ST ch 19 French 75s, Greasy Thumb Guzik

[Joseph Tracy]

I thought the movie was a kind of surrogate imaginary revenge against 
Trump for people who aren't going to do shit to work for change, or to 
stop the bipartisan genocide and scapegoating of refugees fleeing 
poverty and right wing narco states. No Zionists in the Christmas Club, 
no Rubio, No Condaleeza, no Clarence Thomas.  Also there was no family 
in Humboldt County, which was quite central to the novel. The only 
'education for the Prairie character was violence and terror resolved in 
classic hollywood fashion when she shoots her designated killer. Why did 
Sean Penn still join the weird club after they tried to kill him and 
left him disfigured? Vato and Blood telling the fascist prick he would 
have to leave his bones behind but he would get used to it was better.  
DiCaprio and Del Toro( substitute for family)  and the young woman who 
plays the Prairie type role were excellent as were several other 
performances. The French 75 started out with an appealing action and 
then they are robbing banks and murdering the security guard.  Did that 
make anyone want to join the revolution?
   One realistic aspect was the extreme difficulty of organizing a 
violent revolution in an age of pervasive digital surveillance.


The scene with the letter worked for me only because I thought it was 
obvious DiCaprio wrote the letter and that his daughter knew it.  
Otherwise it would be like a manipulative  Hollywood resolution where 
abandonment and murderous betrayal is healed by a profession of love. In 
Vineland Frenesi takes the risk of going north and showing up.

I hate to be so negative. Was looking forward to the movie. Liked his 
version of IV.  I found it slightly better watched on a TV in a second 
view with my visiting daughter, who was not too impressed.


On 5/11/26 12:34 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:
> us thSo, we differ and maybe I’m too accepting.
>
> Here’s  to pluralism.
>
> On Mon, May 11, 2026 at 12:08 PM Laura Kelber <laurakelber at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm just not a fan of PTA, other than Boogie Nights, and I find nothing in
>> his movies that echos or resonates about America or the world the way
>> Pynchon does, or even, for that matter, the old doc The World at War (which
>> I'm currently rewatching) does. In an interview, he said that Benicio del
>> Toro actually helped craft the plot of the latter part of the movie, which
>> is "inspired by," not an adaptation of Vineland. So I don't see PTA as
>> anything approaching the deliberate craftsmanship of Pynchon.
>>
>> On Mon, May 11, 2026 at 11:53 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Anderson’s movies’ tones are not  literally the decade they are set, imo.
>>> Look at the Master, Magnolia, others. They are thematic thematic tones
>>> resonating beyond their present.
>>>
>>> In OBAA it is the eternal present of America from the sixties to Tiffany,
>>> imo.
>>>
>>> I think one reason Anderson is a fan and has had his artistic vision
>>> shaped by TRP is to try to emulate that poised both sides/times now.
>>>
>>> See Lawrence and H Rap Brown among others on violence and America.
>>>
>>> On Mon, May 11, 2026 at 11:37 AM Robin Landseadel via Pynchon-l <
>>> pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I understand what you are saying about the initial setting of the movie
>>>> in the Obama era. Of course, no names are named. However, the historical
>>>> POV of most of the movie is in the present tense, or at least a present
>>>> tense. Thank you for mentioning Assata Shakur and Fred Hampton. That would
>>>> be more on-point, in that regard you are right as regards French 75. The
>>>> point of 24fps was to document police actions against protesters, something
>>>> that was happening a lot at Earth First and associated rallies in the
>>>> Emerald Triangle in the late 1980s/early 1990s, lots of folks circling the
>>>> scene with handheld videocams.
>>>>
>>>>> On 05/11/2026 8:17 AM PDT Laura Kelber <laurakelber at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Saw One Battle After Another a couple of days ago. "French 75" appears
>>>> to be a group modeled after the SDS or Black Panthers but set in the
>>>> present tense rather than the late 1960s/early 1970s like 24fps.
>>>>> French 75 appears to me to be modeled after more violent groups like
>>>> The Weathermen and BLA, and Perfidia clearly referenced Assata Shakur, who
>>>> died about a week (if I remember) before OBAA had its theatrical release.
>>>> The violence of these groups was a response to the FBI's assassination of
>>>> Fred Hampton and the excesses of the Nixon administration and COINTELPRO.
>>>> To set a similar group ahistorically in the tepid years of the late Obama
>>>> period seems politically tone deaf to me. It's not something that Pynchon
>>>> would ever do, and certainly didn't do in Vineland. That's one of my many
>>>> objections to the movie.
>>>>> Laura
>>>>>
>>> --
>>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l