A friend writes about yesterday's post on the Biltmore House and the Hearst Castle:
Re Moby Dick -- I've read it all the way through and it's a chore. I skimmed through a lot of the technical whaling information (there is a lot of that) and the basic story is good and it has a great opening line...."Call me Ishmael". The movie is good because the meat of the story is there but all the technical whaling stuff is not.
Re Citizen Kane: It is always at the top of the list of greatest movies and it had not only a great cast, but many innovative cinematic techniques still with us. Content? To me, dreary, sad, and depressing. However, it did achieve one thing.....it ruined forever Orson Welles' (Wisconsin boy) career. He never achieved the greatness he could have. Hearst was angry that the film was whispered to be about his life (Welles denied--it's pretty close, though) and his relationship with his life-long mistress, Marion Davies. His newspapers savaged the film, his minion, Hollywood writer Luella Parsons, took down Welles. However, once again a great opening. The word "Rosebud" as the character is dying....the whole film is about finding what "Rosebud" means. "Citizen Kane" is consistently considered to be the best movie ever made -- in my opinion, that distinction goes to "Casablanca".
I would second the idea of going to see Biltmore. It's not on the same opulent scale of Hearst (I haven't been there but have seen photos and read about it--Vanderbilt had taste) and there were a lot of good things about it. It was self-sustaining, had a lot of innovative farming going on. It provided solid jobs for the local farmers---not so sure about the indoor staff who had to cater to people who changed clothing multiple times a day. Great views, a spectacular floral garden, and best of all, a really good restaurant in the slicked up stables! The country around there is beautiful as well. But watch for the twisty, windy roads....my brother-in-law speculated that they didn't so much build the roads as follow dog tracks. My favorite memory of that area is driving along a twisty, very narrow blacktop road and coming to a point where the road was blacktopped right over the roots of a very large tree. I would hate to come across that at night if you didn't know about it. The road was not secondary, it was the primary road through the area. Stay sober.....
Off to our helicopter ride this PM -- weather postponed it from yesterday.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
