Quendrith Johnson

By Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent

What do John Updike and Fran Lebowitz have in common? They both discovered James Thurber, American humorist, at age 10. You will find this out by watching James Thurber: The Life and Hard Times, directed by Adam Van Doren, released June 17 on iTunes (also for sale as DVDs) from First Run Features.

This visual non-guilty pleasure is teamed with co-incident releases, Top Hat & Tales: Harold Ross and the Making of The New Yorker (also directed by Van Doren), and Paul Bowles: The Cage Door is Always Open. The Cage Door (2013) is "a Film by Daniel Young," which underscores the fact that, along with the non-ironic Monty-Pythonesque collages used as segues between Paul himself, Bernardo Bertolucci, Gore Vidal, and John Waters who speak about the "Sheltering Sky" author - this one is to be considered half art-film, half ersatz-drug-trip.

Put together back-to-back, Thurber's life intersects naturally with the Harold Ross story. While many Americans may have first encountered Thurber as author of "The 13 Clocks" fame, this Ohio native was instrumental in shaping the tone and tenor of that high brow glossy which debuted on Feb. 21, 1925 as 'The New Yorker.' He along with E.B. White, often mistaken for "just" the author of "Charlotte's Web," along with Thurber were drafted into service by a Colorado high school drop-out by the name of Harold Ross, who first introduced the Top Hat, Monocle, and Butterfly images that put this magazine front and center as the voice of The Jazz Age.

Ross is shown mugging for the camera in vintage footage, raking a hand through the pre-Brian Grazer stand-up hairdo, and generally looking like a literary bulldog. In the proverbial Beginning, Ross started with nothing, moneywise, shook down a few friends, then browbeat his close friends into writing for free based on the premise that New York was the sophisticated Center of the Universe. And he got away with it. All this is gorgeously narrated by Stanley Tucci, who could easily pass for the voice of a literary god - he does it that well.

Although the Thurber and Ross documentaries are just shy of an hour (and dated at the start of 2000), they bear careful consideration. Not only for the vintage footage of New York, The Jazz Age, and all of the authors involved, but for the virtual Making of the Metropolis in America. John Updike, David Remnick (New Yorker Editor since 1998), Charles "Chas" Addams of the pre-trendy goth cartoon fame, current cartoonist Roz Chast, Snoopy's Charles Schultz (late of "The Peanuts"), and Roy Blount Jr., are a handful of the treats included here. Indeed, the greatest covers are shown and one can't help but flash back on the exceptional cartoons that define the New Yorker even today, (e.g.; Chas Addams' Witch in a Hardware Store who buys a broom, and announces: 'You Needn't Wrap It, I'll Ride It Home.'). There is some duplication of footage between Van Doren's Thurber and Ross, but well worth the momentary deja vu.

As a chaser, Paul Bowles: The Cage Door is Always Open rockets this literary visual summer vacation nearly into the present. The Modernists have all expired, both in relevant references and shelf-life - apart from a few of the New Yorker's darlings (read: Hemingway). And along comes a spider, Paul Bowles, who split the glittery NYC scene in 1949 to mark out his territory in little known North Africa, specifically Tangier, Morocco. Bowles didn't pull one of those North African honorable stints like Rick (Humphrey Bogart) in Casablanca... no, he showed up to party, break the sexual sound barriers, and generally become a magnet for The Beats, The Hippies, and other wandering prodigals like Truman Capote and Gore Vidal. There was nothing "straight" about Bowles' habitation of this region beside the Straits of Gibraltar.

Director Young goes for broke in terms of trying to blow one's mind a la LSD, with footage of a dying pajama-clad Bowles in bed saying things like "Love... I assume you mean this as a positive, rather than a negative emotion," to Bernardo Bertolucci wise-cracking about latently insane wife Jane Bowles, on whom the central female character in "Sheltering Sky" is based, to an ancient and now-defanged Gore Vidal stroking his glaucoma-striken Tabby back in LA, remarking "I never liked Jane." The mystery as to whether Jane Bowles, who ended up in an asylum, was poisoned, is kicked around like Sunday football scores, which gives you a sense of the tone here...

Whew, the literary roller coaster from the high-minded ideals of the Modernists to the low-brow babble of the Counter Culture is enough to make one appreciate the privilege of having access to iTunes in the Digital Age.

John Waters is not-to-be-missed in Cage Door, along with a meandering but marvelous William Burroughs baritone, even a few words from Francis Bacon as he wears a journalist's hat in archival footage. All three DVD's, if you go beyond the VOD obsession, are available through First Run Features at http://www.firstrunfeatures.com, a distributor to be applauded for finding gems out there like these in the Pixelated Now.

James Thurber: The Life and Hard Times runs 57 mins., Top Hat & Tales: Harold Ross and the Making of the New Yorker, also directed by Adam Van Doren, runs 47 mins., and Paul Bowles: The Cage Door is Always Open runs feature-length at 87 mins. Again, binge watching recommended; Martinis optional.

[Author's Afterthought:  (Yes, Thurber did write "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," lately made into a 'meh' film by Ben Stiller. Mitty was one of his most famous short stories published in The New Yorker. Ben Stiller needs to take a break from damaging the Classics, lol.)

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