Submitted For Your Approval...

If you’ve been wondering if you’d ever see author George Orwell, screen composer Bernard Herrmann and early television writer Rod Serling all mentioned in the same sentence, your wait is over.

I am, and have been for years, an admirer of all three. For purposes of this short piece let me simply state that in their respective fields, each is a giant. If you scroll back through the Plumwood Road archives you’ll see a piece posted December 21, 2009 that concerned one of Serling’s excursions into The Twilight Zone. Let the record therefore show that I’ve at least nibbled around the edges of the subject before.

The three men were not quite contemporaries. Orwell died in 1950, while Serling was writing teleplays for the great WLW in Cincinnati, and Herrmann was near composing the score for The Day the Earth Stood Still. But for the purposes of this article, let me offer this single observation: these three artists, Serling, Herrmann, and Orwell all frequently created works built around a dread of the totalitarian state.

For The Twilight Zone Rod Serling wrote dozens of episodes depicting the nature of dark, futuristic mega-governments, of state control and monitoring. The music of Bernard Herrmann, beautiful and listenable as it is, frequently contrasted warm inner passion with an icy, sterile, emotionless condition. Watch a copy of the 1966 production of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Pay special attention to the musical score and you’ll see what I mean. And, finally, what is there to say about George Orwell, author of 1984, that hasn’t already been said? The word “Orwellian” sums it up nicely.


As it happened, the other evening I was reading Orwell’s essay, The Prevention of Literature. It’s an excellent short piece if you want to gain a little insight into the workings progressives and of the leftist press from an expert.

Usually I read in silence. But I’d received a new CD; a collection of the scores that Herrmann wrote for The Twilight Zone.

After dinner, as Karen and I settled into the living room to do some reading. I unwrapped the double-disc CD set and put it in the player. I had only a hazy memory of the music composed for the episode titled Eye of the Beholder, so I cued it up and pushed play, then settled down to read.

As the music played, this is the passage from Orwell’s The Prevention of Literature that I happened to read:


“The organized lying practiced by totalitarian states is not, as is sometimes claimed, a temporary expedient… It is something integral to totalitarianism, something that would still continue even if concentration camps and secret police forces had ceased to be necessary….From the totalitarian point of view history is something to be created rather than learned. A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible… This kind of thing happens everywhere, but is clearly likelier to lead to outright falsification in societies where only one opinion is permissible at any given moment. Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth. The friends of totalitarianism in this country (Great Britain in the post-war 1940s) usually argue that since absolute truth is not attainable, a big lie is no worse than a little lie. It is pointed out that all historical records are biased and inaccurate, or, on the other hand, that modern physics has proved that what seems to us the real world is an illusion, so that to believe in the evidence of one’s senses is simply vulgar philistinism. A totalitarian society which succeeded in perpetuating itself would probably set up a schizophrenic system of thought, in which the laws of common sense held good in everyday life and in certain exact sciences, but could be disregarded by the politician, the historian, and the sociologist. Already there are countless people who would think it scandalous to falsify a scientific textbook, but would see nothing wrong in falsifying a historical fact. It is at the point where literature and politics cross that totalitarianism exerts its greatest pressure on the intellectuals.”

Did you get all of that? The above is excerpted from one, single paragraph. It pays to read Orwell slowly, with a pencil for underlining. But he opens a door for you, doesn't he?

About half way through the passage I became aware of the effect that Herrmann’s music was having in enhancing the impact of Orwell’s words and I began to read aloud. I didn’t get far before Karen said,

“Stop, Jed. Stop. It’s scaring me.”

She made my point. Orwell’s text read with Herrmann’s musical accompaniment projects a vivid image. You can feel “the state” at work. The state is everything. You are an ant.

And, now that you have read George Orwell’s text displayed on your computer screen didn’t you, too, even without musical embellishment, see the state as represented by our compliant, unquestioning press, by evidence-destroying global warming scientists, by a power hungry Congress, by seedy, self-serving cradle-to-grave programs?

But what about Mr. Serling; where’s his contribution in this discussion of a potentially all-controlling state?

If you have 23 minutes to spare, click on this You Tube video, broken into three short segments,

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

It is the original November 11, 1960 broadcast of The Eye of the Beholder. See if you don’t get the warnings concerning government medicine, of rationing, of benevolent oppression.

Submitted for your approval...
from Plumwood Road, via The Twilight Zone.

THE TRIANGLE OF DEATH, film review

It’s happened to all of us. We receive a recommendation from a friend: “You’ve got to see this documentary movie. It's important.”

Right away our suspicions are aroused. While the film in question may deal with an issue that cries out for public outrage, it is also likely to be a pretentious dry-ball exercise that will make an evening’s movie-going feel like sitting at the dinner table when you were eight years old and being told by your Mother to “eat your peas and carrots”. Experience has taught us to graciously accept the recommendation, and put said film on our “must see” list – at the bottom – where it stays.


The Triangle of Death is not that movie. It belongs at the top of your list.


The Triangle of Death is a fast paced picture that documents the day to day combat experiences of the 3rd Platoon of the 2/24th of the United States Marine Corps while deployed in the Sunni Triangle in 2004-2005. For 94 pounding minutes the film puts the viewer right at the tip of the spear. You are there; traveling in the convoys, going house to house, battling from the rooftops. The bullets whizzing by are as thick as deerflies at a Wisconsin fish fry in July, and they are real bullets. Same for the mortar rounds, the IEDs, and the blood…they’re all real, too.

And speaking of blood; this film is not for the kiddies. Body parts go flying, wild dogs feed on rotting corpses, and Al Qaeda reprisals against anyone aiding the Marines are brutal. The pictures are unvarnished. The language is unbleeped. It is all right there on the screen.

The film itself is something of an improbability. Get this: all of the combat footage was filmed by one man, Corporal Follah S. Tamba, a rifleman in Echo Company, who in addition to his other gear carried a small high-quality video camera. And what pictures he captured. Tightly edited together, The Triangle of Death it is like an extended fireworks display. The viewer is bashed by one astonishing image after another. Tamba was wounded midway through his deployment and had his first camera blown to bits by an IED. He got patched up, found a back-up camera and went right back into action.

Going further, and even more into the improbable, consider these facts: Corporal Follah S. Tamba is an immigrant from Nigeria. He has a degree in film from Chicago’s Columbia College. Upon graduation he didn’t go to Hollywood, he joined the Marines.

In the course of filming his deployment, and through follow up interviews back home, Tamba draws a clear picture of combat and the men who serve. Writer George Orwell’s statement “We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm” is spot on, but it also omits several important characteristics of these American Marines. The first is dedication. They are charged up and ready to go. The young Marines who are wounded can’t wait to get back into action. They clearly want victory and they want to accomplish their mission.

The second characteristic is professionalism. These guys are the most efficient, businesslike warriors the world has yet to see. No muss. No fuss. They train, they practice and they show up ready for action.

Third, and most unexpectedly, we see how funny these Marines are. Through all they experienced – heat, filth, fatigue, and the threat of miserable death, they maintain an almost chipper sense of humor. Off-hand comments heard in the background while something serious was going on led to some unexpected laughs. Their effort to establish good relations with the Iraqi locals was interesting, too.

While the Americans made it a priority to work within the framework of local mores and customs, sometimes this was a pretty tall order. An incident that occurred during a training exercise with Iraqi militia recruits was especially telling and amusing. At one point an Iraqi trainee, through negligence, accidentally discharged his weapon. As punishment the offender was ordered to carry around a 63 pound rock, in the heat of day through whatever they were doing. Throughout the rest of the filmed sequence, lurking on the fringes we see a gangly Iraqi with a slab of stone perched on his shoulder. This incident underlined the off-center humor sprinkled throughout the film.

The film's producers, Juan Montelongo and Thomas Hartmann, along with Corporal Tamba, are also Columbia College graduates. They formed Wolf Dog Films in the western suburbs of Chicago. The final cut of their picture finished, their task now is to get the film into as many festivals as possible and secure some form of general release.

As well photographed as the film is a key participant in the final presentation was the editor, Eugene Gordon. He kept things tight and moving forward. There is not one slow second of screen time. The sound designer, Tom Balazs, deserves mention, too. “The sound” of the FX tracks was first rate and enhanced the reality of the finished film far beyond the limitations of its modest budget.

As a piece of filmmaking, The Triangle of Death is a unique rare gem, a little jewel. Seeing it today you can easily imagine the film’s increased documentary value five hundred years from now. In future times someone viewing it will have a clear window into the American military of today, its character and capability, unfiltered and untarnished by current mainstream media bias. The Triangle of Death is fast paced, exciting, violent, funny and it makes a serious point: Some first-rate young men are working hard and taking risks so that the rest of America can sleep well again tonight.

Here's a preview.



And, to purchase a copy of the film click here.