You should have been born in August.

Seinfeld

2.11: The Heart Attack

The Premise

Admitted to hospital with a suspected heart attack, George is semi-relieved to discover it’s just his tonsils acting up; they’ve grown back. Kramer’s suggestion of seeking relief through alternative medicine appeals to a budget-conscious George.

Observational

Larry Charles comes up trumps again. This starts out as a simple case of George being a hypochondriac but, with Charles’ anarchic sensibilities brought to bear, transforms into a poke at healthcare from all angles. Indeed, its great strength is how suited the main characters are to the different positions they are required to adopt on the subject.

Charles scripts are often distinctive for latiching onto Kramer to float non-mainstream thought. Charles isn’t necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with a topic; he’s simply recognising the comic mileage he can get out of it. So Kramer, whose often unreconsituted counterculture leanings maroon him two decades from home, can espouse what he sees as the dangers of modern medicine (“Get out right now! They’ll kill you in here!”), while the highly conservative Jerry is unremittingly dismissive of the quackery of alternative healer Tor Eckman (“And you’re not a doctor, but you play one in real life”; a rare example of the show accessing a character’s interior monologue).

It might seem that Jerry is proved right; George’s remedy resolutely fails (Tor turns George bluish purple, and fails to cure his tonsillitis) and he pays the price for being a cheapskate. But Jerry is as gullible as everyone else deep down (“You really think I’m eating too much dairy?” he responds to Tor’s diagnosis). And, while Jerry and George are suffering whiplash, Kramer has made full recovery (“Kramer went to see Eckman. He feels all better already”). Right in the middle is George. He is completely impartial with regard to alternative therapies, as long as they aren’t expensive; it’s another nice twist that the most materialist character buys into hippy remedies out of parsimoniousness.

George repeatedly gets short shrift from Jerry (“Why can’t I have a heart attack? I’m allowed”), culminating in the comedian’s mock smothering of his stricken friend (by this point he knows George has the all clear, but George is in the dark).

George: Just take the pillow and put it over my face.

Jerry: What, kind of like this?

(Elaine enters, startled.)

Elaine: Jerry!

Jerry: (Pretending to be caught in the act) Elaine… What are you doing here?

George’s reaction to the imminent diagnosis is priceless (“Oh, God. Mummy!”) but his relief on getting good news is predictably short-lived (“I completely skipped healthy adulthood”). Only George’s tonsils would grow back (and he didn’t even get some ice cream when he first had them out).

The big guest star of the episode is Stephen Tobolowsky. Except this was in his pre-Groundhog Dayera, when he was just beginning to get a foothold in movies with a succession of variable supporting turns (Bird on a Wire?) He’s great, but then it’s fair to say he has a gift of a part. When Kramer first mentions his herbalist friend (“He’s holistic”), Jerry expresses surprise that he’s out of prison, but presumably he knows him by hearsay rather than direct contact (“See, the medical establishment, they tried to frame him. He’s a rebel”). His stream of random advice is the highly eccentric, as he instructs George to wash only in cold water (“Can it be lukewarm?”)

Elaine’s date, or “Doctor Tongue” as she ends up calling him, is no less certifiable. Ever superficial, he catches her eye when he’s tending to George (Louise-Dreyfus’ giddy schoolgirl antics see them getting in each other’s way) but it soon turns sour on their date when he holds her tongue and holds forth on the organ’s wonders. By which time Elaine is thoroughly put-off (“A kiss? With the tongue? I don’t think so”).

The ambulance scene is possibly a bit too broad and indelicate a means of getting to the final scene. It’s amusing, but Seinfeld usually isn’t at its best when it does “action”.

The Heart Attackis also notable for the first mention of Kramer’s friend Bob Sacamano, who went in to hospital for routine surgery (a hernia operation) that was botched. Now he sits in the corner of a room intoning “My name is Bob!” Kramer is even more unhelpful than Jerry regarding George’s fears; completely oblivious, he brings a meal to George’s room and sits at the end of the bed like he’s watching him on TV.

Larry David also makes an appearance; he’s in some sci-fi cheapie on TV dressed in silver foil, going on about the end of the world (“flaming globes!”). Jerry awakes laughing in the middle of the night and jots down an idea he then finds illegible; when he discovers it was “Flaming globes of Sigmund” he is very disappointed. “That’s not funny”; except that it is. Very.

Quotable

Larry David: The planet’s on fire! It is just as you prophesised! The planets of our solar system are incinerating, Sigmund, like flaming globes!

George: Why can’t I have a heart attack? I’m allowed.

George: There’s nothing wrong with me?

Doctor: Well, I wouldn’t go that far.

George: Lupus? Is it lupus?

Doctor: And when you wake up, you can have some ice cream.

George: Yeah, that’s what they told me the last time.

Kramer: Get out right now! They’ll kill you in here!

Kramer: The next thing you know, you’ve got a hose coming out of your chest attached to a piece of luggage!

George: Oh, yeah. Holisitc. That’s what I need. That’s the answer.

Tor: You should have been born in August.

Elaine: I’m sorry, I can’t stay long. I don’t want to run into Doctor Tongue.

Verdict:

Your Mickey Mouse is one big stupid dope!

Enemy Mine (1985) (SPOILERS) The essential dynamic of Enemy Mine – sworn enemies overcome their differences to become firm friends – was a well-ploughed one when it was made, such that it led to TV Tropes assuming, since edited, that it took its title from an existing phrase (Barry Longyear, author of the 1979 novella, made it up, inspired by the 1961 David Niven film The Best of Enemies ). The Film Yearbook Volume 5 opined that that Wolfgang Petersen’s picture “ lacks the gritty sauciness of Hell in the Pacific”; John Boorman’s WWII film stranded Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune on a desert island and had them first duking it out before becoming reluctant bedfellows. Perhaps germanely, both movies were box office flops.

If I do nothing else, I will convince them that Herbert Stempel knows what won the goddam Academy Award for Best goddam Picture of 1955. That’s what I’m going to accomplish.

Quiz Show (1994) (SPOILERS) Quiz Show perfectly encapsulates a certain brand of Best Picture nominee: the staid, respectable, diligent historical episode, a morality tale in response to which the Academy can nod their heads approvingly and discerningly, feeding as it does their own vainglorious self-image about how times and attitudes have changed, in part thanks to their own virtuousness. Robert Redford’s film about the 1950s Twenty-One quiz show scandals is immaculately made, boasts a notable cast and is guided by a strong screenplay from Paul Attanasio (who, on television, had just created the seminal Homicide: Life on the Streets ), but it lacks that something extra that pushes it into truly memorable territory.

Other monks will meet their deaths here. And they too will have blackened fingers. And blackened tongues.

The Name of the Rose (1986) (SPOILERS) Umberto Eco wasn’t awfully impressed by Jean Jacques-Annaud’s adaptation of his novel – or “ palimpsest of Umberto Eco’s novel ” as the opening titles announce – to the extent that he nixed further movie versions of his work. Later, he amended that view, calling it “ a nice movie ”. He also, for balance, labelled The Name of the Rose his worst novel – “ I hate this book and I hope you hate it too ”. Essentially, he was begrudging its renown at the expense of his later “ superior ” novels. I didn’t hate the novel, although I do prefer the movie, probably because I saw it first and it was everything I wanted from a medieval Sherlock Holmes movie set in a monastery and devoted to forbidden books, knowledge and opinions.

Say hello to the Scream Extractor.

Monsters, Inc. (2001) (SPOILERS) I was never the greatest fan of Monsters, Inc. , even before charges began to be levelled regarding its “true” subtext. I didn’t much care for the characters, and I particularly didn’t like the way Pixar’s directors injected their own parenting/ childhood nostalgia into their plots. Something that just seems to go on with their fare ad infinitum. Which means the Pixars I preferred tended to be the Brad Bird ones. You know, the alleged objectivist. Now, though, we learn Pixar has always been about the adrenochrome, so there’s no going back…

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The Matrix (1999) (SPOILERS) Twenty years on, and the articles are on the defining nature of The Matrix are piling up, most of them touching on how its world has become a reality, or maybe always was one. At the time, its premise was engaging enough, but it was the sum total of the package that cast a spell – the bullet time, the fashions, the soundtrack, the comic book-as-live-action framing and styling – not to mention it being probably the first movie to embrace and reflect the burgeoning Internet ( Hackers doesn’t really count), and subsequently to really ride the crest of the DVD boom wave. And now? Now it’s still really, really good.

All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies.

Watership Down (1978) (SPOILERS) I only read Watership Down recently, despite having loved the film from the first, and I was immediately impressed with how faithful, albeit inevitably compacted, Martin Rosen’s adaptation is. It manages to translate the lyrical, mythic and metaphysical qualities of Richard Adams’ novel without succumbing to dumbing down or the urge to cater for a broader or younger audience. It may be true that parents are the ones who get most concerned over the more disturbing elements of the picture but, given the maturity of the content, it remains a surprise that, as with 2001: A Space Odyssey (which may on the face of it seem like an odd bedfellow), this doesn’t garner a PG certificate. As the makers noted, Watership Down is at least in part an Exodus story, but the biblical implications extend beyond Hazel merely leading his fluffle to the titular promised land. There is a prevalent spiritual dimension to this rabbit universe, one very much

Piece by piece, the camel enters the couscous.

The Forgiven (2021) (SPOILERS) By this point, the differences between filmmaker John Michael McDonagh and his younger brother, filmmaker and playwright Martin McDonagh, are fairly clearly established. Both wear badges of irreverence and provocation in their writing, and a willingness to tackle – or take pot-shots – at bigger issues, ones that may find them dangling their toes in hot water. But Martin receives the lion’s share of the critical attention, while John is generally recognised as the slightly lesser light. Sure, some might mistake Seven Psychopaths for a John movie, and Calvary for a Martin one, but there’s a more flagrant sense of attention seeking in John’s work, and concomitantly less substance. The Forgiven is clearly aiming more in the expressly substantial vein of John’s earlier Calvary, but it ultimately bears the same kind of issues in delivery.

In a few moments, you will have an experience that will seem completely real. It will be the result of your subconscious fears transformed into your conscious awareness.

Brainstorm (1983) (SPOILERS) Might Brainstorm have been the next big thing – a ground-breaking, game-changing cinematic spectacle that had as far reaching consequences as Star Wars (special effects) or Avatar (3D) – if only Douglas Trumbull had been allowed to persevere with his patented “Showscan” process (70mm film photographed and projected at 60 frames per second)? I suspect not; one only has to look at the not-so-far-removed experiment of Ang Lee with Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk , and how that went down like a bag of cold sick, to doubt that any innovation will necessarily catch on (although Trumbull at least had a narrative hinge on which to turn his “more real than real” imagery, whereas Lee’s pretty much boiled down to “because it was there”). Brainstorm ’s story is, though, like its title, possibly too cerebral, too much concerned with the consciousness and touting too little of the cloyingly affirmative that Bruce Rubin inevitably brings to his screenplays. T

Maybe the dingo ate your baby.

Seinfeld 2.9: The Stranded The Premise George and Elaine are stranded at a party in Long Island, with a disgruntled hostess.

He tasks me. He tasks me, and I shall have him.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) (SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek , but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan . That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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