Painted Doll: the magic of the early talkies

The Wedding Of The Painted Doll

It's a holiday today
The Wedding of the Painted Doll
It's a jolly day
The news is spreading
All around the hall

Red Riding Hood & Buster Brown
The Jumping Jack Jumped into town
From far and near they're coming here
Church bells ringing, bringing

All the little dollies from the follies
With the painted cheeks
Little Mama doll has fussed around
For weeks and weeks

Shoo the blues
No time to lose
Rice and shoes
Will spread the news
That it's a holiday
Today's the Wedding of the little Painted Doll

Here come the bridesmaids
Look at them in their places
Look at the fancy laces
Look at them as they smile
All sorrow away

Here comes the bride now
Look at the little cutie
Look at the little beauty
Look at the little doll
It's her wedding day

Here's the preacher and all look
As he takes his little book
He is sure he knows his stuff
'Cause he's done it oft'n enough

Here comes the bride groom
Ready for the service
Just a little nervous
Now the preacher says,
"You're married to stay"

It's a holiday today
The Wedding of the little Painted Doll


Arthur Freed (W) & Nacio Herb Brown (M)
from the 1929 movie, "Broadway Melody"

I finally found a YouTube clip of one of my favorite Hollywood production numbers. It's one of my favorites because it's just about the first Hollywood production number ever, from the 1929 curiosity Broadway Melody. Then of course you know what happened. It was taken down due to one of those silly rules, such as the law against theft.

So I put up the closest thing I could find, which is grainy still pictures, but the music is good.

The days of early sound must have been heady and terrifying: everything was dumped upside-down. Theatres had to scramble to convert all their equipment, careers were shattered, others sprang up full-blown like Athena from the head of Zeus. (Sorry, I used that metaphor a few posts ago, but it was too good not to repeat. This Oscar Levant stuff is getting to me.) It wasn't so much actors with "good voices" who were able to make the switch, but actors who were able to adapt their style to something more fluid, more subtle, with no more fluttering eyelashes or jabbing, full-body gestures.

Try something here, if you will: look at some silent films, both dramas and comedies (and turn off the wretched music that usually goes with them: when I say silent, I mean silent). Then watch some black-and-white movies from ten years later, with the sound off. Observe carefully. It's a whole 'nother ball game, like comparing stage acting to screen acting. The old large gestures won't play. Often, one murmur will do.

This doesn't mean sound films are "better", but they do seem to be from another planet. Much as I'm intrigued by them, I find silent pictures hard to follow. I'm one of those auditory types, and seeing lips moving with title cards strains my imagination.  Except for Harold Lloyd comedies, the pace of silent film seems much slower, and I was raised as a vid-kid on television that, by comparison, moved at light speed.

So, with the release of that awful non-talkie The Jazz Singer (featuring Al Jolson, the most repulsive performer who ever lived), everything changed. Garbo walked in and mowed everyone down with a voice that was heavily accented, "foreign", and far too deep and gruff to match her ethereal beauty. Something about it worked, it snagged people, grabbed them viscerally. Comedians such as W. C. Fields and Laurel and Hardy, who already had a loyal following in silent pictures, exploded overnight into international stars: and need I tell you why?

So anyway, this Broadway Melody, which I have watched on Turner Classics (bailing halfway through the first time because the non-musical part of it is just so awful) is a fine example of the partial transformation that audiences gobbled up at the time. It's a sort of cliche of early talkies that everyone had to cluster around a microphone hidden behind a potted palm, but it actually is true that these movies had a peculiarly static quality. Nobody knew how to deal with a microphone, which to the actors (mimes, by our standards) must have seemed like a voice-sucking monster. That explains why they had to include frenetic production numbers like this one, to keep rigor mortis from setting in.

This is the strangest one ever, with girls being spun around like compasses, a preacher with Harold Lloyd glasses and rubber legs who appears to fall down the stairs, cartwheels and splits galore, girls with a pompom attached to one ankle (??), and precious lyrics sung by one of those young men with a falsetto voice. I also note a bit of '20s choreography I've seen before: the girls stand on one foot, the other leg extended, hold on to the extended ankle, and hop up and down.


The whole thing is so beautiful to look at: not "black and white", but silver and shine. The music has that charming, optimistic "oom-cha, oom-cha" quality that was so popular before the Depression brought it all crashing down. Soon would come a leap in sophistication:  better songs, real plots instead of stilted novelty-driven dialogue ("Take. . . him. . . for. . . a. . . ride"), Fred and Ginger. If you look at pictures from 1929, then pictures from 1931, you will be astounded at the transformation.

In the interim was a mad scramble, studded with quirky little sparklers like this one.

Cheap Trick of the Day

Let us now diss famous dames. . . These quotes are, of course, borrowed. But the person who originally used them must've borrowed them too, eh? Truth is, it's Monday and I don't feel like writing anything. So I will let famous people speak for me, saying colorfully nasty things about women of note. This was a long list and I winnowed out the clinkers, noticing that the only really good ones belonged to another time and place. The art of the gorgeous insult is apparently wearing thin. Please note: in keeping with my latest obsession, we could not avoid including several choice Levant quotes. I don't think he sat around inventing these: they just spontaneously sailed out of his bizarre and fevered intellect, and straight over everyone's head. She was incredibly ugly, uglier than almost anyone I had ever met. A thin, withered creature, she sat hunched in her chair, in her heavy tweed suit and her thick lisle stockings, impregnable and indifferent. She had a huge nose, a dark mustache, and her dark-dyed hair was combed into absurd bangs over her forehead. - - - Otto Friedrich (about Alice B. Toklas)   I loathe you. You revolt me, stewing in your consumption . . . you are a loathsome reptile - I hope you die. - - - D. H. Lawrence (to Katherine Mansfield)   Zsa Zsa Gabor       She not only worships the golden calf, she barbecues it for lunch. - - - Oscar Levant (about Zsa Zsa Gabor) The only person who ever left the Iron Curtain wearing it. - - - Oscar Levant (about Zsa Zsa Gabor) You can calculate Zsa Zsa Gabor's age by the rings on her fingers. - - - Bob Hope Katherine Hepburn       She has a face that belongs to the sea and the wind, with large rocking-horse nostrils and teeth that you just know bite an apple every day. - - - Cecil Beaton (about Katherine Hepburn) She ran the whole gamut of emotions from A to B. - - - Dorothy Parker (about Katherine Hepburn) Marilyn Monroe Her body has gone to her head. - - - Barbara Stanwyck (about Marilyn Monroe) She has breasts of granite and a mind like a Gruyere cheese. - - - Billy Wilder (about Marilyn Monroe) She's a vacuum with nipples. - - - Otto Preminger (about Marilyn Monroe) Elizabeth Taylor Elizabeth Taylor looks like two small boys fighting underneath a thick blanket. - - - Mr. Blackwell Every minute this broad spends outside of bed is a waste of time. - - - Michael Todd (about Elizabeth Taylor) Other Actresses Her hair lounges on her shoulders like an anesthetized cocker spaniel. - - - Henry Allen (about Lauren Bacall, 1994)   I treasure every moment that I do not see her. - - - Oscar Levant (about Phyllis Diller)   Miscellaneous In feathered hats that were once the rage, she resembles a petrified parakeet from the Jurassic age. A royal wreck - - - Mr. Blackwell (about Camilla Parker-Bowles) (More) Literary Legends A fungus of pendulous shape. - - - Alice James (about George Eliot, pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans) George Eliot has the heart of Sappho; but the face, with the long proboscis, the protruding teeth of the Apocalyptic horse, betrayed animality. - - - George Meredith (about George Eliot, pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans) Every word she writes is a lie, including "and" and "the." - - - Mary McCarthy (about Lillian Hellman) Isn't she a poisonous thing of a woman, lying, concealing, flipping, plagiarizing, misquoting, and being as clever a crooked literary publicist as ever. - - - Dylan Thomas (about Dame Edith Sitwell) I am fairly unrepentant about her poetry. I really think that three quarters of it is gibberish. However, I must crush down these thoughts, otherwise the dove of peace will shit on me. - - - Noel Coward (about Dame Edith Sitwell) In her last days, she resembled a spoiled pear. - - - Gore Vidal (about Gertrude Stein) She was a master at making nothing happen very slowly. - - - Clifton Fadiman (about Gertrude Stein) Virginia Woolf's writing is no more than glamorous knitting. I believe she must have a pattern somewhere. - - - Dame Edith Sitwell (about Virginia Woolf) (Favorites? Am I prejudiced in favor of Oscar Levant? His jibes  shouldn't have worked because they were full of unlikely words like 'barbecue' and 'Iron Curtain', but they win the prize for originality and sheer goofiness. In second place, the "nothing very slowly" about Stein, who really seems to get it in these things. Also, did you notice the similarity in pose between Dylan Thomas and Marilyn Monroe? Each of them whoring in their own special way.)

Oscar Levant: The Lost Interview

An interview with Oscar Levant

(from Pulse Magazine, April 7, 1960)

Hello, Oscar. Nice to meet you. You know, I almost said “Hell, Oscar.”

(laughs) It would have been more appropriate. Come right in to my den of thieves.

Thieves?

I steal material all the time, everybody thinks it’s mine. It’s all in the delivery.

You mean a “special delivery”.

Aha, a smart-ass kid! We oughta get along just great.

 OK, Oscar Levant, let me get right down to it. What is it that drives you?

Drives me? I have a chauffeur, but it’s a “he”, not an “it”.

You know what I mean.

Drives me, it’s probably just the will to get up in the morning.

Is that hard for you?

Don’t pry.

OK, I won’t. Sorry. I want to know what. . . I hate to say “inspires” you.

Thank you.

Let me rephrase the question. Did you choose music, or did it choose you?

Do you need to ask?

Would you have done anything else?

I probably would have done practically anything else. The rule in our house was absolute perfection. One wrong note was a source of shame. It drove me absolutely crazy. See, now you have your answer!

As to why you went crazy?

I might have been crazy from the beginning.

So in what way did you depart from absolute perfection?

In just about every way. I hated my teachers. I hated my father. I hated my piano.

I have to tell you a story. Nobody in our family had any talent whatsoever on the keyboard, even though a few of them are professional musicians. When my brother was practicing, he kept trying to leave the room but my mother would stick her head in and say, “You have to practice for half an hour!” At one point he slammed the lid down and opened the front door and yelled at the top of his voice, “I HATE THE PIANO!”                  

(Laughs with a wicked expression)

I love piano stories. I hated the piano too. Or I hated what it did to me.

Did you never feel you’d mastered it?

No performance is ever as perfect as the one that exists in your mind.

That’s profound.

No it isn’t, I forgot my Demerol this morning.

Oh, so that’s supposed to be funny?

It gets big laughs.

So when did you decide to. . .

To be a sellout? That’s what they say about Levant. That he’s a sellout, that he sold out to Hollywood and cheap fame as a movie sidekick who plays cornball classical music between production numbers.

Are you?

A sellout?  Oh sure. But I make a lot better money. And it’s a way to stay out of the concert hall. It’s the ninth circle of Hell up there. (lights another cigarette)

But you’re so good. I mean, you’re –

Let’s get on with the Gershwin stuff, shall we? I know it’s coming.

OK, the Gershwin stuff. May I ask what he was really like?

Nothing like that limp-wristed Robert Alda who played him in the film. Had to dub all his playing for him.

Oh, THAT film! The one where you played yourself. What was it like to play yourself?

Let’s not get obscene here.

I don’t mean play “with” yourself.  I mean – portray yourself in the film.

I’d say it was a snap, but I don’t think I ever really figured out my character.

But you kept the coffee-and-cigarettes mode.

Sweetheart, that’s the only mode I have.

Is it your “shtik”?

Jesus, where do you get these words? What makes you think I’m Jewish?

It was the way you hugged Steve Allen on his show.

I hugged him “Jewish”?

I had to translate it.

(Laughs again) So did these guys send over somebody they think can stay ahead of me, or what?

No one can stay ahead of you.

Better for them. Listen, if I hugged Steve Allen any way at all they’d say I was a faggot. I was friends with Gershwin, and he was supposed to be a faggot, so that made ME a faggot by association.

I get the feeling you’re not a faggot.

Not lately. I think I’ve forgotten how, due to lack of practice. I have a lovely wife,  I mean it sincerely, June, she’s just terrific, we busted up last week. No, seriously, I don’t think I’d be alive without her and I don’t know how she puts up with me.

She loves you.

Loves me, as in popular song? Or loves me, as in, she loves him one minute and hates him the next? That would be my wife.

Do you ever stop joking? Do you ever get truly, deeply serious about things?

You mean, do I ever explore the darkest recesses of my tortured psyche?

Something like that.

Yeah, all the time.

At the piano?

Why would I damage my piano like that?

At the psychiatrist’s office? I saw him on your TV show the other day. That’s an innovative idea, to invite your analyst to come on your show.

He’s the only one I could get on such short notice. Adlai Stevenson bailed out on me at the last minute.

What do you say to your psychiatrist?

HELP!. . .  HELP!

Does he help?

I’m not sure there is such a thing as help, I mean on this plane of existence. I think you are who you are. It might be worse if I didn’t go.

Do you run in little circles inside your head?

What sort of question is that?

Just curious.

If you mean, am I a manic-depressive, of course. That’s the only diagnosis they could come up with that was frightening enough.

What are the highs like?

I don’t even know I’m on a high until I come down and realize that I’ve been babbling and swinging from chandeliers for weeks. Usually turns out I’ve offended a lot of people.

It sure smells like cigarettes in here.

The place is one big ashtray.

Are you hooked?

(Gazes at interviewer, lights another cigarette)

Would you play something for me right now?

I thought you’d never ask.

The Humoresque?

Which one?

Dvorak. Am I pronouncing that right?

No. Do you know there are words to that piece?

I didn’t! Why don’t you sing them?

Right now?

Right now.

(He sits at the piano, fidgeting and taking 2 or 3 minutes to get settled.)

Like a bike but so much cuter

Is my tiny two-wheeled scooter,

And I ride it ‘round and ‘round each day.

Though it has no engine on it,

Once I place my feet upon it

Merrily I’m on my way.

When I grow older

I may be bolder

And I’ll think of aeroplanes

And auto-mo-biles. . .

But right now when I’m outside

I’m satisfied to guide and ride

My tiny little scooter

With two wheels!

Oh, that’s lovely!

So are you, sweetheart. Come back any time. (Coughs, drapes arms around interviewer in Jewish embrace)

END

Barbecue Joe and his Hot Dogs - Tin Roof Blues (1930)

Hot Dog Blues by Barbecue Joe and his White Guy Band

 

Yeah.

 

Oh yeah.

 

OHHHHHHH, yeah.

Since you left me, mama

 

I got dem ole

 

Hot Dog Blues.

 

Got it so bad I bin puttin'

 

Mustard on my shoes

 

Since you left me baby,

 

I'm hangin' roun'

With a big bunch of Jews!

 

(musical interlude)

Boss man sez 

 

I gots ta pay my dues

 

(thump thump thump)

 

With the mob on my case,

 

I cain't see how I can refuse

And though you're thinkin', baby

 

That it's only a ruse

 

And though you're thinkin', baby

 

That I've lost my muse

 

And though you're thinkin', baby

 

That I'se exclaimin' "J'accuse"

 

(while reading Spinoza)

 

 

It don't make no difference, naw sahhhhhhhhh. . .

 

Cuz I've got dem -

 

Got dem -

 

Ohhhhhhhh, cuz I've got dem -

 

Got dem-old hot dog blues:

 

Gotta get down to de cawnah store to buy some,

 

I ain't got no time. . . to. . . loooooooooose!

Why "just" is so unjust

 

Did I make a total fool of myself?

Was I unrealistic? Was I wrong to think, this time, maybe this time things will turn out differently?

I thought I had magic on my side. Not so much because of my writing, which frankly took a very long time to get off the ground. When I look back at some of my early efforts, I feel as if I have bitten into a lemon.

No, it was the subject matter, the discovery. When I jumped into this world, the story began to write itself, and I was certain I was on to a Sure Thing.

It was all about Harold Lloyd, sometimes called the Third Genius of silent film comedy. His life seemed unexplored, or at least not explored in the way Chaplin's or Keaton's had been. Turner Classics had just started showing his films, a lot of them, so it seemed as if every time I tuned in I saw him in some obscure short or other. Later I saw him in his full glory in the feature films that propelled him to greatness.

I was in love, and writing feverishly: a story had sprung up about a young woman going to Hollywood to fulfil her obsession with Harold Lloyd. And yes, I was aware the premise might be seen as cliche - the young girl getting off the bus and being awed by the Hollywoodland sign (as it existed then) - but my hope was that Harold's dynamism and quirky charm might win readers over.

I have never researched anything to this depth, and somehow I'm still doing it, finding bits and pieces that fascinate me, even though, at the same time, it's like being steadily kicked in the teeth.

When I allowed myself to fantasize - and for the love of God, what else do writers DO? - I saw this book soaring, finding a substantial readership for the first time. My first two novels were (wince) "critically acclaimed," code for "they didn't sell" . The Glass Character, a reference to Harold Lloyd's nickname for his screen persona, did not soar as I had expected, but plummeted like a shot partridge, landing with a sickening thud.

I am aware that since I last published in 2005, things have changed. Hell, everything has changed, even my own attitude. I anticipated a sort of
comeback, and after awhile it evolved into an expectation. I forgot all about the Ten Commandments which some rinkydink Charlton Heston of an instructor chiselled into my brain at some writer's conference: A writer must hope, but never expect.

 

What if we assumed that attitude towards, say, sex? Would the human race even exist any more? What is hope, anyway, except a form of expectation? In any case, I tried everything I could think of to get this book published and got absolutely nowhere. Very few even read the thing. Maybe the very idea of a novel about silent film seemed boring to them, something the public would never be interested in. Never mind that The Artist, a silent movie about silent movies, had just won Best Picture at the Oscars, one of the biggest upsets in film history, and Martin Scorsese's Hugo featured a Harold Lloyd scene with the main character dangling off the hands of a huge clock.

Did I lose my objectivity, fall in love with Harold Lloyd to the point that the story somehow went off the rails?

Did fascination somehow devolve into a crashing bore?

 

In my writer's life, it seems I've had mostly failure, if you count failure as rejection and not being able to get your projects off the ground. It's all about being noticed. Wagging your ass, as far as I am concerned. When I referred to wearing a clown suit the other day, I was talking about something that actually happened at a writer's seminar.

A woman who had had a formulaic detective novel published with a small press claimed that if you wanted to be published, you had to be "shamelessly self-promoting" and do anything and everything to get noticed.

"Wear bright colors!" she exclaimed. "Stand out! Make them remember you!" I remember she had an eye-assaulting orange shirt on with rainbow suspenders. It really did look clownish, as if Wavy Gravy had landed in the literary world.

I wonder about this "shameless" thing. So what is the opposite of "shameless"? "Shameful", I guess. The implication is that self-promotion is usually seen as shameful, something we simply must not do if we are to keep our dignity.

This is worse in Canada, it really is. We have to hate our own work, or at least disparage it and be modest about it to a clinical degree. And for God's sake, don't let anybody see it! At the same time, our heads are swivelled around 180 degrees by the (mostly-American) lecturers at the Surrey Conference who tell us to promote, promote, promote. Leap over the usual rules like Evel Knievel soaring over the Snake River Canyon.  If you don't somehow make this leap (it used to be Oprah's book club, until even Oprah plummeted to the very last name on the Fortune 500 "50 Most Influential Women" list), you'll either be stuck in the perceived backwater of literary fiction, or will never publish at all.

Everyone seems to know that the main way to make the fabled leap is to "know the right people", but it's never spelled out exactly how you do this. Every attempt I haved made to contact people who might help me has been brushed off or ignored outright, leaving me feeling humiliated and stupid.   Maybe you really do have to attend cocktail parties where everyone is slightly swacked, and rub your foot against an influential guy's leg under the tablecloth (or maybe tackle him in an empty conference room). 

 

In case you think I'm some sort of paranoid crackpot Ma Kettle type with a smoking shotgun, let me tell you a story. I went to the Surrey conference just as my first novel Better than Life was about to come out in 2003, and it was like attending one big giddy literary party.  I had already signed deal for the second one, then called Nola Mardling. I also had an agent who appeared and disappeared in the happy hubbub of the conference. I ran into an old professor of mine who was obviously thrilled with what was happening. Then I won a minor writing award at the conference. And when people found out I had a "book out", a real live PUBLISHED book, they were amazed and wanted to buy a copy. It was a heady time, but it was also very typical of me and my life that it all crashed, savagely, a year or so later. And I still don't really know why, because I swear to God, I tried as hard as I could.

The book had been taken out of my hands and no longer resembled what I had written. Even the main character's name and the eponymous title had to be changed. I can't describe how this affected me. She died. She was dead, her identity had been destroyed, and yet I had to trot around and promote the thing as if she were still alive and well.

The result was, I didn't know my character any more. She was a stranger to me. Everyone was mildly shocked: why should this bother you so much? Why is it such a big deal to you, only two words changed? Readers won't know the difference, and that's all that matters. Not one person saw why I was upset, no one tried to help or defend me; I was completely abandoned at one of the worst times of my life. By now we were on two different planets, and I was no doubt being perceived as "difficult" or even crazy. 

And a writer must be, in any and all circumstances, grateful.

Why did I put up such a fuss over such a minor detail as my main character's name?  Because it changed the entire energy of the book.

Think of it.

Oliver Smith?

Moby Brown?

Suzy Karenina?

You get my drift.

So why would I want to venture into such shark-infested waters again?

The definition of insanity, in some circles anyway, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I suppose that is what I have been doing, trying to transcend what happened and transcend the news that everything is different now, that it's nearly impossible to get published unless the publisher thinks your book will sell, not just sell but leap across that fabled gap into Fifty Shades of Greyhood.

I'm just waiting for Fifty Shades of Grey Part 7 or 19 or whatever it is up to now.  These things make writers crazy, for I hear the book (books?) is/are absolute shit. I can't stand to read them (so obviously, I have no right to have an opinion), but throwing up was never my idea of a good time. When I try to work a little sex into my novels, everyone is deeply embarrassed and tells me I must tone it down or take it out altogether. Meantime, middle-aged porn rules, with frumpy fat schoolteachers furtively masturbating in bed besides their oblivious snoring husbands while the heroine gets tied up and whipped by some guy who looks like Fabio in a suit.

 

It's a fuck book, folks, and it just shocks me that it has taken over the way it has. All my writer's life I've heard, "Well, why don't you just write. . . " (whatever is "hot" and selling like mad at the time). I want to do a whole post on that word "just", because it makes me want to SCREAM. "Just" means, "it's simple, don't you see it? Why aren't you doing it already? Why haven't you thought of it by now, any idiot can see it!"

Just find an agent. Just write a genre novel. Just copy someone else's salacious, gut-squirming style. It's like telling a terminally-ill person to "just" take milk thistle or meditate, it's very simple, or "just" have a more positive attitude, and you'll be all better in a flash.

 

The number of "justs" in someone's vocabulary is in inverse proportion to their actual knowledge about the subject. The less a person knows about writing and publishing, the more they bore and exasperate you with their endless blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.  And I have had it, I really have.

I hate "just". It's a diminishing sort of word, condescending, implying you somehow can't see the most obvious solution to your problem and need to be set straight.  It's  almost the opposite of "just", which means, more or less, fair.  Just, in the sense of insulting gratuitous advice, isn't clearly defined in any of the dictionary meanings I've found. It's not an adverb, but a kind of command, and the closest simile I can find is "simply" (meaning you could do this easily, if you had half a brain). Simply write a novel, get on the bestseller list, and make a million dollars.

just (just) Pronunciation: /dʒʌst/

adjective

• based on or behaving according to what is morally right and fair: a just and democratic society fighting for a just cause
• (of treatment) deserved or appropriate in the circumstances: we all get our just deserts
• (of an opinion or appraisal) well founded; justifiable: these simplistic approaches have been the subject of just criticism

adverb

• 1exactly: that’s just what I need you’re a human being, just like everyone else
• exactly or almost exactly at this or that moment: she’s just coming we were just finishing breakfast

• 2very recently; in the immediate past: I’ve just seen the local paper

• 3barely; by a little: inflation fell to just over 4 per cent I only just caught the train

• 4simply; only; no more than: just a bad day in the office they were just interested in making money
• really; absolutely (used for emphasis): they’re just great
• used as a polite formula for giving permission or making a request: just help yourselves
• [with modal] possibly (used to indicate a slight chance of something happening or being true): it might just help

• 5expressing agreement: ‘Simon really messed things up.’ ‘Didn’t he just?’

 

 

 

(I notice that the last one looks a little like "sexpressing". Maybe my next novel should be called Sexpression. Or how about How I Tied Up and Tortured Publishers for Fun and Profit? Or even How I Learned to Love Being Tied Up and Tortured? It might just fly.)