quillnews

The Penquins Rock Oscar - beauty and brains!

As expected, Quillnews enjoyed the Oscars, the beautiful people were on display performing beautifully.  Jon Stewart turned out to an smoothie - very easy to take, and the overt lefty politics was confined to a perfectly defensible (if self-important and narcissistic) statement by Oscar winner George Clooney that he's glad to be part of a creative commuinity that historically has been "out of touch" but on the side of the moral right (HIV/AIDS, civil rights, artistic freedom) and not with the (Main Stream in touch?) which is in favor of discrimination, repression...?  I didn't quite get it.  But it has just the right touch of muddled arrogance of us vs. them the Trendy Hollywoodies love...  Still three awards to King Kong for sound, three to Geisha for art; three each to Crash and Brokeback Mountain for the big shot awards, and singletaries to Clooney, Reese Witherspoon, and that Philip Seymour Hoffman, a regular local guy about the Village, who my daugther seems to keep running into all the time. Well deserved all. (Nominees, Winners).  I've written about Syriana, so enough of that; and I am completely in the dark about the significance of the "Its hard out here for a pimp" side show. I just don't get it, any of it. But the one Oscar that was so well deserved and ran rings over all the heavy handed political and ecological polemics offered elsewhere in the nominee list was March of the Penguins, Quillnews favorite film hands down! It had everything: beauty, committment, contending with unforgiving natural forces, technical mastery and even enough haunting questions about our own human impact on this world to take a second look and wonder anew on climate change: what can we do to make it right?

Quillnews business report: no question, the big time Hollywood biz is breaking up. The TV audience for the 78th Oscar telecast apparently fell 8% from last year, with viewers reaching 38.8 million the second time since '87 it fell below 40 million, the other dip in '03 when the telecast came just as the beginning of the Iraq war. Demographics, market tastes, technology and prices are all having their impact.  Recall after WW2, 100% of movie revenue came from ticket sales in theaters; in 2003 it was 18%.  The rest is made on the back end - DVD, subsidiary sales, home use, etc.  Even the Oscar producers believed they were required to remind viewers that big time movies are best seen in the big time movie theaters!  That's all fine Oscar, but the people have moved on. Will Hollywood? Check out Slate, and Edward Jay Epstein's book The Big Picture.

Syriana & UAE: time for an LNG lesson

Cooler heads are beginning to take a deep breathe in the political belly flop the established forces of good government and free markets suffered with the disclosure that UAE's Dubai was on the verge of taking over management of some key American ports.  Good!  Let's all take a moment and toss out the rhetoric and heat.  Do as I had suggested we do after seeing Syriana, the George Clooney political oil terror thriller that's a lock to get an Oscar of some kind in a few weeks.

In this case, I would like to use this post as an excuse to post some relevant graphics dealing with the LNG business, with the map of the Persian Gulf, the Coastal emerities (kingdoms) that reside in the midst of Iran and Saudia Arabia. The UAE's emerities, a collection of kingdoms & city-states, is a powerhouse of economic heft, particularly Abu Dhabi, a massive petroleum producer.  The UAE is a great shopping location for the region, a bit of a play ground, and a well organized if somewhat isolated little place. It has been a strong ally of the US in the war on terror. To start our Quillnews geography lesson, what I intend to do is show that UAE is only one of the countries in that region that is very important to the US and the wider world, and everybody better get their thinking caps on tight to learn the new facts of life that Americans face in our world of global energy and interlocking corporate economies.

Take the small state of Qatar, which I believe is the kingdom in question in Syriana.  Qatar is a very small country, but a very big deal. (See PDF travelogue excerpt Actors in Arabia at left from a visit I made there in '94.) Offshore Qatar is a gas deposit that even ExxonMobil admits today is 900 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. (Corp., LNG) This is a truly astounding amount of gas - one of the largest such deposits in the world, and possessing enough hydrocarbon energy to power needy markets in Asia!  In other words, if this reserve can be delivered, China and India have a chance of being able to afford the energy that their populations -- 40% of humanity -- will require to keep from starving!  A few weeks ago, in ExxonMobil's publication The Lamp, the company announced that it and Qatar had cut a deal to expand the LNG facilities under construction there now by 70%, a new $14 billion, to build two new production trains, each capable of producing 7.8 million tons of LNG a year, bringing to a total of seven the production that has already been committed to bring to market by mid 2009.  (Look at just one camera angle on this collusus above).

What I recommend is that Quillnews readers check out these simple graphics from the ExxonMobil website and just take in the process that is involved in producing the gas, piping it to shore for treatment, and placement in LNG tankers. 

Then look at the map graphic showing the potential growth of this trade from Qatar to the wider world.  Does anyone believe that the US won't do whatever it takes to protect this trade and ensure that the rulers of this region keep reform underway and which would guarantee their people take part in sharing the booty that would flow to their region from this awesome trade?         

Oscars & Oil: Syriana, Bush’s SOTU & Political Winds

Bush 43's identification of the country's addiction to oil in the State of the Union Address came just as Syriana, the Hollywood oil thriller, was gathering Oscar nominations for George Clooney as best supporting actor, and Stephen Gaghan, for best original screenplay. (WB, Oscars)  Clearly, oil has a buzz in Media-ville!  For Quillnews, this symmetry of interest from the right and left is worth noting. The consensus that oil is linked to our national security has been building for a while. The political left has hammered petroleum and all its enablers as the font of all modern evil for decades.  But the political right in recent years has also isolated our oil use as a strategic vulnerability to the country's national security. Both have political views on what government must do. Bush 43's Advanced Energy Initiative in the SOTU is a common sense political response.  Quillnews view: let the political horse trading begin… (Briefing)  Quillnews readers won't be surprised if I don't join the cheer-leading on this new list of proposed government give-aways just yet.  I thought Cheney’s Energy report in May 2001 was balanced political response as well.  Unfortunately the VP’s report didn’t have enough “transparency” to suit DC’s process fetishists who couldn’t understand how it was possible to fashion an energy policy that didn’t include energy taxes, allocations, mandates and other government orders about who should do what and how much everybody should pay.  Personally, Quillnews will get down with spending billions of tax dollars on bat guano-boiler research, when the greens okay exploration drilling in ANWR and the outer continental shelf, offer up a few siting endorsements for fuels refineries, LNG terminals and nuke power plants. (Ha! As if...)

(Editor's aside:  On a personal note, I still don’t understand why Ted & the other rich swells on Cape Cod's coast think wind turbines off Martha’s Vineyard would be so bad. My son, while earning engineering and business degrees, slogged in the intern trenches in Sao Paolo, Brazil working in a factory making wind turbine blades for GE Wind. (Private pix at left).  Zowie.  Those awesome blades are the length of half a football field.) 

But rather than get deep into the switch-grass about which new energy technology will get the fed spendolas (Capital Hill and their K St. pals will work it out depending on the political spending skills of the favor seekers), this post wants to focus on the broader political dynamics at work.  Part of the Bush 43’s rhetorical initiative is being stimulated at least in part by a sophisticated political action campaign from Hollywood left, as well as a somewhat more sober-sided defense establishment initiative from hard line national security pros from the right.  From the right, Frank Gaffney, the hard-line chief of the Center for Security Policy has been working on our national security vulnerabilities associated with reliance on oil for some time. (NRO, NRO2, Gaffney book).  Fair enough.  I completely share Gaffney’s overriding concern for our country's security vulnerabiliities because of oil, but disagree with Gaffney’s conclusions on what to do about it. (His arguments: SAF, Letter, Energy Blueprint). My criticism of Gaffney’s approach is here: "Geo green puts the US in the Red."  Other Quillnews posts on geo-security and oil make my arguments. 

The anti-oil import crowd that is growing on the right is being supplemented on the left by a new political action crew that is based in Hollywood, and which is using socially-aware movies as the platform catalyst for internet driven political action.  Said another way, Hollywood is using new age web political action teams as part of their new business model to market their films to advance a political agenda.  The latest example of Syriana, a product of Time Warner’s Warner Bros. unit, and a companion for-profit business unit in a corporate media network that includes CNN, Time Magazine, et al, is the hot flick of the moment and it is being marketed under the darkly ominous legend: Everything is connected.   (Editor’s aside: as in all contemporary narratives in Media-ville, modern life can be explained by the movement of dark forces that are hidden behind veils of government and private sector secrets that all protect the princes of privilege against people…blah, blah, blah.  For details, read what passes for contemporary political news accounts prepared by the Sixties Dead Enders and their ilk who still control editing and production desks at the MSM's networks and big print shops.) 

George Clooney’s politics are well-known.  Despite my view he’s a political nutcake, his movie Syriana is still a terrific thriller.  One of his movie’s executive producers is a guy named Jeff Skoll, who made his gazillions as an early brain behind Ebay, and who today has his own Skoll Foundation to promote good works, which include giving former VP Gore a platform to show his power point presentation to audiences eager for some explanation of why, among other unsolved ills, the weather behaves so weird.  (Editor’s note: Gore’s explanation is that it’s all Bush 43’s fault!)  Skoll also has formed Participant Productions, which operates under the legend:  Movies have the power to motivate. You have the power to act.  This is a imaginative new technique to use the web to rally like-minded partisans together for political action.

Again, all fair enough.  But check out the partners on the political action campaign that Warner Bros. is using as part of Syriana’s marketing plan and which is being pushed by Skoll’s action network: The NRDC and the Sierra Club. (Here, here, here )  These groups may once have been marginally coherent, but today they operate as part of the anti-growth left, who along with moveon.org and PIRG et al, are funding the stupid and dishonest Exxpose Exxon campaign, whose main purpose is to demonize the oil industry and lobby against the use of oil anywhere all the time.  This crew works the political left to dominate policy debate in the Democratic Party.  The incoherence of their policy views – tax oil to discourage its use, spend government funds on hyper-expensive alternative energy production, and prevent use of coal, nuclear, LNG – is stunning.  The only independence this policy view would create an America that is independent of gainful employment, but which possesses staggering amounts of poverty. Only a media dominated by the like-minded anti-growth boobs would give this set of nincompoops any slack in the public square at all.  Still, their political clout in the public debate – at the moment – is so great the President of the United States believed he was compelled to give away $22 billion on, among other things, switch grass production, as part of his argument that the US has a duty to protect and defend freedom.   

Quillnews view: despite disappointment at the content of the oil and national security debate so far, this is all very good news: at least we are on the right subject. Oil is important -- Big time.  The world wants more and must use it wisely and well.  No fooling.  Free people want all they can get at the lowest possible price and have proven through history they will do whatever it takes to get it.  Regardless of politics, Syriana’s makers got that part right.

Syriana (cont.): Even Hollywood's Hummer drivers get it right...

It's a good movie too.  Your editor, as a former oil company soldier and all around buttinsky on pop culture, sees Syriana as, how shall we say, a "learning opportunity" for Quillnews readers.  George Clooney's hit film is rich indeed and created enough lingering questions I can't seem to let it alone.  If you read through the screenplay available at the Warner Bros. website, you can see that trims and edit cuts were obviously made (no doubt for time) that made the resulting feature everyone is seeing very hard to follow.  As mentioned in earlier posts, Quillnews likes this movie anyway, though a more complete understanding of what the moviemakers had in mind is aided by a cheat sheet, a close viewing or two, and probably will be enhanced by the director's cut DVD that will no doubt be marketed shortly that includes all the scenes edited by cutters working for studio suits who insist major releases fit the theater viewer's clock.  As an former oil company soldier who is savvy to a few of the issues featured in the film, I found it worth the effort.  After reading the script more closely, I have a few more observations around the characters of Prince Nasir (Alexander Siddig) and his American advisor Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon), and the "good guy" position that the screenplay has created for them and their points of view.  The killing of Nasir (along with Clooney's character) and Bryan's near-miss in the film's denounment creates the emotional power at the film's climax. The viewer is left with the belief that dark forces somehow manipulated by the all powerful oil companies, corrupt lobbyists and their henchmen in the CIA and US government are at fault. Hmmm. Setting aside any suspense film's requirement for the dramatic tension created by good guys and bad guys struggling in mysterious shadows, the good-guy positioning of Nasir and Bryan has a few weak spots, particularly when you consider the real-life terrain that Syriana's cleaver movie makers seek to illuminate.  Despite the positioning of Nasir as an enlightened and forward-thinking benefactor, I think if you placed this guy in real-life, he's actually acting like a spoiled ingrate whose petulence at his family's dysfunctions is causing him to do business deals that will hurt his people and waste their resources. Consider these three scenes:

A) In Scene 39, on page 27 -- The Emir, infirm and whose speech is slurred from a stroke, is shown signing a huge gas supply contract with Chinese oil executives and then reads a statement at the direction of his son, Prince Nasir. 

The Emir says: I am happy to welcome the Chinese to my country and optimistic you will not be nearly as greedy as the Americans.

B) In scene 89 on page 63 -- Prince Nasir is in Beirut speaking at a dedication ceremony for a Union of Arab Nations.   

Prince Nasir says: “We begin the process of empowering a new generation of Arabs with the skills and training necessary to succeed globally… our 13 point document is an agreement on principles calling for greater political freedom, good governance and transparency, advanced civil liberties and human rights, women’s rights and judicial reforms… However unlike Washington’s great Middle East initiative, we respect each country’s right to move at its own pace…”

C) In Scene 133 on page 89 -- Prince Nasir and his young American advisor Bryan discuss the Prince's vision for his Gulf emirite and his frustation with the US. 

Nasir says: “I studied at Oxford.  I have a PhD from Georgetown. I want to create a parliament. I want to give women the right to vote. I want an independent judiciary.  I want to start a new petroleum exchange in the Middle east and cut speculators out of the business. Why are the major oil exchanges in New York and London anyway. I’ll put all of our energy up for competitive bidding, I’ll pipe through Iran to Europe like you propose, I’ll ship to China, anything that achieves efficiency and maximizes profits for my people, profits which I’ll then use to rebuild my country.”

Bryan: “That’s great, that’s exactly what you should do.”

Nasir: “Exactly, except your President calls my father, says I’ve got unemployment in Texas, Kansas, Washington State.  One phone call later we’re stealing out of our social programs to buy overpriced airplanes.  We owed the Americans but we’ve repair that debt.  I accepted a Chinese bid, the highest bid. And suddenly I’m a terrorist.  I’m a Godless communist…” 

Now, what is being said and done here:

• Nasir is the older son in a family which derives its worldly position because of political decisions made 80 years before by British diplomats after winning a war that caused Britain and its allies millions of lives, and which caused the political hegemony that had ruled over Nasir's tribal homelands for centuries to collapse.
• The wealth that came to Nasir's family in the years hence came from the technologies, discoveries and economies largely created by the US and which today are secured by the military forces from the US, Britain and their allies who spend trillions on weapons and defense systems that keep this worldwide economic system secure and which also incidently guarantees that Nasir's family live in luxury and have more more wealth than all but a handful of human beings in history. 
• Despite the wealth and position that the British and American efforts have secured for his family and his people, Nasir's country remains a backward ruin because of their own social, cultural, and religious behaviors and because Nasir's family has been unwilling to change or reform their own dysfunctional ways. Still, Nasir gets his education in London and Washington and absorbs the values and beliefs of the obviously successful civilizations that are based there and asserts that he also wishes to create societies modeled on London and Washington in his own country...

But... in Syriana, Nasir calls the Americans "greedy" and awards a lucrative gas contract to Communist China, he says Washington's "great Middle East Initiative" (which Bush 43 launched after Sept 11 and which embodies the liberal values Nasir claims he holds dear and which real life site is here) does not respect his country's desire to "move at its own pace", and he whines that an American president even has the audacity to call his father every once in a while and ask that the Emir and his dependends cut back on the cavair, diamonds, Rolls Royce caravan tours, Riveria yachts cruises, Mayfair hotel stays and constant palace construction and renovations and that the Emir cut his US benefactors a bit market rhythm during an occasional domestic hardship stateside!  Hmmm.   

Okay, in the context of the movie, Nasir says for his decision to go with the Chinese, that the Americans called him a terrorist and a Godless communist and, we in the audience know, this is what led to Nasir's demise.  In real-life, of course, any real-life Nasir, were he as enlightened a benefactor the script positions him to be, would never be so stupid nor ungrateful to deliberately undermine US global interests, and upon whose protection and good will Nasir and his regime depend, by siding with China in a deliberate snub to the US. Not in this world. Sure, Nasir might cut a supply deal with China so they can buy some natural gas... so what?  China needs energy regardless, and gas they buy from Nasir is gas they don't buy someplace else. But for Nasir to turn down US technology and know-how for Chinese contractors and technicians who would actually construct and operate your energy infrastrure?  Hmmm. In exchange for what from China that Nasir can't already get merely by selling his gas?  What could China possibily have to trade that could equal what Nasir is now getting from the US and Britain?  Even the callow Bryan would tell Nasir to walk from that deal. Then again, maybe in Hollywood the default narrative bias against the US and its interests is so great they would blindly applaud a Nasir for this misguided act of "telling truth to power...", despite its mindless and suicidal narcisism. On the other hand, I still like the film. Syriana does get the main point right: when it comes to oil, the free people of the world won't let anything get between them and their fuel. Not even a handsome leading man. Even Hollywood Hummer drivers know that...  (Warner Bros., Script)

Syriana (cont.): No Roger, facts can be learned

As an unashamed fan of low-culture, Quillnews enjoyed watching overpaid make-believe artists indulge in their rituals of self-worship this week while tuned to the Golden Globes Awards. Lots of glitz, pretty bodies, handsome faces; as deep and nourishing as a hit of Reddi-Whip -- right out of the can. Watching with me was my daughter, Lee, a combo AFTRA member and MD, who is an honors graduate of the family educational curriculum known in some parts as the Collins College of Rock 'n' Roll Knowledge.  Lee can more than keep up with me on pop trivia and arcania, having learned that such specialized knowledge has no value at all except to enrich life's fun factor. Lee also appreciates her father's western chops as the author of God Dogs and knows I am a devotee of Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven. So she was psyched to see her favorite film this season, Brokeback Mountain, snare muchos kudos at the Globes ceremonies, and even be presented the best picture honor by Eastwood who, as Ang Lee said, is "the man himself." Tres cool, as such honors serve the people well, in a kind of pop culture-bending way.

Lee and I also agreed with the best supporting award to George Clooney for his work in Syriana, which we both saw a while back. We talked about that movie again. I noted that Roger Ebert has ranked it among the best of the year, and also wrote the following:

Syriana is a movie that suggests Congress can hold endless hearings about oil company profits and never discover the answer to anything, because the real story is so labyrinthine that no one -- not oil company executives, not Arab princes, not CIA spies, not traders in Geneva, understands the whole picture...  The movie explains the politics of oil by telling us to stop seeking an explanation. Just look at the behavior.

Lee read Ebert's remark and shook her head.  Having seen her father suit up as a oil company soldier much of her life, and accustomed to the vagaries, lingo, rhythms and nuances of the oil world, Lee found Ebert's observation wrong-headed.  "Just because the movie is confusing, doesn't mean the subject of oil has to be..."

Who am I to argue with that? She's my kid and she's right. Facts and history can be learned; the social, cultural and political dynamics of oil are more than knowable and are readily available to any observer of the public record who wishes to pay attention with an open mind.  One word of warning: the very last place to begin learning about the oil business and its impact on our world would be with Congressional hearings!  Ouch.  That crowd of public performers?  Forget it.  If recent performances are any indicator, what the people will get from that crew of show boats would be a preening, scripted demogoguery that today's journalists believe passes for congressional oversight in today's Media-ville.  Bizz.  Forget the Congressional hearings.  My vote would be to start with The Prize by Daniel Yergin, whose Pulitzer Prize winning history of the oil industry is a triumph of balance and insight, as is the PBS TV series based on Yergin's work. (For a more low-down personal account, I also am, of course, biased and recommend my own effort Just Business Just War).  In structuring any study of the oil industry and the modern world, I would also ensure that the lessons not be told from the standpoint of focusing on "oil company profits" as Ebert suggests.  This populist and largely political obsession with earnings is a complete diversion that does little but demonize the private sector in order to increase the public sector's role in energy production, but which unfortuantely reduces productivity, increases costs and causes prices to go up even higher.  Such corporate demonizing may have its uses, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking that ExxonMobil's earnings, for example, are somehow to blame.  Companies are merely temporary instruments by which we all -- everyone everywhere -- obtain the energy we want at prices we can afford.  But the organization and structure of these entities are irrelevant.  Companies come and companies go. And at the current rate of private sector demise, the world will soon realize that we were all better off with past corporate hegemony in oil, compared with the state alternatives in Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia et al. (WS, WSJ)  The core issue with oil remains the limited areas where it is located and the demand by people everywhere to get at it.  That demand for oil is growing and won't go away, and how that oil is obtained to satisfy that global demand is what the modern world of Syriana is all about.  Stay tuned... 

Munich: Upham asks "can't we all just get along..?"

One of the telling sub-plots in Steven Spielberg's brilliant "Saving Private Ryan" was the character, Cpl. Timothy Upham, played by actor Jeremy Davis (left).  The movie promo material back in '98 explained the sensitive writer Upham was a kind of stand in for Spielberg himself who wanted to inject some humanistic nuance into a war narrative that was so unrelievedly violent.  Upham's innocence, his unwillingness to confront the brutality of war and to attempt to impose civilized morality into an unforgiving conflict of life and death, was all very charming until Spielberg had the insight to show that Upham's sensibilities cost the life of an admirable soldier and thoroughly tough Jew in his squad, Pvt. Stanley Mellish, played by Adam Goldberg. The death of Mellish, the subsequent deaths of the characters played by Tom Sizemore and Tom Hanks, and Upham's somewhat cowardly, vengeful and too late shooting of the German killer was a dramtic counter-point in the movie's overall narrative, which brilliantly told of the bravery and brutality that were required to crush Nazi evil. On this one, Spielberg and his movie making crew nailed it.

Not so seven years later with Munich. This muddle of moralistic mush is so disappointing.  Rather than take the lesson that it was Upham's indecision and vaciliation that led to tragic consequences, Spielberg uses the ugly 1972 murder of Israeli Olymians in Munich by Palestinian assassins as a platform to ruminate on the perils to your soul and to your humanity of killing your enemy.  In considering the problems faced by the fictional Avner, well, maybe fighting back isn't worth it after all. Spielberg takes the Munich murders and Israeli counter-measures and like the unfortunate Rodney King laments: "Can't we all just get along..." Sure, Munich is brilliantly staged, filmed, edited, produced, written and acted. So what?  Spielberg and his production team are top technicians. But in this post Sept 11 era, when civilized free people are again confronted with an evil enemy, Spielberg the motion picture artist elevates Upham's moral vision again: "Oh whoa is me, I feel so deeply, and am so sensitive.  Violence is so awful and only leads to more violence and never really solves anything, and even worse it can cost you your soul..."

In the realms of civilized religion and moral philosophy, this view of violence is correct. Such sentiments of non-violence are a civilized vision of what humanity must seek and of a world that it is righteous to bring into being. But it is for precisely this reason that armies are not led by movie-makers with a poetic sensiblity about the perils of violence. No, a community turns its military affairs over to persons who know their job is to kill the enemy and to create the conditions for the community's security and survival.  Once the enemy is killed or neutralized, and your security is established, you can turn to mankind's other arts - politics, economics, science, technology, culture - and create the civilization you desire and where violence is outlawed, condemned and controlled. And in this secure world you can go to the movies to learn the lessons of civilization, and let your story-telling artists tell instructive narratives that reinforce your civilization.

But Spielberg and his legions of admirers shouldn't let his movie-making genius get ahead of what life on the earth requires. He and his Hollywood partners have to remember: the billion and a half dollars that they just made selling their movie DreamWorks empire to Viacom to rescue Paramount's bad balance sheet and entertainment mojo, was only made possible because a protected, secure civil society exists so people can go to theaters freely and can purchase all the fantasy factory technical goodies.  Their fortunes exist because there are other persons who are willing to train and to kill the people who have murdered their countryman, have declared they want to destroy our civilization and who will succeed until they are themselves killed. Tom Hanks' character, the heroic Capt Miller in "...Private Ryan" knew that lesson.  Like other soldiers in all our wars, Hanks' fictional character was willing to make the sacrifice necessary to ensure the survival of the innoncent he loved. As the fictional Capt. Miller instructed Matt Damon's Ryan with his dying breath: "Earn this." In Munich, I wish Spielberg's fantasy factory hands has worried less about Avner's particular inner moral chemistry, and had spent their creative talents instead asking if today's generation has earned the sacrifice of Capt Miller and his commrades?  Do we today have the sense of duty to recognize that defeating this enemy of Islamofascists will take relentless and unforgiving doing every bit as awful as any war before?  Given the real world's mushy response to the '72 Munich massacre and all the evil consequences that have resulted and which are still being played out today, that is a better question that the moral destiny and feelings of a Mossad hit man.  That would be a better use of Spielberg's time and audience consideration, not Upham's worldview.  Once we are victorious and the enemy destroyed, we can ruminate about it all in our creative arts and, well, get rich selling stories. (Links: Saving Private Ryan, Munich, Yahoo, NRO, NYT, Slate) (Update: Krauthammer's review nailed the movie's problem.)

Syriana: A cool movie, but off just so…

Quillnews was all set to think the worst about Syriana, the new thriller flick set in the shadowy world of Middle East politics, big oil and DC influence peddlars. Producer George Clooney's politics are well known, and this particular pic, written and directed by current hottie Stephen Gagnan, just off a screenwriting Oscar in '00 for Traffic, had all the earmarks of a typical Hollywood production from the we-are-all-so-much-smarter-and-more-moral-than-you-are set. But I was wrong.  It's pretty good.  Not because it makes any particular sense or has a strong story line that is easy to follow and summarize. Nope. It's an edgy Hollywood film all right, and just a bit too murky for its own good, actually; in the same way that Roger Altman flicks are such a pain because he works the sound so you can never quite hear what the characters are saying.  In the case of Syriana, it's ambitious narrative threads are so sparcely drawn, and so tangentially related, you need multiple viewings or a cheat sheet to keep up. (WB Promo, VDH, Max Boot, Yahoo, Roger Ebert)

No it isn't perfect. But what I like is the way that the movie weaves together otherwise baffling threads of modern life - oil, national security, politics, lobbying and government policy, interdependent global markets, human ambition, greed, terrorism - into one complicated knot and asks the viewer to make sense of it all and decide what is right and what should be done.  On that level, Syriana nails it.  Clooney and all the actors are terrific.  No heavy handed moralizing here, just a neat look-see at a world that rarely gets serious treatment in pop culture.  Some of the lines are great.

Damon's character to his oil shiek boss: "You want to know what the business world thinks of you? We think a hundred years ago you were living out here in tents in the desert chopping each others head's off, and that's exactly where you're gonna be in another hundred. So yes, on behalf of my firm, I accept your money."

Nelson's over-the-top DC bagman: "What is a sovereign nation, but a collective of greed run by one individual? Legitimized gangsterism on a global basis that has no more validity than an agreement between the Crips and the Bloods!... Corruption charges?  Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulation. That’s Milton Friedman.  He got a goddamn Nobel prize.  We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it."

Cool. But, over the top, a la Michael Douglas "greed is good" speech in Oliver Stone's Wall Street. Gagnan wrote a bunch of those cleaver lines. Plummer’s all-knowing fixer has a few, but Clooney's character calls him on it, in effect dismissing this glib DC weasel, saying: "I bet you impress your clients with lines like that..."  Then without batting an eye, Clooney's CIA op cooly lays out how he will kill Plummer's wife and kids if he doesn't do what he says.  Hmmm.  DC business as usual? Hollywood makes DC looks like a tough town!  Let's not forget: this is a movie.  It's story and characters are made up by a guy who is constructing a dramatic narrative for actors to play out in front of a camera lens.  With the right lighting, sound, edit cuts and tempo these flickering images of light and sound will have an emotional power that is the desire of the motion picture art.  Perhaps there may be some truth in the emotional power of the story, but the story is make-believe.  With that said as a caveat, I'd like to make a few serious observations about the film. Quillnews readers know that I was an oil company soldier, and I worked for years on oil projects and political issues just like those explored in this Hollywood cloak-and-dagger.  Food for thought:

1. Qatar:  The small Gulf emirate portrayed in the film reminded me of Qatar, whose giant North Gas field was a target of industry for years and whose emir was a dodderer, and whose two sons were rivals and couldn't stand each other. One eventually took over in a coup.  Mobil eventually got the contract to lead development of the North Field and link the emirate with the Asian LNG markets.  One of the reasons Mobil was taken over by Exxon was that the Qatar gas fields couldn't be developed soon enough to generate the income to keep Mobil independent. This LNG project in Qatar today is a massive economic and industrial collusus that is vital to the economies of East Asia.  Qatar is also regional home to the US military forces formerly located in Saudi Arabia, and HQ for the US coalition's military operations.that provide security of the world's oil supplies.  Qatar is very small but very important country.  Free people need to get smarter faster about how important that country is and why. 
2. Tenquiz: Mobil was the "smaller" company that got the 10% interest in the Tenguiz field in Kazakhstan in the early 1990s; that contract folded into Exxon after the merger in 1999. But Chevron also had a hunk of that Kazak field and hired all kinds of DC lawyers to figure out how to prevent Mobil from moving in on the Kazak field they had worked for years to get from the now-defunct USSR.
3. Characters & Personalities:  Some of the characters are familiar oil patch archetypes. The Texas wildcatter portrayed by Chris Cooper of Killen is spot on.  He’s just the portrait of the upstream exploration and producing guys I worked with for years. Plain spoken, obscene, unpretentious, contemptuous of mindless rules designed to cost money and prevent oil and gas development, and more than prepared to say so in a meeting with corporate stuffed shirts and puffed-up lawyers, who, after all, are nothing more than hired hands he's paying.  Peter Gerety nailed the portly chairman of Connex; he could have been Mobil's Allen Murray easy; same relaxed charm, same cool blue eyes.  Plummer's white shoe lawyer had just the right amount of snotty arrogance that passes for a professional polish in some high end DC law firm lobby shops.  No executive in industry trusts guys like this, even though they pay them millions for their help in managing a government with more ADHD hype artists, shape shifters, taxers and buttinskies than would ever be tolerated in the private sector.  Damon's financial wizard and Wright’s ambitious lawyer are well-known head office players as advisers and kitbzers.  What was not explored in depth was the inner life and pressures of the principle decision makers themselves – the guys who were responsible to make the decisions.  Too bad.  The closest we came was Cooper and Gerety who were unexplored, the "good" prince who stupidly thougth he could give an oil infrasructure job to the Chinese (Ha, as if!) and Plummer who was a hired-hand weasel and easy over the top villain. And what makes William Hurt so smart, or Clooney so dim? Where was the National Security Council and its task forces on Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq etc etc, and an awareness that all their work and efforts (and which would be carried out by CIA and Clooney) are explained to appropriate members of Congress, coordinated within various agencies and departments of the federal bureaucracy and approved by the NSC and the President, even though unscrupulous manipulators like Plummer's lawyer would tell their clients they are owed millions because they got everybody to do it?  (Ha, as if!)  Besides, not much stays hidden in this world.  (WB promo)
4. Iran: The business coalition in Syriana called the Committee to Liberate Iran (CLI), has a shadowy ill-defined back story presence, where every industry player and lawyer is a member and this membership is all somehow meant to explain what is happening in the story.  The idea in Syriana apparently is that getting access to oil in Iran is an industry goal, even to a point where in a political environment that takes place after Sept 11 and after Saddam’s demise, the nasty DC circuit can still brow beat Cooney’s CIA guy up because he is not sufficiently ready to see that it is US policy to open up to Iran…  Bizz.  Exactly wrong.  After Sept 11, Iran was terra no-go period for the oil industry.  In the wake of Sept 11, no corporate executive in the US would invest a nickel of shareholder money on an oil project in Iran, despite the dream of any DC fixer or oil field wildcatter.  Yes, an industry committee that worked to create policy consensus on engage Iran was formed in 1997 and it was called USA*Engage and its presense was widely felt in DC.  I was on its steering committee for five years.  It worked to end the US imposition of unilateral sanctions that prohibited American companies for doing business in countries the US didn’t like  – but ignored the fact that the business would go to foreign firms at American expense.  In the oil industry and national security terms, this meant giving influence and oil leverage to Russia, China and France.  This was a dumb policy that USA*Engage worked hard to remedy, and the Iran Libya Sanctions Act of 1995 (ILSA) was the chief reason the industry's effort was launched.  But all the Iran engagement talk was while Khatemi was in ascendancy, when reform in Iran still seemed possible and before Sept 11. After Sept 11, Iran showed it could not be trusted in the war against al-Qaeda, and within months Bush suspended all US efforts to re-engage Iran.  Furthermore, Iran in real life has become an even greater international pariah with its nuke program, and now that Iraq’s oil field are liberated to be developed for free world markets and in a way that enriches the Iraqi population not Saddam, the oil industry pressure to develop Iran is reduced.  So Syriana has the Iran angle dead wrong.
5. Saudi Arabia A: This is the elephant in the room that is not discussed in the film.  The omission of Saudi Arabia is so obvious that this had to be a marketing or business decision by Time Warner’s Warner Bros. unit for business reasons.  Investor or shareholder pressure?  This is particularly surprising because Bob Baer, the real life CIA vet whose book, See No Evil, was part of the inspiration of this movie, clearly targets Saudi Arabia and US relationship with that Kingdom because of our oil addiction as the fountainhead of our problems in the region.  Also, the reason that Qatar is now the base of US military forces is because Saudi Arabia is home to Mecca and UBL used US presence in the Kingdom as one the reasons for his jihad.  Overthrowing Saddam removed the need for the US to be in Saudi Arabia to protect the Kindgom’s oil fields from Saddam, while at the same time reduced Saudi Arabia’s leverage over world oil supplies.  This is the geopolitical mumbo jumbo that is at the core of the rationale for US action on Saddam, and the fact that these relationships are so little understood is one of my continuing regrets with the US political leadership who seem unable or unwilling to articulate these issues. 
6. Saudi Arabia B: Who paid for the jihad madrassa that nurtured and trained the laid off Pakistani oil workers and turned them into terrorists?  Why was the Saudi souces of these madrassas not discussed or explored?  Where did these crazy Imams come from, who paid their salaries and who produced the twisted religious screeds used to poison those teenagers minds and made them killers.  Why did this school exist?  In real life, the home for the funding of these schools has been Saudi Arabia and the curriculum the ultra fundamentalist intolerant version of Wahhabi Islam that gets its billions from oil income and whose adherents in Saudi Arabia have believed it is their duty to spent their wealth to spread their version of the faith.  (WSJ)
7. The Bottom Line: The best riff in the movie comes from hillbilly-talking Denton who made the over the top point about nation states being nothing more than Crips and Bloods and that corruption is what makes us free… etc.   In fact, his attitude toward governments and nations is accurate.  All nations and governments are artificial and often an impediment to market forces.  So?   His answer that it is corruption that makes it all work is exactly wrong.  (Editor’s aside:  Besides what this guy says on film can’t be trusted anyway.  Wasn’t this the actor who thought one of the Tuturro brothers turned into a toad in Clooney's other neat flick, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?)  No. It is not corruption.  What makes it all work is law and order freely granted by a sovereign people in a transparent democratic process. That’s what makes it work. But Denton's overall attitude is right.  Countries do come and go and so do governments and so do peoples and cultures.  Humanity will get what humanity wants.  And there is nothing sacred or special about corrupt royal families, autocracies and dictatorships in the Persian Gulf region that only have their positions, jobs and millions today because of the political deals cut by Europeans after World War One, mostly at the urging of the British Foreign Office.  These “kingdoms” and cultures and societies have been allowed to prosper and their wasteful, obnoxious ways tolerated by the rest of the world because they enabled the countries with the money and machines to get access to the oil they needed to sustain themselves.  But here is where Syriana has it right: the US and its partners will not allow any forces to get between its wealth-creating poverty-killing economic engines and that oil.  No force, no people, no family, no government, no ideology.  The oil is there and the free people of the world want it and they will do whatever it takes to get it.  On that, the filmmakers of Syriana have it exactly right.   

Postscript:  I wrote an essay about a visit to Qatar in 1994, and a book about oil mergers, downsizing, and the period in DC before and after Sept 11. (Complete list at left).  A PDF of Qatar essay is here.  The section from Just Business Just War on the action in DC 1997-02 is available for viewing in a PDF here.

(Update: Wearing smart Pajamas... The above post put on some spiffy duds Jan 7.  Pajamas Media featured this review of George Clooney's big oil thriller flick in its entertainment section. Cool.  PJ: thanks for the nifty notice.)

Randal, The Apprentice? Nope. Randal's a Jerk.

What a huge missed opportunity to show the people grace in victory. Randal, you've won the big prize, you are the winner, the other person came in second and then Trump wonders if Rebecca who came in second should be hired too.  And you say: no!!!  Randal!  That was the wrong answer.  You showed zero class.   Oxford... smocksford.  You belong in Atlantic City all right. You're a jerk.  And, Trump what were you thinking dangling the job out there for Rebecca to get and then whimping out in the show's final moments by letting Randal make the call... just when the entire audience knew giving Rebeccca the Jersey City gig was the right thing. You knew it too!  The entire show was structured dramatically to have these two candiates both be winners.  But instead, to bring the curtain down on Season 4 like that with such a nasty show of narcissistic selfishness..?   NBC, I'm a fan and I say: boo!  Not good. (Apprentice 4)

Dueling producers: Lurie, Bochco, Bruckheimer

The back-story about the dumping of Rod Lurie as the boss of the new ABC drama Commander-In-Chief is just delicious.  (NRO, NYT, CS, JJ) The Disney net seems to have what could be a hit; Genna Davis is a bona fide Media-ville babe with Oscar cred, and there is plenty of potential for TV soap in the White House as The West Wing showed. The first few episodes have been lame (Donald Sutherland is so over the top, the gag about the first husband in a pink office, first daughter losing her diary filled with gossip...)  Getting an adult like Steven Bochco to take charge ought to help. Like I said: Davis is a looker, and the back-story of a woman president has, shall we say, legs. (For details see: Hillary vs. Condi)

But then again, Bochco missed the mark on Over There. (OT, NPR)  What a disappointing run around the track.  The acting (particularly Erik Palladino's Sgt. Scream) was terrific; production values high.  But the moaning music, the downbeat tone, the overlay of gloom, the juxtaposition of such ridiculous military choices... It was dramatic, but competely missed the mark for a look-see at Iraq.  What a bummer.  Whoa is me!  This set of film makers assembled by Bochco were stuck as Sixties Dead Enders telling episodes with the creative juju they learned where every war hits the same emotional and dramatic notes as they did back in the day with Vietnam when they were young.  Contrast Boccho's Over There with Jerry Bruckheimer's E-Ring, an unapologitic jingoistic kick-ass Pentagon soap that has heart, intrigue and high value techy images with a Mission Impossible juju. This is a TV show that posits that the bad guys are out there, and it is righteous that the US has good guys willing to do something about it.  Lead actors Benjamin Bratt and Dennis Hopper, have the film cred to be savvy to this Media-ville gig, but are shamelessly into it, having fun with this comic opera. Their Marine Staff Sgt. Sista (Aunjanue Ellis playing E-Ring's Radar O'Reilly) rounds out this trio of Hollywood pros at the top of the TV game working for a Media-ville producer who knows how to make a hit the people can feel good about watching.

"Over There" may be good fiction; but it's still Hollywood's truth

Quillnews takes jabs at Media-ville for the way it blends fact and fiction, manufactures news for political or commercial purposes, and politicizes its artistic productions. But I've got a warm spot for the circus anyway. It is fun to read how CNN producers asked a would-be guest to "get angry" during his appearance. So much for objective news. This is staging for dramatic effect! (TB, TB2, LAT )  Then there is the new must-read from Random House's Crown Forum: "Hollywood Nation: Left Coast Lies, Old Media Spin, and the New Media Revolution" by James Hirsen, who plumbs the process whereby fact blurs with fiction, and virtue with vice.  This guy has the clue about the game in today's Media-ville. (First chapter).

But, as I have said, the circus has its uses. Take the drama, Over There. Produced by TV's prolific, Steven Bochco, and distributed on FX, the cable channel from Fox that goes into 87 million via basic cable, the TV war drama that began 10 weeks ago is clearly fiction and Hollywood's first serious crack at the dramatic possibilities of the Iraq war. The show stars Eric Pallidano, late of ER, who is terrific as Sgt. Scream (snap at left). The show, say the producers: "Exploring the effects of war on soldiers on the front lines and their families back home. Avoiding the politics of the war, the series focuses on the physical, emotional and cultural challenges the soldiers face on a daily basis."

Its a soap opera, with high production values and good dramatic tension. I've never served in a rifle company so I can't speak to the army realities, but the two jobs I have had were portrayed in the show in ways that weren't even close to real. In the drama, the two jobs -- reporter and oil company rep -- had featured roles in dramatic interactions that had violent impact on the soldiers, and were integral into the problems the MSM has publicized that the military does have with the free press and with the war's relationship to oil. But the fictional reporter, portrayed by Mark-Paul Gosselaar in Episode 6, was immature and thoughtless; he responded to the events in the show like no reporter ever would. The relationships the reporter had with the soldiers and with his editors were all wrong. His reporting jeopardized the safety of one soldier and when he tried to redeem his own screw-up he was killed by jihadists. His gruesome death (decapitation) was portrayed - in dramatic methods with lighting, staging, music - as equal to the loss of an army officer also killed in the show. Message: even reporters whose work tell lies and jeopardize soldiers are as valuable (or equal in death) as the soldiers who fight.  Hmmm. This was non-political in a way that Stalinist-era theatrical productions were non-political.

Episode 9 this week portrayed the soldiers assigned to protect a US oil company seeking to build a pipeline near a village populated by old world Muslims. In the drama, the oil company rep's boorish behavior and cultural insensitivty was so bad it led to violence for no real reason. I've done this work with oil patch hands on projects in some remote and undeveloped parts. No oil guy I ever knew anywhere acted like the character in Episode 9 Wednesday night.  Such a jerk would have been fired from any oil field job. In fact, the particular oil field assignment portrayed in Wednesday's episode - working with local community leaders to get their cooperation - is one of the most sensitive in any field development project. The people who do this work are the best diplomats in the world, and frequently have a soft common touch of seasoned old timers from friendly climes. They are frequently Cajuns, Okies or Texans. But the oil story is bogus.  Puzzling out problems with locals is done long before a decision on where and if to lay pipe is made.  No new pipelines by Americans are being built in Iraq now. Repairs yes, protection of existing lines, yes. New lines? Bizz. If they were, they would be projects of one of Iraq's state petroleum companies, who are technicial pros and among the most seasoned oil field hands in the world, not by a bullying Texan who wants to put a decision of the local Iman to a community vote! No US oil field boss would muscle a soldier by threatening to call his general, or issue a soldier an order, and every oil field hand learns on his first day of the job that fraternizing with local women can mean death - yours!  None of the relationships portrayed in Over There could ever happen in an American oil field operation. So, this oil character doesn't represent any reality. Though he does fulfill stereotypes, most of them perpetuated by Hollywood scriptwriters.  He's a metaphor for all of America. He represents a dramatic assertion: US mixing it up in foreign parts, even if with good intentions, leads to tragedy. (Dude, like, you know, in Vietnam, or in all those classic noir films...)  In case any viewers in Media-ville missed this, the message was laided out by one of the smart characters in the drama who observed that butting in where you don't belong leads to unexpected screw-ups, just like in the movie Chinatown. Hmmm. In Hollywood such an assertion is not political. It is a truth portrayed in a dramatic art in Media-ville. But in real-life? Maybe, maybe not.