My First Torture Story

This week I was reading a back issue of The New Yorker and came across a Jack Handey piece on the "Shouts and Murmurs" page, which you can usually find somewhere between pages 25 and 48, or thereabouts. If you're a Jack Handey fan you're well acquainted with his eccentric sense of humor. 

The title alone had me glued to the page. As I read the opening lines it brought to mind a short story I'd written as a teen. It, too, was a story about torture. After you read Jack Handey's intro I will tell you about my story.

May 30, 2022
MY TORTURE IDEAS
BY JACK HANDEY

People think it's easy to come up with torture ideas. I wish! You can spend hours walking along a tranquil beach, or sitting in a meadow full of butterflies, and not come up with a single torture idea.

Some torture ideas will come to you out of the blue. Your mother and stepfather might be visiting, and suddenly a great torture idea will occur to you.

But most torture ideas come from just putting your nose to the grindstone--locking yourself in a small, dark room with a lamp shining in your face staring down at a pen and a blank piece of paper, until the ideas are forced out of you.  Eventually, whipping yourself, you become the proud author of hundreds of torture ideas--many with helpful illustrations. But here's the catch: nine out of ten ideas need to be thrown out. Biting snails?  Powerful suction cups? What was I thinking?

Read the rest here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/05/30/coming-up-with-torture-ideas-is-harder-than-you-think

* * * * 

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
CONTINUE YOU AT YOUR OWN RISK

I may have been 15 or so when I wrote my story involving torture. In fact, the torture scene was the primary feature of the story. There was little to no character development, and probably not even a description of what these gangsters looked like or talked like. (I was just a kid. I never got closer to a gangster than my TV, though on retrospect, maybe...)

In the scene a friend and I are being held captive by these bad dudes in suits. The location is sketchy but it is definitely inner city. We're in a room on about the fourth floor. The room has large windows on two walls (must have been a corner office) showing the scale of this concrete jungle. 

In the middle of the room stood a table and a large grey desk, industrial strength, while remaining insignificant.An assortment of tools and implements re-purposed for generating suffering lay strewn across the table.

The story is told in first person and I am on the receiving end of this scene. The manner in which they secured me in my chair is as follows. First, they pushed a small cable into my cheek and out the other cheek. Then the secured the ends of the cable (to pipes on the wall?) in such a way so as to keep me fairly immobile. The only way to escape would be to jerk my head back and rip my face apart.

Now that I think about it, the bad guys did have a motive. They were looking for information. Neither my friend nor I had a clue what they were looking for. We were the wrong guys. 

In my story one of the torture implements was a belt sander, which made a mess of my friend's toes and shins. Funny how I can't remember hardly any of the other horrors except when they strung up my friend by his tongue with a fishhook.

Again for the record, I was 15. 

Torture seems to have become more mainstream since that time. Dustin Hoffman's worst nightmare in Marathon Man; Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory; James Caan in Stephen King's Misery; George Clooney in Syriana. And who can forget Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, that scene in the warehouse with "Stuck in the Middle with You" as soundtrack. 

I once read that if you want to generate sympathy for your main character, hurt them. 

In my story, they went a little too far with my friend, whom they ultimately eviscerated, filling his torso with fast-drying concrete and dropping him into the East River. You know how New York gangsters are, always making bodies disappear in the East River. In New Jersey they leave them in the Great Swamp.

* * * 

More thoughts on this topic are marching into my head, but I'm going to turn the page. Enjoy your weekend. And stay away from people who think torture is fun. It's not.

Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Missing. A Movie Review

The formula comes in a variety of forms. Let's look at three variations on the theme.

SPOILER ALERT
I will be sharing info on all three films as if you've seen them.

The Man Who Knew Too Much

In this 1956 Hitchcock thriller, a doctor (Jimmy Stewart) and his wife, the popular singer Jo Conway McKenna (Doris Day) are traveling in Morocco with their young son. On a bus from Casablanca to Marrakesh they meet a Frenchman named Louis Bernard. Bernard is friendly but his answers to questions seem evasive, leaving Jo suspicious of the fellow. It's a quick setup, creating suspense in what appears to be an otherwise innocuous and casual situation.

As it turns out, there's much more going on than they realized. When Bernard is later stabbed in the back in the marketplace (literally, not figuratively as in office politics) he discloses a secret to Dr. McKenna that there's going to be an assassination attempt of a person of high importance. The stakes are raised when the McKenna's son is kidnapped so that they will not interfere with what has been planned. How ironic that the man of whom she'd been suspicious turned out to be the good guy, the couple into whose care she trusted her son were criminals.

Plot: Ordinary people inadvertently get caught up in a much bigger situation.
Quest: How find their son AND stop the assassination.
Clue: Ambrose Chappel.

Marathon Man

The movie's tagline blurb reads, "A graduate history student is unwittingly caught in the middle of an international conspiracy involving stolen diamonds, an exiled Nazi war criminal, and a rogue government agent."

Babe Levy (Dustin Hoffman) is a graduate student at Columbia University and also a marathon runner. His brother, he believes, is an oil company executive. He doesn't realize that his brother, Henry James Levy, is actually a government agent in a secret agency. The truth comes out when his brother comes to Babe's apartment to tell him something as he is dying from a knife wound. The brother dies before he can reveal anything.

Babe is interrogated by police and then some other people from the agency. No one knows whatever it was that his brother sought to share, yet the bad guys believe he knows more and are determined to find out what it was.

EdNote: There's a torture scene in this film that gave me nightmares that I have not watched it since. i.e. it's not my favorite movie but memorably represents the genre.

Plot: Ordinary person inadvertently caught up in a much bigger situation.
Quest: How to stay alive and find out what's really going on.
Clue: A key.

Missing

A powerful expose of America's dark doings in the September 1973 coup d'etat in Chile. An idealistic young writer disappears. Beth Horman, his wife (Sissy Spacek) and his dad Ed Horman (Jack Lemmon) have the same aim, but there's immense tension because Ed believes the Americans are the good guys, and Beth distrusts everything they say.

Plot: A young writer inadvertently crosses paths with the wrong people and later disappears.
Quest: Wife and father do all they can to learn where he is, whether he's alive or not.
Clues: Many, with red herrings everywhere.

* * * *
This is Greek director Costa-Gavras' American debut and it is spot on. The beauty of this film is that it weaves three points of view into one story and how the sparks fly as a result. The three perspectives are these. Beth is cynical about what our government claims and sees the lying clear as day. Ed believes the U.S. is a good country and that by trusting the authorities he will get to the bottom of this. The embassy authorities know they need to appear to be cooperating with Ed, but also believe the truth is irrelevant. It's not possible for them to be transparent about what they have been doing.

Before seeing this film I was familiar with Arlo Guthrie's heart-wrenching protest against what happened in Chile in a song titled Victor Jara which appeared on his Amigo album. (1976) Victor Jara Martinez was a teacher, poet, singer-songwriter and leftist political activist in Chile up until the coup that overthrew President Allende in September 1973. His protest songs were about peace and social justice, but his death at the hands of the U.S. sponsored Pinochet government was quite contrary to peaceful.

The song is essentially the story of Jara's life, from peasant to singer-songwriter who "fought for the people of Chile with his songs and his guitar." Each verse ends with "His hands were gentle, his hands were strong."

After several verses describing his support for working people and campaigning for Allende, there's a transition to a scene that is central in the film Missing, inside the stadium.

When Pinochet seized Chile they arrested Victor then –
They caged him in the stadium with 5000 frightened men

Costa-Gavras' treatment of the stadium is almost as if this structure were a character in the story. Early on we're in a car moving past it, and again we get a closer glimpse. Further into the story Ed is interviewing one of Beth and Charles' friends who had been arrested and taken to the stadium. Finally Ed and Beth obtain permission to go into the stadium to see if Charles is there. Ed comes face-to-face with the magnitude of the horror.

Amigo is one of my favorite albums by Arlo, so I don't even have to look up these lyrics.

The broke the bones in both his hand, beat him on the head, 
They tore him with electric wires and then they shot him dead.
His hands were gentle his hands were strong.

I share all this as setup for the story of Beth and Ed looking for Charles.

Charles Horman (John Shea)

Charles and Beth were dreamers of sorts, like many of us when we were young idealists in the 60s and early 70s. They were looking for a better world. Charles was writing for a controversial newspaper. addressing issues.

After the military overthrow and martial law there was an intense fear instilled in the city along with curfews, shootings in the streets and thousands being arrested.

Charles was away from the capitol in another part of the countryside, Viña del Mar, where he encounters U.S. operatives staying at the same place he is. Seeing that he's an American they are very open with him about what they're doing, which is helping overthrow Allende in order to install a pro-U.S. government. Charlie asks too many questions and takes too many notes, and the end result is his later disappearance. He was another man who knew too much.

Beth and Ed, seeking truth.

His father flies to Santiago as soon as he learns his son is missing. He's a conservative Christian Scientist, and up till this moment never thought much of what his liberal son and daughter-in-law were doing.

This is what makes it such a great film. Beth and Ed have a somewhat adversarial relationship at the beginning, but as the story unfolds Ed keeps running into U.S. Embassy b.s., he begins to have a change of heart. By the end of the film there's a mutual respect between Beth and her father-in-law as they learn what Beth suspected all along. Charlie was eliminated. He'd heard and seen too much.

It's heartbreaking, but an essential and important film revealing the manner in which our government views other nations, not as autonomous states but as pawns to be manipulated for our own ends.

In Seymour Hersh's incisive account of the Kissinger years, The Price of Power, we see the ugly side of the Nixon-Kissinger reign. Hersh spends more than forty pages debunking the Kissinger claim that what the CIA did in Chile was a U.S. victory.

Sadly, our heavy-handed involvement in Chile wasn't the first time our government assisted in the overthrow of a democratically elected president. (See my blog post Propaganda Revisited.)

As Ed experiences first-hand the atrocities taking place and the lies coming out of the mouths of our U.S. spokespersons, the real picture begins to come into focus. His determination becomes an Ariadne's thread that leads him out of the bureaucratic labyrinth.

In the end Ed respects Beth's courage, and Beth respects Ed's boldness, and active love for his son.

The film is based on a true story about one of many ugly chapters that have occurred during our lifetimes if you're a Boomer or beyond. After the generals seized Chile in 1973 the Constitution was suspended and dissidents kidnapped, tortured and killed. There were no free elections until 1990.

Kissinger's two volume memoir paints a picture of himself as a heroic figure. His fingerprints were all over this chapter from Chile's marred history.

An illuminating moment comes when Ed confronts the U.S. ambassador after learning what has really happened.

U.S. Ambassador: We're not involved, Mr Horman. Our position has been completely neutral.
Ed Horman: That is a bald face lie, sir. How can you say a thing like that when you have army colonels, you have naval engineers, they're all over Viña Del Mar!
U.S. Ambassador: Please sit down. Look, it's very obvious you're harbouring some misconception regarding our role here.
Ed Horman: What is your role here? Besides inducing a regime that murders thousands of human beings?
U.S. Ambassador: Let's level with each other, sir. If you hadn't been personally involved in this unfortunate incident, you'd be sitting at home complacent and more or less oblivious to all of this. This mission is pledged to protect American interests, our interests.
Ed Horman: Well, they're not mine.
U.S. Ambassador: There are over three thousand US firms doing business down here. And those are American interests. In other words, your interests. I am concerned with the preservation of a way of life.
Capt. Ray Tower, USN: And a damned good one.
Ed Horman: [Staring out the window] Maybe that's why there's nobody out there.
U.S. Ambassador: You can't have it both ways.

So, what is the correct response when one begins to see the light? Kissinger won. And our moral leadership of the free world took another hit.

No Country for Old Men

Cormac McCarthy's book No Country for Old Men is an incredible story so very well told. I listen to audio books and this one made me want to keep driving. I could hardly wait for the morrow's commute.

It's one of the classic thriller story lines. An ordinary person accidentally gets caught up in extraordinary circumstances. Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man is a nail-biter example of this genre. A Simple Plan, with Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton, is another.

And like any exceptional story, No Country has memorable characters. Llewelyn Moss is the unfortunate man who while hunting comes across a dope deal gone bad in the expansive back country of South Texas, and ends up with a satchel containing two million dollars in cash. There's a lesson here, though it is never stated as such: if you ever find a couple million dollars that are not yours, it's best to just stay out of it. Even though everyone involved in the transaction appears shot up and pretty much finished off, Moss knows that there will likely be others coming for the money. Little does he know how bad one of these others is.

NOTE: This Review Contains Spoilers

The guy who keeps you sitting straight up in your seat, and may keep you awake at night after, is Javier Bardem as Anton Chiguhr. Think sugar and chigger, and you have this pathological, human version of The Terminator, relentless in pursuit and seemingly indestructible. Nothing sweet about this man whose conscience is dead and determination unstoppable. Your heart rate increases every time he's on the screen.

No Country for Old Men has been receiving fabulous reviews. The Coen brothers (Fargo, O Brother, Where Art Thou?) wrote the screenplay and directed this first rate film. Like another current book adaptation, Charlie Wilson's War, there is much that has to be sifted out and only hinted at, lest we have something tiresome to watch after a while. The Coens were successful at creating the emotional tension that is generated by the book.

How did they do it? One noteworthy item is the total absence of a music soundtrack. They deserve high praise for avoiding the commercial temptation to make a music bed that would generate additional revenues afterward. Instead, they went the direct opposite way with this film. No music, no sound at all in the opening or closing credits. No fake strings section to tip viewers off that something bad is coming. The tension is created totally by the intersection of characters and circumstances. And it does get intense.

In terms of execution the film was flawless. Congrats to the Coens for their ability to bring everyone together and pull off this kind of feat.

But there were a number of problems for me with this film adaptation. First, Tommy Lee Jones as Sheriff Ed Tom Bell. I mean, I just couldn't get past that this was Tommy Lee Jones playing a caricature of himself. He has been in too many movies where he's this hard boiled veteran whose seen too much of life. It is through his eyes that we see the story unfold. As a central character he plays this role well, but I know him as an actor from The Fugitive to Men In Black and, gosh, couldn't we find anyone else to do this? Sorry, guys. That's how it was for me.

Second, some have criticized the short amount of time Woody Harrelson is onscreen. Yep. He is a more important character in the book. Like William Hurt's brief appearance in Syriana, it was not necessary to have such star power here. O.K., it maybe sells more tickets at the box office? I really liked this character in the book, and Harrelson does play Carson Wells the bounty hunter very well, but I just don't know.

I consider both of these criticisms relatively minor compared to my one major criticism. It simply ended too fast in too confusing of a manner. I think a tight, fast ending is usually great in films so that they do not drag on after the final rush. The problem here is a tight, fast and confusing ending. If I had not read the book, I would not have known what happened. And I am not talking about the scene where Chiguhr is hit by the car. I'm referring to the preceding homicides that end the cat-and-mouse drama.

The reason this is a problem is that, in my opinion, the last emotion one should have after this kind of a thrill ride is that same relief you get when the roller coaster slams back into the station and they unlatch the mechanisms that keep you in the car. Relief. Catch your breath. Instead of a big "wow," I left the theater perplexed and disappointed, with jumbled thoughts. Instead of being in awe at the way they created such a fabulous film, I walked out baffled, dampened by the lack of clarity in the films last scenes. This should not have happened.

I still think it a powerful film and worth seeing if you like this kind of story. It will put you on the edge of your seat.