Variety: Mary Pickford: The Muse of the Movies
Bruce Calvert
Mary Pickford: The Muse of the Movies
(Documentary)
By TODD MCCARTHY
An Earthlight and White Castle Prods. presentation. Produced by
Elizabeth Wood Coldicutt, Nicholas Eliopoulos. Directed, edited by
Nicholas Eliopoulos. Narration written by Janelle Balnicke.
With: Lillian Gish, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Charles "Buddy" Rogers,
Roxanne Monroe, voice of Mary Pickford.
Narrator: Michael York.
Although bolstered by pictorially outstanding clips, abundant private
footage and running commentary from beyond the grave by the subject
herself, "Mary Pickford: The Muse of the Movies" is a disappointingly
conventional career recap of the silent era's preeminent female star
and businesswoman. Glossing over controversies and potentially touchy
personal issues as if afraid of offending the Pickford estate, this
well-mounted docu is itself nearly as old-fashioned as the star's
oeuvre appears today, leaving it to be appreciated mostly by silent-
cinema aficionados keen to watch the parade go by one more time.
Given that the allure of "America's Sweetheart" seems unusually rooted
to a particular time -- some years on either side of World War I --
and that her specialty of playing plucky, adorable little girls even
as she pushed 30 seems like something of an aberration, it would seem
incumbent upon a filmmaker to explore the nature of her vast
popularity and provide a strong reason for a modern viewer to take an
interest in her.
With the appeal of films such as "Poor Little Rich Girl," "Rebecca of
Sunnybrook Farm," "Pollyanna" and "Little Lord Fauntleroy" now
appearing unavoidably quaint, no doubt the most rewarding approach
today would have been to analyze the phenomenon of Pickford the
industrial titan. By 1918, she was the highest-paid woman in the
world, and the following year, she founded United Artists with Charlie
Chaplin, D.W. Griffith and her future husband, Douglas Fairbanks.
Forced to become her family's breadwinner at age 5 when her beloved
father was killed, she commanded significant salaries as a child
actress onstage and in movies, and later controlled her own vehicles
by producing half of them, picking her roles, directors and cameramen,
and even writing and directing herself when she wanted to.
Instead, director, editor and co-writer Nicholas Eliopoulos assumes a
nostalgic posture, laying out his subject's quick rise while spending
too much time sketching in early screen history that will be familiar
to anyone who cares to sample this film. The helmer is methodical and
reasonably comprehensive in covering Pickford's massive output -- she
made 140 one-reelers beginning in 1909, then 54 features -- but at the
expense of showing any scenes long enough to amply suggest the star's
effectiveness in any one of them.
There are rewards: The visual quality is often vault-perfect, and the
audio-only interview material with Pickford, while not deeply
revealing, offers a sense of her mental toughness and some shadings
concerning her choices and regrets. Archival interviews with Gish,
Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Pickford's third husband, Charles "Buddy"
Rogers, are colorful, and homemovie and behind-the-scenes footage of
Chaplin, Fairbanks senior and even Griffith give a feel for prankish,
fun-filled times at Picfair, the studio and on tour. One fabulous
curio is a brief sound film chat between Pickford and aviatrix Amelia
Earhart.
These plusses notwithstanding, the pic glosses over not only
Pickford's business prowess, but also any dark corners, including her
somewhat cool relationship with early mentor Griffith, her long,
problematic marriage to Fairbanks, her quick career slide when sound
arrived (Eliopoulos includes a sample of Fairbanks declaiming in the
disastrous "The Taming of the Shrew" but timidly denies us the chance
of hearing Pickford speak Shakespeare's words), her subsequent
financial battles with Chaplin over UA, her unexplained (but
fortunately unfulfilled) determination that her films be destroyed
upon her death, and any allusions to the personality quirks that
evidently accumulated during the final 40-plus decades she holed up at
Picfair.
In the end, the docu politely tiptoes through a mighty career where it
would have profited from taking its full measure.
Tech aspects are outstanding.
More than one option(Film) Buddy
1997 - Rene Russo, Caroline Thompson
(Film) Buddy
Nicolai Cleve Broch, Morten TyldumMore than one option(Tv) Little Lord
Fauntleroy
Rick Schroder, Jack Gold
(Tv) Little Lord Fauntleroy
George Baker, Andrew MorganMore than one option(Film) Pollyanna
(Tv) Pollyanna
More than one option(Co) MGM Television Entertainment
(Co) United Artists Films
Camera (color/B&W), M. David Mullen, Joe Mustacchi; music, David
Michael Frank; sound, Steve Michaels; re-recording mixer, Troy Smith;
additional camera, Robert Jaye. Reviewed on DVD, Los Angeles, Aug. 25,
2008. (In Telluride Film Festival.) Running time: 101 MIN.
Bruce Calvert
--
Visit the Silent Film Still Archive
http://www.silentfilmstillarchive.com
sir m
I suggest her published interviews as a first step to an
understanding .
Donald4564
This seems to me to be a somewhat biased report. It hardly seems fair
to visit the values of the 21st Century upon those of the early 20th.
We are lucky through the medium of film, to see extant those values
and how they were interpreted.
Perhaps my values are also those of the early 20th Century as I still
like the story "Little Lord Fauntleroy"
Regards
Silents Please
Donald BInks
sir m
Donald...I also like that film
daniel...@verizon.net
It doesn't make much sense to fault a reviewer for being biased--that
is, after all, his job. That said, Todd McCarthy is one of the most
respected reviewers in the industry. His love for and knowledge of
film is evident through his books (e.g., Howard Hawks bio) and
documentaries (e.g., Visions of Light). In my opinion, he wrote a
very even-handed review of "Mary Pickford: The Muse of the Movies"
that fully acknowledges her importance to film while complaining that
the documentary itself is too "conventional." He points out the
influence of the Pickford estate in what could be covered, laments the
lost opportunities to show why Pickford became such a star, and limits
his biggest complaints to the lack of adequate clips. He doesn't
belittle Pickford's acting accomplishments, her business acumen, or
her control of the marketplace. He does say that some of her child
roles are "quaint," and I agree. I far prefer the more adult
Pickford--the first "Tess of the Storm Country," for example, or "My
Best Girl"--than her increasingly strained efforts to play young.
You may not think it is fair to apply 21st century standards to early
20th century material, but that is a different argument. McCarthy
applied 21st century standards to a documentary that has just been
completed, and concluded that "Mary Pickford: The Muse of the Movies"
should have been better.
Jason Liller
I think they all miss the boat when it comes to the fundamental task
of making the case for her as an artist and as an actress, which is a
shame given that her entire success is predicated upon these
qualities. A really solid Pickford documentary, with the right clips,
narration, insight and cotext, should produce in the viewer a
compelling desire to explore her body of work.
--Jason Liller
Lloyd Fonvielle
I think this is quite right. Pickford embodied a brand of female
empowerment which has entirely vanished from our culture -- it was
non-polemical, emotional, sentimental, and oriented towards the domestic
sphere. It did not depend on the approval of men. Modern men don't
recognize any form of feminism which doesn't seek their endorsement or
appeal to traditional male values. Pickford was the product of a
matriarchal family and I don't think it ever occurred to her that she
wasn't in charge, or supposed to be in charge, of any situation in which
she found herself. This sensibility is at the heart of every character
she played, and it's deeply strange to modern audiences.
Mar de Cortes Baja
www.mardecortesbaja.com <http://www.mardecortesbaja.com/blog>
Reel...@aol.com
Pickford documentary, Daniel Eagan points to Mr. McCarthy's reputation
as being respected and knowledgable about film history and says that
he recognizes Pickford's importance in film history. While, of
course, McCarthy would not be so short-sighted as to deny the central
role Mary Pickford played in early cinema, there is nothing in his
review to indicate he holds her in any real regard as an artist--that
is, unless dismissing her body of work as merely "quaint" and "old-
fashioned" constitutes a ringing endorsement. At no point does he
cite any exceptions to this impression of her work, so, yes, I do see
him as belittling the artist's achievements. This condescending
attitude of his is very apparent to me and should be separated from
his appraisal of the documentary. His criticism of the latter purely
as a documentary trying to make us aware of the value of Pickford's
work may or may not be well-founded. But it's clear that his overall
perspective is colored by a fundamentally limited view of its subject
in the first place.
Todd McCarthy's attitude toward Mary Pickford's work may reflect the
all-too-common common perspective of other prominent critics like Mick
LaSalle and Richard Schickel who tend to denigrate the American cinema
of the 1910s and its artists as representative of a naive, primitive
era in dire need of salvation, whether from the European imports that
arrived in Hollywood in the 1920s or a supposedly more sophisticated
postwar generation. On the other hand, McCarthy may be indulging
himself in a typically male-centered view of film history by
dismissing a major pioneering feminine artist. Has McCarthy written
any articles about Pickford's male contemporaries like Chaplin and
Fairbanks, Sr.? Does he also refer to their work as "quaint" and "old-
fashioned?" Actually, it may not even be a case of adhering to one or
the other of these dismissive attitudes separately. He and several of
the other reviewers may be scorning the American cinema of the 1910s
precisely because, as feminist historians have pointed out, it was the
one decade in which women had the greatest power in the industry. And
the most salient symbol of this most feminized of the cinema's eras
remains Mary Pickford.
Beyond that, however, there is another aspect to this which makes me
question how knowledgable Todd McCarthy really is of Mary Pickford and
her era. Namely, nowhere does McCarthy ever so much as mention the
previous documentaries on Mary Pickford that have been produced so
far. By my count, this present one is the fourth full-length
documentary to appear so far. (I'm not even counting some of the
shorter ones that were produced, including "The Birth of a Legend"
released by her company in the 1960s.) First, there was "America's
Sweetheart: The Mary Pickford Story" in 1978, which runs 73 minutes
and was narrated by Henry Fonda. Next, there was "Mary Pickford: A
Life on Film" in 1997, which is 98 minutes long and was narrated by
Whoopi Goldberg. In turn, there has been the PBS "American
Experience" documentary on Pickford which came out in 2005 and is 90
minutes in length. The most recent documentary McCarthy reviews here,
"Mary Pickford: The Muse of the Movies," is 101 minutes long, only
three minutes longer than the 1997 Timeline production. While it may
very well have some additional material, its device of combining a
narrator with Mary's own oral history interviews so that she becomes,
in effect, the co-narrator had already been utilized in the 1978
documentary narrated by Henry Fonda. As for McCarthy's wish that the
new documentary had placed greater emphasis on Mary as a businesswoman
and the more tragic aspects of her personal life, that was, in fact,
the prevailing focus of the PBS documentary. (Which makes me wonder
if the supposedly knowledgable Mr. McCarthy was even paying attention
to something that was broadcast to millions on network TV only a few
years ago.) Without offering a judgment on a new documentary I have
not yet seen, I believe a truly fresh approach to a subject that has
already been covered in considerable depth elsewhere would have been
to produce a multi-part documentary on Mary, one that would have
comprised two or even three programs a la Kevin Brownlow's series. To
take yet another example, Schickel's Chaplin documentary was 30
minutes longer than the latest Pickford documentary, definitely a
significant difference. But beyond simply criticizing the new
documentary for cramming a lot of film clips into one program, by not
taking note of the previous efforts, McCarthy never bothered to offer
any kind of constructive analysis.
Not only has a truly in-depth Mary Pickford documentary yet to be
produced (reflective perhaps of those who agree with Mr. McCarthy that
her work is too "quaint" and "old-fashioned" to warrant more sustained
attention?), even more scandalous is the fact that, to date, no
documentary of any kind has been produced on such illustrious
contemporaries of hers as Mabel Normand, Pearl White, and Norma and
Constance Talmadge. Even Gloria Swanson, with one of the longest
careers of all, has so far eluded a really full-length documentary,
with an A&E "Biography" running under an hour being the longest so
far. Todd McCarthy fails to mention this void, one of which I am
keenly aware and which, I believe, reflects the male-centered approach
to film criticism which continues to dominate the profession. I am
currently writing what will be, when completed, the first biography
ever of Pearl White. As part of this, I have been trying to realize a
documentary on Pearl, but, so far, have not been able to obtain the
needed funding for such a project. It certainly does not help in this
cause to have critics like Todd McCarthy, Mick LaSalle, and Richard
Schickel endlessly and mindlessly repeating the mantra that the
American cinema of the 1910s was some sort of primitive, retrograde
era of filmmaking best relegated to the basement of film history.
William M. Drew
sir m
There are several excellent published interviews given by Mary. Were
they recorded and do the tapes still exist and what is the quality of
the recordings?. If there are recordings are there any copyright
restrictions.? It would be splendid if Mary could add a voice-over
to many long clips from her films. I believe that her films prior to
1923 are public domain and that would include much of her work. Making
such a documentary would have to be non profit as there is little mass
appeal and the DVD,s would have limited circulation.
daniel...@verizon.net
but I believe in this case he is off target. Judging strictly on the
review itself, Todd McCarthy faults "Mary Pickford: The Muse of the
Movies" for offering a limited, conventional view of her career, for
failing to deal with controversial aspects of her life, and (in my
belief most important) for not being able to "provide a strong reason
for a modern viewer to take an interest in her." True, he does
qualify four of her close to two hundred films as "unavoidably
quaint," which I believe they are. But he doesn't call them "poor,"
"wretched," or anything else that can be construed as negative. He
also calls Pickford's decision to play young girls while she was
pushing 30 "something of an aberration," which I also feel is accurate
and sympathetic.
What else does he call Pickford? "The silent era's preeminent female
star and businesswoman," a "phenomenon," an "industrial titan," "the
highest-paid woman in the world," someone who produced, wrote, and
directed her vehicles during "a mighty career," etc. As for failing
to "to offer any kind of constructive analysis" about the documentary,
McCarthy in fact points out a number of constructive problems, from
the film's nostalgic, unquestioning tone to its superficial treatment
of Pickford's personal life to its lack of context. The single
biggest complaint McCarthy makes about the documentary is that it
doesn't include long enough clips.
Since neither of us has seen "Mary Pickford: The Muse of the Movies,"
we will have to wait and see if McCarthy is correct in his appraisal.
But I'd like to remind Mr. Drew that criticizing the documentary does
not mean McCarthy is criticizing Pickford, silent film in general, or
American cinema of the 1910s. In fact, McCarthy never mentions
"American cinema of the 1910s" except to set a date for Pickford's
entry into the industry. Nowhere in his review does McCarthy offer
the opinion "that the
American cinema of the 1910s was some sort of primitive, retrograde
era of filmmaking best relegated to the basement of film history."
And to lump McCarthy in with Mick LaSalle and Richard Schickel would
require ignoring McCarthy's long-term and conspicuous support of
silent film.
McCarthy has championed restoration and preservation efforts from
archives around the world. As reviews editor for Variety, he has
provided a platform for an accurate and sensitive discussion of silent
cinema. In covering what looks like a lazy, self-satisfied
documentary, he should not be required to list all the previous
Pickford documentaries, nor should he be required to assign subjects
to other documentarians. If Mr. Drew wants "a multi-part documentary
on Mary, one that would have comprised two or even three programs a la
Kevin Brownlow's series," he should not be blaming Todd McCarthy. If
anything, he should blame Pickford's estate, which controls access to
her work.
I wouldn't care to say whether McCarthy personally likes or dislikes
Pickford's work. As a critic, he is entitled to his opinions. But I
will say that I can't think of another mainstream critic who is as
knowledgeable and sympathetic to silent film as he is. I have never
read anything by him that scorns any period of film history--just bad
films. The very fact that he holds a documentary about Pickford to
the same standards he sets as for those he's reviewed about Orson
Welles or Francis Ford Coppola indicates how important he thinks she
was to the industry. As to McCarthy's "male-centered approach to film
criticism," there is not much he can do at this point about his gender.
sir m
moments. But I think that the best approach to a study of Mary would
be to 1. firstly see a few of her films. I suggest My Best Girl,New
York Hat, Stella Maris. 2. read her published interviews .I admire
her honesty and accuracy.
saffy...@googlemail.com
I viewed Mary Pickford: The Muse of the Movies. I’d liked to give my
comments on the film and respond to Mr. McCarthy’s review, which I
might add is not helpful in the least (for those who’ve seen the film)
and will add confusion (to those who haven’t).
I’m quite shocked to read that nearly every criticism that Mr.
McCarthy lays against the film is simply not factual… dare I ask if
he was fast forwarding while making notes? If he listened as well as
watched, he would have heard Mary (in her own voice) discussing her
cool relationship with Griffith, why she was so successful playing
little girls on screen, her film accomplishments, her numerous
business and charity endeavors, her stardom and finally an explanation
of why she left the movies and retired.
Three longer clips covered Mary in “Rebecca,” “Stella Maris” and “The
Love Light”, including two Biograph shorts at a longer length to
really show Pickford in action. The entire film is 95% Pickford on
camera. During the Q&A, I found out that it took years for the
filmmakers to restore 8 audio Pickford interviews and rearrange them
in order to allow Mary to tell her own story in her own words. Mary’s
voice was compelling and for McCarthy to write ”commentary from beyond
the grave” is just mean-spirited.
Having viewed the film, I came away with the feeling of “having known
the real Mary” – not one framed by film historians or reviewers. I
was touched by her intelligence, her wisdom and soul. Some people
(especially men) are so afraid of emotion, and some reviewers can’t
even bring themselves to type the word , so they feel much safer
calling it “nostalgic.” Shame on you Mr. McCarthy for claiming Mary
doesn’t say much in the film, and God forbid have it be emotional!
This is first person history, and I should think that Mary’s comments
on her films, the development of the motion picture industry, her
marriages (and divorces) and her stardom carries much more weight than
a critic’s caustic commentary.
And finally McCarthy asks what went on at Pickfair (he misspells it…
picfair) for the 40 plus decades she was seemingly “holed up” there?
Wouldn’t that make Mary over 400 years old? I must admit in the last
clip of Mary on film (when she accepted her 2nd Oscar), she was in her
early 80s, so I can understand McCarthy thinking she was quite
elderly, but 400 – please! And lastly, in my opinion, McCarthy just
doesn’t get it that the parade, like Mary Pickford, is eternal. It is
NEVER the same parade no matter how many times we might watch it.
Mary Pickford – who was really the “The Muse of the Movies” made an
incalculable impact on the Art form we enjoy today, and she will
indeed live well beyond 400 years as the ever-lasting “little girl”
archetype that lives in each of us, male or female
sir m
THANKS> I will be adding the doco to my my see list
sir m
The review refers to early Pickford films as quaint I prefer quaint to
ultra-modern films
daniel...@verizon.net
should read the reviews of his latest documentary, "Man of Cinema:
Pierre Rissient."
Conductor71
Hi All,
I’ve been a lurker at this bulletin board for at least ten years,
(although many of you know my husband, Nick, and I from the various
classic film festivals we all attend) but after reading some of the
criticisms of the new Mary Pickford documentary, “Mary Pickford, the
Muse of the Movies,” I felt compelled to write.
Folks, I’m not going to go blow by blow through other people’s reviews
but the idea of a review is that it’s someone’s opinion. No doubt
we’ve all had the experience of falling in love with a silent movie
and being surprised to find that the reviewers of the day hated it but
it would be truly sad to see a movie as wonderful as this be swept
under the rug (and thereby lost to the community that would most
appreciate it) because you all simply took someone else’s opinion and
didn’t see it for yourself.
Nick and I schedule our vacations around classic film conventions
(like Cinevent, Cinefest & Cinesation) – many of you kind folks make
up our most cherished circle of friends -- but the one splurge of the
year is to attend Telluride and stand in the rain – why must it always
rain! -- with other fans to buy tickets to see unusual movies (well,
silents first, then unusual movies ;). When we got the weekend’s
program listing, the first thing we circled was the Pickford
Documentary.
We ran into the director, Nicholas Eliopoulos, by accident the night
before a showing and he was extremely gracious in answering some
questions we had. You know, stuff like “Why did he think Doug & Mary
really broke up?” (You’ll have to ask him for the answer on that ;)
and I remember thinking “Jeeze, this man is so nice, I hope the doc
doesn’t suck because I’d hate to have to look him in the eye
afterwards if we don’t like it.” It makes me laugh now to think of
that since the film absolutely surpassed every expectation of quality
I could have imagined. (Thank God, I didn’t know he had two Emmys
under his belt or I’d have never had the courage to talk to him so
freely.)
Okay, so we got in line with coffee in hand at 8 a.m. the next morning
hoping to get a seat in the 9:00 show, which, fortunately, we did. I
pretty much was expecting the usual “A&E Biography”-type take on Mary
(not that there’s anything wrong with that but you know what I mean:
the usual stills, and footage we’ve all seen before and a basic
rundown of what she’s done) so I was completely taken aback when Mary
herself is narrating a lot of the action. Frankly, I’m used to a
silent Mary and just having her speak in her own words, with her own
inflection gave me the feeling she was actually talking right to us.
As if that didn’t make it personal enough, Eliopoulos actually used
shots of Mary’s earliest scrapbooks complete with original clippings
of theatre reviews of her earliest stage performances.
The film is broken down into sort of Chapters which allow you (and
more importantly the uninitiated viewer who knows nothing about Mary)
to wrap your head around the many different pieces of her incredible
life. I mean, be fair, if you’ve never heard of Pickford before,
there’s a lot of ground to cover in an extraordinary life and still
keep it entertaining while being informative. Eliopolous accomplishes
this task brilliantly. It was refreshing to see her portrayed not so
much as an Iron Butterfly with mind-boggling salary demands, but more
as someone who recognized the little girl character she had created
had a finite screen life and having been abandoned as a child, took
pains to be sure she wouldn’t be left destitute again. There’s also
some great footage about her and Adolph Zukor that shows she
considered him sort of a surrogate father.
Another thing I admired about the film was the enormous amount of rare
photos and film footage I’d never seen before and Eliopoulos’ ease in
including a lot of material instead of simply lingering over a couple
of pictures. There’s a great staged bit between Mary & Amelia Earhart
(and their respective husbands) that was terribly fun to watch.
There’s footage of Charlie Chaplin, Pickford & Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.
I’d never seen before. There’s some footage of Fairbanks interacting
with Mary’s mother that was really interesting to have the opportunity
to see, since I had often wondered about their relationship. There
are even clips of filmed interviews with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (as a
DJ, Jr. fan, our friend and fellow collector Jenny Paxon will be in
heaven!) Lillian Gish and Charles “Buddy” Rodgers … aerial shots of
Pickfair (couldn’t you just smack Pia Zadora for having it torn down!)
and yes, I could go on and on... the point is, if you’re a silent
film fan, I think you’re going to love this wonderful film!
Oh, lest you think I’m simply drooling with praise, I will note that
there were two things I wasn’t crazy about in the film: the use of
vocal versions of “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” and “My Buddy”. No
disrespect to the singers, and I understand that the director probably
wanted to be sure the younger viewers got the sound cues (I mean, gone
are the days of anyone besides us movie geeks understanding the extra
level of musical commentary used by people like Carl Stallings in the
early Warner Bros. Cartoons) but I’d have gone for some old gramophone
record instrumentals instead. But did it mar the film for me? Not a
bit.
Before I saw this film, I thought of Mary (based on the films I’ve
seen of her and some biographies I’ve read) as a sometimes
controlling, uptight woman who drove her husband to infidelity and
eventually became a reclusive alcoholic. By the time it was over, I
had a completely different take on her. She suddenly seemed a real
flesh and blood person. Someone who, against all odds, had scraped
her way to the top, was willing to give it all up for love, rode high
for a time, dealt with a level of failure to match the greatness of
her earlier successes, made human mistakes, tried to retire gracefully
and eventually become philosophical in her later years about her life.
I found Eliopoulos’ juxtaposition of her words/voice and the chosen
footage to be really soul-stirring – particularly the older Mary’s
ideas about life and afterlife and her personal beliefs. It
completely took me by surprise to be so moved. Embarrassing to admit
it but by the end of the film I had gone from “hard hearted Hannah” to
a puddle of tears. (Yeah, those of you who know me – have you ever
seen me cry at a movie – I rest my case ;) This one is really
something special!)
So friends and fellow silent film admirers why not see this film and
come to your own conclusions. As for me, I’m so grateful to
Eliopoulos for putting so much blood, sweat, tears and obvious
affection into this film and for sharing such wonderful material and
exploring some of Mary’s personal thoughts for those of us who love
silents and for those of us who are still discovering them. If I were
Mary, I’d be very pleased.
Respectfully,
Antonia G. Carey
PS. Speaking of discovering silents, I hope this documentary not only
achieves the attention and accolades it deserves, but also paves the
way for a Brownlow documentary about the love of Pickford’s life,
Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. Then Hollywood’s first royal couple will be
finally represented.
PPS. Believe it or not, Kevin Brownlow has wanted to do one for years
and potential backers keep saying no one knows who Fairbanks is
anymore?!