Yesterday’s Troubles, Part Two

I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to claim that what follows is a continuation of ‘Yesterday’s Troubles’ and I will provide a photograph as indirect evidence: Below, left is a selfie I did the ‘night before yesterday,’ and what I’m watching as the dank fog rolls in was the inspiration behind one of my as yet unmentioned ‘horrors’ of the following day, i.e., the bad wake up involving RV women, Lou’s comment, and Joe’s unwarranted and unwanted incoming email, among other things. (If you’re not following me here, press on anyway; I should get rolling in a minute; I’m just asking you to buy the synchronicities I perceive.) What I’m trying to do is work our way still deeper in our examination of cognitive dissonance and how it is in fact the vital element, the prime mover, in HTWRW.

Addendum: No one will ever do this better than Orwell in 1984. Although ‘doublethink’ is outright defined, brilliantly so, the nature of fiction is that it was best to ‘show,’ not ‘tell.’ Besides, a little updating with specific examples might be illuminating.

So look at the photo for a beat or two, maybe click it to see it full-sized. Can you make out what I’m watching on the laptop?… No, it’s blown out, but trust me it was an episode of the TV series ’24,’ and I think a couple posts ago I mentioned that ‘24’ and its creator has something to do with the worst aspect of that ‘Yesterday’ wake up. Remember? So far, so good?

Be advised that my contempt for ‘24’ is on two levels; I’ll just briefly touch on level one to get it out of the way. Level one is the story-telling level and has nothing to do with the more important level of TV as ‘culture creation’ and, indeed, outright mind control. The easiest way to say it: The needle on my contempt meter rises congruent with the level of contempt shown by the story-tellers for my intelligence.

I’ll be as brief as possible in giving an example of the above: Season six of ‘24’ — an episode of which I’m viewing there in the fog – rests on the following premise: The hero (and holy shit is he heroic!) of the series, Jack Bauer, has just spent two years being tortured in a Chinese concentration camp, after single-handedly saving the United States from nuclear annihilation, by (what else?) crazed Muslim terrorists. Then, suddenly, the U.S. government makes a prisoner swap deal to get Jack back from the hell hole. In about the first ten minutes we learn why: ‘Osama’s’ brother (I’m short-handing) tells our anti-terror forces that he will reveal his bro’s whereabouts if they hand over Jack so he can torture and kill him (this is actually made clear) as revenge for Jack’s having tortured to death his other brother.

That’s why Jack’s PTB got Jack sprung from the Chinese. Jack steps off the boat not knowing this. He must’ve figured the PTB’d merely dragged their feet (in making the trade) for the past two years. I remember addressing the screen as the scene unfolded: ‘Hey, Jack, we have good news and bad news! You’re back from Chinese torture but in a few minutes will be tortured then killed by the Arabs.’ This is what you get for saving the western world. Talk about good deeds going unpunished!

Jack, always the trooper, shrugs and says, ‘Okay. But can I shave first?’ (I’m not kidding!)

At one point, one of Jack’s buddies, as they prepare to hand Jack over to Osama’s brother, voices what I’d been wondering too: ‘I hope Osama’s brother tells us the truth about where Osama is, after they torture and kill Jack.’

Or how about this, which happens two or even three times per episode: The Muslim fanatic knows where the nuke is that’s about to go off and kill thousands. He won’t talk. Jack enters, shoots him in the leg; the bad guy instantly spills the address where the bomb is, to stop Jack from shooting his other leg. Jack runs out. The torture ends.

Why not give Jack a phony address?

This is what I mean by ‘insulting the viewers’ intelligence.’ ‘24’ utterly depends on your not being offended. (This is unrelated to the concept of ‘suspension of disbelief,’ which is fine, even in preposterous premises. Hey, you can have people interacting with cartoon characters (Who Killed Roger Rabbit) and all is well with ‘suspension of disbelief’, if you don’t violate the logic of the story. ‘24’ violates the logic of its story multiple times per episode, and in more ways than I thought existed.

It also takes to new heights the concept that high-tech/totalitarian surveillance on all of us is not only a very good thing, but has become the go-to solution when still another story-telling deus ex machina is needed. [For our purposes defined as: ‘…a person or thing (as in fiction or drama) that appears or is introduced suddenly and unexpectedly and provides a contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty.’ (my emphasis)

And worse, of course, is how ‘24’’s very premise is a perversion of reality itself (TV series as ‘soft’ mind-control is a subject too daunting to more than just touch on here). This is Joe’s ‘my truth is different from yours’ horse shit to some nth power that I won’t try to estimate.

But what about my ‘horror,’ and why it is related to this Joel Surnow fellow, the creator of ’24’? And what was I blabbing about when I voiced the fear that I could have become him? Why fear a past that didn’t happen? And anyway, the dude is apparently worth like 80 million bucks! There could be worse guys to ‘have become’!

But hold on. We need some dreaded backstory before dealing with that issue, the bedrock of… of not only ‘recent crapola,’ but the whole HTWRW magilla. Back in 1984 (an appropriate date), and I think it was early fall, I got a call from Michael Mann, who had optioned my first screenplay and with whom I’d collaborated on a science fiction story Michael was developing. He knew me as a writer and a person; my past as a high-flying pot smuggler appealed to him. (He’s well-known for working with real-life cops and crooks.) I’d written a script for Bob Chartoff (the Rocky franchise, Raging Bull, The Right Stuff, etc., etc.) that was in production; all was amazingly well at the time.

So Michael calls me with an emergency: An episode of his new series had just started production but which was halted when someone realized the script was unshootable; it was that bad. Michael knew of my disinterest in TV but persuaded me to fly down to Miami to ‘write it on the set.’ Normally, TV writers (as least for ‘location’ shows) don’t go anywhere near the actual production.

This sounded like fun so I went. And holy shit, it was fun! I’m tempted to describe the week I spent in Miami on the ‘Vice’ rewrite but the only anecdote relevant to our discussion is the following, the details of which I got from an unimpeachable source: After the wrap and I went home, the episode’s producer called Michael and told him I was useless and did not contribute anything to ‘Glades’ (which was about pot smuggling); I had run amok at the hotel, drunk and high on cocaine for the week I was there.

This didn’t sound right so Michael called the director, with whom I’d actually worked; I’d spent almost no time with the producer. The director told him that I’d ‘saved the episode’ and should be put on staff immediately. (Vanity Fair referred to ‘Glades’ as ‘…the best hour of TV so far this season.’ Plus, I had done a ‘page one’ rewrite while they were shooting. Not easy!)

But what was going on here and why is it relevant to our interests? What was going on was the producer had the hots for a production assistant who, as was immediately evident, preferred me. So he lied to Michael out of… spite? Okay, he’s a scumbag, but so what?

H-wood is a small and incestuous place (literally, come to think…), and had Michael not made the second call, what might have happened to me, career-wise?

There are turning points in one’s life, and in one’s career, and often we are not even aware of them as they blow by. My example is not perfect (it was early in my career and I had allies like Chartoff) but had a similar incident happened to someone like, say, Joel Surnow, and at one of those turning points… a show like ‘24’, not to mention Joel’s $80 million, very well might never have materialized.

Humility. Know what I mean? We all could use a little more. (Yeah, this anecdote was a bit of a sidebar.)

The upshot, though, was that Michael persuaded me to go on the ‘Vice’ staff (and for his following series, ‘Crime Story,’ as well), which is how I got to know Joel Surnow, another writer for the show. (According to his cv, ‘Vice’ was his breakthrough as a writer.)

We got along well and kept in close touch after ‘Vice.’ Close enough that when Joel got a deal to feature-produce a story he’d come up with he called me and proposed that I do the screenplay. During the few months of the write, we would hang out, have some fun, on one coast or the other. I’d bought a house at Montauk and at one point Joel came out and stayed with me; how many days I don’t recall but I did show him Montauk (as seen in the flick I linked) and, with my connections with the locals, introduced him to a babe he had a wild night with.

Okay, Allan, you may be thinking, we stuck with you for a lot of backstory. What’s the payoff?

Now, nearly 30 years later, Joel is one of the H-wood ‘elite’ and is apparently worth some $80 million. I’m wandering the countryside in an RV, no family and not even a home base to return to. Yet I’ve said, regarding Joel, words to the effect of ‘There but for the grace of God, go I.’

What kind of nonsense payoff is that?

The payoff is that the Joel Surnow I knew back in the 1980s is not the same human being that you will find living the elite life as the creator of the blockbuster TV series called ’24’; further, the ‘new’ Joel Surnow, I submit, is an example of the warping of reality humans do in order to remain whatever their version is of ‘a stand up guy.’ It’s my nightmare that I could be like that.

Specifics! I harp again and again on them, so let’s get specific. Although for those who harbor sufficient interest I recommend some Net searches (‘Joel Surnow’ will do), I’ll quote briefly from an interview in ‘Cigar Aficionado’:

‘Surnow is known more for talking about his conservative politics than his golf game. He is a good friend of Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News. Surnow once sarcastically described himself as a “right-wing nut job,” and the phrase, however inaccurate, was eagerly picked up by the media.’ (end quote)

I assure you that a ‘right-wing nut job’ is not the Joel Surnow I partied with at Montauk in the mid 80s and collaborated with on a failed movie project. In truth, and you can look into this via quote mining, the Joel Surnow I knew underwent a major change and it’s my hypothesis that it came about for the same reason that… Joe doesn’t ‘remember’ the $5k or Lou can ramble the crapola in his comment or the RV women could turn away from me or Walter could flip-flop on clear issues of visual fakery.

I’ll tell you something that’s key: ‘Success,’ however one defines it but mainly of the financial/power sort, is the issue upon which hinges the degree to which a person can lie to him/herself. Look at Walter, a tremendously successful photographer; and be advised that photography is competitive. When someone is as successful as Walter he does not want to hear that the arena, the very culture, within which he has become successful, is rotten, from the top down at least, or, more likely, to its very core.

And Surnow! Think about this: ‘24’ came out in 2002, right? Although given the relentless ‘9/11 Official Story’ propaganda it spews tempts one to judge it an up front ‘part of the plan,’ I’ll not go there. I’ll assume that Surnow, in his pitch to Fox, merely took advantage of the over all zeitgeist in capitalizing on the horror/fear the attacks generated, in getting the show’s green light. And I’ll assume that that Joel Surnow was the same guy I knew in the ‘80s. An okay guy and fun to hang with. Not ‘a right-wing nut job’ and elite propagandist.

But then what? Allow me the latitude of a little wandering here, in my desire to find some deeper truth. Okay?

In wondering how to explain myself over the past two days I watched all of Season 6 of the TV show called ‘Homeland.’ I did this partially because, in terms of story-telling, the show is as good as TV gets, but mostly I was curious about the ‘homework’ done by those behind the show; see, one of the creators of Homeland, Howard Gordon, was a co-creator (under Surnow) of ’24.’ On the surface it was hard to accept this, given the difference in the quality of the story-telling, but there you have it.

Point being, though, is that these writers, whether on a good show like ‘Homeland’ or a junk one like ’24,’ are professionals. And aside from fine-tuning their characters, general plot-lines, and so forth, they all do their homework.

Addendum: For an example of homework, check out this little clip I mined from Season 6 of Homeland. Classic limited hangout! I love the line, ‘I’ve heard of it in China and Russia but never here. [Hah!] If this is (CIA or NSA, etc.) they’re breaking about ten federal statutes.’ Pu-lease! This is NSA at its ‘best,’ as anyone who’s gone even one click deeper than CNN well knows. Even better, at some point in the show someone says that the clandestine boiler room is called the ‘OPC,’ but ‘no one seems to know what that means.’ Double hah!! Homework! Do a search for ‘Office of Policy Coordination’ to get the in-joke.

And as you all might remember, I’ve met one of the guys from the ‘pictured boiler room’ and who bragged that he had 300 Facebook identities. Talk about the tip of the ‘berg!

Addendum: In the above episode the ‘President Elect of the United States’ points out that it is ‘impossible for a Youtube video to get a million hits in the first 5 minutes after it appears.’ Bingo! Yes, the writers have done their homework all right. A few details are just… sorta… left out… it’s called ‘culture creation,’ and their show is part of it.

These writers indeed – and just like you and I — have done their homework. They… know… what we know… about HTWRW. Or do they? As Orwell so eloquently put it… ‘to know and not to know… to forget whatever was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again when it was needed… and to promptly forget it again.’

 Addendum: Please take a look at this: My interview with a ‘counter-terrorism expert’ I met in Mexico while making Water Time and which didn’t make the cut. What you see in this clip must be what goes on with the makers of shows like ‘24’ and ‘Homeland.’ Either that or they are consciously ‘part of the plan.’ I’d love to know which.

The writers of the shows in question, and remember that Joel Surnow is one of them, surely looked deeply into ‘The War on Terror’, and into 9/11 itself, as backstory. They ‘know’ it as well as Steve, from the video. But again, do they really know it? And if so, how do they live with themselves? Click here and let Georgie O explain.

But what bothered me the day of ‘Yesterday’s Troubles’ and what bothers me still, is this: Had my career as an H-wood writer gone a little different, could I have become one of those writers? I don’t well enough recall who I was twenty years ago, and how easily I might have been swayed by… the sort of success Joel Surnow et al. ‘enjoy.’ Thinking about it, I toss and turn and have bad wake ups.

‘What happened?’ is my question. Whence came the ‘moment’ of my turning in the direction I took? Joel certainly had his, and to remain his version of ‘a stand up guy’ he is now a ‘right-wing nutcase,’ a cigar puffing best friend of evil motherfuckers, and, let’s face it, a psychopathic liar who sees no problem in the perversion of history and the creation of a culture based upon it. Nope, not the Joel I knew. He reinvented himself so he could live with himself.

Am I the person I know, or think I know?

Let me wind this up with a quote I used in a recent post, and which is worth repeating:

“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” (Ron Suskind, NYTimes Magazine, Oct. 17, 2004, quoting Karl Rove).

Allan

I struggle to make you understand. How to better explain myself?

One of the books I’m currently reading is titled The Higgs Fake; How Particle Physicists Fooled the Nobel Committee. The author, Alexander Unzicker, is not a ‘successful’ physicist, not in the same sense as the winners of The Prize — for ‘discovering’ the Higgs boson, the so-called ‘God Particle.’ The latter are ‘the elite’ of physics, while Alexander is all but unknown. Yet if I were offered to ‘be’ a physicist, and given the choice of Nobel Winner or Alexander, I’d chose Alexander in a heartbeat. See, Alexander knows something profound about the underlying nature of reality, even if that ‘something’ is what is not true.

The book’s sub-title is somewhat misleading, in my opinion, and as a book writer myself (who has had conflicts with publishers) I’d bet Alexander had argued for a correctly nuanced one. See, the point of his book is not so much that the Nobel Committee was fooled, but that the Prize Winners had fooled themselves; a crucial difference (and likewise the point in contention in my analysis of the above H-wood writers).

There is no such ‘thing’ as the Higgs boson; the physicists/Nobel Committee are all in the same ‘doublethink’ swamped boat, so to speak. The same can be said of the whole general relativity/big bang/expanding space/black holes/etc. paradigm that has frozen mainstream physics/cosmology in ignorance for the past century. That the true PTB know this, there is no doubt. It’s a part of the ‘dumbing down’ of us ‘useless eaters’ and is reflected in the educational and ‘higher’ academic systems. ‘Real’ physics, the sort of physics that could give us zero point (free) energy and possibly allow us to fly to the stars, is and has been hidden from us all, and is a major source of the power held over us.

That I know this stuff is important to me, much more so than money or ‘success’ as culturally defined. If I have any ‘claim to fame,’ this is it. If my story can nudge you in the same direction… I’ll be pleased.