I have one movie, "The Bunker"(1981), which I chose despite its 151 minute running time because I could watch it over two nights. I think it was a two-part TV special when it aired in 1981. Back then, my friend Alex at MGM asked me if I'd watched it, and when I said "no, how was it?" he said it was pretty good except for the English accents. I think he may have also said that it depended on what the history really was, because no one really knew what happened in that bunker, but mostly he thought it was good. The problem for me was that I was expecting the Pissed-Off Hitler who explodes in Youtube rants about AC-DC concerts, or Led Zeppelin guitar solos, or whatever anyone wants him to get mad about. I'd forgotten all about the other Hitler bunker movie called "Downfall"(2004), which I'd seen, and I'd forgotten about Bruno Ganz's performance. He was the pissed-off Hitler.
"The Bunker" starred Anthony Hopkins, who used a vaguely German-tinged accent, but mostly spoke British, as did all the other actors (though one used his natural Midwestern-American accent; a German general from Omaha, anyone?) but the main deal, to get back to our review, was that I was expecting a different movie, because I'd forgotten about "Downfall". I thought Anthony Hopkins was the Hitler of Youtube meme fame, and I kept waiting for that scene, and it never happened.
Also, the Goebbles was a New York Treat Williams kind of guy. The Martin Bormann was good, and Richard Jordan as Albert Schpeer (pron.) was the best actor in the movie, which also featured many competent Brits in supporting roles, but some looked too 1981, or too young.
One thing I remembered was how beautiful Susan Blakely was. Remember her? She played Eva Braun, and even did a marginal accent. Her IMDB says she was born on a German USAF base, so maybe that helped.
All in all it was as Alex said: a pretty good flick. Very slow, and focusing on the relationship of Schpeer (spelled Speer) and Hitler, and the inevitable arrival of the Bolshevik Russians, and in that regard you almost feel like the writers had some last-minute sympathy, not for the Nazis but for the world, because no one, not even the Germans, was worse than the commies, a horde who had no dignity nor style.
But the main thing about "The Bunker", and "Downfall", is that both may not be factually true. And that's because, as Alex said, no one really knows what happened in that bunker.
Hitler, like Charlie Chaplin before him, was, in part, an actor. And have you ever seen anyone with a Hitler mustache besides Chaplin or Ron Mael? No you haven't. But yeah, Hitler was a masterful actor. Watch his speeches, one of which ends "The Bunker", and then consider Josef Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda, which is also the name of a Sparks album, and then tell me what we know about history of any kind.
And remember who you're talking to when you tell me.
I'm not saying World War Two didn't happen, or that Hitler wasn't real, nor any of that mumbo jumbo. Puh-leeze. All I am saying is that only three people have ever had a Hitler mustache.
And one of them wrote an album called "Propaganda".
Well anyhow.
I am thinking of Pat, whose birthday would've been today. He would have been 65. He was my friend for 50 years, and yet I think I know him better today than I did just one year ago. My goodness, how time has flown. Pat, of course, introduced me to Lillian, who knew Lys, who lived on Newcastle Street very close to Pat's parents. Lil and Lys went to Corvallis High, which was not far from Moby Disc records on Ventura Boulevard. Maybe a couple of miles. The story, when I met Lil and Lys (and Malia and Luanne) at the Capitol Records swap meet, (and wait a minute, was Luanne there?) was that the girls knew Pat from Moby Disc, where they went after school to browse records. So what a coincidence then, eh? That Lys would turn out to live less than 100 yards from Pat's parents' house. I'm not sure if Pat lived there in October 1980. That was when I met Lil and Lys (and Malia and maybe Luanne), and I say that because Pat moved around a lot. Sometimes he lived with his folks, sometimes not, going way back to when he was 14. But I went to the Newcastle house several times, dating back to high school (1974-77) when I'd go over now and then to listen to a record. Pat always had the latest and greatest albums. I know he was living there between October 1980 and June 1981, because it was in that interim that the Famous Newcastle Street Tennis Match happened. On that day (I've been trying to nail down the exact date) I was at Pat's house, and I left, probably to go home. And I got in my car (my BMW 320i) and I started to drive south, but I only got about 50 feet down the street because the Famous Tennis Match was taking place.
I was forced to stop my car.
And was that when I learned that Lys lived on Newcastle? It may have been. I'm not sure I knew it before the tennis match.
Anyhow, I am pretty sure that Pat never mentioned to me that Lys lived on Newcastle, just yards from his parents' house, where he, too, may have lived in 1980 and '81. When he introduced Lil and Lys at the swap meet, he just said they were two chicks from a nearby high school who came into Moby Disc. That was how he knew them. He apparently did not know Lys as a neighbor from Newcastle, or he would've said so.
Doubly amazing, coincidence-wise, is that the Wilsons also lived on Newcastle Street, and even closer to Pat's house than Lys was, although they were all within half a football field of each other. I used to push Pearl down that street, just south of Lorne, and marvel at the juxtaposition of the houses. I'd say to Pearl, "There's Sean's house, and right there is Pat's house (on the other side) and.....(pushing her wheelchair a little farther)...here is where Lys used to live." Then I'd say "that's perfection, Pearl." I used that phrase a lot with her, not just on Newcastle Street but all day long. I loved being her caregiver and miss her every day.
I don't know, however, if the Wilsons lived on Newcastle in 1981. They might've, but I'm not sure. And Sean, of course, had his Box to Talk to Hitler.
I need to go on a Reseda walk real soon.
Happy Birthday, Pat. Thanks for the memories. And thanks for introducing me to Lil.
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