RSS, I Think I Love (Hate, I Mean) You

About a month ago I made the fateful decision to get my RSS reader in action and subscribe to all of my favorite feeds. This was an attempt to sideswipe all of the aimless Interneting I seem to do...all of the checking and re-checking to see if people have posted or not since the last time I checked their blogs.



The monster is getting out of control, though. Now I subscribe to fifty feeds, some of which update about fifty times daily (Wired) and some that seem to update once every few weeks. Most seem to update every day or every 2 or 3 days. On average I have about 100 items to check daily.

Which is getting ridiculous.

And the problem with subscribing to all of these feeds is that a new feeling of completion, of totality, has come over me. I now feel like I have to read everything that come down the pike. Whereas before the Internet was limitless and unfathomable, I've put limits on it. It feels a lot like homework. And I don't have much time for aimless wandering anymore. And reading enjoyment has definitely gone down. Articles must be cranked through in order to get to the next one. That said, I'm cranking through more data than at any point in my life, which is good, right?



I've had to develop a process to deal with all of this stuff, though. Articles or artworks viewable under two minutes get read. Regular articles get put into a separate queue and long-ass stuff in turn gets put in it's own queue. Videos longer than 2 minutes get put in a different folder. Then I attack those separate folders when I'm in the right mindset (as in, when I'm not cranking through everything in Ruthless Cull Mode).

Another thing I'm noticing. Sites without RSS feeds (Signifying Nothing) tend to get ignored. And the pleasure of following a comment thread as it is built is gone. Since comments don't update in my reader, it doesn't remind me to go look. I have become passive in my Interneting. The information comes to me and not the other way around. Delivered to my door. So maybe the New Passivity explains my low comment quotient lately.



I started with 30 feeds a month ago. Now I'm up to 50. This could be a problem. It is difficult to not constantly be disvoreing incredible brilliant things on the Internet. It is difficult to say no to it. Would you be worse off if you weren't exposed to some of this stuff? Perhaps, but at the same time you wouldn't be aware that you were missing anything. Maybe you couldn't even comprehend it. You certainly wouldn't care. I don't feel bad about all of the incredible stuff I don't know about, but once I know about it then I'll feel like I'm missing something if I don't have it.

It's Flatland all over again. Flatland 2.0.

Seven Movies I Knew Were Mediocre But Adored Anyway - Although I'd Probably Hate Them Now

This was going to be "Seven Movies I'm Embarrassed To Love" but I'd probably hate these if I saw them today. But most of these films I defended for years.

1. Contact
2. Ishtar
3. Simple Men
4. Alien 3
5. After Dark My Sweet
6. Hudson Hawk
7. The Sheltering Sky

Newer adds:

1. Code 46
2. Constantine

Better Than Citizen Kane, Better Than Magnolia, Better Than Raging Bull

Brilliant and disturbing, the finest thing ever:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3dei2_orangina_ads

Sleepy E and the Seven Events

Here you are. Sorry for the delay. I couldn't tag anyone else because I don't know anyone besides you people who blog.

It is interesting to see how people have approached this thing. Whether it's 7 confessions or 7 minute details or the 7 things that really define who we are. I think it would be fun to play a HUMILATION version of this exercise (admitting seven humiliating details about yourself). I tag all of you to do this.

I 'm choosing to blog about seven random events.

1. In 1999 I ghostwrote a book for former Boogie Down Productions frontman KRS-ONE. This was before he cheered the 9/11 attacks two years later. I called it "Introducing Hiphop" and it set about to define hiphop and its mythology through twelve chapters focusing on different periods of hiphop history. I was paid $6000. He liked the manuscript so much that he asked me to front his hiphop cultural entity "The Temple of Hiphop." I didn't know anything about hiphop so I declined. He loved the manuscript so much that he wanted to flesh it out into an end-all be-all hiphop bible at ten times the length. But since I had refused to run his weird hiphop organization he fired me. His book "Ruminations" contains little bits and pieces of my work that have been rewritten by others. It is pretty lame. I got no credit, which is fine. I have been meaning to write about this crazy period in my life for some time now.

2. In 1996 I was teaching in South Korea and since we were right next to Pusan National University and the Korean kids love to protest and demonstrate, there was a big rally right outside my classroom window. It was the end of summer and hot and muggy and all my windows were open and the tear gas floated up into my room during a prep period and I had to clear out. It felt a lot like getting clobbered by Drano (sore throat, burning nasal passages, burning eyes).

3. In 1993 I worked as a waiter in the French Quarter of New Orleans. I had a hard time finding a job so I lied and said I had four years of serving experience at my interview. I was a terrible waiter. I would forget about entire tables for twenty minutes at a time. I'd be getting someone's dessert and then realize "Oh, shit, I haven't taken that table's order and they've been waiting forever." I also had a fearsome shaved head at the time and white waiter jacket sized 50 (too huge!) I never spilled soup on anybody, though!

4. In 1981 and 1983 I won the school (district?) spelling bees and compteted in the more prestigious county spell-offs. I never really studied words until the drive to the event itself. In 1981 I finished a respectable fourth, losing on the disrespectable "pirate." I don't know how I missed this. Preposterous. I can't remember what I lost on in 1983 (something even more embarrassing?), but I finished worse (10th maybe?). I think my word might have been "whimsical" but I'm not sure. If anyone knows, please speak up.

5. In 1994 a musician friend conscripted me to be one of three male singers in new musical score being produced for a silent classic, "Closely Watched Trains." I have no singing experience and limited band experience and I can't read music but my friend insisted. "You only have to drone," he said. He was playing accordion. The whole thing was recorded in a church and I consistently got lost and sang at the wrong times but basically just tried to hide my droning among the droning of the other two droners. I was terrible, of course. I got paid $20 cash.

6. In 2004 my brother and I walked around the Yamanote Line, which is the circular train line that runs around Tokyo. It covered twenty-something miles and it took us over eleven hours (the last few in the pouring rain). A long discussion of the rules was the most pleasurable part of the enterprise (do we have to go outside of the tracks at all times? do we have to follow the closest road to the tracks? the closest arterial? do we have to enter each station? etc.) The final decision was that we had to take a picture of each station along the way (29 in all). So at each station we took a picture with his cell phone and mailed it back to home base, where my sister-in-law tracked our progress with the photos and time stamp metadata. Later I remember my brother creating some kind of wallpaper for his computer that superimposed the 29 pictures over a crude overhead map of the route, putting a nice nerdy cap on a very nerdy (inexplicable, for some) event.

7. In 1982 I went to a week-long computer camp at Crystal Mountain. I remember it was 1982 because it was the first time I'd ever heard Michael Jackson's Thriller tape, which my roommate played over and over. I won a strange award called "Mr. Raquet," due to my dominance in tennis, paddle tennis, badminton, and pingpong.

Radiohead, Relevant?

Radiohead put out their seventh full-length album on October 10th. After fulfilling their contract with EMI after their last record, *Hail to the Thief*, the band decided to release *In Rainbows* themselves as a digital download, for a price point to be determined by the buyer. “It’s up to you,” the lo-fi website reads. “No really. It’s up to you.”



A lot has been written about this stunt. It seems about a quarter of fans paid nothing for the download, but many paid in excess of the $10 iTunes standard or even the $18 CD standard. The average cost was 3.88 pounds, which is about 8 dollars, and when you figure that Radiohead might only see 2 to 3 dollars per unit typically, it’s a windfall for them. There are stories of folks paying $100, $200, even $500 because that’s the value of the record for them. You can read a lot of the responses here. It’s kind of interesting: http://www.whatpricedidyouchoose.com/



Obviously, this is not a sustainable model. It’s probably only going to work this once, for a supergroup with an older audience like Radiohead. Nobody’s going to voluntarily pay $10 to download the new 50 Cent effort. Or Linkin Park. But as I am rooted firmly in Generation X, a generation that paid for music for many many many years, I do feel the guilt about stealing music (not enough to actually pay for this download of course). But it seems two or three generations removed from us Xers has never had to pay for music. Indeed they may look at free music as their inalienable right. I think this particular gambit by Radiohead worked because it beat the illegal bootlegs to the Internet and it offered up the goods for free anyway (if you were to stoop so low).

They also put out a deluxe discbox with book, vinyl, CD, and extra tracks for $88, and they’re going to release In Rainbows as a standard CD in the new year. So they seem to be releasing the record much like a movie, with different price points for theatrical, DVD, cable, etc.



All of this discussion has overshadowed *In Rainbows* itself, which is just more mediocrity from Radiohead. I’m sorry, but I just can’t get behind it. The unique pricing issue is compelling, but the more pressing question is whether Radiohead is still relevant. Their last four records (five, if you include Thom Yorke’s solo record *The Analyzer*) seem cut from the same cloth, which is discouraging considering all of the “we are changing as a group” language that ushered in *Kid A*, the unmarketable ambient electronic record that followed the guitar-driven megasuccess of *OK Computer*. *Kid A* was a big fuck you to everyone. It was interesting in its own way but I don’t listen to it anymore. I’m glad they did it, but, well…



Personally, I still listen to *The Bends* and *OK Computer* often, ten years on. Their new music might be more “challenging” or more “intellectual”, whatever that means, but it doesn’t move me like *The Bends* does. In fact, there might be something to be said about intellectualism and accessibility in music.

Maybe I’m a prole for decrying intellectualism in music and wishing Radiohead return to its guitar-driven mode. I just want them to rock again, is that so terrible? “It’s got a good beat and you can dance to it” might be an uninformed, lowly critique, but there is definitely something to it.

Hearty Wheat Meat & the Uncanny Valley

“The Uncanny Valley” is an expression that originated within the field of robotics back in the 1970s. Basically it stated that more human a robot’s features became the more people felt empathy toward to it. But inevitably there was a point where the robot became so realistic—but not completely human, obviously—and at that point the robot became freaky. Scary and repulsive. But the theory of the Uncanny Valley also states that if the robot keeps on advancing then it’ll start to climb out of that valley the closer it comes to bridging the gap to toward absolute resemblance.



In other words, C-3PO is more empathetic than R2-D2 because he is more human. But if you look at the freaky almost-human characters in the Polar Express, then you’ll probably agree that C-3PO still more empathetic than them, even though (or because) he/it is way more abstracted. According to the chart, zombies also fall into this category. There is something about this almost-but-not-quite-human state that triggers repulsion in human beings. It looks real, it sounds real, but it’s not. It’s undead.



This is coming up more these days as Hollywood tries to cast virtual actors in scenes. The new David Fincher movie, Benjamin Button, is trying to create a completely virtual Brad Pitt that they can age with digital makeup. The story is that Benjamin is a guy who is born an old man and gets younger from year to year. They want to create whole scenes with this virtual Brad Pitt, but apparently they are still meeting up with strong resistance from the Uncanny Valley. The rumor is that the footage is absolutely realistic, but the human brain cannot be fooled. Even though all of the sensory input is greenlighting this thing, the human brain knows that it is fake, and feels there is something creepy about it. It will be interesting to see if they will ever be able to solve this problem, or whether the human brain will always somehow know.



It should also be noted that this repulsion applies toward humanness, mainly. Note that in the movie Ratatouille the food and cars and period detail were almost absolutely realistic but that the characters themselves were still somewhat cartoony and abstract. This is probably to keep them out of the Uncanny Valley, but I think this also relates to Scott McCloud’s excellent Understanding Comics, which talks about how the more detailed a comic character gets, the less a reader can identify with it because it just becomes more and more different than the reader. Not everyone can see themselves as Prince Valiant (I sure don’t look like that) but everyone can identify with the crudely-drawn Charlie Brown.



A couple of weeks ago Karen and I went to a place called the Veggie Grill down in Irvine. This restaurant is the oddest of birds: a restaurant that fakes meat out of different ingredients and sells it to its vegetarian customers. Now what percentage of vegetarians actually loves the taste of meat and craves it enough to go to a restaurant that attempts to replicate its bloody meatiness, guilt-free? The times I’ve tried to be vegetarian the thought of meat just gets more and more disgusting. So the Veggie Grill seems to be catering to a fairly small niche, but then what do I know.



I had been craving Carne Asada all day and when we went in they had a special of Carne Asada Tacos! The description gave me pause—“containing Hearty Wheat Meat made from 100% wheat protein, textured like roast beef, and marinated in our natural flavors and spices”—but the picture looked good, so I ordered it and got on the meat train barrelling right down into the Uncanny Valley, choo-choo!



I ate about a third of it. Karen’s Chillin’ Chicken wasn’t as bad—“our specially seasoned and marinated veggie protein blend…taste and believe”—but it was still challenging to eat. I just couldn’t get it down. I think my brain was freaked out in the same way it would be looking at one of these robots…or a zombie. It looks like beef, it smells like beef, but lordy it’s not like beef at all…. AAAAAARRRRRGHGGHGHG. Not that it tasted bad, necessarily, but my brain was getting the message loud and clear: “Meat a little off somehow. Do not eat. Rotten meat. You will get sick.” I think if the Hearty Wheat Meat had come out in the shape of a cube it would have been less repulsive. I eat tofu all the time without a problem. And you know, a veggie burger isn’t a problem because it’s just a disc. Tofurky? No problem.



But this, well, I never want to have this experience again. It was the Polar Express all over again, but with my tongue.

Designing Women: Julie Taymor's Across the Universe (Long)

I don’t know how the process works—whether female directors tend towards a certain kind of character-driven relationship-centered drama or whether the gatekeepers filter out everything but this. Few females have been authorized to direct action (Kathryn Bigelow, partially because of her marriage to James Cameron, and Karyn Kusama (Aeon Flux) ) and no one ever seems to cross over into design-heavy science fiction or period films (have not seen Marie Antoinette). I think studio heads still get nervous when too much cash is on the line with a female director at the controls. It would be interesting to see what the largest-budgeted film helmed by a woman is. My guess is Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days, but that is just a guess. It seems that women are allowed to direct television and indy-cred relationship movies, but large canvas epics are strictly off limits. No costume dramas, no big set pieces, no toys. Certainly no war movies. Just emotions.



Julie Taymor, on the other hand, seems to be working outside of this confinement. Character is definitely a distant second (or third, or fourth) to her spectacular design in her new film Across the Universe, which plays like 20 spectacularly trippy music videos mashed end to end.

Taymor and her co-writers have strung together two dozen or so Beatles songs into a semi-coherent narrative about a chap from Liverpool (Jude) who comes to New York City as the 60s explode into chaos. There are characters named Maxwell, Lucy, Prudence, etc. You get the idea. But because the narrative is drawn from the original songs and not the other way around, like other musicals, it feels false and contrived. It’s an excuse to go out and cram a bunch of clever musical set-pieces into a not-so-believable story.



But spectacular music video sequences do not a good movie make. I recognized that same worn-down feeling I get after watching 2+ hours of MTV at home (in the late 90s of course, we all know MTV plays no videos these days). Some visionary sequences, some not-so-visionary… but mainly it’s that ongoing rush of plotlessness and lack of character arc that gets to you… not unlike watching two hours of commercials.



The film takes a Forrest Gump view of history, as well, touching on the main events that define the 60s for filmmakers (Detroit riots, Kent State, MLKs assassination, Vietnam, etc. etc). There is a Janice Joplinesque character and a Jimi Hendrix character and references to Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey’s magic bus. But it doesn’t feel emotionally honest—like, at all. You can dress up Vietnam and Kent State with arty, MTV visuals and editing but it doesn’t capture anything honest. It’s history being used as a logo to sell something, and it’s actually kind of offensive. I wondered what a Vietnam Vet would think of the way the war is treated in this film… As a bunch of startling, beautiful/horrific surreal images to drive a rock-n-roll music video forward. But the kids of today who are watching this won’t realize that it’s just wallpaper, of course. For them, these visuals contribute to their (mis)understanding of the period. Indeed, the further we get away from the 60s, the more it seems they are hardening into these 10 or so images/stories that stereotype the decade. Taymor was 14 during the Summer of Love, but for some reason the material feels like it was created by someone born in the 70s. Or 80s.



Across the Universe achieves the strange duality of being both visionary and uninteresting at the same time. That said, I love that this film was made. I am always clamoring for something new, and this was definitely something new. I can imagine all of the meetings and planning and convincing that Taymor had to do to get the money to do this film. And I love the playful challenge of it all. There’s no real precedent to this thing (Moulin Rouge, maybe, comes close) so there was probably a very real sense of “I don’t know how this is going to turn out but lets try our best”. That sense of risk is absent from most things these days, especially in film, so it’s important to commend this true artistic spirit when it shows itself, even if it’s in the form of a semi-failure like Across the Universe. And the film is divisive—the reviews are all over the board on this one—which is always a good sign.



I would have adored this film in high school/early college. It’s a good film for film students—a painfully self-aware, stunningly visual tour de force…And Bono as Neal Cassady is a masterstroke. The older I get, though, the less I want cleverness and the more I just want character-driven films that move me, whatever the gender of the filmmakers.

Robot Love and Ham Contests: Blade Runner, 25 Years On (Long)

Karen and I were late and scarfing down Vietnamese food in her kitchen. “I’m not missing the giant eyeball,” I said. “I won’t be late for the giant eyeball, let’s go.”

Karen’s roommate wandered by. “What giant eyeball?” she asked.

“Oh, we’re going to see the new version of Blade Runner.”

“What’s Blade Runner?”

Huh? Karen and I looked at each other. To us, this was like not having ever heard of the Godfather. Or Jaws. Her roommate is 32, hmmm, but she’s from Alabama. Maybe she’s just an isolated case, I thought. Her friend, though, in his late twenties, had never heard of it either. I explained to them that it was probably one of the top three science fiction movies of all time.

“Is it better than Transformers?” he asked.

My jaw dropped. “Uh, yes!”

“Have you seen Transformers?”

“Of course not,” I said. “I don’t need to see Transformers to know that Blade Runner is better. That goes without saying.”

“Yeah, but how can you make that judgment if you haven’t seen Transformers?”

I stared at Karen. Who were these people? It wasn’t like we were so much older than them. How could a film be so seminal and important to an entire generation and yet non-existent to the next? I recalled that Middlebrow got the same kind of nonplussed response from students at the SLCC, both before viewing and after.

“Maybe the film has really aged poorly,” I thought. Nah.



We missed the giant eyeball and we were seated way up front so we exchanged our tickets for the 10:30pm show and waited it out. Now there would be no excuses. If Blade Runner—one of the films that convinced me I wanted to make movies in the first place—really sucked, then it wasn’t going to be because I was late and seated in front row. I was going to be in the back third, with the screen at eye level, with an emptier theater and fewer chewing sounds in the air.

Well, it didn’t suck. And it is still a visionary film. And although it is dated like all older sci-fi is dated, it wasn’t that bad. At all. The worst was some of the wardrobe, actually, especially a violet and turquoise shirt that Harrison Ford pulls off before he puts the robot moves on the robot Sean Young.



But it was slow. Really slow. I learned that some reviewer called it “Blade Crawler” when it first came out. That’s about right. Although I’m sure it feels like MTV when placed next to 2001, which feels like MTV when placed next to Tarkovski’s Solaris. So it’s all relative. But it is interesting to note that people thought it was slow even back in 1982, back when movies were often more than 90 minutes.

And it was empty. It is really a soulless, unemotional movie. Sure, this can happen when you’re making a movie about robots. Robot love isn’t always as fiery as you’d like it to be. Sean Young is about as fiery as you can get in real life, but this is a movie about robots, goddamn it. Tone it down. You too, Harrison.



And nothing too much happens. Although it still looks and sounds exquisite, it proceeds in the typical noir mode—detective going from place to place, looking for clues—with some campy hardboiled dialogue, a hard drinking antihero, chiaroscuro lighting, and moody sax theme laid in from time to time.

And the final speech by Rutger Hauer—a scene I’ve seen probably fifty times—was hammy this time around. Kind of bad. And he just launches it to it. The hand of the author and the director and the actor and the composer are all over that scene. It’s like a big Ham Contest. Rutger’s trying to live up to the writtenness the scene and Vangeles is plinking his new-age synths and booms in the background and the dialogue is the most scripted sounding stuff I’ve ever heard. And Rutger has a nail through his hand and a dove in the other.

Kind of laying it on with a trowel, as WS would put it.



But hey, Blade Runner is still brilliant, even though it’s emotionally void. Probably because Dick’s source material is so smart. And an exercise in production and art design, it’s still the model that sci-fi films aspire to. Seeing it big is totally different than seeing it on TV. That dirty, rainy production design goes deep deep into frame. Never did I get the sense that the reality of the movie stopped just at the edge of frame and beyond it was a craft service table and reality. There’s extras in the deep background and neon and trash and it keeps going. It’s actually kind of insane, how dense and exact the production design is. Bravo!

And most of the effects still hold up today. There are some clunky looking matte paintings and spaceships in the middle, but the opening flyovers are unstoppable, probably because they still used models back then instead of just doing all of your effects work at home in your computer.



As far as changes? It feels like a cross between the original international release and the 1992 Director’s Cut. Not a lot of new material. One interesting change was the line Batty (Rutger Hauer) delivers to Tyrell before he gives him the skull-crush and eye-gouge, which used to be “I want more life, fucker.”

Now it’s “I want more life, Father.” Which is from the original workprint version of the film, actually, and much much stronger (although I still love the aggressive comedy of a robot really using the vernacular to good effect).

The Wikipedia article has a ton of info on this new version and how it differs from previous versions. Lots of good stuff [HERE].

I suppose the next false god to go down will be Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, Mike Leigh’s Naked, or Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross. And how I will weep when that happens.

The Pit: Frank Norris and the ALA Underbelly - or - Too Much Theory: Hooking Up at the Academic Meat Market

As you all probably know, Middlebrow came down to Newport Beach a couple of weeks ago to attend some kind of spectacle and give a talk or two. You'll have to ask him for the details. This is his turf, not mine, even though all activities took place in my realm, the LA megalopolis. I don't pretend to understand his world. The ALA conference is the West Berlin of SoCal. Or the North Korea of SoCal, depending on how you look at it. Take your pick.

Here is the breakdown of events:
-John Wayne Airport
-Newport Brewing Company: 1pm Pints
-Intense Fish & Chips
-Checkin in at the Hyatt: Who is That Tall Man With You?
-Laguna Beach
-How Much Do You Think That House Costs?
-Coffee Time
-Dana Point
-Dad's Liquor
-Pay to Pay: Parking at the Hyatt
-Back to the Room
-Boy Am I Tired Already
-What Exactly Is TV-Internet?
-Wifi Stress
-Aborted Oyster Bar Attempt: Too Chichi For Us Proles
-Mexican & Margueritas: Wait, Too Many Proles Now!
-Hotel Bar
-Aborted Shuffleboard
-Two Men, One Bed: No Problem!

Here is a picture of Middlebrow on the beach:



This is a more iconic version of the same picture:



This is a picture of the hotel room sink after visiting Dad's Liquor:



But what I really want to talk about was the conference woman sitting by herself at the hotel bar, mid-thirties, putting the MOVES on a nerdy kid who looked about twenty-three years old.

The Woman: Black knee-high boots. Black leather jacket. Skirt. Makeup. Tall glass of solo Chardonnay.
The Dude: Glasses. Nervousness. Watching TV instead of facing her. Never shaved in his life.

We were wondering why she had targeted him exactly, but hey, academics need lovin too and she didn't have time to be subtle. She touched him on the arm, repeatedly, while he split his attention between her and the TV screen above and behind the bar. We could not see what he was watching nor could we hear what she was saying to him.

"What's his problem?" we said aloud, watching closely. "Go for it, dude!"

But he didn't hear us and he didn't go for it and after about thirty minutes of her attention she got up and left. But, get this, the guy didn't seem relieved to see her go...instead he turned and longingly watched her leave. It wasn't that he wasn't interested...he WAS interested... he just couldn't pull the trigger.

I talked to Middlebrow about what I would have done differently. The gf has been reading "The Game: Penetrating the World of Pickup Artists" as research and I've been privy to some of the techniques. I told MB that I'd have him go in as my wingman and distract the nerd with some juicy literary theory while I sidled up to the bar and complimented the woman on her boots, then offer to freshen up her drink.

"How hard could it be?" I wondered. But then, where was all of this information when I needed it? Why weren't women this readable when I was 23 and truly needed this stuff? Now I'm taken and I can't use all of my astonishing pick-up technique, not that I really want to anyway...

I'm not sure where I'm going with this--I did have a point when I started, but all I want to say is that when someone is interested in you it isn't a big mystery. It's like a teacher who starts the semester giving everyone an A and lets everyone go downhill from there. She's interested in you, you already have an A. Just do the right thing, son. It's a lay-up!

Oh, and yes, I could be wrong, but it seems like these conferences would be a great place to get laid. Lit conferences and tall clubs. If I'm ever single again I'm definitely crashing both of these events, often.

Not that I'm interested in that lifestyle of course. I'm just saying.

The Future of All Cinema, Part II

I would like to apologize for my snarky comments from two posts ago. There is a lot of great stuff coming up, and not all of it is snooty. Like this, for example:

http://www.worstpreviews.com/trailer.php?id=844&item=0

Please watch to the very end to get the full effect!

Polyphasically Perverse

I just want to announce to everyone that I am back on the Polyphasic Genius Sleep Schedule and loving it. These days I've been trying four and a half hours of core sleep at night and TWO twenty minute naps throughout the day. This is down from the THREE twenty naps a day the plan calls for, so I feel a little tired and not very much like a genius. Three naps a day is pretty hard to pull off, especially if there are other humans in your life who are not taking three naps a day. I have been productive, however, and I will keep this up for as long as I can and make reports here as scheduling permits.

Recently I stumbled across an article in venerable Gelf magazine about a guy who has been able to switch dominance between right and left hemispheres of his brain, thus allowing one side to rest while the other works. Apparently, he was able to stay awake for eleven days by doing this, and could have kept it up indefinitely. Okay, I admit, this sounds a little extreme--I won't be trying this out although I think it would be interesting to see what effect this all had on the human brain and body.

Click [HERE] to go to Gelf Magazine!

My favorite quote: "I generally feel better and more relaxed when I am sleep-deprived."

Speaking of geniuses, did people see that Stuart Dybek won a 2007 Genius Grant?

The Future of All Cinema

The future of all cinema does not look good. About a month ago I put the future of it in three films: Julie Taymor's *Across the Universe* the Coen Brothers' *No Country For Old Men,* and Paul Thomas Anderson's *There Will Be Blood.*

I would like to say that we saw *3:10 To Yuma* the other day and it was quite excellent right up till 2 minutes before the end. But it was fantastic, i thought, and will replace "Across the Universe" in this little trifecta of quality -- I'm giving ATU a miss due all of the lackluster reviews.

*No Country For Old Men* will be fine but not spectacular. "A return to their Fargo form," people are saying. Well, *Fargo* was fine but it was no *Miller's Crossing*, no *Blood Simple.*

So I'm going all in on the new PT Anderson movie, which looks spectacular, dark, and angry, just like I like em. If this movie lets me down, well, well, I don't know what I'm going to do. I haven't anticipated a movie this much since *A Scanner Darkly,* which let us all down (sorry, Lisa B!). Before this, the most anticipated movie was...well...Anderson's *Punch Drunk Love.*

Here's the original teaser:



Here's the Hollywoody trailer. It's not as good as the teaser, but it still works. Notice the music is being done by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead. An interesting choice!

My Dirty Little Secret

All this talk of television has got me thinking about the new role the box has in my life. I've basically pooh-poohed TV for many many years now; I think the last time I actually followed a show was in the Cheers/Night Court days. Which is not to say that television isn't better than ever, better than movies even. Everything Bad Is Good For You makes a lot of compelling arguments about the New Complexity of TV (thanks MB!). But I just can't seem to make time for it. I got cable last year for the first time in my life so I could watch World Cup. When I was working on movies this year I'd come home and unwind with Sportscenter and a drink for a half hour. But that's it. These days my TV probably gets 30 minutes of viewing a month (for non-movie watching purposes).

But I have a dirty little secret: About once every other week I go over to the gfs place and watch VH1 for about three hours straight.

I just can't get enough of it. And this is my idea, definitely not hers.

VH1 was reborn out of the ashes of Adult Oriented Music Video Hell about ten years ago when they created Behind the Music. Since then they've reinvented themselves again with long slate of outlandish reality-based shows and pop-cultural commentary.

In 2004 I was doing a movie in Maine and caught "I Love the 80s", their half-hour program which focuses on a single year and the pop-culture that dominated it, using clips from comedians who comment on it all. I watched it for 5 hours in a row. I couldn't help myself. It spoke to me in a way I hadn't been spoken to before. It was simple and lowbrow and fluffy and but most of all it was hilarious. Of course I could never admit this to anyone.

In the last few years VH1 has ramped up its outrageous reality programming, culminating with the wonderful "The Surreal Life" and "Flavor of Love" which starred our favorite MC Flavor Flav. Now Flav has been replaced by Bret Michels of Poison, and it's not the same. But there is bunch of great new shows out now, like:

Scott Baio is 45...and Single
Hogan Knows Best
The Pick-up Artist

and specials like:

Britney's Most Shocking Moments
The 40 Most Softsational Soft-Rock Songs

I'm especially looking forward to the premiere of America's Most Smartest Model, but that is too much to talk about now.

Karen doesn't know what to make of all this. I can be pretty snooty when it comes to my movies (she calls me Arrogant E and Ivory Tower from time to time), but all of this low-low-lowbrow pop culture (and my love of it) can be a little bit hard to process.

I don't know what else to say.

My only explanation is that at least VH1 is self-aware, and firmly tongue in cheek. The new season's tag line: "VH1: Watch and Discuss" has me thinking that the channel is run by English Majors.

Reprieve

Another humiliating motion picture down the rathole. Karen and I decided to get away for the weekend to enjoy life for a change:

This is a picture of Karen hefting a glass in Santa Barbara. Note the rustic-chic Mason jar and everything that it represents:



This is a picture of me eating rolle polse and pickled herring in Solvang, CA. It was kind of a Scandian lunch-ordering stunt, I confess. Wish I would have gotten corn dog or grilled cheese instead:



This is a picture of wine country, buzzing more than ever with wine bores since Sideways came out. Becoming a wine bore is my newest project.



This is a picture of our purchase. First the people get you drunk. Then you buy way more wine than you want. It is a very effective sales technique and I wonder why they haven't implemented this method at auto dealerships, hmmm:



This is a picture of Pismo Beach:



This is a picture of the pinkified lounge of the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo. Pink cakes and French Dip for the whole family:



This is the picture of a New-Agey labyrinth at our mineral springs spa. I learned that group hugging and group meditation make me a little nervous (am I uptight?). There was also a Yoga Dome, where the Dodgers will be playing next year:



All in all a good time was had. California is really beautiful when you are just visiting.

Awesome!

If you haven't seen it already:

Online Study

It took a long time but I've come to the conclusion that I am a good candidate for online study. I like taking classes but my erratic work schedule always sabotages everything and I have a hard time finishing what I've started. So it seems like having some degree of flexibility in my class hours would be a great thing.

However, I am a bit skeptical. Online learning seems like it's halfway between real course study and self-study. What is this going to provide for me that a reading list alone will not?

I'm curious about everyone's opinions on this matter. Is an online course any better than self study? I am pretty motivated and will tear through a reading list, but I want to feel like I'm going to get something for my money. Is an online class just for students who can't motivate themselves? How is the quality of teaching here? Are there actual lectures? Or podcasts? Do the online courses get shunted to the side and filled with recycled material and ancient lecture notes? What is the quality of the students like? Lower or higher than physical in-class humans? Does the impersonal structure of the online class make the professor care less?

Please feel free to comment on your experiences teaching/taking online classes.

Music Video Treatment Writer

A couple of months ago the gf connected me with one of her music video directors who was in desperate need for someone to put together a treatment overnight. No doubt phoning me was a last resort; I was unknown and unproven and got the call around 10:30pm after a long day's work. The video was for a band called Kasabian; I put the thing together in about 5 hours and turned it in, got a couple of hours of sleep, then went back to my real work in the morning.

Music video treatments are really the cesspool of all literature. Right there with greeting cards and income tax returns and the Penthouse Forums. The treatment is basically a sales pitch to the label and the band, telling them how cool the video is going to be and how beautiful and badass the band will look. Good grammar and syntax are optional. Hyperbole abounds. Cliches prevail. They love it.

Here are some short sample paragraphs from previously existing MV treatments (mistakes are theirs, not mine!):

Blackalicious-"Gab and Xcel of Blackalicious are featured in a series of conceptual portrait scenes illustrating the many situations that make us feel amazing. Clever transitions will make this video one of a kind. You will want to keep watching as the shots slide and flow from one to the next creating the longest, most complex tracking shots ever....I will shoot in 35mm for a polished quality with sharp color and crisp clear images. The overall vibe is natural and true with consistently clever twists. Gab and Xcel are massively featured throughout."

CAP.One- "Have you ever been out at a club or party thinking you were the shit when all of a sudden a crew of cats come in and take over the party with no shame. They take over the VIP and start ordering all of the existing champagne. This performance will provide CAP with massive star appeal as a new artist creating a fresh bold introduction to viewers. Nokio joins him on the bar to begin the party while helping him with the chorus. We fade to shots of delicious looking women who lip synch the chorus. They part like the 'Red Sea' as the camera comes forward."

Desiny's Child- "Three of today's hottest young stars--Beyonce, Kelly, and Michelle--take us on a wild ride of survival in this heart-throbbing, brilliantly orchestrated action adventure video. Shot with a hot fashion editorial approach, this clip is going to be fresh as we film their unbridled beauty. It's extremely sensual, cutting edge and the ultimate beauty piece. We hear the mysterious violins at the opening of the song. The camera races along the ocean's surface in search of something precious that lays victim to this vast body of water. Stormy clouds rest on the horizon threatening to strike at a moment's notice."

Erm.

All of these videos got made. The last one was for the megahit "Survivor." This is the stuff that sells.

Often times quite a few different directors will write treatments on the same video. The label and band then go through them and select the one they like the best. It's a contest, really. Other times the band wants to work with a particular director and all the director has to do is supply a not-awful treatment and the job is his. All he has to do is not screw it up.

Many directors don't actually write their own treatments, even though they are supposed to be the driving creative force behind the thing. Unlike commercials, where the director is pretty much a puppet of the ad agency, the music video is really the director's medium. As a whole, the music video world is in the gutter, but many directors who have been able to rise out of it are quite special (David Fincher, Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, and Jonathan Glazer to name a few).

So after a ten-minute phone conversation with the director I set to task. He had some basic ideas and imagery borrowed from other films, but the task of fleshing it all out and making it cohere was mine.

So in this way the writing was creative. I was the primary creative force behind making the sale. But it was also not creative at all, because as a whole the ideas that I was to build around were pretty durn banal and confining. And I was in the awkward position of not knowing how I fit into all of this--writing to please others when I couldn't comprehend their tastes at all. I spent most of my time wondering what record executives and teenyboppers want, questioning if my ideas would fit in with the director's "vision", and dumbing down the manuscript (I was still reprimanded for using the word "tableau" after all that).

It was nice to get a paid writing gig, but also kind of depressing. It made me feel whorish. I mean, who cares, right? Just do the writing and get paid the money. Hmm.

The deal was I'd be paid a nominal sum to write the treatment and then if the job booked I'd get five times the original amount. I've done three treatments for them but so far none of these videos have booked. Is this my fault? Perhaps. I notice that they're not really calling me anymore, which is fine.

For a while, though, I really lived the life! The life of the Music Video Treatment Writer!

Dyno-mite!

The Moment When The Villain Shows His Weak Human Side and Becomes Sympathetic

I've had a pretty adversarial relationship with the production manager of this latest movie. It's gone on for about a month and a half now (the arguing) and I've taken an extremely hard line with the guy. Because most of our discussions are related to money, our dealings directly affect my pocketbook and so I am ruthless...and rude. Once I sense that someone is messing with me, then the gloves come off and all politeness goes out the window. He's consistently reneged on all of our financial agreements and played dumb at my outrage. At least a half dozen times. And he's inflexible -- unreasonably inflexible -- when it comes to contingencies. All he cares about is keeping costs down, and if it's at the expense of people being able to do their jobs properly, then so be it.

Most of our correspondence happens over the phone and email, but the other night he came by the camera truck with questions about our equipment order for next week, claiming that we had ordered stuff--at additional expense--that hadn't been approved. I explained to him that this wasn't the case and went through the items one by one while my crew watched.

He scratched his head and looked over his paperwork, then re-asked the same questions, and I realized that the poor guy was simply in way over his head. He had no clue what we are talking about. At all. And I was giving him static, over and over, for about six weeks, and so was every other department, and his supervisor especially, the bastard associate producer.

He was getting attacked from all angles. Poor guy. Man. Sure he was underqualified to do the job and I still resented the way his job was intersecting with mine, but as a human being it was hard not to feel a little bad for him.

I wonder if there's a word for this concept in other languages -- the moment when the villain shows his weak human side and becomes sympathetic.

I looked it up online but all I could find was a TV Tropes Wiki and an entry for the "Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain" of which the Riddler is one, apparently.

Please Don't Think You're Exempt

Last Sunday I went to the Coffee Bean to enjoy my magazine with a hot beverage. The outside seating area was filled with smokers and Russian chess players and dogs tied to table legs so I sat inside, where it was cooler. The woman in the next table over was going over galleys for a novel (or page proofs or whatever they're called) and I tried very hard to see what it was over her shoulder but could not, so I turned my attention back to my magazine and read for a good thirty minutes or so. When I looked back over at the woman, she was still going at it, editing away, striking through text with her pen and making notes in the margin. She seemed like a reasonable sort--late 30s early 40s, professionally dressed. She had been in there for a while--longer than me--and there were a couple of to-go cups on her table and a plate littered with crumbs and a spread of crumpled napkins and a forgotten receipt. I noticed her getting her things together and packing the ms away in a box or in her bag I'm not sure. Then she got up and strode out of the place, right by the garbage can, leaving a pile of rubble on her vacated table for some person (probably another customer, since seating was in limited supply and all of the employees were running their asses off) to have to bus off themselves. I don't know why this bothered me but it really did. It is not as if she doesn't know the rules. This is not a cafe where a waitress serves and cleans up after you. I supposed it surprised me because this is the kind of behavior I see from hoodlums at McDonalds who don't think they should be bussing their own garbage. This woman should know better. Indeed, I am sure she does know better. It is that she thinks she is exempt, and that is the biggest problem of all.

Surviving Powder Blue

Well, I said I was leaving the movie business but here I am working on another motion picture. This one is called "Powder Blue" and is essentially a "Crash" retread without the on-the-nose racism. What we do have, though, is (after three days of shooting) plenty of non-racist on-the-nose dialogue, a sad stripper, a suicidal Santa Claus, a guy just out of prison trying to redeem himself, a child in a Hollywood coma, hospital jargon and combat photography (whip pans, handheld, etc) to intensify surgery, a dream sequence in heaven?, and a "Magnolia" rip off ending where blue snow falls on everyone and everything. Four depressing stories of losers intertwining on Christmas Eve...no doubt they will redeem themselves...

"Powder Blue" is not exactly subtle, and in many ways it is worse than the last masterpiece, "Midnight Meat Train." Because it actually tries. At first I thought it was pretentious, no, but it's not even that. It's just heavyhanded. Or ham-fisted, as a grip commented. But the best thing of all is that Ray Liotta, Forest Whitaker, and Jessica Biel are turning in good performances (I think Carrie-Anne Moss is in it too), but all of the supporting characters are simply atrocious. Atrocious! So the effect is of having a bunch of A-list actors in a student film. Here you have Forest and Ray in an intense scene... and then a cop comes over and says his lines... Doh! Or the nurse speaks! Ouch! Or maybe these characters are drifitng through a parallel universe where all the bank tellers and barflies an meter maids--all of the support--are incapable of sounding believable. Very surreal.

But here's the real reason for this post:

On the last movie I gained over 20 pounds (eating out of existential boredom) and was such an asshole to be around that the gf basically forbade me to take this movie unless:

1. I wrapped my head around that it was only 7 weeks.
2. I wrapped my head around the fact that I wasn't going to be able to write for 5 hours a day while working 70-hour weeks (seems obvious, sure, but not to me).
3. I understood I was only going to be able to do one thing in my limited downtime, not fifty things.
4. I understood that good physical health leads to good mental health.

So I've abandoned the polyphasic sleep experiment, although I'll go back to it once we finish the movie... I've started the Zone diet and I've started running and doing pilates (which I scoffed at for a long time before actually trying it and having it kick my ass).

We'll see how things develop. Temptation abounds:

Tuesday they had carrot cake, German chocolate cake, homemade white chocolate and macadamia nut cookies, and ice cream with toppings on the dessert table. Yesterday it was the wonderfully crusty mac-and-cheese, corn on the cob, biscuits, and tangy lemonade that came with BBQ at lunch.

Not sure how long I can continue to say no to this stuff...

Some Kind of Monster

As you probably already know, "Some Kind of Monster" is the Metallica documentary that came out a few years ago. The film begins in 2001 when their bass player quits the band and they are having a hard time getting started recording their new record, "St. Anger." They are pressured by management to bring in a celebrity psychiatrist to help resolve interpersonal tensions and get the record done so that everybody can make their money.

Metallica in Therapy is a promising hook and much of the film is good, but there is an awkward tension between what is onscreen and what is really going on. One gets the feeling that the documentary filmmakers have to answer to the label, and to the band, and even if they actually do have some autonomy then there seems to be some self-censoring going on. There are scenes where the band confronts the filmmakers on-camera about whether they actually want the documentary made. These are important scenes for a lot of reasons -- mainly because they address the issue of whether the film crew's presence alters the reality of the bandmembers and their creative impulse (of course!) -- but in the end the filmmakers come off as lackeys of the band, too eager to play nice, too eager to walk away or just fall into step. It's clear that the documentary is only a Rockumentary--a promotional tool--and not investigative in any way.

From this week's New Yorker on biography: "What those uncooperative witnesses want--and what the famous people themselves want, too, when as has sometimes been the case for Secrest, they are still alive and competent to make trouble--is what everbody wants in life: to control the narrative."

The problem is that the band just isn't that interesting. The whole situation is kind of interesting (lead singer Hatfield disappears for a year in rehab, band in therapy, the puppetmasters all coming in to try and steer the foundering ship) but the people aren't so bright and it goes nowhere (for 2 hours and 20 minutes).

More interesting stuff comes when the band decides they are going to cut off the psychiatrist after 2 years on the payroll (at $40k/month). We learn that the psychiatrist is moving his family out to San Francisco to be closer to work (the band) and for the first time in the film the band kind of comes together to gang up on him. After encouraging the lyric writing of the songs to be spread out among all the bandmembers instead of being the sole territory of the lead singer, we see the psychiatrist himself submitting lyrics. He thinks he's part of the band! He's gotten used to it... and when the band tells him he's not needed anymore he backtracks and looks uncomfortable and says, "The work isn't finished. There's still a lot to do on tour." He looks so disappointed.... Haha. This is great great stuff but it gets buried...

Most interesting to me, though, is real story--the psychiatrist's presence and the need for harmony in the band cause EVEN MORE TENSION than before.... St. Anger is, by all accounts, the worst Metallica record ever. Just go to Amazon and check out all the one-star reviews from hardcore fans. The band jams for two years, trying to find good songs collectively, and the results just SUCK. The songs on St. Anger are AWFUL. Hatfield is emasculated as the creative fountainhead of the band and told that he has to accept lyrics from all of the others. No one is in charge. They are supposed to work in a group and because they have to defer to each other's opinions the results are a Frankenstein's monster of compromises. Perhaps this is the true meaning of the film's title.

There are plenty of other bands like this... where the members demand more creative control at the expense of the overall product. Billy Corgan wrote and played all of the guitar parts on the Smashing Pumpkins records for their first three hugely successful records. The band wanted to be more included in the studio instead of just being a tour band. What happened? They started to suck. The Cardigans last record was a similar story. Everyone wanted to contribute instead of letting the original songwriter do everything. Frank Black broke up the Pixies when Kim Deal tried to exert too much influence. Thank God, because I'm sure a series of mediocre records would have followed (nothing against Kim Deal--I have all of her records--but she's certainly no Black Francis...).

(A counter-example of this is XTC, which always seemed to have four or five ABSOLUTELY INFERIOR songs on each record by the bass player, Colin Moulding. I always wondered why Andy Partridge allowed this, but to him, and to them, I guess, band harmony was more important than quality...)

The gf and I have this argument all the time. Collaboration works to a point, after which it stifles individual vision. On the other end of the spectrum you have non-genius-auteurs like Robert Rodriguez, who make decent but not-brilliant movies, all by themselves. They could use a little collaboration. But three people in a room, being told that all of their opinions have equal weight.....well, it just doesn't work.

Harmony in a group setting and producing great work are incompatible. Someone has to lead and someone has to follow.

Our Man In Havana

I was thinking about my last blog posting and the new Wes Anderson movie and how the white-man-journeying-abroad narrative is falling under increasing criticism. These stories focus on Western protagonists navigating an alien land and alien culture and track their reactions to it…or simply use the place as an exotic backdrop for their adventures.

An African artist was talking about this in an interview—he was complaining how Babel and The Constant Gardner just used Africa as a corrupt, fucked-up background for these white melodramas to unfold.

Which is true.

But isn’t it worse for a filmmaker to make a movie entirely about another culture/ethnicity and to get it wrong? How about Memoirs of a Geisha directed by a white dude starring Chinese actors? How about Brother directed by Takeshi Kitano about LA gangs? Whatever you think about Wong Kar-Wai, his first American film (w Natalie Portman and I forget who else) rings false, or so I’ve heard.

For every Ang Lee-directed Ice Storm, there are fifty films where this doesn’t work at all…

Wes Anderson is a white boy and makes films about white boys navigating a foreign landscape. It is what he knows. Wouldn’t it be more offensive to presume he could make a film entirely about the Indian experience, with no Western characters, better than an Indian filmmaker?

So maybe the idealistic answer is to give these other voices a way to express themselves, sure, everybody should have a voice, everybody in the world…but then the market isn’t going to support that either. A movie made entirely in Afrikaans isn’t going to bring the same dollars as Rush Hour 3, even if the marketing budgets are comparable.

Is the free market always good? Will it regulate itself? Will people get sick of these recycled Hollywood movies and go elsewhere for their stories? Will audiences revolt, eventually?

I am very skeptical. Even when you look on the gender front, there seem to be fewer women working than even twenty years ago. Whatever happened to Susan Seidelman, Amy Heckerling, and Penelope Spheeris? Or action directors Kathryn Bigelow and Mimi Leder? Sure, there’s probably a lot of interesting women working in indie film land, but basically all we’ve really got is the inane romantic comedy robot, Nancy Meyers.

Women do seem to flourish in TV, as guest directors, where their voice can be steamrolled by the momentum of an existing show and its tribe of writer/producers.

But, Jesus, I am getting so tired of the same narratives...

Post #201

Yesterday was the 200th post on the Front Porch, by the way.

Hey, That's Mine! (Long)

Part I: The Teen Wolf Effect

On the first day of shooting “Way of the Puck” three and a half years ago, we discovered the unthinkable: another film crew starting their air hockey documentary at the same time. It felt like that meta-moment in the early underappreciated mockumentary “Man Bites Dog” where a film crew following a hitman around stumbles across another crew following around ANOTHER hitman. One of the crews is using film and one is using tape and I think the film guys kick the video crew’s ass, if I remember right, maybe even killing them.

A few months after meeting this other air hockey documentary crew we heard of a third film crew making THEIR air hockey documentary.

First, I thought, “Oh shit, it’s a race.” For a while, though, I considered the residual effects of niche success, or, what I call the Teen Wolf Effect. Maybe it wasn’t a race. Perhaps the success of an air hockey movie would open people’s minds and air hockey could enjoy a little run before fading away again. Perhaps two movies coming out at the same time would convince viewers that some sort of fad was happening and encourage them to sit up and pay attention.

That lasted for a few minutes before I came to my senses. There would be no Teen Wolf Effect. The movie and the market were too specific. Whether it turned out as crap or as a masterpiece, the first movie would block the success of the second one (and the third one). Watch a movie about shuffleboard. You’re not going to want to watch another doc about shuffleboard with a slightly different perspective. You’re going to want to see something else.

No way. The race was on.


Part II: Another Wacky Sport To Tick Off the List

A year and a half ago a friend and I finished writing a ping-pong movie called “The Secret Unbelievable.” About this time, we heard noise of something called “Balls of Fury,” a ping-pong movie starring Christopher Walken. This was a little discouraging—there wouldn’t be room for two ping pong movies in the world, after all. It was too specific. Two jai alai films coming out in the same year—no, I don’t think so.

But we took comfort in the fact that “Balls of Fury” would take the obvious approach—broad comedy, Asian caricatures, sub-SNL writing. Ours was about ping pong, sure, but it was very different animal from whatever “Balls of Fury” was going to be.

Well, I’m seeing the ads all over now:

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809702030/video/

And it looks like “Balls of Fury” was everything we thought it was going to be: obvious, broad, and kind of lame. It’s like they wrote down the first things that came into their head when somebody said “Ping Pong Movie.”

Our movies are apples and oranges, apples and oranges—our movie isn’t really about ping pong even though it’s definitely central to the movie. Anybody could see that the projects couldn’t be any more different, right? Surely they could see that? It hurts to have the market on our little movie niche cornered already, sure, especially when it’s by this low-grade farce, but surely people will see the vast gulf of difference instead of just labeling our project as “another ping pong movie”?


Part III: The Kibosh

No, way more disturbing is the newly released trailer for Wes Anderson’s new movie, “The Darjeeling Limited,” which effectively puts the kibosh on our efforts.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox_searchlight/thedarjeelinglimited/trailerb/

If we argue that “Balls of Fury” is a totally different movie than ours, then we have to admit that “The Darjeeling Limited” is exactly the same. Except our movie takes place in China instead of India. And it has ping pong. And there are two brothers instead of three.

But the rest of the thing is exactly the same.

Almost exactly.

Two brothers who embark on a flawed “spiritual journey” in order to—usually reluctantly—reconnect with each other. A road trip in a foreign country where everything goes wrong. In fact we even talked about Owen Wilson as a face for one of the characters. “Like Owen Wilson without being Owen Wilson,” I think I said. “Or Owen Wilson before he became popular,” he said. “Before we knew who he was. Before we got sick of him.”

Even a lot of the dialogue is similar. The aspect ratio and a lot of the compositions we talked about are the same.

But mostly it’s the tone of the thing. Kind of sad and yearning, but funny too. I can’t really explain it—watch the trailer. The spirit of the movie is identical, even though I’ve been finding my relationship with Wes Anderson going increasingly distant, ever since Bottle Rocket.

The problem with Wes Anderson is that he just doesn’t seem to be evolving. He’s the talented kid in class who pisses you off because he is so bright and original but doesn’t live up to his potential. “The Life Aquatic” pisses me off more way more than lazy product like “Balls of Fury” because Anderson is so close to greatness (you can see it, taste it) but he seems to fail every time. And every subsequent movie makes me think he’s a one-trick pony.

I feel that he’s let me down. Personally.

And now so even more than ever.


Part IV: The Front Porch

Recently, Starbucks started a whole campaign called “The Front Porch.” “Life’s Better on the Front Porch” it says. Then there are little wacky quotes of hipsters next to hi-con, graphic compositions of people slurping foofy drinks—“Heard on the Porch:” it says, “Running and Flip-Flops Don’t Fix.” Or: “Some Do Yoga. I Do Hammocks.”

Keep your goddamn hands of my Porch. Hear me?

Just give me the damn coffee…


Part V: Here I Pause So That You May Reflect

Karen says I should feel good about all this because it means my ideas are viable and that there are always more ideas, right?

I choose to take a less optimistic view. It’s not like any ideas were stolen (although that has happened too, in the past). It’s not like any of them are startlingly original either, but they are specific, and the risk doing something specific is that you bone yourself if anybody else is doing a similar project, and you can bet your bottom dollar that someone, somewhere, is doing a similar project as yours.

It’s easy to be eclipsed when you’re skinny, after all.

That’s about it. Thanks for listening. Go Mariners.

Back From the SLC

Well, another visit has come and gone and I’m back in Los Angeles gearing up for what I do best: slaving on motion pictures nobody cares about…

Highlights from the activity-jammed weekend in the idyllic Salt Lake City area:

--Chrysler Sebring—Get in my Sebring, Now, Sucka
--Captain Fireball Bowls Two Consecutive 170+ Games at the Sue Rich. And is Very Noisy About It
--3.2 Beer at the Pub. I Am So Full.
--Gus: Lovable Pet or Alternative Energy Dynamo?
--Mosquito Free Mountain Lakes
--10,000 Calorie Dinner For One: Bacon Cheeseburger, Corn Dog, Onion Rings, Coke, Raspberry Shake in Kamas
--Logan Street Book Fair
--Gus v. Garden Hose
--Startlingly Low Breast Implant Ratio at the Local Non-Starbucks Coffee Shop (Also No One Wearing Clingy Sweatpants That Say “Juicy” On Da Butt). Shocking!
--Incredible Pop-Up Book and Folding Exhibit at the University Museum.
--Black Eye at the Hper
--Harry Potter and the Filler of Big
--Sheesh, Look At How Far My California Dollar Will Go In the Real Estate Market Here. Why Don’t I Just Move To This Place?
--Are You a Member of this Club? Errr. –or— Forget Pay to Play, You Gotsta Pay to Pay
--Logan Street Docco-Thon
--The Pub, Part 2

Grizzly Man (Long)

I used to find excruciating pleasure in watching student films. Usually they were terrible, of course, and technically incompetent, but sometimes they were quite brilliant, and often they were brilliant BECAUSE they were technically incompetent. The editing was a little wrong and the eyelines were off, the lighting was inconsistent, the performances were way too big or way too small. The camera was always in the wrong place, wearing the wrong lens, composing a weird frame. There were a lot of tiresome films about smoking (I did one of these too, I admit, as a lighting exercise), or films where nothing happened, but there were also Michael Bay wannabees who went for sledgehammer tactics right of the gate.

Because there are rules about these things. There is a certain filmic syntax that has developed over the last hundred years—about how to shoot a scene, where to put your camera for all of the coverage so that it cuts together unobtrusively, how to edit without jarring. And often times—watching these student films—things would jar without knowing why. Things are jarring universally—it doesn’t matter if the viewer has some film theory under his belt or not. Something just clicks in the brain—That’s a weird edit… or.. What just happened?… or that actor is facing the wrong way… or this angle bothers me. Some of it is because we’ve developed a shooting and editing style that everyone is used to and when is violated it triggers an uncomfortable response in the viewer. So much of the way we ingest cinema is is learned. But just as much is with us from birth, I think...what the brain will accept and what it won't when it's provided with a string of separate images.

You can’t cut from a wide shot to a close-up if you only come off-axis a little bit. You can punch in directly or come off-axis more than fifteen degrees but nothing in between. Eyelines should be just slightly off camera—too close to the lens and the viewer thinks he’s being looked at and the fourth wall is demolished…too far away from the lens and the viewer feels more like a spectator and less like a participant. Shot-reverse-shot dialogue needs to match the same head size between actors. Etc. Etc.

Student films often violate the rules because they don’t know the rules, or they just aren’t good at the rules. So watching them suddenly makes you conscious of the filmmaking craft—because suddenly you’re conscious of where the camera is and how the editing makes you feel weird and how the music is a wrong. Hollywood does such a great job with mechanics that we’re used to a seamless string of images rolling right on through. It’s natural, it feels natural, everything edits together like butter. We only concentrate on performance and story; there is nothing mechanically weird to disrupt the fictional dream.

Well, not only does Grizzly Man violate the rules of narrative, it violates the more lenient rules of documentary.

Grizzly Man appeared on quite a few top-ten lists and was one of the most successful documentaries of 2005. And yet, I hated almost every single aspect of the movie (spoilers ahead):

--Didn’t like Timothy Treadwell, the Grizzly Man himself. Thought he was a wacked-out surfer dude with problems, who cares…
--Didn’t think that he was interesting enough for the viewer to care. Didn’t think his past as an alcoholic and failed actor made me care. Who cares?
--Didn’t like his wacky, non-contemplative schtick..
--Hey, how about the surplus of weird interviews that went nowhere?
--And the motley group of thoroughly unremarkable and unauthoritative group of interviewed experts? What about these people?
--Weird anecdotes selected form these interviews (friend’s irrelevant story of how Timothy’s Prince Valiant haircut stayed in place, always, even while surfing). Why is this in the movie?
--Herzog’s pretentious and intrusive narration. “The glacier was a metaphor for Treadwell’s tortured soul” etc. Come on Werner! Sheesh!
--Herzog’s intrusive philosophies: “Here I disagree with Treadwell. Life is chaos and murder, and unthinking!” Who asked you?
--Herzog’s presence in a scene where he, filmed from behind, listens to the recording of Treadwell and his girl getting mauled. Herzog tells Treadwell’s ex-girlfriend “that she must never listen to this tape” and that “she must never look at the pictures down at the coroner.” Hi Werner! What are you doing here?
--Curious musical choices.
--Scenes where nothing happens.
--Scenes where Treadwell rants.
--More scenes where Treadwell rants, just like those other scenes, hmmm. Not a lot different, no.
--Odd interview questions and non-sequiturs.
--Intrusive camerawork. Unmotivated zooms.
--An absolutely bizarre handheld interview with the coroner who walks around with the camera in his face, re-enacting the contents of the mauling tape. He stares into the camera, floating around, bug-eyed, gesturing wildly like a first-year drama student. Why is he looking into the camera? Weird! Yikes!
--The fun-loving sequence where timothy plays with wild foxes! Awww! Look, he’s domesticating wild animals while a cheery acoustic guitar plays in the background! Isn’t it cute?
--A general, pervasive, filmmaking clumsiness.
--On and on.

What fascinates me about Grizzly Man, however, is that in the end it’s a rare rare rare bird: A film composed of awful, incompetent component parts that’s fairly magical as a whole.

I can’t get this movie out of my head!

Of course the movie isn’t really about Treadwell in the end. It’s about Herzog, of course. This doesn’t really come as a surprise—Herzog’s self-indulgent nihilism and madness have been on display for decades. I mean, anyone who has Klaus Kinski as your alterego for several movies isn’t really a poster child for mental health. You can read about “Fitzcarraldo” here, when Herzog had a ship hand-carried over the Andes for his movie…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzcarraldo

But why do you have to insert yourself in the movie? I yelled at the screen. ARRRGG!!! Awful! In fact, I kept groaning and saying “awful” over and over. Herzog is awful! Why can’t he just be normal? Terrible, really terrible….Damn you, Werner. You suck. Werner Herzog needs to take some filmmaking classes down at the JC, goddamnit.

But in the end it was great! Treadwell’s footage is spectacular and Werner’s weird Teutonic nihilism offer an nice counterpoint to Treadwell’s naïve and sentimental relationship with nature.

Is Werner smarter than all of us or is he just lucky? I have no idea. All I know is that Grizzly Man took me somewhere else for 2 hours and showed me a world that I’ll lever live in, with remarkable people I’ll never meet, doing remarkable things.

Good job.

Heat the Heat

I never did do a proper wrap-up of Picky's visit last April. I have been remiss, I have.

I shall note the following things:
--We are no longer able to consume beer with an intensity higher than 3% or we will be useless the next day, this will be noted...
--Picky lamented the absolute lack of street tacos and roach coaches in the strictly zoned West Hollywood region, this was noted, repeatedly, around 2AM nightly...
--No basketball was played, for better or worse, this was noted...
--Picky noted multiple establishments on Sunset Strip that liked to "heat the heat," that is, bring out those outdoor seating furnaces and ignite them at 4pm when it dipped below 80 degrees, this is noted...
--Celebrity sighting (sort of): Former Jazz player John Ameche at the Griddle Cafe. Picky was very excited about this and claimed (rightly) that he was the only person in the whole restaurant who could identify him and describe his play style.
-- To-go items wrapped up in bright golden foil in the shapes of animals (rabbit, here) from Gladstones on PCH, this will be noted.
--Sat around and watched SportsCenter on Picky's last night here, instead of going out, this is noted...
--Coffee or beer, this was the existential question of the weekend, here noted....

I shall be returning the favor this weekend, where I will come to the SLC to dominate Picky in bowling, karaoke, and, of course, one on one...

Day 8 -and- Condiment's Polyphasic Sleep Index Week 1 In Review

Day 8:

Not so good. Very sluggish.

Three napping meltdowns in a row:

Nap 3 from yesterday, shut alarm off and slept an additional 90 minutes.
Nap 1 from today, shut alarm off and slept an additional 90 minutes.
Couldn't make it to nap 2 today before going down for another 100 minutes or so.

Totally out of it.

Extremely non-productive on the writing front. Slowing down on the donkeywork as well. Must refocus.

*Sigh*


Week 1 Review:

It could very well be that this sleeping project is not sustainable and that I'll feel more and more sleep deprived as it goes on.

Another, more hopeful, hypothesis: I've only been taking 2 naps recently instead of the inconvenient 3. It seemed like I was fresh and productive and not missing the third nap, but maybe the third nap is more important than I've realized.

I've also upped the coffee intake which is basically robbing Peter to pay Paul. More awakeness now but more sleepiness later. I will try to minimize the coffee intake and take the 3rd nap, in spite of the inconvenience.

Week 2 will be more problematic because I'm working Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and will not be able to take 3 naps (or even two, most probably)

Literary Potboiler

I'm wondering if anyone can recommend some plot-driven fiction that rises above the muck, preferably (but not exclusively) in the mystery/suspense/crime genres. Books that create a nice mood of psychological dread are especially coveted!

Old and new books are both good, all genders, other genres are okay too, really whatever, anything is great as long as it's plot-driven and cool.

Thanks!

Ballhog

Last Sunday I invited a friend to come out and play in our closed Sunday morning basketball game. He isn't a close friend, but he is a good work friend, and I've known him since I moved out here. These days I don't see him much--maybe twice a year--but I just worked with him recently and we always seem to get along. He's genuinely friendly and not arrogant, in other words, totally un-Hollywood.

He's short and round, not fat, and not really possessing a pure basketball body if you know what I mean. I think he played soccer in college, but these days he looks a little dumpy (that's a terrible word but I how else to describe it). But he showed interest in playing with us and even though the games have been crowded lately I invited him to come because he's a good guy and why not, right?

Well, he ended up on the other team, and much to my surprise, was kind of a ballhog. He shot the ball about 75% he was passed to and, if he was open, he shot it 100% of the time, no matter what the distance.

I was kind of shocked. He was out there gunning 3s and taking off-balance shots and generally being kind of a black hole. I couldn't believe it. In the end he started hitting some of those shots, but I was bothered by this breach of basketball etiquette, especially his first time out with another group, my group.

Now he's talking about coming back every week.

We showed up separately so people don't know he's connected to me, necessarily, but they will.

Arg, what to do, what to do?

Condiment's Daily Sleep Index:
Yesterday was a little murderous (I slept through one of my alarms for 90 minutes) and felt out of it, but today, Day 5, has been pretty good. I'm even cutting my naps back to two a day to see if that's more workable. Once I start this movie I don't know how feasible taking 3 naps a day, every 4.5 hours, is going to be.

The Polyphasic Sleep Experiment

Today is day 4 of my new sleep system. The MB heard me preach about it yesterday but I still have a lot to say.

Polyphasic sleep (there’s a good entry at Wikipedia) is sleep that spreads itself out in little naps throughout the day instead of going for one big 8-9 hr hibernation every night. The legend is that DaVinci took 6 30-minute naps spread throughout the day, without ever having a long sleeping period. Buckminster Fuller was an advocate, as was Edison, perhaps, and others.

The idea being that you can substitute a full 90-minute sleep cycle with a 20-minute power nap if you get down into REM sleep immediately.

One also becomes forced to consider the length and duration of his cycles. Sleeping 7 hours will make one feel way more zombiefied than only sleeping 6 (because 7 hours has you waking up in deep stage four sleep, sabotaging you with all of that sleep intertia, whereas coming up after 6 has you emerging right as you come out of light sleep).

A lifetime of naps is pretty hardcore, however, so after considerable reading I decided on a hybrid system:

4 ½ of core sleep nightly (12am to 4:30am)
3 20-minute naps (roughly every 4 ½ hours)

That’s it.

The gf thought it was insane, but now approves, and says I actually seem more rested, and certainly happier.

The Cons:
--This may work but might not be healthy for the body in the long run. There’s probably a reason why the human body defaults to an 8-hour long sleep if left to its own devices without alarm clocks around. I plan to do a fortnightly 9-hour reboot just to give my body some of the missing deep sleep it craves.
--I could very well feel like a zombie from days 3-8 as the body adjusts to this new sleeping methodology. I admit, this morning was hard.
--Normal people think this is strange behavior…and don’t get why I have to retreat for naps all day long.
--A normal job situation makes this difficult unless you can nap at lunchtime every day.

The Pros:
--Over 18 hours of pure productivity every day.
--Daily exercise, cooking, film watching, reading, and blogging because of these extra hours.
--Alcohol consumption down to zero, immediately (it’ll screw up my sleep schedule)
--Coffee consumption down to 16 oz a day, immediately (about a third of what it was)
--Drinking gallons of water throughout the day to flush my body so I can sleep during my naps.
--More time freed up to spend with the GF
--Fewer hours of sleep, but better quality sleep, so feeling more rested.

Anyway, I’m going to post a little footnote everyday to monitor progress. I might need this thing to stay on target. So please indulge Condiment and his Daily Sleep Index if you will….

A random side note: We saw Ratatouille last night and it was AWESOME. Just great. The GF and I were remarking that it might have been the first time both of us had wanted to actually go to the same movie... Pixar and its people just blow my mind. I was reading somewhere (the New Yorker?) that Ratatouille gets better, more believable, more moving performances out of its animated characters than 99% of live-action movies do from their real actors. That’s about right, I think. The best part: a flashback near the end which had me howling with genuine laughter, the gf bawling her head off, and the kids in the audience gaping in wide-eyed wonder. All at the same time. Really great. Highly recommended.

That's Mr. Whore, To You

Following Dr. Write's inspiring lead, I've decided to dedicate July to the resumption of the novel. I took a movie that starts on July 30 so hopefully this'll motivate me to get going.

The problem? I've admitted to myself that my plotting is sucky, with way too many characters and way too much going on, so I've decided to stoop down into Hackworld and use traditional plotting for mysteries and detective novels as a skeleton. I'm not really writing a mystery and I'm certainly not doing a detective novel, so what's the point? Not sure, but it does seem to be solving some elemental problems.

The big issue now is reconciling the new need for intricate plot planning and puzzle-making with the old Forge Ahead No Matter What yawp that is NaNoWriMo. I started forging ahead but I am finding that this is not the best way to form an efficient, tight, satisfying plot. Indeed, I am still trying to undo the freeform damage that my frist draft laid out so messily.

So, it feels like a copout but I've got the index cards on the floor and the How-To books from the library and I'm devoting the first week to actually sorting out the narrative. Instead of doing actual writing.

Is this work? Hm. It certainly takes time.

I mean, I don't think it's unproductive. But it's not really productive, either. It's somewhere in between. Semi-productive?

Really, it feels like an excuse for just not sitting down and doing the work.

Lollygaggin.

Don't Hate the Playa

June was my busiest bloggin month since November 2005 (the heyday of the Front Porch), so there. I will try to continue at this pace through July. I feel more self-actualized than ever. I think bloggin helps me lose weight, too... (not really)

Thanks for listening.

Find the Interesting Human

Lately I've been thinking about starting another documentary project. I have been considering what I would do differently, what I would do the same, what I would do at all. And although it's a messier way to work, I do think it's important to allow the material to shape the work. The opposite of this occurs in news (or Michael Moore documentaries, for good or bad)--they start with a script and the whole point of the filming is to grab sound bites and clips that support the original story. Kind of like narrative work, but with "real" imagery.

Sure, it's a stronger, tighter, more efficient, more structurally sound way of working, but it hardly leaves room for surprises. Look at Capturing the Friedmans, which started out as a doc on NY birthday party clowns, then became something much different.

No, I think the more honest way to work is to not have a definite plan at all. Gradually it'll become clearer what the angles are, who the stories belong to, etc, but initially one should be open to pretty much anything.

Secondly, I've been thinking that the "angle" and "subject matter" of the film are utterly secondary to the characters. Documentary is not so different than narrative cinema; it needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. It needs an inciting incident, continuing conflict, character development, rising action, etc. All the usual stuff. Sure. But the subjects are more important than all of this stuff, in my opinion. Your film could be about shuffleboard, or plate techtonics, or paper manufacture, and if your characters are interesting, then they'll carry the film. It's harder, I think, to make an IDEA carry the movie (though I am looking forward to this Helvetica documentary in limited release now).

So the other most important thing becomes: Find the Interesting Human.

To Recap:

Find the Interesting Human.

-and-

Don't Have a Plan.

So these are the life lessons that my 3-Year Self-Created Documentary Film School have taught me.

Hardly a curriculum to start an academy around, no.

Hardly a good way to go about getting outside funding too, hmmm, how about that? Then again, I suppose this is what everyone goes through when writing a grant, or any proposal, really. There will be a certain amount of bullshitting, and deviating, and later, explaining, lots of explaining to do.

For now, though, we must bullshit.

Behold the Forwarder -or- Share the Wow

I've never really liked all the forwarded stuff that ends up in my in-box. Best case scenario: There are some funny jokes. Worst case scenario: A bunch of behavioral surveys or modern-day equivalents of the chain letter.

In the event that the forwarded material isn't junk it's pretty hit-and-miss as to whether I'll appreciate it or not. Which got me thinking that forwarding has a lot more to do with the Forwarder than the Forwardee.

Sometimes the act of forwarding has nothing to do with the content of the message itself. It's a nonverbal text message.

Hey.
I see you.
How's it going?
I acknowledge that you're alive.
Look, I was thinking about you.

But it also assumes an intimacy on the part of the Forwarder. I understand you, it says. I saw this thing and I thought it was cool and I thought you would think it's cool too so you should consume the Forwarded Material then we can commingle in its coolness.

Look, we can share this cool thing together. And that will make us closer together.

But the thing is rarely cool. This is the problem. So sometimes a schism is created, or a cleft, or whatever. Instead of bridging a gap it splits it open. It announces something different:

Hey, you know nothing about me.
Those things that you think are interesting, hmmm, not so sure about that.
Why are you making me read all this?
We are totally different people.

I say all this because I've become an avid Forwarder over the last 2 months. I have forwarded more in the last 2 months than all of the months that came before it in my life, combined.

Part of it is because I've started my Internet Reading Effort (IRE) and I've increased and widened my reading load tenfold. Every day I am wowed by some Internet article in a field I thought I had no interest in.

And I want to share this Wow. Is that so wrong?

Share the Wow, yes.

But what if they aren't wowed? What if they don't care? What if they are annoyed and curse their spam filters and wonder to themselves "Whay are you making me read all this?"

Well, that's too bad, because I'm on offense here. I'm in charge, and forwarding makes me feel good.

You have no choice in the matter.

I am the Forwarder.

Shortlisted But Ultimately Rejected NBA Development League Team Names

Orlando Bloom
New Jersey Pronouns
Annapolis Anomie
New Orleans Hurricanes
Salt Lake City Spazz
California Kings
New York Vitriol
The Green Bay Fighting Leprechauns
Washington Bullets

Board Games For Married Couples

Monotony
The Game of Wife
Clueless
Hungry Hungry Kiddos
Sorry, But Your Wife Doesn't Love You Anymore
Trivial Lawsuit
Bottle
Jenga, That Bitch Who Keeps Trying to Sleep With Your Husband
Risk

Dunk Report

The problem with getting in shape is all that damn weight. Why can't I be skinny and out of shape? That would be a lot easier. Why is it always that I'm fat and out of shape? So now I'm carrying around 30 more pounds than I should (almost 50 more than I was in high school) and I'm expecting to be able to dunk? Imagine trying to jump with two 25 lb weights hanging off your gut. Not fun, I tell you. And hard to get vertical!

People always say that the beginnings of weight loss usually go pretty quickly and then it tapers off and becomes harder and harder to lose weight past a certain point. My theory, though, is that you're getting lighter and lighter as you are simultaneously getting in better and better shape...so it gets easier and easier to run/swim/dunk/play tennis. The tendency for weight loss to become less and less efficient is canceled out exactly by the increased efficiency of your lightening bod. I see no reason why you couldn't just keep losing weight at the same rate until you evaporated or became a Singularity or something...

In other words, No progress on the court. Playing the worst basketball of my life. Running four days a week and getting better but I'm still a lardass, it's still torturous.

More later.

Rejected Titles of the Forthcoming Horror Movie Midnight Meat Train

Midnight Meat Bus
Midnight Meat Barge
Midnight Meat Tram
Midnight Meat Copter
Midnight Meat Sedan
Midnight Meatro
Midnight Meat the Parents
Please Do Not Bludgeon Me
Ouch!

Myers-Briggs Personality Category or 80s Music Entity?

1. EPMD
2. TSOL
3. UTFO
4. INTJ
5. SNFU
6. KRS1
7. ENFP
8. Ultramagnetic MCs

Personality Category: 4,7
Music Entity: 1,2,3,5,6,8