Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Roland Halbe
An office? A factory? Or an elevated freeway?
May 22, 2005
At BMW, the Auto Assembly Line Meets High Design
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
Leipzig, Germany
OF all of Modernism's sacred cows, few have been more revered - or abused - than the assembly line. At the height of the Modernist movement, the crisp, functional efficiency of this factory staple was a template for everything from housing projects to utopian visions of the metropolis.
The new central building at the BMW plant here, designed by the London architect Zaha Hadid, is an antidote to just that sort of mind-numbing, machine-age uniformity. A vast, boomerang-shaped industrial shed with rows of cars streaming by in midair on curving tracks, it is less a model of efficiency than a finely oiled machine for voyeuristic pleasure.
In recent years, German automakers have seized on high-profile architecture as a way of bolstering their images. Coop Himmelb(l)au, based in Vienna, is designing a futuristic blend of showrooms, restaurants and shops for a BMW delivery center in Munich; in Stuttgart, the Amsterdam firm UN Studio has designed the Mercedes-Benz Museum, whose interweaving ramps echo the spiral of Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim in Manhattan. Both are scheduled for completion next spring.
Yet beyond the obvious marketing value, the Leipzig assembly plant is a sophisticated attempt at social engineering. By creating a fluid work environment in which management, engineers, autoworkers and cars seem intertwined, Ms. Hadid is seeking to break down the hierarchies that have defined the traditional factory. In this world, information flows freely and man and machine live in blissful harmony. And while the sight of glistening black and silver coupes gliding through the air may seem a sci-fi horror to some, it is sure to enchant car fanatics.
In many ways, the plant's site on the city's outskirts harks back to old-style Modernism. Even before Ms. Hadid was hired, a team of bulldozers was leveling the area, once farmland, to make room for a vast factory complex - an approach more in keeping with the tabula rasa planning of the postwar years than with the eco-friendly approaches of today.
The three main factory buildings - body shop, paint shop and assembly plant - are housed in big prefabricated corrugated metal sheds, generic staples of the industrial landscape. But Ms. Hadid subverts the sequential order of the manufacturing process by having each car loop back through her central building, where autoworkers and engineers can survey their work and, when needed, reconfigure the assembly process.
This is ideal territory for this architect. Ever since her student days in the 1970's at the Architectural Association in London, she has been drawn to the vast scale of infrastructure: industrial dams, ribbons of highways, gargantuan urban high-rises. In her 1983 proposal for the Peak, an unbuilt country club in Hong Kong that made her an instant cult figure in architectural circles, buildings resembling big concrete beams looked as if they were about to splinter off into space.
Here, all of that feverish energy has been packed inside. Like the surrounding factory buildings, the central structure is wrapped in a taut corrugated-metal skin, but with the corners slightly curved to give it a sleek, contoured look. A bridgelike office structure splits off from the central building and joins two of the factory sheds, framing a small entry courtyard. Supported on massive concrete columns shaped like fins, the office area is engineered like a segment of elevated freeway.
But the most dynamic structure here has yet to be built: a low, sloping showroom that will one day be the entrance point for the complex. Arriving from the Autobahn, visitors will slow down to turn past the showroom, then hurtle across a sprawling parking lot set diagonally to the main building. Once they park, they must slip under the office bridge to reach the main entrance, as if they were ricocheting between the buildings.
Inside the central building, the first thing that strikes you is the immense scale. Offices are organized as a series of concrete terraces that seem to cascade from one end. A towering stairway sweeps up to a balcony of offices along one side of the room; on the other side, the terraces are linked by a long, narrow ramp.
Evoking the silent spacecraft of Stanley Kubrick's "2001," rows of car bodies stream by on computerized tracks. Because every car is routed through here on its way from the body shop to the paint shop or final assembly plant, you witness them in all their various stages. At certain points, the cars stop and revolve on enormous turntables before heading off in a new direction.
The movements are hypnotic, suggesting a mechanical ballet. During shift changes, the sight of hundreds of autoworkers flowing through the corridors adds to the sense of choreography.
In traditional automobile plants, of course, car assembly was organized in a linear sequence, with rows of workers and machinery methodically assembling the cars on a factory line, while engineers tinkered away in offices somewhere across town. Together they churned out an endlessly repetitive sequence of cars, one much like the other.
Today, a luxury car company like BMW will produce thousands of highly customized cars each week, a process that demands lots of tinkering and intervention. When a new step needs to be added to production, the line can be adjusted with minimal interruption.
By channeling all of the work through the central building, Ms. Hadid creates a seamless environment, smoothing that process. The terraces create a kind of loose-knit social hierarchy, breaking down the staff into discrete tiers while allowing engineers to observe or consult with one another without having to pick up a phone. Engineers and workers are in constant contact, too, mingling in the corridors and the cafeteria.
Yet the overarching agenda is to keep the eye focused on the machines, with everyone involved in a constant process of fine-tuning. From their office terraces, engineers can step out onto glass-enclosed viewing platforms to watch the huge, swiveling robotic arms that weld the car frames together. Here and there, cars are periodically pulled off the line and examined for defects. And the mechanized tracks converge above the upper-level cafeteria, so that even workers on lunch break are constantly aware of their presence.
Ms. Hadid is not the first to approach the automobile plant as part of a broader social experiment. Henry Ford is said to have monitored his assembly line with a stopwatch, seeking to foster worker productivity. Nor is she the first to imbue a factory with sex appeal. In the 1920's in Turin, Italy, Giacomo Matt?-Trucco famously topped the Lingotto Fiat factory with a dynamic rooftop test track. The track summed up the Futurists' obsession with speed, their dream of a society in a state of perpetual motion.
Today, such experiments inevitably evoke the dark side of machine worship: the link between Futurism and fascism, for example, and their tendency to reduce human beings to interchangeable parts in a vast, grinding machine.
Ms. Hadid is sensitive to these issues. Visually, her early work has all the dynamic energy of a Futurist painting by Boccioni or Balla, but its forms also reflect a desire to reverse Modernism's dehumanizing effects. The patterns of movement in her architecture are about freedom rather than rigid order.
Here Ms. Hadid takes on this Modernist past directly and gives it a new twist. The free flow of information replaces the monotony of the assembly line; individual needs and tastes rule over bland repetition; and machines are at the service of man, not vice versa. It's unclear where this vision will lead us, but for now, it's pretty seductive.
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Roland HalbeThe BMW plant in Leipzig, Germany, looking under the office bridge and toward the central building
A botanical jihad?
Afghan Poppycock
Hamid Karzai's halfhearted jihad.
By David Bosco
Posted Wednesday, May 18, 2005, at 4:16 AM PT
There's all sorts of good news coming out of the Afghan drug war. Hamid Karzai recently announced that opium cultivation might be down as much as 30 percent this year. In April, the United States nabbed alleged Afghan drug lord Haji Bashir Noorzai. U.S. and European money are helping Karzai's government build special drug courts and train paramilitary interdiction teams. One might almost be convinced that Afghanistan?site of an ongoing political renaissance?has pulled off another miracle.
Don't believe it. The truth is that the war against opium in Afghanistan is stumbling badly. A bureaucratic struggle on counternarcotics strategy inside the U.S. government produced an unhappy compromise. For its part, the fragile Afghan government is too timid to do serious crop eradication. There may be a drop in opium production this year, but it will be due primarily to recent flooding and to the huge stockpiles from last year's bumper crop.
The campaign is certainly not foundering for lack of passionate rhetoric. A few days after his election victory was assured last December, Karzai delivered a table-thumping speech to a collection of Afghan tribal elders. Afghanistan's booming opium trade, he said, was an affront to Islam. "Just as our people fought a holy war against the Soviets, so we will wage jihad against poppies."
The poppies may turn out to be the more stubborn foe. Afghanistan now produces more than 80 percent of the world's opium. In 2004, poppy cultivation reached an all-time high, and the drug economy now accounts for between a third and half of the country's economic output. A World Bank study estimates that opium cultivation can generate at least 12 times as much income as wheat, the main alternative crop. Because drug money flows to regional warlords and other malcontents, it threatens to derail an otherwise remarkably successful nation-building effort. (Last month, several more Taliban big fish accepted the government's amnesty offer and another batch of refugees returned from Pakistan, cheered on by Angelina Jolie.)
Karzai faces a torturous choice in trying to kick his country's habit. If he attacks the trade too aggressively, he could cripple the country's economy and generate a nasty political backlash. Aerial spraying is particularly touchy, since many Afghans still remember napalm runs by Soviet aircraft as they tried to crush the mujahideen. Rumors?unfounded, it appears?that spraying was under way forced Karzai to issue a flurry of denials and call in foreign diplomats for stern conversations. The United States is sensitive to Karzai's political limits, and outgoing U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad helped deflect pressure for a massive eradication campaign. Karzai, the administration realizes, would be a terrible thing to waste.
But if Karzai moves too slowly, the drug trade may infect his country's fragile institutions and fill the coffers of violent opponents including, possibly, al-Qaida (the intelligence on where drug money ends up is spotty at best). According to former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Bobby Charles, "One of the fastest ways you could design to cripple a young democracy is to allow the influx of substantial drug money."
In Washington, the opium dilemma has become a tussle between the State Department and the Defense Department. Curiously, the hawks on this issue are at State. Charles and his colleagues argued for large-scale aerial eradication and the involvement of U.S. and coalition military forces in interdiction. "The success we've had in Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia," he says, "has always involved the military."
The prospect of a militarized drug war makes the brass nervous. The Defense Department is keen to keep its footprint light and is wary of a drug war that could set the population against U.S. troops (last week's Newsweek-inspired anti-American riots will only deepen that fear). The Afghans, after all, have a history of kicking out technologically superior foreign soldiers. So the military has kept drugs on the back burner. Instead of getting its troops directly into the interdiction business, Washington is sending a few teams of DEA agents who will fly around the country in leased helicopters.
The generals aren't alone in resisting a full-on drug war. The idea is anathema to many regional experts, who believe that attacking Afghanistan's economic base without first establishing an alternative is political suicide. Barnett Rubin, an irascible NYU Afghan expert, has no patience for the drug warriors. "There's absolutely nothing to lead one to believe that you can abolish 40 percent of the economy without major implications." He argues for a slow, sequenced approach that begins by creating alternatives for Afghan farmers. Crop eradication, in his view, comes at the end?not the beginning.
That argument has had an effect, and U.S. policy has downshifted. Afghan officials, aided by U.S. contractors, are manually destroying some poppy fields, although it won't be many. Funds earmarked for massive eradication are being directed instead to supporting alternative livelihoods. (Rubin calls these funds a "a drop in the bucket.") For now, the Afghan drug war is a patchwork of sporadic manual eradication efforts, occasional clashes with traffickers, and a trickle of money to Afghan farmers for alternative crops.
It's a dangerous game for Karzai. Having called for jihad, his credibility is on the line. In deference to the president's exhortations, some Afghan farmers may have decided not to plant poppies this year. They'll be expecting assistance in return. If they don't get it, they may take out their frustration in this fall's parliamentary elections?or less constructively. Meanwhile, Karzai and his new security forces are poking at the country's nest of traffickers and drug labs without knocking them out. For the time being, Karzai and his Western backers have no choice but to hope they can continue cultivating a new democracy in a bed of poppies.
David Bosco is senior editor at Foreign Policy. He filed dispatches from Afghanistan last summer
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
May 23, 2005
Smartest Guys Well Outside of Hollywood
By DAVID CARR
FILM buffs have never had more options - DVD's, video-on-demand and myriad cable movie channels. But there is one choice that has not become easier: seeing a movie in the theater on the day it is released. For that, the Star Wars pilgrim who must know how the series ends - or begins, as the case may be - still has to schlep to the multiplex, wait in line and then fight for a seat.
Hollywood is hooked on the big opening weekend, but two very wealthy young men would like to break that habit. Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner, who timed the market nicely when they sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in 1999, have created 2929 Entertainment, which will make, distribute and show films digitally - that is, without using actual film. And instead of using a theatrical release to build a market for DVD and cable broadcast, 2929 plans to release movies in any format you want to see them, on the same day. Its documentary " Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" was released in theaters and for broadcast at the same time.
Those tempted to write off Mr. Cuban and Mr. Wagner as harebrained outsiders with too much money and time on their hands might want to reconsider, given their histories. The two men, particularly Mr. Cuban, have prospered by ignoring convention at every turn.
"There is nothing more fun than blowing up tired traditions to create better business models and better customer experiences," Mr. Cuban said by e-mail.
In a business historically frantic about change, their plan has made exhibitors antsy and studios curious. Theatrical releases, which account for about $9 billion in revenue, have become expensive trailers for the real deal, a $24 billion after-market for home video and DVD's. The current food chain has made everybody fat and happy while the mere existence of a digitized entertainment product - ripe for the downloading - makes the industry shudder.
The theory behind 2929 goes like this: Over the past few years, Mr. Cuban and Mr. Wagner have acquired or built HDNet Films, which funds smaller budget movies, Magnolia Pictures for distribution, Landmark Theaters for exhibiting, and HDNet and HDNet Movies for cable broadcast. Consumers with access to those cable networks will be able to see a film at home on the day it comes out. Or they can see it in the theater or, once details are worked out, simply buy the DVD. By closing the window between when a movie is released and when it becomes available on DVD - usually about four months - 2929 will save on marketing by not having to advertise twice.
THE concept picked up a big name at the end of last month, when the company announced a deal with Steven Soderbergh, who directed "Oceans Eleven," "Oceans Twelve," "Erin Brockovich" and "Traffic," for six small-budget, digitally produced films. The first, "Bubble," a murder mystery set in Ohio, is in production and will be simultaneously broadcast and released in theaters and on DVD.
"If you are looking to really build something that could change things as opposed to just making acquisitions, what they did was very shrewd," said Mr. Soderbergh.
After graduating from Indiana University in 1981, Mr. Cuban built a computer consulting firm called MicroSolutions and sold it to CompuServe in 1990 for about $5 million. A few years later, he and a fellow alumnus, Mr. Wagner, were living in Dallas and lamenting their inability to hear Indiana basketball games. They came up with Broadcast.com, an early version of a Web-based media site, which they eventually sold to Yahoo.
Mr. Cuban took up blogging, basketball and terrorizing referees, buying the Dallas Mavericks for $280 million and racking up fines for railing against league officiating while using a blog to agitate and inform his fan base. In the meantime, Mr. Wagner busied himself with philanthropy. But the two friends wanted new business adventures. Mr. Cuban, who once starred in the reality series "The Benefactor," and Mr. Wagner, who has a deep love of cinema, started building movie assets.
Mr. Cuban responded to e-mail questions but declined to be interviewed on the phone, saying that as a sports team owner he was less than enthusiastic about reporters. But one gets the impression he does everything but brush his teeth by e-mail. He has said he receives thousands of messages a day, but answered an inquiry in minutes. Having once used the Web to buy a $41 million jet, he said he was convinced that technology could do great things for movies. Mr. Cuban wrote that he and Mr. Wagner were able to take a different approach because they were not vested in the current model.
"Any major studio could do it as well. No theaters are going to say 'no' to the new 'Star Wars' movie because it is running one time or it is being day and date released on DVD," he wrote, of the practice of releasing the DVD at the same time the film comes out.
John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theater Owners, agrees that the business is changing - several chains are investing in digital projectors - but said he did not think that 2929 would ever alter the calculus of when a film and DVD were released.
Their plan, he said, "does not establish any serious precedent for the rest of the industry because the pictures are small artistic projects with minimal commercial potential."
Although the exhibition side of the movie business has not changed much since air-conditioning was introduced, Hollywood has used digital technologies for decades. Movies are still primarily shot on film - there are pauses every 10 minutes to reload the cameras - but they are immediately converted to digital images for editing, only to go back through the process to become film prints, at a cost of over $600 million a year industrywide. Mr. Wagner says he thinks another approach is worth trying.
"We are making small, educated bets that the consumers will respond to having this choice," he said. "But we are not kamikaze pilots. If it doesn't work, we won't do it."
There are a few near-term roadblocks to an all-digital Hollywood. Few of the country's 36,000 theaters are equipped to screen digital films, and it will take billions to convert to digital distribution and exhibition. At the end of last month, George Lucas held a quiet conclave at his headquarters in San Francisco with many of the leading movie directors, including James Cameron, Robert Zemeckis and Peter Jackson, all of whom are making digital films.
"I don't think exhibitors are going to have a choice," said Jon Landau, who is producing Mr. Cameron's next film, "Battle Angel," in three-dimensional digital. At the conference, Mr. Cameron spoke of using 3-D as a battering ram to get the attention of exhibitors.
"I think one day we will look back on this process with an ironic smile," said Matthew Robbins, a writer and director who attended the gathering at Skywalker ranch. "The possibilities of digital are going to prove irresistible."
Whether it was the TV, VCR or DVD, innovation was always greeted by a chorus of Hollywood Chicken Littles. The industry now sees digitized output as a threat that would open movies to the kind of download mayhem the music industry has lived through. Mr. Cuban says he thinks that both the recording and film business risk obsolescence by ignoring new approaches. As he has demonstrated on the Web and in the NBA, good manners and deference can be overrated. He sees no reason people should have to wait in line for a new film, or for a future that seems to have already arrived.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
May 23, 2005
Smartest Guys Well Outside of Hollywood
By DAVID CARR
FILM buffs have never had more options - DVD's, video-on-demand and myriad cable movie channels. But there is one choice that has not become easier: seeing a movie in the theater on the day it is released. For that, the Star Wars pilgrim who must know how the series ends - or begins, as the case may be - still has to schlep to the multiplex, wait in line and then fight for a seat.
Hollywood is hooked on the big opening weekend, but two very wealthy young men would like to break that habit. Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner, who timed the market nicely when they sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in 1999, have created 2929 Entertainment, which will make, distribute and show films digitally - that is, without using actual film. And instead of using a theatrical release to build a market for DVD and cable broadcast, 2929 plans to release movies in any format you want to see them, on the same day. Its documentary " Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" was released in theaters and for broadcast at the same time.
Those tempted to write off Mr. Cuban and Mr. Wagner as harebrained outsiders with too much money and time on their hands might want to reconsider, given their histories. The two men, particularly Mr. Cuban, have prospered by ignoring convention at every turn.
"There is nothing more fun than blowing up tired traditions to create better business models and better customer experiences," Mr. Cuban said by e-mail.
In a business historically frantic about change, their plan has made exhibitors antsy and studios curious. Theatrical releases, which account for about $9 billion in revenue, have become expensive trailers for the real deal, a $24 billion after-market for home video and DVD's. The current food chain has made everybody fat and happy while the mere existence of a digitized entertainment product - ripe for the downloading - makes the industry shudder.
The theory behind 2929 goes like this: Over the past few years, Mr. Cuban and Mr. Wagner have acquired or built HDNet Films, which funds smaller budget movies, Magnolia Pictures for distribution, Landmark Theaters for exhibiting, and HDNet and HDNet Movies for cable broadcast. Consumers with access to those cable networks will be able to see a film at home on the day it comes out. Or they can see it in the theater or, once details are worked out, simply buy the DVD. By closing the window between when a movie is released and when it becomes available on DVD - usually about four months - 2929 will save on marketing by not having to advertise twice.
THE concept picked up a big name at the end of last month, when the company announced a deal with Steven Soderbergh, who directed "Oceans Eleven," "Oceans Twelve," "Erin Brockovich" and "Traffic," for six small-budget, digitally produced films. The first, "Bubble," a murder mystery set in Ohio, is in production and will be simultaneously broadcast and released in theaters and on DVD.
"If you are looking to really build something that could change things as opposed to just making acquisitions, what they did was very shrewd," said Mr. Soderbergh.
After graduating from Indiana University in 1981, Mr. Cuban built a computer consulting firm called MicroSolutions and sold it to CompuServe in 1990 for about $5 million. A few years later, he and a fellow alumnus, Mr. Wagner, were living in Dallas and lamenting their inability to hear Indiana basketball games. They came up with Broadcast.com, an early version of a Web-based media site, which they eventually sold to Yahoo.
Mr. Cuban took up blogging, basketball and terrorizing referees, buying the Dallas Mavericks for $280 million and racking up fines for railing against league officiating while using a blog to agitate and inform his fan base. In the meantime, Mr. Wagner busied himself with philanthropy. But the two friends wanted new business adventures. Mr. Cuban, who once starred in the reality series "The Benefactor," and Mr. Wagner, who has a deep love of cinema, started building movie assets.
Mr. Cuban responded to e-mail questions but declined to be interviewed on the phone, saying that as a sports team owner he was less than enthusiastic about reporters. But one gets the impression he does everything but brush his teeth by e-mail. He has said he receives thousands of messages a day, but answered an inquiry in minutes. Having once used the Web to buy a $41 million jet, he said he was convinced that technology could do great things for movies. Mr. Cuban wrote that he and Mr. Wagner were able to take a different approach because they were not vested in the current model.
"Any major studio could do it as well. No theaters are going to say 'no' to the new 'Star Wars' movie because it is running one time or it is being day and date released on DVD," he wrote, of the practice of releasing the DVD at the same time the film comes out.
John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theater Owners, agrees that the business is changing - several chains are investing in digital projectors - but said he did not think that 2929 would ever alter the calculus of when a film and DVD were released.
Their plan, he said, "does not establish any serious precedent for the rest of the industry because the pictures are small artistic projects with minimal commercial potential."
Although the exhibition side of the movie business has not changed much since air-conditioning was introduced, Hollywood has used digital technologies for decades. Movies are still primarily shot on film - there are pauses every 10 minutes to reload the cameras - but they are immediately converted to digital images for editing, only to go back through the process to become film prints, at a cost of over $600 million a year industrywide. Mr. Wagner says he thinks another approach is worth trying.
"We are making small, educated bets that the consumers will respond to having this choice," he said. "But we are not kamikaze pilots. If it doesn't work, we won't do it."
There are a few near-term roadblocks to an all-digital Hollywood. Few of the country's 36,000 theaters are equipped to screen digital films, and it will take billions to convert to digital distribution and exhibition. At the end of last month, George Lucas held a quiet conclave at his headquarters in San Francisco with many of the leading movie directors, including James Cameron, Robert Zemeckis and Peter Jackson, all of whom are making digital films.
"I don't think exhibitors are going to have a choice," said Jon Landau, who is producing Mr. Cameron's next film, "Battle Angel," in three-dimensional digital. At the conference, Mr. Cameron spoke of using 3-D as a battering ram to get the attention of exhibitors.
"I think one day we will look back on this process with an ironic smile," said Matthew Robbins, a writer and director who attended the gathering at Skywalker ranch. "The possibilities of digital are going to prove irresistible."
Whether it was the TV, VCR or DVD, innovation was always greeted by a chorus of Hollywood Chicken Littles. The industry now sees digitized output as a threat that would open movies to the kind of download mayhem the music industry has lived through. Mr. Cuban says he thinks that both the recording and film business risk obsolescence by ignoring new approaches. As he has demonstrated on the Web and in the NBA, good manners and deference can be overrated. He sees no reason people should have to wait in line for a new film, or for a future that seems to have already arrived.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
It's just a movie!
The Mr. Smith Fallacy
Was screening Frank Capra's classic the true nuclear option?
By Timothy Noah
Posted Tuesday, May 24, 2005, at 2:10 PM PT
In the absence of any other logical explanation, I conclude that what nudged the Senate back from the brink of a "nuclear option"?the majority-driven rule change disallowing the use of filibusters against judicial nominees?was the prospect that both Democrats and Republicans would screen Frank Capra's 1939 film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, last night in the Capitol.
As I've explained before, I believe that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist should have taken his "nuclear option" one step further and eliminated the filibuster not only for judicial nominees but for legislation, too. This isn't because I favor the appointment of judges hostile to a woman's right to choose abortion; I don't. Rather, it's because I believe the filibuster is an inherently reactionary tool that, over the long term, has impeded and will continue to impede activist liberal government by imposing a 60-vote supermajority requirement on virtually every bill that comes before Congress. People would have an easier time grasping this if it weren't for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
In Mr. Smith, the idealistic Sen. Jefferson Smith, played by Jimmy Stewart, uses the filibuster to block legislation to build the Willet Creek Dam, the true purpose of which, we are told, is to line the pockets of political bosses. That sounds like a plausibly liberal goal today, when environmentalists routinely argue that dams destroy delicate ecosystems. And it seemed so during the last week of October 1972, when I, age 14, attended a screening of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington at Pomona College with my older brother Peter. Capra was there to answer questions from the audience afterward, and Peter's hand was the first one up. "Mr. Capra," asked my brother, "can I assume, based on what we just saw, that this Tuesday you'll cast your vote for George McGovern?" Capra looked balefully at his shaggy-haired, bearded interlocutor, whose political views, he knew, were shared by nearly everyone else in the audience. Then he mumbled, "Uh ? no."
Capra idealized the common man, but he was nobody's idea of a liberal. And back when Mr. Smith was released?a mere six years after the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority?liberals were not the dam-haters they are today. New Dealers considered the building of federally funded dams vital to maintaining struggling family farms and to bringing electricity to the homes of the rural poor. Seen in its historic context, then, the fictional bill that the fictional Mr. Smith blocks is what today would be called "progressive legislation." It therefore fits right in with the sort of bills that filibusters have nearly always been deployed against in real life. Thanks to the filibuster, President Roosevelt was never able to pass anti-lynching legislation. More recently, the filibuster kept the Clinton administration from overhauling a century-old mining law that makes it impossible for taxpayers to block environmentally harmful giveaways to companies mining federal land. Today, the filibuster guarantees that the United States won't pass legislation extending health insurance to all its citizens. And saving it is a great liberal cause?
Another fallacy inherent in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is the notion that the modern-era filibuster has anything to do with what Sen. Robert Byrd (citing Mr. Smith in a March 1 floor speech) grandly calls "the deliberative process." As Byrd well knows, contemporary practice eliminates the speechifying part of the filibuster altogether; these days, whenever a filibuster is threatened, the Senate majority will typically calculate whether it has the 60 votes necessary to cut off debate, and if it doesn't, it won't bother to bring the legislation in question to a floor vote at all. (Byrd, I should note, filibustered?the old-fashioned way?14 hours against passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. That's the law that banned discrimination in public facilities! So forgive me if his views on the subject don't command my full attention.)
It's ironic that Mr. Smith Goes to Washington has become an argument-stopping sacred cow in Washington, because when the film premiered in 1939 at Washington's DAR Constitution Hall, it got an overwhelmingly hostile reception. Here's how Capra remembered it in his 1971 autobiography, The Name Above the Title:
By the time Mr. Smith sputtered to the end music, about one-third of Washington's finest had left. Of those who remained, some applauded, some laughed, but most pressed grimly for the doors. ? [At the reception afterward,] I took the worst shellacking of my professional life. Shifts of hopping-mad Washington press correspondents belittled, berated, scorned, vilified, and ripped me open from stem to stern as a villainous Hollywood traducer.
In an interview with Richard L. Strout of the Christian Science Monitor, Senate Majority Leader Alben W. Barkley, a Democrat (he would later be Harry Truman's vice president), changed the subject from the debate over entering the war in Europe to Capra's film. Barkley called Mr. Smith
as grotesque as anything I have ever seen. ? At one point, the picture shows the senators walking out on Mr. Smith as a body when he is attacked by a corrupt member. The very idea of the Senate walking out at the behest of that old crook! It was so grotesque it was funny. It showed the Senate made up of crooks, led by crooks, listening to a crook. ? It was so vicious an idea that it was a source of disgust and hilarity to every member of Congress who saw it. ? I did not hear a single senator praise it. I speak for the whole body.
A fascinating index of how our politics have changed since 1939 is that back when Mr. Smith came out, it didn't occur to members of the Senate?or even the press!?to identify with the film's authority-defying protagonist. Today, it would never occur to a senator?even a member of the Senate leadership?to identify with anyone else. Maybe that explains why the filibuster is proving so hard to kill.
Timothy Noah writes "Chatterbox" for Slate
David Chelsea
May 22, 2005
Cubicle Cupid: Nothing Personal
By ALYSON M. GOMEAU
THERE'S someone out there for everyone. It makes a charming notion for love. It also happened to make an airtight refund policy for the online dating conglomerate I was working for in Los Angeles. Lovelorn hopefuls paid my employer for the opportunity to leap into a seemingly bottomless pit of potential mates, but if they hit bottom alone, it was their own fault, and they were not reimbursed.
A cold corporate approach? Perhaps. Whatever, it didn't apply to me. Fresh off a breakup and cross-country move, I'd reached the stage where I was mourning less the loss of my boyfriend than the Gore-Tex anorak he refused to return, and I wasn't yet in the market for a new one (boyfriend, not anorak). Besides, I wasn't allowed to look even if I'd wanted to; employees were required to check their hearts at the front desk.
I'd been working there for three months, ever since the tenacious rep at the temp agency, unfazed by my lackluster Excel scores and general apathy about cubicle jobs, called while I was organizing my Vogue magazines in reverse chronological order and said, "You can wear jeans."
It was data entry; the parking was convenient, the pay negligible. I was in my mid-20's, among the legion of aspiring screenwriters in need of some way to pay the bills. As such, I was forced to concede that this job was at least something.
Less than an hour later, ensconced at a cramped computer station in a windowless room that smelled of Cool Ranch Doritos, I wondered if I should have held out for more. The flourishing company maintained a half-dozen of the most popular dating Web sites, each merely a twist on the obsolete personal ad. The client - known flatteringly as the "single" - provided brief answers to mind-numbingly general questions like "Life Motto?," which, along with an optional photograph, served as his or her profile. Anyone could post or view a profile; paying members received photo space and expanded profile and, most important, could contact one another. The Internet dating scene had reached its post-9/11 apex of popularity, and the company was besieged with hundreds of thousands of profiles from men and women hot on the trail of their special someone.
My job was to preview each new profile for obscenities, objectionable references and prohibited contact information (phone numbers, addresses, instant message handles). And I was to do this task at a constant steady speed. You were not to read, needlessly edit or laugh. And certainly not look for your own match.
The profile-entry department was a stock crew of aspirants: the actor, the singer, the writer, the former assistant to a B-list celebrity, all of us frog marched to a bland building on Wilshire Boulevard by our lofty artistic goals and loftier Visa bills. We had drawn the dreaded 6 a.m. shift, and the combination of early morning proximity, professional frustration and poor ventilation had helped us forge a thin alliance.
We acted happy when the actor scored a commercial for a discount hair-cutting chain, laughed too hard when the singer regaled us with the tale of her gig as a dancing bear at a sub-par amusement park, rallied mildly around the agent trainee after he was terminated for filching the e-mail addresses of pretty single women. We acted as if we cared. But the job was short term, and so was our interest in one another.
Besides, the truly interesting people were the ones on our filmy computer screens. These singles were hardly wallflowers or workaholics; they were confident and unabashed, with evidently all the time in the world to compile rosters of astrological preferences, height requirements, and in one case, a 16-item list of music the future betrothed could never, ever, listen to.
At first I tried to help. True, there was no Vera Wang fitting in my immediate future, but I had done O.K. in the past - nobody had ended a long-term relationship with me via a voice-mail message - and my current singleness was voluntary, intended and celebrated: a new city, a new time zone, a whole new video store.
We were strictly monitored, so my assistance took a minimalist approach. A few snips and that rambling sentence about a single's "five-year social sabbatical" no longer seemed so intense. The removal of an errant adjective and voil?: the single's Yorkshire terrier was still a dog but no longer "transcendental." I may not have been an expert in all things love, life and grammar. But they just wanted to be happy. Couldn't I help them cut in line?
As the weeks dragged on, however, I lost enthusiasm for meddling. Time was passing. The old department was fading away, with the actor and singer moving on to bigger and brighter things while I remained rooted, half-asleep in the chair closest to the floor fan, now a mentor to the novices in the acclaimed "Control/Shift" shortcut key.
And I began to resent the singles. I grew angry at their sloppy, impassive prose. If SanDiego44 really had "waited a lifetime for love," couldn't he have squeezed in another 10 seconds to check the spelling of his work? And could PwrBrkr36 spout off a few more clich?s about men and commitment? This was love they were looking for. It took time, effort, a thesaurus. Elusive, evasive, slippery love. What made them think they could catch it so easily? If they wanted happiness, they could get in line. Behind me.
Because even though I'd chosen this life, I was starting to get restless. The temp agency had called with other assignments, but the compensation - financial or intellectual - was no greater, and the rep had not been able to guarantee the free chai lattes I enjoyed now. This had become one priority I could not shift.
When my VCR began to rewind and fast-forward on its own in the dead of the night, I heaved it into the Dumpster and bid adieu to entertainment as I knew it. Careers, major appliances and love all seemed to require owner's manuals I could no longer locate.
And so it was that after spending most of the morning staring out the window at an unusually cloudy Southern California sky, I did the unthinkable: I began to search the profiles. I signed on as a guest member, entered an age and location, and read the results. I skimmed past the men who favored blondes, mountain biking and "Fear Factor." I scrolled 15 pages of potential. And then I stopped.
He was a newly certified architect. He declined to discuss Woody Allen unless the other party had seen both "Sleeper" and "The Purple Rose of Cairo." He was originally from the East Coast, enjoyed Thai food and didn't know what he was doing on this Web site because he wasn't sure what he was doing on this planet. His photo was unpretentious, his smile genuine, and, unlike a startling number of his peers, he had not cropped the shot from his wedding portrait.
I looked out the window again. I had not turned on my home computer in over five weeks. Opening my freezer required an alarming amount of manufactured enthusiasm. The recent Valentine's Day had passed unrecognized until the chatty drug store clerk pointed out her plastic heart earrings to me. "They're supposed to flash, but I couldn't be bothered to find the right batteries," she said with a smile, but her eyes were weary. "You know how it is."
I did know. But suddenly, alone in that cubicle, I fully understood how my months of immersion in the loneliness of others had seared and anesthetized me to the point where I'd forgotten how it felt to discover that you both liked Interpol before everyone else did.
NOW, reading - really reading - the architect's careful words, I felt the ether wearing off and the sensations rushing back. The singles on my screen no longer seemed picky, demanding or needy. They were vivacious, honest, funny and, most of all, brave. So what if they wrote lists defending the raw-food diet lifestyle and spoke of May-December like it was a real month? They hoped for the best. They actually believed there was someone out there for them.
Two clicks later and I had the architect's private e-mail address on my screen. I had my pen out and a Post-It ready. I probably also had a laminating kit nearby. For this could be it. It was all there in front of me in a respectable font without so much as a semicolon smiley face. This could be my someone.
But my hand stopped midletter.
What was I doing? How had I allowed myself to be seduced by this electronic candy machine of shrink-wrapped soul mates?
My old boyfriend, whom I loved, who was as close as I'd come so far, talked loudly during movie previews, used a duck-shaped lint remover on his sweaters, refused to run from the rain and had an uncontrollable, contagious laugh that was the best compliment you ever received. How does one capture that in a profile?
We'd met by chance, not keyword search. He was running late, I was leaving early. We were two people headed in opposite directions down a long hallway, blissfully unaware of each other's shared astrological signs or Life Mottoes. Two strangers who hadn't been reduced to clich?, category or classification. I knew absolutely nothing about him, and yet there was that instant, immediate, time-suspending connection. ...
Click.
I closed out of the screen, threw my cold latte into the trash. As I walked out onto the street, I remembered that I'd left my time sheet back in the cubicle, and I hesitated. It was already past due, and I would have to fax it by this afternoon if I wanted to get paid.
But the sun had just burst indignantly through the dispersing clouds, and there were actual people out here on the sidewalk, gloriously unclassified, without any preferences blaring from their foreheads in 16-point Helvetica Narrow.
I kept walking. Let them keep their money. I had smuggled out my heart. We could call it even.
Alyson M. Gomeau, who lives in Los Angeles, is a screenwriter.
