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.
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