Contract Killer

Film: The Paper Chase
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on The Nook.

I’m not old enough to remember The Paper Chase when it was a new movie, but I am old enough to recall my mother being a fan of the television show. While the star of the movie is officially Timothy Bottoms and the star of the television show was a guy named James Stephens (which is an alias I’ve used, although not because of the actor), the real star of both was John Houseman. Houseman was a stage actor, the co-founder of the Mercury Theater, and a teacher at Julliard. The Paper Chase was his third film role, one coming in the late 1930s and one uncredited in the 1960s. After this film and the subsequent television show, Houseman was everywhere, and his image was indistinguishable from that of his role in this film.

The Paper Chase is the story of a first-year Harvard Law student named James T. Hart (Timothy Bottoms) and his experience with his classmates in a class covering contract law. That class is taught by Professor Kingsfield (John Houseman), a terror in the classroom, but the sort of man who takes the brightest minds in the room and sharpens them to become the brightest minds in the country. Kingsfield’s class is a trial by fire. He identifies students only by a seating chart and has no memory of any of them beyond the classroeom. No student’s cares or concerns penetrate the icy wall of Kingsfield’s demeanor. The grade they get is the grade they earn with no chance or possibility of favoritism.

Watching Oscar: The China Syndrome

Film: The China Syndrome
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on big ol’ television.

I think I must have been sort of a weird kid. Actually, I know I was a pretty weird kid, but that seemed to express itself in my movie choices. I can remember seeing The China Syndrome as a kid, which means I saw this when I was 11. Why the hell would an 11-year-old kid want to see The China Syndrome? I have no answer for that except to say that evidently, I was that kid. This was a pattern—I saw Chariots of Fire in the theater by myself, and I also remember seeing, of all things, The Falcon and the Snowman. What the hell was I thinking? On the other hand, I also saw Star Wars in the theater almost 20 times. Actually, that’s pretty weird, too.

Anyway, The China Syndrome is a film about an almost-accident at a nuclear power plant that turns into both a scare and a scandal. It’s a solid film with some very good performances, but it also benefited greatly from timing. When the film was released, the idea of a nuclear power plant disaster was not really in the mind of the public, but less than two weeks after its release, the incident at Three Mile Island happened. Suddenly the idea of nuclear disaster was on the minds of everyone, and The China Syndrome reaped the enormous benefits.