Marlon Brando once visited the Prime Minister of Canada, Pierre Trudeau, to request money for a film about the First Nations that he and Abby Mann were working on.

Following the very unfruitful meeting with Trudeau, Brando declared,”That’s the most frightened I’ve ever been in my life. He’s the most intimidating person I’ve ever met.”

Hmmm … well, that remark, which I first read quite awhile ago in a much longer article about that meeting, has stayed with me, particularly since I now live in Canada, and have done so since Jean Chretien replaced Trudeau as Prime Minister.

Chretien, in fact all of Canada, seems to still sit in the shadow of Pierre Trudeau. In light of what Trudeau has done to Canada and what Obama is now doing to the United States, the size of their still-growing legends is not surprising since they’re doing exactly the same thing: instituting or rather forcibly injecting socialism into a Federalist Nation in the guise of Democracy.

“Make them an offer they can’t refuse!” (more…)

On The Waterfront!

Hmmm …

As Hamlet says, mortality “must give us pause”.

Therefore, “Hmmmm ….. “

On what must be my tenth viewing of that American masterpiece, I realized how tragically prophetic it has proven to be.

What inspired Elia Kazan  and Budd Schulberg to collaborate in recording what is still The Great American Tragedy?

On The Waterfront is clearly a heroic drama, not a tragedy, with a thrillingly courageous victory for its hero in the end.

What makes it a possible tragedy now?

The testimony Kazan gave to the House Un-American Activities Committee, naming members of the American Communist Party with which he had participated in meetings, not only branded him as a “stool pigeon”, stigmatized him like Brando’s Terry Malloy in On The Waterfront, but, in addition, has grown over the years to carry a tragic foresight within it. (more…)