April 2, 2021

Jumping straight into MLog BLog because I've been behind on that. **SPOILERS**

Theroux, Louis – GOTTA GET THEROUX THIS: MY LIFE AND STRANGE TIMES IN TELEVISION

Published: 2019

Read: 3/2021

Louis Theroux is a UK Documentary presenter. Which means he’s the one on camera interacting with subjects and asking them questions. His career’s focus has been largely on American fringe groups and cultures. A bit like an on-camera Hunter S Thompson, but a lot less drugs. I came to Louis’s book in my progression down the Adam Buxton rabbit hole. Louis went to the same upper-class boarding school as Adam and Joe. Louis’s parents were well-off and very liberal. His dad is the American travel writer, Paul Theroux. (His cousin is the actor Justin Theroux, who was the director character in Mulholland Drive!) The book talks about his early life and education, how he got into television (through a lucky break, landing an on-camera roll on Michael Moore’s show, TV Nation, even though he had had no previous TV experience), and a bit about the documentaries he’s done. Oh yeah, and a whole lot on his relationship with Jimmy Saville. 

Like I said, I knew of Louis’s only because he was a regular on the Adam Buxton podcast. This book was a pretty good inroad to Louis’s work. He’s funny and does a thorough (a Theroux) job of describing his docs and what the making of them was like. If I had seen a bunch of the documentaries in question, it might have been a bit dull. Like someone telling you exactly what was in a movie or book after you’ve already seen or read it. 

His privilege, in his route to a career in TV, hit me like a tidal wave as I was reading. He comes from a wealthy and artistic family, he had an elite education (private school then Oxford), he had dual citizenship because of his dad and was able to move from London to California and then to New York easier than I could have moved from Colorado Springs to Denver. Then, on top of all that, he also appears to get outrageously lucky. Not that one should ever really approach someone else’s journey as the blueprint for breaking in, but Louis’s is definitely not one I’ll be able to emulate. 

Stuff I like about him: doggedness, quick to a joke, slow to judgement, a penchant for getting out of his depth, but also a strong equilibrium that’s difficult to totally upset. 

Rating: ★★★

LE TROU

1960

Directed by: Jacques Becker

Written by: Jacques Becker, José Giovanní, Jean Aurel

Based on: The Break by José Giovanní

Watched: 4/1/21

Four cell mates are planning to escape when a new inmate, Gaspard, is moved into their cell. Gaspard is taken with how much camaraderie and good feeling there exists between the four. They all share their food parcels, sent in from outside. (And of course, as a French film, the food looks lovely. Cheeses, bread, jams, smoked meats.) Gaspard, in turn, offers to share his parcel of food. Eventually, the four let him in on their plan to escape. They’re working – folding cardboard into cardboard boxes – and they use the cardboard to cover the hole they’re digging in one corner of the cell. They break through to the basement of the prison, and from there, they go down into the sewers. The sewer line is blocked by concrete to prevent escape. So for several nights, the men take turns digging a hole around the concrete barrier. By the end of a night of working, they’re able to break through. They follow the sewers to outside the prison. But the two that do need to go back and tell the others. The five of them plan their escape for that night. However, Gaspard is called into the warden’s office. He tells Gaspard that his wife has dropped the charges against him. He should be out as soon as the magistrate drops the case, which could take a few weeks. 

Gaspard returns to the cell and assures his cell mates that he did not give away their plan. Gaspard had told Manu, one of the other men, earlier that he felt more right with them in their escape efforts than he had ever done before in his life. That night, as the men are ready to make their escape, a whole rush of guards shows up. They strip the other four prisoners to their underwear and get ready to send them to solitary confinement. Gaspard is led to his original cell. As he passes the four men, one of them looks at him and says “Poor Gaspard.” 

I love that ending. I feel like it was saying that Gaspard, even though he’s soon going to be free, is more pitiable than the men who now have to stay in prison. They experienced purpose, brotherhood, loyalty. He has none of those things. 

Man, there are a lot of long sequences in this movie of these guys loudly digging their holes. But those long sequences did help confer on me how much work these men were undertaking and how risky and claustrophobic it was. It has that underlying quality of joy. Working hard together towards freedom. Tricking the authority. Taking your and your brothers’ lives into your hands. There were wildly silly parts as well, like two of the men avoiding a patrol by shimmying around the opposite of a column, one of the men on the other man’s shoulders. 

It sounds like the other two films by this director worth seeing are Touchez Pas Au Grisbi and Casque d’Or. I will put them on my list. 

Rating: ★★★★