it to be true. The survey only estimates 68 percent of U.S. adults fall into the obese and overweight classifications (based on the outdated, kooky BMI, remember). However, The Weight of the Nation never presents that possibility. In this election year, polls have exploded with alarming frequency for quite some time — and it only will get worse. Despite the endless unending onslaught, even the lazy media remembers to remind us of the margin of error. The documentary never mentions the notion of sampling errors — or methodology — or any evidence that supports that figure. They pronounce that 68 percent of Americans fall into that weight class and the discussion ends and we must accept their word as gospel truth. I imagine
that those involved didn't follow the analytic guidelines of that NHANES report. Part 1 begins in larger, bold, italic type saying, "The first and over-riding analytic guideline is that the data user, prior to any analysis of the data, should read all relevant documentation for the survey and for the specific data items to be used in an analysis." When it downsizes the type size and resorts to lightface, it adds, "Many analytic problems and misinterpretation of the data can be avoided by reading the documentation, examining the data collection protocols and data collection instruments, and conducting preliminary descriptive evaluation of the data. The documentation will indicate how the data were collected, how the data are coded and the amount of missing data." It makes me sad because these people didn't need to play this way. Michael Moore doesn't hide his point-of-view and he usually comes off making stronger cases in his films such as Sicko. The people and organizations behind The Weight of the Nation don't want to admit that they've constructed propaganda when they didn't need to do so and they end up undermining themselves. I wasn't exaggerating when I said how interesting the NHANES document turned out to be. The CDC unit used to conduct these surveys periodically and then release the results as a single set of data covering six years. Beginning in 1999, NHANES turned into a continuous, annual survey released in increments of two years. Here comes the important point, from Part 2: "For a two-year analysis, sample size is smaller and the number of geographic units in the sample is more limited…Sample size and statistical power consideration should be used to determine if a two-year sample is sufficient for a particular analysis or if 4 (or even 6) years of the survey need to be combined to produce statistically reliable analysis."
By going by the 2007-2008 figure, The Weight of the Nation not only neglects to mention the possibility of sampling errors, it ignores the survey makers' own advice to combine samples from the previous two-year or four-year samples to paint a more accurate picture. Why do I feel I'm doing more research writing this review than some people involved in the series did? Later, in Part 3 of NHANES' Guidelines, it gets serious and pulls out bold italic again.
"Because NHANES is a complex probability sample, analytic approaches based on data from simple random sample are usually not appropriate. Ignoring the complex design can lead to biased estimates and overstated significance levels. Sample weights and the stratification and clustering of the design must be incorporated into an analysis to get proper estimates and standard errors of estimates."
Just in case you missed the point so far, they raised the size of the type again when they used it as the start of Part 5.
"5. In order to produce estimates with greater statistical reliability for demographic sub-domains and rare events, combining two or more 2-year cycles of the continuous NHANES is encouraged and strongly recommended. For two-year cycles, the sample size may be too small to produce statistically reliable estimates for very detailed demographic sub-domains (e.g. sex-age-race/ethnicity groups) or for relatively rare events. The sample design for NHANES makes it possible to combine two or more “cycles” to increase the sample size and analytic options. Each two-year cycle and any combination of those two years cycles is a nationally representative sample."
Could the CDC's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey analytical guidelines be any clearer? The two-year sample, which The Weight of the Nation uses to yell fire in the movie theater about 68 percent of all Americans being overweight or obese, lacks a sample sizable enough to be reliable and without combining it to another cycle of NHANES surveys, the result can't be extrapolated nationally. Perhaps they tried that but the figures didn't turn out the way they wanted, especially since the CDC's NHANES report released in 2007, as reported by Gina Kolata on Nov. 27, 2007, in The New York Times, found obesity rates leveling off. Kolata wrote:
"Obesity rates in American women have leveled off and stayed steady since 1999, a long enough time for researchers to say the plateau appears to be real. And, they say, there are hints that obesity rates may be leveling off for men, too.
The researchers’ report, published online today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, used data from the centers’ periodic national surveys that record actual heights and weights of a representative sample of Americans. Those surveys, according to Cynthia L. Ogden, an epidemiologist at the National Center for Health Statistics and the lead author of the new report, are the only national ones that provide such data.
Dr. Ogden said the trend for women was “great news.” Obesity rates have remained steady at about 35 percent since 1999, a long enough time to persuade her that the tide has changed. “I’m optimistic that it really is leveling off,” she said.
Men’s rates increased until 2003, when they hit 33 percent and stayed there through the 2005-6 survey. Dr. Ogden said she would like to see a few more years of data before declaring that men's rates have stopped increasing."
As much as I would like to move on, I've burrowed so deep into NHANESland that I feel I must share the actual demographic breakdown of participants in the 2007-08 survey. They go into incredible detail and include some categories that I'll admit I don't comprehend. You can click on that link for the full list, but some highlights beyond what I've sprinkled as screenshots already.
This certainly marks a first for me. I've never had to divide a review of an HBO documentary into two parts, but I have more to say about "Consequences" (some positive things even) and the discussion of the second part, "Choices," has yet to be broached — and as a viewing experience, "Choices" ends up being the more satisfying hour.
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Labels: 10s, Boardwalk Empire, Documentary, HBO, Television, Treme, Twain
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Studies that count, stories that touch
Despite the tendencies of the makers of and the experts they employ to bend and shape statistic results to say what they want them to throughout The Weight of the Nation, the documentary series manages to produce some worthwhile moments when it allows itself to stray from the talking heads and tell the stories of regular people. What comes off best in Part One, "Consequences," which debuts tonight at 8 Eastern/Pacific and 7 Central on HBO and all its platforms, including free streaming on HBO.com, concerns the well-knoddwn story of the 40-year cardiovascular study run by Dr. Gerald Berenson in Bogalusa, La.
Berenson began his landmark study in 1972 from his post at Tulane University's School of Medicine, with funding from the National Institutes of Health. Ninety-three percent of the children in Bogalusa became part of Berenson's study, including Kathy Pigott, who joined the research in 1973 as a kindergartner and now teaches at Bogalusa Middle School. She admits how exciting it used to be when Berenson's white truck would arrive at her school for his twice-a-year visit, though it wasn't that she harbored an unusual devotion to medical research as a child — she just welcomed the opportunity to get out of class. With the study now in its 40th year, Pigott still
takes part in the research and Berenson notes that some of the children who began the study are 50-years-old now. What made the study a landmark taught in medical schools everywhere were Berenson's findings that the preliminary signs of heart disease begin in children. Sadly, the findings couldn't be substantiated until some of the subjects died from accidental and non-cardiac-related deaths and autopsies could be performed to provide the needed evidence to prove Berenson's hypothesis. "After we'd been in the study five or six years, we'd clearly established that heart disease began in childhood. What clinched our information was doing an autopsy study," Berenson said. The autopsies discovered that 20 percent of the deceased children (560 since 1972) already showed signs of plaques (fat deposits) in their coronary arteries. The children in question, all of whom had been part of The Bogalusa
Heart Study, were known to have both high cholesterol and high blood pressure. The autopsies were the first scientific evidence that the plaques involved in heart disease could be found in children. As it continues well into its 40th year, the Bogalusa Heart Study has followed more than 16,000 children into adulthood. Berenson's work shows that obese children are eight times more likely to develop hypertension than children carrying a healthy weight. Of study participants, only 7 percent of who had a healthy weight as kids grew into obese adults. Part of the problem might be found in the economic conditions of Bogalusa
itself. Stephanie Broyles, an epidemiologist from the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, tours Bogalusa in her car at one point in the "Consequences" episode of The Weight of the Nation and gets discouraged by the state of disrepair of playgrounds in the area. How can children be expected to be active and play and burn off calories in places like these? "When it was only adults or only people in less-valued groups, you can put it aside, but when it's children, you can get a conversation going," says Shiriki Kumanyika, professor of epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania. On a pure filmmaking and storytelling level, I'm surprised the makers of The Weight of The Nation missed the opportunity to report on how in 2005 the heart study suffered severe damage because of Hurricane Katrina. The storm knocked out power and thawed frozen samples of blood and urine from thousands of subjects, The Associated Press quoted Dr. Paul Whelton, senior vice president for health sciences at Tulane. Berenson also promised that the study "will go on." He noted that much data had already been "collected and saved" on his computer. "We'll just have to pick up the pieces from what we have." 
"Consequences" offers up one more set of questionable statistics (actually it provides plenty of questionable statistics, but I've run out of time and exhausted my energy to go through any more of them in today's installment), but it doesn't leave enough clues for me even to guess what they might be basing them on. It claims that adult obesity used to be a problem more prevalent among lower incomes but in recent years, all income levels have seen a growth in girth. They show a couple of graphics that they don't really explain what either the colors or numbers mean and sources for this information won't be found in any of the four-part series. One thing that did strike me as somewhat hypocritical comes whenever Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, speaks. "There is some regional variation, but it's all different degrees of terrible. The levels are so high everywhere that everyone has to pay attention to this issue. The health care cost not to mention the human burden is very high in every corner of this country and, increasingly, every corner of the world," Brownell says at one point in "Consequences." Take a glance at his photo. I'd be tempted to say, "Physician, heal thyself" except he isn't a medical doctor, just a PhD.
While the second part of The Weight of the Nation that premieres tonight at 9:10 Eastern/Pacific and 8:10 Central on HBU and all its platforms, including the free streaming on HBO.com, repeats many of the spurious, unsourced statistics of Part One, "Choices" moves the
documentary series in the right direction — at least as a viewing experience — by keeping moat of the focus on personal stories. Watching someone share their struggles always proves more compelling than listening to lectures from pompous people who think they know what's best for everyone. That doesn’t apply to all the talking heads. Some make good points and seem genuinely concerned for others. I would count Dr. Gerald Berenson from The Bogalusa Heart Study in Part One as one of those types of people. Another example might be Dr. David Nathan, director of the Diabetes Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, who comes off as neither arrogant nor clinically removed when discussing his patients and his work. Nathan spearheaded the Diabetes Prevention Program, a clinical trial that took place over the course of many years and attempted to see if lifestyle
interventions could stave off the development of Type 2 diabetes. The study sought to identify leading risk factors for diabetes such as a sedentary lifestyle and increased body mass, to test the feasibility of reversing those behaviors through lifestyle interventions. Nathan found himself fortunate when one day 12 years ago a volunteer walked into his facility named Tim Daly (though we're in New England, he should not be confused with the actor from Wings). Daly had been diagnosed as borderline diabetic so he wanted to volunteer for the trial. He also happened to be an identical twin. His twin, Phil Daly, already had diabetes. In the special, when they rattle off their measurements, Tim tells us that he's 5'10" and 192 lbs. Phil gives his details as "Five foot eight and three-quarters, two hundred and forty pounds," prompting his brother to ask if he's shrinking. "With identical twins, you can separate out genetic factors from environmental factors. What Tim Daly has done is he has taken the weight and the activity level out of the equation," Nathan says. When the doctor meets with the brothers, he explains that it's not too late for Phil to make his life better, suggesting that a loss of just 10 to 20 pounds would be enough to improve his diabetes.
"Choices" also has fun in a segment dealing with the ineffectiveness of diets. Kelly Brownell, who looks as if he should know, returns to say, "There's some pretty clear advice that follows from research that's gone on. Fad diets, diets that haven't been scientifically tested, things that promise miracles because there really isn't such a thing as a miracle here, so if you're promised it, it's a pretty good idea to run in the other direction." Interspersed between his comments and comments by Susan Yager, author of The Hundred Year Diet, we see many people list off the oodles of diets that they have tried and failed at, displayed with some nice visual flair, leading, of course, to a point where all the dieters appear to say in unison, "Atkins" as if declaring, "I am Spartacus!" (As I've always said, a high protein, low carb diet won't help if you slip on the ice and crack your skull open.) "The diet industry has no reason to solve the problem. Solving the problem puts them out of business," Yager says. "Almost all diets are just some low-calorie plan masquerading as some secret. No publishing company is going to publish a book that just says, 'Eat a little bit less and move a little bit more.' You've gotta have a hook, you've gotta have a gimmick." One of the women shown in this sequence we get to know better later. Her name turns out to be Vivia and it probably marks the emotional high point of the entire series. Vivia informs us that she's 27 years old, 5'5" and 321 lbs. She shows a bit of anger when she discusses "chubby chasers" and how she wants a man who loves her for who she is not what she looks like. The tears flow when an interviewer asks about her feelings about food. "Food can be my best friend. Food can be my boyfriend at that moment. Food can be my vacation to the beach and I can't afford to go." "Choices" also includes a surprisingly straightforward tale of a judge's experience with bariatric surgery, a procedure that the doctor admits kills 1 in 300. It's too bad that the series doesn't have more moments like these and didn't feel the need to stack its deck — especially when the action in parts three and four involves some real villains that you'll find in Washington and on Wall Street.
Labels: 10s, Documentary, HBO, Nolte, Television
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Friday, April 20, 2012
And you can charm the critics and have nothing to eat
When you get right down to it, everything that happens up to Kathy (Debbie Reynolds) accidentally missing Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and giving Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) the pie in the face, serves as exposition for the remainder of Singin' in the Rain. (If the credits had been delayed until this point, it would have put Raising Arizona's opening to shame 35 years in advance.) That could be a huge detriment to a film, but here it grows a mighty oak from which the biggest laughs, the greatest songs and the most memorable dance numbers spread forth. As Al Jolson said in The Jazz Singer, "You ain't heard nothin' yet" only in Singin' in the Rain, you ain't seen nothin' yet either. In many musicals — either those produced exclusively for the movies back in their heyday right up to new ones premiering on stages today — the musical numbers usually exceed the books in quality (a quite common problem throughout the career of Stephen Sondheim, whose many scores rank among the greatest in musical theater history but often come shackled to lackluster or problematic scripts). Singin' in the Rain doesn't suffer that kind of problem because Betty Comden & Adolph Green's screenplay never slows down long enough to take a breath, let alone allow writing weaknesses to interfere with the glory of what Kelly and co-director Stanley Donen cook up with the Freed/Brown songbook. The next scene we see following R.F.'s party shows Guy arriving on the Monumental Pictures lot three weeks later, ready to commence shooting on the next Lockwood & Lamont silent spectacular The Duelling Cavalier (and yes, they spell Duelling with two l's in the film), another romantic, swashbuckling epic set during the French Revolution.
Don spots Cosmo (Donald O'Connor) reading Variety and chatting with an actor in full costume for a jungle feature being filmed. Cosmo fills them in about The Jazz Singer being "an all-time smash in its first week." The other actor continues to be a sound movie naysayer, predicting, "And an all-time flop in the second." Lockwood's mind obviously rests elsewhere, so the news doesn't capture his attention. He only mentions that he's back reporting for duty and walks off with Cosmo, ducking to avoid ruining a shot in a Western filming next to the jungle picture. Don tells Cosmo that he now can refer to him as Count
Pierre de Bataille, alias the Duelling Cavalier. "Why don't you release the last one under the new title? You know — if you've seen one, you've seen them all," Cosmo jokes, but Don gets serious and asks him why he said that. When Cosmo inquires what riled him, Lockwood explains that Kathy said that to him. Cosmo expresses surprise that the girl remains on Don's mind and assures him that he didn't get her fired from her job at the Cocoanut Grove. Cosmo suggests that Don's preoccupation stems from the fact that she was the “first dame that hasn’t fallen for your line since you were four.” Cosmo, intent on cheering his buddy up, gives him his version of "the show must go on" speech, leading to O'Connor's solo number. During the preparations of Singin' in the Rain, Donen noted that there wasn't really a suitable solo number for O'Connor to perform and asked Arthur Freed if perhaps he and Nacio Herb Brown could write a new song for him. Freed agreed and inquired what kind of tune they needed. Donen suggested something along the lines of Cole Porter's "Be a Clown" which Kelly and Judy Garland performed in 1948's The Pirate, which Garland's husband at the time, Vincente Minnelli, directed and Freed produced. When Freed returned with "Make 'Em Laugh," everyone's jaws dropped. Musically, the song nearly matched "Be a Clown" note for note. Here are the two clips. First, O'Connor's energetic and delightful rendition of "Make 'Em Laugh" (The four-pack-a-day smoker sang, danced and performed acrobatically so enthusiastically, it sent him to bed for three days of rest, or perhaps hospitalization, afterward. To make matters worse, the footage got destroyed and he had to re-create the routine once back at work.) and then Kelly and Garland's number from The Pirate."None of us had the nerve to say, 'Arthur, this song is too close. You can't do that.' So we used it. Arthur brought Irving Berlin down on the stage when we were shooting 'Make 'Em Laugh,'" Donen said in a documentary on the fabled Freed Unit on MGM included on the 50th anniversary DVD. "Obviously, Berlin knew 'Be a Clown'…and as the song went on his head got lower and lower and lower and after about eight bars, he said to Freed, accusingly, 'Who wrote that song?' Arthur said, 'That's enough, Irving. We don't need to hear anymore. The guys and I, we all got together and we wrote the song. Come on, Irving.' And that was the easing out without admitting he had somewhat borrowed some of it." You would think that with music that so obviously mirrored Porter's earlier song, Porter would have filed a lawsuit, but he didn't. The prevailing conventional wisdom, such as written by Cecil Adams, theorizes that Porter "was still grateful to Freed for giving him the assignment for The Pirate at a time when Porter's career was suffering from two consecutive Broadway flops." Partially plagiarized or not, "Make 'Em Laugh" was one of only two songs in Singin' in the Rain written specifically for the film. The other, "Moses Supposes," stands out as the sole tune in the movie not written by Freed & Brown, instead composed of lyrics by Comden & Green and music by Roger Edens, the associate producer of the film and, according to Comden in the same documentary, "the backbone of the Freed Unit in every department." Green added that "(Edens) was the original trainer and overseer of Judy Garland." Edens also added a little something special to the film's most famous song. More on that later.
Stolen music or not, if O'Connor's bit weren't enough to tickle your funny bone, what comes next may well be my personal favorite nonmusical scene of the movie. Director Roscoe Dexter (Douglas Fowley) calls for his stars to come to the set to begin shooting The Duelling Cavalier. Lina exits her trailer in full 19th-century regalia, complaining about the period garb she wears. “This wig weighs a ton. Who would ever wear something like this?” she asks. Everyone used to wear them, Roscoe assures her. “Then everyone was a dope,” Lina declares. Don arrives, continuing to be crestfallen about Kathy — and even dim Lina detects what's bugging him. Lockwood expresses guilt about her firing when Lina admits that they weren't going to can her until she called and insisted. Before Don can throttle his co-star, Roscoe steps in to explain that in the scene about to film he needs to remember that he's madly in love with her. The moviemaking scenes in general but this one in particular pays off with some of the film's comedic highlights and makes me wonder if in the days of silent filmmaking, something similar ever occurred since no microphones picked up their words. It echoes the film's opening, when Don told the
fans and radio listeners one thing while moviegoers saw the truth. This dialogue, delivered calmly, goes on while the two go through the motions of Don as Count Pierre de Bataille trying to seduce the maiden of the French aristocracy. DON: Why you rattlesnake you, you got that poor kid fired.
LINA: That’s not all I’m gonna do if I ever get my hands on her.
DON: I’ve never heard of anything so low. What did you do it for?
LINA: Because you liked her. I could tell.
DON: So that’s it. Believe me — I don’t like her half as much as I hate you, you reptile.
LINA: Sticks and stones may break my bones.
DON: I’d like to break every bone in your body.
LINA: You and who else, you big lummox?
After Roscoe calls cut, Lina tries to insist that Don couldn't kiss her like that and "not mean it just a teensy bit!" Don glares at her. "Meet the greatest actor in the world! I'd rather kiss a tarantula." She thinks he's lying. He requests a tarantula. Before the quarreling can
continue, R.F. (Millard Mitchell) storms onto the set. It seems that he reads Variety also. He announces the closing of the studio for a few weeks — to reconfigure it for sound filmmaking. The sensation of The Jazz Singer has changed everything. "I told you these talking pictures would be a menace," R.F. shouts, conveniently forgetting his own history. He tells Roscoe and Don that movie theaters already have started adding sound equipment and they can't risk being left behind. The Duelling Cavalier now will be a talking picture. "Talking pictures, that means I'm out of a job. At last I can start suffering and write that symphony," Cosmo sighs. "You're not out of job, we're putting you in as head of our new music department," R.F. informs the pianist. "Oh, thanks, R.F.! At last I can stop suffering and write that symphony," Cosmo gladly accepts. Don expresses worry, saying that they don't know anything about this talking picture business. It doesn't bother R.F. It's the same
thing — just add talking. "Don, it'll be a sensation! Lamont and Lockwood: they talk!" Simpson proclaims. Then, from across the set, a voice adds, "Well of course we talk. Don't everybody?" Uh-oh. You think the P.R. flaks at Monumental Pictures feared Lina speaking in public or on the radio — now what would they do when a collision between that voice and the masses couldn't be avoided. Diction coaches sounded like the best short-term solution. In the meantime, the studio dived into the lavish musical business — so lavish that Singin' in the Rain was considered one of the more expensive films made in that era at $2,540,800 (with $157,250 spent on Walter Plunkett's costumes alone). Compare that to The Godfather's budget of $6.5 million 20 years later. Using the Labor Department's Inflation Calculator, the Singin' in the Rain budget would be worth $22,416,892.06 today, but only $3,957,784.62 when The Godfather filmed. One look at the complete production number for "Beautiful Girl" (with Jimmy Thompson singing the song) and you see where much of that costume budget went. Sondheim cites Brown & Freed as one of the songwriting teams whose style he mimicked in his pastiche numbers in Follies. Follies even contains a song called "Beautiful Girls," but it sounds nothing like the Freed & Brown song. The "Beautiful Girl" sequence does contain an important plot point though since Cosmo spots Kathy in the chorus and rushes off to tell Don and R.F. likes her as well and decides to hire her to play the younger sister of Zelda Zanders (Rita Moreno) in her movie (slightly humorous since only four months separated her and Debbie Reynolds in real life).As you no doubt noticed by now, movies that mean a lot to me such as Singin' in the Rain do start me prattling on like the grade school student I described in the first half of this piece. When you combine that with the accumulated knowledge I've gathered over the several decades since and new goodies I've picked up from commentaries, my impulses push me to regurgitate it all and ignore the writer inside
me who yells, "Enough already! People stopped reading this before you even created the second page. You wonder why so few leave comments?" (I also must ask why I'm getting wordier the older I get. I love films such as Goodfellas and The Rules of the Game even more, but I kept their tributes to a page.) Prompting and provoking my worst traits in this regard happens to be the colossal collection of embeddable clips from Singin' in the Rain that YouTube contains. Admittedly, not every musical number exists in a pristine presentation — and the 17-minute "Broadway Melody" ballet sequence only gets represented by two clips of the Cyd Charisse portions of the epic dance piece — but YouTube even has examples of some of the hysterical dialogue scenes. The movie contains so much that I want to share it all. Granted, ruining twists in it wouldn't be the same as it would be in other films where the plot turns contain some significance, but in other ways, it would be worse here. I've seen films such as Fight Club where I've gone in knowing the twist and loved them anyway. You can't untell a joke. As much as I might want you to hear Gene Kelly sing "You Are My Lucky Star," I can't show you that clip because if you haven't seen the movie — well, dammit, you should and you should see him sing it in context. As far as all those backstage, insider details that I could toss your way, I'm going to let some slide. Otherwise, I'd never finish this tribute.I feel I must share one particular number because it doesn't earn the kudos that the more widely seen musical sequences such as "Make 'Em Laugh," "Good Mornin'," "Moses Supposes" and, of course, the title song, do. When Don learns that Cosmo has found Kathy — and on the Monumental lot, of all places — Lockwood doesn't waste any time clearing the air between them and making his true feelings known. However, there is a hitch. Just as Don the actor lacks experience with dialogue, Don the man also stumbles when it comes to putting his thoughts into words. In this sequence, you see a very subtle theme that lurks beneath the film's surface. It isn't just the transition from silent films to sound ones but about the love of language in general and using the proper words. To feel more comfortable, Don takes Kathy on to an empty soundstage to sing his feelings to her. Originally, film historian Rudy Behlmer said on the DVD commentary, they planned for Kelly to sing the song while taking Reynolds on a tour of changing backdrops such as London, Paris and a jungle. Instead, they settled on the empty soundstage and it may be one of the best decisions since not going with Howard Keel as a silent Western star for the lead. Harold Rosson's use of Technicolor on the sparse set makes for one of the loveliest scenes in the film.
I praised her extensively in the first half of this tribute, but I can't allow Jean Hagen's brilliance as Lina Lamont to receive mention in part one alone, especially when a fun bit of Singin' in the Rain trivia makes the actress's work all the more impressive. First though, let us backtrack to more of the funniest moments of the movie (which all inevitably involve Lina) as we see a brief snippet of her session with diction coach Phoebe Dinsmore, played by the wonderful character actress Kathleen Freeman, who died just two weeks after lending her
voice to the commentary track. At the time, Freeman appeared in her Tony-nominated role in the Broadway musical version of The Full Monty but her credits were so extensive, you had to have seen her in something. Perhaps as Fred Ward's gun-toting mom in The Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult. Second, as Roscoe films Lina and she drives the director insane because she can't grasp the concept of speaking where they've placed the microphone. That leads to one of Lina's best one-liners in the entire film. As you might expect if you haven't seen the film (again, what the hell are you waiting for?), the premiere of the sound version of The Duelling Cavalier turns into a big bust. Actually — and fortunately for Monumental Pictures — the showing merely was a preview, not the opening to the public. Cosmo, during an all-night session of bemoaning the death of Don's career with Don and Kathy, comes up with the idea of turning The Duelling Cavalier into a musical — until they recall a problem known as Lina Lamont. "Lina. She can't act, she can't sing, she can't dance. A triple threat," Cosmo comments. They then get the bright idea — which Kathy agrees to do and R.F. backs as long as Lina doesn't know Kathy provides the voice — to have Kathy dub all of Lina's singing and dialogue. One of the songs in the re-titled Dancing Cavalier is a short number called "Would You?" They construct the sequence quite nicely, beginning with Kathy recording the song then cutting to squeaky-voiced Lina doing the same. We switch to seeing Lina in color lip-synching to Kathy as they film the scene until it slowly turns to black-and-white and R.F. gives his approval in the screening room. The scene from the movie:Later, Don and Kathy have a scene where Kathy dubs Lina's dialogue in her love scenes with Don and the two confess their true feelings for one another. Now, why does any of this involve a bit behind-the-scenes True Hollywood-style craziness? Because, for whatever reason, Donen and Kelly didn't think that Reynolds' voice resonated strongly enough in "Would You?" During the other songs in the movie that she performs (admittedly none were solos), the singing voice does indeed belong to Reynolds, but they didn't think she worked here so in the scene where Debbie Reynolds portrays Kathy Selden dubbing Jean Hagen's Lina Lamont's singing, Reynolds herself had her voice dubbed by Betty Noyes, somewhat of a mystery dubber whose few other verified credits include singing the Oscar-nominated "Baby Mine" in Dumbo, though since Dumbo was born when Walt ran the show, no voices received credit. It gets stranger. The powers-that-be also ruled that Reynolds speaking voice didn't sound right to replace Lina's dialogue. Instead, Jean Hagen used her natural voice to dub herself doing the Lina voice for the scene. Follow all that? By the way, if you are curious, the take of "Would You?" using Reynolds' singing exists here.
Seventeen minutes of a "Broadway Melody Ballet" never had been planned for inclusion in Singin' in the Rain and, truth be told, as much as I love the film and admire the sequence itself, it sticks out like a sore thumb. For all of the sequence's extolling of that "Broadway Rhythm," this segment is the only part of Singin' in the Rain where its rhythm breaks down and the fault lies entirely with the success of
An American in Paris, which Oscar or no Oscar for best picture, I've never liked the film that much (except for Oscar Levant). For best picture, it defeated A Place in the Sun and A Streetcar Named Desire. Those eligible but not nominated for the top prize included An Ace in the Hole, The African Queen, Alice in Wonderland, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Detective Story, The River, The Steel Helmet and my personal choice, Strangers on a Train. However, An American in Paris had a ballet in it so Freed, Donen and Kelly figured that they better put one in Singin' in the Rain no matter how incongruous it would be. The original idea of a Broadway-type number that would have included O'Connor and other cast members got tossed as production shut down on the film for four months. The delay put the kibosh on any chance of O'Connor taking part in the finale anyway since, though Rain was an MGM production, Universal had loaned him to them. "They preempted me at Universal. We finished the picture. It took us about nine months, if I recall correctly, then Gene was gone about four months…and (Universal) had other plans for me. They wanted me to work with the jackass again," O'Connor said, referring to his film series with Francis the Talking Mule. "So I went back and worked for them. That's the reason I'm not in the finale." Behlmer said in the commentary that an early draft ended with everyone showing up to the premiere of the movie Broadway Rhythm and Don and Kathy were married as were Cosmo and Lina, if you can believe that.
"What originally was going to be a relatively simple number budgeted at $80,000 came in at more than $600,000 because of the extension of it and elaborateness and the fact they had Cyd Charisse who had just had a baby and had to get back in shape," Behlmer said as he talked of how Kelly and Donen kept expanding the size, scale and time of the "Broadway Melody" sequence. While I do enjoy this sequence, it plays as if someone spliced it into the film from another picture by accident. On top of that, the early part, where Don plays an eager would-be hoofer going door to door in New York trying to find an agent bears a slight resemblance to the movie's beginning depicting the early struggles that he and Cosmo had. His character in the "Broadway Rhythm" fantasy even eventually ends up in vaudeville. The notion that he tries to sell to R.F. about why The Dancing Cavalier needs this sequence doesn't quite hold water either, but they try to explain that away in two parts, giving half the idea to Cosmo who suggests to get modern numbers in make the movie be about a hoofer who reads A Tale of Two Cities while backstage waiting for his call when he gets hit in the head with a sandbag and imagines all the French Revolution stuff. That doesn't quite mesh with the 17-minute sequence that Don describes to R.F., so it's understandable that he says, "He can't quite visualize it. He'll have to see it on film." (Reportedly, that phrase often came out of Arthur Freed's mouth but he didn't catch the joke they made at his expense. Cyd Charisse puts on some damn sexy dance moves though as a gangster's moll with a Louise Brooks hairdo (a gangster who does a George Raft coin flip). I also enjoy the finish of the sequence when Kelly rises above all the lit Broadway theater signs and it practically looks three-dimensional. Here's the first encounter with Charisse for you to enjoy. What a great place to hang your hat, eh?
When they first planned what arguably became the most famous musical number in film history, "Singin' in the Rain" was going to be a trio. After the disastrous preview of The Duelling Cavalier, Don, Kathy and Cosmo together, in that "at some point things just got so
off-the-charts bad, it just got funny" spirit, would splash out the title tune. One night, an idea struck Gene Kelly and he phoned Arthur Freed and told him that he wanted to do it as a solo. Freed inquired as to what Kelly had in mind, but he didn't really have an answer except that he'd be singing and dancing in the rain. Sounds easy enough, but a lot of work went into that memorable little scene. First, as most film buffs know and I'm sure I've mentioned in relation to other movies, it's damn hard to get rain to show up on film. In the case of Singin' in the Rain, the mixed milk in with the water so the downpour showed up better. As always in these situations, the lighting had to be adjusted correctly so that not only did the rain show up, but so did your principal figure and backgrounds. The milk-water mixture had an unintended side effect as well: It shrank Kelly's wool suit the wetter it got and this scene took days of filming. That's right, days, which required covering the street sets of MGM's back lot with black tarp to make it appear as if it were night outside. To make matters worse, Kelly wasn't at his best. Illness had caught up with the workaholic who filmed parts of the scene with a temperature of 103 degrees.
The streets on the MGM back lot didn't come ready made with puddles. Those had to be built — or I guess broken would be the more proper term. "The puddles in the street were all faults we built because that is where he was going to be at that particular moment. We chipped out the pavement and the sidewalk and made puddles for him to splash in," Donen said in the Freed Unit documentary. While the crew may have deconstructed puddles for Kelly to splash in, they couldn't control the water pressure when the clock hit the right time of the day. "As people got home around 5 o'clock, they would start watering their yards because the hot sun had been beating down and the water pressure would suddenly drop enormously. We used a lot of water raining that whole street and when we tried to turn on our water, we'd just get a drip around 5 or 5:15 in the afternoon," Donen said. One matter that did stay in their control were transitions, something that film historian Rudy Behlmer said mattered a lot to both Donen and Kelly. Immediately preceding the "Singin' in the Rain" number was when he dropped Kathy off at her place after the all-night session that came up with the musical idea and she gives him a chaste kiss goodnight (or good morning, to be accurate) which prompts his elation. Donen and Kelly still sought some way to get from the doorway to the song and that's the other Roger Edens contribution I alluded to earlier. Edens added the little vocal vamp at the beginning that wasn't in the original version of the Freed & Brown song. "Doo-dloo-doo-doo-doo/Doo-dloo-doo-doo-doo-doo/Doo-dloo-doo-doo-doo-doo/Doo-dloo-doo-doo-doo-doo…I'm singin' in the rain" They added the dancin' as well. You wouldn't think a string of sounds or nonsense words could make that big a difference, but can you imagine that number without them? They might as well be a magic spell.
How can anyone watch that and not have their spirits lifted immensely? That song has survived being placed in a horror context in A Clockwork Orange, yet it still makes me smile. Even though Singin' in the Rain regularly tops lists of superlatives now, few awards came its way in 1952. Donald O'Connor won a Golden Globe for best actor in a musical or comedy and Betty Comden & Adolph Green won the Writers Guild of America award for Best Written American Musical. (How about that for a very specific category?) Green said on the commentary track that he thinks he knows why the film didn't get the kudos then that it received in the years since. "It never won any big awards because, maybe for the simple reason, I think maybe, that it was funny. It didn't seek significance because people were laughing and doing odd things." Let's hear it for people laughing and doing odd things, especially when they did it as well as they did in Singin' in the Rain.
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Labels: 50s, Awards, Cole Porter, Comden and Green, Cyd Charisse, Debbie Reynolds, Disney, Documentary, Donen, Garland, Gene Kelly, Movie Tributes, Musicals, Oscars, Raft, Silents, Sondheim
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