Job Discussion Forums

[dmb]

Where is the best beach from your experience?
My faves are Unawatuna in Sri Lanka and Gumusluk in Turkey.

[johnslat]

Dear dmb,
Chu Lai, Viet Nam. But as it was nearly 40 years ago. I have no idea what it's like these days. Sort of reminds me of that line from "Atlantic City". Susan Sarandon and Burt Lancaster are strolling on the boardwalk and she remarks about how beautiful the ocean is. His reply:

" Ah, you should have seen it fifty years ago."

Regards,
John

[khmerhit]

That was a fine film ,atlantic city. I can remember my english teacher lamenting its neglect by the academy. Dont remember much of the film tho, must see it agian. Aging gangster meets cocktail waitress?
forgetfully yours
khmerhit

PS the beaches of cambodia are nothing much-- unless you hail from a northern clime!

[johnslat]

Dear khmerhit,
Atlantic City
Director: Louis Malle
Screenplay: John Guare
Stars: Burt Lancaster (Lou Pasco), Susan Sarandon (Sally Matthews), Robert Joy (Dave Matthews), Kate Reid (Grace), Michel Piccoli (Joseph), Hollis McLaren (Chrissie), Al Waxman (Alfie), Robert Goulet (Singer), Moses Znaimer (Felix), Angus MacInnes (Vinnie)
MPAA Rating: R
Year of Release: 1980
Country: USA / Canada / France

Burt Lancaster won the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of a conniving salesman-turned-preacher in 1960's Elmer Gantry, but his best performance was arguably in his role as Lou Pasco, an aging small-time gangster in Louis Malle's Atlantic City. Lancaster brings to the role a great, endearing physicality, a sense of presence that is convincing in its character-created self-delusion. Lou is a man for whom the past is his only consolation, but it is a past that is largely a figment of his own imagination and years of dreams-turned-lies.
The film's backdrop is the titular New Jersey resort town, which was in the midst of a major transformation following the official legalization of gambling by the state of the New Jersey in 1976. Once known as the "Queen of Resorts," whose boardwalks in the 1920 and '30s was the place to be seen for Hollywood royalty and gangsters alike, it had been in steady decline since the end of World War II, slowly deteriorating until the sudden burst of multi-million-dollar construction following the legalization of gambling. At one point, we see an old, proud hotel being torn down to make way for a gaudy new casino, and it is an apt visual metaphor for the complete transformation that was occurring at that time, as the ocean-side city morphed from a once-ritzy resort island to a Disney-fied tourist trap.

In such a world, there is little room for men like Lou. But, as the film makes clear by the end, there has never been much room for men like him, two-bit hustlers and con men who talk big and dream even bigger, but ultimately accomplish very little. They exist in the margins, and although Lou puffs himself up with stories about "the old days," when he was cellmates with Bugsy Siegel and "worked for the people who worked for the people" like Al Capone, he is more marginalized than ever.

Even as the city he has called home for decades deteriorates and is reborn into something entirely different, Lou refuses to leave or change his "old school" ways. He remains in stasis--literally frozen in time--while the city evolves, leaving him even less room than before. "Now it's all so damn legal," he complains at one point. "Howard Johnson is running a casino." His sense of the past is so nostalgic that it blankets even those things that haven't changed. "You should've seen the Atlantic Ocean in those days," he says wistfully, as if the good old days of guns and racketeering somehow changed the ocean itself.

Lou lives in a seedy old building that is scheduled to be torn down, and he spends his days running small-time numbers for quarters and taking care of Grace (Kate Reid), the feisty widow of a long-deceased gangster for whom Lou used to work. At night, he watches a young woman named Sally Matthews (Susan Sarandon) wash her arms and torso with lemon juice to take away the fish smell from the oyster bar at which she works during the day. After work, she takes classes on running a blackjack table, her head filled with dreams of dealing her way to Europe.

Ironically, Lou finally gets his chance to be a high-roller when Sally's husband, Dave (Robert Joy), rolls into town. Months earlier, he had run away with Sally's sister, Chrissie (Hollis McLaren), a sweet and affable, but painfully simple, young women who is eight months pregnant by Dave. Dave has stolen a package of cocaine back in Philadelphia, and he enlists Lou to help him sell it. He gets in Lou's good graces by claiming to have heard of him in Las Vegas--that he is "the person to see" in Atlantic City--and Lou is so desperate to believe such a story about himself that he buys it wholesale, despite its obvious fabrication.

When something happens to Dave, Lou is left holding thousands of dollars in cash and more cocaine to sell, and he immediately dives into the situation, buying a new suit, impressing Sally with his spending, and strutting with a new form of confidence, the confidence that has always been in his dreams, but never his reality. Of course, it's still a fantasy--Lou's money is the product of happenstance, and it will run out even if the Philadelphia gangsters who track Dave to Atlantic City don't get it back first.

The screenplay, written by playwright John Guare (Six Degrees of Separation) is ultimately not about plot mechanics--what Lou will do with the cocaine or if the gangsters will ever catch up with him or even if he and Sally will end up together are of little importance. Instead, he and director Louis Malle focus on Lou's character and how these events allow him to finally be--if only for a short while--the man of his dreams. Atlantic City, as the city itself promises, is about the fulfillment of dreams, although the ironic twist is that the fulfillment itself is something of fantasy itself, powerful, but fleeting. "

Well. my "quote" was a bit off (It should have been, "You should've seen the Atlantic Ocean in those days") but the essential meaning remains the same. A very good film, indeed, I'd say.
Regards,
John

[khmerhit]

[Wolf]

There are some nice beaches along Cape George, Nova Scotia. Sure, it's not beach weather there for very long out of the year, but when it is beach weather, the ocean is warm and clean, the beaches are never crowded, and it was overall a blast.

Southeast Asia. It's so close ... and yet so far. Guess that'll have to do for the forseeable future.

[Marcoregano]

Talking of beaches and Burt Lancaster together brings to mind another film by the great man, The Swimmer (1968), directed by Frank Perry. Based on a short story by John Cheever, the film exposes the rot beneath the picture-perfect green lawns of Connecticut and New York's Westchester County. And as this reviewer notes:

"In 1968, director Frank Perry brought one of Cheever's most compelling tales of the failure of the American dream to the screen in The Swimmer. It's the story of a successful suburbanite who spends one hot summer afternoon literally swimming his way home through the pools of his equally high-achieving neighbors, with each pool evoking past events in his life. Now, what middle-aged actor in 1968 (or in 1999, for that matter) would have the nerve to spend 90 minutes on screen clad mostly in swim trunks? Frank Perry was lucky, because he got Burt Lancaster, who in his mid-50s still had the powerful body of the circus acrobat he had been years ago. Supporting Lancaster were Kim Hunter, Marge Champion, Janice Rule, and a number of lesser-known male and female performers. For real shock value, a young Joan Rivers even makes an appearance. But rent The Swimmer anyway."

An excellent and rather disturbing film. I haven't seen Atlantic City yet and will make a point of finding it. Long live Burt.

Anyway, back to beaches. Can anyone recommend a picturesque but reasonably quiet beach in Bali?

[Lanza-Armonia]

What's wrong with Western Super mere?

[Lynn]

Cannon Beach, Yakutat, Alaska

[Lanza-Armonia]

...and then ya marry one...

[Deborann]

Sunshine Coast, Q'ld Australia; 70 Mile Beach on Fraser Island, Q'ld; Noosa if you can cope with yuppies; Byron Bay if you like surfing. No contest - Australia has the best beaches in the world!