In A Perfect World

Mitt Romney's Childhood Home: Victim of Economic Decline

Goodness knows, Mitt Romney is not asking me for campaign advice. But you have to wonder why he hasn't taken the opportunity to connect with Americans who've lost their homes by talking about his childood home in Detroit. The 5,500-square-foot structure in the long-exclusive Palmer Woods was demolished two years ago, an artifact of the blight that has ravaged so much of the Motor City.

Romney's family lived there for twelve years until 1953, before his father went on to become head of American Motors Corp., Governor of Michigan, and U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. As recently as 2002, the house sold for $645,000, then suffered foreclosure, abandonment and disrepair before finally being torn down in 2010.

Remembering the GI Bill

On Memorial Day, when we honor Americans of every political persuasion who gave their lives for their country, it's worth recalling that there are times in our history when America's political leaders worked together for the country's good. In 1944, the GI Bill was passed by both houses of Congress by unanimous votes, making it possible for millions of veterans returning from the war to go to school and own a home.

The Last Station: Jay Parini wrote the book

  
Jay Parini is one of the lucky ones. A couple of years ago, I interviewed him for a piece I was writing about Russia and Leo Tolstoy's Moscow house, now a charming museum on the city's outskirts. Parini, who teaches literature at Middlebury College in Vermont, had written a good and substantial historical novel called The Last Station about the last year of Tolstoy's life and the battle for his soul. He already expected then that a movie based on his book was going to get made.

At the time, he thought Anthony Hopkins and Meryl Streep would be playing the roles of the great author and his wife Sofya -- roles ultimately taken by Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren. Not so shabby. The cast also includes two of my other favorites, James McAvoy and Paul Giamatti.

The film, in limited release until January, has already landed two Golden Globe nominations (Plummer and Mirren) and five Independent Spirit awards, and it seems poised to garner some Oscar noms as well. As any filmmaker knows, getting any film made is a small miracle. Getting a good film made is a major one. The same theory surely applies to novelists imagining a film based on their novels.

Yet, nearly every time I read a review about the new movie, there's a part of me that feels badly for Parini. Why? More often than not, the talk is all about Michael Hoffman's The Last Station, the film that he directed and wrote. Well, they might mention that it's based on Parini's novel, but more typically the reader is led to believe that the film simply sprang forth from Hoffman.

Shed no tears for Parini. He's got a major motion picture based on his novel coming to a theater near you. More than that, a good director took his work seriously enough to create a sensual human drama, not merely a stiff Masterpiece Theater job. That's damned lucky.

But let's hope as the award season rolls on that more people remember that good movies usually originate from hard-working writers like Parini, compelled to create even if the movies don't come calling. 

Mickey Mouse: Welcome to the Dark Side

Get ready for Mickey's dark side. Mickey Mouse, the nicest mouse on the planet, is about to get real. Turns out the Disney folks have finally recognized that their too-tight cling to their super-clean icon has been killing the little fella. They're planning to awaken his less savory qualities, allow him to be cantankerous and edgy now and then, maybe even make us care about him again.

That's brave for a brand that generates billions in merchandise sales. And smart, because this world-famous icon has become an increasingly irrelevant pop culture figure. Once it's all about nostalgia, it's game over.

According to The New York Times, it's starting with a new video game called Disney Epic Mickey in which Mickey "traverses a forbidden wasteland." And that's only the first step in Disney's "re-engineering" of Mickey -- the way he walks, talks, appears on the Disney Channel and interacts online. 

The game, to be released in 2010 for the Wii, has been created by developer Warren Spector and his team at Junction Point. I rarely like video games, but this one looks different. Spector, in an excellent interview with Time, describes it as a visual marriage between Tim Burton and Walt Disney. That's compelling terrain.

And Spector, a hard-core game nerd and self-described Disney freak, has pulled from the early days of Mickey Mouse, way back to 1928 and Steamboat Willie, when Mickey Mouse was a genuine troublemaker, before he was buffed up to please the widest possible audience.

"The first thing I wanted to do was put Mickey in a world where he's out of place, where he's uncomfortable and has real problems," Spector says. "We've taken him to a strange place where it's a world of forgotten and rejected Disney creativity. There's 80 years of Disney creativity that exists in the archives and we've taken all the stuff that people have forgotten about."

Mickey, Spector reminds, was modeled after the heroic adventurer figure of Douglas Fairbanks and the comic figure of Charlie Chaplin.  Back in the beginning, Mickey could be seen smoking, drinking, even abusing animals. I'm guessing Mickey as smoker, drinker and abuser won't be Disney's ticket to the future.

But as a non-gamer, I'm pretty excited to see the new world in which the reimagined Mickey travels. It sounds like it's a world that extends beyond the five-and-under set. And if Epic Mickey is just the first milestone in Mickey's rebranding, the folks at Disney may be entering a new golden era where what they create matters again. 

Obama's Nobel Peace Prize

I'm already on record rooting for Greg Mortenson to win the Nobel Peace Prize. I'm inspired by his work and the risks he's taken to bring schools to Afghanistan and Pakistan and further peace in that troubled region. I saw the prize as a way to raise awareness about one man's path to peace -- an approach involving listening, learning and taking time to build constructive relationships -- a way of living that can be applied to many other efforts. I saw the granting of the prize as a way to inspire others to take risks.

Which is why my initial surprise about Obama's award has been followed with enthusiasm. Yes, we are all looking for concrete results. But it seems to me that the Norwegians' decision is less about tallying points already scored than about honoring a brave new strategy and inspiring others to take part. A strategy, by the way, that is consistent with Alfred Nobel's last will and testament of 1895 -- that a peace prize should be dedicated to "the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations....." 

Nobel also cited in his will the "abolition or reduction of standing armies" as worthy peace initiatives -- a goal that currently seems far, far away. But who can argue that Obama has not focused with great intensity on building fraternity between nations? Call it naive, if you want to pretend that America would benefit by a continued path of aggressive unilateralism, but Obama's open-handed approach is just what Nobel was seeking.  

And for anyone who imagines that approach to be soft or weak, it's worth remembering that Sweden's native son was no pushover: Alfred Nobel was the inventor of dynamite.