Every Dawn I Die (1939)
Another gay movie, everyone’s favourite Cagney film, and the only film he starred in with George Raft. Cagney and Raft gaze into each others eyes, and though it's his girlfriend (Jane Bryan, her film career lasted only 3 years — though she’s quite sweet here) who fights for Cagney’s life, what really impresses us is that Cagney manages to soften the heart of convicted killer George Raft when he helps him escape from prison. So Raft puts himself back in jail just to save Cagney. When they are reunited you think they’re going to kiss. After all, they both came from the same bad backgrounds, but Cagney got the breaks and made better choices and — you get the idea. At the end Cagney is reunited with Jane Bryan — but who cares? — because The Warden hands Cagney a signed photo of Raft, that says “To a square guy.” However, it’s Cagney’s speech when he gets released from solitary that that I won’t soon forget: “When I first came here I believed in justice / Now I hate the whole world and everybody in it for letting me in for this / Buried in a black hole because I’m a good citizen / Now I’m a convict, I act like a convict, smell like a convict / I think and hate like a convict / Beat me, kick me, put me back in the hole / I can take it.” Cagney is a crusading reporter, framed by a sleazy high powered district attorney; the crooked American legal system crushed him, but he never gives up and never stops fighting. This was Joseph Stalin’s favourite film, and I can see why. The end of the COVID-19 lock down is not going as expected; we all thought we would be set free — as Cagney wishes to be — but instead, we keep getting sent back to solitary. And some people aren’t giving up. I still respect those kids they keep interviewing on the beach, and they’re getting more articulate. They just used to just ejaculate, drunkenly 'Let's party, man!' now they’re challenging the statistics: “I just don’t believe it’s dangerous enough to shut everything down.” But it’s the Nick Cordero story that is doing me in. It took him three months to die, dammit, and he went through hell, and he was from Hamilton Ontario — where I live — and a Broadway star — his beautiful wife had just given birth to a baby boy. I don’t for one minute deny that his death was tragic — more than that — torturous — or that he went through hell. The problem is, I don’t believe he died of COVID-19, And I think it’s an insult to his life and death for those in power to use his death to keep kids off the beaches in Miami. Nick Cordero had three COVID-19 tests. Yes, three. He tested negative twice, but the doctors believed he had COVID-19. They figured he’d make a good poster boy to keep those errant kids inside. So on the third test — lo and behold — the doctors won, and Cordero was diagnosed with you-know-what. Now the media can bring his brutal suffering to the masses, interview his wife, and then turn to those beach kids, grief porn in hand, and speechify. 'Is that the kind of suffering you want to cause? All for your fun? You’re killers, do you know that? All you kids are killers. And for what? For a little friggin’ pleasure? You had to have your cheap kicks, and it ended up killing this poor man — not just killing him, but putting him on the rack. Are you happy now? With your ‘COVID parties,’ and you’re whining -- I don’t want to put on a mask, it doesn’t look good, and it’s itchy -- well Nick Cordero is dead, and it’s you’re fault. I hope you’re satisfied.' If it isn’t Nick Cordero, then it’s some overweight woman going on about how she's certain she got ‘dementia’ from COVID-19 — a first person account (no doctor in sight) someone who appears as if she has lived her life as a victim, telling us about the nightmares — the awful nightmares — she saw a vision of her dead mother, can you imagine? - beside her bed — and her mother has been dead for years! Okay so who dares now to claim that people with COVID-19 don't suffer? And I swear, nowhere is there a single statistic that puts this in context. Sure, all these young people who are supposedly testing positive ‘may not die — but they may end up with lasting effects.’ This is not doctors pontificating, just the usual public health suspects, the dark talkers with the sad grim eyes. It all takes me back to AIDS — stay home, stay home, it was the same message then. Why can’t we just learn to stay at home? Drinking, singing, dancing, screwing, these things bring it on — we always knew those things lead to bad shit — why do people insist on doing them? If you stay home with your family, you are safe. An old friend of mine just wrote an article about how COVID-19 is for him the same as PTSD, and that we are all to some degree traumatised. I would say instead that we are all now permanently victims. We used to love those medical shows on TV, now we get no actual news — what is happening in Russia? Thailand? Syria? We don’t know, we’re too busy clicking our tongues at teenagers who are not social distancing, and enjoying people suffer and die. People always suffered and died, but you know what the problem was? We didn’t think about them enough. As of today, you must understand that just because you’re healthy and happy it doesn’t mean that everybody is. It’s time that you took a moment from your selfish little life to think about someone else. In fact, it would be better if you just covered yourself with a shroud, sat at home, and poured dirt on your head. I think that’s best; because if you think it’s a good thing to have fun in times like these, then you have no morality, no pity, no love. Well I’ve had it with this forced mass contrition, and like James Cagney — if you’re going to throw me back in solitary for saying so, then go ahead. You’ve met your match. You’ve met someone who doesn’t give a rats ass if you hate him. In fact I enjoy being hated. I enjoy outraging people! There yes, I said it. Perhaps in fact I am writing this just to outrage you. Yes, it’s giving me immense satisfaction! Is there no depth to my depravity? No, none; I give you license to hate, to dig down into the darkest recesses of your soul, where you know without a shadow of a doubt that you are one of the good ones, one of the virtuous few — and that I am evil incarnate. I’m feeling rather Christlike. But that would be too good for me. I’m not dying for you sins, but for your virtue.