Associated Press:

Soon after, he became an early member of the Actors Studio and was chosen by Elia Kazan to play Biff, the son of Willy Loman, in the London production of “Death of a Salesman.” He repeated the role in the 1951 film starring Fredric March and earned an Oscar nomination as supporting actor.

But while he would consistently win praise for his acting during a long and busy career, his most lasting fame would come for “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” In the 1956 film, he vainly tried to warn residents in his small town of the evil pod people from outer space who were quietly taking over the personalities of everyone on Earth.

His frantic shouting of “You’re next!” to those in approaching cars became so well known among science-fiction fans that he was often asked to spoof the role. He more or less did that in the opening minutes of the 1978 remake, which starred Donald Sutherland as the hero menaced by the pod people.

“Body Snatchers” flopped at the box office, considered too bleak for audiences of the time. It was elevated to classic status, and its star to iconic status, after such critics as Francois Truffault hailed it and late-night television programmers embraced it.

Full article here.

AMC’s The Prisoner was awful. The headache inducing flashbacks, incomprehensible sudden and rapid scene changes, incessant and interminable runs through the desert to find the sea, the ever present morose gay son, “11-12,” of “2,” and the lack of any plot tension made the show almost unwatchable. But watch it I did, because I wanted to know both 2’s reasons and the technology that helped create “the Village.” The answer was preposterous. I should have read a “spoiler” review instead.

I never watched the original 1960’s television show, so had no particular expectations. The Prisoner is about a technology company, “Summaker,” which identifies people it presumes need help. It kidnaps them and places them in an induced hallucinogenic state. The hallucination is the “Village,” which looks like a human-sized toy town. The kidnapped live out their lives in a dreary hallucinogenic sameness with identical small pink houses, ambition free jobs, and some sense that all is ok. Villagers are unaware, mostly, they live in a hallucination, although many have odd “dreams” about their past. Dreamers are hunted down and sent down bottomless holes that appear in the ground. We are led to believe they are gone and dead. (Do they go back to the real world?).

All people have a number rather than a name. “2,” Ian McKellen, is the leader of the Village. He plays his character as a postmodern, ironic, fear inducing, ruthless dictator and lives in a mansion in the Village. “Six,” James Caviezel, is the “Prisoner” who intuits the illusion and seeks to escape and destroy “2.”

By the end of the mini-series, we learn “2’s” wife, who is in a trance/coma throughout the series, invented/discovered the Village in her mind. She is able to project this vision onto others. We are not told why a person from the real world is chosen to live in the Village. One character was a schizophrenic in real life, but it’s unclear all Villagers had such torments. No person is given a choice to go to the Village. “2” apparently realizes his own ruthless personality is less than ideal for this job as head Village honcho. The plot line results in “2” recruiting “6,” who has great empathy, to take over the Village.

Viewers have to suffer through various monologues by McKellen, each designed to teach us how tenuous and “relative” reality is. Yet he and his supposedly “mystical” wife apparently know what’s best for all. We never really learn how the hallucination is physically created in the minds of Villagers. “6” is seen taking his seat in a Director’s chair in front of computer banks by the end of the tedious six hour mini-series.

The Prisoner did strike me as an unintended satire of the totalitarian vision that is the Left’s view of the world. Elites know best and can force you to obey; just follow them and all will be great; reality and truth are mere conventions or fictions; and so on. The Prisoner takes totalitarianism to a high level, as there is utter lack of freedom. Even the fundamental facts about physical reality are subject to manipulation for the Villagers’ good. This is similar to the worldview of the East Anglia climate scientists and the Obama EPA’s Lisa Jackson. Who needs data? Just believe.

I prefer my unintended satires of the totalitarian Left more thrillingly and crisply delivered. Coincidentally, within a few days of seeing The Prisoner, I saw on TMC the original 1956 version of  The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. There are similarities between The Prisoner and Body Snatchers. In Body Snatchers, a small town is invaded by human sized “corn on the cob” looking “pods” from outer space. Each pod is designed for a particular citizen. A replacement being is born from each pod. When the real person falls asleep, the pod person takes over their memory. (I never could figure out where their bodies go; I guess they merge.). They become similar to people in the Village; they are dull, emotionless, pain free, and have some general sense of well being. They are all “one.”

Rather than creating a new mental “Village,” the Body Snatchers just capture the memory of every person in the small California town. The protagonist, Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy), gradually discovers the pod attack as reports mount of people claiming family members have “changed.” Like “6,” he tries to escape and is constantly thwarted by pod-people (rather than “2”). The movie is a flashback of a story he tells to doctors in a neighboring town who listen at first with great skepticism. The movie ends with Bennell racing out of town warning people in cars on the freeway to stay away. It is short, fast paced and has little wasted scenes.

Viewers identify with Bennell. The horror he witnesses is bad enough. But he also knows the story is absurd sounding and recognizes how impossible it is for others to believe it. Unlike “6,” Bennell knows what is happening from the beginning and explicitly rejects the pods relativist ideology, which “6” accepts. He quaintly believes in individual freedom and truth.

The Prisoner, on the other hand, is the perfect modern movie. All reality is relative and elites know better than you. Who cares if East Anglia scientists lost all the raw climate data 20 years ago? Forget those dreams of “truth” and listen instead to the likes of Lisa Jackson.

CO2 is a pollutant. Just believe. You’ll feel much better.

We, who assumed that a grown-up whose friends and mentors were people like Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, Saul Alinsky, the folks at ACORN and the most corrupt of Chicago politicians, believed he was more likely to belong in a square cell than in the Oval Office. 

For my part, I felt a lot like Kevin McCarthy in the movie, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” trying to warn my fellow earthlings that the pod people were among us and definitely up to no good. 

It’s not just the big things the man does, things such as the kazillion dollar bail-outs, the trichinosis-infested budget and the threat of the Fairness Doctrine being enacted, that make my blood run cold.  It’s not even the allegedly eloquent orator requiring a TelePrompter in order to say, “Hello.”  What I’m referring to is the Commander in Chief earmarking $900 million for Hamas and, worse yet, make veterans financially responsible for their own service-related medical treatments.  (That comes under the heading of adding insult to injury.)  And let us not forget Obama’s sending the bust of Winston Churchill back to the English embassy and then, compounding that infantile act of boorishness, by treating the Prime Minister of our staunchest ally like a guttersnipe. 

Funny, I seem to recall Obama’s partisans insisting that he would personally make the United States popular the world over.  Well, so far, he has certainly reached out to Cuba, Venezuela and Iran, and I suppose if he actually closes Gitmo, Islamics will dance in the street of Tehran just before dropping the bomb on Israel. 

Regarding the recent brouhaha, I’m afraid I’m one of the few people who wasn’t up in arms over the AIG bonuses.  To me, they were just an obvious distraction by the administration, just like the unwarranted attacks on Rush Limbaugh or Clinton’s bombing of the pharmaceutical factory.  I’m not saying I was happy about the bonuses, but a contract is a contract, and I prefer to see a bunch of scumbags collect their undeserved millions than to see the day that contracts in America are no longer worth the paper they’re written on. 

I keep hearing people on the radio and TV going ballistic over the fact that employees at a failed company were collecting as much as four million taxpayer dollars for being rotten at their jobs, and I’m sick and tired of it.  How is it that nobody is demanding that 435 self-righteous congressmen and 100 arrogant senators give back their salaries?  They’re the folks who not only oversaw a failing economy, but, thanks to pushing sub-prime home loans on people who didn’t have a pot to piss in, did the most to cause the financial calamity in the first place. 

On top of all that, I’ve heard that Obama and his legislative cronies plan to give AIG at least another 30 billion before they’re done.  So how about, instead of having to watch politicians grandstanding over the measly $165 million in bonuses and Charley Schumer’s threatening to get the money back by having the IRS bludgeon these folks to death, the schmucks in Washington just write the company a check for $29,835,000,000 the next time around? 

I understand that, according to some recent polls, Obama and the Democrats, in spite of a pandering media, are losing some of their allure after a relatively brief honeymoon.  Which can’t help but remind me of a line attributed to Oscar Wilde, that Niagara Falls is only the second biggest disappointment in the life of an American bride. 

Someone recently suggested that in less than three months, Obama went from being a messiah to being a mess.  However, here in Hollywood, he is still sheer magic.  They utter his name with the same reverence as when Christians refer to Jesus or Bill Maher refers to himself.  

But, then, Hollywood is a peculiar place where celebrities who treat their own assistants and household help like underpaid coolies, are constantly demanding that Washington should do more for the poor and the oppressed.  Hollywood is where actors think God was created in their image, while actresses are so full of plastic and collagen that even their own dogs can’t pick them out of a crowd. 

I’m sure that Sean Penn thinks he should be ambassador to Cuba, and if only he owed back taxes, I’m certain this administration would give him the gig. 

Even as I dream of the day when conservatives take back the reins of government, I worry that in the meantime the liberals will find a way to place a luxury tax on our dreams. 

Finally, in case any of you were wondering, it will be 117,936,218 seconds until Obama’s term ends.  But, who’s counting? 

BurtPrelutsky@aol.com