Movie break: It’s heavy and colorful, yet we *want* this fruitcake of a film: Minority Report (2002)

An ace police officer is tarred as suspect by his own employer, a high-tech societal guardian; and is “entrapped” into being suspect by means of a grisly familial insinuation

Another Washington, D.C./police-power story

[Edits done 12/19/12.]

 

Subsections below:

An early directorial attempt at making the film relevant

Spelling out the film’s precognition/intervention premises

The film’s possible relevance in another context: Mass health-care intervention, among other bugbears (such as police entrapment)

The esthetics of saturation and color/tone

The plot aspect of the “flaw in the system,” and premised on an evil “father” of the system

The baubles on this “Christmas tree” of a movie, conducing to a story of loss and redemption

Though this film is science fiction, and I am not a big fan of science fiction, it still is interesting—to me and to a potential range of people—for its main thematic component, represented by the dramatic arc of John Anderton. I’ll come back to how this film seems to work unusually well in the science-fiction mode, even for those of us who aren’t really big on sci fi.

On the specific-premises side, with the original short story by Philip K. Dick, this film might almost seem a Sixties-era, drug-inspired weird fantasy with a certain Kafkaesque slant (meaning, the story involves gross or profound intrusion on individual rights). But apparently this film updates the original story with many high-tech details that are meant to square with what seemed technologically possible-in-the-future in 2001, when the film probably was mostly produced.

An early directorial attempt at making the film relevant

Then, released in late spring 2002, it seems to have been given a marketing-type tweak to accord with the “new normal” that followed the 9/11 attacks (I’m thinking of the scene near the end where Tom Cruise is viewed with the Washington Monument in the background—which tries to make a real-life connection that, to me, seemed rather flighty but not totally out of line).

A little more specifically to the point, director Steven Spielberg seems to square—to the extent a fantasy can be squared—with the actualities of the U.S. government’s policing capacity in DVD commentary (which seems more glibly marketing-angled than retrospectively analytical); that is, he seems to keep in focus—at least in explaining its theme—this film’s thematic affinities with the issues posed by the new policing (especially intelligence-related) powers assumed by the Department of Homeland Security. Specifically, he talks about how a Precrime-type system would be acceptable if precognition could be used to detect a crime before it occurred and such a policing system had “the blessing of the Supreme Court” and was voted on “by a referendum” (these quotes may paraphrase slightly)…all very hypothetical-type considerations (and perhaps a way to try to justify a film that seems to err a lot on the side of fantasy). (Of course, we know—and I can even tell you from my own passionate view of it—from the past year’s experience with the Supreme Court’s vetting of the Affordable Care Act [Obamacare] that such a life-value–oriented issue as how to handle health care in this country can still run into enormous political divisiveness.)

Of course, this is one solid way to try to spell out how we can relate this film to real life, from Spielberg’s ~2002 considerations.

Today, as unexpected in 2001 perhaps, this film has a resonance with current “difficult conditions facing our lives” that makes it still worth a look, and for appreciating what Anderton’s odyssey can be interpreted to say for us today. While we may not be so concerned (as the film suggests) with the possibility of a state presuming to have a way to predict when a certain serious crime will occur, and therefore have a tough means to catch the “perpetrator-to-be” before he commits his crime and put him away in a sort of eerie catacombs, we can still match this film’s elaborately portrayed conceit about precognition and societal spying with another, ongoing issue: invasion of privacy via Internet and social-media–type means, especially where a police function coopts this “infrastructure” for “catching bad guys before (or just after) they do their evil deeds.”

First, let me take a detour to look at a philosophical problem.

Spelling out the film’s precognition/intervention premises

The main thematic underpinnings that we have to take on faith—which those who don’t like sci fi may be unwilling to swallow, but which I would be willing to indulge because of what good there is in this film—is that the “precog[nitive]s” used in the film to detect a coming crime are able to do what they do because when it comes to murder, it is posited, “nothing is more destructive to the metaphysical fabric that binds us” than it (a notion espoused by the precogs inventor, Iris Hineman, whom we meet later in the film, played by the quirky Lois Smith).

In the same scene in which such premises are spelled out conspicuously, the “commission of the crime is absolute metaphysics—the precogs see the future and the precogs are never wrong.” Now, if you were to go into a discussion (from the angle of a philosophy major) of what metaphysics is, and whether today such a “science” has any validity, you could get into a hairy discussion, somewhat like talking about whether outer space is filled with “ether.” But OK, let’s assume the film’s premise about the nature of how murder is especially representative of the worst kind of “rift” in the metaphysical fabric, and how the precogs are infallible in foreseeing a murder in advance (this sentence contains my own scare quotes). (And as the film will have it, because the Precrime system, serving only Washington, D.C., at first, has had a deterrent effect, almost the only kinds of murders that still occur are ones of passion. Which pits such expressions of passion against the cold “infallibility” of the state.)

Then we get to the more realistic philosophical conundrum of (pre)determination: if you stop a murder that precogs predict will happen, can you really stop it? Or did they really foresee a murder that was to occur? This is less a sophomoric question than you may think. The same sort of plot problem comes up (but only as a small detail)—more due to sloppiness in this latter case—in the likes of director M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense (1999), where the child psychologist played by Bruce Willis (who is looking into whether Haley Joel Osment’s character can really see dead people) talks (alone) into a dictaphone about the possibility that the boy is schizophrenic. We later find that Willis’ character—who was also a ghost—was trying to help the boy and knew what was up all along. So why then did he speculate about the boy being schizophrenic, when he was alone with his dictaphone? He should have known the boy wasn’t. (This is my memory of the film; I haven’t seen it since it was in the theater, over 10 years ago.)

In Minority Report, Tom Cruise’s character John Anderton engages in what almost seems like chicanery when he says (in the scene where the philosophic underpinnings are laid out) that the precogs “don’t see what you intend to do, only what you will do.” Obviously it is difficult to establish a set of story premises that explain how precognitives will foresee a future that then people have the option of changing. But if we leave this paradox aside, and ride along with this flashy film, we come to some satisfying situations (more or less) later on, which actually can be considered relevant to the thematic question of a society using technology to “predict” behavior and therefore targeting some intervention to the relevant individual in order to prevent or change the behavior.

Now let’s get back to the real world for a minute.

The film’s possible relevance in another context: Mass health-care intervention, among other bugbears (such as police entrapment)

You could also think of this in the more commercial (or pretending “health-care”) realm: Big Pharma companies targeting certain consumers with ads “tailored to them.” Think of the assumed “purpose”: “to stop your depression before it starts”; “to treat someone lest he or she do violence”; “to get a treatment to an AIDS patient before he gives another unwitting soul his dread disease” (these are not tag lines I’ve ever heard, but they certainly conform with medical-advertising mentality; and I do have a story to tell about the AIDS idea—not now, though). But what if such a message goes to the wrong person? Will it “send him over the edge”? Will it constitute an unforgivable invasion of privacy, or harassment, or even assault?

Or what if a policing agency—a county prosecutor, a state Attorney General’s office, or the FBI—were following individuals’ Internet communications with some “preemptive interest” in mind? Do we thereby have the potential for (on the part of the policing agency) a sort of malfeasance similar to, in police contexts, entrapment? Suppose some police entity, based on monitoring a person’s Internet communications, got in touch with the person’s doctor to advise the doctor to look into something about that person? Maybe that violates HIPAA laws, or some other federal or state statute. Does that sound so far-fetched?

But it’s certainly feasible. Technologically, it’s almost child’s play today, what with the Internet and other electronically based forms of communication. The real problem: the ethics of handling individuals this way, the privacy issues, the way the Internet “giveth freedom, and taketh it away.” It’s remarkable how Philip K. Dick’s paranoid world view, as fleshed out by Spielberg in a movie like Minority Report, can still be used as a template to consider analogous situations involving individual freedom and the paradoxes of modern options for communication that are really at our disposal today.

One side issue: Consider the film script’s aspect of Precrime having an “utter infallibility” (or however it’s phrased) or Iris Hineman’s comment (made ironically in her jaded retirement), “Who wants a justice system with doubt? It may be reasonable, but it’s still doubt” (which seems to make an odd point about reasonability connected to doubt in a legal context; “reasonable doubt” in a criminal case usually means that a juror has reason to doubt that the state has convincingly made its case). This seems to go along with Dick’s thematic idea about an authoritarian (if not a totalitarian) government (whether in the U.S. or not), in its trying to be perfect (and hence freedom-infringing) in what it does. I think we wouldn’t be so much afraid of this today in terms of what ordinary policing powers there are in the U.S. (the idea of flying police who can come and haul us off sounds more like a 1930s-70s fear). But where the infringements on liberty and certain legal rights come today is in the information realm—a whole area worthy of discussion I don’t want to indulge in here.

Another thing to think about is that, during the heavy-fear-of-the-Soviets time of, say, the 1930s-70s, the “U.S. becoming totalitarian” was feared by members of the public mostly as possibly arising in the state-related (FBI, CIA, etc.) and military realms. Today, I think, the locus of overreaching power in this country for many is where the U.S.—not in an official sense—has traditionally allowed carte blanche: in the commercial realm, not in the state realm (in which latter carte blanche has always been allowed in, say, Russia). Big business, big money, is the god (lowercase intentional) of the country, not the state. So, again, consider the ideas of Internet advertising I noted above.

Before I look at film details, let’s look at another general premise….

The esthetics of saturation and color/tone

One of the things that may strike viewers about this film—in addition to a noirish darkness than some may find a surprise to come from E.T.-delivering Spielberg—is its richness in visual and also sound terms. This side may appeal to both sci fi enthusiasts and the young—and actually, it appeals to me in this film, too. And I’m not normally one who likes a crazy carnival ride of a movie.

You might recall what I said in my September discussion of another genre-heavy film, Martin Scorsese’s remake of Cape Fear (1991). There I said

I find there are some very general categories that pop art seems to fall into, particularly when you consider how your tastes change with age. In popular music (rock, country, blues, dance music, etc.), two very broad categories (which I propose provisionally) seem to be (1) “confection” versus (2) “heartbeat-expressive” or “made for moving”….

I find that with Minority Report, it seems useful—when it comes to the combined themes of police / life crisis / privacy / alienation / family-type-aims-invaded-by-government—to see how it is quite different from the likes of the Coens’ Burn After Reading (see my previous review), and yet it offers an alternative choice along differing esthetic lines. Say you were asked what you thought was The Beatles’ best album. If you’re like me and you consider your views as they’ve changed over years, and you also consider how critics have talked and how audiences have reacted, you could say, “Well, it’s hard. I hate to cop out, but I could say there are four—Revolver (1966), Sgt. Pepper (1967), The Beatles (“The White Album”) (1968), and Abbey Road (1969). Then we can get little weaselly and say that if we had to whittle it down, “It’s a tossup between Sgt. Pepper and ‘The White Album.’” But then we see what we’ve chosen here is two very different albums. Their esthetic strategies are so different.

Sgt. Pepper = largely influenced by McCartney (consider how he uses the vague “concept album”/reprised theme song on some of his later albums: Ram, Band on the Run, Venus and Mars, and maybe Back to the Egg); very much a confection style, fairly uniform in style, and dense; lyrics-wise, focused on city life, and its associated alienation to an extent; and it reflects the group to a good extent working together. In view of all these things, it is a sort of young people’s album.

“The White Album” = influenced more by Lennon (he wrote a greater percentage of its songs than on Pepper, and the bolder songs are by him); oriented much to rhythm, country & western, experimentation, and a sense of spatial stretch; oriented to rural life in good part, and endorsement of life values (differently among the different Beatles) is conspicuous; the album reflects individual members of the group musically “doing their own thing” to a large extent. In view of these things, if it isn’t a “middle-aged person’s” album, it is one reflecting someone feeling they’re getting older and wanting to stretch their wings and “leave the nest.”

So, in a way that may seem superficial yet I think has some value, Burn After Reading takes a sort of “White Album” approach to its look at government intelligence, midlife crisis, and so on (though of course Burn is more oriented to suburbs than it is to rural influences, as “The White Album” is), while Minority Report takes a more Sgt. Pepper approach to some of the same themes (and a lot of its settings are in congested city areas).

And yet Minority Report can still appeal to a “jaded” sort like me, and why? Partly because of its overriding darkness (though I don’t like darkness for its own sake), but also because of how it handles some of its themes, including on the level of its vivid details.

But also, and most importantly, its focus on character—as we watch Tom Cruise not only athletically make his way through his odyssey and “run from the overreaching law,” but also struggle emotionally—allows us to “keep our eye on the ball” in terms of remembering that there is something ahead to discover about Anderton himself, as we wash down the stream of rich details. We meet all sorts of side characters, and see the plot unwind elaborately but not incomprehensibly; but we feel there is something ahead to discover—and what is it?

The plot aspect of the “flaw in the system,” and premised on an evil “father” of the system

I hope I don’t spoil this film for any viewers—it is worth seeing a second or more time—by commenting on the end section of the plot (the last 20 minutes or so). Leonard Maltin, whose opinions I usually respect, seemed confused or a bit vexed by this movie (I seem generally, across films, to accord more with his apparently baby-boomer assessments—he and I even like Hitchcock’s Topaz, while most of the country probably doesn’t, while I am more hit-or-miss in according with the views of Videohound, which seems aimed to younger viewers; the latter gives Minority Report three and a half bones out of four, which I would tend to agree with). Maltin says in his compendium that the film goes on too long, and he seems to find it ironic it was adapted from a short story (though as maybe he doesn’t know—and I actually scanned the story a bit—the story is sketchy and abstract [almost too much so], compared to the film [one of the screenwriters comments more or less on this on the DVD]; and with today’s fantasy audiences, or even back in 2002, you couldn’t have so skeletal a story on screen; you needed to flesh it out with eye candy).

Granted, the movie is a bit manic in its richness of action/character detail and atmosphere. But the main skeleton of the plot, I think, is simple enough, and should be kept in view when appreciating this film.

Recall the premises of the Precrime department I noted above. The precogs see a crime to happen in the future; the Precrime police go to stop it (often against a fast-running-out clock). When an alert about a future crime comes that alleges John Anderton is about to commit a premeditated murder, not a murder of passion, of course Anderton is shocked and, scared, goes on the lam. Danny Witwer (played by Colin Farrell) is suddenly on hand as the representative of the Department of Justice who—giving an air of being a competitor with Anderton at first—seems to be present officially to sniff out whatever flaws might be in the Precrime system—which until now has been operating on an experimental basis only in Washington, D.C. His “vetting” agenda seems to serve the larger agenda item of the Justice department’s wanting to take the system over to make it national. And of course, Lamar Burgess (played by Max von Sydow), who helped start the D.C. experiment of Precrime, is leery about his baby being taken away by the federal outsiders…. In some ways, of course, this seems a story of territorialism, jealousy over a magnificent project someone has started, and so on.

But now, the ace cop, Anderton, who in his virtuosity seemed an extremely important component of the Precrime program, is suddenly identified as a potential murderer by the system he helped become so successful. He suspects that Witwer set him up. Lamar Burgess wants to shelter Anderton, but Anderton, following wise instincts, decides to stay aloof from his elegant old boss, as he is essentially on a search to find out whom he is supposed to kill (and why).

Later we find that Anderton has come upon the hotel room where the man (Leo Crow) he is supposed to kill, has been holed up, and Crow seems to be a child molester/murderer who, Anderton discovers partly via photos laid out on a bed, had abducted and killed Anderton’s own years-gone son. Anderton then realizes, yes, he is going to kill Leo Crow—by the passion newly stirred up in him.

But free will intervenes, so to speak, when, just on the cusp of putting a bullet into Crow, Anderton has a change of heart and recites to Crow his Miranda rights. But Crow himself—some kind of drifter or the like—has been “set up” to take the fall of being killed so that his family is provided for…and in a hectic semi-struggle, he causes Anderton to shoot him dead. So, the precogs foresaw the murder after all (even while Agatha, the chief precog, is with Anderton after he has “kidnapped” her).

But Danny Witwer, who has been the ad hoc leader of the Precrime team on Anderton’s trail, is the one who comes intuitively to smell a rat: after checking out Leo Crow’s hotel room (signs of murder remaining) from which Anderton has fled, he says this can’t be a real murder scene—too much inculpating evidence is present. “This is what we called an orgy of evidence,” he says, comparing the situation to his old work in a homicide squad. “This was all arranged,” he says.

So, Witwer had a good-faith interest in disinterestedly testing Precrime for flaws after all. He goes back to Lamar Burgess to present his suspicions and theory. Witwer has already obtained the “minority report” of precog Agatha’s vision of a years-old murder, which—crucially—she has interested Anderton in early in the film (she showed this to Anderton when they had been alone in the precogs’ “temple”—where the precogs reside in order to have their crime-stopping visions). This image-stream of the old murder from Agatha’s mind varies in details from the images that had originally been gotten—and stored in the database of the Precrime system—from the other two precogs, who have less “talent” than Agatha (as is pointed out by a couple characters).

Agatha’s vision, it will be shown, is the real one—i.e., reflects a true murder. Witwer has been told that the precogs tend to suffer “precog déjà vu”—where they see the same crime (the worst ones) again, and the technicians have to disregard them. The fact is that the early murder that Agatha has interested Anderton in, has ultimately led Witwer to discover that the other precogs’ “reports” (the majority report, so to speak) don’t match Agatha’s minority report. Hence, he theorizes that Agatha’s report represents a real murder, and the other report reflects a faked murder staged to cover up the real murder. So who committed the actual murder, and why was there a coverup?

Burgess, after patiently listening, kills Witwer.

As we find, Burgess turns out to be corrupt in a particularly “rich” way. Years before, he had killed Agatha’s mother, a “neroin” junkie (“neroin” is the drug that seems of choice among many in this society, and even Anderton is addicted to it). Agatha’s mother had wanted to get her daughter Agatha back into her fold after beating her addiction. But Agatha was the precog who, because of her talent, was key to Precrime. So Burgess killed the mother himself, after having a drifter take part in a fake murder beforehand, which is what the Precrime system first thought it detected (and hence stopped). Once the Precrime police took away the fake murderer, Burgess killed Agatha’s mother himself. Only Agatha saw this actual murder, and it apparently had haunted her ever since.

Not only that, but when Agatha has clued Anderton to the murder of her mother in the arcane way that, early in the film, we can’t fully understand (and neither can Anderton), Burgess has caught on (when Anderton shows her his recording of Agatha’s vision of the murder), and Burgess elects to have Anderton gotten rid of. Hence (in what we can only insert into our understanding of the story on second viewing), he apparently arranges for Anderton to be chased after by the Precrime system, with Anderton trying to find out what it is about this man (Leo Crow) he’s supposed to kill, while Crow has been set up by Burgess (similar to the drifter who killed Agatha’s mother) to be the supposed abductor of Anderton’s son….

Near the film’s end, Anderton vehemently yells at Burgess through a cellphone that Burgess had used Anderton’s grief over his son to try to trigger him into killing Leo Crow, etc. (Earlier, Burgess fit with Anderton’s more innocent understanding by saying that Anderton’s pain at loss of his son cemented his dedication to Precrime, which helped the public be won over to Precrime.)

The whole plot is a little labyrinthine—and even the evil machinations seem unusually convoluted—but this story, as outlined, is not nearly as hard to understand as it may first seem. I think what makes it seem more complicated than it really is is the sheer nastiness of Burgess’s motivations, in a man who (played by von Sydow) seems like such a “nice old man.” Many you could say the film’s cynicism, at least aimed at the likes of Burgess, is one factor that makes it tough to swallow.

(Actor dossier: von Sydow has had a career that almost seems like a history lesson: he was the knight paying chess with Death in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal [1957], one of the priests in William Friedkin’s The Exorcist [1973], a demanding companion to a female in Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters [1986]…and of course you can read his Wikipedia bio for more. Today he is a good example of a courtly old Scandinavian man—something of a Walter Cronkite or an Eric Sevareid [these were news anchor and commentator, respectively]—who carries an aura of credibility and reliability, making his character of Burgess all the more shocking.)

Anyway, once you understand this pattern to the story, then watching the film wind through its story (for beyond the first time) isn’t so hard. 

Now let’s look more at the film on the level of some of the details.

The baubles on this “Christmas tree” of a movie, conducing to a story of loss and redemption

For one thing, the principal photography of this “post”-heavy film (“post” refers to being subject to postproduction work) seems to have been done pretty quickly. Actors mispronounce names or terms—

* Anderton’s estranged wife is variously called “Lara” (correct) and “Laura” (the latter even [in DVD commentary] by the actress playing her, Kathryn Morris, who is otherwise fine in the varied-tones role);

* Anderton is called “Anderson” by precog Agatha in the hotel lobby scene;

* and the drug to whom many are addicted is various called (phonetic spelling) “neroin” and “neuronin.”

More on details of this film in a future blog entry, maybe to come in about two weeks. I’m sure this cup of egg nog of a review is more than strong enough for you already.

Fraud in the Caymans (1970s), News-Editor Bias (1989), Part 1 of 2

Mulvihill may have been “dreaming” (per recent obits) with results entailing economic benefit to part of Sussex County, but he was realistic in pleading guilty to federally sanctioned, felonious charges

[A few edits done 12/12/12.]

 

Subsections below:

Some earlier public statements by several, in 2012, about Mr. Mulvihill

Background and findings stated within the 1986 SEC decision

State-land-use component to the one-count accusation of criminal activity

A deed-restriction matter, and a 1989 local-news topic is ahead

I had said I would look into how Eugene Mulvihill had gotten in trouble, as led to news reporting about him by the later 1980s being negative, including reference to him as a convicted felon. I did find a copy of a decision by an administrative law judge on file with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission, which had been signed September 30, 1986. It is eye-opening.

Some earlier public statements by several, in 2012, about Mr. Mulvihill

In my November 6 blog entry, I had noted that

Anyone who has had their own “stomping grounds”—place of residence, area in which they do most of their business—in this northern crescent [of Vernon Township, the Franklin/Hamburg area, and Wantage Township], as opposed to those more in the direction of Newton—know that Mr. Mulvihill has long had a rather dark reputation. Whether or how much this is rooted in reality (such as a legal issue where he got in trouble for a self-insurance matter in the early 1980s—for some backup, see here [link is provided], under the subhead “Vernon Valley,” but be aware that as of November 15, 2012 [sic], important allegations in this Wikipedia article such as Great American Recreation’s having engaged in such things in the 1980s as “unauthorized operation of an insurance company” are noted with “citation needed”; but local news entities have covered this latter issue in the past), the simple fact had long been that Mr. Mulvihill had long had a “folk reputation” among many in Vernon Township (and probably in neighboring municipalities as time went on) that saw him as being an exploitative big-businessman, running a park (long called Action Park in the summer [now Mountain Creek] and the Vernon Valley Ski Resort [or something close to this] before Intrawest took it over by 1998) that had numerous problems of its own, whether simply perceived or not.

I also remarked,

Consider how an otherwise acceptable-enough obituary, in including various people’s quotes, describes Mr. Mulvihill as “the man whose vision changed the face of northern Sussex County, creating bustling amusement parks and ski resorts where there were woods and farms,” who “dreamed of turning Vernon Township into a tourist destination that could rival Disney World” (both said in the Star-Ledger obit of October 30[, 2012]), and quoting Governor Chris Christie as saying “Gene Mulvihill’s contributions to the economic development of Sussex County are unquestionable” (same source). Consider how the same obit has Harold Wirths, currently the commissioner of the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development and previously a county freeholder, say, “…Gene Mulvihill delivered on his dreams since the 70’s […]. He built the northern part of the county into a renowned recreational area and employed over 4,000 people [there]” (same source).

Mr. Mulvihill, of course, bought Mountain Creek, the successor to the Vernon Valley/Great Gorge ski resort and Action Park in Vernon Township, N.J., in 2010, after it had been owned by Intrawest for a little over a decade, as reported in this article in the state newspaper.

Let’s see some small part of how Mr. Mulvihill “delivered on his dreams.”

Background and findings stated within the 1986 SEC decision

The September 30, 1986, “initial decision” delivered by administrative law judge David J. Markun represents the outcome of a hearing, including appearances by attorneys for the New York Regional Office for the Division of Enforcement, and other attorneys (some “on the briefs,” and one or more “at the hearing only”). The hearing, held May 27 and 28, 1986, was for the determination of what sanction(s) was/were to be applied in order to serve the public interest in the matter of Mr. Mulvihill (decision, p. 10), in which he had already pleaded guilty to six counts of a set of charges with a total of 109 counts (p. 4). This hearing was quite some period after the initial time of the guilty pleading; this was shown in an order of the SEC of October 16, 1981, to determine Mr. Mulvihill’s wrongdoing (p. 2). “In 1983 or 1984, [a] State Grand Jury Indictment…, containing 108 counts, and…(a one-count accusation) were filed with the Superior Court of New Jersey [it does not say where this court was]” (p. 4). “On November 8, 1984, the State of New Jersey and Respondent Mulvihill entered into a plea agreement pursuant to which (a) Respondent pled guilty to counts 17, 23, 57, 61 and 65 of the indictment and to the one-count accusation and (b) the remaining counts in the indictment were subsequently dismissed” (pp. 4-5).

Mulvihill, the decision indicates, had been “the secretary, treasurer, and 75-100% owner of the outstanding common stock of Mayhill Agency, Inc. …, a broker-dealer, since October 1977. Mayhill, in turn, ha[d] been the owner of 75-100% of the outstanding shares of Seabord [sic] Planning Corporation…, another broker-dealer, since January 1977. Respondent Mulvihill ha[d] been president and a director of Seabord since January 1985 and ha[d] been the beneficial owner of 75-100% of the outstanding common shares of Seabord since February 1977. Both Mayhill and Seabord are broker-dealers registered with the [Securities and Exchange] Commission pursuant to Section 15(b) of the Exchange Act, and both are also registered with the NASD [sic]” (p. 3).

Further, “During the period from April 1977 to April 1981[,] Respondent Mulvihill was a member of the board and chief executive officer of Vernon Valley Recreation Association, Inc. …, which owned and operated a recreational ski area and summer action park [sic] in northern New Jersey, and was also associated with other entities and operations” (p. 3).

To the point: “In order to avoid the cost of insurance premiums in connection with insurance required by the various recreational and construction operations in which he was involved, … Mulvihill formed a phony offshore corporation, London & World Assurance, Ltd. (“L&W”), as an exempt corporation under the laws of the Cayman Islands, British West Indies, and utilized it to issue and distribute fictitious insurance policies and performance bonds. This conduct resulted in the convictions of … Mulvihill that are involved in this administrative proceeding” (p. 4).

On December 14, 1984, the decision says, Mr. Mulvihill was sentenced. “On the [one-count] accusation (using a corporation to promote a criminal object) he received a suspended three[-]year sentence, was placed on probation for three years, and was fined $7,500” (p. 5). On the five counts in the grand-jury indictment (connected with allegations of doing business as an unauthorized insurance company, and falsifying and tampering with records), “he received, for each count, a suspended one[-]year sentence, a term of one year’s probation, and a fine of $7,500” (p. 5).

“A judgment of conviction and order for probation was issued against…Mulvihill on Feb[ru]ary 27, 1985, in accordance with the plea of guilty, and all remaining counts of the indictment were dismissed” (p. 5).

##

When the issue of the sanctions to be applied in view of the public interest was being addressed in 1986, Mr. Mulvihill had argument presented to the Division of Enforcement to inveigh against “the Division’s contention that an additional jurisdictional basis for sanctions exists because the violations arose out of ‘the conduct of the business of a[n] … insurance company’ within the meaning of the relevant statute” (p. 7).

The decision notes, “The essence of Respondent [Mulvihill]’s arguments on this point is that L&W was not a bona fide insurance company and did not sell or purport to sell insurance to the public at large but only to various entities in which Mulvihill had an interest” (p. 7).

The one-count accusation that charged Mr. Mulvihill with “Use of a Corporation to Promote a Criminal Object, Third Degree” “charged that from April 1, 1977 through April, 1984, Mulvihill and others created and used L&W to promote a criminal object by, among other things, fabricating and distributing documents purporting to be valid insurance policies and performance bonds issued by L&W and other documents, records[,] and correspondence relating to the financial condition of L&W for the purpose of creating the false impression that L&W was a bona fide insurance company when in truth it was not” (p. 8). “[A]s already noted, …Mulvihill pleaded guilty to the one-count accusation” (p. 8).

Of the five counts in the grand-jury indictment, “each details specific acts involving the issuance of purported insurance policies or performance bonds by Mulvihill through L&W” (p. 8).

The decision points out “it is clear that…Mulvihill pleaded guilty to engaging in the unauthorized [italics here; underscored in original] business of insurance within the relevant period…” (p. 8).

There is what seems a bit of humor. The decision looks at the question of “whether the doing of unauthorized, bogus insurance business constitutes the commission of a crime that arose ‘out of the conduct of the business of’ an insurance company within the meaning of subsections 15(b)(6) and 15(b)(4)(B) of the [Securities and] Exchange Act” (p. 9). Apparently this may refer in part to Mr. Mulvihill's argument that "no one got hurt and that no one was put at risk by his phony insurance machinations" (p. 20). “In some respects Respondent [Mulvihill]’s argument on this point is somewhat akin to the argument that income illegally obtained need not be reported as income for Federal income tax purposes because it was not legally obtained. That argument, of course, has been singularly unpersuasive in the courts” (p. 9).

“[B]asically, I conclude that the Division’s argument that the pertinent sections of the Exchange Act must be broadly construed in order to effectuate their remedial purposes i[s] sound and persuasive” (p. 9).

Remaining was the question of what sanction must be applied against Mr. Mulvihill to serve the public interest.

The judge notes that the Division had argued that “the dismissed counts, while not admissible to prove or establish the counts to which Respondent pleaded guilty, are admissible on the question of what sanctions are appropriate in the public interest, by analogy to the wide latitude [that] criminal courts have to consider broadly matters bearing upon the personal history and behavior of the accused…” (p. 11). The judge doesn’t buy this argument, concluding “…that due process considerations militate against considering the dismissed counts of the indictment in determining what sanctions may be appropriate in the public interest.” Nevertheless, “…I do not strike such dismissed counts from the record in view of their possible utility in any appeal that may be involved in subsequent stages of this proceeding” (p. 12).

State-land-use component to the one-count accusation of criminal activity

In view of what the judge characterizes the “egregious nature, character, and duration of the felonies committed and admitted by…Mulvihill” (p. 12), the accusation is quoted at length, and includes:

During the time period set forth in this Accusation, [Mulvihill], as a member of the…board of directors and as chief executive officer of Vernon Valley Recreation Association, Inc. was aware of the express conditions contained in various lease agreements between the State of New Jersey and Vernon Valley Recreation Association, Inc. [for short, VVRA] requiring that [VVRA] purchase, maintain[,] and keep in force at all times a policy of general liability insurance in an amount not less than $2,100,000.00 with the State of New Jersey designated as a named insured [p. 13].

This meant that state land, which abutted VVRA-owned land, which was used probably for support of the ski areas (such as, I suppose, water for use by the artificial-snow-making equipment), “did not have bona fide insurance coverage from July, 1977 until March 1981 as required by said leases…” (p. 14) and false documents were supplied to the state to suggest that there was such insurance (p. 14).

There was also false representation of performance bonds (alleged to come from the same bogus insurance company) made to Vernon Township in relation to development of the Stonehill condominiums (p. 15).

The judge’s decision notes the sentencing court’s acknowledgement of the seriousness of Mr. Mulvihill’s infractions with respect to his awareness of the crimes: the sentencing court wrote, “What I find very troubling is the fact that the defendant, Mr. Mulvihill, with such ability and such talent[,] has deliberately, calculatedly[,] and premeditatedly chose[n] the course of action which he did, and I have no doubt in my mind that he knew at the time that it was illegal, criminal, and an attempt deliberately to deceive for the purpose of a commercial venture” (p. 17).

The 1986 administrative law judge notes that “[t]he sentencing Court had before it numerous letters from friends, acquaintances, and persons who had had business or other contacts with…Mulvihill and who spoke of his generosity, standing as a fine family man, uprightness in his business dealings, and the like” (p. 17). “These same letters were received in this proceeding as part of Respondent’s Exhibit B and are relied upon by him on the question of sanctions” (p. 17).

The 1986 judge notes that the sentencing court remarked at one point, “…I don’t see this as a crime committed out of weakness; I see it as a crime committed out of strength and an arrogant belief that it could be accomplished without detection…” (p. 18).

The 1986 judge later heads toward his conclusion with, “I find nothing in the record or in the Respondent’s arguments that would prompt me to come to a different conclusion in evaluating these several elements in determining sanctions in the public interest in this proceeding. Respondent’s past acts of charity and assistance to worthy groups and individuals cannot serve to immunize him from the consequences of his serious and calculated violations” (p. 20).

“Respondent attempts to make much of the arguments that no one got hurt and that no one was put at risk by his phony insurance machinations. This argument only serves further to demonstrate Respondent’s failure to appreciate the nature and gravity of his offenses, as the sentencing Court noted” (p. 20).

“Mulvihill’s disposition to cut corners rather than to turn square corners in legal matters as indicated by his convictions is precisely the kind of tendency that must be guarded against, and cannot be countenanced, in the securities business, an industry that presents so many opportunities for abuse and overreaching and depends so heavily on the integrity of its participants” (p. 22; boldface added).

The decision notes that Mr. Mulvihill had been “in the brokerage business since 1959” (p. 23).

The order concludes that “Respondent Eugene Mulvihill is hereby barred from association with a broker-dealer,” which the judge has premised on the idea that it is “necessary in the public interest” (p. 24).

I don’t know whether this decision was appealed (i.e., whether a “review” was petitioned for).

All this would support most of what I said in my November 27 blog entry where I noted

…Mr. Mulvihill pleaded guilty to six counts of wrongdoing within a set of charges (some were criminal; I’m not sure if others were civil) that included setting up a dummy corporation to seem as if Action Park and/or its associated business(es) had liability (?) insurance it was required to carry. There was also a component of some alleged misuse of state land [I need to look at this aspect further; my reference here may only aim at the single-count accusation's allegation that Mulvihill did not have insurance on land he leased from the state] (the Action Park and ski areas, under the control of Mr. Mulvihill’s company Great American Recreation [GAR], have abutted state preserves for years); forgery and embezzlement also appear to have been among the charges.

Now let’s move slowly to the next general item of interest, news reporting in 1989.

A deed-restriction matter, and a 1989 local-news topic is ahead

There was an agreement, apparently reached later in 1986, brokered by a state assemblyman, I believe (Walter Kavanaugh, was the name?), where Mr. Mulvihill was allowed to continue running GAR/VVRA (excuse me if there’s looseness in referring to this company or companies), and it involved some swap of ownership of mountaintop land—Mulvihill gave some of his to the state, and the state gave some of its own to him.

In particular, some deed restrictions were placed on the land he received, which became a point of controversy by the early 1990s connected with a proposed campground project (on this I have clearer memories, having attended some of the township government meetings related to this; I might have news clippings addressing it, too). I leave this stated as roughly as I do here because, first, it is not as serious as the matters I just cited above from the 1986 judicial decision; and second, what I have to relate from 1989 presupposes fairly common-sense knowledge, which I will make clearer, behind the land-use issues that were central to interrelations I got tangled up in (in 1989) as a news reporter trying to make sense out of contentions coming from various, rather bitterly opposed sides.

This latter situation, where I tried to report, as assigned by none other than whom I’ve pseudonymed Skoder, involves attitudes toward Mr. Mulvihill where, I think it’s safe to say, he was hounded by a variety of people who had deep suspicions about what he was doing with his not-very-accessible mountaintop land. On that, we have to wait while I gather my information for Part 2.

Another signpost: To address the interest in Mulvihill and “Skoder”

[Edits done 12/6/12.]

It is striking to me, judging from statistics showing the accumulation of e-mail links to my different blog entries (including those on this blog and those on the “Jersey Mountain Bear” blog), how much interest there has been in my first (November 6) entry on Gene Mulvihill, and associated entries largely dealing with the pseudonymous Skoder. Where Mr. Mulvihill is concerned, I would expect that there are two very different, almost diametrically opposed, schools of thought: those defending him (understandably enough) and those who have long viewed him skeptically, in contempt, and/or such (also understandably, or not incomprehensibly).

I didn’t expect to tap into such a wellspring of interest on the local issues of Mr. Mulvihill and Skoder (and I am not as expert in Mr. Mulvihill as others are in the local area). But while, in general with this blog, I try to be fair in choosing my topics primarily with an intuitive feel for what will make an interesting entry (and usually not trying to cater to “market considerations”), I know I run a risk with certain blog entries of stirring up some kind of hornet’s nest of interest, not all of it with full sympathy or respect for my view. And this leads me in those cases to wonder if there is some way I can mitigate any sense of disturbance I cause, or contrarily if I can add to a story to satisfy people’s curiosity, or their moral sense of wanting a fuller story out.

I have several blog entries in the works (not related to Mr. Mulvihill or Skoder) that should interest various constituencies, but I have been planning to make an entry on a specific set of incidents that occurred in summer 1989—related to both Mr. Mulvihill and Skoder—that are only tangentially hinted at (in pp. 8-9 if put in print-preview mode) in my November 21 blog entry, “The place of Skoder in my war stories, Part 1 of 2.” This projected entry’s topic is a somewhat different matter from the issue of what Mr. Mulvihill’s wrongdoings were (particularly ones he pleaded guilty to) in the 1980s that were the subject of so much press attention, but in a way it relates to them. (For preliminary suggestions about the legal stuff, see the last subsection of my November 27 entry.)

It will have to do with a news-story assignment Skoder gave me—and the way she defined the assignment was almost ludicrously paradoxical—that I made an elaborate attempt at doing, including with an interesting interview with Mr. Mulvihill and with others (among them, town government representatives). This story was not published, and generally speaking, it is really what triggered Skoder’s no longer using me for about two weeks in later summer 1989, at the end of which two weeks I resigned. This whole entry will take some time to put together (it has already been started), but when I post it—which might not be until late December or early January—it should prove interesting to those numerous people who have seemed interested in my entries on Mr. Mulvihill and on Skoder.

And to think I posted the Skoder stories in order to suggest some “experiential [and legally related] background” for making statements regarding a wholly different matter!

Movie break: Affairs of state, and of another kind; and levels of intelligence, in different senses: Burn After Reading (2008)

A Washington, D.C./police-power story

[Edits done 12/5/12 & 12/9/12. Edits 4/1/16.]

This movie may seem a little insubstantial on the one hand, and (in its short-scene, efficiently-edited way) complicated on the other, but it does a good job satirizing two things: in a more pitched way, spy/action movies and a certain air of Washington, D.C., self-importance on the one hand; and on the other hand, with more gentle satire, “the cry of the middle-aged person,” in terms of encountering midlife crises, obsessing about health, maybe stuck in a sort of personal rut….

Joel and Ethan Coen, the directors, speak in a making-of segment on how this movie came together (it had been started before or during the development of their Oscar-winning adaptation of the thriller No Country for Old Men [2007]), and they note that in part this one formed as it did because it made use of its several worth-getting actors at a point when they were all available. Hence, perhaps, the sketchy aspect of some points in the film, though throughout, it seems fairly well written on a line-by-line basis. So maybe one way to start a look at it is via its colorful characters, as a humorous use of the marquee actors playing them.

A set of distinctive characters for a hectic-accidents story

* Osborne Cox, played by John Malkovich, is a CIA analyst who is apparently erratic to the point where he is required to be demoted, in an interesting first scene in which a supervisor and others handle him (no exit is shown, with him allowed to collect his things in a box): he has a drinking problem, it is cited, and hence he is being taken out of “sig int” (meaning “signal interpretation”?) and the “Balkans desk.” Cox, defensive, goes into a fury, accusing them of playing office politics and performing a “crucifixion,” and heads out. He ends up quitting. Of course, next scene, he is making a mixed drink as his pediatrician wife comes home and he, knowing how dicey the prospect is, wants to tell her the news of his quitting. The role of Cox was written specifically for Malkovich, whom the Coens had never worked with before.

* Katie Cox, Osborne’s wife, played in cool-cucumber manner by Tilda Swinton, is later not pleased to find her husband has quit. It also happens she is having an extramarital affair with Harry Pfarrer (below). She is efficient and self-serious, and generally speaking, is disappointed in, or comes to have the basis to be disappointed in, the men in her life: her husband and boyfriend.

* Harry Pfarrer, played by George Clooney (with this role his third for the Coens since 2000), a federal marshal whom we first see Osborne and Katie mix with at a small party they host, including as guests Pfarrer’s wife and a few others. Pfarrer, a rather bumptious sort who has an eye for the work of wood flooring, is leery of Osborne’s sniffing out his affair with Katie. Meanwhile, his wife, a writer of children’s books played by Elizabeth Marvel, already seems to detect Harry’s affair.

Pfarrer, by the way, seems to have a surfeit of testosterone or something; as the movie winds through its subplots, we find he has affairs with other random women, including one less “fancy-pants” SES-wise than Osborne (and his wife), who is…

* Linda Litzke, played by Frances McDormand (who has worked with the Coens through several films, back to the 1980s), is a worker at a gym called Hardbodies, and in a sense she is the heart and soul of the film. We meet her in a plastic surgeon’s examination room, as she is getting surveyed, so to speak, for surgery to improve her physique. She is very conscious of her appearance, in part because she is rather obsessively interested in dating (while she also claims to an insurance rep that her job and its required exposure to customers mean she needs to look her best), but she finds that cost becomes a block to her getting those surgeries. She finds with her patient, careworn-looking boss Ted Treffon (Richard Jenkins, in another of his few roles for the Coens since at least 2003) that her employer’s insurance won’t cover the surgeries because they are elective. This is a setback, but she is determined.

* The most popular role and actor in this film, to judge from a cursory Google search—and probably not surprisingly, given the young who shape so much of the Internet’s “metes and bounds of values determining content”—is Chad Feldheimer, he of the tall-and-ill-streaked hair, played by Brad Pitt. Chad is the dimmest bulb in this set of characters, offering the most obvious comedy (e.g., as he is dressed in an ill-fitting formal suit, staking out Osborne’s Georgetown apartment, waiting to go in to search for more “marketable intelligence files,” he sings “Shake it down!” to whatever ass-moving swill he is listening to as ear-bud–pumped fare of choice for shooing away boredom, or accompanying vigorous workouts).

The plot (somewhat beside the point) gets underway

So there are different sets of mostly middle-aged people: on the federal-government side, Osborne who just left his job, and his snooty wife; and Harry Pfarrer and his author wife [added 4/1/16: the wives, by the way, aren't federal employees; my point should have been obvious]; and maybe you can throw in Osborne’s former colleagues at the CIA, who end up, in sober review of the wacky facts, somewhat doing a comedy routine in trying to comprehend the others’ inadvertent shenanigans in deadpan. On the Hardbodies side are Linda, Ted, and Chad. The two sets of people’s paths cross by chance when the divorce attorney for Katie, who has advised her to “be a spy too” and get an electronic copy of Osborne’s financial info, has led his secretary to have the info on a CD.

The secretary happens to patronize Hardbodies, and accidentally leaves the disk behind. Manola [sp?], a worker there, passes the disk on to Chad, who reviews the contents (there are both Osborne’s draft of the memoir he started writing after quitting, as well as his financial info) and is stunned and feels it is “secret intelligence shit,” and that it is valuable. He and Linda become partners in a venture mainly to help her: in returning the disk, as they plan, to Osborne (Chad finds out its owner through his own connections), they want to ask for a reward. It seems simple and innocuous enough to them. But in a clumsy, comical phone call to Osborne one night, they trip Osborne into thinking they are ill-willed extortionists.

Chad arranges to meet with Osborne at a streetside location, Chad on his bicycle. From there, the rough comedy proceeds like falling dominoes—and amid this, there are fun laughs, and as often in a Coens film, there is black-comedy stuff mixed with occasional dismaying violence, giving a noir overlay to much of the doings.

This is all the setup, pretty much, and I won’t tell too much more about the plot. This is a film to watch a few times, because though, on first viewing, it may seem a bit confusing at points, you appreciate how much it does in efficient style as you grow to understand the fancy plot. Especially appreciation-apt are the touches portraying middle-aged people’s simple styles of dealing with some muted version of despair due to aging: an obsession with fitness, worry about a body no longer so pretty….

Interestingly, the sex maniac Harry seems to have a lot in common with Linda—they both become daters, with Harry the real idiot in maintaining his affairs with both Katie and Linda [he also dates a third woman, briefly, amid the others]—and they both are also obsessed with physical fitness: Linda is a gym worker as well as concerned to get plastic surgery, and Harry is so fitness-obsessed that, more than once, no sooner does he finish in the commode after sex than he thinks he can “get a run in.” Toward the end of the film, grappling with depression understandable in the wake of his wife’s having filed for divorce, he gropes at the realization he can think better if he can just exercise, “butt-crunches, anything.”

(Another tiny subplot involves his working clandestinely in his cellar workshop, and it turns out he has been making an elaborate sex toy….)

And by the way, part of the spy-satire aspect of this film is the mysterious shadowing of various of the people in portentous cars…which we find are not only, in some instances, CIA operatives (in connection with Osborne’s situation) but also, more humorously, at least one private investigator hired in connection with a divorce action.

Glimpses of middle-aged “failure”

This movie is especially interesting, to a middle-aged sort like me, for its humorous look at the type of doldrums peculiar to the American middle-aged. The two actors who do the most to portray this are Malkovich and McDormand. (George Clooney’s Harry Pfarrer seems mainly a permanent sexual 16-year-old, and Brad Pitt rides the idiot button so hard for his Chad—he certainly is amusing—that he even is seen spinning in a swiveling chair at Linda Litzke’s apartment like a boneheaded high schooler.)

Malkovich’s Osborne Cox covers all the bases amusingly as someone who has lost (or abruptly left) his high-paying job, and has no prospects on the immediate horizon. He whiles away his time at home in a bathrobe, starts his memoir with lines read into a dictaphone that seem like self-parody (“We were young and…committed, and there was nothing we could not do”). When a call comes over the old-fashioned tape-style answering machine in the cellar (which greets callers with a portentous reference to the “Cox Group”—amazing how unimaginative we Americans are, to so often tart up a nothing business with “…Group”), he hastens downstairs only to find the caller is trying to reach his wife. He watches an idiotic daytime game show. He peers out a window desultorily in his bathrobe. Finally, when the proper time comes, he fixes his “ritual” drink. All this is probably too subtle for young viewers, but so funny to those of us who suddenly (newly “ascended” to the status of “redundant unemployed”) have to practice the voodoo—sometimes in stinky at-home clothes—of getting a new career going.

One detail of his life that I personally can’t relate to (but don’t need to) is how, after he’s seemed to have drifted in unemployment for a while, he goes to a class reunion at his old Ivy League college, and we see, in one long master shot, a set of aging/beefy sorts (some with cigars) gathered around a feast table in a “luxe” paneled room, like a nightmare of a Skull and Bones get-together, singing an asinine class song whose words you can’t fully understand, and don’t need to. And there is Osborne, recognizable amid the anonymous revelry, seeming consoled for one smoky night.

I went to only one college class reunion, in 1994, and it was OK (and actually, I was surprised how few classmates came to that one). What Osborne’s reunion reminds me of is what I think was called, at my university, the “University Club” on the third floor of the six-level Marvin Center, the huge student union at George Washington University that I worked at for a few years (while I was a student, and for a year-plus after graduating). The University Club was the only part of the Marvin Center (MC) that my job almost never required me to have anything to do with. It was a club dedicated to old alumni, and may have had special events that were of an exclusive variety (typically, students on the university grounds never went in there; certainly, there were numerous other eateries within the MC that catered to them). And as I look back, I think a fair amount of the University Club’s purpose was to allow wining/dining (hefty see-gars optional) of the sorts of folk who would eventually donate an appreciable sum to the university, or otherwise be of particularly efficient financial (and/or connections) use to the school. As I knew even then, the university—as they all are—was so often concerned to raise money. I don’t think I focused much, at age 23, on what purpose the (in particular) snooty University Club served in terms of keeping the school’s coffers as close to filled as possible.

McDormand’s Linda Litzke is comic, and pathetic in a way, and yet winsome (and she turns out to be almost the only main character who doesn’t come to a bad, or weirdly fleeing, end). She is obsessed with getting her body worked on. She can be fast-mouthed, a bit bitchy, hectoring in talking to others with an end to getting her money for her surgery. She spouts platitudinous middle-class-ass talk when trying to move someone (she chides Ted, who usually is patient and kind enough to her, with, doesn’t he know the power of positive thinking?, when the issue is dealing with a payroll company in a manner that she refuses to understand is not feasible). Eventually, she berates Ted with his failure, in her eyes, to be a “can-do” person, and (absurdly, per the movie’s comic style) claims that goofy Chad, who has since disappeared (permanently, as she doesn’t know), was the only “can-do” person she knew.

Coens’ technical helpers add class to a “small” movie

Carter Burwell, the “underscore” composer for many of the Coens’ films, adds his usual tasteful music here. Of course, in good part it is meant to underscore the satire side of the film—drums that are meant to playfully echo the pomposity of less ironic fare, making this, as Ethan Coen remarks, their version of a “Tony Scott/Bourne Identity” movie, “without the explosions” (this, of course, was recorded years before Tony Scott’s death, on which see early in my August 28 entry, which is a review of Ridley Scott’s American Gangster). When Burn’s trademark drums aren’t adding a little levity, Burwell can add tasteful strings or such that underscore the occasional mood of tragedy, or a certain afternoon-of-life melancholy, to this film, rather as he does with the one that immediately followed it, A Serious Man (2009).

Important production notables who often turn up in the Coens’ making-of docs speak on the DVD for this film, too: Jess Gonchor, the production designer, and Mary Zophres, the costume designer. Anyone who wonders what these two kinds of moviemaking professionals do can hear these two’s comments on the DVDs for this film, A Serious Man, and the remake of True Grit (2010), and realize what an art (and set of time-consuming labor) their functions can be.

Roger Deakins, who has been the distinctive cinematographer on most of the Coens’ films back to the early 1990s, was not available to contribute to this movie. Instead, the Coens used Emmanuel Lubezki, whose work here gives this film a sort of clear-eyed but digital-video look, not the usual “clinically clear” analog-type photography Deakins can render.

Note: This film has some nasty curses (apparently to contribute the kind of “porn thread” that I’ve previously suggested films, for wide distribution, have had to have). This can be compared with A Serious Man, where, interestingly, the adults largely don’t curse too terribly (and, the story being within a Midwestern Jewish community, referring to “Hashem” and other ritual usages pop up), but the main character’s two kids use pretty coarse language (with each other) at times.

Added 12/5/12: I was remiss in forgetting to say something about J.K. Simmons, who plays the CIA supervisor of the underling (the character Palmer) who has proceeded to demote Cox when Cox quit. Simmons is pungent in his two short scenes with Palmer (and Simmons has worked with the Coens before, too--at least in The Ladykillers [2004], as the factotum/handyman Garth Pancake among a group of thieves, who always envisions the solution to a sudden problem with "Easiest thing in the world!"). In Burn, Simmons is alert and pithy in performing his role (and shows part of why the film got an R rating--his use of the term clusterfrig [not the exact word] to describe in thumbnail fashion what tragedies have befallen the group of Cox, Pfarrer, Litzke, and others). Simmons is a solid character actor, having done such side-character work as the bombastic newspaper editor in the Sam Raimi-directed Spider-Man films. He is somewhat like the actor Mort Mills was in the 1950s-60s; Mills played the roadside cop in Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), the assistant D.A. in Welles' Touch of Evil (1958), and the fake-farmer/government agent in Hitchcock's Torn Curtain (1966). Mills was a flavorful small-part player in major movies--not leading-man material, but memorable in his roles. Simmons is the same way today. And he isn't entirely picky about his choice of acting work. Lately, along with all else, he has played a sort of nondescript manager in TV commercials for an insurance company.

Amusing details about the legal profession

If you thought I was, actually I’m not going to remark much on the aspects of the legal profession that are vividly portrayed in this film (how do you like the weaselly private investigator whom Harry tackles, who works for the fictional law firm of [phonetic spelling] Tuckman Marsh Halperin and Rodino?), I don’t need to. For further information on that area of detail for this movie, see my blog entry of March 14, “Served. Witnessed. Have a Nice Day: The Coen brothers’ edifying portrayal of practicing lawyers in their movies, Part 1 of 2.” (You can also find a sort of “director’s dossier” in this March entry.)

What you see in this film legal-world-wise are largely aspects of professional consultation; indeed, the use of lawyers (realistic in ways, comical in others) in Burn After Reading—for those who like this sort of thing—can be considered along with the more pitched and thoroughgoing satire of the legal profession in the Coens’ Intolerable Cruelty (2003), which I reviewed in my March 22 blog entry, and with the generally more respectful portrayals in A Serious Man.