Happy Monday + "The Founder"

Happy Late Monday Night, Sweet Baby,

I hope you had a nice day and a good weekend. I didn't see you on FB, so you must have been working on something. I am glad you are getting to go to Germany and Iceland. That will be a blast, and also an adventure.  :)

Today was Yer Basic Workday, as is the case these days, but I did manage to get up to Aliso Canyon for a nice walk this afternoon.

Tonight I watched a movie called "The Founder" (2016) starring Michael Keaton. It's the story of Ray Kroc, the entrepreneur who turned McDonald's into a worldwide empire. The movie was directed by a guy named John Lee Hancock, who also did the story of Walt Disney in "Mr. Banks" a few years ago, and he has a feel for these kind of biopics about men who have had a huge impact on America, and the world. In Disney's case, he pretty much built his empire on his own ideas, albeit with help from his brother and people in the movie business. Ray Kroc, on the other hand, took the idea of someone else - The McDonald brothers - and capitalised on it. As shown in the movie, the brothers did want to make a buck (who doesn't?), but not at the expense of their vision of the restaurant. Above all, they prized quality control. And, they were perfectly happy with their one very successful restaurant in San Bernardino, which owed much of it's success to it's fast service. The McDonald brothers invented fast food, before that term meant what it does today.

When they entered into a partnership with milkshake machine salesman Kroc, everything changed. He was like a Donald Trump of his time, though not born into wealth like Trump. But Kroc was a similar materialist who believed success in life was all about "more of everything" : more money, more acquisition, more stature.

He wasn't near the bad guy Trump is, but he was pretty ruthless to the McDonald brothers who created the original restaurant. He eventually forced them out of their own business, for a comparatively paltry 2.7 million dollars. And he portrayed himself, for a while, as the founder of the chain, hence the title of the movie.

Now, it must be said that McDonald's is an institution in America, and all over the world. Speaking for myself, though I don't eat there very often nowdays due to trying to "eat right", I have many very happy childhood memories of going to the Sherman Way McDonald's, which in the 1960s still had the Golden Arches and white and red tile design. The movie fairly portrays the "family atmosphere" that the McDonald brothers wanted to create and that Kroc did preserve after taking over. Regardless how one feels about the food, it is true that McDonald's represents the Icon Of Comfort In American Family Values in the same way as Disneyland and Coca-Cola. It takes us back to a time when families spent time together, or at least more than they seem to do today, and it also represents all that is Clean-Cut about America, the idealised vision of the country in the 1950s. And in that way, everyone has fond memories of McDonalds, as an Institution Of Nostalgia. So Ray Kroc wasn't all bad, and the movie does not portray him as such. But he was ruthless as a businessman, perhaps because he got such a late start. Prior to meeting the McDonalds and discovering their restaurant, he had been busting his butt as a 52 year old traveling salesman, of the milkshake machines that would wind up changing his life. But he was a materialist at heart, and that part of his personality came out with a vengeance once he had a taste of financial success.

Walt Disney was driven, too, and far more than Kroc. But Disney seemed truly to want to make people happy with his creations. Kroc did too - he wanted McDonald's (of which every creative idea was originally thought of by the brothers) to be enjoyed by all Americans and people in other countries too, and he wanted it to be clean and neat and wholesome, but more than anything he wanted the money, power and success it conferred on him personally. Unlike Walt Disney, Ray Kroc was an egomaniac. His wife Joan was pretty cool, though, and when she died she left a bulk of their fortune to various charities including NPR.

Michael Keaton is great as always in the lead role. "The Founder" is quite good for what it is, a true story of how a gigantic corporation was created by a very driven man in the days when things were wide open in America.

That's all for tonight. See you in the morning. I Love You.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)