Film When Giants Walked Hollywood Sometimes the “business of poltroons” yields a masterpiece despite itself. Giant Love: Edna Ferber, Her Best-Selling Novel of Texas, and the Making of a Classic American Film, by Julie Gilbert, Pantheon, 400 pages. Some years ago, I asked the movie director Peter Bogdanovich about the unwillingness of movie studios to take more artistic chances. “It’s a business of what you would call poltroons. Cowards,” he said. I was reminded of Bogdanovich’s clear-eyed diagnosis of Hollywood pusillanimity when contemplating the inevitable industry reaction to Francis Ford Coppola’s recent science-fiction extravaganza with philosophical pretensions, Megalopolis, which is, by any standard, a box-office calamity. Despite its maker having committed $120 million of his own funds to the project, this bizarrely Ayn Randian argument for turning over civic life to quixotic architects has grossed, at press time, less than $10 million in the U.S.  The movie business will undoubtedly pull in its horns on what it considers needlessly adventuresome movies, but we must remember that the failure of Megalopolis has less to do with its scope than with its particulars: its bumbling performances, its combination of weird visuals and stilted dialogue, and its poorly worked-out contemporary political metaphors. Megalopolis is a nonpareil catastrophe. The lesson should not be to make fewer epics but to make better epics. Moviemakers seeking an example of a large-scale cinematic saga that resonated with the public need look no further than George Stevens’ 1956 masterpiece Giant, which uses a multigenerational soap opera to paint a picture of life in Texas during a chunk of the twentieth century. The film was based on an equally grandiose novel by Edna Ferber. Like Coppola, Stevens uses bold brushstrokes. He is not simply trying to tell a good story but to capture the flavor—the landscape, the customs, the prejudices, the peculiarities—of a time and place. But the similarities end there.  Giant, both the Ferber novel and the Stevens movie, is the subject of Julie Gilbert’s immaculately thorough and beautifully perceptive new book, Giant Love: Edna Ferber, Her Best-Selling Novel of Texas, and the Making of a Classic American Film. If the author writes with particular authority, it is because she approaches this material with particular bona fides. Gilbert is a great-niece of Ferber, who was born in 1885 and died in 1968, and whose major novels include So Big and Show Boat, the latter the source for the great musical by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II.  Gilbert previously authored a biography of her famous relation, Ferber: A Biography of Edna Ferber and Her Circle, in 1978. Gilbert’s background with Ferber, personal and professional, gives her an unusually intimate perspective. For example, Gilbert remembers having once asked her great-aunt whether she experienced loneliness. “Oh, no. Never,” Ferber replied. “The characters in my books are my friends. They provide sustenance.” And surely no other Ferber chronicler could write, as Gilbert does here, that Ferber’s editor on Giant, Ken McCormick, was “a kind, gentle, erudite man, who, as luck and irony would have it, was the editor for my Ferber biography three decades later.”Above all, Gilbert’s familiarity with her subject allows her to perceive Ferber’s intentions clearly, a rare virtue in an age when the work of past writers is routinely apologized for or simply canceled. Not so with Gilbert, who effortlessly enunciates Ferber’s aims, even while conceding that her novels have fallen out of favor. “Her liberal patriotism could be perceived as eccentric today,” Gilbert writes. “But what is so quaint about upholding the notion of the land of the free? Ferber was able to locate a moral center in her novels. She laid out a clear map of the better and lesser ways to navigate. Her character fought and forgave; they learned and grew.” Giant recounts the litany of societal changes experienced by Jordan “Bick” Benedict (played in the film by Rock Hudson), who oversees a cattle-ranch empire in Texas. Over the course of the narrative, Jordan sees his way of life sidelined by the ascendant oil industry—represented by upstart ex-ranch hand Jett Rink (James Dean)—and his view of life is significantly altered. Aided by the liberal perspective of his old-money Marylander wife Leslie (Elizabeth Taylor), Jordan sloughs off the casual racism he displays towards Mexican Americans to become, by the end, the patriarch of an interracial family.  To his everlasting credit, Stevens teases out these themes with much artistry and minimal preachiness. Even so, credit must first be given to Ferber, a Jewish woman whose transient upbringing—her father was a dry-goods proprietor who took his family to such spots as Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Ottumwa, Iowa—and encounters with anti-Semitism unquestionably informed what and why she wrote.  “Ferber was a stickler for accuracy and didn’t believe in ‘divine inspiration,’” Gilbert writes. “She would double back in her writing process if she felt her facts were shaky, and if a new morsel was presented, she would redraft a portion to fit it in.” She even identified the exact breed of cattle likely to be raised in the area in Texas where Bick and family live. Said the biographer of Ferber’s playwrighting partner George S. Kaufman, Howard Teichmann, “She had great personal courage, an overwhelming desire to travel, to seek new people, new places, new ideas.” Before Ferber had the details, though, she had the big picture—the notion of a hefty and complex novel about the twenty-eighth state. “This assignment I had given myself was as difficult as the state of Texas itself was enormous and diverse,” Ferber said. “It was as Spanish as Mexico; it was as American as ham-and-eggs; it was as Neiman-Marcus as Fifth Avenue; it was as Western as long-horns and cactus.” The book was a notable best-seller, but with its unvarnished depiction of the treatment of Mexican Americans, it was met with—how to put this politely?— conflicted reactions in the state in which it was set. Even in Hollywood, the book was met with some studio reticence, though it was eagerly pursued by leading directors King Vidor and George Stevens. A native of Galveston, Vidor—whose visionary films included the ambitious An American Romance and the star-bedecked Western Duel in the Sun—arguably had stronger claims to the material than Stevens. Yet it was the younger man, associated with well-made trifles such as the Astaire-Rogers musical Swing Time and the adventure flick Gunga Din, who seems to have had a deeper feeling for the material. Stevens had, after all, not long earlier come home from World War II, a traumatizing and transformational experience that had begun to seep into his mature films, among them A Place in the Sun and Shane. “His altered perspective believed in social change through big-screen dramatic storytelling,” Gilbert writes. “Stevens was intrigued by the fact that she had pissed off the entitled Texas gentry, making her a gen-u-ine pariah.” The two also had politics in common: Both were steady Democrats; she had supported Adlai Stevenson for president and saw in Stevens “a basic decency” that endeared her to him. Gilbert expertly guides the reader through the writing, publication, and reception of Ferber’s novel, but her book really takes off when she settles into the making of Stevens’ movie. Each phase of production is described with flavor and excitement, including the formation of a screenplay by Fred Guiol and Ivan Moffat—with uncredited contributions by Ferber. Alas, Ferber’s own draft evidently missed the mark. Replying in the margins to a line added by the author, Stevens wrote, sensibly, “Let the picture say this—do all our jokes need explaining?” Yet, on the whole, Ferber and Stevens shared a certain methodical, even plodding way of working. Studio boss Jack Warner cabled to associates: “WORRIED GIANT ONLY FIVE REELS SCORED.” Even the director’s son George Stevens Jr. conceded the unusual pace: “I worked with my dad on the script and then went in the Air Force for two years and came back and worked with him on the editing.” Despite its director’s orderly approach, Giant, like most great movies, ultimately benefited from a certain degree of happenstance, especially in casting. Clark Gable sought the role of Bick, but Stevens heeded the counsel of female friend Joan McTavish, who while working at Universal had noticed Rock Hudson in a movie that called for him to age a quarter of a century (as would be required of whoever played Bick in Giant). James Dean ended up playing Jett Rink because co-screenwriter Guiol noticed that the young actor was hanging around—“twirling a rope, just twirling away,” as Gilbert puts it—outside their offices. “This guy was fascinating,” Stevens said. “He wasn’t looking for a part in the film, but Freddie and I said, ‘What would happen if he played this part?’” What happened was that Dean delivered a sensational performance and, before the movie had wrapped, died in a car crash at age 24. If only Hollywood would find its misplaced courage and make epics as good as Giant again. Seeing it on the big screen, as I did nearly a decade ago, is an almost volcanic experience. In a theater, the film’s storytelling scope and physical vastness communicate the thematic ambition of Ferber’s novel. Gilbert’s book distinguishes itself by not having to labor to make a case for its subject: Giant the novel was a big deal when it was published; Giant the movie was an enormous success when it was released. The book and the movie deserve the superb treatment they are given here.  The post When Giants Walked Hollywood appeared first on The American Conservative.

Television personality Geraldo Rivera revealed Monday that he is backing Vice President Harris over former President Trump in the election, now less than a month away. “Former President Trump is a sore loser who cannot be trusted to honor the Constitution,” Rivera, once an ally of the former president, wrote in a lengthy post on social platform X. “That is why I am voting for Kamala Harris to be our 47th President.” The former Fox News personality said he hasn’t spoken to Trump since November...

Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris has been accused of plagiarizing sections of her first book, published in 2009, after a renowned "plagiarism hunter" found multiple passages that closely resembled or were taken word-for-word from other sources without attribution. Conservative activist Christopher Rufo independently verified and then published the purported lifted sections in Harris' book, "Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor's Plan to Make Us Safer," first surfaced by Austrian...

Population alarmists who buy into the overpopulation myth believe that the world’s growing population will strip the Earth of its useable resources and will outpace innovation and rates of production. This, they […]

by Greg Hunter, USA Watchdog: Dr. Peter McCullough is a renowned cardiologist who has been fighting the government CV19 vax propaganda from the beginning.  Dr. McCullough is on record saying “The CV19 vaccine did not help a single person.”  Now, Dr. McCullough is fighting a new false government narrative on the Bird Flu.  They just […]

In Pelling, a town in Western Sikkim in India with the best views of the Himalayan peak Kanchenjunga, Tsering Bhutia gazes at the terraced field behind his house. “We’ve grown organic black cardamom for years,” he says. “But ever since a blight destroyed my crop, I’ve been contemplating making a homestay here instead…” About two miles away, Rinchen Lama adds homegrown vermicompost to her field. “The squash I grow is the most delicious you’ll ever eat,” she says. “But my kids also like other vegetables, so I get them from the market.”  In a state that officially went 100 percent organic in 2016, and won what many regard as the Oscar for best public policies — the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Future Policy Gold Award — in 2018, such stories paint an honest picture of the challenges that arise in fundamentally altering how our food is grown. But this change is necessary: An estimated 52 percent of agricultural land across the globe is moderately to severely degraded due to monoculture, chemical pesticide and fertilizer use, and groundwater extraction — and this will accelerate unless these practices change. And in 2019, a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report found that commercial food production over the last 50 years has driven more biodiversity loss globally than any other activity.  Sowing after the rains. Credit: Mevedir When it comes to organic farming, Australia leads the world’s tally with 53 million hectares under cultivation, and at 4.7 million hectares, India stands a far second (the United States, at 2.06 million hectares, is ninth). Not many countries and regions have managed to transition to 100 percent organic food production, as it is tricky and initially expensive. Here’s how Sikkim succeeded where Sri Lanka failed disastrously.  Lessons from a failed experiment In 2021, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, president of Sri Lanka, declared an overnight ban on the use and import of chemical fertilizers and other crop inputs in the country. A survey at the time found that over 90 percent of the two million farmers in the island nation used chemical fertilizers and 85 percent expected huge reductions in their harvest if they stopped suddenly.  Indeed, the ban, coupled with the higher production expenses, devastated food production. The government was not able to supply enough organic fertilizers, or import sufficient soil nutrients to satisfy farmers’ requirements, before banning agrochemicals. Consequently, the production of rice (a significant staple on Sri Lankan plates) dropped by half, and the production of tea, Sri Lanka’s largest cash crop, fell by 18 percent. In 2022, food shortages and a worsening foreign exchange crisis forced the government to call off its experiment with organic farming. The World Food Programme estimated that in 2023, 17 percent of its population of 22 million remained food-insecure, an improvement on 2022’s figure of 28 percent.  Mevedir officials inspecting a chilly crop. Credit: Mevedir In comparison, Sikkim chose the slow route: Back in 2003, the state gave itself a decade to transition to 100 percent organic. The odds were in its favor. Sikkim is India’s most sparsely populated state (86 people per square kilometer, as per the 2011 census, compared to 828 in the North Indian state of Uttar Pradesh). Its mainly subsistence farms were, and continue to be, spread thinly across mountainous terrain, which makes supplying inorganic fertilizers expensive. Consequently, using homegrown organic manure and vermicompost (compost created from worm waste) was very much the norm. In fact, Sikkimese farmers were already using less nitrogenous and phosphatic fertilizers in 2003: merely 9.9 kg per hectare of cropped area, compared to Punjab (172 kg per hectare) and Haryana (150.4 kg per hectare). It also helped that the local populace already understood the value of organic food. “As children, we were taught that basti (local) vegetables grown without any chemical inputs by small farmers, were the best vegetables to eat,” says Renzino Lepcha, CEO of Mevedir, an organic agri-business and certification agency in Sikkim. “And we chose them over those imported from the plains.”  “We’ve borrowed this earth from our future generations…” The state’s organic journey kicked off in 2004, with an action plan in which the then-chief minister Pawan Chamling wrote, “[W]e have not inherited this earth from our forefather but have borrowed it from our future generations, it is our duty to protect it by living in complete harmony with nature and environment.” This lofty idea was accompanied by pragmatism: At this juncture, the subsidy on chemical fertilizer was merely reduced (it was fully banned in 2014). The state government developed 100 model villages where organic farming was demonstrated, and as most landholdings were small, encouraged farmer-producer groups to collectively apply for organic certification. This was provided initially through certification agencies like Mevedir, and later, starting in 2015, through the newly-minted Sikkim State Organic Certification Agency. Crushed by negative news? Sign up for the Reasons to be Cheerful newsletter. [contact-form-7] In 2010, the Sikkim Organic Mission, the nodal agency that implemented the state’s organic policy, was formed. “We underwent many training modules and learned about different aspects of organic farming — making fertilizers and crop medicines from cow dung and urine, multi-cropping, crop rotation, composting, etc.,” Bhutia, the farmer in Pelling, recalls. “Most of these were easy, and cheap to adopt.” By 2016, when the state government and contracted agencies had certified more than 75,000 hectares of land, the state was declared to have become 100 percent organic.  But even though the transition was leisurely and well-planned, Sikkim faced — and continues to face — challenges.  “Why export organic pineapples — and eat non-organic fruit at home?” In 2022, 82 percent of the respondents in a study of the state by the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), a nonprofit focused on conservation and sustainable development, reported that they still source their staple food from the market or through the public distribution system. “And this is not necessarily organic,” Sarala Khaling, an ecologist and interdisciplinary researcher at ATREE, says. “Farmers are growing more cash crops than food crops,” she says, describing the state’s changing foodscape, which is influencing what farmers are choosing to grow — or not grow. “I’ve seen many farms abandoned for reasons including economic unviability, climate uncertainty, reduced land holding sizes and loss of interest in farming among the youth.”  Ploughing the fields after the monsoon. Credit: Mevedir This declining interest in farming has been exacerbated by a drop in agricultural production between 2017 and 2020, and the lack of agricultural infrastructure to make agribusinesses financially feasible (which could make farming more attractive to the younger generation). “Initially in 2006, we started sending ginger and turmeric to Holland and Germany by air,” Lepcha says. “But in the absence of any cold chain infrastructure, our export volumes were so small that they weren’t commercially viable.”   There has been a decline in political interest in organic farming in Sikkim as well. In the 2019 Assembly elections, the political party Sikkim Democratic Front, led by the erstwhile chief minister Pawan Chamling, lost to the Prem Singh Golay-led Sikkim Krantikari Morcha. Chamling, a farmer who had served five consecutive terms as chief minister of Sikkim, had spearheaded and overseen the transition to organic. But the new government, Lepcha observes, has different priorities. “Five years ago, the Krishi Bhawan (Department of Agriculture) used to be buzzing with daily meetings, training sessions and seminars on organic agriculture,” he says. “Today, there are hardly any.” The return of the bees On the bright side, studies and field observations indicate that Sikkim’s fragile mountain ecology is thriving today. “We can actually see on the ground that going organic has improved the soil quality and biodiversity in the areas that we work,” Lepcha says. Mevedir presently works with 30 farmer groups across three districts in Sikkim. “Most farmers we work with experience the positive effects of going organic, and it certainly helps that homemade crop inputs are way cheaper than buying their chemical counterparts,” he says.  A bumper crop of maize drying on a farmer’s house. Credit: Mevedir Rain-fed agriculture has helped reduce the need for irrigation and conserve water, a scarce commodity in the Himalayas. Some reports suggest that since 2014, bee populations have been rebounding, with yields of pollinator-dependent cardamom increasing by more than 23 percent. The organic tag is also fueling an increase in wellness tourism, and tourist arrivals in the state have increased by 25 percent since 2016. Khaling sounds a warning note here, however, saying that she is apprehensive about “opening the floodgates of an ecologically fragile zone to mass tourism.” Even though the government focus on organic agriculture has lessened, Lepcha says that farmers supplying to Mevedir continue to practice it. Marginal farmers like Bhutia and Lama prefer the organic way as well.  “Sikkim isn’t a failed model, but it isn’t easily replicable either!” Sikkim’s unique traits — low population density, small landholding size, large natural resource base, historical prevalence of organic farming and most importantly, political will — have lubricated its organic journey. However, as GV Ramanajanegulu of the Hyderabad-based Center for Sustainable Agriculture points out, these traits also make its organic transition hard to replicate. “But while the state’s organic transition may not have been 100 percent successful, it is proof that if a government has the will, it can intervene and transform farming,” he says.  The Sikkim case highlights another key takeaway: Going organic is much more than simply using organic agricultural inputs. It is as much about changing how we grow as it is about changing what we actually eat. Lama’s children groan every time there is squash for dinner, and at Mevedir’s organic vegetable outlet in Gangtok, Lepcha is seeing a growing demand for exotic and out-of-season vegetables like tomatoes. “While this demand exists, vendors in Sikkim will be forced to import from other parts of the country,” he says.  Become a sustaining member today! Join the Reasons to be Cheerful community by supporting our nonprofit publication and giving what you can. Join Khaling and her colleagues at ATREE suggest that it would be more transformative to broadly uphold all the principles of agroecology (the complex interrelationship between people, food  production, livelihoods and the environment) instead of narrowly focussing on organic farming alone. “Replenishing the water and soil used for farming, eating what we’re producing, allowing biodiversity and domestic animals to thrive alongside farms and most of all, ensuring that farming practices improve the lives and lifestyles of the farmers themselves, could improve the Sikkim model,” she says.   Meanwhile, Lama’s children noisily protest against squash being on their dinner menu yet again, and once again, for a little variety, she buys some potatoes from the local market to cook into a curry.  The post How One Indian State Went 100% Organic appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.

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