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Column
'Wordplay,' 'Flyboys' and Disney Book Notes
by Scott Holleran
March 30, 2007
Burbank, California—Catching up on missed movies, I recently watched Flicka, Flyboys, and Wordplay on DVD. The less said about the slow-moving, badly acted Flicka the better. The true story of America's first fighter pilots, Flyboys, is hokey but it soars in aerial dogfight scenes. Wordplay tops both across and down.
Structured simply and humorously as a light documentary profiling some of the 50 million people who do the New York Times crossword puzzle every week, with a highly suspenseful angle on those who are smart enough to participate in an annual crossword competition in Connecticut, Wordplay indulges in the arena of those who rely purely on their knowledge of words. It is a fascinating journey, not merely as a dry exercise in English, though this is not beside the point.
The contenders are today's cultural outcasts—those wonderfully bright puzzle enthusiasts that sit with a folded newspaper and poised pen in coffeehouses and living rooms, thinking in concepts. Once a year, the best of them congregate to knock heads in friendly but fierce competition. One will win, most will lose, and they're all part of Wordplay's intense and intelligent climax.
The people who do the crossword puzzle are almost as sharp as those who create the puzzles, and Wordplay features New York Times puzzle editor Will Shortz front and center, with a band of worthy freelancers who submit their black and white brainteasers at various levels of ability.
Wordplay is as riveting as it is stimulating. Checkered with celebrity segments from Jon Stewart and Bob Dole, including a few minutes from ex-President Clinton, trying to erase the memory of his snaky challenge to what the meaning of the word 'is' is, director Patrick Creadon's sly Wordplay works up to the maddeningly tense final round, delivering players of all types seeking only to solve an elusive crossword puzzle. Put this one in the Netflix queue as relief from mindless movies.
Book Notes
Spinning Disney's World makes for easy, light reading on a lazy afternoon. Disney Legend and theme park publicist Charles Ridgway's "memories of a Magic Kingdom press agent" takes the motion picture studio from his days as a Los Angeles tabloid reporter living in Anaheim decades before Disney vice-presidents were "as thick as fleas on a hound dog," as he writes, to the glory days of Michael Eisner and the late Frank Wells and into the 21st century.
Ridgway spins a leisurely tale of a business where original ideas were considered both artistically creative and profitable, where the technologically innovative Carousel of Progress, sponsored by General Electric and unveiled at the 1964 World's Fair, became a Disneyland attraction that told the story of electricity in words, music and Audio-Animatronics—and was the forerunner to Walt Disney's partly realized and larger than life Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT).
The recently published Spinning Disney's World captures one shining example of capitalism in movie-themed entertainment, when Pepsi, Timex and dozens of great American businesses sponsored attractions at Disneyland and, later, Walt Disney World, while journalists Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley were enchanted by Disney's theme park magic. Whether he's telling tales about William F. Buckley's pompous favor-seeking, the New York Times spiking an assignment once it was apparent that the article would favor Disney, or Cary Grant giving the reading at the Christmas Candlelight Procession, Ridgway treats the reader to Disney at its brightest.
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• Index of Scott Holleran's Columns
RELATED LINKS
• DVD: Wordplay
• DVD: Flicka
• DVD: Flyboys
• Book: Spinning Disney's World | 
