I don't like Anchorman. Nor should you.

Sometimes the world likes something - even loves something - but you don’t.

Like avocados. I can’t begin to imagine why so many people find these small, shriveled balls of green goo tasty, but they do.

In these instances, you can do one of two things:

1. Remain silent, knowing that you will stand in opposition of the masses and risk people questioning your taste.

2. Declare your hatred for the thing that everyone loves and withstand the onslaught.

I always do the latter, because I enjoy argument, conflict, and debate. I enjoy standing alone. Also, I think I’m usually right and simply ahead of the curve.

In that less-than-generous spirit, I would like to officially declare my hatred for the film Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.

People love this movie. They loved it so much that a sequel was made that earned almost as much at the box office as the first. Even Roger Ebert gave this dumpster fire three stars. People quote this film constantly. They rave about Will Ferrell’s performance. They brag about having watched it hundreds of times.

Not only do I not like this film, but I think it’s stupid. I find it unfunny, pointless, and forgettable. The jokes are sophomoric and simple. I don’t care about the characters, and I don’t believe in any of them for even a second. I hope they all fail and die. The movie is filled with cardboard cutouts bumping into things and saying stupid things.

I hate this movie.

In fact, I think Anchorman is worse than avocados, and that’s saying a lot.

But if you love the movie, fear not. I’m not judging you. Lots of people marry someone who they absolutely love only to find out that their spouse is a monster. Sometimes the spouse turns into a monster over time, but other times, their spouse was a monster right from the start.

They just couldn’t see it.

That’s how I feel about Anchorman.

It’s stupid and bad and not funny. You just can’t see it yet.

Deep Impact is a stupid movie

I know it was released in 1998, but boy is Deep Impact a stupid film.

It you don’t remember, Deep Impact and Armageddon both came out in 1998 - two months apart - and featured planet-killing asteroids threatening the Earth. Armageddon earned more than $200 million while Deep Impact brought in about $140 million.

That’s astounding considering how terribly written Deep Impact was.

Watching the last 45 minutes of the film on the treadmill last week, it was very clear why this movie failed to beat Armageddon at the box office and, more importantly, why it failed to have any significant after life on television or other secondary markets.

The movie kills all the wrong people. Constantly. And purposelessly.

The list of deaths just within the last 30 minutes of the film include:

A blinded father on a spaceship whose baby boy was born while he was in space, and who he will never see because he is blind and about to die. It’s bad enough that he is going to die without ever holding his child in his arms, but did the writers really need to blind him, too?

Parents of an infant who must hand their baby son over to their teenage daughter and her boyfriend so they can outrun a giant wave on a motorcycle.

The film’s tangential star, Tea Leoni, and her father, standing together on the edge of the Atlantic, reconciled just in time for the wave can wipe them out together.

Leoni’s last line is, “Daddy…”

Of course this movie failed to gain any traction in the post box office mediums. There is nothing to be happy about at the end of this film. All we have left is a bunch of parent-less infants and a purposeless death of the film’s star.

It sucks.

Armageddon is smart. Not in terms of science or even plot, but in terms of managing audience emotions. You feel good after watching Armageddon. Maybe a little bit stupider, too, but good.

And yes, Bruce Willis’s character dies at the end of the film, but he dies for a reason.

He saves the damn planet.

And though he also leaves a daughter behind, she’s a grown-ass woman. Not some helpless baby who will never know her father. Also, Willis saves his daughter’s future husband by taking his place on the asteroid.

Deep Impact ends with the President of the United States, standing before a decimated US Capitol. promising to rebuild.

Armageddon ends with a wedding and an Aerosmith song.

I’m not saying that characters can’t die in films. Just allow them to die for a reason. Allow their deaths to mean something. And don’t give them infants and toddlers unless it’s absolutely necessary to the plot.

Otherwise, people will watch your movie once and never want to watch it again.

Like Deep Impact.

A very stupid movie.

Sid from Toy Story was a completely normal person.

I know the film is 24 years old, but I’m still annoyed:

Sid, Andy’s next door neighbor, was portrayed as the antagonist in Toy Story simply because he liked to take toys apart and reassemble them in new and creative ways.

Yes, perhaps if you are a toy, this is not a good thing, but should we expect Sid to be aware that his toys might be secretly sentient, filled with hopes and fear?

Of course not. Yet at the end of the film, Woody goes rogue and reveals himself to be alive. Not only does he speak to Sid, but he gets dark and creepy while doing so, scaring the bejesus out of this poor kid.

It’s awful.

As a child, I would throw my toys out of the window of my second floor bedroom onto the gravel driveway to determine which would break. Was I evil or even wrong to wonder if my Sho-Gun Warrior could survive a 15 foot plunge to the Earth?

My sibling and I would take great pleasure in jamming Weebles into the crack between the door and the wall then slamming the door so that the Weebles would explode into dozens of pieces.

Did this make us rotten children or simply curious kids who liked to experiment on the toys we had stopped playing with long ago?

Sid was a normal child with a creative, experimental mind. Yes, he tormented his sister, but what brother doesn’t? Yes, he was apparently kicked out of summer camp, but many creative people throughout history were misunderstood. Pixar tries like hell to make Sid look bad with a skull on his tee-shirt, but this is an ordinary kid who likes to makes things, take things apart, and even occasionally blow things up.

Normal.

Unless of course you’re being compared to stick-in-the-mud rule-follower Andy.

Woody’s “Play nice” warning to Sid at the end of the film was cruel and unnecessary. When we see Sid again in Toy Story 3, he is listening to heavy metal music, working as a garbage man.

Nothing wrong with being a garbage man (my father worked as a garbage man for a time), but it’s not exactly a cinematic ending for this poor boy, who is probably tormented for the rest of his life with the knowledge that at least one toy in this world (and probably others) are alive, sentient, and mean.

Sid isn’t the bad guy here. Pixar is the real bad guy for portraying a spirited, creative boy as a villain.

Star Wars got better. Seriously.

I can’t believe it.

Star Wars nerds have actually won me over.

I love Star Wars but have always found the overly-indulgent, obsessive nerds a little too much to handle, but then I see this:

A legitimately brilliant, seamless improvement to the movie that started it all.

I support this. I love this. My apologies and appreciation to Star Wars nerds everywhere. I should have never doubted your dedication to the franchise and universe.

Benji the Hunted

This 30 second clip from the 1987 film Benji the Hunted says everything you need to know about the difference between how my generation and the millennial generation was raised.

I grew up watching stuff like this - a movie for little kids - and thinking absolutely nothing of it.

Losers lose. I am happy.

As Captain Marvel enters its second weekend at the box office, it’s important to note that:

• It had a spectacular opening weekend, pulling in $153 million in North America and $455 million globally

• Both of those numbers far exceed projections

• It was the sixth-best worldwide opening ever

• The film appears to be on its way to earning more money than any superhero origin ever

I have not yet seen the movie, so I can’t speak to the quality of the film. It’s earned a 79% on Rotten Tomatoes and critics have generally liked it a lot but not loved it.

Nevertheless, these box office numbers please me greatly.

When it was announced that Captain Marvel would be a woman, the same low-life cretins who protested the reboot of Ghostbusters with female leads began their campaign of hate against this film, too.

These are most assuredly small-minded, knuckle-dragging white guys who trade in toxic masculinity and treat the Marvel cannon as something both scared and immalleable. They were undoubtedly the champions of Gamergate and the kinds of men who worry that women and Mexicans are stealing the jobs that they probably lost because they were too busy playing video games and drinking purple drank.

I paint a broad brush, I know. Apologies. I’m sure some very fine people stood opposed to a female Captain Marvel for very good reasons.

But you need to be a special kind of loser to be so angry that Captain Marvel is a women or the Ghostbusters have vaginas as to take to the Internet in droves, attempting to bring these movies down.

I am happy to see that their campaign of sexism has failed. I am happy to see that Captain Marvel is a huge financial success.

I like it when idiots, sexists, and close-minded bigots lose spectacularly.

Now if someone wants to come over and watch our kids, Elysha and I will be happy to see the movie and contribute to its financial success.

“Star Wars Always” saves the day

The last Star Wars film really depressed me.

I loved the original three films. I watched the first one - my first film ever - while sitting in the aisle with dozens of other children at The Stadium in Woonsocket, RI.

I also liked the prequels. I know there were serious issues with those movies, but I always remind myself that I saw the first three Star Wars films when I was a child and teenager. In the eyes of children the same age, those prequels were excellent. And for me, they were good. Not expertly made, but not damaging to the Star Wars story.

Then The Force Awakens came out, and honestly, I liked it very much. Yes, in many ways, it was a simple rehashing of the plot of A New Hope, but I still enjoyed it a great deal.

Then I saw Rouge One, and I liked it, too. I may have liked it a lot.

Then I saw Solo, and while there were issues with that film, I liked it enough. Again, it wasn’t ruinous to the Star Wars universe.

But the last Star Wars film - The Last Jedi - hurt me deeply. Simple plot stupidity and some unforgettably stupid moments made me wonder if this film was made by someone who misunderstood not only the Star Wars universe but basic logic.

It was an atrocity of the film. Entire swaths of that film make no sense. It is unforgivable.

I was depressed. Hurt. Angry, even.

Then I saw this incredibly ambitious trailer, made for all of the Star Wars films released to date. Titled “Star Wars Always,” it seeks to bring all of the Star Wars film together into one cohesive story, and I’ll be damned… it does so brilliant.y

It hasn’t taken away the sting of The Last Jedi, but it’s helped me to remember that this story is so much larger than a single movie. This adventure, which began when I was six years-old, is an epic tale that has becomes engrained in my heart and mind.

Yes, The Last Jedi sucked. Yes, I want to throttle Ryan Johnson for ruining that film. And yes, I sincerely want the movie re- made or at least re-edited to correct its worst parts, but despite all of this, the Star Wars story remains great.

“Star Wars Always” reminded me of this.

Advice from The Beatles

So many times in my life, I see something clever, brilliant, or truly inspired, and I think to myself, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Just last week, the trailer dropped for Danny Boyle’s latest film, Yesterday. It’s the story of a musician who wakes up in a world where The Beatles never existed, except that he knows they existed. He knows their music. He knows their songs.

He’s the only person on the planet who knows their songs.

Suddenly he’s in a position to become The Beatles. He can claim every Beatles song for himself. He can become world famous on the backs of other great musicians.

What do you do?

Elysha told me to watch the trailer, so I did. When I finished, she said, “I knew you’d like it. It’s the kind of story you would write.”

I thought, “It’s the kind of story I should’ve written! Damn it!”

So clever. Maybe even brilliant. Also an idea just waiting for the taking, and I didn’t take it. Screenwriter Richard Curtis did.

Spielberg didn't hire me. Big mistake.

When I was 14 years-old, I went to see Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom at The Stadium in Woonsocket, Rhode Island.

After seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark three years earlier and loving it, I couldn’t wait to see the latest installment in this franchise.

When I left the theater after seeing the movie, I went straight home and wrote a letter to Stephen Spielberg, explaining to him that I thought he was a brilliant director who told fantastic stories but needed someone to watch the finished film to show him all the dumb parts so he could take them out.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is filled with dumb parts.

To her credit, my English teacher at the time found the address of Paramount Pictures and sent the letter off for me, which was not an easy thing to do in a pre-internet 1983.

Spielberg, you’ll be surprised to hear, did not respond.

Honestly, I thought he would. In my 14 year-old mind, I felt certain that I had made an offer he couldn’t refuse.

More than 35 years have passed since that day, but I remain firm in my belief that filmmakers would do well to ask me to watch their movies and point out the dumb parts.

Recently, for example, I wrote about how in both Mary Poppins Returns and Wonder Woman, a white guy ends up saving the day when that job should’ve clearly been put in the hands of the female protagonist. These mistakes were so egregious that I can’t begin to imagine how those films ever made it to the screen without someone correcting the errors in these stories.

Last week Elysha and I watched Spielberg’s latest film Ready Player One. I had read and adored the book a few years ago, so I had low expectations going into the film.

It’s rare that a movie outpaces a book, though Spielberg has managed to accomplish this feat more than once with Jaws, Minority Report (a short story), and maybe Jurassic Park (I’m still not sure).

My low expectations were sadly realized.

Still, even though the film was never going to be better than the book, there were moments of real stupidity in that story that didn’t need to be there. Odd decisions by characters never paid off, shifts in tonality that tilted the film on its side, and at least one moment where an exceedingly obvious solution to an enormous problem was ignored by literally hundreds of people.

All would’ve been easily corrected had Spielberg asked me for advice. Had he answered my letter in 1983 and partnered with me then.

His loss, I guess.

Even so, things have worked out surprisingly well. Today I spend an enormous amount of time helping storytellers revise their stories.

I’m working with a documentarian, reading and revising scripts, looking for ways to improve her storytelling.

I’m working with an ad agency, helping to infuse more effective storytelling into national ad campaigns.

I’m working with small businesses, large corporations, universities, religious institutions, and hospitals to help them craft stories about their products, services, and missions.

I’m working with writers, reviewing their books, book proposals, magazine pieces, and television and film scripts and offering suggestions to improve their stories.

And I work with storytellers, listening to the stories they tell on stages and at the pulpit, in board rooms and in classrooms, at commencements and sales conferences, and everywhere in between.

Oddly, I’m doing the job that I first proposed to Spielberg 35 years ago.

It took me a little longer to get there, and perhaps I’m more skilled today than when I was 14 years-old, but it’s surprising - shocking, really - to realize that I have been on this same path for far longer than I would’ve ever imagined.

Ever since I was a kid, I was watching and listening to stories and trying to find ways to make them better.

It only took me 35 years to realize this.

No wonder Spielberg didn’t hire me back then.

Wonder Woman and Mary Poppins Returns: Two excellent films with stupid, sexist endings

Spoiler alert:

I’m about to reveal the stupid, sexist, asinine endings to Mary Poppins Returns and Wonder Woman. If you were hoping to experience the stupid, terrible endings of these films in an unspoiled fashion, stop reading now.

For those of you with me…

Mary Poppins Returns and Wonder Woman are both very good films that feature strong female protagonists but unfortunately end with stupid, sexist endings.

In both films, the character who saves the day is not our strong, female protagonist. Instead, it’s the white guy.

In Wonder Woman, yes, the film ends with an epic battle battle between Wonder Woman and Ares, but the person who actually saves the world is Steve, the white guy who heroically boards the plane containing the bomb and flies it into the sky where it can detonate safely, sacrificing himself for the world.

In fact, it’s only by witnessing the death of Steve that Wonder Woman is able to defeat Ares. Ares attempts to direct Diana's rage and grief at Steve's death by convincing her to kill Maru, the creepy poison lady, but the memories of Steve cause her to realize that humans have good within them. She spares Maru and ultimately redirects Ares's lightning into him, killing him for good. 

It’s strongly implied that had she not loved Steve, she may have killed the helpless Maru and perhaps turned to the dark side.

Of course all of this is fairly irrelevant given that Ares plan has been ruined by the white guy in the plane. Even if Ares kills Wonder Woman, the lethal gas is destroyed. It can no longer be used to gas the Western front and prolong the war.

Wonder Woman doesn’t save the day. Steve does.

I’m not suggesting that Wonder Woman needed to die to make this movie right. We just didn’t need a white guy sacrificing himself to save the world and inspiring our female protagonist to do the right thing.

Mary Poppins Returns is even more egregious.

After spending the entire film attempting to find a way to save the house from foreclosure, including finding a long lost bank stock, it is suddenly discovered woven into a kite.

Hurrah!

But oh no… the bank note is missing the required signatures, so it’s not complete and therefore worthless.

Oh no!

Mary Poppins? Will you save the day?

Or perhaps the children? Can they rescue their home?

Or even their father, the widow who has apparently been a wreck since the death of his wife. Will he finally overcome his grief and save the day?

Nope. There has literally been a rich, white guy in the other room all the time. Dick Van Dyke, playing the supposed senile bank owner, was just sitting in the next room, waiting to step in at the last minute and tell the family that they can stay in their home after all.

A rich, white guy who appears on screen for less than a minute and uses his wealth and power to save the day.

Not Mary Poppins or the children or the father or Lin Manuel Miranda’s character.

No. It’s a rich, white guy.

Ans therefore, it’s stupid. Epically stupid.

In both cases, the opportunity for the female protagonist to do what all protagonists are supposed to do - SAVE THE DAY - is subverted by a white guy.

I have no idea what these filmmakers could have been thinking, but it wasn’t good.

The magic of film on film

The Showtime series Kidding (which I have not watched) did something quite amazing:

One continuous, panoramic, uncut shot that shows the compressed transformation of a character and a space over the course of a year, portrayed in a little less than two minutes.

The scene itself is amazing, but even better, the producers added an overhead camera to show how the scene was accomplished, including quick outfit changes, body doubles, and a film crew working furiously to move the entire set around just outside the camera’s field of vision.

Also, there’s a dog in the scene. It doesn’t do anything, and I’m sure it’s well trained, but with all the complexity of the scene already, why add an element as potentially random and disruptive as a dog?

Take a moment and watch the scene. It really is remarkable example of teamwork and ingenuity.

Dr. Seuss's The Grinch is feminist and lovely.

Elysha and I took Charlie to see Dr. Seuss’s The Grinch last weekend. It’s a great film, not unlike the cartoon that we grew up watching on television. And I’ve always thought it was a pretty brilliant story:

Christmas is stolen from the Whos, but still they gather and sing on Christmas day, just as joyously as any other Christmas, causing the Grinch’s heart to grow two sizes larger.

Smart.

Here’s an unexpected twist in this version that I adored:

Little Cindy Lou Woo, the child who encounters the Grinch on Christmas Eve, is the child of a single mother. Cindy Lou is worried that her mother works too hard and has no time for herself, so she tries to meet Santa on Christmas Eve to ask if he might find a way to help her mom work less.

Instead she meets the Grinch.

Did you see that?

There’s no attempt in this film to find Mom a spouse or a love interest. No attempt reunite father and mother. In fact, there is never a mention of a father. We have no idea if Cindy Lou’s parents are divorced or if she is adopted or if her father died or if she’s the product of artificial insemination via an anonymous Who donor.

In an unexpected but much appreciated twist, we have a single mother who is not broken or incomplete or failing or even unhappy because she is single. Instead, we are given the portrait of a highly effective mother who is not in need of a man.

Yes, she is frazzled at times. A little overworked. Maybe even exhausted from time to time. But I hear parents complain every day about the struggles of parenthood.

A little too much sometimes.

Cindy Lou’s mother is no different.

I’ve often argued that a two adult household is ideal for raising children, simply because two heads are better than one. There have been many times in our years as parents that Elysha and I have stopped the other from making some silly or stupid parental mistake.

It’s always good to have a system of checks and balances whenever possible.

But I’ve also argued that this two adult household need not be a father and mother. Two fathers or two mothers are just as good. Also, a single mother with an aunt or uncle would be fine. Or a father and his best friend. Or a mother and her old college roommate. Or two grandparents raising their grandchild.

I think that in most cases, two responsible parents - in any combination - are probably better than one simply because of numbers, but I also think that single moms and single dads can kick some parenting ass, too.

As Cindy Lou Who’s mother clearly does.

More importantly, I don’t think that every single mother or single father is in need of a spouse. And I don’t think that every single mother or single father who is portrayed in film, television, or books needs to be presented as incomplete, broken, or in need of romantic love. We don’t need the children of single parents constantly portrayed as trying to find love for their loveless mothers or fathers.

This has all been done before, and honestly, it wasn’t especially good the first time.

The Parent Trap was predicable and sucky. Both times.

Dr. Seuss’s The Grinch offers audiences the opportunity to watch a kickass single mom do her job very well, absent of any pining over love lost or love never found.

I like that. I think it’s smart and new and fresh and probably a solidly feminist way of looking at the world.

I’m glad my son saw that kickass single mom kicking some parenting ass.

Well played writers Michael LeSieur and Tommy Swerdlow.

Don't sleep on Die Hard 2

Here’s the thing that everyone misses about Die Hard absolutely being a Christmas movie:

So is Die Hard 2. Maybe even more so.

The most re-watched movies of all time

Below is the list of the 25 most re-watched movies according to a national survey.

Some thoughts on this list:

I haven’t seen 8 of the 25 of the films:

The Sound of Music, Gone with the Wind, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Lion King, Finding Nemo, The Notebook, or Pride & Prejudice (though I read the book more than once) and The Avengers.

Probably a mistake to have skipped at least a few of them. I might need to see them at some point.

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This is blasphemy, I know, but I think Caddyshack and The Princess Bride are both overrated. I’ve admittedly only seen both movies once, so perhaps I might appreciate them more on a second viewing, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

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I can’t imagine rewatching Titanic or Pretty Woman. Forrest Gump is also a difficult movie to rewatch simply because it has not aged well.

_____________________________

Which Star Trek film is the list referencing? All of them? Also, I can’t imagine rewatching any of them. With the exception of a couple, most of those films really, really suck.

_____________________________

I understand why someone would want to rewatch Grease, but I am not one of those people.

_____________________________

The movie I have rewatched the most often is probably The Matrix, followed by Pulp Fiction, Rounders, any of the Jason Bourne films, any of the Die Hard films, Good Will Hunting, Speed, and Jaws, which shockingly did not make the list.

How the hell does The Notebook make this list but not Jaws?

$126 is not a lot of money

Have you heard?

Kevin Spacey’s latest film Billionaire Boys Club was exiled to video-on-demand in the wake of the sexual abuse allegations against the actor, and its theatrical release last weekend was less than expected:

$126 on Friday and $162 on Saturday. 

While I'm saddened for the hundreds of other people involved - actors, directors, producers, writers, and investors - who had hoped that the film would do better and had no idea about Spacey's alleged crimes when they were making the movie, I'm sure they were anticipating a less-than-stellar opening once they learned about their lead actor's history of sexual assault.    

I'm equally thrilled that someone who once wielded as much power and influence that Spacey once did is being made to pay for his alleged crimes, both financially and criminally, and in this case, in the court of public opinion as well. 

Stories like this give me hope that others in power (and one in particular) will eventually be made to pay for their crimes against those who are weaker, less affluent, and less skilled at obfuscation than them.

My hope is that the days of these invincible power brokers are numbered. 

"Tears in the Rain" monologue captures it all

When all is said and done, we are the sum of our experiences. Our thoughts and feelings - who we are and what we believe - are the result of the memories that we carry forward of a life lived. Our minds are a vast storehouse of the millions of minutes that we have been alive.

This is why the loss of someone like my mother was so tragic. Every question that I failed to ask my mother will remain forever unanswered. Every memory that I failed to pry from her mind will never be spoken again.  

My children were born after my mother had passed away, so as I experienced fatherhood for the first time and began to wonder if the things I see in my children were also present in me as a boy, I must resign myself to the fact that I will never know. The person who carried this information is gone.

When a person dies, it's like the wiping of a precious hard drive. The loss of valuable data. Memories so strong and so true gone forever.

It's awful. 

Even worse, so many of us plod through life, careless with our memories. We experience a moment of beauty or grace. Someone says something that causes our heart to soar. We experience a moment with our spouse or child or parent that we never want to forget. But instead of seeing the priceless nature of these moments and holding onto them with all our might, we discard them like trash. A brilliant, beautiful moment that feels as important as anything that has ever happened to us is forgotten three weeks later as life continues to pile up and we fail to reflect, record, and preserve. 

Our minds of filled with memories, but the number of memories that we have allowed to fade away is astronomical. We forget so much more than we remember, even when these forgotten moments are profoundly beautiful or incredibly moving.  

This is why I do Homework for Life. It's the most important thing I do. This is why the collection of storyworthy moments from my life that I have amassed over the past five years is the most valuable thing I own. 

Seeing, recognizing, capturing, and preserving the most meaningful moments from my life takes less than five minutes a day, yet it is the most important thing I do every day. 

If you're not familiar with Homework for Life, you want watch my TED Talk on the subject here: https://bit.ly/2f9ZPne

A reader who also does Homework for Life recently pointed me to the final scene from Blade Runner, known as the "Tears in the Rain" monologue. In the scene, the dying replicant Roy Batty delivers the speech to Rick Deckard moments after Batty saved his life despite Deckard being sent to terminate him. 

In five simple sentences, the replicant makes it clear that he also understands how life is but the sum of our experiences. He understands the value of a lifetime of memories. And he certainly understands the inherent tragedy of death, not only in the loss of the person, but also in the loss of the sum of their experiences. The deletion of their memories forever.  

It's s devastating scene. Terrible and tragic. You need not watch the film or even understand the nature of the memories that the replicant lists to understand the sadness and tragedy of the moment.

A replicant is engineered to remember everything. It has a super-human mind. It is a Homework for Life machine.

For the rest of us? We need to stop discarding our moments of beauty, poignance, heartbreak, and discovery like trash. We need to see, recognize, capture, and preserve. 

We are the sum of our experiences. Make that sum as large as humanly possible, and you will be a more thoughtful, more complete, and a happier human being.

Jurassic Park on the left. The Goonies on the right.

Weird. Right?

Movies require logic in order to succeed. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri lacked that logic.

The thing that upsets me most about a film is a failure of logic. 

A movie is supposed to transport the audience to another world. At its best, it should make us almost forget our own world. I brought Charlie to Paddington 2 a month ago. In the middle of the movie, he bolted upright in his seat and shouted, "Wo! I almost forgot who I was!" 

I loved this moment so much. What he really meant was that he forgot where he was. In his mind, he was existing within the movie. 

That is magic.

This is why we cry at scenes that our objective minds know never happened. Two people - actors who we've already seen pretending to be other people in other movies -are pretending to be two people in a moment that never actually happened.

We know all this, yet still we weep. 

This is what makes stories great. It's what makes movies great. It's magic.

A failure of logic destroys that magic. When something illogical happens in a movie, you find yourself wondering questions like:

Why did that happen?
Why did she do that?
Isn't anyone in this movie going to notice this?
Why don't they just do that?

The magic is broken. I don't get to almost forget who I am. Instead, I find myself wondering what is wrong with these people.  

I watched Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri last night with Elysha. A film that scored a number of Academy Award nominations and a handful of victories. 

Boy did I love the performances in that movie. Woody Harrelson the most.

Boy did I hate that movie.

Why? Logic. Or a lack thereof. 

Without giving away any spoilers, below is a list of fallacies of logic that ruined the possible magic of the movie for me. They are the fallacies of logic that I believe should've ruined the movie for everyone.

1. Police stations have back doors. All buildings have back doors. This is a basic fire safety requirement. No building in the world has a single exit. Especially a public building. 
2. People who commit assault - in some cases multiple times - are prosecuted for their crimes. This includes assault against dentists, teenagers, salespeople, secretaries, and former police officers. You don't get to walk through the world unscathed and unfettered after brutally assaulting other human beings repeatedly. 
3. Crime victims and their assailants are not placed in the same hospital room during their recovery.  
4. Police officers whose employment has been terminated are not encouraged to return to station late at night after everyone has gone home in order to retrieve their mail using keys that no one has bothered to collect. Also, do police stations ever really close? Even in a small town, doesn't someone answer calls at all hours?
5. People who are dying and leaving behind a beloved wife and small children don't spend large sums of money on amusing acts of petty revenge. They leave that money for their family.  

For all of these reasons, I never believed this movie. At every turn, I found myself saying:

"What? This makes no sense?"

At that point, I was no longer captivated by the magic of the film. I was distracted by the obvious fallacies of logic. 

Movies also are permitted a coincidence, but they only get one. One coincidence per film. More than one coincidence causes the audience to wonder what the hell kind of world these characters are inhabiting. More than one coincidence reminds the audience that this story isn't real. It was written by human beings who chose to manipulate events in a way that feels unreal and dishonest.

More than one coincidence makes it feel like the writers cheated, because they did.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri relies on a hell of a lot of coincidence. More than the permitted one. 

The movie was also nominated for best screenplay.

That makes no sense to me.  

The performances were brilliant. The cinematography was top notch. I loved the score.

But the screenplay? No. You don't get to put a police station in your movie with no back door and be nominated for an Academy Award. You don't get to create a world where assault goes ignored again and again and be considered great. 

Movies require logic. This movie did not have any. 

Just one writers opinion. 

Our boy watches Star Wars for the first time

My son Charlie, age 5, watched episodes 4, 5, and 6 of Star Wars with me and Elysha over the past two weeks. 

It was quite the experience. 

Though he knew almost nothing about Star Wars, he owns about a dozen action figures and received a Millennium Falcon for Christmas this year. He knew there were good guys and bad guys, but that was about it. He had sadly realized just a couple weeks before that the movie's title is Star Wars and not Star Whores. 

He was primed for viewing.

He loved the first Star Wars movie, originally titled Star Wars when I sat in the aisle in The Stadium in Woonsocket, RI back in 1977 to watch it for the first time.

Today it's titled A New Hope, and although George Lucas has tinkered with the film several times over the years, it's just as great as it was when I watched it as a six year-old boy.

The first picture was taken as John William's opening began and the famous Star Wars scroll appeared. He was saddened at the death of Obi Won Kenobi and shouted with joy when the Death Star was destroyed. 

When I told him that the next episode was titled The Empire Strikes Back, he said, "Uh oh. Doesn't sound like the good guys are going to win."

It was a tough movie for him. The Rebellion struggles throughout the movie, but what was most upsetting to him was the discovery that Darth Vader is Luke's father. The second photo was taken as that information was revealed for the first time.

He was genuinely upset. Confused, too. 

A day later, he asked me in a hushed tone, "Dad, will you ever turn to the dark side?"

I realized that this was the first time Charlie saw a father behave badly. It shook him to the core. 

Later, he said, "Dad, I think Darth Vader will turn back to the good side."

Of course, he was right. In Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader sacrifices himself in order to save his son's life and kill the Emperor. Charlie cheered again but was saddened to discover that Darth Vader was dying.

"But he's good now. Why does he have to die?"

Later, Luke cremates Vader's body. Charlie asked what was happening, and I explained that some bodies are buried and others are burned into ashes. Charlie said, "You'd better not burn me."

He has all three movies available to him now on his iPad, which is unbelievable to me. I watched that first film in a theater so jam packed that I had to sit in the carpeted aisle, and then I didn't see the movie again for more than a decade.

He has them at this fingertips.

He's watched A New Hope a couple times since that first viewing and still cheers when the Death Star is destroyed. I suspect that he may go back to Return of the Jedi at some point, too. 

But it might be a while before he returns to The Empire Strikes Back. Charlie prefers to live in a world where fathers never turn to the dark side and the good guys triumph in the end. 

Who can blame him?

All I want for Christmas is a machine gun

Not really, of course, but damn do I love this sweater.

For those of you who can't quite pick up on the reference, it's Die Hard, the greatest Christmas film of all time.

In the movie, our hero, John McClane, has just managed to kill his first terrorist and acquired a machine gun. He sends the lifeless corpse down to Hans Gruber, the terrorist boss man, in an elevator with this note written in red Sharpie on his sweatshirt.

There's nothing better than a barefoot underdog taunting his well armed enemy.

For the record, while I'm not interested in owning a machine gun, I'm not at all opposed to the second Amendment. I believe in the right of Americans to own firearms. I simply want every gun owner to undergo a thorough background check, restrictions placed on criminals, perpetrators of domestic abuse, individuals on the no-fly list, and the like, and a complete ban on assault weapons. 

You know... reasonable, rationale gun ownership. The kind of gun ownership our founding fathers envisioned with they wrote the Constitution. 

Except for John McClane, of course. He can have as many machine guns as he wants.