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Waiting for Brando: A disastrous 1961 film production of the Iliad

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Re: Waiting for Brando: A disastrous 1961 film production of the Iliad

#21

Post by DoreenMichele »

circlefull wrote: post #12
DoreenMichele wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first sentence states he fell "head over heels" in love with her even though nowhere in the piece does he indicate they ever dated or flirted or so much as kissed. The rest of the first paragraph describe an interaction that sounds to me like she was probably trying to deflect his interest. He goes on to say he persisted with a tenacity he did not know he was capable of. If that doesn't sound borderline stalkeris…

Oh come on. The author never harassed her caused any harm or did anything she refused. He was a suitor and had a crush. Stalker is a word better used more carefully in my opinion, for bad people. Not hopeless romantics perusing hopeless relationships.

Not hopeless romantics perusing hopeless relationships.

Let me reframe that:

If there is no hope she will ever say "yes", he knows that and pursues her anyway, he is a stalker, not a hopeless romantic.

Re: Waiting for Brando: A disastrous 1961 film production of the Iliad

#22

Post by DoreenMichele »

Maursault wrote: post #20
actionfromafar wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is true , that's also exactly how stalkers present themselves.

Haven't RTFA, but it is clear neither you nor OP have any idea what stalking is. While it does mean "to approach stealthily," which implies surveilling and following in the context of predator and prey, in the social and criminal sense stalking has a specific meaning which is in the simplest sense to threaten . Any indication in the article that the author had an intent of harassment and intimidation, or threatened a…

We do not have Susan Brockman's side of this story. We do not know if the contact was deemed unwanted nor if she felt threatened, etc.

This was the 1950s and 60s. Women with any career ambition put up with a lot more sexist BS and sexual BS than they typically do today. She may have felt this was an opportunity she could not afford to pass up.

Re: Waiting for Brando: A disastrous 1961 film production of the Iliad

#23

Post by kyleamazza »

cammikebrown wrote: post #11
Guthur wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, they rarely go around saying, "I'm the 1%".

I know several one percenters who say they’re not wealthy. They always know someone richer than them, so they can’t possibly be that rich.

I think that's because the difference between the top of that 1% and bottom of that 1% is a magnitude of thousands. It goes from a few million to hundreds of millions, and up to many billions.

The bottom of that 1% doesn't have to worry about spending money for daily things, but going higher, the upper portions can spend on _anything_. So, the difference at least feels large between the rich and "obscenely" rich, as opposed to the 50%ers vs the 75%ers.

Re: Waiting for Brando: A disastrous 1961 film production of the Iliad

#25

Post by rawgabbit »

The 1930 film All Quiet on the Western Front is one of my favorites. The author should have listened to the Millstone who directed the movie. That and having a good script. If he had a good script Brando or another star would have been interested.

Re: Waiting for Brando: A disastrous 1961 film production of the Iliad

#26

Post by nl »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #18
nl wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whilst I moderately agree that it does sound like it could be stalkerish there is some evidence of her active involvement, eg: > I was living at my parents’ home in Rockville Centre and feared that asking Zervos to reply to Ed Epstein c/o Betty & Lou Epstein might cast my credibility as a producer into question. Susan’s sorority house at Cornell, Alpha Epsilon Phi, had a similar problem, but Susan found the solution:…

I'm a woman. I try to assume good faith if men are pretending they wish to support my professional goals. In my experience, it's 100 percent downside for me if the real motivation is sexual interest.

As I said, I moderately agree but I'm unsure there is enough information to be sure.

She certainly was involved in the project and seems to possibly have known of his romantic interest because she told him when she told him when she had become romantically involved with Willem de Kooning.

Re: Waiting for Brando: A disastrous 1961 film production of the Iliad

#27

Post by DoreenMichele »

nl wrote: post #26
DoreenMichele wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a woman. I try to assume good faith if men are pretending they wish to support my professional goals. In my experience, it's 100 percent downside for me if the real motivation is sexual interest.

As I said, I moderately agree but I'm unsure there is enough information to be sure. She certainly was involved in the project and seems to possibly have known of his romantic interest because she told him when she told him when she had become romantically involved with Willem de Kooning.

Choosing to accept a leading role in a movie that many people were excited about because they thought Brando would be in it does not mean she was never uncomfortable with his romantic interest in her. The fact that she told him she got involved with someone else may have been polite code for "You can stop holding out hope we will get together. It's not going to happen, which I have been trying to politely signal since the very first time you chatted me up and I didn't bother to so much as look at you."

If a woman is too picky about completely avoiding men who are interested in her where her answer is definitely no to their romantic interest, it can make it impossible to pursue a career at all and doing so may not even protect her from having to put up with his unwanted attentions.

#NotAllMen, obviously, but it's an excessively common issue for some women.

Re: Waiting for Brando: A disastrous 1961 film production of the Iliad

#28

Post by acabal »

floren wrote: post #5

> I realized that though we had come to Cornell from Brooklyn, and from fairly similar Jewish middle-class backgrounds > Her father, who owned a travel agency, among many other companies, provided us with first-class tickets to Athens on a KLM “sleeper” flight. It's true what they say, everybody wants to think of themselves as middle-class

Historically, that is what it meant to be middle class. Before there was an established middle class, there was only the upper class - aristocracy who inherited wealth and land - and the poor. You might find a rich merchant from time to time but they were the exception and not a class. Once the industrial revolution kicked in, it became possible for a large amount of people to amass wealth without having inherited it. If you were able to do that, you were part of the new "middle class". Of course, there is often much sniffing and consternation over the super-wealthy middle class occasionally trying to elbow their way up the social ladder into the upper class.

If this woman's father bought her a trip in 1959, then he may have made his money in the 1920s, when the middle class was only just firming up. It would have been correct at the time to think of him as middle class, even though to us today he seems pretty wealthy. That's because his class status was defined by him being a businessperson who presumably did it himself, as opposed to having inherited wealth, land, or title.

The rise of the middle class was the cause of much cultural introspection at the time. There's a lot of thoughtful and beautiful literature about it, like Howards End[1] and The Forsyte Saga[2].

Of course, today "I'm middle class" means "I earn enough to own a car and take a vacation once a year." But that's a modern shift of definition and not quite what it meant for this woman's father in the first half of the century.

[1] https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/e-m-forster/howards-end

[2] https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/john-galsworthy/the-forsyt...

Re: Waiting for Brando: A disastrous 1961 film production of the Iliad

#29

Post by jfengel »

pavlov wrote: post #4

Women often report that they suffer from imposter syndrome. I wonder if there’s a name for the opposite phenomenon so amply on display in this story, with this young male college dropout hustling catastrophically, all because he’s afraid a famous painter will steal his maybe-girlfriend.

Not quite what you describe, but in the ballpark, is "failing up": people (primarily men) who fail at activity after activity with such confidence that everyone believes he has great talent and can't wait to give him the opportunity to try again.

Re: Waiting for Brando: A disastrous 1961 film production of the Iliad

#30

Post by throwawaylinux »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #21
circlefull wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come on. The author never harassed her caused any harm or did anything she refused. He was a suitor and had a crush. Stalker is a word better used more carefully in my opinion, for bad people. Not hopeless romantics perusing hopeless relationships.

Not hopeless romantics perusing hopeless relationships. Let me reframe that: If there is no hope she will ever say "yes", he knows that and pursues her anyway , he is a stalker , not a hopeless romantic.

That's just not what stalking means. It's a pretty serious crime with a real definition, not just "I don't like somebody" or "they hurt my feelings" or whatever.

You're free to call it creepy or frightening or anything else, it's just not what stalking is though. You've made up your own definition of the word.

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