The passing of writer Jackson Gillis at the age of 93 could be viewed, if one were prone to overwrought metaphors, as symbolic of the death of a whole era of television.
His list of credits is astonishing. He wrote for more prestigious shows like Perry Mason and Columbo, but he also contributed scripts to Lost In Space, Longstreet and, for God's sake, Jason Of Star Command. He penned many episodes of the old George Reeves Superman series, as well as a script for its snarky modern update, Lois & Clark. In a way, he was TV history.
But now, it seems, ancient history. Though Gillis occasionally landed regular gigs on particular shows--he was a story editor on Perry Mason--he mostly made his living as a freelancer. Until sometime in the eighties, most programs depended on freelance writers for scripts, particularly one-hour dramas. (Sitcoms were more likely to be written in-house, but even then, most of them would routinely feature a few episodes per season written by outsiders.) Then as now, the vast majority of programming was formulaic--cop shows, medical shows, lawyer shows, westerns. The regular characters were pretty much set in stone, unchanging from episode to episode, there only to drive this week's storyline.
That's where somebody like Gillis came in. Unlike some of the more densely-packed series of today, when even the relentlessly disposable likes of CSI: Miami comes complete with a ton of backstory to its characters, it didn't really matter to a freelancer if they weren't up on the show's bible. If Gillis sold a spec script to Barnaby Jones, but producer Quinn Martin was short on storylines for Cannon that season, eh, no problem, it was easily retooled.
If Gillis could devise an airtight plot, producers were interested--that's what their shows were about. It was the story that kept a viewer hooked. Nowadays, almost every TV drama is primarily character-driven--not just the good ones, like Mad Men and Breaking Bad, but shows like House and the Law & Order franchise, which spend way too much time on the ongoing personal lives of not very interesting characters, and give short shrift to the stories they presumably mean to tell. Almost all of these shows are scripted by staff writers, and then filtered through the sensibilities of whatever powerful writer-producer is in charge.
Which is fine, for shows where it makes sense. The Sopranos and Deadwood, or to go back farther, Wiseguy and Homicide: Life On The Streets, were mostly written by a small staff who knew the characters intimately, and produced some of the best dramas ever. But when the same approach is taken to what should be fun junk food, something's wrong. A program like Criminal Minds has pretensions it hasn't earned, and its undernourished storylines, buried under a mountain of character details, are grindingly predictable.
Which is why producers use to wisely depend on Jackson Gillis. If nothing else, he knew how to tell a story.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Saturday, August 28, 2010
IT BRINGS ON MANY CHANGES
Noel Murray's A Very Special Episode series at The AV Club has been indispensable from the get-go, but the latest installment, on the history and influence of MASH, is less interesting for the article itself than the response of its readers.
Murray's article has generated over 400 comments as I write this, and the big surprise is how obviously familiar with the show the readership of The AV Club appears to be. Though it is popular with people of all ages (hey, I'm a regular!), the site is geared largely to people in the early twenties to late thirties demographic. Many of its readers would not even have been born when MASH was in production. They would have to come to it through syndication, or DVD. And evidently it struck a chord in many people. Which is a surprise to me, because this show is a prime example of a once-revered program that simply doesn't hold up..
When it originally aired, MASH was regarded as an example of "Quality Television", one of the few bastions of quality writing and acting to be found in the vast Wasteland of primetime TV. But it was always a bit of a mongrel, aspiring to innovation while remaining thoroughly conventional, straining for pathos while relying on punchlines.
Early in its run, it tried for a looser, more free-form vibe, somewhat akin to the Robert Altman film that inspired it. But the show's developer, Larry Gelbart, while a certified comedy genius (and I'd like to take this moment to heap mountains of praise on his script for Stanley Donen's Movie Movie, one of the greatest comedies of the seventies), had the instincts of a Catskills tummler, always ready with a snappy quip or pun. Thus the show always felt self-consciously written, which tended to clash with its more serious war-is-hell attitude. The best early episodes have the feel of a more acerbic Sgt. Bilko, only not as good.
Because Bilko, after all, had no particular pretense to realism--it was shot in front of a studio audience. MASH was shot one camera-style, on locations or on relatively detailed sets, and seemed to be striving for...what? Authenticity? No, that can't be right--the very seventies hairstyles of most of the actors undermine any such notions. And the performances were anything but subtle, with the actors braying the dialogue as if trying to project to the back rows.
In a way, MASH most closely resembled the work of Gelbart's old writer's room cohort from the Sid Caesar days, Neil Simon. His plays--wildly popular in the seventies, almost completely forgotten now--were similarly machine-tooled for laughs and pathos, with the comedic and dramatic beats arriving at exactly the expected times. It could be effective, but it was inorganic by nature. Gelbart's jokes were funnier than Simon's, but his show felt similarly forced--characters were constantly having dramatic revelations that would be completely forgotten about by the next episode.
Of course, that was the convention of the time. TV shows in the seventies lacked the continuity of even the least distinguished shows today. There were no continuing storylines or callbacks to previous incidents. Every episode was self-contained. Or at least, that's what many TV historians claim. But it's not entirely true.
For instance, there was episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show where perpetually wisecracking loser Murray risks everything--his marriage, his job, his happiness--by openly declaring his crush on Mary, his co-worker. She's flattered and embarrassed, doesn't know how to deal with it, and the whole episode is kind of squirmy and uncomfortable. And, in true seventies sitcom fashion, after that installment, it's never spoken of again. BUT...if you saw that episode, you could never look at Murray and Mary, sitting side-by-side at their work desks, the same way again. It was a character revelation that continued to resonate and didn't need to be stressed.
On the other hand, MASH would have its characters have some sort of epiphany just because it made for a nice dramatic storyline. They'd remember a childhood trauma, or become obsessed with death, or have a crisis of faith--the type of thing that, in anything resembling the real world, would pretty much define your very existence--then have a little speech at the end of the episode (perfect for an Emmy highlight reel) and be ready for next week's episode. Nothing ever resonated, nothing ever mattered.
After Gelbart's departure, MASH became much, much worse, limping along year after year in a neverending loop of static camera set-ups, mechanical wisecracks and high school play-level dramatics. The last three or four seasons--with the actors visibly much older, and situations often repeated from earlier episodes--were and are actually painful to watch. Yet the show's acclaim seemed to grow exponentially. Why?
Seventies TV was much maligned at the time, and still is now, sometimes unfairly. The best shows of the era--just off the top of my head, Mary Tyler Moore, Columbo, The Rockford Files, WKRP In Cincinnati--stand up to even the very best of what's being done now. But yeah, there was a lot of crap, and in particular, there were a lot of shows essentially designed to be nothing but time-killers. And as sometimes happens, in a sea of mediocrity, something that aspires to better things stands out. In concept and execution, MASH wasn't really significantly better than anything else, but it claimed to be, and once upon a time, good intentions really were enough.
Murray's article has generated over 400 comments as I write this, and the big surprise is how obviously familiar with the show the readership of The AV Club appears to be. Though it is popular with people of all ages (hey, I'm a regular!), the site is geared largely to people in the early twenties to late thirties demographic. Many of its readers would not even have been born when MASH was in production. They would have to come to it through syndication, or DVD. And evidently it struck a chord in many people. Which is a surprise to me, because this show is a prime example of a once-revered program that simply doesn't hold up..
When it originally aired, MASH was regarded as an example of "Quality Television", one of the few bastions of quality writing and acting to be found in the vast Wasteland of primetime TV. But it was always a bit of a mongrel, aspiring to innovation while remaining thoroughly conventional, straining for pathos while relying on punchlines.
Early in its run, it tried for a looser, more free-form vibe, somewhat akin to the Robert Altman film that inspired it. But the show's developer, Larry Gelbart, while a certified comedy genius (and I'd like to take this moment to heap mountains of praise on his script for Stanley Donen's Movie Movie, one of the greatest comedies of the seventies), had the instincts of a Catskills tummler, always ready with a snappy quip or pun. Thus the show always felt self-consciously written, which tended to clash with its more serious war-is-hell attitude. The best early episodes have the feel of a more acerbic Sgt. Bilko, only not as good.
Because Bilko, after all, had no particular pretense to realism--it was shot in front of a studio audience. MASH was shot one camera-style, on locations or on relatively detailed sets, and seemed to be striving for...what? Authenticity? No, that can't be right--the very seventies hairstyles of most of the actors undermine any such notions. And the performances were anything but subtle, with the actors braying the dialogue as if trying to project to the back rows.
In a way, MASH most closely resembled the work of Gelbart's old writer's room cohort from the Sid Caesar days, Neil Simon. His plays--wildly popular in the seventies, almost completely forgotten now--were similarly machine-tooled for laughs and pathos, with the comedic and dramatic beats arriving at exactly the expected times. It could be effective, but it was inorganic by nature. Gelbart's jokes were funnier than Simon's, but his show felt similarly forced--characters were constantly having dramatic revelations that would be completely forgotten about by the next episode.
Of course, that was the convention of the time. TV shows in the seventies lacked the continuity of even the least distinguished shows today. There were no continuing storylines or callbacks to previous incidents. Every episode was self-contained. Or at least, that's what many TV historians claim. But it's not entirely true.
For instance, there was episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show where perpetually wisecracking loser Murray risks everything--his marriage, his job, his happiness--by openly declaring his crush on Mary, his co-worker. She's flattered and embarrassed, doesn't know how to deal with it, and the whole episode is kind of squirmy and uncomfortable. And, in true seventies sitcom fashion, after that installment, it's never spoken of again. BUT...if you saw that episode, you could never look at Murray and Mary, sitting side-by-side at their work desks, the same way again. It was a character revelation that continued to resonate and didn't need to be stressed.
On the other hand, MASH would have its characters have some sort of epiphany just because it made for a nice dramatic storyline. They'd remember a childhood trauma, or become obsessed with death, or have a crisis of faith--the type of thing that, in anything resembling the real world, would pretty much define your very existence--then have a little speech at the end of the episode (perfect for an Emmy highlight reel) and be ready for next week's episode. Nothing ever resonated, nothing ever mattered.
After Gelbart's departure, MASH became much, much worse, limping along year after year in a neverending loop of static camera set-ups, mechanical wisecracks and high school play-level dramatics. The last three or four seasons--with the actors visibly much older, and situations often repeated from earlier episodes--were and are actually painful to watch. Yet the show's acclaim seemed to grow exponentially. Why?
Seventies TV was much maligned at the time, and still is now, sometimes unfairly. The best shows of the era--just off the top of my head, Mary Tyler Moore, Columbo, The Rockford Files, WKRP In Cincinnati--stand up to even the very best of what's being done now. But yeah, there was a lot of crap, and in particular, there were a lot of shows essentially designed to be nothing but time-killers. And as sometimes happens, in a sea of mediocrity, something that aspires to better things stands out. In concept and execution, MASH wasn't really significantly better than anything else, but it claimed to be, and once upon a time, good intentions really were enough.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
NOT QUEEN, NOT DUKE, NOT PRINCE
So I made an offhand comment on my Facebook page last night suggesting that anyone who uses the word "chillax" deserves to be taken out and shot. A number of friends responded with what I'm going to hope was mock indignation, and I offered a half-assed apology, and that was that. Still, as close as I've come to being involved in one of those exciting internet dust-ups the kids seem so fond of these days.
But it also got me thinking--if use of meaningless slang terms could be punishable by death, what other Draconian laws would be enacted if I were in charge of things? Obviously, Marc Cohn and Jason Mraz would be subjected to slow, exquisite punishment--they'd be forced to listen to their own music. Other grave offenses would include use of Ke$ha songs as ring tones, wearing flip-flops to work and of course, cleaning your gutters at 5 AM. (That last one would only apply to my neighbors.)
But I wouldn't be wholly despotic. Many would benefit from my rule. Joe Dante, Brad Bird and Paul Thomas Anderson would be given unlimited funding to make whatever the hell movies they want. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker would be hustled into a recording studio on a regular basis, thus assuring new Steely Dan albums would appear more frequently than every decade or so. (There would, however, be a bylaw mandating Becker play every bass and guitar part himself, and forbidding him from ever singing.) TV would be full of however many shows Jay Tarses wants to create. Best of all, a team of scientists would work around the clock trying to figure out how to bring Kurt Vonnegut back to life, because I can't stand living in a world without him. Also, though polygamy would be illegal for the general public, it would certainly be allowed for me, thus freeing me up to marry Lauren Graham, Thora Birch and Neko Case simultaneously. (They'd all be cool with it, I'm sure.)
Cracks would eventually appear. I'd become hated, my regime despised. An underground resistance would materialize, and Walking In Memphis would become a song of defiance. Jason Mraz, his dead eyes betraying the emotional scars of someone who has spent years in a dungeon listening to an endless loop of I'm Yours, would appear in the palace (I'd have a palace, right?) with vengeance on his mind, and not even my personal bodyguard--Kurt Russell, of course--would be able to stop him. It would be a thuddingly obvious twist ending, like a bad M. Night Shyamalan movie.
Of course, there'd be none of those in my personal world, either.
But it also got me thinking--if use of meaningless slang terms could be punishable by death, what other Draconian laws would be enacted if I were in charge of things? Obviously, Marc Cohn and Jason Mraz would be subjected to slow, exquisite punishment--they'd be forced to listen to their own music. Other grave offenses would include use of Ke$ha songs as ring tones, wearing flip-flops to work and of course, cleaning your gutters at 5 AM. (That last one would only apply to my neighbors.)
But I wouldn't be wholly despotic. Many would benefit from my rule. Joe Dante, Brad Bird and Paul Thomas Anderson would be given unlimited funding to make whatever the hell movies they want. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker would be hustled into a recording studio on a regular basis, thus assuring new Steely Dan albums would appear more frequently than every decade or so. (There would, however, be a bylaw mandating Becker play every bass and guitar part himself, and forbidding him from ever singing.) TV would be full of however many shows Jay Tarses wants to create. Best of all, a team of scientists would work around the clock trying to figure out how to bring Kurt Vonnegut back to life, because I can't stand living in a world without him. Also, though polygamy would be illegal for the general public, it would certainly be allowed for me, thus freeing me up to marry Lauren Graham, Thora Birch and Neko Case simultaneously. (They'd all be cool with it, I'm sure.)
Cracks would eventually appear. I'd become hated, my regime despised. An underground resistance would materialize, and Walking In Memphis would become a song of defiance. Jason Mraz, his dead eyes betraying the emotional scars of someone who has spent years in a dungeon listening to an endless loop of I'm Yours, would appear in the palace (I'd have a palace, right?) with vengeance on his mind, and not even my personal bodyguard--Kurt Russell, of course--would be able to stop him. It would be a thuddingly obvious twist ending, like a bad M. Night Shyamalan movie.
Of course, there'd be none of those in my personal world, either.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
TROUBLE EVERY DAY
Presumably his spiritual heirs have been too busy protesting gay marriage and spreading lies about Islam to note the death of James J. Kilpatrick at the age of 89.
A long-time spokesman for the lunatic right, he spent the forties and fifties toiling at various newspapers in the segregated south. When the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Brown vs. The Board Of education, Kilpatrick thrust himself onto the national stage, becoming a go-to spokesman for segregation. As late as 1963, when it must have been obvious to Kilpatrick that the tides of time and common sense were turning against him, he submitted an article to The Saturday Evening Post arguing that, in his words, "the Negro race, as a race, is in fact an inferior race."
That piece never ran, but the fact that a blandly mainstream publication like The Post even considered it proves that the hijacking of the media by right-wing extremists is nothing new. Indeed, Kilpatrick parlayed his noxious celebrity into a sweet gig on 60 Minutes, on which he and the supposedly liberal Shana Alexander indulged in pointlessly argumentative back and forth of the exact kind so favored by news networks today.
60 Minutes producer Don Hewett would no doubt have claimed that he used Kilpatrick as a way of proving that his show had no agenda, that it aired all points of view. But do all points of view need to be aired on a network forum, especially when those views are hateful and ill-informed? Kilpatrick's run on CBS was an inspiration for CNN's Crossfire, which gave Pat Buchanan a forum for launching his hateful bile, which led, inevitably, to Fox News--ideology presented as fact.
And we are living with the results of all this. When the views of hate-minded lunatics are given the patina of legitimacy by the mainstream press, they become part of the mainstream debate, and open hatred of other religions and races is made acceptable.
A long-time spokesman for the lunatic right, he spent the forties and fifties toiling at various newspapers in the segregated south. When the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Brown vs. The Board Of education, Kilpatrick thrust himself onto the national stage, becoming a go-to spokesman for segregation. As late as 1963, when it must have been obvious to Kilpatrick that the tides of time and common sense were turning against him, he submitted an article to The Saturday Evening Post arguing that, in his words, "the Negro race, as a race, is in fact an inferior race."
That piece never ran, but the fact that a blandly mainstream publication like The Post even considered it proves that the hijacking of the media by right-wing extremists is nothing new. Indeed, Kilpatrick parlayed his noxious celebrity into a sweet gig on 60 Minutes, on which he and the supposedly liberal Shana Alexander indulged in pointlessly argumentative back and forth of the exact kind so favored by news networks today.
60 Minutes producer Don Hewett would no doubt have claimed that he used Kilpatrick as a way of proving that his show had no agenda, that it aired all points of view. But do all points of view need to be aired on a network forum, especially when those views are hateful and ill-informed? Kilpatrick's run on CBS was an inspiration for CNN's Crossfire, which gave Pat Buchanan a forum for launching his hateful bile, which led, inevitably, to Fox News--ideology presented as fact.
And we are living with the results of all this. When the views of hate-minded lunatics are given the patina of legitimacy by the mainstream press, they become part of the mainstream debate, and open hatred of other religions and races is made acceptable.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
I FEEL LIKE A JEWISH GUY IN A RED LEATHER JACKET
1) Another Larry King quote, another Random Thoughts post. This particular Larry utterance comes from an interview he did with Harper's Bazaar, focusing on The Great Man's fashion sense. Because after all, when I think of all things cool and stylish, I think of Larry King.
2) I live in Iowa, so there's no way to avoid it: Floods. The rain has seemed almost endless since the spring, and the ground has been saturated the whole time. At its most benign, water is seeping into people's basements because where else can it go? The ground can't hold anymore.
At its most malignant, of course, water leaps the banks of rivers, cascading down streets, wiping out homes and businesses, short-circuiting power grids and poisoning water supplies. These are replays of actions that happened all over the midwest only two years ago, and which devastated most of Iowa fifteen years before that.
Flooding happens, of course, but not generally on this scale, not this often. The floods of '93 were a supposedly once-in-a-lifetime happening, but it seems the unthinkable is becoming routine. And humans will react as they always do, by gritting their teeth, soldiering on and refusing to admit that nature is in charge.
3) Any TV news show that includes regular comments from a right-wing pundit--which is to say, any TV news show--will feature the right-winger saying something along the lines of, "Oh, it's so offensive that people think Tea Partiers are a bunch of racists. That's offensive! That's reverse racism!"
At which point, the host of Generic News Show will back off, perhaps feebly suggesting that there may be some people sympathetic to the Tea Party cause who are perhaps a bit less than racially sensitive, and the right-winger will say something like, "What are you, the NAACP?" and everyone will laugh.
Because, yes, darn it, the Tea Party types are totally NOT racist. Oh, sure, they'll refer to Obama as the "coon-mander in chief" and yeah, they might email each other hilarious doctored photos of the president eating watermelon or rolling dice, and they might glower at the number of interracial couples around them and mutter, "Time was, you could lynch a boy for doing that to a white woman"--but they're not racist!
And in case you're wondering, yes, I've encountered all these things in person.
4) Geez, this has been a pretty depressing post so far. So let's talk about something cheerful and upbeat. Specifically--Beagles! More to the point, let's talk about Bella, who consistently brightens my day with the near-maniacal exuberance she brings to something as simple as jumping up on a chair. Between her insane leaping, desire for attention and endless energy--not to mention the fact that her antics often reduce me to helpless laughter--it's like living with a furry, four-legged Jerry Lewis. (Which presumably casts me in the Dean Martin role. I'd better learn how to sing.)
So I was walking Bella the other morning, and she caught a scent of something or other, as she often does, but her reaction to this particular odor was unusually intense--it caused her to rear up on her hind legs. And then--she just started trotting along on her hind legs, as if it was the most natural thing in the world! She stopped, eventually, turned and and looked at me, as if seeking approval. Or more like, she was saying, "See? Here's another cute thing I can do! Is there no limit to how adorable I can be? Could you possibly love me any more?"
And no, of course, I couldn't. I couldn't imagine how it would be possible to love anyone or anything more than I love Bella.
5) But then there's poor Delmar. He nuzzles Bella occasionally, and tries to show some sort of affection for her, but he just can't. If I had any other cat in the world, it would probably have bonded with Bella by now, and they'd curl up together in the recliner, or at least peaceably co-exist, each in their own little world.
But any other cat wouldn't be Del, my furry little malcontent, a black-and-white bundle of neuroses. I couldn't love him any more than I do, either, but he'd never believe me if I told him that.
6) This post was originally going to be all about the new CGI/live-action Bugs Bunny film that the soulless suits at Warner Bros. intend to put into production. But when I tried to actually say something about it, I found myself speechless. Some ideas are so transparently awful, they can't even be properly mocked.
2) I live in Iowa, so there's no way to avoid it: Floods. The rain has seemed almost endless since the spring, and the ground has been saturated the whole time. At its most benign, water is seeping into people's basements because where else can it go? The ground can't hold anymore.
At its most malignant, of course, water leaps the banks of rivers, cascading down streets, wiping out homes and businesses, short-circuiting power grids and poisoning water supplies. These are replays of actions that happened all over the midwest only two years ago, and which devastated most of Iowa fifteen years before that.
Flooding happens, of course, but not generally on this scale, not this often. The floods of '93 were a supposedly once-in-a-lifetime happening, but it seems the unthinkable is becoming routine. And humans will react as they always do, by gritting their teeth, soldiering on and refusing to admit that nature is in charge.
3) Any TV news show that includes regular comments from a right-wing pundit--which is to say, any TV news show--will feature the right-winger saying something along the lines of, "Oh, it's so offensive that people think Tea Partiers are a bunch of racists. That's offensive! That's reverse racism!"
At which point, the host of Generic News Show will back off, perhaps feebly suggesting that there may be some people sympathetic to the Tea Party cause who are perhaps a bit less than racially sensitive, and the right-winger will say something like, "What are you, the NAACP?" and everyone will laugh.
Because, yes, darn it, the Tea Party types are totally NOT racist. Oh, sure, they'll refer to Obama as the "coon-mander in chief" and yeah, they might email each other hilarious doctored photos of the president eating watermelon or rolling dice, and they might glower at the number of interracial couples around them and mutter, "Time was, you could lynch a boy for doing that to a white woman"--but they're not racist!
And in case you're wondering, yes, I've encountered all these things in person.
4) Geez, this has been a pretty depressing post so far. So let's talk about something cheerful and upbeat. Specifically--Beagles! More to the point, let's talk about Bella, who consistently brightens my day with the near-maniacal exuberance she brings to something as simple as jumping up on a chair. Between her insane leaping, desire for attention and endless energy--not to mention the fact that her antics often reduce me to helpless laughter--it's like living with a furry, four-legged Jerry Lewis. (Which presumably casts me in the Dean Martin role. I'd better learn how to sing.)
So I was walking Bella the other morning, and she caught a scent of something or other, as she often does, but her reaction to this particular odor was unusually intense--it caused her to rear up on her hind legs. And then--she just started trotting along on her hind legs, as if it was the most natural thing in the world! She stopped, eventually, turned and and looked at me, as if seeking approval. Or more like, she was saying, "See? Here's another cute thing I can do! Is there no limit to how adorable I can be? Could you possibly love me any more?"
And no, of course, I couldn't. I couldn't imagine how it would be possible to love anyone or anything more than I love Bella.
5) But then there's poor Delmar. He nuzzles Bella occasionally, and tries to show some sort of affection for her, but he just can't. If I had any other cat in the world, it would probably have bonded with Bella by now, and they'd curl up together in the recliner, or at least peaceably co-exist, each in their own little world.
But any other cat wouldn't be Del, my furry little malcontent, a black-and-white bundle of neuroses. I couldn't love him any more than I do, either, but he'd never believe me if I told him that.
6) This post was originally going to be all about the new CGI/live-action Bugs Bunny film that the soulless suits at Warner Bros. intend to put into production. But when I tried to actually say something about it, I found myself speechless. Some ideas are so transparently awful, they can't even be properly mocked.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
GREEN CAN BE COOL AND FRIENDLY-LIKE
It doesn't happen much anymore. In a way, that makes it worse: Something is seen on TV, something is read somewhere, a joke is heard, and I think, "I'll have to tell Mom about that."
What follows is even more terrible, as that minor blip in my brain is immediately followed by another, that says, "No, you can't. She's dead." Simple as that. No sobbing moment of remembrance, no flood of grief, just a calm, sober reminder.
That is, I guess, the way of the world. People die. We grieve, then move on. It's a process we all must endure in order to continue to make our way in the world. If we continued to mourn, if we spent every waking moment missing the people we loved, we'd never be able to function. We would spend all our lives in darkened rooms, weeping uncontrollably.
But sometimes that very process of moving on is itself the source of despair. For me, that usually comes a few moments later. "I have to tell Mom about that," "Oh, right, she's dead," followed by the realization that I had just casually dismissed the passing of one of the most important people in my life, as indifferently as if I'd noticed it was a rerun of a favorite show, or the computer was running slow, or the neighbor's dog was barking. I'd treated a major turning point in my life as a minor nuisance. How dare I? How dare I?
And then, at last, comes the flood of grief, and with it, the oddly comforting realization that I haven't moved on, and never will, that as long as I continue to grieve, her memory is still honored, and she still lives in my heart.
What follows is even more terrible, as that minor blip in my brain is immediately followed by another, that says, "No, you can't. She's dead." Simple as that. No sobbing moment of remembrance, no flood of grief, just a calm, sober reminder.
That is, I guess, the way of the world. People die. We grieve, then move on. It's a process we all must endure in order to continue to make our way in the world. If we continued to mourn, if we spent every waking moment missing the people we loved, we'd never be able to function. We would spend all our lives in darkened rooms, weeping uncontrollably.
But sometimes that very process of moving on is itself the source of despair. For me, that usually comes a few moments later. "I have to tell Mom about that," "Oh, right, she's dead," followed by the realization that I had just casually dismissed the passing of one of the most important people in my life, as indifferently as if I'd noticed it was a rerun of a favorite show, or the computer was running slow, or the neighbor's dog was barking. I'd treated a major turning point in my life as a minor nuisance. How dare I? How dare I?
And then, at last, comes the flood of grief, and with it, the oddly comforting realization that I haven't moved on, and never will, that as long as I continue to grieve, her memory is still honored, and she still lives in my heart.
Monday, August 09, 2010
REHEARSALS FOR RETIREMENT
Without question, the death of actress Patricia Neal is occasion for sadness, due in no small part to the impression that she was never fully allowed to give us as much as she might have. True, she was cut down by a stroke in the prime of her life, which robbed her of some productive time, but let's face it: How many great roles did she really get on screen? Hud. The Subject Was Roses. You could throw in The Day The Earth Stood Still, probably her most famous film, but it doesn't require her to do much heavy lifting in the performance department. Then again, maybe it didn't need to: She managed to convey great intelligence even when just standing there, and that, combined with a certain remote quality she projected, made her endlessly fascinating to watch. Even when the movies weren't worthy of her, she was still there, and that was enough.
Neal's death is the latest in a terrible run of recent deaths of people who had a lot to do with some of the best or most influential movies ever made. They weren't actors, they weren't famous to the general public, but their work mattered.
Take Robert Boyle, for instance. The term "production designer" sounds more industrial than creative, but Boyle's magnificent collaborations on some of Alfred Hitchcock's most iconic films marked him as a true artist. Consider James Mason's weird house situated somewhere atop Mt. Rushmore in North By Northwest, or the ironic facade of a welcoming small town in Shadow Of A Doubt. Consider, too, his work with other great directors: For Joe Dante's Explorers, Boyle had to design an alien spacecraft that would be convincingly otherworldly and effectively ominous, all while still seeming reminiscent of something from a fifties sci-fi cheapie. Lord knows how he pulled it off, but he certainly did.
Suso Checchi D'Amico worked as a screenwriter with many of the best Italian filmmakers--Francesco Rosi, Michelangelo Antonioni, Vittorio DeSica. Her most frequent collaborator was Luchino Visconti, with whom she wrote several films, including The Leopard. She wrote a lot of lesser films, too, of course, as a working writer must, but even if her voice is not the dominant one in the great films she worked on, it is still in the mix.
Nobody would ever confuse the films Tom Mankiewicz wrote with The Leopard, but the fact remains that one of those movies--Superman or Superman II, or one of the lesser Bonds like Diamonds Are Forever or Live And Let Die--are always being watched somewhere. They're the work of a competent journeyman, and nothing to be sneezed at. The fact that they are so popular means they have meaning to people on some level.
That's what unites all the people on this list. The size and quality of their contributions may vary, but they've all been part of our dreamworlds as lived on screen, and for that, they can't be thanked enough.
Neal's death is the latest in a terrible run of recent deaths of people who had a lot to do with some of the best or most influential movies ever made. They weren't actors, they weren't famous to the general public, but their work mattered.
Take Robert Boyle, for instance. The term "production designer" sounds more industrial than creative, but Boyle's magnificent collaborations on some of Alfred Hitchcock's most iconic films marked him as a true artist. Consider James Mason's weird house situated somewhere atop Mt. Rushmore in North By Northwest, or the ironic facade of a welcoming small town in Shadow Of A Doubt. Consider, too, his work with other great directors: For Joe Dante's Explorers, Boyle had to design an alien spacecraft that would be convincingly otherworldly and effectively ominous, all while still seeming reminiscent of something from a fifties sci-fi cheapie. Lord knows how he pulled it off, but he certainly did.
Suso Checchi D'Amico worked as a screenwriter with many of the best Italian filmmakers--Francesco Rosi, Michelangelo Antonioni, Vittorio DeSica. Her most frequent collaborator was Luchino Visconti, with whom she wrote several films, including The Leopard. She wrote a lot of lesser films, too, of course, as a working writer must, but even if her voice is not the dominant one in the great films she worked on, it is still in the mix.
Nobody would ever confuse the films Tom Mankiewicz wrote with The Leopard, but the fact remains that one of those movies--Superman or Superman II, or one of the lesser Bonds like Diamonds Are Forever or Live And Let Die--are always being watched somewhere. They're the work of a competent journeyman, and nothing to be sneezed at. The fact that they are so popular means they have meaning to people on some level.
That's what unites all the people on this list. The size and quality of their contributions may vary, but they've all been part of our dreamworlds as lived on screen, and for that, they can't be thanked enough.
Sunday, August 01, 2010
SEE, I'M TOO DISTRACTED TO EVEN DREAM UP A TITLE
Thing is, as I'll be dog-sitting for a week or so, my attention will be elsewhere. Writing is easy enough, but staying focused...yeah, probably not.
For instance, I thought I'd simply write about the current canine situation. The dog being sat is Brody, Tabbatha's rat terrier, whose unfailing awesomeness I've gone on about before. But the first few times he was here, I had no dog of my own.
But now Bella is here, and her pack-dog mentality initially required her to prove her dominance over poor Brody, which she did by humping him constantly. The image of a spayed female riding a neutured male is like something from Female Trouble-era John Waters, but eventually Brody started fighting back, and the result has been endless good-natured roughhousing. (At least, I think it's good-natured.) They wrestle endlessly, then pause, heading to the kitchen to lap up some water, then BOOM, right back to it. So it's basically like this classic scene from John Carpenter's They Live:
See, but this is where my attention wanders. I'm ostensibly writing about the dogs, but I can't let that clip pass without commenting on the greatness of John Carpenter. This scene was fairly notorious back in '88, when They Live was released, as almost comically pointless, an excuse to let the movie's star, pro wrestler Roddy Piper, do his thing.
But taking the scene on its own terms, it's a small masterpiece of staging, with Carpenter's casually elegant wide-screen framing and precise editing a textbook example of how to block and shoot an action scene, an example more of today's directors, with their addiction to shaky-cams and whiplash editing, would be wise to study. Less is always more.
All well and good, but then the other thing is, I also can't let a mention of They Live pass without mentioning the fact that it remains one of the few mainstream American movies to even acknowledge class divisions in this country. This goofy, lowbrow sci-fi epic about alien invasion is also a bracing portrait of a world in which the human race has been enslaved by capitalism run wild, one vast, ecumenical system...well, let's let Ned Beatty explain, in this terrifying speech from 1976's Network, brilliantly crafted by Paddy Chayefsky.
But here again, my attention wanders. I post this scene because I think it makes an important point, but watching it, I mostly focus on Beatty's perfectly modulated performance. This is his only scene in the whole film, and like a high-priced hitman, he just comes in, totally nails it, then leaves.
And why not? Beatty is one of those actors incapable of giving a bad performance, which gets me to thinking about other actors who are always great, which...but what does any of this have to do with the dogs?
Nothing, I'm afraid, which is why posting will likely be light this week. When rasslin' puppies are nearby, it's hard to focus on anything else.
For instance, I thought I'd simply write about the current canine situation. The dog being sat is Brody, Tabbatha's rat terrier, whose unfailing awesomeness I've gone on about before. But the first few times he was here, I had no dog of my own.
But now Bella is here, and her pack-dog mentality initially required her to prove her dominance over poor Brody, which she did by humping him constantly. The image of a spayed female riding a neutured male is like something from Female Trouble-era John Waters, but eventually Brody started fighting back, and the result has been endless good-natured roughhousing. (At least, I think it's good-natured.) They wrestle endlessly, then pause, heading to the kitchen to lap up some water, then BOOM, right back to it. So it's basically like this classic scene from John Carpenter's They Live:
See, but this is where my attention wanders. I'm ostensibly writing about the dogs, but I can't let that clip pass without commenting on the greatness of John Carpenter. This scene was fairly notorious back in '88, when They Live was released, as almost comically pointless, an excuse to let the movie's star, pro wrestler Roddy Piper, do his thing.
But taking the scene on its own terms, it's a small masterpiece of staging, with Carpenter's casually elegant wide-screen framing and precise editing a textbook example of how to block and shoot an action scene, an example more of today's directors, with their addiction to shaky-cams and whiplash editing, would be wise to study. Less is always more.
All well and good, but then the other thing is, I also can't let a mention of They Live pass without mentioning the fact that it remains one of the few mainstream American movies to even acknowledge class divisions in this country. This goofy, lowbrow sci-fi epic about alien invasion is also a bracing portrait of a world in which the human race has been enslaved by capitalism run wild, one vast, ecumenical system...well, let's let Ned Beatty explain, in this terrifying speech from 1976's Network, brilliantly crafted by Paddy Chayefsky.
But here again, my attention wanders. I post this scene because I think it makes an important point, but watching it, I mostly focus on Beatty's perfectly modulated performance. This is his only scene in the whole film, and like a high-priced hitman, he just comes in, totally nails it, then leaves.
And why not? Beatty is one of those actors incapable of giving a bad performance, which gets me to thinking about other actors who are always great, which...but what does any of this have to do with the dogs?
Nothing, I'm afraid, which is why posting will likely be light this week. When rasslin' puppies are nearby, it's hard to focus on anything else.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Z-Z-Z-Z-Z
How did this happen, America? We have been lazy, we have been indifferent, we have failed to pay attention. And during this time, there have been forces, pernicious forces within our own borders, that have managed to do what bin Laden himself couldn't do: They've given Marc Cohn the highest-charting album of his career.
Did we learn nothing from the nineties? Though his debut album charted modestly back in '91, its debut single, the truly awful Walking In Memphis, acted like a bland, piano-driven pod placed under the nation's collective bed, and the next morning we woke up to a world that just wasn't quite the same.
Oh, we still went to doctor's offices, sat in line waiting for driver's licenses and shopped at mid-price retail chains. But suddenly all these unexciting yet essentially painless activities were constantly accompanied by a piano bar keyboard riff and a nondescript voice straining to sound scruffy and world-weary. Incredibly trite lyrics--referencing Elvis, W.C. Handy and Al Green, which conjure Memphis about as evocatively as mentioning the Empire State Building and Central Park when discussing New York--filled the air, and as much as we tried to ignore the problem, it never went away. Walking In Memphis was exactly the sort of personality-free song that would continue to be played in public areas for years and years.
As dreadful as a Michael Buble or a Jason Mraz might be, they've at least tied up the kind of "light listening" music services favored by restaurants and reception areas, and it was easy to become complacent, to think, "Well, at least we won't have to worry about hearing that Walking In Memphis guy anymore." But we were wrong to think that, very, very wrong. Despite having been shot in the head in 2005--bullets killed John Lennon, but they only made Marc Cohn stronger!--it seems he can't be stopped. His new covers album, Listening Booth: 1970 (and, by the way, is there anything less creative than an album of cover songs?), drags Van Morrison and Alex Chilton down to his level, but far more ominously, it features a version of Bread's Make It With You. Imagine the horror: an already lugubrious, desperately uninteresting David Gates ballad as run through the Marc Cohn blanderizer. It would be formless aural mass, a musical version of The Nothing from The Neverending Story, sweeping away all memories of joy, or pain, or any human emotion whatsoever.
It happened before, America. We survived it once, but we were stronger then. Will we be able to survive it again?
Did we learn nothing from the nineties? Though his debut album charted modestly back in '91, its debut single, the truly awful Walking In Memphis, acted like a bland, piano-driven pod placed under the nation's collective bed, and the next morning we woke up to a world that just wasn't quite the same.
Oh, we still went to doctor's offices, sat in line waiting for driver's licenses and shopped at mid-price retail chains. But suddenly all these unexciting yet essentially painless activities were constantly accompanied by a piano bar keyboard riff and a nondescript voice straining to sound scruffy and world-weary. Incredibly trite lyrics--referencing Elvis, W.C. Handy and Al Green, which conjure Memphis about as evocatively as mentioning the Empire State Building and Central Park when discussing New York--filled the air, and as much as we tried to ignore the problem, it never went away. Walking In Memphis was exactly the sort of personality-free song that would continue to be played in public areas for years and years.
As dreadful as a Michael Buble or a Jason Mraz might be, they've at least tied up the kind of "light listening" music services favored by restaurants and reception areas, and it was easy to become complacent, to think, "Well, at least we won't have to worry about hearing that Walking In Memphis guy anymore." But we were wrong to think that, very, very wrong. Despite having been shot in the head in 2005--bullets killed John Lennon, but they only made Marc Cohn stronger!--it seems he can't be stopped. His new covers album, Listening Booth: 1970 (and, by the way, is there anything less creative than an album of cover songs?), drags Van Morrison and Alex Chilton down to his level, but far more ominously, it features a version of Bread's Make It With You. Imagine the horror: an already lugubrious, desperately uninteresting David Gates ballad as run through the Marc Cohn blanderizer. It would be formless aural mass, a musical version of The Nothing from The Neverending Story, sweeping away all memories of joy, or pain, or any human emotion whatsoever.
It happened before, America. We survived it once, but we were stronger then. Will we be able to survive it again?
Monday, July 26, 2010
HELL: BROUGHT TO YOU BY NASCAR
According to today's New York Times, the marketeers at Screenvision announced plans last week to upgrade the "preshow experience" in movie theaters that subscribe to their service. The preshow, for those of you dwelling in blissful ignorance, consists of banner ads, mindless trivia challenges, various interstitials and grotesquely overproduced PSAs, like those National Guard ads featuring Kid Rock and Three Doors Down. (At least, I think it was Three Doors Down. Either them or Nickelback. Some shitty band or other. Like I would know; those ads were so bad they'd inevitably make me flee to the lobby until they were over.)
I doubt there's a filmgoer on the planet who actually enjoys sitting through these things, but Screenvision believes negative reactions from audiences can be turned around by throwing even more shit onscreen before the movie starts. Their new "advertainment" block--and incidentally, every time someone uses the word "advertainment", an angel is cast into hell--will consist of sponsored Nascar footage, video clips of Timbaland apparently just hanging out and talking to us and a so-far-unspecified use of Paula Abdul.
You can understand why the folks at Screenvision spend their time dreaming up nonsense like this--it's their job, after all. And they allegedly have the numbers to prove it: The Times cites a Nielsen study claiming in-theater advertising was one of the few aspects of the ad world to show growth in 2009.
That's presumably due to the fact that theater owners are faced with dwindling attendance a smaller slice of the box-office take, thanks to increasingly outrageous demands from distributors. But what the numbers don't take into account is how many potential filmgoers actually stay away precisely because of the preshow spectacle.
Even if you only get to the theater ten minutes before showtime, you're still bombarded with ads that whole time, followed by an endless onslaught of trailers. By the time the movie itself starts, you've already spent a full half-hour or so sitting in the dark watching images on a screen, and exhaustion has set in. If there's a movie I'm on the fence about seeing, I usually decide to wait for the DVD, mostly because the moviegoing experience is so actively unpleasant these days, and I'm sure I'm not alone.
People know when they are being treated like chimps in a Skinner box, and they resent it. All the advertainment in the world can't change that.
I doubt there's a filmgoer on the planet who actually enjoys sitting through these things, but Screenvision believes negative reactions from audiences can be turned around by throwing even more shit onscreen before the movie starts. Their new "advertainment" block--and incidentally, every time someone uses the word "advertainment", an angel is cast into hell--will consist of sponsored Nascar footage, video clips of Timbaland apparently just hanging out and talking to us and a so-far-unspecified use of Paula Abdul.
You can understand why the folks at Screenvision spend their time dreaming up nonsense like this--it's their job, after all. And they allegedly have the numbers to prove it: The Times cites a Nielsen study claiming in-theater advertising was one of the few aspects of the ad world to show growth in 2009.
That's presumably due to the fact that theater owners are faced with dwindling attendance a smaller slice of the box-office take, thanks to increasingly outrageous demands from distributors. But what the numbers don't take into account is how many potential filmgoers actually stay away precisely because of the preshow spectacle.
Even if you only get to the theater ten minutes before showtime, you're still bombarded with ads that whole time, followed by an endless onslaught of trailers. By the time the movie itself starts, you've already spent a full half-hour or so sitting in the dark watching images on a screen, and exhaustion has set in. If there's a movie I'm on the fence about seeing, I usually decide to wait for the DVD, mostly because the moviegoing experience is so actively unpleasant these days, and I'm sure I'm not alone.
People know when they are being treated like chimps in a Skinner box, and they resent it. All the advertainment in the world can't change that.
Friday, July 23, 2010
BRING ME ANOTHER MINT JULEP, SHAWN, OR I'LL DIVORCE YOUR PERKY ASS FOR REAL THIS TIME
1) Another Random Thoughts post, another Larry King quote, only this one is entirely made up. (Seriously, would YOU want to spend any more time than necessary browsing the USA Today archives, looking for relevant King-isms?) I'm imagining Larry barking this line at his clinically-depressed wife, her entire body trembling as she shuffles off to fulfill yet another of Larry's demands, as he languishes by the pool, his tiny Speedos held in place by suspenders.
Right. Let's move along, shall we, and never envision this scenario again...
2) Long-time readers (Are there any of you out there? Hello?) may remember when this space was largely devoted to my misadventures in the dating world. Whether it involved one-off encounters with would-be actors and hardcore masochists or enraptured odes to long-term relationships that died on the vine, I willingly spilled my guts here.
Hasn't been much of that lately, has there? While I'd like to say it's because I've decided to keep my private life private, the sad fact is, there is no private life. I had a particularly bad date a month or two ago, but aside from the former meth-head aspect, it wasn't interesting enough to recount here.
Beyond that, upkeep on the house (which mostly consists of pulling crap out of the gutters and mowing the lawn, like, once a week) and playtime with the puppy keep me occupied. Other than messy physical desires, I'm not missing being in a relationship at all. But hey, that's what hookers are for!
3) Kidding about the hookers. That was obvious, right? Because you never know. People have a bad tendency to key into the literal meaning of words without understanding tone and intent, and...*sighs* This could turn into a lengthy screed about Obama and Fox News, you know. And bear in mind, whenever talk turns to politics around here, Star Wars metaphors will be deployed, and no one wants that. Though that reminds me...
4) ...I've been having a lot of Star Wars-based dreams lately. You might think, "Well yeah, what's unusual about that, you go on about it all the time," but the thing is, I don't, really. Sure, I like Star Wars, but I wouldn't say I'm really into it. I've never read any of the zillions of tie-in novels or comic books, for instance. And even back in '77, the double-LP soundtrack for the original (which was NOT then called A New Hope, thank you very much) came with a cool poster of the rebels attacking the Death Star...but I never even put it up on my wall. I had posters from the '76 King Kong, and don't even ask me about my obsession at the age of 10 with Planet Of The Apes, but by the time I turned 12, the notion of displaying a poster from a movie I liked just seemed kind of geeky. Just because I saw it five times that summer (no small feat when you live on a farm and the only theater in Iowa playing it was over an hour's drive away, which means convincing everyone in your family to take you at least once) doesn't mean that it changed my life or anything. By that fall, I'd moved on to other obsessions. When The Empire Strikes Back came out, I was barely interested in seeing it.
Of course, once I did see it...
5) Who am I kidding? Ladies and germs, the greatest fucking piece of music ever written:
6) Finally, as all these posts end, with a critter update: Neurotic cats and exuberant puppies really don't mix. But when they do, the results are very entertaining.
Right. Let's move along, shall we, and never envision this scenario again...
2) Long-time readers (Are there any of you out there? Hello?) may remember when this space was largely devoted to my misadventures in the dating world. Whether it involved one-off encounters with would-be actors and hardcore masochists or enraptured odes to long-term relationships that died on the vine, I willingly spilled my guts here.
Hasn't been much of that lately, has there? While I'd like to say it's because I've decided to keep my private life private, the sad fact is, there is no private life. I had a particularly bad date a month or two ago, but aside from the former meth-head aspect, it wasn't interesting enough to recount here.
Beyond that, upkeep on the house (which mostly consists of pulling crap out of the gutters and mowing the lawn, like, once a week) and playtime with the puppy keep me occupied. Other than messy physical desires, I'm not missing being in a relationship at all. But hey, that's what hookers are for!
3) Kidding about the hookers. That was obvious, right? Because you never know. People have a bad tendency to key into the literal meaning of words without understanding tone and intent, and...*sighs* This could turn into a lengthy screed about Obama and Fox News, you know. And bear in mind, whenever talk turns to politics around here, Star Wars metaphors will be deployed, and no one wants that. Though that reminds me...
4) ...I've been having a lot of Star Wars-based dreams lately. You might think, "Well yeah, what's unusual about that, you go on about it all the time," but the thing is, I don't, really. Sure, I like Star Wars, but I wouldn't say I'm really into it. I've never read any of the zillions of tie-in novels or comic books, for instance. And even back in '77, the double-LP soundtrack for the original (which was NOT then called A New Hope, thank you very much) came with a cool poster of the rebels attacking the Death Star...but I never even put it up on my wall. I had posters from the '76 King Kong, and don't even ask me about my obsession at the age of 10 with Planet Of The Apes, but by the time I turned 12, the notion of displaying a poster from a movie I liked just seemed kind of geeky. Just because I saw it five times that summer (no small feat when you live on a farm and the only theater in Iowa playing it was over an hour's drive away, which means convincing everyone in your family to take you at least once) doesn't mean that it changed my life or anything. By that fall, I'd moved on to other obsessions. When The Empire Strikes Back came out, I was barely interested in seeing it.
Of course, once I did see it...
5) Who am I kidding? Ladies and germs, the greatest fucking piece of music ever written:
6) Finally, as all these posts end, with a critter update: Neurotic cats and exuberant puppies really don't mix. But when they do, the results are very entertaining.
Monday, July 19, 2010
SOMETHING SOMETHING KISSED A GIRL, SOMETHING SOMETHING HOT AND COLD, SOMETHING SOMETHING CALIFORNIA GURLS...LIKE I'M GONNA BOTHER LOOKING UP THE LYRICS
Had a video clip I intended to paste in here, so I went to YouTube to find it. The home page popped up, with a little sidebar promo for Katy Perry: The YouTube Interview, during which "Lisa Nova will ask Katy your questions."
Wait a second. I could have submitted questions for Katy Perry? Dear God, why was I not told? My life now is incomplete. A minor, soon-to-be-forgotten celebrity might have acknowledged my existence by answering a question submitted by me. Me! Just an average fella, rubbing elbows, via question-asking surrogate Lisa Nova, with an artist whose work I've long avoided.
Yet my opportunity passed. My question for Katy--"Why have I heard of you, exactly?"--will remain forever unanswered. An almost unbearable melancholy descends, and I weep silently.
Wait a second. I could have submitted questions for Katy Perry? Dear God, why was I not told? My life now is incomplete. A minor, soon-to-be-forgotten celebrity might have acknowledged my existence by answering a question submitted by me. Me! Just an average fella, rubbing elbows, via question-asking surrogate Lisa Nova, with an artist whose work I've long avoided.
Yet my opportunity passed. My question for Katy--"Why have I heard of you, exactly?"--will remain forever unanswered. An almost unbearable melancholy descends, and I weep silently.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
I ALREADY BOUGHT THE DREAM
Silly interweb dust-ups are a dime a dozen, and this one is so ridiculously trivial it's barely worth going into--and why should I bother, since Dennis Cozzalio does such a fine job of breaking it down?--but in brief, New York film critic David Edelstein wrote a mildly negative review of Christopher Nolan's new film Inception, and a lot of fanboys are pissed off.
The back story is, Edelstein was one of the first major critics to pan Nolan's The Dark Knight two years ago, and since many comic book fans were convinced that movie would somehow legitimize their geekiest obsessions, they felt as though they had been personally attacked. And though most of them haven't seen Inception yet--it opens tomorrow--they still feel some sort of gratitude to Nolan, as though he validated their lives.
Which is just kind of pathetic, and many of Nolan's defenders are doing him no favors (the word they're tossing around most frequently to describe Inception is "Kubrickian", which is utterly senseless on many levels), but the thing is, I kind of understand their enthusiasm. Whatever else can be said about The Dark Knight, it remains one of the few big blockbusters in recent movie history to be any good at all. It was well-written (if a bit self-important), mostly well-directed and perfectly cast down to the smallest roles. It understood what it wanted to be, and set out to do it.
That wouldn't seem like such a big deal, but dear God, have you tried going to a movie lately? Expectations couldn't be high, from either audiences or the filmmakers themselves, for a remake of a thirty-year-old sword and sorcery epic (Clash Of The Titans) or an adaptation of a mostly forgotten TV show (The A-Team) or a disposable romantic comedy (Knight And Day), yet time and again, audiences are expected to sit through things that fail to display even a baseline competence.
Most people aren't looking for life-altering experiences when they go out for a night at the movies, but they expect to be entertained. Inception may not reinvent the wheel, but it doesn't look like a thousand other movies, and it's understandable that audiences may have unreasonable expectations for it. In the middle of a drought, even a single drop of rain refreshes.
The back story is, Edelstein was one of the first major critics to pan Nolan's The Dark Knight two years ago, and since many comic book fans were convinced that movie would somehow legitimize their geekiest obsessions, they felt as though they had been personally attacked. And though most of them haven't seen Inception yet--it opens tomorrow--they still feel some sort of gratitude to Nolan, as though he validated their lives.
Which is just kind of pathetic, and many of Nolan's defenders are doing him no favors (the word they're tossing around most frequently to describe Inception is "Kubrickian", which is utterly senseless on many levels), but the thing is, I kind of understand their enthusiasm. Whatever else can be said about The Dark Knight, it remains one of the few big blockbusters in recent movie history to be any good at all. It was well-written (if a bit self-important), mostly well-directed and perfectly cast down to the smallest roles. It understood what it wanted to be, and set out to do it.
That wouldn't seem like such a big deal, but dear God, have you tried going to a movie lately? Expectations couldn't be high, from either audiences or the filmmakers themselves, for a remake of a thirty-year-old sword and sorcery epic (Clash Of The Titans) or an adaptation of a mostly forgotten TV show (The A-Team) or a disposable romantic comedy (Knight And Day), yet time and again, audiences are expected to sit through things that fail to display even a baseline competence.
Most people aren't looking for life-altering experiences when they go out for a night at the movies, but they expect to be entertained. Inception may not reinvent the wheel, but it doesn't look like a thousand other movies, and it's understandable that audiences may have unreasonable expectations for it. In the middle of a drought, even a single drop of rain refreshes.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
ANOTHER THING I DON'T WANT TO WRITE
It's odd, in a way, that I have no desire to use this space to explore my feelings about the life and art of Harvey Pekar, who died yesterday at the age of 70. Odd because I probably wouldn't be writing if I hadn't picked up an issue of American Splendor back in '84, and realized...
No. I'll stop now. Even though this space is relentlessly personal, even though I try to be honest about everything that passes through my life--something I learned from Pekar--I just don't feel like sharing my feelings right now. A decent obit can be found here, and a good appreciation of the man's life and work can be found here. Then pick up some of the American Splendor anthologies and a copy of Our Cancer Year.
And then go on and live the rest of your life, because it's what Harvey would want you to do.
No. I'll stop now. Even though this space is relentlessly personal, even though I try to be honest about everything that passes through my life--something I learned from Pekar--I just don't feel like sharing my feelings right now. A decent obit can be found here, and a good appreciation of the man's life and work can be found here. Then pick up some of the American Splendor anthologies and a copy of Our Cancer Year.
And then go on and live the rest of your life, because it's what Harvey would want you to do.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
I LIKE MY FAMILY AS A FRIEND
Even though I've been in a surprisingly good mood lately, I started out this morning working on a piece intended for this site that was another of my occasional sojourns into fiction writing, a story of a misunderstanding between a married couple that started to spin into some darker areas than I intended, and I wound up abandoning it, at least for now.
So I went out and did stuff instead, and now that I've returned, it seems the weekend is winding down. What better way to prepare for the coming drudgery of the working week than to relax and have a few laughs? Here are a few of the things that make me laugh the most.
I'm not a big fan of the movie Ghostbusters; I saw it on its opening weekend in 1984, found it moderately amusing, have never felt the need to revisit it. Except...it does feature one of the best one-liners in movie history, perfectly set-up, growing plausibly out of the situation at hand and expertly delivered by Bill Murray, truly a comedic god among men.
Sure, his presence in a movie now is often cringe-inducing (and his new one, Little Fockers, looks truly unbearable), but there was a time when Ben Stiller was not just funny, but downright inspired. Any number of clips from The Ben Stiller Show could prove my point, but we'll let Tito Gallegos stand as a perfect example.
That brief snippet of American Pie at the end of that segment segues nicely to this. I could pick any Weird Al bit at random, and in fact, this particular number isn't even all that funny, more like a snarky telling of the actual storyline of The Phantom Menace ("some ships exploded and some pilots fried") than a full-blown parody. I'm just including it because I love the damned thing so much, and you have no idea how often I find myself singing this one. No, seriously--you have no idea.
Finally, Mike and the Bots offer a thorough take-down of a terrifying social engineering short from the 1950s. Is Mystery Science Theater 3000 the greatest thing in the history of the world? Yes. Yes, it is.
So I went out and did stuff instead, and now that I've returned, it seems the weekend is winding down. What better way to prepare for the coming drudgery of the working week than to relax and have a few laughs? Here are a few of the things that make me laugh the most.
I'm not a big fan of the movie Ghostbusters; I saw it on its opening weekend in 1984, found it moderately amusing, have never felt the need to revisit it. Except...it does feature one of the best one-liners in movie history, perfectly set-up, growing plausibly out of the situation at hand and expertly delivered by Bill Murray, truly a comedic god among men.
Sure, his presence in a movie now is often cringe-inducing (and his new one, Little Fockers, looks truly unbearable), but there was a time when Ben Stiller was not just funny, but downright inspired. Any number of clips from The Ben Stiller Show could prove my point, but we'll let Tito Gallegos stand as a perfect example.
That brief snippet of American Pie at the end of that segment segues nicely to this. I could pick any Weird Al bit at random, and in fact, this particular number isn't even all that funny, more like a snarky telling of the actual storyline of The Phantom Menace ("some ships exploded and some pilots fried") than a full-blown parody. I'm just including it because I love the damned thing so much, and you have no idea how often I find myself singing this one. No, seriously--you have no idea.
Finally, Mike and the Bots offer a thorough take-down of a terrifying social engineering short from the 1950s. Is Mystery Science Theater 3000 the greatest thing in the history of the world? Yes. Yes, it is.
Friday, July 09, 2010
WHAT A TIME IT WAS
Milos Forman's 1981 film adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime is remembered these days, if it is thought of at all, for James Cagney's final big screen performance, for Randy Newman's beautiful score and for Elizabeth McGovern's nudity. It was an expensive, lavishly mounted production, but largely miscalculated, with overcast English settings failing to convince as early-twentieth century New York, a dull performance by Howard Rollins in a key part, and good actors (Brad Dourif, Mary Steenburgen, Donald O'Connor, Kenneth McMillin) given too little time to make an impression. Individual scenes are lovely, and Newman's music gives it a sense of melancholy it might otherwise lack, but one can't help but imagine while watching it what the film's original director, Robert Altman, would have brought to it.
So why am I bringing it up at all? I stumbled across the original teaser trailer for it on YouTube, and...well, just take a look.
Consider what we are shown on screen: Raucous parties, dancing, shootings, explosions, savage beatings, passionate embraces. But what do we hear? Soft music, and a cool, detached narration, describing not so much the film as the era in which its set. It's a distinct tone this trailer has, and in its chilly reserve it is truer to the spirit of Doctorow's novel than the film itself.
That's the thing: this is an advertisement undeniably unique to this particular movie. Clearly, if Ragtime had been produced today (not that it's possible to imagine anyone funding such an expensive white elephant now), the trailer would play up the action-oriented elements (and possibly the sex), and every explosion would be presented in teeth-rattling THX sound. There'd be some onscreen crawl, shock cuts--it would make this particular movie look like every other movie.
And some generic source music borrowed from a hundred other trailers. That would be a necessity, though, since the final score for the film probably wouldn't be completed yet. That's one of the most amazing thing about this preview: Like most trailers of the era, the music featured is actually used in the movie itself. This was a teaser, likely released to theaters a few months in advance of the picture's release, yet the movie was already substantially completed, with its musical score already in place. In the case of Ragtime, there was almost certainly still a lot of fine-tuning going on in the editing room--the final cut still feels incomplete--but it wasn't still being tweaked by CGI monkeys mere days before release, like almost everything made these days, major studio pictures and indies alike.
Ragtime isn't a great movie, but this trailer gives you every reason to believe it might be. It's a sad reminder of the days when movies were sold individually, on their own merits, instead of generic product.
So why am I bringing it up at all? I stumbled across the original teaser trailer for it on YouTube, and...well, just take a look.
Consider what we are shown on screen: Raucous parties, dancing, shootings, explosions, savage beatings, passionate embraces. But what do we hear? Soft music, and a cool, detached narration, describing not so much the film as the era in which its set. It's a distinct tone this trailer has, and in its chilly reserve it is truer to the spirit of Doctorow's novel than the film itself.
That's the thing: this is an advertisement undeniably unique to this particular movie. Clearly, if Ragtime had been produced today (not that it's possible to imagine anyone funding such an expensive white elephant now), the trailer would play up the action-oriented elements (and possibly the sex), and every explosion would be presented in teeth-rattling THX sound. There'd be some onscreen crawl, shock cuts--it would make this particular movie look like every other movie.
And some generic source music borrowed from a hundred other trailers. That would be a necessity, though, since the final score for the film probably wouldn't be completed yet. That's one of the most amazing thing about this preview: Like most trailers of the era, the music featured is actually used in the movie itself. This was a teaser, likely released to theaters a few months in advance of the picture's release, yet the movie was already substantially completed, with its musical score already in place. In the case of Ragtime, there was almost certainly still a lot of fine-tuning going on in the editing room--the final cut still feels incomplete--but it wasn't still being tweaked by CGI monkeys mere days before release, like almost everything made these days, major studio pictures and indies alike.
Ragtime isn't a great movie, but this trailer gives you every reason to believe it might be. It's a sad reminder of the days when movies were sold individually, on their own merits, instead of generic product.
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
THAT THING YOU DID...ONCE...A LONG TIME AGO
If you've ever lived in a medium-sized town, big enough to have its own paper but which only publishes once a week, you've probably seen a headline in that very paper detailing the semi-lavish wedding of some city official or other, like the comptroller, and it's presented as if it's some big deal, like this is somebody you should know, instead of the guy whose office you walk past when you go down to pay the water bill.
You might say Jonathon Schaech is the small town comptroller of celebrities. His only legit claim to fame is as the second lead in That Thing You Do!, a good movie that is let down by a surfeit of blandly likeable, utterly indistinguishable leads. Basically, the only way to describe Schaech is as "The guy from That Thing You Do! that didn't have Liv Tyler as his girlfriend," and even then, the response may be, "Oh, you mean Steve Zahn?" and you'd have to say, "No, the other guy."
Anyway, the point is, Schaech got married recently, a fact that many entertainment-based websites apparently found notable enough to report. This is the state of celebrity journalism: If you've ever been in front of a camera at any point in your life, you're somehow inherently interesting.
You might say Jonathon Schaech is the small town comptroller of celebrities. His only legit claim to fame is as the second lead in That Thing You Do!, a good movie that is let down by a surfeit of blandly likeable, utterly indistinguishable leads. Basically, the only way to describe Schaech is as "The guy from That Thing You Do! that didn't have Liv Tyler as his girlfriend," and even then, the response may be, "Oh, you mean Steve Zahn?" and you'd have to say, "No, the other guy."
Anyway, the point is, Schaech got married recently, a fact that many entertainment-based websites apparently found notable enough to report. This is the state of celebrity journalism: If you've ever been in front of a camera at any point in your life, you're somehow inherently interesting.
Sunday, July 04, 2010
BUTTERFLY MORNINGS
In honor of the Fourth of July, a celebration of the work of a great American artist, Sam Peckinpah. This is an odd, sweet little musical number that appears out of nowhere in his oddball 1970 near-masterpiece The Ballad Of Cable Hogue. I say "near-masterpiece" because it is a mostly beautiful, deeply moving film for the most part, but it has some amazingly misjudged sequences that unfortunately undercut the elegiac tone Peckinpah was clearly going for. You can see some of that at the end of this sequence, with the goofy sped-up slapstick that looks like something off of Gilligan's Island.
Though in this case, that particular sequence involves naked Stella Stevens, and...Who am I trying to kid? Peckinpah is one of my absolute heroes, but let's be honest: the only reason I'm posting this is because of the sweet, sweet Stella footage. What can I say? Seeing her on the big screen forever altered my eight-year-old self. Never before had I performed the flag salute, or let my bombs burst in midair, or felt my oceans white with foam. Dear God, how I longed to explore her purple mountain majesties, as well as her fruited plain. And...well, I'll just stop now. Except to note that the sight of the Mississippi-born Stevens in all her glory makes me truly want to say, "God Bless America!"
Though in this case, that particular sequence involves naked Stella Stevens, and...Who am I trying to kid? Peckinpah is one of my absolute heroes, but let's be honest: the only reason I'm posting this is because of the sweet, sweet Stella footage. What can I say? Seeing her on the big screen forever altered my eight-year-old self. Never before had I performed the flag salute, or let my bombs burst in midair, or felt my oceans white with foam. Dear God, how I longed to explore her purple mountain majesties, as well as her fruited plain. And...well, I'll just stop now. Except to note that the sight of the Mississippi-born Stevens in all her glory makes me truly want to say, "God Bless America!"
Friday, July 02, 2010
I'M NEVER GONNA MISS THE WAY THINGS USED TO BE
We'd seen the movie he wanted to see (The Last Airbender), and he'd accompanied me as I went shopping for things I needed. Now Paul figured it was his turn again: "I'm thirsty. Can't we go get something to drink?"
"How about ice cream?" I suggested.
"No. I'm thirsty. Drink. Pop. I'll even call it soda, if it makes you happy."
"Why not ice cream?"
"Thirsty. Meesa no want ice cream."
"'Meesa?' Are you turning into Jar-Jar?"
"Only when meesa thirsty. And meesa no want ice cream."
"Well, what about me?" I asked with mock indignity. "What about what I want?"
"That doesn't sound like something you'd say. That sounds like something a selfish person would say."
"Maybe I'm selfish."
He looked at me with one of his patented "get real" expressions.
"What?" I asked. "I can be selfish."
"No you can't."
"How do you know?"
He rolled his eyes. "Look at all the stuff you do for me. You're always buying me stuff, taking me places. It's never about what you want. You never even think of yourself."
I laughed. "That's what every girl I've ever dated said to me, right before they dumped me."
He laughed, too, then stopped. "Wait. Those are all good things. Why would they dump you if you're a good person?"
"Well, it's, 'These are all the good things about you, and I really care about you, but I just don't feel that way about you.' Then they'll say, 'But we can still be friends.'"
"Did my mom say all that to you?"
"More or less."
"But you're still friends with her."
"Yeah, well. I'm still friends with you, too."
"That's because you're a good person. Even my mom knows that." He paused. "Even if she did rip out your heart."
I laughed, and we kept driving around.
"How about ice cream?" I suggested.
"No. I'm thirsty. Drink. Pop. I'll even call it soda, if it makes you happy."
"Why not ice cream?"
"Thirsty. Meesa no want ice cream."
"'Meesa?' Are you turning into Jar-Jar?"
"Only when meesa thirsty. And meesa no want ice cream."
"Well, what about me?" I asked with mock indignity. "What about what I want?"
"That doesn't sound like something you'd say. That sounds like something a selfish person would say."
"Maybe I'm selfish."
He looked at me with one of his patented "get real" expressions.
"What?" I asked. "I can be selfish."
"No you can't."
"How do you know?"
He rolled his eyes. "Look at all the stuff you do for me. You're always buying me stuff, taking me places. It's never about what you want. You never even think of yourself."
I laughed. "That's what every girl I've ever dated said to me, right before they dumped me."
He laughed, too, then stopped. "Wait. Those are all good things. Why would they dump you if you're a good person?"
"Well, it's, 'These are all the good things about you, and I really care about you, but I just don't feel that way about you.' Then they'll say, 'But we can still be friends.'"
"Did my mom say all that to you?"
"More or less."
"But you're still friends with her."
"Yeah, well. I'm still friends with you, too."
"That's because you're a good person. Even my mom knows that." He paused. "Even if she did rip out your heart."
I laughed, and we kept driving around.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
EH, I GOT NOTHIN'
See, I could have used Larry King's announcement of retirement as an excuse to post a quote from the great man, and as we all know, when that happens around here, it leads to a Random Thoughts post.
And I thought about that, but my thoughts were derailed by the fact that The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, the cumbersomely-titled new entry in the story of a sparkly vampire and the sullen teen who loves him, opens today, and I should grapple with the fact that the sullen teen in question is named Bella. Like my dog.
Believe me, I was not thinking of a wannabe Goth chick with low self-esteem when I named my dog. I mean, the whole Twilight thing pretty much exists outside my sphere of interests, but whenever someone asks the dog's name, I say "Bella," and they'll say...something about that stupid movie. And I'll just sort of mumble and pretend I'd thought of another name.
Except, you know, I like her name. It's short for Isabella, which is the name I'd originally chosen for my much-missed German Shepherd Elinore, until my mom pointed out that I'd probably shorten it to Izzy, and I already had a cat named Izzy. (Izzy Cohen, to be exact, named after the Howlin' Commando with the most ethnically stereotyped name.) And even though I never thought I'd get another dog after Elinore--the pain of losing her was way too intense--I filed the name away, figuring maybe I'd use it someday. (Possibly for an actual kid, had I ever had one.)
Anyway...I'm sorry...Where was I? Something about wanting to write about a couple different things, but not really having anything much to say about either....I dunno. *sighs* Hey, here's a girl getting a splinter in her eye!
And I thought about that, but my thoughts were derailed by the fact that The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, the cumbersomely-titled new entry in the story of a sparkly vampire and the sullen teen who loves him, opens today, and I should grapple with the fact that the sullen teen in question is named Bella. Like my dog.
Believe me, I was not thinking of a wannabe Goth chick with low self-esteem when I named my dog. I mean, the whole Twilight thing pretty much exists outside my sphere of interests, but whenever someone asks the dog's name, I say "Bella," and they'll say...something about that stupid movie. And I'll just sort of mumble and pretend I'd thought of another name.
Except, you know, I like her name. It's short for Isabella, which is the name I'd originally chosen for my much-missed German Shepherd Elinore, until my mom pointed out that I'd probably shorten it to Izzy, and I already had a cat named Izzy. (Izzy Cohen, to be exact, named after the Howlin' Commando with the most ethnically stereotyped name.) And even though I never thought I'd get another dog after Elinore--the pain of losing her was way too intense--I filed the name away, figuring maybe I'd use it someday. (Possibly for an actual kid, had I ever had one.)
Anyway...I'm sorry...Where was I? Something about wanting to write about a couple different things, but not really having anything much to say about either....I dunno. *sighs* Hey, here's a girl getting a splinter in her eye!
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
BOW TO YOUR CORPORATE MASTERS
It's been awhile since I've written anything here, and I fully intended to come back with the laziest post ever, a clip job. Specifically, a clip job highlighting one of the most-reviled characters in TV history, Twiki, Gil Gerard's would-be hilarious robot sidekick from the '79 TV series Buck Rogers. Not a big deal, I was just going to show a morally repugnant scene of Our Boy Twiki hitting on a female robot, a bit that has been floating around YouTube for as long as I can remember.
Except...the listing for the clip is still up on YouTube, but when you try to play it, a notice appears informing you that "this video contains content from NBC Universal, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds." Unbelievably awkward syntax aside, this notice is infuriating.
I mean, seriously? Is this another case of NBC zealously guarding its "intellectual property"? As a writer, I appreciate the notion of copyright protection as much as anyone, but it's not like anyone posting and enjoying clips on YouTube is earning a profit from somebody else's work. In fact, if the suits at NBC had a lick of sense, they'd realize this is the only way that this particular product can remain viable.
It's not like they're currently raking in a ton of cash from Buck Rogers. The entire series was released on DVD a few years ago, and it didn't sell particularly well, but even if it had, it wouldn't have sold beyond its fan base, assuming it even has one. What good does it do to own a property that nobody wants?
But when seen in campy, out-of-context clips on YouTube, the show actually looks entertaining, albeit in a heavily ironic way. Still, hey, that might get people interested in watching it, perhaps even in picking up the DVD boxed set, if it's on sale or something. At best, it may make the property slightly more valuable, and at worst, who the hell gets hurt by showcasing brief footage from a deservedly-forgotten TV show?
Free Twiki!
Except...the listing for the clip is still up on YouTube, but when you try to play it, a notice appears informing you that "this video contains content from NBC Universal, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds." Unbelievably awkward syntax aside, this notice is infuriating.
I mean, seriously? Is this another case of NBC zealously guarding its "intellectual property"? As a writer, I appreciate the notion of copyright protection as much as anyone, but it's not like anyone posting and enjoying clips on YouTube is earning a profit from somebody else's work. In fact, if the suits at NBC had a lick of sense, they'd realize this is the only way that this particular product can remain viable.
It's not like they're currently raking in a ton of cash from Buck Rogers. The entire series was released on DVD a few years ago, and it didn't sell particularly well, but even if it had, it wouldn't have sold beyond its fan base, assuming it even has one. What good does it do to own a property that nobody wants?
But when seen in campy, out-of-context clips on YouTube, the show actually looks entertaining, albeit in a heavily ironic way. Still, hey, that might get people interested in watching it, perhaps even in picking up the DVD boxed set, if it's on sale or something. At best, it may make the property slightly more valuable, and at worst, who the hell gets hurt by showcasing brief footage from a deservedly-forgotten TV show?
Free Twiki!
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
AND THE WIND THAT FOLLOWS AFTER
It's not so much the rain, which has been a daily occurrence around here for weeks, as what comes in its immediate wake: The clouds, still gray, but not so dark, and rushing to the east; the sudden drop in the temperature, as if the mood of nature itself has shifted; and of course, the wind, no longer furious as at the height of the storm, but still insistent, making limbs tremble and grass bow to its will. Sometimes I only catch glimpses of this spectacle, on my way to and from work, yet it's enough. My mind reels briefly, and I fall back.
Back to where, exactly? To a school bus. I'm five, or seven or nine, sitting next to the window, as I almost always did, trying to ignore the overpowering din shattering my eardrums, a singalong of Ninety-Nine Bottles Of Beer On The Wall or discussion of a TV show from the night before or...I can't remember anymore. It was my reality, nearly every day between late August and the end of May, and yet I can't remember much about life on the school bus.
Except how the mood always changed when we drove through a storm. We were farm kids; as young as we were, we knew all too well the consequences of bad weather. Conversation would dwindle to nothingness, the only sound the THUMP-THUMP of the windshield wipers as they chased each other back and forth, steely sheets of water soaking the beanfields and cornfields that were the only scenery on the way home.
Then the rain would stop, or at least lighten, and the winds diminish, the bus no longer shaking furiously. Voices would return, tentatively, and the conversation and the singing and whatever else broke out again, but never at the same full volume.
A pleasant background hum, never distracting, and I relaxed, finally able to dig out a book and read. But what was I reading? Whatever I'd checked out from the library that day. There were so many books, and I read them with passion, but how odd: I can't remember a single title or premise of any of them. I lived under their spell briefly, but they are forgotten now. Still, it's enough to know that they existed, that they gave me comfort, that under those cold gray skies they provided a literal shelter from the storm.
Back to where, exactly? To a school bus. I'm five, or seven or nine, sitting next to the window, as I almost always did, trying to ignore the overpowering din shattering my eardrums, a singalong of Ninety-Nine Bottles Of Beer On The Wall or discussion of a TV show from the night before or...I can't remember anymore. It was my reality, nearly every day between late August and the end of May, and yet I can't remember much about life on the school bus.
Except how the mood always changed when we drove through a storm. We were farm kids; as young as we were, we knew all too well the consequences of bad weather. Conversation would dwindle to nothingness, the only sound the THUMP-THUMP of the windshield wipers as they chased each other back and forth, steely sheets of water soaking the beanfields and cornfields that were the only scenery on the way home.
Then the rain would stop, or at least lighten, and the winds diminish, the bus no longer shaking furiously. Voices would return, tentatively, and the conversation and the singing and whatever else broke out again, but never at the same full volume.
A pleasant background hum, never distracting, and I relaxed, finally able to dig out a book and read. But what was I reading? Whatever I'd checked out from the library that day. There were so many books, and I read them with passion, but how odd: I can't remember a single title or premise of any of them. I lived under their spell briefly, but they are forgotten now. Still, it's enough to know that they existed, that they gave me comfort, that under those cold gray skies they provided a literal shelter from the storm.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
LOVE YOUR LEG WARMERS!
A few thoughts on Toy Story 3:
1) Yes, like I suspect every adult who sees this, I cried. This is certainly a wonderful movie for kids, but the final scene--in which our non-human protagonists realize they must move on to a new point in their lives, and a major human character discovers how far he's grown since childhood, and how he misses it--can really only resonate with people who have lived their lives, suffered loss, made plans that didn't quite work out.
And yes, this scene is extremely sentimental, and perhaps overplays its hand just slightly. But you know what? It earns the right to its sentiment. We've known and loved these characters so long, they have more than earned the right to makes us cry as much as they've made us laugh.
2) And we do love these characters, don't we? They're smart, they're funny, they're childish and silly and cranky and sad. Unlike the protagonists of so many movies these days, we want to spend time with Woody, Buzz, Rex and all the rest. As characters, they're made out of plastic, and they're created out of numbers and zeroes, and yet they seem more real than all the Robert Pattinsons or Megan Foxes of the world.
3) Compared to more recent Pixar efforts, particularly Brad Bird's two films for the studio, Toy Story 3 is a little bit generic. Wall-E director Andrew Stanton and Up director Pete Docter are both long-term Pixar hands, but there is a genuinely unique sensibility in their films, a filmmaker's voice, that is largely absent here. This isn't to knock what Lee Unkrich has done with the film. It's solid, professional work, and the third movie in a series doesn't really allow for much personal expression, anyway. It feels almost like a throwback to the old studio days, when all the departments functioned so well even a non-auteur like Michael Curtiz could knock out a masterpiece or two.
(Incidentally, I was originally going to compare Pixar to the Arthur Freed unit at MGM, suggesting Bird as the equivalent of the Gene Kelly/Stanley Donen duo, Docter as Vincente Minnelli and Stanton as Charles Walters, but the whole thing fell apart because I couldn't figure out a counterpart for Unkrich. George Sidney, maybe? No, that wouldn't work. Also, Docter-as-Minnelli doesn't entirely make sense, either, but since I'm possibly the only human being on earth who thought of Yolanda And the Thief while watching Up...Ah, forget it.)
4) The opening sequence of Toy Story 3, a frantic action sequence that brings all the characters together in a scenario involving a runaway train, a speeding sports car, an atomic blast and an alien spaceship, is meant to conjure the hyperactive playtime of a seven-year-old boy. It also feels like every overly-caffeineited Hollywood action movie. The resemblance is, obviously, intentional, and possibly the best joke in the film.
5) But will any studio executives get the joke? More to the point, will they look at the huge success of this film, easily dominating a summer full of flops, and realize that if they make a movie that's well-written, well-made, and stuffed full of things that people actually, you know, enjoy, maybe audiences will respond?
1) Yes, like I suspect every adult who sees this, I cried. This is certainly a wonderful movie for kids, but the final scene--in which our non-human protagonists realize they must move on to a new point in their lives, and a major human character discovers how far he's grown since childhood, and how he misses it--can really only resonate with people who have lived their lives, suffered loss, made plans that didn't quite work out.
And yes, this scene is extremely sentimental, and perhaps overplays its hand just slightly. But you know what? It earns the right to its sentiment. We've known and loved these characters so long, they have more than earned the right to makes us cry as much as they've made us laugh.
2) And we do love these characters, don't we? They're smart, they're funny, they're childish and silly and cranky and sad. Unlike the protagonists of so many movies these days, we want to spend time with Woody, Buzz, Rex and all the rest. As characters, they're made out of plastic, and they're created out of numbers and zeroes, and yet they seem more real than all the Robert Pattinsons or Megan Foxes of the world.
3) Compared to more recent Pixar efforts, particularly Brad Bird's two films for the studio, Toy Story 3 is a little bit generic. Wall-E director Andrew Stanton and Up director Pete Docter are both long-term Pixar hands, but there is a genuinely unique sensibility in their films, a filmmaker's voice, that is largely absent here. This isn't to knock what Lee Unkrich has done with the film. It's solid, professional work, and the third movie in a series doesn't really allow for much personal expression, anyway. It feels almost like a throwback to the old studio days, when all the departments functioned so well even a non-auteur like Michael Curtiz could knock out a masterpiece or two.
(Incidentally, I was originally going to compare Pixar to the Arthur Freed unit at MGM, suggesting Bird as the equivalent of the Gene Kelly/Stanley Donen duo, Docter as Vincente Minnelli and Stanton as Charles Walters, but the whole thing fell apart because I couldn't figure out a counterpart for Unkrich. George Sidney, maybe? No, that wouldn't work. Also, Docter-as-Minnelli doesn't entirely make sense, either, but since I'm possibly the only human being on earth who thought of Yolanda And the Thief while watching Up...Ah, forget it.)
4) The opening sequence of Toy Story 3, a frantic action sequence that brings all the characters together in a scenario involving a runaway train, a speeding sports car, an atomic blast and an alien spaceship, is meant to conjure the hyperactive playtime of a seven-year-old boy. It also feels like every overly-caffeineited Hollywood action movie. The resemblance is, obviously, intentional, and possibly the best joke in the film.
5) But will any studio executives get the joke? More to the point, will they look at the huge success of this film, easily dominating a summer full of flops, and realize that if they make a movie that's well-written, well-made, and stuffed full of things that people actually, you know, enjoy, maybe audiences will respond?
Thursday, June 17, 2010
MORE ABOUT THE DAMNED DOG
Isabella's chewing the upholstery on the recliner again. True, it's a well-worn recliner I rescued from a trip to the dumpster, but still--AAUUGGHH! When it's not the recliner, she's tearing up threads from the carpet, or pawing at power cords, or otherwise showing absolutely zero comprehension of the word, "No."
All of which is exasperating, and results in much apoplectic teeth-gnashing and arm-waving on my part. (Imagine a cross between Jackie Gleason and Jerry Lewis.) But despite all the frustration, and even while asking myself why I thought any of this was a good idea in the first place, I realize I finally understand the dog thing.
Don't get me wrong: Cats are awesome. But though they can be pampered, and can certainly be demanding, they don't really need much from people. Give a cat a fresh litterbox, plenty of food and an adequate supply of water, you can be gone for a week. True, he may be a little standoffish when you get back, but that's just because you weren't around to provide a lap for sleeping. It's not like he missed you.
Dogs...aren't like that. They require a good deal more effort on the part of their human companions, and sometimes that can be frustrating. For instance, I used to be able to do stuff as soon as I got off work--going out to eat, catching a movie, hanging out with friends, whatever. But now I have to go home first, because it's been over nine and a half hours since I left for work, and poor Bella needs to be taken for a walk. Sometimes that seems like such a millstone.
Certainly it's a routine, a ritual enacted with little variation day in and day out. Yet this routine gives me exercise (I've dropped six pounds in the last month), brings me into contact with my neighbors and allows me to explore new blocks and see aspects of my neighborhood I've only previously seen from behind a steering wheel.
Mostly, though, these walks allow me plenty of bonding time with my beloved baby girl. Bella is never more blissfully unaware of my existence than when we're out for our afternoon walk, when her nose is low to the ground, catching a new scent every ten seconds or so, every new thing more interesting than the last. And though she may not notice me much at times like these, I bask in every moment, as she leaps into the air to bat at low-hanging branches, or whips her head around as birds flutter in and out of her peripheral vision, or simply wags her tail furiously over some fresh marvel. She's living fully in the moment at times like these, and thanks to her, I am, too.
All of which is exasperating, and results in much apoplectic teeth-gnashing and arm-waving on my part. (Imagine a cross between Jackie Gleason and Jerry Lewis.) But despite all the frustration, and even while asking myself why I thought any of this was a good idea in the first place, I realize I finally understand the dog thing.
Don't get me wrong: Cats are awesome. But though they can be pampered, and can certainly be demanding, they don't really need much from people. Give a cat a fresh litterbox, plenty of food and an adequate supply of water, you can be gone for a week. True, he may be a little standoffish when you get back, but that's just because you weren't around to provide a lap for sleeping. It's not like he missed you.
Dogs...aren't like that. They require a good deal more effort on the part of their human companions, and sometimes that can be frustrating. For instance, I used to be able to do stuff as soon as I got off work--going out to eat, catching a movie, hanging out with friends, whatever. But now I have to go home first, because it's been over nine and a half hours since I left for work, and poor Bella needs to be taken for a walk. Sometimes that seems like such a millstone.
Certainly it's a routine, a ritual enacted with little variation day in and day out. Yet this routine gives me exercise (I've dropped six pounds in the last month), brings me into contact with my neighbors and allows me to explore new blocks and see aspects of my neighborhood I've only previously seen from behind a steering wheel.
Mostly, though, these walks allow me plenty of bonding time with my beloved baby girl. Bella is never more blissfully unaware of my existence than when we're out for our afternoon walk, when her nose is low to the ground, catching a new scent every ten seconds or so, every new thing more interesting than the last. And though she may not notice me much at times like these, I bask in every moment, as she leaps into the air to bat at low-hanging branches, or whips her head around as birds flutter in and out of her peripheral vision, or simply wags her tail furiously over some fresh marvel. She's living fully in the moment at times like these, and thanks to her, I am, too.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
AND YOU'RE SURPRISED WHEN NOBODY LIKES YOUR BAD IDEA?
Hollywood is in the midst of one of its periodic tizzies, and with good reason: We're well into the summer movie season, and every weekend brings another heavily-promoted release that tanks immediately.
This past weekend's big loser was the much-unanticipated movie version of The A-Team, a TV show that is fondly remembered by some, but never had the fanatical fan base of, say, Star Trek. That the movie failed to perform isn't really surprising; the real question is, why did it get made in the first place?
Screens big and small have been littered lately with doomed attempts to revive popular TV shows from the seventies and eighties, and one would have thought by now it would be obvious to even the most thick-skulled executroid that audiences just don't care. A once-popular title alone doesn't mean anything; the circumstances that made a TV show a hit likely can't be duplicated by even the most dedicated marketing team. The A-Team may have been successful on TV a generation ago, but did the studio really think that would somehow translate into huge box-office?
Apparently so, because they did absolutely nothing to insure the movie would stand on its own merits. The cast seemed to have been assembled at random. Liam Neeson presumably got the gig because of the unexpected popularity of Taken, just as Bradley Cooper's in it because The Hangover was a hit, and Sharlto Copley was cast because of the success of District 9. Clearly, no more thought was given to the casting process than the financial success of each actors' previous project. Were they right for their roles? Hey, it's a would-be tentpole picture! Who cares about silly things like characterization?
To insure mediocrity down the line, the studio chose Joe Carnahan to direct, a guy who, in a perfect world, would go back to moving furniture. Carnahan's continued ability to find employment is a case study in everything wrong with the movie business right now. His debut feature, Blood, Guts, Bullets And Octane announced itself as a third-rate Tarantino knock-off by its very title, and his gritty, realistic cop movie, Narc, played as an imitation of James Gray's similar cops-and-criminals character studies, which are themselves largely imitations of Sidney Lumet. Carnahan followed that with the dismal Smokin' Aces, yet another desperate Tarantino wannabe.
It's not that Carnahan is untalented, exactly, but he clearly has never had an original idea--his movies are full of things you've seen before, and better. More to the point, none of his previous films were successful critically or with audiences. If you were a studio head betting big bucks on what you hoped would be a new franchise, wouldn't you want to hire people with a proven track record?
You might, but you're not running a studio. The thing with The A-Team isn't just that it flopped over the weekend, but that those who did show up, according to tracking numbers, were mostly disappointed. Think about that for a second. Nobody would go to a movie like this expecting high art, but it clearly failed to deliver even a modest level of entertainment.
How hard is that to achieve, really? Audiences don't demand much from summer movies, but they expect them to be watchable. But with the likes of The A-Team, Sex And The City 2, Killers, Get Him To The Greek, Prince Of Persia, Robin Hood and so on, it's like studios are willfully turning out crap, performing some sort of experiment to see just how bad a movie can be before audiences turn away completely. Maybe at some point they'll try making good movies, just to see what happens, but...nah, probably not.
This past weekend's big loser was the much-unanticipated movie version of The A-Team, a TV show that is fondly remembered by some, but never had the fanatical fan base of, say, Star Trek. That the movie failed to perform isn't really surprising; the real question is, why did it get made in the first place?
Screens big and small have been littered lately with doomed attempts to revive popular TV shows from the seventies and eighties, and one would have thought by now it would be obvious to even the most thick-skulled executroid that audiences just don't care. A once-popular title alone doesn't mean anything; the circumstances that made a TV show a hit likely can't be duplicated by even the most dedicated marketing team. The A-Team may have been successful on TV a generation ago, but did the studio really think that would somehow translate into huge box-office?
Apparently so, because they did absolutely nothing to insure the movie would stand on its own merits. The cast seemed to have been assembled at random. Liam Neeson presumably got the gig because of the unexpected popularity of Taken, just as Bradley Cooper's in it because The Hangover was a hit, and Sharlto Copley was cast because of the success of District 9. Clearly, no more thought was given to the casting process than the financial success of each actors' previous project. Were they right for their roles? Hey, it's a would-be tentpole picture! Who cares about silly things like characterization?
To insure mediocrity down the line, the studio chose Joe Carnahan to direct, a guy who, in a perfect world, would go back to moving furniture. Carnahan's continued ability to find employment is a case study in everything wrong with the movie business right now. His debut feature, Blood, Guts, Bullets And Octane announced itself as a third-rate Tarantino knock-off by its very title, and his gritty, realistic cop movie, Narc, played as an imitation of James Gray's similar cops-and-criminals character studies, which are themselves largely imitations of Sidney Lumet. Carnahan followed that with the dismal Smokin' Aces, yet another desperate Tarantino wannabe.
It's not that Carnahan is untalented, exactly, but he clearly has never had an original idea--his movies are full of things you've seen before, and better. More to the point, none of his previous films were successful critically or with audiences. If you were a studio head betting big bucks on what you hoped would be a new franchise, wouldn't you want to hire people with a proven track record?
You might, but you're not running a studio. The thing with The A-Team isn't just that it flopped over the weekend, but that those who did show up, according to tracking numbers, were mostly disappointed. Think about that for a second. Nobody would go to a movie like this expecting high art, but it clearly failed to deliver even a modest level of entertainment.
How hard is that to achieve, really? Audiences don't demand much from summer movies, but they expect them to be watchable. But with the likes of The A-Team, Sex And The City 2, Killers, Get Him To The Greek, Prince Of Persia, Robin Hood and so on, it's like studios are willfully turning out crap, performing some sort of experiment to see just how bad a movie can be before audiences turn away completely. Maybe at some point they'll try making good movies, just to see what happens, but...nah, probably not.
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
83, IF YOU WISH TO LIGHT A CIGAR
With considerably more ooh-ing and ah-ing from the assembled masses than accompanied the Sermon On The Mount, Steve Jobs officially revealed the iPhone 4 this week, and those media types in attendance who touched the hem of His garment--sorry, I mean handled the phone personally--agreed that it is indeed The Greatest Thing Ever. It's smaller than the previous iPhone, it's sleeker, it has hi-def resolution, it has multi-function capabilities which allow you to run numerous apps at once, which is...um...important. I guess?
Hell, I don't know. The point seems to be, you'll never need another media device, ever. It's the best phone you'll ever own, unless you want to call someone, since Apple inexplicably maintains its ties with the notoriously unreliable AT&T network, but whatever. Who makes phone calls anymore, when all your friends are online?
On a totally unrelated note, a new study by researchers at the University of Michigan shows a marked decrease in levels of empathy among college students today. When presented with simple statements such as "I sometimes have tender feelings for those less fortunate than me," students were 40 percent more likely to issue a negative response than their counterparts in decades past.
The study did not seek to analyze the reasons for this drop in compassion, but the director of the project, Sara Konrath, was willing to hazard a guess. "The increase in exposure to media during this time period could be one factor," she said. "Compared to thirty years ago, the average American is now exposed to three times as much information."
Indeed, though calling much of what we're exposed to "information" seems a bit kind. Mostly we're confronted with sensation, empty experience, most of it from several directions at once. Texting a friend on your phone while also updating your Facebook status on your laptop while sipping an overpriced drink at Starbucks means you're not really devoting your attention to any single task, and while the coffee at Starbucks isn't really worth savoring, many things in life are.
The bitter irony here couldn't be more thuddingly obvious, and yet so many people seem still unable to get the point: The very technology that was supposed to bring us all together has instead driven us all apart.
Hell, I don't know. The point seems to be, you'll never need another media device, ever. It's the best phone you'll ever own, unless you want to call someone, since Apple inexplicably maintains its ties with the notoriously unreliable AT&T network, but whatever. Who makes phone calls anymore, when all your friends are online?
On a totally unrelated note, a new study by researchers at the University of Michigan shows a marked decrease in levels of empathy among college students today. When presented with simple statements such as "I sometimes have tender feelings for those less fortunate than me," students were 40 percent more likely to issue a negative response than their counterparts in decades past.
The study did not seek to analyze the reasons for this drop in compassion, but the director of the project, Sara Konrath, was willing to hazard a guess. "The increase in exposure to media during this time period could be one factor," she said. "Compared to thirty years ago, the average American is now exposed to three times as much information."
Indeed, though calling much of what we're exposed to "information" seems a bit kind. Mostly we're confronted with sensation, empty experience, most of it from several directions at once. Texting a friend on your phone while also updating your Facebook status on your laptop while sipping an overpriced drink at Starbucks means you're not really devoting your attention to any single task, and while the coffee at Starbucks isn't really worth savoring, many things in life are.
The bitter irony here couldn't be more thuddingly obvious, and yet so many people seem still unable to get the point: The very technology that was supposed to bring us all together has instead driven us all apart.
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
YOU COULDN'T BE MORE WRONG, MY FRIEND
1) Yeah, another wholly random and out-of-context Larry King quote, which I guess signifies another Random Thoughts post. Only this one isn't so much random as a few things that have been annoying me lately, minor nuisances that aren't worth more than a paragraph or two. Still deserving of wrath, though.
2) A ubiquitous pop-up ad at The New York Times promotes Cirque du Soleil's new show, something called Banana Shpeel. Instead of the usual self-consciously arty line-up of contortionists and whatnot that is Soleil's usual fare, this is apparently a salute to vaudeville, featuring a trio of clowns (or, to use the preferred nomenclature, "funsters") bedeviling a conniving impresario...or something. Who the hell cares?
The point is, the ad for this thing bills it as "a collection of ha-has, la-las and ta-das," and dear God, has there ever been a less appealing tagline in the history of advertising? There is no way anybody, anywhere, would be drawn to such a thing. It's like the producers of this thing suddenly realized they'd made a show with clowns as heroes, and wanted to warn people away. Mission most definitely accomplished.
3) While it might seem hopelessly insular to rag on a local free weekly, the Des Moines-based yuppie funtime rag Juice is after all available to everyone everywhere thanks to the miracle of the Interweb, and besides, it's so consistently awful it needs to be thrashed whenever possible.
The most recent issue featured a profile of the paper's brand-new advice columnist, Chris Gardner, a local boy who once wrote for People and Variety but has inexplicably chosen to return to Des Moines to write for a shitty giveaway. Anyway, in his first column, he offers this bit of wisdom to a young woman who is concerned that all of her friends are getting pregnant and making her feel self-conscious: "Girl, I gotta give you snaps for recognizing you and your husband aren't ready, but shame on your friends and fam for pressuring you to relocate to familytown."
It goes on from there, but at this point, any sentient reader has crumpled the paper and thrown it away, unless they're reading online, in which case, they're wondering how much it'll cost to replace the monitor they just punched.
4) Somebody suggested a lame running Saturday Night Live sketch would make a good movie, and somebody else agreed. The result was MacGruber, which in its third week of release found its box-office receipts dropping ninety percent from the week before. The people responsible for this earn more in a year than I'll make in a lifetime, and will inexplicably not be tried for crimes against humanity.
2) A ubiquitous pop-up ad at The New York Times promotes Cirque du Soleil's new show, something called Banana Shpeel. Instead of the usual self-consciously arty line-up of contortionists and whatnot that is Soleil's usual fare, this is apparently a salute to vaudeville, featuring a trio of clowns (or, to use the preferred nomenclature, "funsters") bedeviling a conniving impresario...or something. Who the hell cares?
The point is, the ad for this thing bills it as "a collection of ha-has, la-las and ta-das," and dear God, has there ever been a less appealing tagline in the history of advertising? There is no way anybody, anywhere, would be drawn to such a thing. It's like the producers of this thing suddenly realized they'd made a show with clowns as heroes, and wanted to warn people away. Mission most definitely accomplished.
3) While it might seem hopelessly insular to rag on a local free weekly, the Des Moines-based yuppie funtime rag Juice is after all available to everyone everywhere thanks to the miracle of the Interweb, and besides, it's so consistently awful it needs to be thrashed whenever possible.
The most recent issue featured a profile of the paper's brand-new advice columnist, Chris Gardner, a local boy who once wrote for People and Variety but has inexplicably chosen to return to Des Moines to write for a shitty giveaway. Anyway, in his first column, he offers this bit of wisdom to a young woman who is concerned that all of her friends are getting pregnant and making her feel self-conscious: "Girl, I gotta give you snaps for recognizing you and your husband aren't ready, but shame on your friends and fam for pressuring you to relocate to familytown."
It goes on from there, but at this point, any sentient reader has crumpled the paper and thrown it away, unless they're reading online, in which case, they're wondering how much it'll cost to replace the monitor they just punched.
4) Somebody suggested a lame running Saturday Night Live sketch would make a good movie, and somebody else agreed. The result was MacGruber, which in its third week of release found its box-office receipts dropping ninety percent from the week before. The people responsible for this earn more in a year than I'll make in a lifetime, and will inexplicably not be tried for crimes against humanity.
Monday, June 07, 2010
DUTY NOW FOR THE FUTURE
Having a little bit of time to kill today, I ducked into a Salvation Army store, absent-mindedly thinking I might find some cheap bookshelves or something.
What I found instead was a graveyard, a stark reminder of the inevitable passing of all things. There will always be remnants of obsolete technology in a thrift shop, the occasional 8-track tape or off-brand turntable. But when they sit unloved and unwanted on shelves, passed over even by kitsch collectors, all the Anne Murray lps, the tube TV sets, the boxless, homemade VHS tapes, Selectric typewriters and ColecoVision cartridges seem to take on an almost unbearable poignance. The world they were made for no longer exists, and yet they still exist, ready to perform whatever task was once asked of them.
The music piped through the store seemed in a strange way to reinforce the eerie mood--a "Best of the eighties, nineties and today!" radio station, blandly pumping out the likes of Jason Mraz, Jason Fucking Mraz, music seemingly designed to be as non-threatening as possible, and utterly disposable. Popular now, but soon destined to seem as strange as the copy of the You Light Up My Life soundtrack which somehow made its way into my hands.
The thought of buying it flickered across my brain, to see if this slab of vinyl could act as a sort of time machine, to take me back to the person I was back in 1977, when the title song played on the radio in a seemingly endless loop. But now that song, and all this now-failed technology, once so bright and shiny, seemed so old, and what did that say about my past?
And what does it say about my present, or anybody's?
What I found instead was a graveyard, a stark reminder of the inevitable passing of all things. There will always be remnants of obsolete technology in a thrift shop, the occasional 8-track tape or off-brand turntable. But when they sit unloved and unwanted on shelves, passed over even by kitsch collectors, all the Anne Murray lps, the tube TV sets, the boxless, homemade VHS tapes, Selectric typewriters and ColecoVision cartridges seem to take on an almost unbearable poignance. The world they were made for no longer exists, and yet they still exist, ready to perform whatever task was once asked of them.
The music piped through the store seemed in a strange way to reinforce the eerie mood--a "Best of the eighties, nineties and today!" radio station, blandly pumping out the likes of Jason Mraz, Jason Fucking Mraz, music seemingly designed to be as non-threatening as possible, and utterly disposable. Popular now, but soon destined to seem as strange as the copy of the You Light Up My Life soundtrack which somehow made its way into my hands.
The thought of buying it flickered across my brain, to see if this slab of vinyl could act as a sort of time machine, to take me back to the person I was back in 1977, when the title song played on the radio in a seemingly endless loop. But now that song, and all this now-failed technology, once so bright and shiny, seemed so old, and what did that say about my past?
And what does it say about my present, or anybody's?
Friday, June 04, 2010
PORTAL TO HELL
So I was wasting time at The Huffington Post--yeah, yeah, I know, but where else can you read political analysis by the likes of Sean Combs?--when I saw a photo of two people I didn't recognize under the ominous headline IT'S OVER. Being a naive, trusting sort, I clicked on the photo and was immediately linked to People magazine's website, where I discovered the anonymous divorcing couple turned out to be...Mark-Paul Gosselaar and his wife? Seriously?
Does anyone, anywhere, care about the private life of the erstwhile Zack Morris? Even if I did have an inexplicable obsession with Saved By The Bell (and I'm not admitting anything), I would still say that Gosselaar is a non-entity, and he should have dropped off the tabloid radar about the time he stopped being profiled in Teen Beat. I realize he's a working actor and all, but hell, Lark Voorhees still gets gigs, and it's not like I have to read details of her private life anywhere.
These people aren't even celebrities on the Danny Bonaduce level. I mean, I think we all assume Screech will be found dead any day now (my bet: autoerotic asphyxiation), and his former castmates will try with all their might to say something nice about him, and when this happens, I sincerely hope that is the last we will ever hear about the behind-the-scenes lives of anyone connected with Saved By The Bell.
Until Mr. Belding does a sex tape. Because that seems inevitable.
Does anyone, anywhere, care about the private life of the erstwhile Zack Morris? Even if I did have an inexplicable obsession with Saved By The Bell (and I'm not admitting anything), I would still say that Gosselaar is a non-entity, and he should have dropped off the tabloid radar about the time he stopped being profiled in Teen Beat. I realize he's a working actor and all, but hell, Lark Voorhees still gets gigs, and it's not like I have to read details of her private life anywhere.
These people aren't even celebrities on the Danny Bonaduce level. I mean, I think we all assume Screech will be found dead any day now (my bet: autoerotic asphyxiation), and his former castmates will try with all their might to say something nice about him, and when this happens, I sincerely hope that is the last we will ever hear about the behind-the-scenes lives of anyone connected with Saved By The Bell.
Until Mr. Belding does a sex tape. Because that seems inevitable.
Thursday, June 03, 2010
AT WHAT AGE GROWING UP, GAGA, DID YOU KNOW YOU WANTED TO BE A PERFORMER?
1) Yes, another Larry King quote, signifying as always another Random Thoughts post. This particular quote, as you might have guessed, is lifted from his scintillating interview with Lady Gaga. Asking an entertainer when she became interested in performing--that's the kind of probing, daring question that made Larry King what he is today.
2) Long-time readers of this site--both of you!--may remember how often I would go off on some screed or other, usually decrying the Bush administration, or the sorry state of the Democratic party, or just vent on some international incident of some sort. Clearly, I don't do that sort of thing anymore.
And the massive oil spill in the Gulf explains why. Everything about this--from the blatant lies perpetrated by BP officials from the very beginning, to the hapless dithering of Team Obama in response, to the widespread death of so many living things, both in the water and above it--is, well, unbelievably depressing. Given the somewhat fragile nature of my psyche, it just seems wise to avoid thinking about this sort of thing too much. Kind of a cop-out, and a type of attitude I once would have decried as unforgivably disengaged, but what can I say? Just scanning the front page of The New York Times makes me want to curl up in a ball and cry.
3) Speaking of things that are deeply depressing, the long-unawaited remake of Footloose is apparently scheduled to start shooting this summer, despite the fact that it seems to have no cast or script yet, but hey, whatever. The most-jaw-dropping aspect of this whole enterprise is the studio's claim that this version will differ from the original by focusing less on elaborate dance numbers and more on the drama of the story. Because, yeah, that's what everyone who has ever seen Footloose was thinking: This would be so much better if it was gritty and, you know, real.
I don't even know why they're bothering with this thing anyway. It was originally announced in the wake of the whole High School Musical hoo-ha--in fact, it was originally intended as a star vehicle for Zac Effron--but it makes no sense now. I can't imagine any audience for this thing, but they're going to waste precious money and time cranking it out anyway.
How many good movies aren't getting made because studios are wasting their resources on crap like this?
4) Today's gratuitous musical clip comes is of early eighties Frank Zappa, with special guest vocalist Jimmy Carl Black: Harder Than Your Husband.
5) Jeez, sorry, it seems I didn't really have that many Random Thoughts worth expressing. Still, at least I'm not going on about the dog again. At least, not yet.
2) Long-time readers of this site--both of you!--may remember how often I would go off on some screed or other, usually decrying the Bush administration, or the sorry state of the Democratic party, or just vent on some international incident of some sort. Clearly, I don't do that sort of thing anymore.
And the massive oil spill in the Gulf explains why. Everything about this--from the blatant lies perpetrated by BP officials from the very beginning, to the hapless dithering of Team Obama in response, to the widespread death of so many living things, both in the water and above it--is, well, unbelievably depressing. Given the somewhat fragile nature of my psyche, it just seems wise to avoid thinking about this sort of thing too much. Kind of a cop-out, and a type of attitude I once would have decried as unforgivably disengaged, but what can I say? Just scanning the front page of The New York Times makes me want to curl up in a ball and cry.
3) Speaking of things that are deeply depressing, the long-unawaited remake of Footloose is apparently scheduled to start shooting this summer, despite the fact that it seems to have no cast or script yet, but hey, whatever. The most-jaw-dropping aspect of this whole enterprise is the studio's claim that this version will differ from the original by focusing less on elaborate dance numbers and more on the drama of the story. Because, yeah, that's what everyone who has ever seen Footloose was thinking: This would be so much better if it was gritty and, you know, real.
I don't even know why they're bothering with this thing anyway. It was originally announced in the wake of the whole High School Musical hoo-ha--in fact, it was originally intended as a star vehicle for Zac Effron--but it makes no sense now. I can't imagine any audience for this thing, but they're going to waste precious money and time cranking it out anyway.
How many good movies aren't getting made because studios are wasting their resources on crap like this?
4) Today's gratuitous musical clip comes is of early eighties Frank Zappa, with special guest vocalist Jimmy Carl Black: Harder Than Your Husband.
5) Jeez, sorry, it seems I didn't really have that many Random Thoughts worth expressing. Still, at least I'm not going on about the dog again. At least, not yet.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
GAZE, IF YOU DARE, INTO THE FACE OF ULTIMATE HORROR
I've said it before, I'll say it again: Sometimes even I don't understand my obsessions.
Case in point: My fascination with bad TV from the seventies and early eighties. Probably this is due as much as anything to the fact that this was the era in which I formed so much of my aesthetic sense, when I decided what was good and what was bad, what I would take with me for the rest of my life.
1980 was a good year for deciding such things. New music included The Clash's Sandinista!, the first album from Suicide, Pete Townshend's Empty Glass, Steely Dan's Gaucho and Steveie Wonder's Hotter Than July, all as essential as oxygen. Movies were even better: Raging Bull, Bad Timing, The Stunt Man, The Long Riders, The Tin Drum.
Amazing stuff. But if the good was easily enough appreciated, it took an archeologist's skill to dig through the wasteland of network TV to find the worst of the worst. I watched Eischeid, for God's sake. I watched Pink Lady And Jeff. I thought I knew how bad it could get.
But somehow, I missed Marie, a very short-lived variety program intended to showcase the many talents of Marie Osmond. And because I never saw this at the time, I come to it now and stare at it in slack-jawed disbelief, and can only ask the obvious question: What the hell were they thinking?
Case in point: My fascination with bad TV from the seventies and early eighties. Probably this is due as much as anything to the fact that this was the era in which I formed so much of my aesthetic sense, when I decided what was good and what was bad, what I would take with me for the rest of my life.
1980 was a good year for deciding such things. New music included The Clash's Sandinista!, the first album from Suicide, Pete Townshend's Empty Glass, Steely Dan's Gaucho and Steveie Wonder's Hotter Than July, all as essential as oxygen. Movies were even better: Raging Bull, Bad Timing, The Stunt Man, The Long Riders, The Tin Drum.
Amazing stuff. But if the good was easily enough appreciated, it took an archeologist's skill to dig through the wasteland of network TV to find the worst of the worst. I watched Eischeid, for God's sake. I watched Pink Lady And Jeff. I thought I knew how bad it could get.
But somehow, I missed Marie, a very short-lived variety program intended to showcase the many talents of Marie Osmond. And because I never saw this at the time, I come to it now and stare at it in slack-jawed disbelief, and can only ask the obvious question: What the hell were they thinking?
Saturday, May 29, 2010
DARK EMPTY PLACES WE DON'T QUITE RECOGNIZE
Not exactly a profundity to observe that Hollywood can do terrible things to its most favored children, but the deaths of Gary Coleman and Dennis Hopper somehow bring it all into sharper relief.
Coleman's story seems almost unbearably cruel in retrospect. Following some minor success in commercials, he was cast as Arnold Jackson on Diff'rent Strokes, and in fact his zesty, distinctive way with a one-liner was the centerpiece of the show's original ad campaign, and was single-handedly responsible for its success. NBC promoted the hell out of him and the show, even as the network, the show's producers and pretty much everyone involved knew Coleman's secret: Due to chronic liver problems, he was destined to remain in a little boy's body. He was ten when the show started, but playing much younger, and seventeen--seventeen!--when it ended, still playing a kid, Li'l Gary Coleman, all cute and sassy.
Once Diff'rent Strokes left the air, what were his options? If producers didn't come calling with tailor-made vehicles--and they didn't--his ability to find work as an actor was severely limited by his very celebrity: How could he be cast as anything other than Gary Coleman? Employment in the real world--he worked for a time as a security guard--proved just as difficult. Wherever he went, whatever he did, everyone recognized him as Arnold Jackson, and refused to acknowledge him as a human being.
So he gave in and accepted his status as a minor celebrity, a showbiz has-been, a perpetual freak show. Reality shows, publicity stunts, periodic arrests--sure, why not? This was, finally, tragically, all his life had to offer, and the one-time reality of a lively little kid with extraordinary talent was lost.
With Dennis Hopper, most of the wounds were self-inflicted, but there's no question that the ego-feeding-and-destroying atmosphere of Hollywood stunted a potentially major talent. In the 1950s, he became dangerously convinced of his own brilliance, certain he was the next James Dean. His famously pointless clash with director Henry Hathaway on the set of the routine 1958 Western From Hell To Texas was the first sign of a talent out of control, and Hathaway led the charge to have Hopper blackballed from Hollywood.
Which was fine with Hopper; he moved to New York, studied with Lee Strasberg, dabbled in painting and photography. In 1961, he married Brooke Hayward, daughter of superagent Leland Hayward, and magically found work again. But the roles were limited, bit parts in other people's movies--Cool Hand Luke, Hang 'Em High. So he finally decided that, if the starring roles weren't coming, he'd make his own damn movie, and dabble in a new career as auteur.
It's impossible to take an objective look at Easy Rider these days. No one knows--no one involved can remember--how much of its hippy-dippy dialogue was intended sincerely, how much was intended as a put-on. While it has some effective moments, and some of it is undeniably well-directed, it plays now as a spoof of then-mod techniques, and too much of it is simply laughable.
Hopper would direct two more worthwhile films, the legendarily warped The Last Movie and Out Of The Blue, before it became obvious he had little to say as a director. He took can't-miss material and made it flat and uninteresting in Colors and The Hot Spot, and the less said about Chasers the better. His directing career was kind of like his work as a still photographer--he clearly wanted to be good, but he wasn't, really.
He was a good actor, though, and that's what makes his career so frustrating. In the sixties and seventies, in what should have been the prime of his career, he let his ego run away with him, and indulged in Keith Richards-level amounts of drugs and booze. There was almost no way any director could work with him, and sadly, very few did.
He did get some leads in the seventies, in good movies like Kid Blue and Mad Dog Morgan, and of course, his performance as a crazed photojournalist in Apocalypse Now is rightly considered the stuff of legend, although even then, it was obviously cobbled together from whatever useable, semi-coherent footage was available.
Hopper's personal behavior became worse and worse, but he finally sobered up, ready to become a working actor again. At first, this was great news: He used his knowledge of the alcoholic's lifestyle to moving effect in Hoosiers, and used everything he'd ever been as the spectacularly depraved Frank Booth in David Lynch's iconic Blue Velvet.
I love both of those movies dearly, but they were both released in 1986, and though he would continue working right up until his dying days, they were the last things Hopper would do that were truly worthy of his talent. And with his run of over-the-top villains in movies as varied as Speed, Waterworld and Super Mario Brothers, it seemed as though he was intentionally parodying his great work as Frank Booth, diminishing one of the best things he ever did to the point where it has become almost impossible for anyone coming to Blue Velvet for the first time to see it as anything other than another standard over-the-top Hopper character.
And that, finally, is what success did to Gary Coleman and Dennis Hopper: It made them so much less than they could have been.
Coleman's story seems almost unbearably cruel in retrospect. Following some minor success in commercials, he was cast as Arnold Jackson on Diff'rent Strokes, and in fact his zesty, distinctive way with a one-liner was the centerpiece of the show's original ad campaign, and was single-handedly responsible for its success. NBC promoted the hell out of him and the show, even as the network, the show's producers and pretty much everyone involved knew Coleman's secret: Due to chronic liver problems, he was destined to remain in a little boy's body. He was ten when the show started, but playing much younger, and seventeen--seventeen!--when it ended, still playing a kid, Li'l Gary Coleman, all cute and sassy.
Once Diff'rent Strokes left the air, what were his options? If producers didn't come calling with tailor-made vehicles--and they didn't--his ability to find work as an actor was severely limited by his very celebrity: How could he be cast as anything other than Gary Coleman? Employment in the real world--he worked for a time as a security guard--proved just as difficult. Wherever he went, whatever he did, everyone recognized him as Arnold Jackson, and refused to acknowledge him as a human being.
So he gave in and accepted his status as a minor celebrity, a showbiz has-been, a perpetual freak show. Reality shows, publicity stunts, periodic arrests--sure, why not? This was, finally, tragically, all his life had to offer, and the one-time reality of a lively little kid with extraordinary talent was lost.
With Dennis Hopper, most of the wounds were self-inflicted, but there's no question that the ego-feeding-and-destroying atmosphere of Hollywood stunted a potentially major talent. In the 1950s, he became dangerously convinced of his own brilliance, certain he was the next James Dean. His famously pointless clash with director Henry Hathaway on the set of the routine 1958 Western From Hell To Texas was the first sign of a talent out of control, and Hathaway led the charge to have Hopper blackballed from Hollywood.
Which was fine with Hopper; he moved to New York, studied with Lee Strasberg, dabbled in painting and photography. In 1961, he married Brooke Hayward, daughter of superagent Leland Hayward, and magically found work again. But the roles were limited, bit parts in other people's movies--Cool Hand Luke, Hang 'Em High. So he finally decided that, if the starring roles weren't coming, he'd make his own damn movie, and dabble in a new career as auteur.
It's impossible to take an objective look at Easy Rider these days. No one knows--no one involved can remember--how much of its hippy-dippy dialogue was intended sincerely, how much was intended as a put-on. While it has some effective moments, and some of it is undeniably well-directed, it plays now as a spoof of then-mod techniques, and too much of it is simply laughable.
Hopper would direct two more worthwhile films, the legendarily warped The Last Movie and Out Of The Blue, before it became obvious he had little to say as a director. He took can't-miss material and made it flat and uninteresting in Colors and The Hot Spot, and the less said about Chasers the better. His directing career was kind of like his work as a still photographer--he clearly wanted to be good, but he wasn't, really.
He was a good actor, though, and that's what makes his career so frustrating. In the sixties and seventies, in what should have been the prime of his career, he let his ego run away with him, and indulged in Keith Richards-level amounts of drugs and booze. There was almost no way any director could work with him, and sadly, very few did.
He did get some leads in the seventies, in good movies like Kid Blue and Mad Dog Morgan, and of course, his performance as a crazed photojournalist in Apocalypse Now is rightly considered the stuff of legend, although even then, it was obviously cobbled together from whatever useable, semi-coherent footage was available.
Hopper's personal behavior became worse and worse, but he finally sobered up, ready to become a working actor again. At first, this was great news: He used his knowledge of the alcoholic's lifestyle to moving effect in Hoosiers, and used everything he'd ever been as the spectacularly depraved Frank Booth in David Lynch's iconic Blue Velvet.
I love both of those movies dearly, but they were both released in 1986, and though he would continue working right up until his dying days, they were the last things Hopper would do that were truly worthy of his talent. And with his run of over-the-top villains in movies as varied as Speed, Waterworld and Super Mario Brothers, it seemed as though he was intentionally parodying his great work as Frank Booth, diminishing one of the best things he ever did to the point where it has become almost impossible for anyone coming to Blue Velvet for the first time to see it as anything other than another standard over-the-top Hopper character.
And that, finally, is what success did to Gary Coleman and Dennis Hopper: It made them so much less than they could have been.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
MY BRAIN HURTS
In case you haven't seen it--and even though it only surfaced yesterday, it has already inspired several online parodies--here's Heidi Montag's, uh, audition for Transformers 3.
Many aspects of this are more sad than funny--for instance, Montag's personal trainer or whatever the hell he is introduces it as a tryout for Transporter 3, suggesting even he can't bother giving a shit, or the fact that somebody would actively seek out a role in a terrible giant robot movie--but the saddest by far is this: We know who Heidi Montag is.
Why? Why have we heard of her? She's an incredibly shallow rich girl, with a prematurely Botoxed face and enormous fake tits, and not a trace of personality. Thanks to her turn on the (thankfully canceled) MTV pseudo-reality series The Hills she briefly reached some level of Us magazine-level celebrity, which gave her a sense of entitlement even beyond that of the usual batch of moneyed SoCal blondes, who are at least awful people only in their own circles.
Though no sane human being would ever willingly sit through an installment of The Hills, even ironically, its very existence fueled Montag's delusions, made her believe that she somehow, like, matters. The best thing that could happen to her, to all of us, would be a return to obscurity. Instead, she'll likely get another reality show, probably on E, the worst network ever focus-tested.
The fallout from this thing will likely involve Montag revealing that this tape was intended as a gag, nothing more. No one will believe her, but everyone will laugh, and she'll laugh, too, never fully realizing that the joke is on her, and always will be.
Many aspects of this are more sad than funny--for instance, Montag's personal trainer or whatever the hell he is introduces it as a tryout for Transporter 3, suggesting even he can't bother giving a shit, or the fact that somebody would actively seek out a role in a terrible giant robot movie--but the saddest by far is this: We know who Heidi Montag is.
Why? Why have we heard of her? She's an incredibly shallow rich girl, with a prematurely Botoxed face and enormous fake tits, and not a trace of personality. Thanks to her turn on the (thankfully canceled) MTV pseudo-reality series The Hills she briefly reached some level of Us magazine-level celebrity, which gave her a sense of entitlement even beyond that of the usual batch of moneyed SoCal blondes, who are at least awful people only in their own circles.
Though no sane human being would ever willingly sit through an installment of The Hills, even ironically, its very existence fueled Montag's delusions, made her believe that she somehow, like, matters. The best thing that could happen to her, to all of us, would be a return to obscurity. Instead, she'll likely get another reality show, probably on E, the worst network ever focus-tested.
The fallout from this thing will likely involve Montag revealing that this tape was intended as a gag, nothing more. No one will believe her, but everyone will laugh, and she'll laugh, too, never fully realizing that the joke is on her, and always will be.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
MUCH LIKE THE SHOW ITSELF, MY POSTS ABOUT THE SIMPSONS KEEP COMING, EVEN WHEN NOBODY ASKS FOR THEM
A comment on my previous post prompted a response from me, but it threatened to run on and on, and it occurred to me that it would be better served by a follow-up post.
In her comment, Lilli mentions simply not finding The Simpsons funny anymore, even when stumbling across a rerun. And sadly, I know that feeling: The very longevity of the show now threatens its legacy.
The prime years of the show, roughly seasons two to eight (some would extend it to season nine or even ten), remain in and of themselves as good as they ever were. But since The Simpsons continues to grind on and on, with the inevitable decline in quality, a feeling of fatigue is bound to set in. It's not even necessary to watch it to become tired of it. It's gone from Can't Miss to Is That Thing Still On, and it makes it difficult to watch even the prime years without some level of...well, "contempt" is probably too strong a word, but that about sums it up. An early Marge/Homer dustup reminds us how tired we've become of that recurring premise, just as an early, once-funny appearance by a now-recurring character (let's go with Disco Stu as an example) reminds us how subsequent years have pounded that character into the ground.
It doesn't help, either, that so many more recent programs have taken what was fresh and innovative and used it to their own purposes. Family Guy, most obviously, has taken some of the storytelling devices and gag set-ups from The Simpsons and used it to far cruder, less funny effect, but on a higher level, such shows as Arrested Development and Community bear a clear influence, and in these cases, the students may have outshone the master.
But that part is inevitable. Everybody takes from something else. Monty Python's Flying Circus once seemed daring and innovative, but now it seems almost sedate, TV as comfort food. But its quality, like that of The Simpsons, is absolute: No matter what, it's still good. It has nothing (except, perhaps, over-familiarity) to taint the viewing experience. But once we've seen Lisa Simpson lip-synching a Ke$ha song, it will never be possible to think of her the same way.
In her comment, Lilli mentions simply not finding The Simpsons funny anymore, even when stumbling across a rerun. And sadly, I know that feeling: The very longevity of the show now threatens its legacy.
The prime years of the show, roughly seasons two to eight (some would extend it to season nine or even ten), remain in and of themselves as good as they ever were. But since The Simpsons continues to grind on and on, with the inevitable decline in quality, a feeling of fatigue is bound to set in. It's not even necessary to watch it to become tired of it. It's gone from Can't Miss to Is That Thing Still On, and it makes it difficult to watch even the prime years without some level of...well, "contempt" is probably too strong a word, but that about sums it up. An early Marge/Homer dustup reminds us how tired we've become of that recurring premise, just as an early, once-funny appearance by a now-recurring character (let's go with Disco Stu as an example) reminds us how subsequent years have pounded that character into the ground.
It doesn't help, either, that so many more recent programs have taken what was fresh and innovative and used it to their own purposes. Family Guy, most obviously, has taken some of the storytelling devices and gag set-ups from The Simpsons and used it to far cruder, less funny effect, but on a higher level, such shows as Arrested Development and Community bear a clear influence, and in these cases, the students may have outshone the master.
But that part is inevitable. Everybody takes from something else. Monty Python's Flying Circus once seemed daring and innovative, but now it seems almost sedate, TV as comfort food. But its quality, like that of The Simpsons, is absolute: No matter what, it's still good. It has nothing (except, perhaps, over-familiarity) to taint the viewing experience. But once we've seen Lisa Simpson lip-synching a Ke$ha song, it will never be possible to think of her the same way.
Monday, May 24, 2010
A WELL-CHOSEN SIMPSONS QUOTE WOULD SEEM APPROPRIATE, BUT I JUST CAN'T BRING MYSELF TO DO IT
Despite my post from a week or two ago decrying the use of Ke$ha's Tik Tok in its opening couch gag, I haven't actually sat down and watched an episode of The Simpsons since...well, I can't remember. I gave up on it not because it was bad, but because it was relentlessly mediocre, which in a way seemed even worse. This was a show that had scaled the heights of greatness, that literally defined a whole new comedic sensibility. To see it just sitting there spinning its wheels just kind of hurt.
Last night, mostly due to lack of anything else to do, I sat through the season finale. It's official: The Simpsons has officially slipped the surly bonds of mediocrity and touched the face of awfulness.
I don't even know where to begin. The shameless pimping for another Fox show, American Idol? The incredibly generic designs for new characters? The stiff, lifeless animation? The terrible writing?
Oh yes, let's focus on that last one. There wasn't a single laugh to be had in the entire episode. (I did smile once, at a throwaway gag involving a mongoose/cobra reconciliation clinic.) The main plot was so transparently designed to plug American Idol it seemed static, covered with Krusty levels of flop sweat, unable to even pretend it was anything other than a promo piece. The B plot was a complete non-starter--how many times, oh Lord, can this show go to the "conflict between Marge and Homer" well?--and, incredibly, there were even trace elements of a C plot involving Santa's Little Helper, which seemingly only existed to pad the running time.
Admittedly, plot isn't necessarily what we go to The Simpsons for, but when it is this formulaic, it can't possibly serve as a springboard for any kind of organic laughs. It didn't even try to mine the characters for comedy--everybody just had generic laugh lines, and most of the alleged comedy came from desperate attempts to be meta, to reference the history of the show or the network or...whatever. The point is, it sucked. Hard.
How bad has The Simpsons become? Afterward, I watched my first episode of The Cleveland Show, a Family Guy spinoff from the rancid Seth MacFarlane factory. And, though it wasn't good, it at least wasn't actively painful.
Last night, mostly due to lack of anything else to do, I sat through the season finale. It's official: The Simpsons has officially slipped the surly bonds of mediocrity and touched the face of awfulness.
I don't even know where to begin. The shameless pimping for another Fox show, American Idol? The incredibly generic designs for new characters? The stiff, lifeless animation? The terrible writing?
Oh yes, let's focus on that last one. There wasn't a single laugh to be had in the entire episode. (I did smile once, at a throwaway gag involving a mongoose/cobra reconciliation clinic.) The main plot was so transparently designed to plug American Idol it seemed static, covered with Krusty levels of flop sweat, unable to even pretend it was anything other than a promo piece. The B plot was a complete non-starter--how many times, oh Lord, can this show go to the "conflict between Marge and Homer" well?--and, incredibly, there were even trace elements of a C plot involving Santa's Little Helper, which seemingly only existed to pad the running time.
Admittedly, plot isn't necessarily what we go to The Simpsons for, but when it is this formulaic, it can't possibly serve as a springboard for any kind of organic laughs. It didn't even try to mine the characters for comedy--everybody just had generic laugh lines, and most of the alleged comedy came from desperate attempts to be meta, to reference the history of the show or the network or...whatever. The point is, it sucked. Hard.
How bad has The Simpsons become? Afterward, I watched my first episode of The Cleveland Show, a Family Guy spinoff from the rancid Seth MacFarlane factory. And, though it wasn't good, it at least wasn't actively painful.
Friday, May 21, 2010
LISTEN, I'M NOT GONNA GET SUCKED INTO THIS
Noel Murray's ongoing A Very Special Episode series at The AV Club started strong and has been consistently excellent, even revelatory, but this week's installment, exploring the unique appeal of Mystery Science Theater 3000, is particularly perceptive.
I don't really have a whole lot to add here, except to point out that MST3K pretty much altered my DNA, changing not only my perception of movies as I watch them, but of my life as I live it. It has always served as a reminder that we don't have to take anything as we find it, that we should always question what we see.
Here's a clip that shows what I mean. In this episode, Joel, Crow and Tom Servo were forced to watch the movie The Painted Hills, an odd, moralistic melodrama that featured beloved dog Lassie as a blunt instrument of revenge. Crow and Servo were having none of it, and questioned the very morality of the movie itself. Sure, it's all intended comedically, but the fine, precise tone of the script ("I accidently bump my Rottweiler with a screen door, I wake up the next morning with a severed cat head in my bed?") shows that the writers were genuinely upset about the mixed messages the film presented. Plus, it's just damned funny, and perfectly played.
I don't really have a whole lot to add here, except to point out that MST3K pretty much altered my DNA, changing not only my perception of movies as I watch them, but of my life as I live it. It has always served as a reminder that we don't have to take anything as we find it, that we should always question what we see.
Here's a clip that shows what I mean. In this episode, Joel, Crow and Tom Servo were forced to watch the movie The Painted Hills, an odd, moralistic melodrama that featured beloved dog Lassie as a blunt instrument of revenge. Crow and Servo were having none of it, and questioned the very morality of the movie itself. Sure, it's all intended comedically, but the fine, precise tone of the script ("I accidently bump my Rottweiler with a screen door, I wake up the next morning with a severed cat head in my bed?") shows that the writers were genuinely upset about the mixed messages the film presented. Plus, it's just damned funny, and perfectly played.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
MY HEART IS YOURS
Being too cheap to buy a cooler or anything, I always bring my lunch to work in a leftover plastic bag from a grocery store or wherever. The other day, I noticed the bag I had used still had the sales receipt in it. I looked at the items I had purchased. There were only three--Puppy Chow, a squeak toy and a rawhide bone.
What the hell is wrong with me?
I've always been a cat person. Yeah, there were dogs around in my youth, particularly Penny, the beloved family mutt, who always followed me around on my adventures all over the farm, and I realize now that many of my fondest childhood memories involve her presence. But a presence was all she ever amounted to, forever in the background, just sort of there.
For one thing, she was never allowed into the house. Cats were, and as a result, they became the ones that could get up on my lap and curl up with me in bed and form attachments. If I started rattling off the names of all the cats I've had in my life, I'd also start describing their individual quirks and personalities, which were all as different as snowflakes.
That's what I always thought the difference was between cats and dogs: Cats are all individuals, whereas dogs have predictable personalities dictated by their breed. And maybe that's true, for most dogs.
But it's not true of Isabella. She's not a typical beagle at all. I mean, sure, she is constantly on the scent of something or other, and has a friendly nature and has a loud, piercing bark. Sure, she looks like every picture of a beagle you've ever seen. But Bella's different.
Because she's my baby. It's my lap she climbs on, it's my face she nuzzles, it's my fears and anxieties that are magically relieved by hugging her. I don't know from dogs, but I know I've been crazy for my baby girl since her first ride home, when she burrowed under my arm as I steered, then bounced into the house when we arrived home, immediately claiming the recliner as her personal chair. I still love cats--I mean, Delmar's still here, and he still gets plenty of attention--but it's weird how I look forward to coming home from work, just so I can take Bella for a walk, followed by play time and hug time.
There have been some turnarounds in my life lately, some misfortune, trip-ups I hadn't imagined. Melancholy has returned, but I've discovered how easily it can be transcended. All it takes is a pair of big brown eyes looking at me, and a heart full of love.
What the hell is wrong with me?
I've always been a cat person. Yeah, there were dogs around in my youth, particularly Penny, the beloved family mutt, who always followed me around on my adventures all over the farm, and I realize now that many of my fondest childhood memories involve her presence. But a presence was all she ever amounted to, forever in the background, just sort of there.
For one thing, she was never allowed into the house. Cats were, and as a result, they became the ones that could get up on my lap and curl up with me in bed and form attachments. If I started rattling off the names of all the cats I've had in my life, I'd also start describing their individual quirks and personalities, which were all as different as snowflakes.
That's what I always thought the difference was between cats and dogs: Cats are all individuals, whereas dogs have predictable personalities dictated by their breed. And maybe that's true, for most dogs.
But it's not true of Isabella. She's not a typical beagle at all. I mean, sure, she is constantly on the scent of something or other, and has a friendly nature and has a loud, piercing bark. Sure, she looks like every picture of a beagle you've ever seen. But Bella's different.
Because she's my baby. It's my lap she climbs on, it's my face she nuzzles, it's my fears and anxieties that are magically relieved by hugging her. I don't know from dogs, but I know I've been crazy for my baby girl since her first ride home, when she burrowed under my arm as I steered, then bounced into the house when we arrived home, immediately claiming the recliner as her personal chair. I still love cats--I mean, Delmar's still here, and he still gets plenty of attention--but it's weird how I look forward to coming home from work, just so I can take Bella for a walk, followed by play time and hug time.
There have been some turnarounds in my life lately, some misfortune, trip-ups I hadn't imagined. Melancholy has returned, but I've discovered how easily it can be transcended. All it takes is a pair of big brown eyes looking at me, and a heart full of love.
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