In Memoriam: Richard Matheson 1926-2013

Writer, known for science-fiction and fantasy. I Am Legend. The Shrinking Man (which Hollywood turned into The Incredible Shrinking Man, screenplay by Matheson himself) Hell House. What Dreams May Come. Bid Time. Stir of Echoes. Adapted his short story "Duel" into a TV movie directed by Steven Spielberg Wrote many episodes of The Twilight Zone, including one of its most famous "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet". Wrote the Star Trek episode "The Enemy Within". For director Roger Corman, he adapted four Edgar Allen Poe stories (the titles, anyway) to the screen. Adapted what was at the time an unpublished novel (by Jeff Rice) into a TV movie starring Darren McGavin called The Night Stalker, which later became a series that, though short-lived, still pops up on cable from time to time, and was the main inspiration for the long-lived series The X-Files.

Richard Matheson was a close friend and the best screenwriter I ever worked with. I always shot his first draft. I will miss him.

--Roger Corman

...one of the most important writers of the 20th century

--Ray Bradbury

 For me, he is in the same category as Bradbury and Asimov.

--Steven Spielberg

He fired my imagination by placing his horrors not in European castles and Lovecraftian universes, but in American scenes I knew and could relate to. ‘I want to do that,’ I thought. ‘I must do that.’ Matheson showed the way.

--Stephen King

Wonder why Spielberg and King spell their first names differently. That could be a Matheson story right there: "The Mystery of the Monikers"--but I digress.

        
“But are his needs any more shocking than the needs of any other animals and men? Are his deeds more outrageous than the deeds of the parent who drained the spirit from his child? The vampire may foster quickened heartbeats and levitated hair. But is he worse than the parent who gave to society a neurotic child who became a politician? Is he worse than the manufacturer who set up belated foundations with the money he made by handing bombs and guns to suicidal nationalists? Is he worse than the distiller who gave bastardized grain juice to stultify further the brains of those who, sober, were incapable of progressive thought? (Nay, I apologize for this calumny; I nip the brew that feeds me.) Is he worse, then, than the publisher who filled ubiquitous racks with lust and death wishes? Really, no, search your soul, lovie--is the vampire so bad?” 

"...suddenly he thought, I'm the abnormal one now. Normalcy was a
majority concept, the standard of many and not the standard of just
one man.

"Abruptly that realization joined with what he saw on their faces --
awe, fear, shrinking horror -- and he knew that they were afraid of
him. To them he was some terrible scourge they had never seen, a
scourge even worse than the disease they had come to live with. He was
an invisible specter who had left for evidence of his existence the
bloodless bodies of their loved ones. And he understood what they felt
and did not hate them. His right hand tightened on the tiny envelope
of pills. So long as the end did not come with violence, so long as it
did not have to be a butchery before their eyes...

"Robert Neville looked out over the new people of the earth. He knew he
did not belong to them; he knew that, like the vampires, he was
anathema and black terror to be destroyed. And, abruptly, the concept
came, amusing to him even in his pain.

"A coughing chuckle filled his throat. He turned and leaned against the
wall while he swallowed the pills. Full circle, he thought while the
final lethargy crept into his limbs. Full circle. A new terror born in
death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of
forever.

Sometime in the early 1950s, Matheson was watching the 1931 movie version of Dracula and “My mind drifted off, and I thought, ‘If one vampire is scary, what if the whole world is full of vampires?'" The result was I Am Legend, part horror story, part meditation of what it means to be human, to be normal.

Officially, Legend has been brought to the screen three times, with the emphasis on horror. Well, whadya expect? Film is a visual medium; you can't just show someone meditating, can you? Actually, the first version kind of tries. The Last Man on Earth (1964), starring Vincent Price,  emphases the titles character's loneliness, a loneliness only interrupted by battles with dead folk that aren't quite the vampires of Matheson's novel. What they are exactly I'll get to a couple of paragraphs down. Matheson wrote the screenplay himself under the pseudonym "Logan Swanson". Though he acknowledged the finished product followed his book pretty closely, Matheson was disappointed with the results, mainly because of the low budget. He also felt Price, appearing in a monster movie where he wasn't one of the monsters for a change, was miscast. I think the movie works despite the low budget (I've read that it was an U.S. produced movie shot in Italy to save money. So what, did the cast and crew get discount airline tickets or something?) I thought Price was good, too, though, truthfully, even if I were a bloodsucking monster, I'd be a little leery about taking him on.

The second version of I Am Legend came out in 1971. This time called The Omega Man, it starred Charlton Heston as a man not only upset that he's seemingly the last member of the human race, but that the monsters who come out at night are so gauche. Why can't they appreciate fine art, fine wine, and classical music the way he does it in his fortified penthouse? The monsters themselves have Gold Medal-flour white skin and--leapin' lizards!--no eyeballs. The film is notable for an interracial kiss and a suggestion of sex between Heston and Rosalind Cash, at a time when that was still rare on the big screen. Unfortunately, there's little chemistry or--despite one playing a right-wing militarist and the other a Black Nationalist--sexual tension between them, though if two such people ever got together back in 1971 it probably would have been the end of the world. Really, this movie is pretty ambitious in the way it tries to combine horror with late '60s-early '70s social relevance. However, it just doesn't take. The best thing about this film is the always-scary Anthony Zerbe as a TV anchorman-turned-ghoul. Not surprisingly, he's more convincing playing the latter.

The latest version, this time actually called I Am Legend, came out in 2007. I haven't seen it, but it got good reviews, and who better than Will Smith to survive a world holocaust?

Those are all the official versions of Matheson's novel. There was also an unauthorized version, in 1967. At the time, George Romero was a young director of commercials and industrial films who wanted to escape that rut by making his own horror film. A fan of I Am Legend, he saw this new film as a prequel of sorts, showing the vampire plague at the very beginning. Except these weren't vampires, either, but zombies, though the term in never used in what shaping up to be the most influential horror film of all time, The Night of the Living Dead. Romeo has never cited the first screen version, The Last Man on Earth as an influence, but the two films look very similar. The final  scene in the earlier film where the hero fights off an army of the undead would have fit right into Romero's version, except that he couldn't afford Vincent Price. Instead, a local Pittsburgh actor by the name of Duane Jones played the zombie-battler. Noone ever mentions it in the film, and Romero himself has said it played no role in his casting decision, but Jones was black. That he--SPOILER ALERT--gets killed not by the monsters themselves but a trigger-happy redneck gave the film much more social significance than could ever be found in the more self-consciously provocative The Omega Man made a few years later. Who knows? Maybe the 1971 version was so self-conscious BECAUSE of Romero's film. Social significance aside, we're currently living in an age of zombies. There's the popular AMC series The Walking Dead, a book, The Zombie Survival Guide, and a movie out in theaters, World War Z. All can be traced to the novel I Am Legend. So you have Richard Matheson to thank for it all (or to blame if you're one who yearns for a return to werewolves)

    

 

OK, enough with the animated corpses already. Matheson wrote other things as well.

The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) screenplay by Richard Matheson. If you found The Last Man on Earth too upsetting, let me reassure you that Vincent Price is back to playing a creep in this one.

 

The Twilight Zone: "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" OK, I admit the "gremlin" is obviously just some guy in a costume, but even THAT would be a rather odd thing to see 20,000 feet up, don't you think?

Matheson could be funny when he wanted to, never more so than when he wrote the screenplay for The Comedy of Terrors (1963)

There's a thin line between horror and humor.

Quips and Quotations (Rags to Riches Edition)

You know, before I would think, my cab driver hates me. Now I think my limo driver hates me. 

--Ray Romano 

Dive Diva

Esther Williams, a huge movie star of the 1940s and early '50s, died last week at the age of 91. She starred in mostly musicals, where she did her fair share of acting, singing, and dancing, none of which I want you to concern yourself with. Truth be told, as an actress, singer, and dancer, she was merely serviceable. Betty Garrett, who was never a huge movie or even TV star (she was Laverne and Shirley's landlady, remember?) outacted, outsang, and outdanced Williams in Take Me Out to the Ball Game and Neptune's Daughter. So why was Williams so popular? Her looks? She was an extremely attractive woman. But Hollywood, then and now, is overpopulated with extremely attractive people. Even Betty Garrett back in the day was cute from certain angles. One of the reasons boys and girls go to the movies is to see girls and boys so attractive that they make the homecoming queen and her star quarterback boyfriend look like Punch and Judy. Williams did look good in a bathing suit, which she wore more often than any other star at the time. Now we may be getting somewhere, and not simply because of how she looked but what she did while wearing it.

Williams big dream growing up wasn't to win an Oscar (which she never did) but an Olympic gold medal in swimming. By the time she was 16, she had won three U.S. National championships in breastroke and freestyle, the latter with a record-breaking time of 1 minute 09.0 seconds in the 100 meter. In addition, her medley team (nothing to do with singing) set the record for the 300-yard relay at the Los Angeles Athletic Club. She was clearly on her way to the 1940 Helsinki Olympics, until the country that last held the event, Germany, effectively canceled the whole shebang by going out and starting World War II. Her gold medal hopes dashed, Williams took a job with Billy Rose's popular Aquacade, a singing, dancing AND swimming show held at various world fairs and expositions throughout the late '30s, this particular one in San Francisco, where she appeared along side former Olympic star and screen Tarzan Johnny Weismuller. A talent scout caught the act and signed her to a movie contact.

And thanks to that contract, Esther Williams turned swimming, formerly a "sport", into an art. Well, she had some help from the entire MGM apparatus: the set designers, Technicolor technicians, background musicians, hair dressers (her soaked head always remained nicely coiffed), makeup artists (her mascara never ran down her wet cheeks), and casts of synchronized thousands that made a Williams movie seem more than just a day--or whatever the film's running time--at the beach. Mostly she got help from legendary choreographer Busby Berkeley. In the 1930s, Berkeley had epitomized the Warner Brothers musical. He packed the screen with proscenium arch-bending imagery, a typical dance number looking like a Super Bowl halftime show as viewed through a house of mirrors. However, at MGM in the '40s and '50s, Berkeley faced stiff competition from the likes of Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, who took a comparatively more subdued, more arty approach to song-and-dance escapism. Nevertheless, with Esther Williams acting as his muse, Berkeley made dousing an extravaganza all its own. Watch:

Bathing Beauty (1944)

 

Easy to Love (1953)

Million Dollar Mermaid (1952)

By way of comparison:

 

 

From Russia With Love (1963) No, Williams didn't star in this one, it's not even a musical, but doesn't she look she'd fit right in with that scene? And Busby Berkeley could have worked wonders with those explosions.

 

 

A rare photo of Esther Williams soaked head when it wasn't nicely coiffed. She looks good, anyway,  don't you think?

Realpolitik Check

 Late last year, I wrote a post describing my frustrations with political writing, which once so dominated this blog. Before I reexamine that frustration, I'd like to give you two essays from that politically dominant era. The first is from 12/01/2008, less than a month after the election that put Barack Obama in the White House:

What's the Appoint?

 

I know it's been a foregone conclusion for about two weeks now that Hillary Clinton would be our next Secretary of State, but I wanted to be absolutely, positively, empirically, unquestionably, and pretty gosh darn sure before I posted this...Let me check again just to be sure. Be right back.

Yep, she's got the gig. All the talking heads think it's a great choice. She's smart. She's respected. She's experienced.

So why ain't she president?

I mean, wasn't that her main argument during the primary race, that she was more experienced than her main opponent, a one Barack Obama. But Obama, if you'll recall, had one great comeback. HILLARY HAD VOTED FOR THE WAR IN IRAQ! How could you possibly trust her judgement?

Apparently Obama can. Oh, well. What was that Jesus said again? Oh, yeah. Love your enemy. Especially after you've kicked his or her ass.

Maybe he'll appoint Bush to something next.

I probably should have used John McCain's name in that last sentence (we're back to 2013, incidentially), since he's the one whose ass was actually kicked, but that election seemed more like a refutation of George W. Bush. McCain just happened to be on the ballot. Other than that, I stand by the above post 100%. Hillary Clinton's been lauded as having been a great Secretary of State, though the only real accomplishment anyone can really point to is that she logged a lot of travel miles. She's now considered the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic nomination for president. Two-party omnipotence being what it is, I'll probably vote for her in the general election (as I would have in 2012 had she got that far), despite my misgivings. And those misgivings mean just as much to me now as they did then. I'm sorry, but I just can't forgive nor forget (but, um, can cast a ballot for) an accomplice to the worst foreign policy debacle since Vietnam.

The next post, from 1/30/2009, I don't stand by 100--or any--%. Yet I'm not repudiating it , either. What I'm trying to do is make sense of it. When I re-read it a couple of days ago, I asked myself, "Why in the hell was I complaining about THAT?" But complain I did:

Are Van Helsing and Dracula Next?

Samantha Power, the Harvard University professor and Pulitzer Prize winning author who was dumped as a foreign policy advisor by then-presidential candidate Barack Obama for calling Hillary Clinton a "monster", will soon be hired as a foreign policy advisor by now-President Barack Obama, according to the Associated Press.

Wait a second, it's not the victim who's supposed to rise from the grave.

Then again, Jamie Lee Curtis did star in at least two Halloween sequels.

How does the monster, er, Hillary Clinton, feel about all this? According to an official close to the transition, the two have decided to "bury the hatchet." As senior director of multilateral affairs (is there a director of single lateral affairs?) at the National Security Council, Power will have close contact, and maybe even travel with, Clinton, now Secretary of State. No word as to whether Power will bring along wolf bane and garlic, just in case.

You have to hand it to Obama. If nothing else, he knows how to bring about reconciliation within his own party. Of course, it was something of a surprise when, after all the insults traded between the two campaigns, Obama appointed Hillary to State in the first place. I remember the press conference he gave right after that announcement, in which he dismissed all that dissing back and forth as "just politics, heat of the campaign, you know."

Huh? They weren't serious?

IF YOU CAN'T TRUST POLITICIANS WHEN THEY'RE TRASH TALKING EACH OTHER, WHEN CAN YOU TRUST THEM?!

 

My beef in the above piece (it's over now; we're back to 2013) wasn't with Samantha Power, who I have no real strong opinions about.  If the name is unfamiliar to you, she's a former journalist and Harvard professor who wrote a highly regarded, and as I said in the above post, Pulitzer Prize-winning book  "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide, which criticized the USA for standing by not-so-helplessly as various crimes against humanity were committed around the globe. This book was published in 2002. A few years later she was a foreign policy fellow in the office of then-Senator Barack Obama, and when he ran for president in 2008, became a senior foreign policy advisor, until she resigned after telling a journalist in what she naively hoped would be an off-the-record comment that Hillary Clinton was a "monster". Boning up on her for this post, I've found things to like and not like about her. She's probably more interventionist-minded than I'm comfortable with, but was against the intervention that was Iraq, which I see as a plus. Also, she doesn't see intervention strictly as a matter of planes, tanks, and guns (nor does she see any of that as a turn-off) but also "...a whole range of options—you can convene allies, impose economic sanctions, expel ambassadors, jam hate radio. There is always something you can do" At the National Security Council she's championed religious freedoms and the protection of religious minorities, human rights and democracy, women's rights, LGBT rights, curbs in human trafficking, and the protection of refugees. Hard to argue with any of that.

 

I think what was really going on when I wrote that post is, after rooting for Obama to stomp Hillary in the 2008 primaries, I finally realized that I didn't know where exactly he was coming from. How to separate the wheat from the chaff, the man from the myth, the principles from the politics, the convictions from the spin, the soul from the positions paper, and the beliefs from the bullshit? Even though I voted for him, I was determined to hold Obama's feet to the fire, to speak truth to power, even if four years later that truth reads like nitpicking.

 

Then the Tea Party happened. And the birthers. And obstructionists in Congress who were suddenly against things they've previously championed (such as health insurance mandates), and their willingness to bankrupt the country by refusing to raise the debt limit because they believed doing so would cause...bankruptcy. With the poor guy up against all that, I felt I should cut Obama some slack. But here was, and is, my dilemma: how to cut him slack without this blog sounding like a White House talking point?

 

I gradually retreating from writing about politics and instead turned toward pop culture, a subject that's always interested me. I did keep the phrase "political observations" in the description underneath the title Shadow of a Doubt, in case something of national interest should happen that piqued my interest.

As it turns out, a couple things this past week has piqued my interest. The first is Obama nominating Samantha Power as Ambassador to the United Nations, and appointing Susan Rice--the current UN ambassador--as National Security Advisor. Both seem to be relatively idealistic, with all the pluses and minuses that entails. If Power is approved by the Senate--which seems likely in spite of some opposition  from a few who feels she's not pro-Israel enough--she'll have become a mainstay of the Obama administration. He must like her. He also must like Rice, who got her start in the Clinton administration, where she was special assistant this or senior assistant that. Along with the rest of that particular White House, she was mum on the subject on the 1994 Rwanda Genocide until the worst had passed. She came to regret her silence, later saying: "I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required." As such, she urged dramatic action--from recalling ambassadors to no-fly zones to multinational intervention--in the Sudan, Zaire, and Libya, none of which has caused her to go down in flames. What did almost cause that had a much smaller body count than the butcheries inflicted on the citizens of the aforementioned countries. These new bodies, though, were Americans, including Libyan Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens (who sez ambassadorships are plumb jobs?) during the attack on the Benghazi consulate last September. Afterwards, Rice went on several TV news shows and said the attacks appeared to be the result of spontaneous demonstrations sparked by an anti-Islam film. Hillary Clinton made similar statements. Both of these women were mistaken, as the attacks now said to have been pre-meditated (though by whom remains an open question.) Rice, who many believe was in line to replace Clinton as Secretary of State, withdrew her name from consideration because of the controversy. The job went instead to John Kerry, a decent man who, probably for political reasons like Hillary, voted for the Iraq war.   Lo, these many months later, what Susan Rice thought and said the week following the attack is still a matter of controversy for some. But not me. I have no strong feelings about Rice. As I understand it, she's respected by most of the other delegates to the UN. Cooler heads (not in Congress, obviously) feel she's more than qualified for the national security post, which doesn't require Senate approval anyway.

 

If I don't have strong feelings, pro or con, about either Power or Rice, why did their nominations/appointments pique my interest? Something I read online by Peter Beinart, a former editor of The New Republic. In a Daily Beast article titled "Obama Unbound", Beinart argues that with these second-term appointments (including Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense), the "true" Obama is emerging. The first time around he appointed people he didn't really want, such as Hillary, strictly because it was good politics to do so:

 

"The Democratic Party has finally freed itself from the long shadow of Vietnam. For decades after the end of that war, Democrats peered nervously over their shoulders at a public that considered them soft. That’s why in 1988 Michael Dukakis climbed goofily into a tank. It’s why in 2004 Democrats tried to convince America that the single most important thing about John Kerry was that he had served in uniform. It’s why Obama couldn’t close Guantánamo Bay.

"Now those anxieties are gone, first because George W. Bush destroyed the GOP’s foreign-policy brand, and second, because by ordering the military operation that killed Osama Bin Laden, Obama won himself all the tough-guy swagger he needed. Thus, last fall, when Mitt Romney tried to out-hawk him on Iran, Obama didn’t scramble to his right. To the contrary, in the foreign-policy debate he smacked Romney for being 'reckless' in his willingness to 'take premature military action.' It worked. According to virtually every poll, Americans said they trusted Obama more as commander in chief.

 "Since the election, it’s been more Obama unbound. He’s appointed a wildly controversial Defense secretary who has talked bluntly about his determination to keep America out of future wars. Then, late last month, he gave a speech vowing to close Guantánamo Bay and declaring the 'war on terror' over. Now he’s appointing Rice. It’s quite a change. In 2009, Obama chose a Defense secretary and a national-security adviser Washington Republicans loved. This year, he’s chosen a Defense secretary and a national-security adviser they hate. The reason: he no longer needs to care as much what they think."

 Beinart goes on to compare Obama to Bill Clinton, who behaved like a conservative in his first term so as to have the freedom to be liberal in the second. Or would have, had a stained black dress belonging to a White House intern not been a major distraction.

Beinart ends his piece this way:

"So what will Obama pursue? A comprehensive deal with Iran? A new initiative on climate change? A real effort at slashing nuclear stockpiles across the globe? One last presidential push for Mideast peace? He has laid the table for the kind of big, controversial foreign-policy initiative that would have been too risky in his first term. If Republicans are angry now, just wait. The real fun has yet to begin."

All well and good. Now to the second thing that piqued my interest, the following headline:



 NSA Monitoring All Verizon Calls in the US, Leaked Memo Says

Or was the leaked memo part at beginning of the headline? Anyway, you probably saw something similar. According to Obama, whose White House the super-secret agency answers to, all this has something to do with the War on Terror, the one that is supposed to be over, and is sanctioned by the Patriot Act. There's been a relative firestorm of relative controversy over all this. Notice I said "relative". That's because I don't think most Americans are bothered by this, least of all Verizon customers. There's been similar stories in the past 12 years, and only the ACLU seems to care. Oh, the party not in the White House--first the Democrats and now the Republicans tries to make the most political hay they can about it. But they soon back off. They know the public fears terrorism, a fear they've both helped fan. To be fair, they get other help from time to time from the likes of the Tsarnaev boys.

This could even help Obama politically. It could contribute to the Presidents tough guy swagger. Ensure even more confidence in him as our commander-in-chief. Shorten the shadow of Vietnam even more. These are my thoughts, not Beinart's, but it does fit in with his thesis. It's an argument that can be made, an excuse to be offered. Extremist politicking in the name of foreign policy idealism is no vice.

It also reminds me of the old Vulcan saying, "Only Nixon can go to China." Except first Obama has to become Nixon.

Or J. Edgar Hoover.

I'd prefer to think that we can get a comprehensive deal with Iran, a new initiative on climate change, slashed nuclear stockpiles across the globe, and Mideast peace without bringing Big Brother into it. Politically, it only makes sense.

In the meantime, I'm going to return to writing about old TV shows, movies, and comics. Pop culture may be no less compromised than politics, but at least I'm more comfortable making excuses for it.

 

  

 

 

 

  

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Memoriam: Jean Stapleton 1923-2013

Actress. Appeared in many stage and film productions--she sang the reprise of "You Gotta Have Heart" in the original Broadway run of Damn Yankees--but was best known for playing Edith Bunker on All in the Family.

No one gave more profound 'how to be a human being' lessons than Jean Stapleton.

--Norman Lear

Working with her was one of the greatest experiences of my life.

--Rob Reiner

Before Edith ... women who lived with fellows like Archie were usually submissive and suffering in the face of roaring nonthink...After Edith, they confronted nonthink a little more sternly and stiffly and gave hint of a serious readiness to rebel, just as Edith rebelled from time to time.

--Carroll O'Connor, in his autobiography I Think I'm Outta Here, 1999


Norman said on the phone, "I just haven't been able to say yes to this." … I said, "Norman, you realize, don't you, she is only fiction," And there was a long pause. And I thought, I've hurt this dear man that I love so much. And then the voice came back to me, "She isn't."

--Jean Stapleton, describing in 2000 producer Norman Lear's reaction when she informed him that, after 10 seasons, she would no longer be playing Edith Bunker. Reluctantly, Lear signed off on the character's demise. Fortunately, by that time the show was called Archie Bunker's Place. Edith's death--which occurs off-screen anyway--is now in a whole different syndication package from All in the Family. You don't have to watch it if you don't want to.

So, instead...

 

 

Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton appeared one last time together in 2000. They're being interviewed here by Donny and Marie Osmond (whom, to my knowledge, never appeared in a Norman Lear production.) Note that, unlike her TV character, Jean Stapleton was actually quite articulate.

Earlier this year, I wrote about a couple of episodes of All in the Family. I liked one, didn't care so much for the other, but Jean Stapleton was great in both.

Who's Who

Reese Witherspoon is a pretty big star. She's best known for a film that came out about 12 years ago titled Legally Blond, a comedy about a blond California college fashion merchandising major and sorority president (foreshadowing) who is dumped by her boyfriend for being an airhead (foreshadowed.) Brokenhearted, she follows him to Harvard Law School, intent on getting him back. She doesn't, and so tries to prove him wrong first by studying hard (the movie never says whether she ever did that in regards to fashion merchandising), then by working as an intern on a court case where she ultimately proves a woman innocent of murder. She graduates from Harvard with high honors, and gets a job at a prestigious Boston law firm. Her former flame, meanwhile, has graduated without honors and without any prospects. You see, the former flame is getting his comeuppance for ever doubting her intelligence in the first place (even though, had he not doubted it, she never would have gone to law school in the first place, and some poor woman would be rotting away in a cell for a murder she didn't commit. Maybe this fellow should dump a Harvard Med School student next. We might finally get a cure for cancer.) I'd recommend Legally Blond. It's funny, and Witherspoon is funny in it. If she doesn't quite make me forget Jean Harlow, Judy Holliday, Marilyn Monroe, or Goldie Hawn, well, I'm just wallowing in the past. Every generation has a right to the dumb blond pop culture icon of its own, assuming 12 years ago still counts as this generation. Since Blond, Witherspoon has appeared in several other hit movies, mostly comedies, playing smart blonds as well as dumb. She also played a smart (and, by most accounts, incredibly patient) brunette, June Carter Cash in Walk the Line, for which she received critical acclaim. Like I said, she's a pretty big star. Famous, too, which I guess is the same thing

Or not.  This past April,  Reese Witherspoon got in some legal trouble of her own. She and her husband Jim Toth were motoring around Atlanta--she was there to film a movie--in the very early morning hours when the car they were in was seen weaving across a double line by the last person you'd want to been seen doing something like that, a policeman. Toth, who had been behind the wheel, was found to have a blood alcohol level of 0.139. Since Witherspoon was on the passenger side, all she had to do was stay in the car and stay quiet. Instead, the currently brunette actress went from playing dumb to acting dumb. She got out of the car when she was warned not to, and challenged the cop by asking this simple question:

"Do you know who I am?"

Soon in handcuffs along with her legally intoxicated husband, Witherspoon warned the officer that her arrest would be in the national news.

More about that national news in a moment. I'd like to jump ahead a month to just last week. Amanda Bynes is another big star. She's best known for a sitcom that ran on the WB network in the mid-2000s titled What I Like About You, in which she and Jennie Garth played sisters. She's also know for such teen-oriented moves as Big Fat Liar, What a Girl Wants, She's the Man, Sydney White, and Easy A. She also had a supporting role in Hairspray, so far her biggest hit.

Last week, Bynes allegedly had a hit of a different kind in the lobby of her New York City apartment building. A guard saw her smoking a joint and talking to herself. She was apparently so disoriented she couldn't even fake speaking into a cell phone. The guard called the police, who soon showed up outside her door. Another sign of disorientation: she didn't throw the bong out her window until AFTER letting the cops in. New York's Finest took her away in cuffs, but not before she blurted out:

"Do you know who I am?"

Before we go any further, I should assure you that I'm not a member of MADD, D.A.R.E, the W.C.T.U, or any other organization interested in preventing you from having fun and/or making an ass of yourself. Also, we've all had our run-ins with the law, often fully sober. You don't need any foreign substance in your bloodstream to tell you there's no reason to go past that stop sign when nobody's looking. Except for that cop hiding God-knows-where that was looking.

"Do you know who I am?"

The thing is, most of us know not to challenge the officer during those occasional run-ins because, let's face it, they don't know us from Adam. They don't know us from Reese Witherspoon or Amanda Bynes, either.

"Do you know who I am?"

I write about famous people quite a bit on this blog. But not because they're famous. Other than politicians, our celebrities tend to come from the arts, and the entertainment industry. Artistic types interest me, renowned or not. Of course, most artistic types--no matter how talented--never achieve fame. In fact, in a society where net worth is revered above all else, artistic types tend to get looked down on quite a bit. Ah, but not if you're one of the lucky few for whom, as the now-no-longer-famous Irene Cara once put it, people remember your name. Then people look up to you. Initially for the talent, I guess, but as time goes by, the name recognition is enough. They want to have their picture taken with you, they don't want you to have to wait in line, they want to make sure have the best seats in the house, the restaurant, the Dumbo ride at Disneyland for all I know. The famous come to expect this treatment from everybody. Including, it seems, the law. From Lady Justice herself.

"Do you know who I am?"

But the lady is blind and can't read People.

Reese Witherspoon was right when she said her arrest would make national news. The Atlanta police helped out a bit by videotaping the whole thing, which was played on YouTube, all four broadcast networks, all the cable news shows, Twitter, etc. She eventually apologized, and payed a fine of $213

Amanda Bynes, meanwhile, has threatened to sue everybody. The police, the media, anybody who might have had something unfavorable to say about her (nice thing about not being famous--she doesn't know I exist.)

There are more important news stories out there, I know. But when a celebrity expects preferential treatment from the law, such excessive media coverage seem like comeuppance to me.

"Do you know who I am?"

Next time a star asks that, I hope the officer answers the question with a question:

"Just who do you think you are?"