Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 6/27/25

One for All and All for One edition

It’s been an interesting week at the bunker, to say the least, with the sudden and necessary reduction of 50% of the administrative staff, but we are somehow or another managing quite nicely. Many of the regular duties have been, um, accomplished, and one or two now benefit from sudden and necessary changes in their S.O.P. due to the remaining staff having no actual clue what that original Standard Operating Procedure actually entailed. Also, we’d like to report that there have been no more strange noises coming from the laundry room since Wednesday, when someone from the Division of Design and Fabrication reported what sounded like “a shoe in the dryer.” It was not the Division of Media Review enjoying their hop-hip music. It was also not a shoe in the dryer. It was two boots.

Nothing fun this week. Just proof that I am still here.

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From the Department of Media Relations

The Agency of Broadcasting continues its course of instructive and educational videos assembled by the Bureau of Special Projects. These links lead to bits of knowledge and shrewd commentary on some of the hot topics under discussion in creative fields. If you are one such creative person, you might find the links below interesting.

Ted Goia’s Substack, The Honest Broker, has this to say about short vs. long form entertainment, and has some math to back up his claims. It’s very nice to hear that the world is not, in fact, being run by children on TikTok.

Popular YouTuber Legal Eagle is talking about the landmark AI lawsuit against Midjourney by two of the largest entertainment corporations in the world. Hint: it’s two movie studios, and you can guess one of them right away, I am sure.

Coincidentally, John Oliver was talking about AI Slop on Sunday. Worth a look, for all of the behind-the-scenes reasons, and even a few things I hadn’t considered.

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The Agency of Health and Wellness: Caregiver Mode

Longtime residents of the bunker may remember the time when I was the caregiver for my first wife, Cathy, who battled cervical cancer from 2018 to 2020. It was one of those transformational experiences in my life, the epochal event that changed me in a hundred different ways, both expected and unexpected. We know a lot more about the stresses that being a caregiver causes, which is both sad and encouraging at the same time. There’s a lot we don’t talk openly about in America, but that’s a whole ‘nuther essay.

That jar on the wall there? Sent me right back five years, man. Nutty stuff.

After Cathy died, a huge absence opened up in my sense of self. As a caregiver, I went from being a cheerleader and driving her to appointments and keeping her spirits up to holding her hand and wishing there was something I could say or do. And then, overnight, it all stopped. I went from being the person who had a great and terrible responsibility to being a person with the ruins of a former life to sort through. It was too much for me; I couldn’t do it.

Thankfully, I had an incredible and generous array of friends and family who did the unenviable task of standing me back up again and helping me move forward. Probably the single hardest thing I ever had to do, honestly. Friends and family (and therapy and radical lifestyle changes and so on and so on) did a lot of the heavy lifting for me. Everything else that they couldn’t reach, I decided to sweep up into a large pile and shove it under the metaphorical rug, where I would proceed to trip over it now and again for the next five years, every time, thinking, “I really ought to do something about that.”

Cut to: Janice is getting knee surgery, and everyone, in their rush to be helpful, filled our heads with contradictory stories of miraculous recoveries and depressing outcomes. Of course, we tended to focus on the outcome stories because that’s just human nature. I knew that I would need to be a caregiver for Janice, because the first six to eight weeks would be really challenging.

For instance, stairs. You know, those things we live above? It takes twenty eight steps, broken up by a landing, to ascend into the bunker. Concrete steps. Industrial, even. With good knees, you feel it the first few times you ascend. With bad knees?

More than once, I’ve watched Janice, pre-surgery, struggle her way up the stairs, and I’ve said, “You must really love me to put yourself through this.” She would usually say something pithy in reply like, “You’re worth the climb.” Heartwarming, but her grimace of pain and concentration sorta dulled the impact of that compliment. But no matter, I assured her, I got this. YOU got this (note: cheerleading mode).

As we got closer to the day of the surgery, I started to feel really trapped, and also really angry. Nothing was right, nothing was on time, everything was borked, and I was stomping around like a lunatic. We came back from Cross Plains on a geek-high and the impending surgery date just clotheslined me. It took extra effort to be civil, to not pick a fight online with someone; I was really agitated. On top of all that, Janice’s family came to town for her surgery, since they were taking her back to Waco for the first two weeks after the surgery. That’s all well and good, of course, but I was no longer part of a pair, I was now one part of a larger group. I didn’t talk very much, mostly because I didn’t trust myself not to sound like an asshole.

After Janice’s surgery, it dawned on me. We picked her up and with a nearly comical amount of effort, got her into the car. The doctor told her to sit in the back seat for the trip to Waco. The nurse who walked us out refused to do that, insisting that she sit up front. This became a lengthy debate that raged for most of the trip back. I was less concerned about where she sat and more concerned with getting her out of the car as quickly as possible. We had to stop every hour to stretch her legs. Each stop was a thirty minute project as we all collectively worked on getting Janice in and out of the car with as little discomfort as possible. The three hour drive took over five hours. At one point, we actually switched cars, like a college prank.

If that sounds like a lot to process with a mostly drugged up middle aged woman who couldn’t bend her leg, it was. And I was pissed. Every time I made a move towards Janice, one or two of her family swooped in to help her instead. Did they think I was incapable of helping my wife out of a car? What the hell? I was feeling pretty useless. That’s when the gong sounded.

A quick word about compartmentalization: It’s really not good for us, but boy, I tell you what, men understand it on a molecular level. We are seemingly born with the ability to shove unpleasant emotions into a box and stuff them into our attic until they metastasize and kill us on the golf course at the age of 50. It’s our primary means of expression, and if you’re a native Texan, they teach it at the elementary school level.

When I packed up all of the detritus from the last time I was a caregiver to my wife, a lot of left over resentment, anger, confusion, and fear went into the box with it. Three weeks ago, I got that box down and started looking through it, pop! goes the Charlie in the Box and suddenly, I am scared to death for no particular reason. It’s knee surgery. It’s practically outpatient surgery these days. And Janice would definitely recover. That’s just part of it. My brain, however, wasn’t having any of that, and I raged and fumed and swore and felt really helpless...kinda like when Janice’s family (who loves her enough to sit through a knee surgery) tried to help her. It wasn’t about me but I made it about me.

Over the weekend, once Janice was installed in the family homestead, she got sleep, and then she felt better, and then she woke up, and then she ate, and then she walked to the bathroom, and suddenly, the tension broke and I could see that all of my leftover junk was not needed. Did you ever find that random box you packed after a move, maybe ten years ago, full of shit you thought you needed? That was my holdover grief.

Janice is getting better every day—the pain of healing from surgery notwithstanding—and she’s doing pretty good in Physical Therapy so far. I don’t know if I can bring her home after two weeks, but I am hopeful. We have to do this all over again in three or four months and I am quite confident that we’ll all be better prepared for it next time. And I’m not going to be such a miserable shit, either. In fact, by the time you read this, I’ll be in Waco, cooking navy bean soup for my sweetie. It’s an old family recipe that smells like home and tastes like hug. She will love it. I’m really grateful that I get a do-over on being a husband, especially since I am determined not to make the same mistakes. I do have a list of all new mistakes to make, but I will save it for when Janice’s legs are fully bionic.

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Weekly Report from the N.T.A.B. Division of Media Review

Note: we would like to take a moment to thank all of our devoted readers who wrote cards and emails of concern, but we are fine, just fine. It seems that it was decided from somewhere else in the Bunker that we needed a bit of a “time out.” They called it “a break” but we weren’t fooled. Now we are back and as we get up to speed on all of the things we missed, we’d like to point out a recent re-release on physical media, which we understand for our younger readers is much like finding a dinosaur bone in the backyard, but we trust after so many years that you will at least glance over our offering with an open mind.

The Three Musketeers & The Four Musketeers: Two Films by Richard Lester (Criterion)

D’artagnon, a young Gascon, makes his way to Paris to join the King’s Musketeers, only to find himself embroiled in swordfights, swashbuckling, and skullduggery.

If you ask any bibliophile with a cineaste’s heart what the best movie version of The Three Musketeers is, they will all say it’s this one. All of those other versions (and there have been many) have been various degrees of entertaining. I like a couple of them very much. But this pair of films (even though they are really one film, cut in half, which was a controversial thing at the time) ends up at the top of the list for so many reasons.

Okay, let’s break it down:

George MacDonald Fraser, a British historian and the author of the Flashman novels, was tapped to write the screenplay—his first one. In it, he managed to cram roughly two-thirds of the novel’s sprawling plot into four hours’ worth of film; a magic trick that has yet to be repeated. As a historian, Fraser liberally sprinkled scenes, tableaus and bits of business about 17th century European life, drawing severe contrasts between the classes in France and England. There’s a ton of snarky asides, unreliable narration, and rapier-wit dialogue, and of course, in the early 1970s, some bawdy humor as well (Flashman was originally serialized in Playboy). It’s Fraser’s heroic work on these movies that allows me to forgive him for Red Sonja. Dick Lester, too.

Richard Lester and Fraser wanted more realism, especially in the fight scenes, and while they are really fun and there are a lot of great stunts and tricks in the films, the combat nearly always dissolves into a rugby scrum as swords break or are dropped, and everyone uses the environment and their surroundings and improvised weaponry whenever they can. There’s some inventive and frankly incredible choreography, made all the more exciting by the fact that the actors were all using real, sharp swords for most of the scenes. If you know what to look for, you can see Oliver Reed get stabbed. No wonder they were using real dueling tactics like catching the opponent’s thrusts on a cloak or with a gloved hand. Stuff I’ve not seen in any other swashbuckling film.

Lester also knew when to be funny and when to be serious and when to be a little of both. He got great performances out of the cast by simply letting them do their thing. He shot with multiple cameras, sometimes as many as five at a time, rarely asked for another take, and knew when to linger for one more beat to get a reaction or a look. He makes the pacing work by alternating between life or death fights and light and sometimes broad humor. Not many directors, then or now, could do that.

And that cast… look at the star power! Raquel Welch won a Golden Globe for her comedic turn as Constance, dressmaker to the queen. Oliver Reed, in a stunning display of casting against type, played the drunken Athos, Frank Finlay gave the definitive portrayal of Porthos, and Richard Chamberlain was picture perfect as Aramis. Michael York, to his credit, carried a lot of the movie as the story is ostensibly about D’artagnan’s rise into the ranks of a musketeer and beyond. He’s instantly likeable and charming. And all of the bit players and supporting staff, most of them noteworthy British comedians, don’t waste a single frame of their screen time. They are responsible for some of the biggest laughs and slapstick comedy.

But what about villains? Chuck Heston, to the rescue. Cue Christopher Lee. And Faye Dunaway. I’m not going to list their credits. If you don’t know who these people are at your age, you’re not watching movies made in the 20th century.

The film was shot on location in Spain and you can see these are real buildings (palaces, castle ruins, palatial estates) in real places. There’s only a couple of matte paintings in the whole movie. 90% of the film was a location shoot, with actors doing their own stunts, and the results are unlike anything you’ve likely seen in a long time.

It’s funny how a movie can be so historically accurate and historically inaccurate at the same time. Out of period dresses, firearms, inventions all show up in the story because it would look better, be cooler, was necessary for the plot, and on and on. Anachronistic, yeah, but noticeable? Probably not by the majority of the audience. What they might notice is how some of the scenes look like they were inspired by classical paintings from the masters like Vermeer and Rembrandt, right up to and including the lighting and composition thanks to the legendary cinematographer Michael Watkin.

Best of all, you get to see all of that lovely camera work and lighting design, thanks to Criterion, the company the founded the “deluxe format” option, first on really expensive laserdiscs, and later on slightly-less-expensive DVD and Blu-ray transfers. Their commitment to preserve and present classic films in the best possible format and adding in tons of extras, as much as they can find, has since been adopted by other companies trying to digitize and preserve less, shall we say, culturally important movies. This Criterion release is no different, featuring a lengthy documentary that spans both films, a featurette from 1974, interviews with the cast, and more. But it’s the 4K transfer that makes this worth having. It’s gorgeous, and manages to retain some of the film grain of the original print. I watch these movies once a year, and I have had to contend myself with a crappy transfer from years ago. No more!

An all-star cast from any era, including Michael York, Richard Chamberlain, Oliver Reed, Raquel Welch, Faye Dunaway, Christopher Lee and Charlton Heston round out this incredible adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ classic by none other than George Macdonald Fraser, and directed by Richard Lester. I mean...what else could you possibly want?

The Three Musketeers & The Four Musketeers: Two Films by Richard Lester is a must-have for all of the fans of this beloved story. It’s a long-overdue upgrade that hearkens back to a magical time when so much was possible...the 1970s, I mean. Don’t bother streaming it. Buy the goods and actually own something physical. See how it feels.

Mark Finn is one of the most opinionated and influential experts on Robert E. Howard in the state of Texas. He’s an author out of largesse rather than as a vocation and writes stories because he can’t play the guitar. He loves gorillas, values a well-placed conversational movie quote, and treasures the picaresque in literature. Annoyed with people’s misunderstanding of popular culture, he took it upon himself to buy a movie theater so he could lord it over every obnoxious film student on the Internet. He likes to say, “If three people tell you you’re drunk, go lie down.”