I'm watching "Miami Vice," Michael Mann's unsettlingly disappointing epic of trashy decadence, misdirected artistry, misspent millions, overwrought complexity and underwrought performances by some of the film world's finest character actors and two almost superstars who have never been so bad. There is greatness in this movie's outline. You can see it in the rough edged visual flavor Mann jams into every shot - how the film shifts from color-corrected black and white to glossy Florida neon, delicately, perfectly. You can feel it in the Miami skyline - Michael Mann loves him his midnight lit-up cityscapes. The lightning striking, the music lifting. There's a subplot that comes out of nowhere and feels like it lasts an hour where Gong Li takes Colin Farrell to Cuba for drinking, dancing, genuine old-fashioned lovemaking. Mann wants to have it both ways - make a hard-edged crime flick sans humor and 80s gloss, yet he also wants to make a modern romance epic, capturing every aspect of modern crime (smugglers and crackheads and club kids dancing to Jay-Z/Linkin Park mash-ups).
It's a rare kind of bad movie. The kind that might be a good movie, someday, when the world shifts a couple inches towards crazy.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Live Blogging Late-period Hitchcock Whilst Buzzed Off Success And Kindhearted Month-Old Weed
(I found this in an untitled document on my computer this morning. I woke up with a headache. It was considerable.)
Live-blogging - watching Marnie on the best day of my life having just smoked weed from what used to be an American Spirit before a bit of battlefield surgery.
26:10 - this is Hitchcock at the beginning of his late dull period - a part of time I have always read about and proclaimed to understand but have now confined myself to - filling up my netflix queue, sitting on my coffee table staring at me.
Marnie freaks out when she drops red ink onto her arm
HItcock is showing alot of attention to make sure that we know where Marnie's attention lies -
Tippi Hedren - is she a bad choice for this role? her performance is either minimalist or awful
you can feel the sexual yearning in this movie - the sense of perversion - at a very earlier point - from the way the boss man stutters over his barely admitted attraction to a pretty girl, how she was the reason for the hire and so forth.
Tippi is coming in to work on a Saturday. The office is empty. Only Sean Connery is going to be there
How much of this movie is the subtle story of a whore? Tippi shrieks at her mom, "How do you think I got all that money?" and her mother slaps her. You can see the line shifted around, shot with a handheld camera against grimy indie surrounds, a girl screaming "How do you think I got all that money" who's a prostitute - same effect, different audience
30:12 - "Does zoology include people, Mr. Rutland?"
The lightning from outside is giving Tippi a fit - Sean makes his move - has she never seen lightning before? a WINDOW breaks in? What melodrama is this? Oh my god, Sean Connery is a sexual fucking GOD - he just kissed Tippi - did he arrange all of this? is he wealthy enough to do everything?
35:07 - after Sean has promised to take Tippi to the races (after learning she likes horse races)
Tippi: Are you a fan of horses?
Sean: Not at all.
Subtly, this is the story of how a boss - not sleazy, rather gentlemanly - seducing his secretary - and is she trying to be seduced?
The red sets her off again - does she just live in a world without colors? does this happen all the time? what monochrome world is she from? she is someone from the black and white, experiencing color? is this Hitchcock?
Is this "Secretary?" have to watch
he's introducing her to his family. What is going on in this movie?
Mr Rutland -
Hitchcock's lavish surroundings.
Old dude: (father of Sean-ly) Best thing to being inside a man or a woman is the outside of the horse!Shouldn't think you'd find old Mark very interesting - he doesn't even ride!
Ratface! And you misquoted!
Sean takes her out to the stables. To kiss her - they go down a long hallway - "Come out next time... see the horses, have a your pick of the teabag"
Marnie (old Tippi) runs to the bathroom, waits until everyone is gone - hides in the stall for many long moments afterwards, and then there is complete silence - and still she stays there, not staring at anything, looking around nervously - finally, she opens the door
old maid lady - thats the maid from "Rope!"
49:00
Sean - You walk, I ride.
Sean - "Is Edgar your real name?"
She's angry because she thought it was just a one-night stand, or that it was just a job - but Sean's known about her for much longer, he wants a relationship
He is trying to make a ho into a housewife.
59:00 - Sean Connery explains the improbably plot permutations that allowed him to follow her and set up the second half of the movie - he replaced all her money, took a random thing she said and investigated it
Tippi - "no beaus, no gentleman callers, nothing" - she's a VIRGIN!
1:01:20 - Sean Connery decides to marry her
The sister-in-law (also the one good actor in the whole movie) - Kisses him on the steps of his house, just after his wedding to another woman, open mouth, tries to make out with him
(That's all.)
(I'm a space cadet)
Live-blogging - watching Marnie on the best day of my life having just smoked weed from what used to be an American Spirit before a bit of battlefield surgery.
26:10 - this is Hitchcock at the beginning of his late dull period - a part of time I have always read about and proclaimed to understand but have now confined myself to - filling up my netflix queue, sitting on my coffee table staring at me.
Marnie freaks out when she drops red ink onto her arm
HItcock is showing alot of attention to make sure that we know where Marnie's attention lies -
Tippi Hedren - is she a bad choice for this role? her performance is either minimalist or awful
you can feel the sexual yearning in this movie - the sense of perversion - at a very earlier point - from the way the boss man stutters over his barely admitted attraction to a pretty girl, how she was the reason for the hire and so forth.
Tippi is coming in to work on a Saturday. The office is empty. Only Sean Connery is going to be there
How much of this movie is the subtle story of a whore? Tippi shrieks at her mom, "How do you think I got all that money?" and her mother slaps her. You can see the line shifted around, shot with a handheld camera against grimy indie surrounds, a girl screaming "How do you think I got all that money" who's a prostitute - same effect, different audience
30:12 - "Does zoology include people, Mr. Rutland?"
The lightning from outside is giving Tippi a fit - Sean makes his move - has she never seen lightning before? a WINDOW breaks in? What melodrama is this? Oh my god, Sean Connery is a sexual fucking GOD - he just kissed Tippi - did he arrange all of this? is he wealthy enough to do everything?
35:07 - after Sean has promised to take Tippi to the races (after learning she likes horse races)
Tippi: Are you a fan of horses?
Sean: Not at all.
Subtly, this is the story of how a boss - not sleazy, rather gentlemanly - seducing his secretary - and is she trying to be seduced?
The red sets her off again - does she just live in a world without colors? does this happen all the time? what monochrome world is she from? she is someone from the black and white, experiencing color? is this Hitchcock?
Is this "Secretary?" have to watch
he's introducing her to his family. What is going on in this movie?
Mr Rutland -
Hitchcock's lavish surroundings.
Old dude: (father of Sean-ly) Best thing to being inside a man or a woman is the outside of the horse!Shouldn't think you'd find old Mark very interesting - he doesn't even ride!
Ratface! And you misquoted!
Sean takes her out to the stables. To kiss her - they go down a long hallway - "Come out next time... see the horses, have a your pick of the teabag"
Marnie (old Tippi) runs to the bathroom, waits until everyone is gone - hides in the stall for many long moments afterwards, and then there is complete silence - and still she stays there, not staring at anything, looking around nervously - finally, she opens the door
old maid lady - thats the maid from "Rope!"
49:00
Sean - You walk, I ride.
Sean - "Is Edgar your real name?"
She's angry because she thought it was just a one-night stand, or that it was just a job - but Sean's known about her for much longer, he wants a relationship
He is trying to make a ho into a housewife.
59:00 - Sean Connery explains the improbably plot permutations that allowed him to follow her and set up the second half of the movie - he replaced all her money, took a random thing she said and investigated it
Tippi - "no beaus, no gentleman callers, nothing" - she's a VIRGIN!
1:01:20 - Sean Connery decides to marry her
The sister-in-law (also the one good actor in the whole movie) - Kisses him on the steps of his house, just after his wedding to another woman, open mouth, tries to make out with him
(That's all.)
(I'm a space cadet)
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Success!
Over 7 hours of sleep.
Of course, I had to sleep through my shift with the start-up company, but the fact remains - Well Rested Forever!
Of course, I had to sleep through my shift with the start-up company, but the fact remains - Well Rested Forever!
Monday, December 10, 2007
Dreaming About Sleep
Last night I did everything right. I stopped drinking caffeine before 5pm. I avoided any strenuous activity that would get my heart rate pumping. I ate a dinner that was large but not so much as to cause heartburn. I watched television on the TV. I did a little bit of work, drank a little bit of warm milk, disappeared into my room at 11 pm, read a few pages from "Against the Day," and went to sleep.
No. I went to bed. And laid there for five minutes. And I knew that I was not going to get very much sleep that night. I had to wake up at 7 to telecommute for my goofy start-up job. The day clicked forward at midnight. I turned onto my stomach. My stomach hurt. I turned onto my back. My everything hurt. I did the stretches my physical therapist told me to do. They didn't help. I watched an episode of Lost for the fifth time, waiting for sleep to claim me. I got just close enough to subconsciousness that I thought I was on the island. Then I pulled back. My mind wouldn't let me sleep.
Insomnia is a bummer. My shrink's big new idea is that more sleep is the key to my mental health. Going to a shrink is great, because I always leave in the state of epiphany, like I have finally figured out my mental state - it's all because of x! And y! And yes, z, too!
It's like with my back problems. My first physical therapist said I had to detense my back muscles. After some exploration, she decided the real problem was that I was tensing my stomach muscles. Then it turned out that my hamstrings were getting in on the action, too. Stretch, she said, stretch. Yoga. Eastern philosophy will save your body from itself. Then it turned out that my posture was all wrong. And I talked too fast, walked too fast, wrote too fast with too few punctuation points.
Recently, I've discovered that my right foot angles out when I walk. It's a rotator cuff problem. My new physical therapist says I can't do any leg exercises - nothing that will tense up the hamstring to kneecap area. No running. And no sit-ups - that will impact the chest muscles. How about that - just when I devote myself fully to developing my body into a Terminator 2 KillFace machine, I'm not allowed to develop my six-pack. Unbelievable, the timing.
Fortuitously, I've still got my good looks.
No. I went to bed. And laid there for five minutes. And I knew that I was not going to get very much sleep that night. I had to wake up at 7 to telecommute for my goofy start-up job. The day clicked forward at midnight. I turned onto my stomach. My stomach hurt. I turned onto my back. My everything hurt. I did the stretches my physical therapist told me to do. They didn't help. I watched an episode of Lost for the fifth time, waiting for sleep to claim me. I got just close enough to subconsciousness that I thought I was on the island. Then I pulled back. My mind wouldn't let me sleep.
Insomnia is a bummer. My shrink's big new idea is that more sleep is the key to my mental health. Going to a shrink is great, because I always leave in the state of epiphany, like I have finally figured out my mental state - it's all because of x! And y! And yes, z, too!
It's like with my back problems. My first physical therapist said I had to detense my back muscles. After some exploration, she decided the real problem was that I was tensing my stomach muscles. Then it turned out that my hamstrings were getting in on the action, too. Stretch, she said, stretch. Yoga. Eastern philosophy will save your body from itself. Then it turned out that my posture was all wrong. And I talked too fast, walked too fast, wrote too fast with too few punctuation points.
Recently, I've discovered that my right foot angles out when I walk. It's a rotator cuff problem. My new physical therapist says I can't do any leg exercises - nothing that will tense up the hamstring to kneecap area. No running. And no sit-ups - that will impact the chest muscles. How about that - just when I devote myself fully to developing my body into a Terminator 2 KillFace machine, I'm not allowed to develop my six-pack. Unbelievable, the timing.
Fortuitously, I've still got my good looks.
Friday, December 7, 2007
"The Key To Reserva"
The plot: Martin Scorcese takes three fragmented pages from an unfilmed Hitchcock script. The script is utter nonsense by the name of "The Key To Reserva" that Scorcese, imitating and honoring and becoming Hitchcock, shoots so smooth it's like the 60s never happened. Almost completely silent. Definitely completely perfect.
This thing is more exciting than almost any thriller made this year. It conjures a complete world out of thin air, in a single scene, with the bare minimum of dialogue. We understand everything we need about the characters, all at once. Watching this, and loving this, made me think of another short film this year that was directed for the internet by another great director - "Hotel Chevalier", which is sheer cinematic divinity. It's appropriate that I downloaded it from iTunes, since I treated it like a song that I love enough to pay for it and then play over and over again (on my computer, on my iPod, in my dreams) until I'm sick of it. Wouldn't this be a strange and wonderful way for directors who devote years to ever-expanding visions and budgets to just chill out and make a good old-fashioned movie. Don't you wish Sam Raimi could have cranked out a twenty-minute gorefest in between Spiderman 2 and 3? Or that Christopher Nolan could make a twisty little ten-minute noir?
Stop complaining that that would ruin movies. The short film deserves to become its own genuine popular art - all the early films were short, after all. The only reason movies turned into feature films is that DW Griffith made "The Birth of a Nation." People (adults) (lame ones) complain about short attention spans, but isn't this just a return to the pre-classical days?
Because great minds think alike - more likely because my life and philosophy have been shaped by his writing - David Thomson's latest entry is right on my wavelength:
Hotel Chevalier didn't mean very much, in a narrative sense, but it was riveting, and I wonder if there isn't a future for movie (as opposed to movies) as just arresting, enigmatic scenes or conversations - bits and pieces - on the internet.
I love David Thomson. I have a secret dream to write about television the way that David Thomson writes about movies. (I saw Thomson when he came to the Stanford bookstore to speak about his latest book, "Nicole Kidman," a beautiful and weird love letter to Kidman, actresses, the cinema, all life that is never quite lived. I was the only student there. I was one of only five people, and two of them were bookstore employees. He spoke. He signed my book.) In my secret dream, he finds me in a crowded theater after an awards ceremony that I didn't win. I'm sitting at my table, trying to look proud of just being nominated, but not at all, really. He walks up to me, and in his light british accent that sounds just a bit like Peter Ustinov, he says, "I'm proud of you, son." Actually, maybe that's my secret dream about my father, I forget.
Another hypothesis - this burgeoning boom in short films is the artistic leap forward from youtube videos - which have to be short, because of lack of money and lack of RAM, just like the old Noir films had to be shadowy to hide the missing walls of the set. "Detour" is only about an hour, took a week to shoot, and features one or two of the most mesmerizing scenes in cinema.
And even though this is a commercial, I dare you to find more thrilling, vital, exhultant, wild and yet controlled, kinetic, utterly useless and just perfectly fucking SMOOTH filmmaking this year:
Michael Mann is a genius.
This thing is more exciting than almost any thriller made this year. It conjures a complete world out of thin air, in a single scene, with the bare minimum of dialogue. We understand everything we need about the characters, all at once. Watching this, and loving this, made me think of another short film this year that was directed for the internet by another great director - "Hotel Chevalier", which is sheer cinematic divinity. It's appropriate that I downloaded it from iTunes, since I treated it like a song that I love enough to pay for it and then play over and over again (on my computer, on my iPod, in my dreams) until I'm sick of it. Wouldn't this be a strange and wonderful way for directors who devote years to ever-expanding visions and budgets to just chill out and make a good old-fashioned movie. Don't you wish Sam Raimi could have cranked out a twenty-minute gorefest in between Spiderman 2 and 3? Or that Christopher Nolan could make a twisty little ten-minute noir?
Stop complaining that that would ruin movies. The short film deserves to become its own genuine popular art - all the early films were short, after all. The only reason movies turned into feature films is that DW Griffith made "The Birth of a Nation." People (adults) (lame ones) complain about short attention spans, but isn't this just a return to the pre-classical days?
Because great minds think alike - more likely because my life and philosophy have been shaped by his writing - David Thomson's latest entry is right on my wavelength:
Hotel Chevalier didn't mean very much, in a narrative sense, but it was riveting, and I wonder if there isn't a future for movie (as opposed to movies) as just arresting, enigmatic scenes or conversations - bits and pieces - on the internet.
I love David Thomson. I have a secret dream to write about television the way that David Thomson writes about movies. (I saw Thomson when he came to the Stanford bookstore to speak about his latest book, "Nicole Kidman," a beautiful and weird love letter to Kidman, actresses, the cinema, all life that is never quite lived. I was the only student there. I was one of only five people, and two of them were bookstore employees. He spoke. He signed my book.) In my secret dream, he finds me in a crowded theater after an awards ceremony that I didn't win. I'm sitting at my table, trying to look proud of just being nominated, but not at all, really. He walks up to me, and in his light british accent that sounds just a bit like Peter Ustinov, he says, "I'm proud of you, son." Actually, maybe that's my secret dream about my father, I forget.
Another hypothesis - this burgeoning boom in short films is the artistic leap forward from youtube videos - which have to be short, because of lack of money and lack of RAM, just like the old Noir films had to be shadowy to hide the missing walls of the set. "Detour" is only about an hour, took a week to shoot, and features one or two of the most mesmerizing scenes in cinema.
And even though this is a commercial, I dare you to find more thrilling, vital, exhultant, wild and yet controlled, kinetic, utterly useless and just perfectly fucking SMOOTH filmmaking this year:
Michael Mann is a genius.
Why Isn't Lost Back Yet?
I can only watch Jack and Locke's epic climactic halfway-point showdown and hear drunken bearded future-Jack yell at cleanfaced future Kate, like a soul cursed to hell yelling at his mournful guardian angel, "We have to go back, Kate! We have to go back!" for so much longer before I implode.
I don't think the question has been properly asked yet - is this the best scene in TV history? The twist, the mystery, the broken dreams, the way in which the scene seems to invalidate the entire purpose of the show to this date, and then, as the music rises, an airplane, the defining symbol of our terror-stricken age, rises behind Jack, mocking him, inviting him. It's like the island is calling to Jack, and to us, "Come back to me. You know you want to." I do. I do.
I don't think the question has been properly asked yet - is this the best scene in TV history? The twist, the mystery, the broken dreams, the way in which the scene seems to invalidate the entire purpose of the show to this date, and then, as the music rises, an airplane, the defining symbol of our terror-stricken age, rises behind Jack, mocking him, inviting him. It's like the island is calling to Jack, and to us, "Come back to me. You know you want to." I do. I do.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Why Isn't "Chuck" Better?
"Chuck" ought to be a particular kind of amazing show. Dynamite premise - adorably nerdy worker bee at Best Buy-ish electronics store gets all the secrets of the CIA downloaded into his brain. Good bits of multigenre fusion - "James Bond" meets "The Apartment," light workplace comedy mashed together with action drama. The protagonist is a post-Seth Cohen beta hero; the love interest is a kung-fu femme fatale bombshell out of Diaz-era "Charlie's Angels." Adam Baldwin is involved, and everything Adam Baldwin says or does is a gold mine. It's a show by Josh Schwartz, creator of "The O.C." and "Gossip Girl," an expert in high-quality post-Housewives guilty pleasure.
And yet, week after perilous week, "Chuck" just lies there. It's a show full of tiny pleasures - bit players like Captain Awesome, hot chick karate, Adam Baldwin Adam Baldwin - and that is why I keep watching, waiting for the whole enterprise to click together.
So far, it hasn't. The stars have no real chemistry - Zachary Levi hits the right chord of amiable heroism, but Yvonne Strahovski is blanker than blank. That wouldn't be so bad if so much of the show didn't focus on her inner emotional torture - it's obvious to everyone (literally everyone) that she loves Chuck, but she can't admit it to herself, her job gets in the way, blah blah blah. It's the old Mischa Barton complex - the most complex character is played by the least talented performer. It'd be funnier if she were more cutthroat spy - episode 4's rival feminagent, played by Mini Anden, hit all the right flirty-twisty Emma Peel notes much better than Strahovski.
The problems with their romance became obvious when Rachel Bilson guest-starred. Bilson, clearly doing a favor for her old showrunner Schwartz, played her patented Summer Roberts blend of fast-talking neurosis and fiery passive aggression, and struck instant sparks with Levi. Here's the kind of romance Chuck SHOULD be having - one that would really bring the whole Clark Kent/Superman dualism of the series home.
But no. Instead, we get Chuck's clueless best friend, Morgan, a character clearly intended for comic relief who fails at nearly every turn. Joshua Gomez is a gifted actor, but the producers, in trying to set up a best-friend character, pushed him way too far over the edge - his worship of Chuck approaches that of a zealot consumed with Soviet era cult of personality. For much of the first season so far, the guy's had zero inner life besides wondering where Chuck is and waiting for Chuck to find him. This is a modern bromance of the most pathetically jilted sort - you want to yell, "Just kiss him already!"
Consider the climactic scene of "Chuck versus the Sandworm," which involve one of the series' principal characters racing into a party to find another principal character of the series, whose face shifts from mournful to exhilirated upon realizing they have been found by the only person they care about. This is an exact repeat of the closing scene from the New Year's episode from Season 1 of "The OC," right down to the slow motion and the song ("Dice" by Finley Quaye and William Orbit - one of those songs that defined 2004, for a certain type of person at a certain time of their life whose only experience with modern music came from soundtracks for "The OC.") The difference being that the earlier scene culminates in Ryan telling Marissa he loves her, this new scene culminates in Chuck telling Morgan that he should be the head of the two-person costume they wear every year, shaped like a sandworm from Dune, which is shaped like a gigantic sci-fi cock.
The show's taken Morgan in a good direction by pairing him up with Anna Wu, who's just the right blend of bad bi-curious asian girl and goth-sweet coworker to make the romance believable. "Chuck" got picked up for a full season - it's reasonable to think, with time off for more wages, the writers will bounce back with more goodness like that. Post-"Lost," post-"Sopranos," it's easy to forget that plenty of good shows need some time to find their footing.
Or so I keep telling myself. The main overriding problem with the show, so far, is how oddly repetitive the spy plotlines have been. The narrative arc of each show is really not so dissimilar from old actioners like "The A-Team" or "Charlie's Angels" - Chuck will flash on someone who just so happens to be an international arms smuggler/counterfeiter/drug dealer/superspy; the CIA flips out and sends him, the girl, and Adam Fucking Baldwin in; the girl and Adam Fucking Baldwin get into trouble and Chuck awkwardly and sweetly saves the day. Why can't Chuck ever do something, you know, INTERESTING with his gigantic backlog of knowledge? Get back at a business rival, say, or get himself free cable?
Come on, Chuck! Be better!
And yet, week after perilous week, "Chuck" just lies there. It's a show full of tiny pleasures - bit players like Captain Awesome, hot chick karate, Adam Baldwin Adam Baldwin - and that is why I keep watching, waiting for the whole enterprise to click together.
So far, it hasn't. The stars have no real chemistry - Zachary Levi hits the right chord of amiable heroism, but Yvonne Strahovski is blanker than blank. That wouldn't be so bad if so much of the show didn't focus on her inner emotional torture - it's obvious to everyone (literally everyone) that she loves Chuck, but she can't admit it to herself, her job gets in the way, blah blah blah. It's the old Mischa Barton complex - the most complex character is played by the least talented performer. It'd be funnier if she were more cutthroat spy - episode 4's rival feminagent, played by Mini Anden, hit all the right flirty-twisty Emma Peel notes much better than Strahovski.
The problems with their romance became obvious when Rachel Bilson guest-starred. Bilson, clearly doing a favor for her old showrunner Schwartz, played her patented Summer Roberts blend of fast-talking neurosis and fiery passive aggression, and struck instant sparks with Levi. Here's the kind of romance Chuck SHOULD be having - one that would really bring the whole Clark Kent/Superman dualism of the series home.
But no. Instead, we get Chuck's clueless best friend, Morgan, a character clearly intended for comic relief who fails at nearly every turn. Joshua Gomez is a gifted actor, but the producers, in trying to set up a best-friend character, pushed him way too far over the edge - his worship of Chuck approaches that of a zealot consumed with Soviet era cult of personality. For much of the first season so far, the guy's had zero inner life besides wondering where Chuck is and waiting for Chuck to find him. This is a modern bromance of the most pathetically jilted sort - you want to yell, "Just kiss him already!"
Consider the climactic scene of "Chuck versus the Sandworm," which involve one of the series' principal characters racing into a party to find another principal character of the series, whose face shifts from mournful to exhilirated upon realizing they have been found by the only person they care about. This is an exact repeat of the closing scene from the New Year's episode from Season 1 of "The OC," right down to the slow motion and the song ("Dice" by Finley Quaye and William Orbit - one of those songs that defined 2004, for a certain type of person at a certain time of their life whose only experience with modern music came from soundtracks for "The OC.") The difference being that the earlier scene culminates in Ryan telling Marissa he loves her, this new scene culminates in Chuck telling Morgan that he should be the head of the two-person costume they wear every year, shaped like a sandworm from Dune, which is shaped like a gigantic sci-fi cock.
The show's taken Morgan in a good direction by pairing him up with Anna Wu, who's just the right blend of bad bi-curious asian girl and goth-sweet coworker to make the romance believable. "Chuck" got picked up for a full season - it's reasonable to think, with time off for more wages, the writers will bounce back with more goodness like that. Post-"Lost," post-"Sopranos," it's easy to forget that plenty of good shows need some time to find their footing.
Or so I keep telling myself. The main overriding problem with the show, so far, is how oddly repetitive the spy plotlines have been. The narrative arc of each show is really not so dissimilar from old actioners like "The A-Team" or "Charlie's Angels" - Chuck will flash on someone who just so happens to be an international arms smuggler/counterfeiter/drug dealer/superspy; the CIA flips out and sends him, the girl, and Adam Fucking Baldwin in; the girl and Adam Fucking Baldwin get into trouble and Chuck awkwardly and sweetly saves the day. Why can't Chuck ever do something, you know, INTERESTING with his gigantic backlog of knowledge? Get back at a business rival, say, or get himself free cable?
Come on, Chuck! Be better!
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Novel Writing: The Halfway Halt; or, Alexander in Valley Forge
National Novel Writing Month is over - the buzz is gone, a bit, I'll admit. It doesn't help that I took four days off writing to go back to my alma mater, where I watched a performance of a show that I helped write, and received accolades and cheers from everyone I know and everyone I don't know. Nor does it help that I spent all four of those days in a perpetual spin cycle, lack of sleep, excessive sake bombs, excessive drama, excess of excess. My ex had to text me on Sunday to remind me that I called her the C word. Which is kind of embarrassing. I think every man secretly wants to call a woman that he hates the C word at least once in his life - in that secret part of our mind that lacks conscience and social grace - and I did it, and I don't even remember it. I also lost my jacket. My three piece suit is ruined.
And I didn't do any writing. Getting back in the saddle is hard - even harder, because I'm at the halfway point and I'm experiencing serious doubts about my ability to close the deal on this novel.
This is an all-encompassing motif of my life right now - reaching a halfway point and just stopping:
-After promising myself and my devoted facebook stalkers that I would finish Thomas Pynchon's "Against the Day" before 2008, I have reached just past page 500 (out of just over a thousand), and now can't bring myself to read it. I've carried that book in Hawaii, through my senior year, to Chicago, to Moscow, to San Francisco. I was reading it last Christmas - can I finish it before this one?
-My second or third week at McSweeney's I came up with the idea that I would write an epic treatise on Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series, which he wrote over the course of 30 years and which runs throughout his entire career - he brings in characters and themes from other books, he writes himself in, all that jazz. I sped through books 1-3, reading every moment I had - on the bus, at home with the TV on silent, in cafes. I read with an analytical mind - I haven't done that in a long time, and I never was so emotionally invested in it (if you pick up any of my old books from high school, you'll find me underlining random words just for the sake of underlining, because it seems like the right good honest thing to do). I sent in a proposal to the Believer editors - this on the trail of my earlier proposal, shot down with love, to interview David Thomson. They didn't want it. I got a form email, telling me with cheer to "send more stuff whenever it strikes ya."
It was the "ya" that did it to me. Although cursed with anxieties that my shrink and I are only beginning to understand, I am also blessed with an advanced sense of pride. I demand respect. I demand to be referred to as a "you," except by my friends, and then only in conversation, not email talk. (Watch the Believer editors find this blog and fire me.) So I stopped reading - right in the middle of the 4th book, with the three longest books still to come. I couldn't finish. I couldn't close. I began to see what a failure Stephen King was, what a failure "The Dark Tower" was, what a failure as a human being I would be if I wrote an amazing essay that elevated "The Dark Tower" to the status of American myth. I would be like Truffaut and Hitchcock - taking a wonderful piece of low art and calling it high art. I should read only Cormac McCarthy. I should cry tears of blood over "American Pastoral."
-At this point in my internship, I know everyone, I've done work for everyone, good work, I've broken through the initial glass ceiling. And now I can't find it in me to go to work. I need a real job, I say. I need real money.
I blame winter.
And I didn't do any writing. Getting back in the saddle is hard - even harder, because I'm at the halfway point and I'm experiencing serious doubts about my ability to close the deal on this novel.
This is an all-encompassing motif of my life right now - reaching a halfway point and just stopping:
-After promising myself and my devoted facebook stalkers that I would finish Thomas Pynchon's "Against the Day" before 2008, I have reached just past page 500 (out of just over a thousand), and now can't bring myself to read it. I've carried that book in Hawaii, through my senior year, to Chicago, to Moscow, to San Francisco. I was reading it last Christmas - can I finish it before this one?
-My second or third week at McSweeney's I came up with the idea that I would write an epic treatise on Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series, which he wrote over the course of 30 years and which runs throughout his entire career - he brings in characters and themes from other books, he writes himself in, all that jazz. I sped through books 1-3, reading every moment I had - on the bus, at home with the TV on silent, in cafes. I read with an analytical mind - I haven't done that in a long time, and I never was so emotionally invested in it (if you pick up any of my old books from high school, you'll find me underlining random words just for the sake of underlining, because it seems like the right good honest thing to do). I sent in a proposal to the Believer editors - this on the trail of my earlier proposal, shot down with love, to interview David Thomson. They didn't want it. I got a form email, telling me with cheer to "send more stuff whenever it strikes ya."
It was the "ya" that did it to me. Although cursed with anxieties that my shrink and I are only beginning to understand, I am also blessed with an advanced sense of pride. I demand respect. I demand to be referred to as a "you," except by my friends, and then only in conversation, not email talk. (Watch the Believer editors find this blog and fire me.) So I stopped reading - right in the middle of the 4th book, with the three longest books still to come. I couldn't finish. I couldn't close. I began to see what a failure Stephen King was, what a failure "The Dark Tower" was, what a failure as a human being I would be if I wrote an amazing essay that elevated "The Dark Tower" to the status of American myth. I would be like Truffaut and Hitchcock - taking a wonderful piece of low art and calling it high art. I should read only Cormac McCarthy. I should cry tears of blood over "American Pastoral."
-At this point in my internship, I know everyone, I've done work for everyone, good work, I've broken through the initial glass ceiling. And now I can't find it in me to go to work. I need a real job, I say. I need real money.
I blame winter.
Shawshank Redemption
You remember that period in the mid to late 90s when TBS and TNT played "The Shawshank Redemption" at least five times a week at key times on Saturday afternoon or school nights, the perfect time when you were listlessly grooving down the channels, not really looking for anything, one step away from picking up a book or switching to Mario 64 or all the other weird things we used to do before the internet consumed our free time - BOOM, you hit just as the evil head guard holds Andy Dufresne off the roof, or when Red and the boys make Andy a chess set, or even late in the movie, and you're taken away?
I miss that. I miss the idea that TV could make me love a movie.
I miss that. I miss the idea that TV could make me love a movie.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Run On
Things I've done since the end of the worst relationship ever - for me, for anyone I know, for the entire planet:
1) Bought a membership at 24 Hour Fitness. Expensive. More than I could afford even if I had a job with a salary. I ease my conscience by going 5 or 6 times a week. I lift until the muscles in my left arm shake, like the shivery tremors that cascaded down the arms of the old priest who would substitute teach at my high school, a serious looking man, perpetually embarrassed by his age. I run in front of the TV set that plays CNN. I watch Kanye West's mom die.
2) Bought a Netflix membership. Watched French New Wave. Watched the two Terrence Malick movies I hadn't seen yet - "Badlands" and "Days of Heaven," both about romance - human love, and Malick's passionate zeal for the weird beautiful living world. Watched "Vertigo."
3) Bought an eighth. Spent Thanksgiving weekend in a haze of glitter weed. Discovered that I could write while stoned.
4) Started a novel. Wrote almost 200 pages. Can't figure out what to do next. Have barely touched it in two days.
5) Started a beard, concurrent to the novel. November is National Novel Writing Month. November is No Shave November. I haven't cut my hair or shaved my face in weeks.
6) Gained a few pounds. At one point last Winter or Spring - in the bad time, the weird depressive times - I was at 159. Not even Manorexic. Skinful. Now, zipped up to a healthy 175. Eating lots of carrots and apples.
7) Stayed in on two consecutive Saturdays. Watched movies. Wrote my novel. Stared out my window at San Francisco, pondering the weekend from the outside, wondering if I would ever feel more a part of the human race, if anyone did.
8) Met a random girl on a random night in SF. Turned out poorly for several reasons.
9) Took part in a Stanford study on back pain. Popping pills thrice a day. Between the back pain and the mental pain, I feel like a real adult.
10) Pined after the cute Asian girl law student who drinks coffee and studies at the cafe just down the street from McSweeney's. I exchanged furtive glances with the air around her waiting for her to notice me. Every time I walk into the cafe in the morning, I always say, "If Cute Asian Girl Law Student is in here today, then this time, I'm going to ask her out." And Every Time, she's in there. Awkward, awkward, awkward, ragged claws scurvy maws.
11) Tomorrow I'm going to walk into a barber and ask for a shave and a haircut. I don't want to do this for many reason. I have had the beard (or stubble, or scruff) for as long as I've been writing the novel. Samson and Delilah, you know? And I've just gotten used to it. Do I want to look in the mirror and see myself three years younger? But can I deal with the pretension of having a beard? Why is it that no choice in life is ever remotely clear cut? Why do I feel the presence, a few neutrino pathways to the right, of an alternate universe where everything is different?
12) I finally transferred a bunch of songs from my old computer onto my new one, and when I did that I found a playlist that I constructed as a soundtrack for the movie I was making with my old high school friends the summer of 2005, when I was working in Los Angeles during the week and then driving down to San Diego on weekends to make the movie. And when I drove back and forth I would listen to the soundtrack, and such beautiful images would appear in my mind's eye. When I listened to the theme music from "Last of the Mohicans" I could see the finale of my own movie with crystal clarity, as if touched by some mad demon with an interest in amateur filmmaking.
For the first time in a long time - since Berlin, almost two years ago - I get that feeling with music, again. And that feels good. Content.
1) Bought a membership at 24 Hour Fitness. Expensive. More than I could afford even if I had a job with a salary. I ease my conscience by going 5 or 6 times a week. I lift until the muscles in my left arm shake, like the shivery tremors that cascaded down the arms of the old priest who would substitute teach at my high school, a serious looking man, perpetually embarrassed by his age. I run in front of the TV set that plays CNN. I watch Kanye West's mom die.
2) Bought a Netflix membership. Watched French New Wave. Watched the two Terrence Malick movies I hadn't seen yet - "Badlands" and "Days of Heaven," both about romance - human love, and Malick's passionate zeal for the weird beautiful living world. Watched "Vertigo."
3) Bought an eighth. Spent Thanksgiving weekend in a haze of glitter weed. Discovered that I could write while stoned.
4) Started a novel. Wrote almost 200 pages. Can't figure out what to do next. Have barely touched it in two days.
5) Started a beard, concurrent to the novel. November is National Novel Writing Month. November is No Shave November. I haven't cut my hair or shaved my face in weeks.
6) Gained a few pounds. At one point last Winter or Spring - in the bad time, the weird depressive times - I was at 159. Not even Manorexic. Skinful. Now, zipped up to a healthy 175. Eating lots of carrots and apples.
7) Stayed in on two consecutive Saturdays. Watched movies. Wrote my novel. Stared out my window at San Francisco, pondering the weekend from the outside, wondering if I would ever feel more a part of the human race, if anyone did.
8) Met a random girl on a random night in SF. Turned out poorly for several reasons.
9) Took part in a Stanford study on back pain. Popping pills thrice a day. Between the back pain and the mental pain, I feel like a real adult.
10) Pined after the cute Asian girl law student who drinks coffee and studies at the cafe just down the street from McSweeney's. I exchanged furtive glances with the air around her waiting for her to notice me. Every time I walk into the cafe in the morning, I always say, "If Cute Asian Girl Law Student is in here today, then this time, I'm going to ask her out." And Every Time, she's in there. Awkward, awkward, awkward, ragged claws scurvy maws.
11) Tomorrow I'm going to walk into a barber and ask for a shave and a haircut. I don't want to do this for many reason. I have had the beard (or stubble, or scruff) for as long as I've been writing the novel. Samson and Delilah, you know? And I've just gotten used to it. Do I want to look in the mirror and see myself three years younger? But can I deal with the pretension of having a beard? Why is it that no choice in life is ever remotely clear cut? Why do I feel the presence, a few neutrino pathways to the right, of an alternate universe where everything is different?
12) I finally transferred a bunch of songs from my old computer onto my new one, and when I did that I found a playlist that I constructed as a soundtrack for the movie I was making with my old high school friends the summer of 2005, when I was working in Los Angeles during the week and then driving down to San Diego on weekends to make the movie. And when I drove back and forth I would listen to the soundtrack, and such beautiful images would appear in my mind's eye. When I listened to the theme music from "Last of the Mohicans" I could see the finale of my own movie with crystal clarity, as if touched by some mad demon with an interest in amateur filmmaking.
For the first time in a long time - since Berlin, almost two years ago - I get that feeling with music, again. And that feels good. Content.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Wes Anderson
One of my writing teachers had an interesting theory about Hemingway. We had been reading "The Sun Also Rises," which is still the only Hemingway I've read besides "The Snows of Kilamanjaro." It was a senior-year lit class, affectionately called the Novel Salon. Each week, we take a different book, read it, dissect it, ponder why it works and why it doesn't. It wasn't literary analysis. We were all writers, or wanted to be. The prideful spite-fink in me felt no end of aroused dignity, considering that I was the only writer in class recognizable to the local public at large. Celebrity pride, senior year pre-graduation pride, starting-a-relationship pride - it was an interesting time.
Anyways, the teacher's theory went thusly - "The Sun Also Rises" was the breakthrough for the Hemingway form, stripped of excess emotion, descriptive of only the barest actions, deadpan dialogue that ran on until you forgot who was talking to who and wondered if it even mattered. It's the Hemingway that everyone has read - true connoisseurs sample the better chapters of "A Moveable Feast" (the best ones involve Fitzgerald), when you reach a certain age you have to read "The Old Man and the Sea." And it is told entirely from the perspective of Jake Barnes, with his old war wound that left him impotent, maybe even castrated. When you understand that about Jake, and you see how it affects his worldview - to Hemingway, and to Barnes, to be asexual is to be neutral, disinterested, vague - then Hemingway's style makes sense. A first-person narrator who is distant from his own life is unbearably sad, like the book itself.
But after "The Sun Also Rises" (according to the teacher), Hemingway wrote predominantly in the third person, and although his writing was still good, there was something essentially wrong with it. The notion of a single individual cut off from the world is sad; the notion that everyone is like that, every character, the godlike omniscient narrator, is just a little bit lazy, and depressive, and nihilistic.
I thought of the teacher's theory last night, as I fell asleep to "The Royal Tenenbaums," I movie which I passionately loved when I first saw it in theaters. For three years after, Wes Anderson struck me as a genuine film artist. When I heard that his next movie was going to be a high-seas adventure involving claymation and Bill Murray, my head exploded. But then "The Life Aquatic" came out. There is much brilliance in the movie, but there is something missing, too. It is a film lovers' candy land, the kind of adventure we all dreamed of having. But so much of the movie is adrift. The final scenes are moving, and yet, so few of the characters in the film have any real emotional arc. The middle hour is little more than a bunch of people hanging out in beautiful sets. And the sets are beautiful. But it's an empty beauty.
It steadily began to dawn on everyone else that "Life Aquatic" was not the genius film we were expecting, and so, by the time "The Darjeeling Limited" arrived in theaters, Anderson-bashing was a genuine pastime.
I haven't seen "Darjeeling," though I want to. But having reviewed "Royal Tenenbaums," I think I've finally figured out the problem with "Life Aquatic." There are a bunch of great actors in "Tenenbaums," but the most underrated has to be Alec Baldwin, in what might be his best performance, his gravel voice combining the gravitas of his earlier glamour-boy roles with the light whimsy of his current comedic second act. It's Baldwin who directs us, like a good storyteller or a wise old medicine man or a filmmaker, in the film's opening scenes, which cut across decades of Tenenbaum life, introducing us to all the characters at a whip-quick pace that could have come out of Pynchon or Roald Dahl.
There is no Baldwin voice in "Life Aquatic" - and that is a problem. Like the Tenenbaum children, Steve Zissou is a genius past his prime, a great talent descended into mediocrity. The narrator in "Tenenbaums" shows us that great talent; in "Life Aquatic," we have to take it on faith, and just to make sure, Anderson keeps making other characters say, "Steve is great, we love Steve, we'd do anything for him." Brilliant as Bill Murray can be, he lets his characters find him, and not the other way around - and he can never (to me) summon up the authority of someone who is supposed to be such a great leader of men. (He works better in "Lost in Translation" and "Broken Flowers" with his lifelong loners.)
"Royal Tenenbaums" feels much closer because of the narration - first-person cinema. We can understand the heavily stylized atmosphere - this is a fairy tale, a book gotten from a library, a retelling of an old story. "Life Aquatic" feels much more removed - third-person cinema. It feels like it should be more realistic, not more kitschy.
That's my theory anyways.
"Hotel Chevalier" rocks.
Anyways, the teacher's theory went thusly - "The Sun Also Rises" was the breakthrough for the Hemingway form, stripped of excess emotion, descriptive of only the barest actions, deadpan dialogue that ran on until you forgot who was talking to who and wondered if it even mattered. It's the Hemingway that everyone has read - true connoisseurs sample the better chapters of "A Moveable Feast" (the best ones involve Fitzgerald), when you reach a certain age you have to read "The Old Man and the Sea." And it is told entirely from the perspective of Jake Barnes, with his old war wound that left him impotent, maybe even castrated. When you understand that about Jake, and you see how it affects his worldview - to Hemingway, and to Barnes, to be asexual is to be neutral, disinterested, vague - then Hemingway's style makes sense. A first-person narrator who is distant from his own life is unbearably sad, like the book itself.
But after "The Sun Also Rises" (according to the teacher), Hemingway wrote predominantly in the third person, and although his writing was still good, there was something essentially wrong with it. The notion of a single individual cut off from the world is sad; the notion that everyone is like that, every character, the godlike omniscient narrator, is just a little bit lazy, and depressive, and nihilistic.
I thought of the teacher's theory last night, as I fell asleep to "The Royal Tenenbaums," I movie which I passionately loved when I first saw it in theaters. For three years after, Wes Anderson struck me as a genuine film artist. When I heard that his next movie was going to be a high-seas adventure involving claymation and Bill Murray, my head exploded. But then "The Life Aquatic" came out. There is much brilliance in the movie, but there is something missing, too. It is a film lovers' candy land, the kind of adventure we all dreamed of having. But so much of the movie is adrift. The final scenes are moving, and yet, so few of the characters in the film have any real emotional arc. The middle hour is little more than a bunch of people hanging out in beautiful sets. And the sets are beautiful. But it's an empty beauty.
It steadily began to dawn on everyone else that "Life Aquatic" was not the genius film we were expecting, and so, by the time "The Darjeeling Limited" arrived in theaters, Anderson-bashing was a genuine pastime.
I haven't seen "Darjeeling," though I want to. But having reviewed "Royal Tenenbaums," I think I've finally figured out the problem with "Life Aquatic." There are a bunch of great actors in "Tenenbaums," but the most underrated has to be Alec Baldwin, in what might be his best performance, his gravel voice combining the gravitas of his earlier glamour-boy roles with the light whimsy of his current comedic second act. It's Baldwin who directs us, like a good storyteller or a wise old medicine man or a filmmaker, in the film's opening scenes, which cut across decades of Tenenbaum life, introducing us to all the characters at a whip-quick pace that could have come out of Pynchon or Roald Dahl.
There is no Baldwin voice in "Life Aquatic" - and that is a problem. Like the Tenenbaum children, Steve Zissou is a genius past his prime, a great talent descended into mediocrity. The narrator in "Tenenbaums" shows us that great talent; in "Life Aquatic," we have to take it on faith, and just to make sure, Anderson keeps making other characters say, "Steve is great, we love Steve, we'd do anything for him." Brilliant as Bill Murray can be, he lets his characters find him, and not the other way around - and he can never (to me) summon up the authority of someone who is supposed to be such a great leader of men. (He works better in "Lost in Translation" and "Broken Flowers" with his lifelong loners.)
"Royal Tenenbaums" feels much closer because of the narration - first-person cinema. We can understand the heavily stylized atmosphere - this is a fairy tale, a book gotten from a library, a retelling of an old story. "Life Aquatic" feels much more removed - third-person cinema. It feels like it should be more realistic, not more kitschy.
That's my theory anyways.
"Hotel Chevalier" rocks.
National Novel Writing Month: Finish Line
Word count: Forty-eight thousand, eight hundred, sixty six. That reads alot better than 48866, the counter on the bottom of the microsoft word document. (I actually type in TextEdit - no page numbers, no word counter. Makes it feel a bit more like a typewriter, without the annoying clacking, or the ink. I tried typing with a typewriter once. Not a success.)
I'm just over a thousand words from finishing the National Novel Writing Month goal of 50 thousand words. That is good. It is also good that I am not quite fazed by the notion of one thousand words. I have maintained a good, steady, true pace. I write for an hour, maybe more, besides all the creative mind work at my unpaid internship. I work out for an hour, maybe less. I just bought my first ever set of gym gloves. I never wanted to be one of those gym glove guys, mainly because with my physique, it seemed a little bit pretentious. Then I saw a guy who was Peter Parker without the spider bite, complete with coke bottle glasses and long skinny arms, a white tank top and short black shorts. That motherfucker has a gym glove, shit man, I'm a fucking guido boxing king by comparison. There goes my italian american demographic.
Most of the paragraphs in the novel (it's still not a book, yet - maybe in another hundred pages) read like the one I just wrote. Vague. Wandering. Perhaps insightful, perhaps obnoxious. There's editing material.
Of course, the problem is, I'm not even halfway there. Not close. Activity still must happen. Twists must be coiled. Lives must be cut short, unexpectedly, sorrowfully. This current chapter (3 of 5) I want to be a real gothic romance. Mistaken identity. Misshapen love polygons. Mind rape.
I've been exceptionally content the last few days. There is a desperate part of my mind that can't stop screaming that it's only temporary. The plan was always to show up to Gaieties on Wednesday clean shaven and cut haired. But girls keep giving me mixed signals. Some say keep it all - grow the scruff. Others say lose the half-beard, keep the long flowy hair. All I want is a definitive answer. Then again, it will be nice to meet with people I haven't seen in awhile and not get their two-second what-the-fuck-is-on-your-face stare. My uncle George made the first Jesus crack. Bless you, my son.
I'm just over a thousand words from finishing the National Novel Writing Month goal of 50 thousand words. That is good. It is also good that I am not quite fazed by the notion of one thousand words. I have maintained a good, steady, true pace. I write for an hour, maybe more, besides all the creative mind work at my unpaid internship. I work out for an hour, maybe less. I just bought my first ever set of gym gloves. I never wanted to be one of those gym glove guys, mainly because with my physique, it seemed a little bit pretentious. Then I saw a guy who was Peter Parker without the spider bite, complete with coke bottle glasses and long skinny arms, a white tank top and short black shorts. That motherfucker has a gym glove, shit man, I'm a fucking guido boxing king by comparison. There goes my italian american demographic.
Most of the paragraphs in the novel (it's still not a book, yet - maybe in another hundred pages) read like the one I just wrote. Vague. Wandering. Perhaps insightful, perhaps obnoxious. There's editing material.
Of course, the problem is, I'm not even halfway there. Not close. Activity still must happen. Twists must be coiled. Lives must be cut short, unexpectedly, sorrowfully. This current chapter (3 of 5) I want to be a real gothic romance. Mistaken identity. Misshapen love polygons. Mind rape.
I've been exceptionally content the last few days. There is a desperate part of my mind that can't stop screaming that it's only temporary. The plan was always to show up to Gaieties on Wednesday clean shaven and cut haired. But girls keep giving me mixed signals. Some say keep it all - grow the scruff. Others say lose the half-beard, keep the long flowy hair. All I want is a definitive answer. Then again, it will be nice to meet with people I haven't seen in awhile and not get their two-second what-the-fuck-is-on-your-face stare. My uncle George made the first Jesus crack. Bless you, my son.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
"Dan In Real Life"
Steve Carell excels at the comedy of loneliness. He can play abrasive (his old Daily Show personality) and stupid (his retard savant in "Ron Burgundy," which is still the stupidest movie that everyone I know loved - everything about it, stupid, idiotic, dull, pandering comedy, except for the cameo by Vince Vaughn and everything Steve Carell says or does). But in "The Forty Year Old Virgin," in "The Office," and now, in the instantly underrated "Dan In Real Life," he excels at playing men who are quietly desperate for, and frightened of, other people.
Yes, Michael Scott on "The Office" is a loudmouth - almost a carbon copy, at first glance, of that earlier Daily Show personality. But there was a moment in the second season when the show moved past its status as a remake of the funniest show ever - the Halloween episode, which ended with Michael, alone in his big empty house, answering the door to give kids some candy. It was a rare moment of real quiet - as opposed to awkward, eye-rolling, stuttering quiet that the show turns into comic gold. That episode, coming so soon after "Virgin," sealed Carell's personality. It will always be hard not to like him.
"Dan in Real Life" was marketed terribly and will not make nearly as much money as it should, but it was cheap, and it will live on. It's the kind of movie you hope families will watch together. That's how I saw it - it was our Thanksgiving movie (it was that or "Into the Wild.") It's about a family reunion, and has a little bit in common with "The Family Stone," that terrifying mishmash of contrivance and emotion. "The Family Stone" packed a bunch of talented people with big names (Claire Danes, Sarah Jessica Parker, Diane Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Craig T. Nelson, Luke Wilson), and then wasted them. "Dan in Real Life" flips the equation - the extended family is full of unfamous character actors (Amy Ryan from "Gone Baby Gone," frequent "Friends" guest star Jessica Hecht,) and they've all got great material.
This is a rare kind of family movie where you feel as if you know everyone. The peak of the movie comes when Steve Carell and Dane Cook sing "Let My Love Open the Door," by Pete Townshend. Everything that has brought the film to this point sounds mawkish at best. Carell is a single father - he has brought his three precocious daughters to the annual family reunion - he misses his wife, goes to a local bookstore, meets a beautiful French woman who could probably only be played by Juliette Binoche - it turns out, surprise surprise, she's dating his rascal brother, Dane Cook - he loves her, he can't say anything, he loves his brother - and then, the family puts on its Talent Show. Has any family ever put on a talent show?
And Dane Cook wants to impress his girlfriend (who, we are quite sure now, has fallen for Carell - she reads his book, after all!) So he has his loving brother help him sing "Let My Love Open the Door." But Cook forgets the words, and Carell knows all of them. And they sing, and they both look straight at Binoche. And I would have been fine if the scene had gone on forever - if Carell and Cook, having reached the end of the song, kept on humming, invented new words, always returning to the chorus, which Carell whisper-sings in his little voice, almost on the edge of crying. The song ends - it has to - and there is a reverse shot on the entire family - there might be 20 of them, it's hard to count. And I realized, in the few seconds that shot held, that I felt like I knew every single one of these people. And I didn't want the movie to keep going, because it had to solve its romantic conundrum, and there was no way to solve it without becoming a movie movie as opposed to a slice of real life.
And the movie doesn't quite solve itself. The last scenes are the weakest - except for the penultimate scene, where Carell has to explain himself to his daughters, and to himself. Steve Carell for Best Actor, dude.
Yes, Michael Scott on "The Office" is a loudmouth - almost a carbon copy, at first glance, of that earlier Daily Show personality. But there was a moment in the second season when the show moved past its status as a remake of the funniest show ever - the Halloween episode, which ended with Michael, alone in his big empty house, answering the door to give kids some candy. It was a rare moment of real quiet - as opposed to awkward, eye-rolling, stuttering quiet that the show turns into comic gold. That episode, coming so soon after "Virgin," sealed Carell's personality. It will always be hard not to like him.
"Dan in Real Life" was marketed terribly and will not make nearly as much money as it should, but it was cheap, and it will live on. It's the kind of movie you hope families will watch together. That's how I saw it - it was our Thanksgiving movie (it was that or "Into the Wild.") It's about a family reunion, and has a little bit in common with "The Family Stone," that terrifying mishmash of contrivance and emotion. "The Family Stone" packed a bunch of talented people with big names (Claire Danes, Sarah Jessica Parker, Diane Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Craig T. Nelson, Luke Wilson), and then wasted them. "Dan in Real Life" flips the equation - the extended family is full of unfamous character actors (Amy Ryan from "Gone Baby Gone," frequent "Friends" guest star Jessica Hecht,) and they've all got great material.
This is a rare kind of family movie where you feel as if you know everyone. The peak of the movie comes when Steve Carell and Dane Cook sing "Let My Love Open the Door," by Pete Townshend. Everything that has brought the film to this point sounds mawkish at best. Carell is a single father - he has brought his three precocious daughters to the annual family reunion - he misses his wife, goes to a local bookstore, meets a beautiful French woman who could probably only be played by Juliette Binoche - it turns out, surprise surprise, she's dating his rascal brother, Dane Cook - he loves her, he can't say anything, he loves his brother - and then, the family puts on its Talent Show. Has any family ever put on a talent show?
And Dane Cook wants to impress his girlfriend (who, we are quite sure now, has fallen for Carell - she reads his book, after all!) So he has his loving brother help him sing "Let My Love Open the Door." But Cook forgets the words, and Carell knows all of them. And they sing, and they both look straight at Binoche. And I would have been fine if the scene had gone on forever - if Carell and Cook, having reached the end of the song, kept on humming, invented new words, always returning to the chorus, which Carell whisper-sings in his little voice, almost on the edge of crying. The song ends - it has to - and there is a reverse shot on the entire family - there might be 20 of them, it's hard to count. And I realized, in the few seconds that shot held, that I felt like I knew every single one of these people. And I didn't want the movie to keep going, because it had to solve its romantic conundrum, and there was no way to solve it without becoming a movie movie as opposed to a slice of real life.
And the movie doesn't quite solve itself. The last scenes are the weakest - except for the penultimate scene, where Carell has to explain himself to his daughters, and to himself. Steve Carell for Best Actor, dude.
Blog Blog Blog
I haven't added to this bad boy in almost two weeks - perhaps because I've realized the futility ("realize the futility" could be a good name for a "curb your enthusiasm" spoof), or because I've been spending all my time writing the novel, or maybe I just got spooked because someone told me they'd been reading this. Two someones. I prefer writing for the ether. It doesn't talk back, except in the back of my mind, where it sounds a bit like Orson Welles (late-period fat-happy), and it always say, "Good show, old kid!" Then he turns back to his game of baccarat with Scrooge McDuck (voiced by Sean Connery) and Bruce Wayne (future Bruce Wayne from "The Dark Knight Returns.") and Clint Eastwood (Clint Eastwood).
Nothing happened in the last two weeks. I like my new shrink. We threw a party. Thanksgiving came. The Christmas season is starting. I haven't shaved or cut my hair. My novel swelled without growing. Seriously, the entire second part (which I was hoping would be deeply psychological) is a long and vague slog forward. How do you write good traveling? My characters seem to exist separately, each in their own universe. Whenever they don't talk, I write these long elaborate paragraphs that zip and zap and zop from one not-quite-topic to the next:
Andy stared down the rooftops. The landscape had a perverse kind of beauty in its outline. The dull space-maximized square buildings, laid along one after the other - along the middle there were entire low-cost patches owned and operated by cut-rate apartmentiers who promised a number of amenities to supplement the crushing claustrophobia of existence therein. Each tiny room was outfitted with a soundway - a once-popular portway derivation which absorbed only the sound and passed it along through the ether. You could order a beachside soundway and fall asleep to the push-pull of the waves; or a forest soundway, with wind cresting through the trees and obnoxiously undomesticated creatures moaning generic cries of woe and hunger. Andy knew this, because Johnny lived in one of those cheap little apartment blocks. His apartment was large - his parents were the landlords - and yet, Andy had taken many long hours, that first time in Johnny's room, getting over the fact that there were no windows.
Then there will follow a dialogue sequence written like something Hemingway crammed out in a night of hard coffee and cheap wine:
"You think this is transcendence?" asked Johnny. "Those are all the people. The brains. They've been absorbed into this place - whatever it is."
"It's not," said Maura. "Look at them, at their faces. They look so happy."
"They're drugged."
"They're in heaven."
"They're in prison."
"Maybe heaven is a prison," Maura said. "Would that be so bad?"
Johnny said, "Yes."
"What if you didn't know it was a prison?" Maura asked. "If you were happy forever with no second thoughts?"
"It would still be a prison," said Johnny.
"You're just like Andy," said Maura.
"I like to think he's just like me," said Johnny.
People keep asking me what the novel is about. I change the subject and mention that their new article of clothing looks great. Then they comment on my scruff. Well, one person (a girl person) (from work) said I looked scruffy. Other adjectives accrue. Who am I kidding. I look like I spent two weeks in a prison sniffing glue. Also, I think I'm gaining weight. I blame "Curb Your Enthusiam" for all this complaining.
The one good thing about the novel is that it is a novel. It is long and dull and torpid and bland and pretentious and unabsorbing, but it is over 150 pages long, with no end in sight, and so it is a genuine novel now. I just need to keep writing it. I don't have the parachute of "It's just for National Novel Writing Month" or "It's just to see if I can do it." Now it's getting real. Do I like my characters? A little bit. I've killed off a couple without batting an eyelash. Could I kill off the rest of them? I have to. I have to kill off one of my favorites - a girl, an important girl. Looking back, I've adopted a kind of close third person for almost everyone but her - when it comes to her mind, I turn away, embarrassed, maybe even frightened. Nervous, certainly. The other women in the book are either no-bullshit flirty, violently maternal, or insane. My main guys are anxious, amused, adventurous, and arrogant.
This is supposed to be a fantasy novel. They are supposed to scale the top of the world. But there is so little wonder in my book right now. It has everything bad about fantasy and realism with none of the good parts. I'm the worst writer ever. I hate myself and everyone around me. I love the world too much to do so little justice to it in book form. There are too many beautiful and amazing things that appear in front of my eyes every day. Today I walked around San Francisco with a friend and sat near Fisherman's Wharf and looked out on Alcatraz and Sausalito and the Golden Gate Bridge. How do you describe that? I just did, poorly. On a clear day, you can see too many things from the window of my apartment. I hope that heaven lets you time travel. It has to, right?
My best friend thinks I'm a tortured writer. But the torture is entirely self-inflicted. The world doesn't torture me. The urge to capture it does. HP Lovecraft wrote, "I am well-nigh resolv'd to write no more tales, but merely to dream when I have a mind to, not stopping to do anything so vulgar as to set down the dream." That's exactly how I feel. Dreams are much nicer when you don't feel the terrific desperate need to set them down in print.
Nothing happened in the last two weeks. I like my new shrink. We threw a party. Thanksgiving came. The Christmas season is starting. I haven't shaved or cut my hair. My novel swelled without growing. Seriously, the entire second part (which I was hoping would be deeply psychological) is a long and vague slog forward. How do you write good traveling? My characters seem to exist separately, each in their own universe. Whenever they don't talk, I write these long elaborate paragraphs that zip and zap and zop from one not-quite-topic to the next:
Andy stared down the rooftops. The landscape had a perverse kind of beauty in its outline. The dull space-maximized square buildings, laid along one after the other - along the middle there were entire low-cost patches owned and operated by cut-rate apartmentiers who promised a number of amenities to supplement the crushing claustrophobia of existence therein. Each tiny room was outfitted with a soundway - a once-popular portway derivation which absorbed only the sound and passed it along through the ether. You could order a beachside soundway and fall asleep to the push-pull of the waves; or a forest soundway, with wind cresting through the trees and obnoxiously undomesticated creatures moaning generic cries of woe and hunger. Andy knew this, because Johnny lived in one of those cheap little apartment blocks. His apartment was large - his parents were the landlords - and yet, Andy had taken many long hours, that first time in Johnny's room, getting over the fact that there were no windows.
Then there will follow a dialogue sequence written like something Hemingway crammed out in a night of hard coffee and cheap wine:
"You think this is transcendence?" asked Johnny. "Those are all the people. The brains. They've been absorbed into this place - whatever it is."
"It's not," said Maura. "Look at them, at their faces. They look so happy."
"They're drugged."
"They're in heaven."
"They're in prison."
"Maybe heaven is a prison," Maura said. "Would that be so bad?"
Johnny said, "Yes."
"What if you didn't know it was a prison?" Maura asked. "If you were happy forever with no second thoughts?"
"It would still be a prison," said Johnny.
"You're just like Andy," said Maura.
"I like to think he's just like me," said Johnny.
People keep asking me what the novel is about. I change the subject and mention that their new article of clothing looks great. Then they comment on my scruff. Well, one person (a girl person) (from work) said I looked scruffy. Other adjectives accrue. Who am I kidding. I look like I spent two weeks in a prison sniffing glue. Also, I think I'm gaining weight. I blame "Curb Your Enthusiam" for all this complaining.
The one good thing about the novel is that it is a novel. It is long and dull and torpid and bland and pretentious and unabsorbing, but it is over 150 pages long, with no end in sight, and so it is a genuine novel now. I just need to keep writing it. I don't have the parachute of "It's just for National Novel Writing Month" or "It's just to see if I can do it." Now it's getting real. Do I like my characters? A little bit. I've killed off a couple without batting an eyelash. Could I kill off the rest of them? I have to. I have to kill off one of my favorites - a girl, an important girl. Looking back, I've adopted a kind of close third person for almost everyone but her - when it comes to her mind, I turn away, embarrassed, maybe even frightened. Nervous, certainly. The other women in the book are either no-bullshit flirty, violently maternal, or insane. My main guys are anxious, amused, adventurous, and arrogant.
This is supposed to be a fantasy novel. They are supposed to scale the top of the world. But there is so little wonder in my book right now. It has everything bad about fantasy and realism with none of the good parts. I'm the worst writer ever. I hate myself and everyone around me. I love the world too much to do so little justice to it in book form. There are too many beautiful and amazing things that appear in front of my eyes every day. Today I walked around San Francisco with a friend and sat near Fisherman's Wharf and looked out on Alcatraz and Sausalito and the Golden Gate Bridge. How do you describe that? I just did, poorly. On a clear day, you can see too many things from the window of my apartment. I hope that heaven lets you time travel. It has to, right?
My best friend thinks I'm a tortured writer. But the torture is entirely self-inflicted. The world doesn't torture me. The urge to capture it does. HP Lovecraft wrote, "I am well-nigh resolv'd to write no more tales, but merely to dream when I have a mind to, not stopping to do anything so vulgar as to set down the dream." That's exactly how I feel. Dreams are much nicer when you don't feel the terrific desperate need to set them down in print.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Razor Thick
There was a point in my life - from the start of high school until perhaps midway through college - when I lived a life in perpetual denial of my origins, embarrassed, fearful that other kids would find me strange or hateful. I was, you see, a closet geek. I stopped visiting comic book stores, I hid all my old "Star Wars" novels in my family's dark labyrinthine storage closet, I tried fill up my brain with indie-popular music. To no avail. It gives me tingles when I buy a hardbound comic book collection. Epic fantasy novels set me free. ComicCon is my Mecca. George R. R. Marten is my god.
And last night was one of the best nights of my life. I got to watch a new "Battlestar Galactica" on a real-life movie screen. "Razor," a double-episode movie event that the show's producers hammered together to bide time before season 4 debuts in April, brings together everything great and wonderful about the show into a neat little standalone package. Like "Lost," the show excels at combining pop-SF scenarios with highbrow speculative themes - space battles and moral ambiguity never mixed so smoothly.
The main character in "Razor" is Kendra Shaw - a newbie to the series, played by Stephanie Chaves-Jacobsen, a halfie actress born in Hong Kong and raised in Australia. She says "frak" like she means it and takes no shit from nobody, not when she's delivering commands, not when she's slipping off to the bowels of the ship to inject a little happy juice into her neck. Drug abuse is treated casually by the show, as are two characters' heretofore unrevealed lesbianism - and there are also throwaway references to abortion (it's been outlawed) and genetic experimentation (think stem cell research with grown-up human people instead of leftover baby matter).
The plot flashes back to follow the story of the "Pegasus," running concurrent to the timeline of the series proper but presenting a Bizarro-world version where the characters' choices lead them beyond damnation. It's reminiscent of the second season "Lost" episode that followed the trials and travails of the Tail-end survivors - more evidence that these two shows belong together in a new pantheon science-fiction storytelling, playing with viewers' perception and suggesting, "Rashomon" style, a world without good and evil, beyond any normal strain of morality. Like most episodes of "Lost," "Razor" is all about the search for redemption - Kendra has some demons in her past - and somehow, the "Battlestar" geniuses weave plenty of background mythology into an essentially standalone piece.
And last night was one of the best nights of my life. I got to watch a new "Battlestar Galactica" on a real-life movie screen. "Razor," a double-episode movie event that the show's producers hammered together to bide time before season 4 debuts in April, brings together everything great and wonderful about the show into a neat little standalone package. Like "Lost," the show excels at combining pop-SF scenarios with highbrow speculative themes - space battles and moral ambiguity never mixed so smoothly.
The main character in "Razor" is Kendra Shaw - a newbie to the series, played by Stephanie Chaves-Jacobsen, a halfie actress born in Hong Kong and raised in Australia. She says "frak" like she means it and takes no shit from nobody, not when she's delivering commands, not when she's slipping off to the bowels of the ship to inject a little happy juice into her neck. Drug abuse is treated casually by the show, as are two characters' heretofore unrevealed lesbianism - and there are also throwaway references to abortion (it's been outlawed) and genetic experimentation (think stem cell research with grown-up human people instead of leftover baby matter).
The plot flashes back to follow the story of the "Pegasus," running concurrent to the timeline of the series proper but presenting a Bizarro-world version where the characters' choices lead them beyond damnation. It's reminiscent of the second season "Lost" episode that followed the trials and travails of the Tail-end survivors - more evidence that these two shows belong together in a new pantheon science-fiction storytelling, playing with viewers' perception and suggesting, "Rashomon" style, a world without good and evil, beyond any normal strain of morality. Like most episodes of "Lost," "Razor" is all about the search for redemption - Kendra has some demons in her past - and somehow, the "Battlestar" geniuses weave plenty of background mythology into an essentially standalone piece.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
National Writing Month: The Best Day Ever
I woke up today with one thing in mind: I was going to get my poor characters out of that god damn bar.
See, in constructing my vague outline for this thing (I don't even like calling it a novel anymore - it feels more like this big, swaddling, B-movie Blob creature), I had always envisioned Part One as this sort of storm-is-gathering introduction - all the characters come together in a tiny bar at the top of a hill at the far side of the world from their eventual goal, learn their purpose, set off on their quest. The good news is that more than 18 thousand words later, I've got nine protagonists, two potential antagonists, an entire world mapped out, and several assorted mysteries to solve.
But they were still in that god damned stupid idiotic bar. (Inside the McGuff Inn. Get it?)
I'm not going to stare a man in the face and say that these are exactly well-mapped characters. I came up with most of the names and backgrounds on the fly. But if they aren't quite breathing yet, they've at least got a pulse.
So I woke up around 9 and slept until 10. The fact that I'm going to start a low-(but-nevertheless-definitively-)paid telecommuting job has sapped my passion for arriving to my fascinating yet unpaid job earlier than noon. I woke up and decided that I would go to the gym. At the gym I realized how I was going to get them out of the bar. I ate Chinese food in a take-out restaurant called "Asia Chinese Food." I came home. I watched TV. I did a blog posting. And then I started writing.
They're out of the bar. At long, long last, they're out of the bar.
Now I have no idea what to do next.
See, in constructing my vague outline for this thing (I don't even like calling it a novel anymore - it feels more like this big, swaddling, B-movie Blob creature), I had always envisioned Part One as this sort of storm-is-gathering introduction - all the characters come together in a tiny bar at the top of a hill at the far side of the world from their eventual goal, learn their purpose, set off on their quest. The good news is that more than 18 thousand words later, I've got nine protagonists, two potential antagonists, an entire world mapped out, and several assorted mysteries to solve.
But they were still in that god damned stupid idiotic bar. (Inside the McGuff Inn. Get it?)
I'm not going to stare a man in the face and say that these are exactly well-mapped characters. I came up with most of the names and backgrounds on the fly. But if they aren't quite breathing yet, they've at least got a pulse.
So I woke up around 9 and slept until 10. The fact that I'm going to start a low-(but-nevertheless-definitively-)paid telecommuting job has sapped my passion for arriving to my fascinating yet unpaid job earlier than noon. I woke up and decided that I would go to the gym. At the gym I realized how I was going to get them out of the bar. I ate Chinese food in a take-out restaurant called "Asia Chinese Food." I came home. I watched TV. I did a blog posting. And then I started writing.
They're out of the bar. At long, long last, they're out of the bar.
Now I have no idea what to do next.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
The Top 10 Stephen King Stories That Haven't Been Adapted Yet (and how to not make them crappy)
Stephen King has written practically everything that a writer can write - trim little horror novels with words and images seared into our collective nightmare memory (Carrie covered in pig's blood, Cujo frothing at the mouth, "All work and No Play make Jack a Dull Boy); Epic fantasy-horror treatises that meander through time and space, question the existence of God, and take big ensemble casts and kill them off slowly in magnificent ways ("Desperation," "It," "The Stand"); dozens upon hundreds of short stories and novellas - King might be the last author to turn short form fiction into such an addictive treat. Gasbags like Harold Bloom whine that King has his flaws, but King's managed to remain remarkably unpretentious about his work, an impressive achievement for someone who wrote himself into his own fantasy epic. He writes the way Howard Hawks directed - he makes it easy to kick back and get absorbed.
That's probably why there have been over 100 adaptations of King's books into film and TV. The list is rife with dross and low-budge video franchises that keep going until they had to invent more numerals (who knew "Children of the Corn" could stretch so far?) Too often, the people behind the camera seemed to just miss the point completely. "Cujo" turned the horrifically unhappy ending into a boringly happy fadeout; "Apt Pupil" pruned all the darker elements out of King's prose (like the protagonist's concentration camp wet dream). It's not that you have to be completely honorable to the book's story - Stanley Kubrick pissed King off to high heaven with "The Shining," but even if the movie departs from the original narrative, it absolutely captures the perfect King mixture of terror and humor.
"1408" rolled into theaters over the summer; next up is "The Mist," a film by Frank Darabont, who turned a near-forgotten King novella into "The Shawshank Redemption," one of the true singular films of the 90s, and also gave us the adaptation of "The Green Mile," a long and lazy tall tale with lots of heart (if not much tension). So there are reasons to be hopeful. This trailer is not one of those reasions. Besides giving away half the plot points, it indicates that Darabont has decided to replace the main fright aesthetic of the story - the image of silent, endless mist, and the horror that there might be strange things in there - with a bunch of poorly animated giant evil moths. Why, Darabont, why?
In honor of (or perhaps horror at) "The Mist," here's a list of the 10 best King stories that haven't seen the moviehouse yet, and how to make sure they don't suck:
10: Gerald's Game - In the mid-90s, the author wrote a trio of books that centered on women in perilous domestic situations who take extraordinary steps to deal with their abusive husbands. There was "Dolores Claiborne," "Rose Madder," and the best of the bunch was this little ditty about a bit of married role-play gone way, way wrong. Jessie Burlingame is in the bedroom with her husband Gerald, in a cabin in the forest far from prying eyes or helpful hands. Gerald likes to play games, but tonight, Jessie decides she's not that into the handcuffs. Gerald decides to take her any way. Jessie kicks him, so hard that Gerald has a fatal heart attack and leaves her all by herself, naked, handcuffed to a bed. The book has a few flashbacks and throws in a necrophiliac serial killer late in the game, but mostly, the set-up is the story: Jessie's handcuffed to a bed, and she has to get out.
Unfilmable, you say? I say, in a year when everyone is complaining there are no more good roles for actresses, here's a portrait of a married woman taking charge of her relationship, trapping herself in an impossible situation and forced to confront her demons form the past to escape. It's empowering, it's dramatic, it's sexy, it's fearless. You talk about De Niro gaining weight for "Raging Bull"? Psh. How about being naked in a bed onscreen for 90 minutes? Done wrong, this could be horrible; done right, honoring King's minute attention to detail (the steady decomposition of Gerald's corpse, Jessie's ultimate gruesome solution for escaping), this could be stellar.
9: Beachworld - In the future, a spaceship crashlands on a desert planet. Two crewmen survive. While they wait for rescue, cabin fever sets in. The sand might be alive. You could take the story any number of ways - make one of the survivors a woman and add a sexual element, send the characters off exploring. But King's central visual - the endless swaying sand - is haunting, and makes Tatooine look warm and cozy by comparison.
8: Insomnia - King has said that this is his least favorite book. Unfortunate, since in Ralph Roberts, the elderly widowed insomniac who starts to see strange things in the early morning moonlight, King created his most idiosyncratic protagonist. A likable old guy from a boring little town who suddenly finds himself embarking on a grand adventure in the winter of his life, complete with an age-appropriate love interest? How many great actors over 70 have been dying for a role like this? Get Nicholson, or Newman, or throw some digital wrinkles on Ed Harris if you have to.
7: The Regulators - Open on a quiet little street in suburban nowhere. Kids walk down the street slurping ice cream cones; fathers drive home from work, mothers drive home from their lovers; lawnmowers mow. A paper boy bikes down the street. A car rides up next to him. The window rolls down. A shotgun opens a hole in the paper boy's midsection. Bedlam - absolute and bloody - ensues. Think "Desperate Housewives" meets "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." This supernatural genre mash-up has all the fixings of vintage King - big ensemble cast of eccentrics, shadowy unstoppable villains, a devil child with powers beyond the ken of mere mortals.
6: The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - Like "Gerald's Game," the story of a woman alone in the wilderness, except here, it's a teenaged girl with a radio who listens to the Red Sox and takes inspiration from the titular closer. This practically wordless story could be a Terrence Malicky swoonfest - the beauty of nature, etc - but the tone is more reminiscent of "Aguirre, the Wrath of God," with the frightening presence of what could be a bear or the devil hovering just offscreen until the spellbinding conclusion. Paging Dakota Fanning.
5: The Drawing of the Three - King's "Dark Tower" epic is big and messy. It contains some of his best writing, but you don't write something for over 30 years without some fits and starts. King usually steers readers to his later books, but it's this one, Part 2, that encapsulates everything great about the series. In the first few pages, Roland - think Clint Eastwood crossed with King Arthur - wakes up on a beach and gets two fingers and a big toe chopped off by a mutant lobster; his luck goes downhill from there, as he hops back and forth across the decades to New York City. Under the guise of a fantasy novel, King digs into the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s, the Drug trade of the 80s, and everything great and awful about pre-Giuliani Big Apple. You might think it sounds crazy, but if ever the words "Scorcese" and "Fantasy" could be uttered in the same sentence, this would be the movie.
4: Roadwork - Like "Regulators," a book from King's altar ego, Richard Bachman - the pseudonymic personality that produced a line of particularly dour and hopeless books. "Roadwork" is easily King's most straightforward story ever, which makes it all the more frightening. A guy has just lost his son, his marriage is on the rocks, and a new interstate highway is being built right over his home and his business. Urban insanity like you could only find in the 70s follows. This is not a happy story, and at times it reads like the sort of fuck-the-man manifesto that seems outdated today. But King tells the story with passion and verve. David Fincher, who made urban life look like all kinds of hell in "Seven," would love this juicy little pulp story about a guy who's mad, and sad, as hell.
3: I Am The Doorway - Astronaut goes to space, gets infected with virus, yadda yadda yadda. But this is a Stephen King story, so it's not just a virus. In what might be the most horrifying visual King has ever conceived, little eyes start to cover his hands. The man can sense the alien intelligence; soon, it begins to take him over. There are so many crappy special effects today - give the boys at ILM the chance to put some crazy eyes on hands, you've got, if nothing else, the best trailer of the year.
2: The Talisman - Co-written by Peter Straub, this is a genuine picaresque story of one boy's travel across the country to save his mother. With the occasional skip into an alternate dimension. And with werewolves, and alot of other supernatural beasties. "The Talisman" has almost been filmed several times, but each time, the deal fell through - perhaps because the protagonist is a young boy who has to go through all kinds of hard-R experiences before he can find what he's looking for. Here's a wild idea - make it animated. Seriously, 2-D animation is a few years away from experiencing a comeback (for one thing, it's alot cheaper). Get those "Samurai Jack" boys off of Star Wars and onto something worthy of their talent. (Note - just after I wrote this, I discovered that Genndy Tartovski, the creator of "Samurai Jack," was in talks to develop a cartoon version of "The Dark Tower." Use this as a warm-up, Genndy).
1: The Long Walk - Another Bachman book, another dark tale with tragedy written in its code. In a near-flung future, every year, one hundred teenaged boys start walking. That's all. It's not a race, though you do have to maintain a steady pace. Except that when you stop walking, you die. Last one left alive gets everything he ever wants. This is a story about mental and physical exhaustion, and as the hours and days tick by, the relationship among the boys takes on a number of different faces - they're all in it together, like soldiers in a trench, and yet they're also competing against each other for nothing less than their lives. Gus Van Sant would shit himself for a movie like this, and for once, it could actually turn out good.
That's probably why there have been over 100 adaptations of King's books into film and TV. The list is rife with dross and low-budge video franchises that keep going until they had to invent more numerals (who knew "Children of the Corn" could stretch so far?) Too often, the people behind the camera seemed to just miss the point completely. "Cujo" turned the horrifically unhappy ending into a boringly happy fadeout; "Apt Pupil" pruned all the darker elements out of King's prose (like the protagonist's concentration camp wet dream). It's not that you have to be completely honorable to the book's story - Stanley Kubrick pissed King off to high heaven with "The Shining," but even if the movie departs from the original narrative, it absolutely captures the perfect King mixture of terror and humor.
"1408" rolled into theaters over the summer; next up is "The Mist," a film by Frank Darabont, who turned a near-forgotten King novella into "The Shawshank Redemption," one of the true singular films of the 90s, and also gave us the adaptation of "The Green Mile," a long and lazy tall tale with lots of heart (if not much tension). So there are reasons to be hopeful. This trailer is not one of those reasions. Besides giving away half the plot points, it indicates that Darabont has decided to replace the main fright aesthetic of the story - the image of silent, endless mist, and the horror that there might be strange things in there - with a bunch of poorly animated giant evil moths. Why, Darabont, why?
In honor of (or perhaps horror at) "The Mist," here's a list of the 10 best King stories that haven't seen the moviehouse yet, and how to make sure they don't suck:
10: Gerald's Game - In the mid-90s, the author wrote a trio of books that centered on women in perilous domestic situations who take extraordinary steps to deal with their abusive husbands. There was "Dolores Claiborne," "Rose Madder," and the best of the bunch was this little ditty about a bit of married role-play gone way, way wrong. Jessie Burlingame is in the bedroom with her husband Gerald, in a cabin in the forest far from prying eyes or helpful hands. Gerald likes to play games, but tonight, Jessie decides she's not that into the handcuffs. Gerald decides to take her any way. Jessie kicks him, so hard that Gerald has a fatal heart attack and leaves her all by herself, naked, handcuffed to a bed. The book has a few flashbacks and throws in a necrophiliac serial killer late in the game, but mostly, the set-up is the story: Jessie's handcuffed to a bed, and she has to get out.
Unfilmable, you say? I say, in a year when everyone is complaining there are no more good roles for actresses, here's a portrait of a married woman taking charge of her relationship, trapping herself in an impossible situation and forced to confront her demons form the past to escape. It's empowering, it's dramatic, it's sexy, it's fearless. You talk about De Niro gaining weight for "Raging Bull"? Psh. How about being naked in a bed onscreen for 90 minutes? Done wrong, this could be horrible; done right, honoring King's minute attention to detail (the steady decomposition of Gerald's corpse, Jessie's ultimate gruesome solution for escaping), this could be stellar.
9: Beachworld - In the future, a spaceship crashlands on a desert planet. Two crewmen survive. While they wait for rescue, cabin fever sets in. The sand might be alive. You could take the story any number of ways - make one of the survivors a woman and add a sexual element, send the characters off exploring. But King's central visual - the endless swaying sand - is haunting, and makes Tatooine look warm and cozy by comparison.
8: Insomnia - King has said that this is his least favorite book. Unfortunate, since in Ralph Roberts, the elderly widowed insomniac who starts to see strange things in the early morning moonlight, King created his most idiosyncratic protagonist. A likable old guy from a boring little town who suddenly finds himself embarking on a grand adventure in the winter of his life, complete with an age-appropriate love interest? How many great actors over 70 have been dying for a role like this? Get Nicholson, or Newman, or throw some digital wrinkles on Ed Harris if you have to.
7: The Regulators - Open on a quiet little street in suburban nowhere. Kids walk down the street slurping ice cream cones; fathers drive home from work, mothers drive home from their lovers; lawnmowers mow. A paper boy bikes down the street. A car rides up next to him. The window rolls down. A shotgun opens a hole in the paper boy's midsection. Bedlam - absolute and bloody - ensues. Think "Desperate Housewives" meets "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." This supernatural genre mash-up has all the fixings of vintage King - big ensemble cast of eccentrics, shadowy unstoppable villains, a devil child with powers beyond the ken of mere mortals.
6: The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - Like "Gerald's Game," the story of a woman alone in the wilderness, except here, it's a teenaged girl with a radio who listens to the Red Sox and takes inspiration from the titular closer. This practically wordless story could be a Terrence Malicky swoonfest - the beauty of nature, etc - but the tone is more reminiscent of "Aguirre, the Wrath of God," with the frightening presence of what could be a bear or the devil hovering just offscreen until the spellbinding conclusion. Paging Dakota Fanning.
5: The Drawing of the Three - King's "Dark Tower" epic is big and messy. It contains some of his best writing, but you don't write something for over 30 years without some fits and starts. King usually steers readers to his later books, but it's this one, Part 2, that encapsulates everything great about the series. In the first few pages, Roland - think Clint Eastwood crossed with King Arthur - wakes up on a beach and gets two fingers and a big toe chopped off by a mutant lobster; his luck goes downhill from there, as he hops back and forth across the decades to New York City. Under the guise of a fantasy novel, King digs into the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s, the Drug trade of the 80s, and everything great and awful about pre-Giuliani Big Apple. You might think it sounds crazy, but if ever the words "Scorcese" and "Fantasy" could be uttered in the same sentence, this would be the movie.
4: Roadwork - Like "Regulators," a book from King's altar ego, Richard Bachman - the pseudonymic personality that produced a line of particularly dour and hopeless books. "Roadwork" is easily King's most straightforward story ever, which makes it all the more frightening. A guy has just lost his son, his marriage is on the rocks, and a new interstate highway is being built right over his home and his business. Urban insanity like you could only find in the 70s follows. This is not a happy story, and at times it reads like the sort of fuck-the-man manifesto that seems outdated today. But King tells the story with passion and verve. David Fincher, who made urban life look like all kinds of hell in "Seven," would love this juicy little pulp story about a guy who's mad, and sad, as hell.
3: I Am The Doorway - Astronaut goes to space, gets infected with virus, yadda yadda yadda. But this is a Stephen King story, so it's not just a virus. In what might be the most horrifying visual King has ever conceived, little eyes start to cover his hands. The man can sense the alien intelligence; soon, it begins to take him over. There are so many crappy special effects today - give the boys at ILM the chance to put some crazy eyes on hands, you've got, if nothing else, the best trailer of the year.
2: The Talisman - Co-written by Peter Straub, this is a genuine picaresque story of one boy's travel across the country to save his mother. With the occasional skip into an alternate dimension. And with werewolves, and alot of other supernatural beasties. "The Talisman" has almost been filmed several times, but each time, the deal fell through - perhaps because the protagonist is a young boy who has to go through all kinds of hard-R experiences before he can find what he's looking for. Here's a wild idea - make it animated. Seriously, 2-D animation is a few years away from experiencing a comeback (for one thing, it's alot cheaper). Get those "Samurai Jack" boys off of Star Wars and onto something worthy of their talent. (Note - just after I wrote this, I discovered that Genndy Tartovski, the creator of "Samurai Jack," was in talks to develop a cartoon version of "The Dark Tower." Use this as a warm-up, Genndy).
1: The Long Walk - Another Bachman book, another dark tale with tragedy written in its code. In a near-flung future, every year, one hundred teenaged boys start walking. That's all. It's not a race, though you do have to maintain a steady pace. Except that when you stop walking, you die. Last one left alive gets everything he ever wants. This is a story about mental and physical exhaustion, and as the hours and days tick by, the relationship among the boys takes on a number of different faces - they're all in it together, like soldiers in a trench, and yet they're also competing against each other for nothing less than their lives. Gus Van Sant would shit himself for a movie like this, and for once, it could actually turn out good.
In A Naked Attempt To Appear on IMDB's Hit List, I'm Going to Start Posting Ranked Lists of Esoteric Pop Culture Topics
My life has moved beyond cliche into despicability.
National Novel Writing Month: 12,000
Almost a quarter of the way across the finish line, and a bit ahead of schedule too. 12,000 words is a long time for almost nothing to be happening, yet nevertheless I've almost managed it.
That's not true. If you could map my narrative with that cool machine they use for measuring the movement of tectonic plates, my story be one steady neutral line occasionally punctuated by gigantic shifts up and down (OH MY GOD THE WORLD'S ON FIRE! OH MY GOD WE'RE BEING GASSED! OH MY GOD ROFLMAO!) Oh well. Guess it's better to be over the top than nothing at all.
One thing I'm starting to notice - the first few days, I would just sit down and write and not worry so much about the word count. Now, I'm having this terrible watched-pot-never-boils thing where I'll write one paragraph, check the word count, be disappointed. Restrain yourself, Franich!
I think I've assembled a cast of characters.
That's not true. If you could map my narrative with that cool machine they use for measuring the movement of tectonic plates, my story be one steady neutral line occasionally punctuated by gigantic shifts up and down (OH MY GOD THE WORLD'S ON FIRE! OH MY GOD WE'RE BEING GASSED! OH MY GOD ROFLMAO!) Oh well. Guess it's better to be over the top than nothing at all.
One thing I'm starting to notice - the first few days, I would just sit down and write and not worry so much about the word count. Now, I'm having this terrible watched-pot-never-boils thing where I'll write one paragraph, check the word count, be disappointed. Restrain yourself, Franich!
I think I've assembled a cast of characters.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
National Novel Writing Month: The First Thing I've Written In Three Days That I Kind Of Like
"We need to find her hand," Andy said, gasping. "They can reattach it. Science can reattach anything."
National Novel Writing Month: Long Dark Weekend of the Soul
I had the worst hypochondria all weekend. It might sound weird to talk about hypochondria like it's a disease, but that's exactly how I've come to think of these occasional spells I get (usually on weekends, because I don't have work or anything useful to distract my mind) when every five seconds I feel like another part of my body has contracted an irrevocable disease which medical science doesn't know about and can't cure.
Sampler - I woke up yesterday with a hangover, despite several last-minute-before-sleep attempts to fill my body with H2O. My brother and I went to go and see the movie about Ian Curist, the tragic genius lead singer of Joy Division. Ian Curtis had epilepsy. Of all the possible conditions I've spent a bit of my lifetime obsessing over, Epilepsy is the one that I keep on returning to. A long time ago, a family friend died from it - that's probably where it started. There is something about epilepsy which frightens me more than any of the normal conditions - the fact that it lasts a lifetime and usually ends it, the randomness of it, the imprecise visual of a brain completely at war with the body that supports it. It was uncomfortable watching the film - I think because something about the moviewatching experience seems so close to mental synapse shutdown anyways (the way the outside world disappears, the imprecise flicker of the film screen at 24 frames per second). So then I spent the rest of the day anxiously avoiding using my mind, for fear that one stray thought might be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
Avoiding using your brain is thankfully simple in the modern world. I went on the internet and surfed wikipedia. My neighbor's wireless connection was particularly good yesterday - no doubt they had better things to do on a Saturday than use the internet - so I managed to catch up on my stories. "The Office" was good, 'Dirty Sexy Money" was better, and then I made the mistake of watching "Grey's Anatomy," which, like all hospital shows, is a nightmare for a hypochondriac. Girl comes into the hospital with weakened bones from dieting - good god, I think to myself, have I been eating right? Old guy with a heart problem is allergic to anesthetic? What if I'M allergic to anaesthetic? That would mean that when they operate on me for my heart/lung/brain/liver/toe condition, I'll need to be conscious! I can't deal with the pressure of having a surgeon's fingers tickling my inner organs! I can barely deal with the pressure of leaving my apartment on a beautiful day!
Another thing that freaked me out about the Ian Curtis film - suicide. I have never once in my life wanted to commit suicide, but since sixth or seventh grade I have thought about suicide, in the abstract - holding a gun to your head, tying a noose around your neck, swallowing a boatload of prescription pills. It freaks me out - the finality of it. And it freaks me out to think that death really is so close. It reminds me of a line from "Arkansas," the book which McSweeney's is publishing in the springtime which is going to win alot of awards and hopefully climb up the bestseller's list if there is any justice in this unjust world - "It was much too easy to kill a man."
I wonder if there are any statistics on who commits suicide more often - people who do believe in the afterlife, or people who don't. And I wonder if they commit suicide because they think they're right, or because they think they're wrong.
It was that kind of weekend. I talked to my best friend, and she expressed the same kind of vaguely depressed ennui. Maybe it's the jump back from daylight savings time, or the inscrutable weather in the Bay Area (three days ago, I can't see out my window for the fog; today, I can see all the way to Napa, and smell the wine on the light bayside breeze).
I think my mind is making up excuses to not write this novel. Which is ironic, because the only time I ever feel really good, and centered, is when I have been writing on a regular schedule.
I need a plot. Right now all I have is a few little characters in a bar. Nothing is happening. I know what happens in three steps, but the next two are mysterious. Solution: go to the local cafe and write until closing time.
Sampler - I woke up yesterday with a hangover, despite several last-minute-before-sleep attempts to fill my body with H2O. My brother and I went to go and see the movie about Ian Curist, the tragic genius lead singer of Joy Division. Ian Curtis had epilepsy. Of all the possible conditions I've spent a bit of my lifetime obsessing over, Epilepsy is the one that I keep on returning to. A long time ago, a family friend died from it - that's probably where it started. There is something about epilepsy which frightens me more than any of the normal conditions - the fact that it lasts a lifetime and usually ends it, the randomness of it, the imprecise visual of a brain completely at war with the body that supports it. It was uncomfortable watching the film - I think because something about the moviewatching experience seems so close to mental synapse shutdown anyways (the way the outside world disappears, the imprecise flicker of the film screen at 24 frames per second). So then I spent the rest of the day anxiously avoiding using my mind, for fear that one stray thought might be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
Avoiding using your brain is thankfully simple in the modern world. I went on the internet and surfed wikipedia. My neighbor's wireless connection was particularly good yesterday - no doubt they had better things to do on a Saturday than use the internet - so I managed to catch up on my stories. "The Office" was good, 'Dirty Sexy Money" was better, and then I made the mistake of watching "Grey's Anatomy," which, like all hospital shows, is a nightmare for a hypochondriac. Girl comes into the hospital with weakened bones from dieting - good god, I think to myself, have I been eating right? Old guy with a heart problem is allergic to anesthetic? What if I'M allergic to anaesthetic? That would mean that when they operate on me for my heart/lung/brain/liver/toe condition, I'll need to be conscious! I can't deal with the pressure of having a surgeon's fingers tickling my inner organs! I can barely deal with the pressure of leaving my apartment on a beautiful day!
Another thing that freaked me out about the Ian Curtis film - suicide. I have never once in my life wanted to commit suicide, but since sixth or seventh grade I have thought about suicide, in the abstract - holding a gun to your head, tying a noose around your neck, swallowing a boatload of prescription pills. It freaks me out - the finality of it. And it freaks me out to think that death really is so close. It reminds me of a line from "Arkansas," the book which McSweeney's is publishing in the springtime which is going to win alot of awards and hopefully climb up the bestseller's list if there is any justice in this unjust world - "It was much too easy to kill a man."
I wonder if there are any statistics on who commits suicide more often - people who do believe in the afterlife, or people who don't. And I wonder if they commit suicide because they think they're right, or because they think they're wrong.
It was that kind of weekend. I talked to my best friend, and she expressed the same kind of vaguely depressed ennui. Maybe it's the jump back from daylight savings time, or the inscrutable weather in the Bay Area (three days ago, I can't see out my window for the fog; today, I can see all the way to Napa, and smell the wine on the light bayside breeze).
I think my mind is making up excuses to not write this novel. Which is ironic, because the only time I ever feel really good, and centered, is when I have been writing on a regular schedule.
I need a plot. Right now all I have is a few little characters in a bar. Nothing is happening. I know what happens in three steps, but the next two are mysterious. Solution: go to the local cafe and write until closing time.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
National Novel Writing Month: Roundabout 4000, and Persona
Today was in many ways awful. Couldn't sleep. Wake up to a text from the girl. Bad day at the office. Terrible feelings of sickness, general physical and mental spiritual. Disaffection for my fellow men. Detachment from the same. My second 2000 words are awful, meaningless, whirling, plotless, falling far from existential and reading more like the haphazard fantasy that my little student writes. I smoke a cigarette and climb the hillside to my stately apartment, and I feel as if I am going to collapse from exhaustion. I feel again like I'm dying of something.
So I put in "Persona," a film of Bergman's I actually purchased almost a year ago. It's amazing how few films I really watched in college, when I was supposedly a major in Film Studies. And now, in less than a week, rata-tat-tock, "Badlands" by Malick, "Band a Part" by Godard, "Persona" by Bergman. "Persona" is almost my favorite of the lot. Not sure how I feel about the ending, although I think that I appreciate it. It's not about the ending, anyways. It's a film which seems to nail precisely the sort of thing that I have been feeling for awhile. The main character (one of them, at least) is an actress who has stopped speaking - who perhaps cannot speak, out of disgust or fear or disenchantment with how little speech can really express.
I am remembering how much I love the movies.
So I put in "Persona," a film of Bergman's I actually purchased almost a year ago. It's amazing how few films I really watched in college, when I was supposedly a major in Film Studies. And now, in less than a week, rata-tat-tock, "Badlands" by Malick, "Band a Part" by Godard, "Persona" by Bergman. "Persona" is almost my favorite of the lot. Not sure how I feel about the ending, although I think that I appreciate it. It's not about the ending, anyways. It's a film which seems to nail precisely the sort of thing that I have been feeling for awhile. The main character (one of them, at least) is an actress who has stopped speaking - who perhaps cannot speak, out of disgust or fear or disenchantment with how little speech can really express.
I am remembering how much I love the movies.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
National Novel Writing Month: Wireless Row
I'm on my third free wi-fi cafe of the night, trying my best to finish up as much of my real work as possible before the writing (the Writing) begin.
The streets of North Beach are filled with children dressed like witches and superheroes and agents from "The Matrix."
On the TV: boxing, real football, a rerun of the World Series of Poker.
On the east coast, it will be November in half an hour.
I can feel my psychiatric bills going through the roof.
The streets of North Beach are filled with children dressed like witches and superheroes and agents from "The Matrix."
On the TV: boxing, real football, a rerun of the World Series of Poker.
On the east coast, it will be November in half an hour.
I can feel my psychiatric bills going through the roof.
National Novel Writing Month: "Tick Tock," Mocks the Clock
Less than 6 hours to go. My jitters have descended into vapors of ennui. No longer do I worry that I can't do it. Rather, as the reality of the novel writing approaches, I'm struck by an equal yet opposite impulse: why should I do it? I'm young, industrious, working one job and starting another and applying for still another. I have a gym membership, a Netflix membership, a safeway card. I could just do it next year, or the year after. There's no rush.
Except there is. For much of the past year, I have often been struck by the truth of my own mortality. I can feel time floating away from me. I can feel it every morning when I wake up too late for breakfast, every evening I spent at fraternity parties or row houses. I think this might be the brazen shock of adulthood. Yet I also think of Monroe Stahr, Fitzgerald's unfinished hero. In some ways, Stahr is the hero America never had - a man who knows that he will not live to reap the fruits of his labor, and so labors for the mere sake of laboring. A man who works to work. That's Scrooge McDuck, in a way, too - he lives long, but never settles down.
I know that I will probably live an unnecessarily long life. I am always the last person to leave the party, even though I usually enjoy it the least. I will be a lonely old man at empty funerals. I will remember things the world has forgotten. But who knows? My best friend once told me that she wouldn't live to see 30. There's a season for everything: marriages, divorces, births, deaths. All we have is the time given us by God and science.
I need to write this motherfucker.
Except there is. For much of the past year, I have often been struck by the truth of my own mortality. I can feel time floating away from me. I can feel it every morning when I wake up too late for breakfast, every evening I spent at fraternity parties or row houses. I think this might be the brazen shock of adulthood. Yet I also think of Monroe Stahr, Fitzgerald's unfinished hero. In some ways, Stahr is the hero America never had - a man who knows that he will not live to reap the fruits of his labor, and so labors for the mere sake of laboring. A man who works to work. That's Scrooge McDuck, in a way, too - he lives long, but never settles down.
I know that I will probably live an unnecessarily long life. I am always the last person to leave the party, even though I usually enjoy it the least. I will be a lonely old man at empty funerals. I will remember things the world has forgotten. But who knows? My best friend once told me that she wouldn't live to see 30. There's a season for everything: marriages, divorces, births, deaths. All we have is the time given us by God and science.
I need to write this motherfucker.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
National Novel Writing Month: Crutches
A few nights ago, I bought a pack of cigarettes. Except there was a two for one deal, and you know how much I'm trying to save money. Then, at 1 or 2 last night - just before the rundown market on 20th and Valencia shuttered its doors - I was craving cigarettes, but hadn't brought any with me, so I bought a pack. That makes three. Unconsciously, I've stocked up for the long month ahead. Cigarettes, coffee, the gym: these, my crutches, for advancing through a month of solitary confinement in the torrid realm of my imagination.
And yesterday I went to meet a new shrink. My first shrink worked at the on-campus Health center. Our meetings were weekly, life-affirming, and gratis. He was a quiet-faced man with non-judgmental eyes and glasses. This new one is a woman, age uncertain, beauty profound. Will writing the novel make me less crazy, or more? Will I drown in disappointment and sorrow, ascend to glory, muddle through?
I need eccentric characters, is what I need.
And yesterday I went to meet a new shrink. My first shrink worked at the on-campus Health center. Our meetings were weekly, life-affirming, and gratis. He was a quiet-faced man with non-judgmental eyes and glasses. This new one is a woman, age uncertain, beauty profound. Will writing the novel make me less crazy, or more? Will I drown in disappointment and sorrow, ascend to glory, muddle through?
I need eccentric characters, is what I need.
National Novel Writing Month: 24 Hour Intern Proofread Chapter-title-Naming Sesh
Two days remain, or maybe three, I'm not sure. I write this from the end of an all-nighter - my first since college, my first at McSweeney's. A book needed finishing, and only closers get coffee. I was johnny on the spot - just walked into work at 5 in the evening, having spent the day telecommuting at home, with a quick spin over to the gym. 24 Hour Fitness charged me a couple dozen arm legs as an entrance fee - I intend to earn it back in muscle tone gained. At the very least, I might regain some of my lung capacity.
The book needed finishing by dawn. Proofreading. Giving the chapters titles that were whimsical yet informative. Factchecking. Grammar. Page numbers. The book is an anthology, a how-to guide for memoirists with advice from the key practitioners of the art. I've read practically the whole book, now - exhortations of where to start, where to finish, how you write and when and where, with whom or without anyone but yourself and your pen, or laptop.
I can feel it about to happen. I have far too much work to do this week, two job possibilities I need to explore. My roommate is gone - I must guard the castle alone. I have miles to go. But I must. I will. I can. Hopefully. So sleepy.
The book needed finishing by dawn. Proofreading. Giving the chapters titles that were whimsical yet informative. Factchecking. Grammar. Page numbers. The book is an anthology, a how-to guide for memoirists with advice from the key practitioners of the art. I've read practically the whole book, now - exhortations of where to start, where to finish, how you write and when and where, with whom or without anyone but yourself and your pen, or laptop.
I can feel it about to happen. I have far too much work to do this week, two job possibilities I need to explore. My roommate is gone - I must guard the castle alone. I have miles to go. But I must. I will. I can. Hopefully. So sleepy.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Gone Baby Gone: Phantoms Like A Motherfucker!
What a week for comedy writers in America. FEMA makes fake journalists. Dumbledore is gay. Ben Affleck directs a movie starring his little brother. A noir film set in Boston, no less - territory recently owned by Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorcese, who both won Oscars (and so did their films.) Except god damn my children's children if "Gone, Baby, Gone" isn't a real heartwrench trip of a movie. A dirty urban tale wrought with corrupt cops, cokehead mommies, drug lords with Haitian accents and Ed Harris with a serious-looking beard. Put this next to "Michael Clayton" - old-fashioned movies that turn, of all things, on characters making difficult moral decisions. Neither will do good box office. Both will live and breathe on DVD and TBS.
"Gone, Baby, Gone" starts off with hammy-sounding narration and a hammy-looking montage of low-end Boston. A little girl's gone missing; his grieving aunt and mustachioed uncle come and ask Little Affleck, playing a private investigator who looks all of 16, to find her. Yawn. But give the Affleck bros a second. They're just setting the stage, bringing us into their native city, lulling us so we aren't ready for the killer left hook they've got prepared.
Because while you watch this movie, you can see Big Affleck making up for all the dross he put his face on during the first half of the century. There are twists over twists, but what's even better than the story is the acting talent pushing it. Amy Ryan gives a star turn as the girl's mommy, a drunk with a couple dozen drug problems who barely seems to notice her child is gone. Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris could play stern cop authority figures in their sleep - here, in a few key scenes, they get the chance to shade in the gray. And Casey Affleck, in the main role, tricks us with his boyish look - as the plot webs around him, you can see the pain, the depth, and most of all the desperate moral code, that fuels this kid. He's Bogart, basically, unwilling to compromise his values even if it means his soul.
The film's got its flaws. There's an awkward stretch right in the middle where the action shifts forward several months (it's puffed up with unnecessary narration) that probably worked better on the page. Michelle Monaghan isn't quite wasted as Affleck's partner and galpal - she's got a good little speech at the end - but she spends too much of the movie as the cute eye candy next to the brains of the operation. (Can't this girl get a break? After showing comedic chops in "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang," she's been the bland object of Tom Cruise's and Ben Stiller's affection in the worst movies of their careers. Here's your goddamn Wonder Woman, George Miller!)
But those are quibbles. Here's a movie to absorb you, to challenge you. Issues of race and class are bubbling under the surface at all times. This is the first film that can stand next to "The Wire" - no accident, perhaps, that Ryan and supporting star Michael K. Williams are veterans. Critics who compare this to "Mystic River" and "The Departed" are missing the point. "Gone, Baby, Gone" is a movie about a man trying to do the right thing in a city and a world where no one knows or cares about right - this is "The Third Man," in thick Bahstonese.
"Gone, Baby, Gone" starts off with hammy-sounding narration and a hammy-looking montage of low-end Boston. A little girl's gone missing; his grieving aunt and mustachioed uncle come and ask Little Affleck, playing a private investigator who looks all of 16, to find her. Yawn. But give the Affleck bros a second. They're just setting the stage, bringing us into their native city, lulling us so we aren't ready for the killer left hook they've got prepared.
Because while you watch this movie, you can see Big Affleck making up for all the dross he put his face on during the first half of the century. There are twists over twists, but what's even better than the story is the acting talent pushing it. Amy Ryan gives a star turn as the girl's mommy, a drunk with a couple dozen drug problems who barely seems to notice her child is gone. Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris could play stern cop authority figures in their sleep - here, in a few key scenes, they get the chance to shade in the gray. And Casey Affleck, in the main role, tricks us with his boyish look - as the plot webs around him, you can see the pain, the depth, and most of all the desperate moral code, that fuels this kid. He's Bogart, basically, unwilling to compromise his values even if it means his soul.
The film's got its flaws. There's an awkward stretch right in the middle where the action shifts forward several months (it's puffed up with unnecessary narration) that probably worked better on the page. Michelle Monaghan isn't quite wasted as Affleck's partner and galpal - she's got a good little speech at the end - but she spends too much of the movie as the cute eye candy next to the brains of the operation. (Can't this girl get a break? After showing comedic chops in "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang," she's been the bland object of Tom Cruise's and Ben Stiller's affection in the worst movies of their careers. Here's your goddamn Wonder Woman, George Miller!)
But those are quibbles. Here's a movie to absorb you, to challenge you. Issues of race and class are bubbling under the surface at all times. This is the first film that can stand next to "The Wire" - no accident, perhaps, that Ryan and supporting star Michael K. Williams are veterans. Critics who compare this to "Mystic River" and "The Departed" are missing the point. "Gone, Baby, Gone" is a movie about a man trying to do the right thing in a city and a world where no one knows or cares about right - this is "The Third Man," in thick Bahstonese.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
National Novel Writing Month: The Setting, The Structure
Part of what I want to do with my novel (aside: for the title, I liked "Why Is Johnny Pope" at first, but now I'm souring on it. I can't decide whether to go more paperback - "The Ice Desert of Kalahari," say - or more macro-sized superthematic - "Beyond The Infinite," or "Infinity's Ascension" or "Ultimate Infinity" or something) is explore a quality fantasy world.
I dig science fiction/fantasy, always have, always will. Right now the genre is having its moment in the pop culture sun. Comic books are cool. Tolkien is cool. Batman, by way of Christian Bale and his tanker-truck batmobile, is the Dirty Harry icon of our generation. It's not going to last. I can sense an oncoming wave of realism approaching on the horizon. Raymond Carver is plotting his eternal revenge. We will look back on this era someday as shallow, full of empty spectacle. I need to strike while the iron is hot.
I think I'm going to divide the story up into four or five segments - taking a bit off of "The Gunslinger," I know, but I like the structure - individual parts building to a climax, while they all build to a larger climax. I need a goal, though, and I think it's going to be, simply, to see the face of God.
The problem is that I already know what I want to do with the third part, but not how to get there.
I dig science fiction/fantasy, always have, always will. Right now the genre is having its moment in the pop culture sun. Comic books are cool. Tolkien is cool. Batman, by way of Christian Bale and his tanker-truck batmobile, is the Dirty Harry icon of our generation. It's not going to last. I can sense an oncoming wave of realism approaching on the horizon. Raymond Carver is plotting his eternal revenge. We will look back on this era someday as shallow, full of empty spectacle. I need to strike while the iron is hot.
I think I'm going to divide the story up into four or five segments - taking a bit off of "The Gunslinger," I know, but I like the structure - individual parts building to a climax, while they all build to a larger climax. I need a goal, though, and I think it's going to be, simply, to see the face of God.
The problem is that I already know what I want to do with the third part, but not how to get there.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
20 Hours At Home, Part 1
12 AM - Buzzed off a birthday celebration I had to leave early to catch the last train southbound. There was a cute girl at the bar that made me think of my last girl. I am morose, and for lack of a cigarette, I spend the train ride reading fifty pages of Stephen King's "The Waste Lands," a book which features a monumental train ride. When I realize this, I can sense the walls of reality closing in on me, so I put the book away. Outside the window there are no tall buildings, only hills, and trees, and rows of houses that have space for yards. I'm far from the city.
1 AM - I get off at Mountain View, the train stop where I used to board the train when I was in high school. Here is where I met my good friend, here is where we bought out first porno rag, here is where I was sitting when he strolled up wide-eyed one Tuesday morning and said unconvincingly that planes rammed into the World Trade Center. I catch a taxi and ride home. My parents are gone for the week. The house where I grew up is all to myself. The street is quiet. I hated being here all summer - hated everything about suburbia - but now there is something quite comfortable about it. It is so peaceful. I want to grab a blanket and lie in the middle of the street, and watch the stars. I wonder for the first time if I was not born to live in a city.
1:45 - I have an appointment at 9:00 and I will have to drive to get there. I should sleep. I watch "Friday Night Lights" instead. This is the third episode of the second season, and it is much better than the second episode, which was much better than the first episode. In a sense, the show is suffering from the same fatigue as "Heroes" - both had first seasons which built to a defining climax (for "FNL," it was the State Championship; for "Heroes," saving the world); now, both shows are struggling to find a new overarching path. "Heroes" has the ratings to spend time on a narrative comeback; "FNL" will probably fade.
2:30 - Fall asleep, worrying that I won't fall asleep. Which comes first - insomnia, or the anxiety about insomnia that spurs insomnia? I hate the chicken and the egg.
8:30 - I wake up from a splendid dream feeling like I maybe slept four hours. I put on my gray warm-ups and a T-shirt my brother gave me for christmas, one of the only two T-shirts I own that weren't bought cheap in some foreign city or handed down from the family closet.
9:00 - Physical therapy is very often painful. I have terrible posture and an inability to relax many key muscles - lower back, stomach, calves. Half of PT is comfortable massage, the other half muscle-twisting pain. Because the physical therapy helps wuth the pain, I keep doing it; because it doesn't cure the pain completely, it also makes me feel very depressed, and trapped. There was a time when I didn't feel as if my body and mind required constant care from professionals. That time has passed, for me. I don't think it will ever return.
My physical therapist asks me how things are going. Groggy, wanting to sleep, I say Fine. She asks, Have I seen the girl? No, I say, I haven't seen the girl.
10:00 - Blessed release. My physical therapist reminds me to do my stretches. I nod, knowing that I won't and then will feel bad about not doing them. I feel too tired to feel sad. I feel numb, and yet I cannot appreciate the numbness - I cannot just be. Consumed with self-hatred, my leg and back muscles screeching, I go to Lucky's for a bunch of chicken strips, and go home and cover them in Tabasco, and watch "30 Rock."
11:30 - I have an appointment at the Apple Store to replace my electronic cord. The appointment is at 12:30. I don't like driving to that area - it reminds me too much of the summertime, and of high sprung emotions that I don't like to think about. But I need an electric cord. I feel like I have a cold - my nose is stuffed and my throat is sore. I speak to a friend on the telephone. I watch "Chuck" on my mother's computer, but pause it before the the credits are finished. I gather my computer into my bag, rub the stubble I haven't shaved in days, and consider my arms, which are long and skinny and not particularly useful. The dark weight in my mind presses tears against my eyes. I hold them back, then realize that I am alone in a house on an empty street, and then I collapse, and I sob.
I do not know what I am so sad about. It may be the girl, or memories of my childhood, or my misformed muscles that cannot relax. As I lie curled on the floor of a kitchen, a young man without a real job with long hair who spends much of the week reading and writing in coffeehouses, I worry, not for the first time, that I am becoming a cliche.
1 AM - I get off at Mountain View, the train stop where I used to board the train when I was in high school. Here is where I met my good friend, here is where we bought out first porno rag, here is where I was sitting when he strolled up wide-eyed one Tuesday morning and said unconvincingly that planes rammed into the World Trade Center. I catch a taxi and ride home. My parents are gone for the week. The house where I grew up is all to myself. The street is quiet. I hated being here all summer - hated everything about suburbia - but now there is something quite comfortable about it. It is so peaceful. I want to grab a blanket and lie in the middle of the street, and watch the stars. I wonder for the first time if I was not born to live in a city.
1:45 - I have an appointment at 9:00 and I will have to drive to get there. I should sleep. I watch "Friday Night Lights" instead. This is the third episode of the second season, and it is much better than the second episode, which was much better than the first episode. In a sense, the show is suffering from the same fatigue as "Heroes" - both had first seasons which built to a defining climax (for "FNL," it was the State Championship; for "Heroes," saving the world); now, both shows are struggling to find a new overarching path. "Heroes" has the ratings to spend time on a narrative comeback; "FNL" will probably fade.
2:30 - Fall asleep, worrying that I won't fall asleep. Which comes first - insomnia, or the anxiety about insomnia that spurs insomnia? I hate the chicken and the egg.
8:30 - I wake up from a splendid dream feeling like I maybe slept four hours. I put on my gray warm-ups and a T-shirt my brother gave me for christmas, one of the only two T-shirts I own that weren't bought cheap in some foreign city or handed down from the family closet.
9:00 - Physical therapy is very often painful. I have terrible posture and an inability to relax many key muscles - lower back, stomach, calves. Half of PT is comfortable massage, the other half muscle-twisting pain. Because the physical therapy helps wuth the pain, I keep doing it; because it doesn't cure the pain completely, it also makes me feel very depressed, and trapped. There was a time when I didn't feel as if my body and mind required constant care from professionals. That time has passed, for me. I don't think it will ever return.
My physical therapist asks me how things are going. Groggy, wanting to sleep, I say Fine. She asks, Have I seen the girl? No, I say, I haven't seen the girl.
10:00 - Blessed release. My physical therapist reminds me to do my stretches. I nod, knowing that I won't and then will feel bad about not doing them. I feel too tired to feel sad. I feel numb, and yet I cannot appreciate the numbness - I cannot just be. Consumed with self-hatred, my leg and back muscles screeching, I go to Lucky's for a bunch of chicken strips, and go home and cover them in Tabasco, and watch "30 Rock."
11:30 - I have an appointment at the Apple Store to replace my electronic cord. The appointment is at 12:30. I don't like driving to that area - it reminds me too much of the summertime, and of high sprung emotions that I don't like to think about. But I need an electric cord. I feel like I have a cold - my nose is stuffed and my throat is sore. I speak to a friend on the telephone. I watch "Chuck" on my mother's computer, but pause it before the the credits are finished. I gather my computer into my bag, rub the stubble I haven't shaved in days, and consider my arms, which are long and skinny and not particularly useful. The dark weight in my mind presses tears against my eyes. I hold them back, then realize that I am alone in a house on an empty street, and then I collapse, and I sob.
I do not know what I am so sad about. It may be the girl, or memories of my childhood, or my misformed muscles that cannot relax. As I lie curled on the floor of a kitchen, a young man without a real job with long hair who spends much of the week reading and writing in coffeehouses, I worry, not for the first time, that I am becoming a cliche.
Monday, October 22, 2007
National Novel Writing Month: The Preshow Jitters
On Friday, I couldn't wait for National Novel Writing Month to start. I wanted nothing so much as to devote myself without fail or rest to something greater than myself. I looked forward to becoming a zealot. I prepared myself for a monk's life. I told all my friends I would party hard through October, reach out and touch the stars themselves on Halloween, then wake up the next day with a pen in my hand and a goal in my heart and write, write, write the living hell out of 50 thousand choice words.
Then I woke up yesterday and realized there was no way in hell that I could actually write a novel. It's too big. Too hard. I don't know what the story is, or where it will go. But that's not right. That's not the real reason I was scared. Because I know that I can do it, and that's what really frightens me.
My whole life that I can remember, I've always wanted to be a writer. I read so many books when I was a kid - my peak was definitely junior high, when school was easy and I didn't have any really good friends, when I could read the latest iteration of the Star Wars X-Wing Rogue Squadron series. I can still remember how it felt to finish Stephen King' "It" - I think that was getting into high school, though with Stephen King I can never quite keep it straight. I can remember the feeling of tremendous accomplishment, King for writing it, me for reading it. I can remember how it felt to hold an adult book rather than a children's book.
My dad used to take me to bookstores and buy several books at once - fiction, history, biography. He wouldn't finish many of them. I do that, now, too. My mom gave me so much of what I think of as my writing ability, but my dad was the one who taught me about the weight of books. To this day, nothing pleases me more than buying several books at once. It is my one real luxury. I am doing everything I can to cut excess spending during this long dark night of unpaid internshipping - no more video games (I left the playstation at home), no more music (iTunes beckons me like a loathsome quick-pay siren), no more DVDs, no lavish dinners (I'm learning how to cook).
I went to City Lights last night late and thought I might suffer a panic attack because I looked around me at all these books - all the worlds contained within the binding - and thought, I could create one of these things, I might have a book here certainly within the next decade at least. Books to me are sacred objects. If I can create one, does that make them less sacred? I am not Icarus, nor was meant to be.
I bought several books and came up with a new title.
"Why Is Johnny Pope"
Then I woke up yesterday and realized there was no way in hell that I could actually write a novel. It's too big. Too hard. I don't know what the story is, or where it will go. But that's not right. That's not the real reason I was scared. Because I know that I can do it, and that's what really frightens me.
My whole life that I can remember, I've always wanted to be a writer. I read so many books when I was a kid - my peak was definitely junior high, when school was easy and I didn't have any really good friends, when I could read the latest iteration of the Star Wars X-Wing Rogue Squadron series. I can still remember how it felt to finish Stephen King' "It" - I think that was getting into high school, though with Stephen King I can never quite keep it straight. I can remember the feeling of tremendous accomplishment, King for writing it, me for reading it. I can remember how it felt to hold an adult book rather than a children's book.
My dad used to take me to bookstores and buy several books at once - fiction, history, biography. He wouldn't finish many of them. I do that, now, too. My mom gave me so much of what I think of as my writing ability, but my dad was the one who taught me about the weight of books. To this day, nothing pleases me more than buying several books at once. It is my one real luxury. I am doing everything I can to cut excess spending during this long dark night of unpaid internshipping - no more video games (I left the playstation at home), no more music (iTunes beckons me like a loathsome quick-pay siren), no more DVDs, no lavish dinners (I'm learning how to cook).
I went to City Lights last night late and thought I might suffer a panic attack because I looked around me at all these books - all the worlds contained within the binding - and thought, I could create one of these things, I might have a book here certainly within the next decade at least. Books to me are sacred objects. If I can create one, does that make them less sacred? I am not Icarus, nor was meant to be.
I bought several books and came up with a new title.
"Why Is Johnny Pope"
Friday, October 19, 2007
National Novel Writing Month: The Story
Here are four stories that I have been working on or thinking about, in one way or another, for almost one and a half years, without ever fully committing to turning them into a book. Literally, the furthest I've ever gotten is page 20. Single spaced, so that's not that bad, but still.
1 - Overwhelmingly Huge Polyglot Fantasy Novel - Intercutting between three separate storylines, this one would seek to top everything that has ever come before; an overwhelming "Lost" style mystery, a Neil Gaimen-esque treatment of gods and monsters, a coming of age story, a jilted love affair, death and life, a character named Marcello who bears a striking resemblance to his namesake in "La Dolce Vita." Storyline 1 - the Big Island of Hawaii, late August, 2005. An old man watches the television news. Hurricane Katrina is whipping through New Orleans. Iraq is starting to go to hell. He is old, but not dying. Meanwhile, two mysterious men, one loud and fat, the other deathly pale, hire a boat to take them to a leper colony. Storyline 2 - a retelling of Edgar Allen Poe's novel "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket." Storyline 3 - a young boy in a massive fantasyland continent meets a strange girl and sets off on an adventure that will ruin his life.
Problem: Too big. Almost preciously elaborate. Biting hardcore off of Stephen King.
2 - A Little Death in Amsterdam - a loner meets a girl in Amsterdam, fucks her, ditches her. The next day, she's floating upside down in the canal. Who killed her? Can he even find out? Does it even matter? Who was she?
Problem - How does an American find a killer in Amsterdam? I want to do a story about Europe, not just Amsterdam. Maybe he finds the killer and tracks him all across Europe?
3 - Drags - Fantasy story about a country with Dragons. I've written the beginnings to at least ten different stories set in this world, no luck.
4 - A semiautobiographical story based on my college life.
Problem - It will be narcissistic and self-loathing at the same time.
1 - Overwhelmingly Huge Polyglot Fantasy Novel - Intercutting between three separate storylines, this one would seek to top everything that has ever come before; an overwhelming "Lost" style mystery, a Neil Gaimen-esque treatment of gods and monsters, a coming of age story, a jilted love affair, death and life, a character named Marcello who bears a striking resemblance to his namesake in "La Dolce Vita." Storyline 1 - the Big Island of Hawaii, late August, 2005. An old man watches the television news. Hurricane Katrina is whipping through New Orleans. Iraq is starting to go to hell. He is old, but not dying. Meanwhile, two mysterious men, one loud and fat, the other deathly pale, hire a boat to take them to a leper colony. Storyline 2 - a retelling of Edgar Allen Poe's novel "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket." Storyline 3 - a young boy in a massive fantasyland continent meets a strange girl and sets off on an adventure that will ruin his life.
Problem: Too big. Almost preciously elaborate. Biting hardcore off of Stephen King.
2 - A Little Death in Amsterdam - a loner meets a girl in Amsterdam, fucks her, ditches her. The next day, she's floating upside down in the canal. Who killed her? Can he even find out? Does it even matter? Who was she?
Problem - How does an American find a killer in Amsterdam? I want to do a story about Europe, not just Amsterdam. Maybe he finds the killer and tracks him all across Europe?
3 - Drags - Fantasy story about a country with Dragons. I've written the beginnings to at least ten different stories set in this world, no luck.
4 - A semiautobiographical story based on my college life.
Problem - It will be narcissistic and self-loathing at the same time.
National Novel Writing Month: The Title
There are two schools of thought about titling your novel. One school says you just start writing and a title will reveal itself. The other school says that before you write anything you write the title, and then, whenever you can feel the story wandering and your heart flagging, you've got something concrete to hold on to. I read both of those theories in a "how do you write" type interview in some shi-shi magazine like Time or Newsweek. I have come to believe that you can understand modern life by reading Time and Newsweek.
Working Titles, take 1: "Miscreation" "Together We Spiral" "Dis and That" "Implode-Explode" "Devil Up" "The Bachelor from Bulgaria" "Apocalypse Tuesday" "Fire and Dice" "Johnny Pope and the Quest for Reality" "The Girl"
Working Titles, take 1: "Miscreation" "Together We Spiral" "Dis and That" "Implode-Explode" "Devil Up" "The Bachelor from Bulgaria" "Apocalypse Tuesday" "Fire and Dice" "Johnny Pope and the Quest for Reality" "The Girl"
National Novel Writing Month: Prologue
In the next two weeks, I have to finish research on a book about undocumented immigrants and a book about the stock market. I need to continue my intensive study of "The Dark Tower" saga by Stephen King, which means reading another 4000 words or so of small text. I need to get a job. I need to see as many people as possible.
Because starting on November 1, I am going to monk out and write the shit out of my first novel. National Novel Writing Month. By my rough estimate, I need to write about ten pages a day, no breaks for weekends or holidays or long nights of high emotion with women I kid myself into thinking I love. I am trimming the excess fat out of my life. I am converting all the money I usually spend on club fees and iTunes into coffee and cigarettes. Lots of cigarettes. I've been holding off the inevitable addiction for as long as possible.
I hope to trace my progress on a day-to-day basis. If I miss one day, then I will miss another day, and then my whole plan will come tumbling apart. I must be strong. I am a ninja lurking in the shadows of the sea. I am a samurai warrior, hear me slash. I am a mongrel dog in the junkyard, making a living off scraps of food people throw into garbage cans. I am Shiva, the god of death.
I'll get better, I swear.
Because starting on November 1, I am going to monk out and write the shit out of my first novel. National Novel Writing Month. By my rough estimate, I need to write about ten pages a day, no breaks for weekends or holidays or long nights of high emotion with women I kid myself into thinking I love. I am trimming the excess fat out of my life. I am converting all the money I usually spend on club fees and iTunes into coffee and cigarettes. Lots of cigarettes. I've been holding off the inevitable addiction for as long as possible.
I hope to trace my progress on a day-to-day basis. If I miss one day, then I will miss another day, and then my whole plan will come tumbling apart. I must be strong. I am a ninja lurking in the shadows of the sea. I am a samurai warrior, hear me slash. I am a mongrel dog in the junkyard, making a living off scraps of food people throw into garbage cans. I am Shiva, the god of death.
I'll get better, I swear.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Babylon Revisited
I had a horrible feeling when I woke up on Saturday that something bad was going to happen. Choose your own adventure: which of the following events was my premonition anticipating?
1) The bitter, whimpering end of a relationship that dominated my life, in one way or another, for over half a year, consuming all of my mental and emotional energy, sending me into fits of ecstasy and deep depression?
2) The end of a month of sobriety, a month in which I rediscovered Saturday and Sunday mornings, wrote more, smoked more cigarettes, drank more coffee, found an apartment in San Francisco, met the next unrequited love of my life, and made the disturbing discovery that I could stay in on a Friday night watching TV on the internet and playing old PlayStation games and feel perfectly happy, content, serene even?
3) Stanford's loss to TCU, which would have been a fine game if all the eyes of the nation weren't upon us after our photo-finish defeat of number-one-asshole USC, a match-up worthy of its own 80s movie, us as the dorks with anarchic facial hair, USC as the diving team fascists?
4) The horrible moment, which recurred at least thirty times at the recent graduate reunion before the game, when people with actual jobs asked me what I was doing. Four months out from college, I'm falling behind in the race to financial independence.
All of the above, unfortunately.
1) The bitter, whimpering end of a relationship that dominated my life, in one way or another, for over half a year, consuming all of my mental and emotional energy, sending me into fits of ecstasy and deep depression?
2) The end of a month of sobriety, a month in which I rediscovered Saturday and Sunday mornings, wrote more, smoked more cigarettes, drank more coffee, found an apartment in San Francisco, met the next unrequited love of my life, and made the disturbing discovery that I could stay in on a Friday night watching TV on the internet and playing old PlayStation games and feel perfectly happy, content, serene even?
3) Stanford's loss to TCU, which would have been a fine game if all the eyes of the nation weren't upon us after our photo-finish defeat of number-one-asshole USC, a match-up worthy of its own 80s movie, us as the dorks with anarchic facial hair, USC as the diving team fascists?
4) The horrible moment, which recurred at least thirty times at the recent graduate reunion before the game, when people with actual jobs asked me what I was doing. Four months out from college, I'm falling behind in the race to financial independence.
All of the above, unfortunately.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Drunken Places I've Been Sober In the Last Month
-My Triple-Ex-Girlfriend's Birthday Party, at a tiny bar on El Camino run by a guy with the same name as the author of "The Da Vinci Code," literally fifty feet from the apartment of my then-ex-girlfriend, who I'd broken up with one week earlier. The hangover from break-up night convinced me to take a sober month.
-A bar in the Mission right next to where I work, with several of my fellow interns and a couple of actual people. There was some sort of party happening in the bar that involved taking pictures with a gigantic flashbulb which filled the silence between words like a lightning flash.
-My cousin's engagement party. My uncle bought a couple weddings' worth of catered food and professional drink. There were several toasts. I spent the night coming up with new and interesting euphemisms for "intern." Free booze alert!
-Gaieties Retreat. "Gaieties" is an annual Big Game tradition - a comedy-musical about how much Cal sucks. Kind of like "Beach Blanket Babylon" with lots of college humor. I was on the writing staff of the show three times. Gaieties Retreat is a legendary bacchanalia where the actors, crew, and assorted hangers-on retreat to a cabin in the woods, drink profusely, make out in hot tubs, and smoke out in teepees. I explained to my friends that I was the sober monitor. "Yes, you are!" insisted some. "Vag-face!" shrieked others. Ended up driving my two drunk friends home. Free booze alert!
- A sports bar near my new apartment, where my roommate and I went to watch the USC-Stanford game. My school, which was never better than mediocre while I was an undergrad and achieved a 1-11 record last season, beat the number one team in the nation on their home field. The smug faces of USC undergrad richfuck pussies crying their eyes out made me happier than I've been in years. No one in the bar was a Stanford fan, but everyone, even the guy in the Cal shirt, hated USC.
- A trendy bar on Polk Street where I saw two of my fraternity brothers for the first time in over a month. When I walked in, they insisted on buying me a shot. "Can't do it, " I said, trying not to sound smug or cowardly, "I'm sober tonight." They concluded that I was both a woman and a homosexual.
- An Alumni golf tournament for my high school. There was free beer in the clubhouse, coolers full of coronas and bud lite scattered throughout the course, and a gigantic truck with October Fest and Pilsner beer pouring out of spigots in its side. We saw only two other guys from our era. "I'm just hear to get wasted!" they said. "Me too!" said my friend. Free booze alert!
- A Beirut concert. Beirut plays a kind of folk-rock-waltz fusion with Eastern European influences and every kind of instrument you can imagine. His performance was so extraordinary that it made me reconsider my life and how I try to live it. I wanted to fall in love. I wanted to fall asleep on that beach on Mykonos. I wanted my former ex-, now maybe-girlfriend to be there, but I wasn't sure if she would appreciate it.
-A bar in the Mission right next to where I work, with several of my fellow interns and a couple of actual people. There was some sort of party happening in the bar that involved taking pictures with a gigantic flashbulb which filled the silence between words like a lightning flash.
-My cousin's engagement party. My uncle bought a couple weddings' worth of catered food and professional drink. There were several toasts. I spent the night coming up with new and interesting euphemisms for "intern." Free booze alert!
-Gaieties Retreat. "Gaieties" is an annual Big Game tradition - a comedy-musical about how much Cal sucks. Kind of like "Beach Blanket Babylon" with lots of college humor. I was on the writing staff of the show three times. Gaieties Retreat is a legendary bacchanalia where the actors, crew, and assorted hangers-on retreat to a cabin in the woods, drink profusely, make out in hot tubs, and smoke out in teepees. I explained to my friends that I was the sober monitor. "Yes, you are!" insisted some. "Vag-face!" shrieked others. Ended up driving my two drunk friends home. Free booze alert!
- A sports bar near my new apartment, where my roommate and I went to watch the USC-Stanford game. My school, which was never better than mediocre while I was an undergrad and achieved a 1-11 record last season, beat the number one team in the nation on their home field. The smug faces of USC undergrad richfuck pussies crying their eyes out made me happier than I've been in years. No one in the bar was a Stanford fan, but everyone, even the guy in the Cal shirt, hated USC.
- A trendy bar on Polk Street where I saw two of my fraternity brothers for the first time in over a month. When I walked in, they insisted on buying me a shot. "Can't do it, " I said, trying not to sound smug or cowardly, "I'm sober tonight." They concluded that I was both a woman and a homosexual.
- An Alumni golf tournament for my high school. There was free beer in the clubhouse, coolers full of coronas and bud lite scattered throughout the course, and a gigantic truck with October Fest and Pilsner beer pouring out of spigots in its side. We saw only two other guys from our era. "I'm just hear to get wasted!" they said. "Me too!" said my friend. Free booze alert!
- A Beirut concert. Beirut plays a kind of folk-rock-waltz fusion with Eastern European influences and every kind of instrument you can imagine. His performance was so extraordinary that it made me reconsider my life and how I try to live it. I wanted to fall in love. I wanted to fall asleep on that beach on Mykonos. I wanted my former ex-, now maybe-girlfriend to be there, but I wasn't sure if she would appreciate it.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Sunday Sunday
Woke up today in San Francisco without a hangover. I didn't have anything to drink last night except coffee, coke, and apple juice, and I still couldn't wake up before my brother. My mind was still reeling from "Michael Clayton." Tilda Swinton makes great acting look dirty hot in corporate attire, George Clooney lets you see the gray in his hair and the bags under his eyes, Tom Wilkinson plays a manic-depressive corporate lawyer like it's King Lear for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Sydney Pollack reprises his role from "Eyes Wide Shut" as the kindly uncle figure who acts surprised when you can't believe he's evil.
Had an argument with my brother over "Hotel Chevalier" last night. This is our second loud argument in the last two months about Wes Anderson. Last time I was anti-Wes - I've never liked "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" as much as I wanted to, frankly thought it was $100 Million hipster cumshot, but B made a passionate plea for Anderson's artfulness, his European influence, the sheer amount of STUFF that you've never seen in any other movie. Potato potato. I figured, then, that B, the devoted apostle, would like "Hotel Chevalier" even more than I, the scornful cynic would. Nope. He hated it - the stilted Anderson-speak, the little cutesy affectations like Natalie Portman's toothpick, everything.
I've disagreed with people about movies before, but there's something about "Hotel Chevalier." Two of the people I love most in the world have expressed nothing less than complete disdain for the short, and on both occasions I've felt equally hurt and angry - like, how can you not understand this? Maybe it's personal. Maybe you have to have been to a tourist wonder metropolis like Paris or Berlin and wanted nothing more than to lay in bed and order room service. Maybe you have to love a girl and hate her at the same time. Maybe you have to be at a particular time in your life - lonely, jobless, aimless - to really love the movie Or maybe you need to be as infantile as Wes Anderson. This whole "Hotel Chevalier" episode is not reflecting well on me. I can sense friendships breaking and mindsets shaking. I wish I could go back to a few days ago, when I just wanted to hate Wes Anderson some more.
I drove back home to clean out my room. Watched "Aliens" in the meantime. I know I shouldn't put a movie on while I'm trying to do something, but I can't help it. Like the Girl, I always have to have something on in the background. I'm listening to music right now because "Sopranos" is on commercial. Fucking "Sopranos" on A & E.
Had an argument with my brother over "Hotel Chevalier" last night. This is our second loud argument in the last two months about Wes Anderson. Last time I was anti-Wes - I've never liked "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" as much as I wanted to, frankly thought it was $100 Million hipster cumshot, but B made a passionate plea for Anderson's artfulness, his European influence, the sheer amount of STUFF that you've never seen in any other movie. Potato potato. I figured, then, that B, the devoted apostle, would like "Hotel Chevalier" even more than I, the scornful cynic would. Nope. He hated it - the stilted Anderson-speak, the little cutesy affectations like Natalie Portman's toothpick, everything.
I've disagreed with people about movies before, but there's something about "Hotel Chevalier." Two of the people I love most in the world have expressed nothing less than complete disdain for the short, and on both occasions I've felt equally hurt and angry - like, how can you not understand this? Maybe it's personal. Maybe you have to have been to a tourist wonder metropolis like Paris or Berlin and wanted nothing more than to lay in bed and order room service. Maybe you have to love a girl and hate her at the same time. Maybe you have to be at a particular time in your life - lonely, jobless, aimless - to really love the movie Or maybe you need to be as infantile as Wes Anderson. This whole "Hotel Chevalier" episode is not reflecting well on me. I can sense friendships breaking and mindsets shaking. I wish I could go back to a few days ago, when I just wanted to hate Wes Anderson some more.
I drove back home to clean out my room. Watched "Aliens" in the meantime. I know I shouldn't put a movie on while I'm trying to do something, but I can't help it. Like the Girl, I always have to have something on in the background. I'm listening to music right now because "Sopranos" is on commercial. Fucking "Sopranos" on A & E.
Friday, October 5, 2007
An Overlong Email I Sent To My Best Friend About Why "Hotel Chevalier" is Such a Good Movie
I don't think I've looked forward to any movie as much as I looked forward to "Life Aquatic." All the descriptions of it read like a millenial film geek's giant wet dream - Wes Anderson gets a $90 Million Dollar Budget to go to Europe and do whatever he wants; Bill Murray and Anjelica Huston as a married couple; deep sea diving adventure; claymation imaginary sea creatures; Cate Blanchett as a pregnant love interest. I went to go see the movie on ski trip sophomore year. Have I ever told you about this ski trip? So much craziness - hook-ups and drinking games and skiing at the top of the world. And the whole time, me and my friend Roddy couldn't stop talking about how much we all had to go and see "The Life Aquatic." It was a different time. I think Hunter S. Thompson was still alive. Bush had just been re-elected. Anger was settling into malaise and casual annoyance.
I can remember the exact moment that I knew I didn't quite like the movie. It's the moment when Bill Murray breaks out of his bonds and shoots up a bunch of pirates, action movie style. It's a moment that Steve Zissou seems to become the great man that everyone is always saying he is, and after that scene, I was expecting that Bill Murray would finally come to life. It's strange to remember now, but he used to be a vital, crazy presence onscreen. He was never madcap - never a John Belushi - but there was a certain madness in his best performances, in "Caddyshack" as an idiot savant waging war on a gopher, in "Scrooged" battling his own inner asshole to find true love, and most especially in "Groundhog Day," where he covers an incredible range of moods - anger, madness, exasperation, existential regreat, and ultimately contentment. Anderson revived his career in "Rushmore" by making Murray play the same kind of man twenty years after the party - sad, quiet, mugged by the passage of time. That gunfight seemed to indicate a return of the old Murray.
But no. After the fight, he remains trapped in his little malaise - for the whole movie, really. In a sense, "The Royal Tenenbaums" and "The Life Aquatic" are the same sort of story, in that you hear, over and over again, how the characters' greatness has passed them by. The difference is that "Tenenbaums" has Gene Hackman, who absolutely holds the movie together. Every other character is trapped in that particular Andersonian stasis - they stand still in elaborate diorama-sets without really noticing anything. Hackman gives the whole film its life force - he's the burning, half-drunk, scheming supernova that casts light on everyone else. Bill Murray in "the life Aquatic" is just the opposite - every character onscreen loves him, can't stop talking about how great Steve Zissou is, and he's just at the center, hanging out in a steam room. He's the black hole. I think, frankly, this is because Hackman is a genuine actor and Bill Murray is just Bill Murray. Murray plays the same character in each film, and sometimes it's genius ("Lost in Translation") sometimes it's just monotone ("Broken Flowers.")
There are moments of "Life Aquatic" that make you laugh and moments that make you choke up with tears, and what they both have in common is that they come completely out of nowhere. Anderson doesn't write narratives that advance or grow - he comes up with a single idea and has characters circle around that idea for the whole movie. There is always an elephant in the room in Anderson films that characters never quite get around to talking about. In "Royal Tenenbaums" and "Life Aquatic," no one can ever quite bring themselves to admit what failures they have become.
The worst thing, though, was the cuteness. "Royal Tenenbaums" was cute, but there, within the film, it actually made sense - all of the characters suffered from arrested development, so it made complete sense that they all still acted like children. In "Life Aquatic," the cuteness is ruinous - you can't believe that any of the characters could steer a canoe, much less make a series of true-life deep-sea adventure films. You certainly don't buy Steve Zissou as a genius. Leaving the theater from watching "Life Aquatic," my strongest feeling was frustration - the whole movie, all I could think of was how much I wanted to crawl on the screen and shake everyone out of their stupor. You have a fucking boat with a fucking submarine! Life isn't so bad!
Hackman is that shaker in "Royal Tenenbaums." The teacher is that shaker in "Rushmore" - she never gets carried away by Max's dreams, never once buys into the fact that he actually loves her, is quite aware of the fact that HE'S A TEENAGER.
And that's exactly the role that Natalie Portman plays in "Hotel Chevalier," from the very first moment she steps into the hotel - "What the fuck is this music?" Jason Schwartzman's character has arranged his whole room just so, Wes Anderson style - he selects a particular soundtrack of late 60s music, he starts a bubble bath, changes his clothes, orders food. Natalie Portman is exactly the breath of fresh air that keeps Wes Anderson films from being empty whimsy. Gwyneth Paltrow was narcotized in "Royal Tenenbaums" - she never changed her expression. You could argue that it made it all the more potent when she did emote - the bit where she starts crying when she hugs Luke Wilson is beautiful - but you could also argue that it's strange, after her knockout performance in "Shakespeare in Love," to see the woman who was then the greatest actress in the world give a Jessica Biel performance.
I didn't read all of the race thing because I noticed it had spoilers for "Darjeeling," and even for movies I don't want to see I hate spoilers, but it seems that the main argument is that Anderson uses ethnic characters and cultures on the periphery and makes a joke out of his character's inability to understand them. Here we are getting into dangerous post-PC territory. There was just a big flap over a comment that a character made on "Desperate Housewives" - Teri Hatcher (who, everyone knows, is the ditzy housewife) said that she wanted to see her doctor's credentials and make sure he "didn't have a med school diploma from the Phillipines or something." Instantly, the Filipino government issued a massive public statement about how the comment was entirely misleading - that Filipino doctors are some of the most educated in the world, etc, etc. But was the line meant to make fun of the Phillippines, or was it meant to make fun of the characters' stupidity, or was it meant to portray a silly yet common prejudice in modern day America? Was the joke morally defensible? Is "Desperate Housewives" anti-Filipino?
This is an important question for the modern age, because the thrust of Slate's argument is essentially that Wes Anderson makes movies about upper class white people with no understanding of the rest of the world, and hence, Wes Anderson has no understanding of the rest of the world. Gene Hackman makes racist comments in "The Royal Tenenbaums" and people laugh at them, because Gene Hackman's delivery is very funny. Does that make us racist if we laugh at that? Archie Bunker said much worse for much longer on "All in the Family,"and that was one of the funniest sitcoms ever. If you were to watch an episode of "All in the family" and "Friends" back to back, which one has aged better? "Friends" is offensive to no one, and yet it is entirely deracinated as a result - FAR more hermetic, I would argue, then anything Anderson has done.
Is the Indian guy in "Royal Tenenbaums" funny? Hell yes. Does he have as big a role as other characters? No. Does he have a fascinating backstory? Yes - he stabbed Royal and took him to the hospital afterwards, and he stabs him again. For comparison, consider the movie "About Schmidt," one of the most heartbreaking films ever made about old age and loneliness which is also hysterically funny. The running joke of the film is that Jack Nicholson has taken part in one of those "save the african orphans" program and sends money to a child named Nduku - they encourage people to write their orphans letters, and so throughout the film, Jack Nicholson begins his letters, "Dear Nduku." Because people in America find the name so alien, and so when it's placed in such a quaint context of a letter, it becomes insanely funny. One critic (I don't remember who, so sorry if this is just a straw man argument) said that that bit was racist.
Take it one step further. There is a burgeoning question online about race in Peter Jackson films. There were no black people in "Lord of the Rings," but there were orcs (who had monstrous big noses and were generally ugly and scruffy looking and talked with Cockney accents) and there were also the Uruk-Hai, a warrior race of big dudes who painted their faces and could smell Man from miles away. They were black as soot, and looked like lions. They were unrepentantly evil, and unthinking. Are they meant to be African? Is "Lord of the Rings" secretly a story about gentrification - Aragorn, the long lost King, is after all a Numenorian, a member of a master race that lives a very long time and hangs out with the Elves, who stand still and statuesque like characters in a Wes Anderson film.
Even more problematic is "King Kong" - Peter Jackson envisions the natives of Skull Island as african-esque people. I say "african-esque" because the roles are played by actors of several different races who are colored more olive than brown. Jackson wanted Skull Island to incorporate aspects of several climate zones - plants from all over the world, different sorts of animals, and he wanted his people to have the same hybrid look. But does the fact that they were dark skinned and primitive mean that Jackson sees all African people like that? He makes fun of the earlier King Kong's treatment of the natives in his own film, but is his treatment any better? Does it matter that one member of the supporting cast is African American, quotes "heart of Darkness" from memory, and takes a young orphan under his wing?
So lets say, for the sake of argument, that Wes Anderson's whole point with race in his films is to show how his characters are silly in their prejudice. Where does that leave us? Royal gets his comeuppance - the man he insults ends up marrying his wife and becoming a surrogate father to his children. Conversely, nothing really happens in "Life Aquatic" to connect the characters to their environment. The treatment of the Pirates, in particular, is complete fantasy land - they're just a bunch of Filipinos who hang out on a broke down boat and keep a secret base on an island. My brother thinks that "Life Aquatic" has a particularly Mediterranean style - that Anderson absorbed the best of France and Italy and Spain. I don't see any evidence of the film styles of those three countries in the film. "Life Aquatic" is the ultimate tourist movie - Steve Zissou goes cool places without every really trying to understand them, doesn't seem to speak the language, doesn't try.
WHich brings me back to "hotel Chevalier," where the whole point, I think, is that Jason Schwartzman's character is hermetically sealed, and Natalie Portman is there as the eternal Breath of Fresh Air. I think there is something unbearably sad about the short, and I think that has everything to do with Portman's performance - the way she absorbs the whole diorama layout of Schwartzman's pristine room and asks, "What the fuck is the deal?" Most characters in Anderson films refuse to let even the simplest emotion out of their face, but Portman is all emotion - yearning, annoyance, hatred, sadness, confusion, amusement, everything. It's fitting, then, that she's essentially naked by the end of the film and Schwartzman hasn't taken off a single article of clothing. How perfect that the film ends out on the deck, because that's exactly the kind of view Wes Anderson's characters take of the world - they see it without being it, slightly removed in their lavishly designed, empty hotel room. The first and last shot of the film are the only two that aren't inside of the hotel room.
Wes Anderson's films are all about the tension between stasis and kineticism, between silent people who can't formulate a word and manic people who can't help but speak their mind. "Hotel chevalier" captures all of that in 12 minutes. The one wrong note in the film is the slow motion penultimate shot, but only because it feels so mannered - but notice how Anderson twists his own style, and our own expectations. Yes, there is the same old "British Invasion song playing over slow motion walking" bit, but it's the same song that was playing earlier - that Jason Schwartzman arranged for his perfect tableau scene - and it isn't actually the last shot - when Anderson cuts outside, they're moving back in normal motion.
One more thing about the song - in "Life Aquatic," you could tell that Anderson was just making his soundtrack quirky for the hell of it. "Search and Destroy" is a great song, but the montage it accompanies does nothing for the movie - it seems like a scene that exists purely to showcase "Search and Destroy." But "Where do you go to My Lovely" is exactly the right song for this film. It is rife with references to High culture and Europe and pop culture and names and places - it could have been written by Bret Easton Ellis ("you talk like Marlene Dietrich/ and you dance like Zizi Jeanmarie/ your clothes are all made by Balmaire) - but because Anderson is making a film that's specifically about an American abroad hermetically sealed in his hotel shell, the song becomes a bit sad - you get the vibe that Jason Schwartzman's character knows who Marlene Dietrich is but has never seen one of her movies, that he knows Picasso is great but doesn't understand why, that he knows Naples is cool but couldn't find it on the map.
The song is also important because it's easy to misunderstand the intention. The chorus runs, "WHere do you go to my lovely, when you're alone in your bed, tell me the thoughts that surround you, I want to look inside your head." Because it's a man singing, one might automaticaly assume that the song is about Natalie Portman's character. Just the opposite. Jason Schwartzman is the "lovely" of the title - alone in his bed, surrounded by thoughts. Natali Portman's whole role in the film is to try to get Jason Schwartzman to open up - to leave his little hotel room, to tell her what he really thinks, to get a RISE out of him. It almost kind of works.
I dunno. Maybe I just see alot of myself in the movie.
Cheers,
Darren
I can remember the exact moment that I knew I didn't quite like the movie. It's the moment when Bill Murray breaks out of his bonds and shoots up a bunch of pirates, action movie style. It's a moment that Steve Zissou seems to become the great man that everyone is always saying he is, and after that scene, I was expecting that Bill Murray would finally come to life. It's strange to remember now, but he used to be a vital, crazy presence onscreen. He was never madcap - never a John Belushi - but there was a certain madness in his best performances, in "Caddyshack" as an idiot savant waging war on a gopher, in "Scrooged" battling his own inner asshole to find true love, and most especially in "Groundhog Day," where he covers an incredible range of moods - anger, madness, exasperation, existential regreat, and ultimately contentment. Anderson revived his career in "Rushmore" by making Murray play the same kind of man twenty years after the party - sad, quiet, mugged by the passage of time. That gunfight seemed to indicate a return of the old Murray.
But no. After the fight, he remains trapped in his little malaise - for the whole movie, really. In a sense, "The Royal Tenenbaums" and "The Life Aquatic" are the same sort of story, in that you hear, over and over again, how the characters' greatness has passed them by. The difference is that "Tenenbaums" has Gene Hackman, who absolutely holds the movie together. Every other character is trapped in that particular Andersonian stasis - they stand still in elaborate diorama-sets without really noticing anything. Hackman gives the whole film its life force - he's the burning, half-drunk, scheming supernova that casts light on everyone else. Bill Murray in "the life Aquatic" is just the opposite - every character onscreen loves him, can't stop talking about how great Steve Zissou is, and he's just at the center, hanging out in a steam room. He's the black hole. I think, frankly, this is because Hackman is a genuine actor and Bill Murray is just Bill Murray. Murray plays the same character in each film, and sometimes it's genius ("Lost in Translation") sometimes it's just monotone ("Broken Flowers.")
There are moments of "Life Aquatic" that make you laugh and moments that make you choke up with tears, and what they both have in common is that they come completely out of nowhere. Anderson doesn't write narratives that advance or grow - he comes up with a single idea and has characters circle around that idea for the whole movie. There is always an elephant in the room in Anderson films that characters never quite get around to talking about. In "Royal Tenenbaums" and "Life Aquatic," no one can ever quite bring themselves to admit what failures they have become.
The worst thing, though, was the cuteness. "Royal Tenenbaums" was cute, but there, within the film, it actually made sense - all of the characters suffered from arrested development, so it made complete sense that they all still acted like children. In "Life Aquatic," the cuteness is ruinous - you can't believe that any of the characters could steer a canoe, much less make a series of true-life deep-sea adventure films. You certainly don't buy Steve Zissou as a genius. Leaving the theater from watching "Life Aquatic," my strongest feeling was frustration - the whole movie, all I could think of was how much I wanted to crawl on the screen and shake everyone out of their stupor. You have a fucking boat with a fucking submarine! Life isn't so bad!
Hackman is that shaker in "Royal Tenenbaums." The teacher is that shaker in "Rushmore" - she never gets carried away by Max's dreams, never once buys into the fact that he actually loves her, is quite aware of the fact that HE'S A TEENAGER.
And that's exactly the role that Natalie Portman plays in "Hotel Chevalier," from the very first moment she steps into the hotel - "What the fuck is this music?" Jason Schwartzman's character has arranged his whole room just so, Wes Anderson style - he selects a particular soundtrack of late 60s music, he starts a bubble bath, changes his clothes, orders food. Natalie Portman is exactly the breath of fresh air that keeps Wes Anderson films from being empty whimsy. Gwyneth Paltrow was narcotized in "Royal Tenenbaums" - she never changed her expression. You could argue that it made it all the more potent when she did emote - the bit where she starts crying when she hugs Luke Wilson is beautiful - but you could also argue that it's strange, after her knockout performance in "Shakespeare in Love," to see the woman who was then the greatest actress in the world give a Jessica Biel performance.
I didn't read all of the race thing because I noticed it had spoilers for "Darjeeling," and even for movies I don't want to see I hate spoilers, but it seems that the main argument is that Anderson uses ethnic characters and cultures on the periphery and makes a joke out of his character's inability to understand them. Here we are getting into dangerous post-PC territory. There was just a big flap over a comment that a character made on "Desperate Housewives" - Teri Hatcher (who, everyone knows, is the ditzy housewife) said that she wanted to see her doctor's credentials and make sure he "didn't have a med school diploma from the Phillipines or something." Instantly, the Filipino government issued a massive public statement about how the comment was entirely misleading - that Filipino doctors are some of the most educated in the world, etc, etc. But was the line meant to make fun of the Phillippines, or was it meant to make fun of the characters' stupidity, or was it meant to portray a silly yet common prejudice in modern day America? Was the joke morally defensible? Is "Desperate Housewives" anti-Filipino?
This is an important question for the modern age, because the thrust of Slate's argument is essentially that Wes Anderson makes movies about upper class white people with no understanding of the rest of the world, and hence, Wes Anderson has no understanding of the rest of the world. Gene Hackman makes racist comments in "The Royal Tenenbaums" and people laugh at them, because Gene Hackman's delivery is very funny. Does that make us racist if we laugh at that? Archie Bunker said much worse for much longer on "All in the Family,"and that was one of the funniest sitcoms ever. If you were to watch an episode of "All in the family" and "Friends" back to back, which one has aged better? "Friends" is offensive to no one, and yet it is entirely deracinated as a result - FAR more hermetic, I would argue, then anything Anderson has done.
Is the Indian guy in "Royal Tenenbaums" funny? Hell yes. Does he have as big a role as other characters? No. Does he have a fascinating backstory? Yes - he stabbed Royal and took him to the hospital afterwards, and he stabs him again. For comparison, consider the movie "About Schmidt," one of the most heartbreaking films ever made about old age and loneliness which is also hysterically funny. The running joke of the film is that Jack Nicholson has taken part in one of those "save the african orphans" program and sends money to a child named Nduku - they encourage people to write their orphans letters, and so throughout the film, Jack Nicholson begins his letters, "Dear Nduku." Because people in America find the name so alien, and so when it's placed in such a quaint context of a letter, it becomes insanely funny. One critic (I don't remember who, so sorry if this is just a straw man argument) said that that bit was racist.
Take it one step further. There is a burgeoning question online about race in Peter Jackson films. There were no black people in "Lord of the Rings," but there were orcs (who had monstrous big noses and were generally ugly and scruffy looking and talked with Cockney accents) and there were also the Uruk-Hai, a warrior race of big dudes who painted their faces and could smell Man from miles away. They were black as soot, and looked like lions. They were unrepentantly evil, and unthinking. Are they meant to be African? Is "Lord of the Rings" secretly a story about gentrification - Aragorn, the long lost King, is after all a Numenorian, a member of a master race that lives a very long time and hangs out with the Elves, who stand still and statuesque like characters in a Wes Anderson film.
Even more problematic is "King Kong" - Peter Jackson envisions the natives of Skull Island as african-esque people. I say "african-esque" because the roles are played by actors of several different races who are colored more olive than brown. Jackson wanted Skull Island to incorporate aspects of several climate zones - plants from all over the world, different sorts of animals, and he wanted his people to have the same hybrid look. But does the fact that they were dark skinned and primitive mean that Jackson sees all African people like that? He makes fun of the earlier King Kong's treatment of the natives in his own film, but is his treatment any better? Does it matter that one member of the supporting cast is African American, quotes "heart of Darkness" from memory, and takes a young orphan under his wing?
So lets say, for the sake of argument, that Wes Anderson's whole point with race in his films is to show how his characters are silly in their prejudice. Where does that leave us? Royal gets his comeuppance - the man he insults ends up marrying his wife and becoming a surrogate father to his children. Conversely, nothing really happens in "Life Aquatic" to connect the characters to their environment. The treatment of the Pirates, in particular, is complete fantasy land - they're just a bunch of Filipinos who hang out on a broke down boat and keep a secret base on an island. My brother thinks that "Life Aquatic" has a particularly Mediterranean style - that Anderson absorbed the best of France and Italy and Spain. I don't see any evidence of the film styles of those three countries in the film. "Life Aquatic" is the ultimate tourist movie - Steve Zissou goes cool places without every really trying to understand them, doesn't seem to speak the language, doesn't try.
WHich brings me back to "hotel Chevalier," where the whole point, I think, is that Jason Schwartzman's character is hermetically sealed, and Natalie Portman is there as the eternal Breath of Fresh Air. I think there is something unbearably sad about the short, and I think that has everything to do with Portman's performance - the way she absorbs the whole diorama layout of Schwartzman's pristine room and asks, "What the fuck is the deal?" Most characters in Anderson films refuse to let even the simplest emotion out of their face, but Portman is all emotion - yearning, annoyance, hatred, sadness, confusion, amusement, everything. It's fitting, then, that she's essentially naked by the end of the film and Schwartzman hasn't taken off a single article of clothing. How perfect that the film ends out on the deck, because that's exactly the kind of view Wes Anderson's characters take of the world - they see it without being it, slightly removed in their lavishly designed, empty hotel room. The first and last shot of the film are the only two that aren't inside of the hotel room.
Wes Anderson's films are all about the tension between stasis and kineticism, between silent people who can't formulate a word and manic people who can't help but speak their mind. "Hotel chevalier" captures all of that in 12 minutes. The one wrong note in the film is the slow motion penultimate shot, but only because it feels so mannered - but notice how Anderson twists his own style, and our own expectations. Yes, there is the same old "British Invasion song playing over slow motion walking" bit, but it's the same song that was playing earlier - that Jason Schwartzman arranged for his perfect tableau scene - and it isn't actually the last shot - when Anderson cuts outside, they're moving back in normal motion.
One more thing about the song - in "Life Aquatic," you could tell that Anderson was just making his soundtrack quirky for the hell of it. "Search and Destroy" is a great song, but the montage it accompanies does nothing for the movie - it seems like a scene that exists purely to showcase "Search and Destroy." But "Where do you go to My Lovely" is exactly the right song for this film. It is rife with references to High culture and Europe and pop culture and names and places - it could have been written by Bret Easton Ellis ("you talk like Marlene Dietrich/ and you dance like Zizi Jeanmarie/ your clothes are all made by Balmaire) - but because Anderson is making a film that's specifically about an American abroad hermetically sealed in his hotel shell, the song becomes a bit sad - you get the vibe that Jason Schwartzman's character knows who Marlene Dietrich is but has never seen one of her movies, that he knows Picasso is great but doesn't understand why, that he knows Naples is cool but couldn't find it on the map.
The song is also important because it's easy to misunderstand the intention. The chorus runs, "WHere do you go to my lovely, when you're alone in your bed, tell me the thoughts that surround you, I want to look inside your head." Because it's a man singing, one might automaticaly assume that the song is about Natalie Portman's character. Just the opposite. Jason Schwartzman is the "lovely" of the title - alone in his bed, surrounded by thoughts. Natali Portman's whole role in the film is to try to get Jason Schwartzman to open up - to leave his little hotel room, to tell her what he really thinks, to get a RISE out of him. It almost kind of works.
I dunno. Maybe I just see alot of myself in the movie.
Cheers,
Darren
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