Art imitates life

It seems absolutely ridiculous to cast Jennifer Aniston in the role of a woman who can’t find a date. It’s Jennifer Aniston! C’mon!

Then again, it seems absolutely ridiculous that Jennifer Aniston can’t find a date.

It’s Jennifer Aniston! C’mon!

So I guess the casting might have been fine after all.

But I don’t care. You can’t just cobble a bunch of flimsy stories and half-drawn characters together, front load it with a bunch of well known actors, slap on a title like He’s Just Not That Into You, and expect this movie to be a success.

It wasn’t.

Worst movie dialogue ever

I recently watched the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral. I saw it years ago, but this film is timeless. Sadly, the excellence of the movie is tarnished by one of the cheesiest lines in all of cinematic history. At the close of the movie, Charles and Carrie are standing in the rain, together at last. The final few lines of the movie include this gem:

Charles: There I was, standing there in the church, and for the first time in my whole life I realized I totally and utterly loved one person. And it wasn't the person next to me in the veil. It's the person standing opposite me now... in the rain.

Carrie: Is it still raining? I hadn't noticed.

How this bit of dialogue didn’t end up on the cutting room floor is beyond me. Compounding the problem is Andie MacDowell’s poor delivery of the line, but it’s so awful that I can hardly blame her. She was probably throwing up in her mouth as she uttered the words.

My least favorite bit of dialogue comes from Back to the Future. In this scene, Marty McFly, having traveled thirty years into the past, is sitting at the counter of a 1950’s soda shop when the owner, Lou, begins speaking.

Lou: You gonna order something, kid? Marty McFly: Ah, yeah... Give me - Give me a Tab. Lou: Tab? I can't give you a tab unless you order something. Marty McFly: All right, give me a Pepsi Free. Lou: You want a Pepsi, pal, you're gonna pay for it.

A Tab? I realize that this diet cola still exists, but did anyone under the age of sixty ever drink the stuff? And what’s more, even my grandmother wouldn’t order a Tab in a restaurant. Marty is a seventeen year old kid from 1985. He deserves the beating that Biff soon delivers for ordering this stuff.

Then he asks for a Pepsi Free. Again, who orders a Pepsi Free?

Pepsi? Sure. Diet Pepsi? Okay.

But a Pepsi Free?

Worse bit of forced dialogue ever.

Casting is an art

Best casting job ever:

Julie Warner in the film Tommy Boy.

In this film, Warner must do the impossible:

1. Be good looking enough to play the lead female role in a major motion picture.

2.  Be not-so-good-looking enough to make us believe that she could fall in love with Chris Farley. 

And she accomplishes both objectives  brilliantly. 

In Tommy Boy, Warner skirts that line between good looking but not-too-good-looking with remarkable precision.  She does this with the help of a coat and some flannel, in order to conceal her body a bit, but when she kisses Chris Farley’s character at the end of the film, I somehow believe that this fairly good looking girl is in his league.

Brilliant. 

Maniac behind the wheel

I was watching the highway chase scene from The Matrix Reloaded while getting dressed yesterday.  A few minutes later I was in my car, driving down the road like the character, Morpheus, from the movie.  My blood was pumping, my adrenaline was rushing, and I was shifting through the gears like a madman, accelerating faster than necessary, looking for opportunities to weave in between slower moving traffic.

It was insane.

I literally had to pull over and calm myself down before proceeding in a more appropriate manner.

This leads me to wonder how dangerous the roads are after a movie like The Transporter, a film that is little more than brief moments of fisticuffs interspersed between car chases. With a couple hundred amped up drivers suddenly on the road as the credits rolled, does the probability of accidents increase?

They would if everyone behaved like me.

We need a study on the issue. Unfortunately, a recent study indicated that most studies suck.

So never mind.

Thanks a lot, Glenn…

Have you noticed that since Drew Barrymore’s jackass boyfriend, Glenn, denied her the window seat on the airplane in The Wedding Singer that men around the world can no longer request the window seat from their wives and girlfriends without appearing like a selfish jerk themselves?

How am I ever going to explain Ghostbusters to her?

There are certain things that I will never be able to fully explain to my daughter. Here’s one:

The theme song to the film Ghostbusters by Ray Parker Jr. went to #1 on the Billboard singles chart and stayed there for three weeks.

This is not a song like Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On, which, for all its sappiness, does not specifically reference icebergs, diamonds and the sinking of an ocean liner and therefore has an understandable life beyond the movie.

This is a song that only makes sense if you have seen the film. It’s a song about Ghostbusters, an occupation that only exists within the movie.

This is a song with lyrics like:

If you've had a dose of a freaky ghost You'd better call - Ghostbusters!

And yet somehow this theme song became a number one hit in 1984.

I can hear Clara now:

“Daddy, how did the theme to Ghostbusters become the most popular song in America for a entire month when there were plenty of other songs that did not rely on a specific movie for context?  I don’t get it.  You had Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, Madonna, The Police, The Rolling Stones, U2, Bon Jovi  and dozens of other great musicians making great music in 1984 and the Ghostbusters theme song topped them all for an entire month?”

What can I say to something to a question like that?

She would be right. It’s inexplicable.

Instead of attempting to provide an answer (because there is no answer), I’ll attempt to distract her with this nugget of trivia about the song:

The song was nominated for an Academy Award in the best original song category and won a Grammy. But you won’t find the music video on the home video version of the movie Ghostbusters due to a plagiarism suit brought by Huey Lewis in 1984. Lewis charged that the tune to Ghostbusters was essentially the same as I Want a New Drug by Huey Lewis and the News, which had come out six months earlier. The suit was settled out of court in 1985, with one of the stipulations being that neither party would ever discuss the suit in public.

And because the world depends upon bizarre coincidence, Huey Lewis was originally asked to come up with a theme song for Ghostbusters but turned down the project, after which the producers approached Ray Parker, Jr.

Rumble seats?

The 1970’s were a strange time in America. Disaster movies were quite popular throughout the decade. Movies like Poseidon Adventure, Airport, and The Towering Inferno were well received by audiences and critics alike.

But no movie was stranger than Earthquake, which was shown with Sensurroud, a series of large speakers and a 1,500 watt amplifier, that would pump in sub-audible "infra bass" sound waves at 120 decibels (equivalent to a jet airplane at takeoff), giving the viewer the sensation of an earthquake.

From Wikipedia:

The process of Sensurround was tested in several theaters around the United States prior to the film's release, yielding various results. A famous example is Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood, California, where the "Sensurround" cracked the plaster in the ceiling. Ironically, the same theater premiered Earthquake three months later -- with a newly-installed net over the audience to catch any falling debris -- to tremendous success.

The "Sensurround" process proved to be a large audience draw, but not without generating a fair share of controversy. There were documented cases of nosebleeds generated by the sound waves. When the film premiered in Chicago, Illinois, the head of the building and safety department demanded the system be turned down, as he was afraid it would cause structural damage. In Billings, Montana, a knick-knack shop next door to a theater using the system lost part of its inventory when items from several shelves were thrown to the floor when the system was cued during the quake scenes. Perhaps the most amazing Sensurround incident occurred when a patron's ribs were cracked by the intense output of the system.

Bizarre.

Possibly maybe potentially exciting. Someday. Maybe.

Both SOMETHING MISSING and UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO have been optioned to producers, one for film and the other for television. 

All this really means is that someone has paid me a not-enormous sum of money for the rights to try to put together a deal with a television or film studio.  This involves writing scripts, soliciting actors and directors, pitching their ideas to show runners, and the like.  If a television pilot or movie is eventually made, I get paid a more significant amount of money.

This week I received updates regarding both projects, and as always, they were laced with big named actors and producers and great potential.

After going through this process for more than two years with SOMETHING MISSING and six months with UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO, I’ve learned that these potentially exciting updates all say essentially the same thing:

Something great might happen someday.  Maybe.

I’ve learned to temper my excitement.

The evils of swashbuckling action and very bad weather.

Have you noticed that in addition to a simple rating, the Motion Picture Association of America adds a reason behind the rating to each and every movie that appears on the big screen? You need to watch the preview closely in order to see the reasons along the bottom of the screen, but it’s often worth the effort. Some of the reasons are hilarious. Here are a few of my favorites:

Twister: PG-13 for intense depiction of very bad weather.

Alien vs. Predator: PG-13 for violence, language, horror images, slime, and gore.

Indian in the Cupboard: PG for mild language and brief video images of violence and sexy dancing.

Team America: World Police: R for graphic crude and sexual humor, violent images and strong language - all involving puppets.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: PG for quirky situations, action and mild language.

Shrek the Third: PG for some crude humor, suggestive content and swashbuckling action.

Goonies never say die

It’s the twenty-fifth anniversary of The Goonies this week.

I loved the film, as all children of the 1980s should, but I always had one big problem with it.

At the end of the film, when Mikey opens his marble bag to reveal the jewels that he has managed to retrieve from One-Eyed Willy’s cache, the assumption is instantly made that this small handful of possible-costume jewelry will be worth enough to cover the mortgages on a significant number of homes in the neighborhood.

In fact, Mikey’s father is so certain that his ten-year old son has somehow stumbled upon a hidden treasure of enormous wealth that he instantly tears up the bank documents that he was about to sign and tosses them in the air.  And all this happens before the pirate ship or any other evidence of his son’s fantastic tale even becomes visible. 

Even if Mikey’s father believed that they were real jewels (a stretch at best), how was he able to instantly appraise their value with such certainty?

This never felt right to me.

Of course, I was able to instantly recall the names of almost every character in the movie prior to writing this post and could probably provide you with a remarkable accurate, scene-by-scene narration of the story, so apparently this faulty ending did not do much to spoil my love for the movie.

The devil is in the details

Twenty five years later and there are still Easter eggs to find in Back to the Future.

This one blew my mind.

The Hunt for Red October: Good and not so much

I caught some of The Hunt for Red October yesterday. It’s a good movie and a better book, but having not seen the film in years, I had some thoughts after watching it again. 1.  Just a little bit of computer-enhanced special effects in the last fifteen minutes of the film could really improve the whole damn thing. Those underwater submarine battles, and especially the torpedoes, look ridiculous. If they can add a bunch of meaningless CGI to the original Star Wars, couldn’t they fix this film up as well?

2.  Does the evil Russian submarine captain have to be sweaty and arrogant and stupid? Give me a capable bad guy any day.

3.  Harrison Ford makes for a much better Jack Ryan. But perhaps watching Alec Baldwin’s masterful comedic performances over the years have soured him for me when it comes to dramatic roles.

4.  The way in which the director eliminates the subtitles while making the viewer believe that the Russians are still speaking in Russian is masterful and should be copied whenever possible.

I don’t get it

I know it’s hip and trendy to love Wes Anderson’s films, but I don’t. 

I thought that Rushmore was okay, The Life Aquatic was overrated, The Darjeeling Limited was slow and unfunny, and The Royal Tenenbaums was so awful that I would have walked out of the theater if I hadn’t gone with friends. 

One of the worst movies I have ever seen. 

I just don’t understand the love affair that people have with his films, and this video short illustrates my feelings precisely. 

Deprived youth

I was speaking to a group of Newington High School students yesterday about writing.  In attempting to explain the importance of twisting stereotypes and giving the reader the unexpected, I used the example of Hannibal Lecter from The Silence of the Lambs. 

Lecter was an absolute villain and a genuine cannibal, I explained, but the audience couldn’t help but like him.  In the closing scene of the movie, Lecter is preparing to kill and eat Dr. Childress, the psychologist who has tormented him for years, and even though this man is little more than an arrogant and lecherous weasel, the audience finds itself pleased that Lecter has escaped and Childress will be receiving his comeuppance at the hands of Lecter. 

Turns out no one in the class has ever seen the movie.

THE WHOLE CLASS HAD NEVER SEEN THE MOVIE.

Their teacher reminded me that they were not alive when this movie was released, but I reminded her that I wasn’t alive when films like Psycho were released but I’ve still seen them.

A whole class of high school students who have never seen Silence of the Lambs, which is, by the way, widely regarded as one of the best films ever made?

Horrifying.

I assigned them the movie for homework.

I also added that the Thomas Harris novel upon which the film was based was also excellent, as was all of his work. 

HANNIBAL, the follow-up novel to SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, was one of the only books that literally had me cringing through scenes, and there was one particular scene that made me want to take a shower after reading it.

I still get the creeps just thinking about it. 

Waiting on Hollywood

It’s that time of night that film and television news occasionally trickles in. 

Both SOMETHING MISSING and UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO have been optioned to film and television producers, and since they are working on the West Coast, I tend to hear from them around 7 PM Eastern Standard Time.

Lately, the news has been good, and this evening was no exception.  Big-named movie directors are bandied about in terms of UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO, and a serious, no-nonsense television producer is hard at work on SOMETHING MISSING, trying to convince someone that it would make a great television series. 

It can be quite exciting.    

But I’ve learned over the past year to never get your hopes up in terms of film and television.  Everyone from Oprah’s production company to Johnny Depp’s “people” have considered the projects and passed, so despite the enormity of the names, I’ve learned to just sit back and continue writing my books. 

If something happens, it happens.  I’m an author who might get lucky enough to have a movie or television series based upon my stories someday,  but at my heart, I write books for people to read. 

This is my focus.

The remarkable part of the whole process is that I never anticipated anything like this happening when I first started writing.  Truthfully, I never even expected SOMETHING MISSING to be published.  I thought I’d end up with a book to pass onto my kids someday, as evidence that their dear old dad actually existed in a younger form and had half-a-brain. 

Everything since I finished the book has been gravy. 

But in the last two years, I’ve found myself on the phone and exchanging email from time to time with powerful and influential people in Hollywood.  Producers, directors, writers, and agents who want to pick my brain, pitch their idea and pay me for the rights to shop my book around.  I often hang up the phone after one of these calls and pinch myself, wondering if all this could still be real.

Hopefully one day it will be.

“Separate but equal” still alive in Hollywood

My wife and I caught about ten minutes of the Golden Globe Awards last night, and I came away wondering:

Why are the best acting awards divided along gender lines? 

While there are competitive endeavors in which the division of the sexes seems reasonable (basketball, soccer, and similar athletic events, at least for now), there is no discernable reason why actors and actresses cannot compete against one another, and I can’t imagine why they would not want to vie for the same award.

Frankly, I would prefer my daughter grow up in a world in which she does not see these divisions along gender lines as necessary or inevitable. I want her to have the opportunity to compete against men wherever and whenever there is a level playing field, and acting would seem to be one example of this. 

My wife argues that the division of the sexes in the Golden Globes provides an opportunity for more awards, and therefore more people can be recognized for their excellence.  But if increased awards this is the motive for these gender-based distinctions, why not choose distinctions that matter rather than ones related solely to genitalia and chromosomes?

How about best actor in a fictional role and a non-fictional role?  Or best actor in a period and non-period piece?  These distinctions at least seem more meaningful than best actor with a penis and best actor with a vagina, which is the distinction that we currently have.  

And if we are really interested in this division of gender in order to increase the number of awards, why isn’t the Best Director award similar divided?  Women and men must compete against one another for the directorial award (last night James Cameron beat Kathryn Bigelow in what many considered to be an upset), while the actors and actresses whom they direct do not have the same opportunity.

If I were Hilary Swank, I’d be mad as hell.  I bet she’s dying to kick Russell Crowe’s ass.     

Even the term actress provides a dilemma.  While many female television and movie stars still use the term actress to describe their profession, a growing number now prefer to be referred to as actors. But the Golden Globe and Academy Awards that honor these women still utilize the actress moniker.  Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress remains the name emblazoned on these awards.  What happens when a woman who insists on being referred to as an actor is awarded the Best Actress Oscar? 

Does she decline? 

Does she scrape the word actress off the statue and have it replaced with actor?

If everyone was competing for the same statue, problems like this would not exist.  And doesn’t the move away from the term actress signal a belief similar to my own? 

And what happens when we have our first transgender or multi-gendered actor/actress is nominated for an award?  This issue has already proven troublesome in the sporting world, where a division of sexes at least seems reasonable.  What happens when it arises in a competition that is divided along gender lines for no apparent reason?

Are Meryl Streep and Kate Winslet afraid to compete against the likes of Sean Penn and Jack Nicholson?

More importantly, why are they not clamoring to do so, if not or their own sakes, for the sake of my daughter?

Star Trek stinks

Sometimes I encounter a freak who claims that Star Trek is better than Star Wars.  While there are many, many ways to refute this utterly ridiculous claim, I like to point to this video clip. It says it all.

Johnny Depp, again, and again, and again

Did you hear about the upcoming film Alice in Wonderland?

It stars Johnny Depp, reprising his role as Edward Scissorhands in an adaptation of Jack Sparrow’s Willy Wonka.

Does this guy play the same character in every movie or what?

    

Rise up, my brothers and sisters!

Mark Wilson and I are simpatico when it comes to handling movie theater talkers.  I agree with everything he suggests. On Wednesday my friend and I plan on seeing Avatar at the local IMAX theater, and if anyone dares to speak during the movie, I will take immediate action, employing some of Wilson’s suggestions with my own if necessary.  Normally, a simple but stern reminder of theater etiquette is enough to quiet down the average movie talker, but on more than one occasion, I have been forced into more drastic measures.

My wife and I were watching The Village a few years ago when a roving band of teenagers wandered into the theater, called out for a guy named Hector, and then left. They returned a few minutes later, stood near the door, and giggled before leaving again. Several minutes later they returned for a third time, taking seats in the front row and resuming their conversations. I waited for a couple minutes, hoping they they would calm down, and when they did not, I took action.

I walked down to the front row, took up a position in front of the group, leaned in, and whispered, “You can shut up and stay, or you can leave now.  But if you stay and keep on talking, I will make it my primary mission in life to get you kicked out of the theater, even if I have to lie to do it.”

They exited immediately.

Several years ago, I was watching one of the Lord of the Rings movies with a girlfriend. The movie had been running for about five minutes and two young women sitting a couple rows behind had failed to end their conversation, even after I asked them to stop. Frustrated and angry, I stood up, turned to the women (and the audience in general), and said in a loud voice, “Can we all agree that these two women need to shut up now or leave the theater?”

A smattering of tentative applause quickly crescendoed into a unanimous ovation by my fellow patrons, immediately shaming the women into silence.

I admit that there’s a small part of me that sometimes hopes to run into callous, inconsiderate movie talkers, just so I can pull stunts like those I’ve described above.

People-pleasers

This morning, as I was getting dressed, I turned on the television. The channel was tuned to HBO, which was airing a movie that I later identified as Bride Wars.

Based upon the scene that I watched, I will not be watching this film anytime soon. But I did catch a piece of dialogue, a phrase really, that I liked a lot. In the midst of a verbal confrontation between two characters, one woman accused the other of “people-pleasing” her way through life.

I love this line, despite the paucity of good dialogue surrounding it.

Like the angry female character in the film, I am also not a fan of people-pleasers, and in many ways, CHICKEN SHACK addresses my distaste for this brand of human being.

I define people-pleasers as those individuals who construct their lives in such a way as to constantly conform to the expectations and ideals of others. These are the people who believe that all manner of pomp and circumstance must be adhered to without exception, lest the offending party be judged as uncivilized, uncouth or just plain rude. Proper dress and appropriate decorum are goals for which these people-pleasers strive feverishly. Rather than allowing themselves to be judged upon originality, creativity, or authenticity, people-pleasers purposefully amalgamate their persona into cookie-cutter constructs of those around them. They base their entire existence upon inflexible tradition, a rigid set of cultural norms, a stringent and assiduous devotion to proper etiquette and comportment, a blind and unquestioning adherence to religious doctrine, and an enthusiastic embrace of popular culture.

These are the people who purchase gifts based upon numerical equity and perceived expectation, find great comfort on the social acceptance that comes with the well-timed thank you note, and throw elaborate birthday and graduation parties so their equally uninteresting children can achieve their own station on the social ladder. These are the societal wonks of the world who would never dare to break a dress code and only listen to music on Top-40 radio stations, shunning anything that might be perceived as weird, different or unpopular. Image is everything to the people-pleaser. Without even being aware of it, their goal is to become as unmemorable as possible in their constant attempt to look and sound like everyone else around them. They avoid confrontation and controversy at all costs, dodging the honesty and forthrightness that can sometimes result in animosity in favor of behind-the-back sniping and anonymous cruelty.

As you can probably tell, I do not like this kind of person at all. People-pleasers make it difficult for quirky, odd, strange and unique individuals to be themselves. They demand conformity and often vilify those who do not meet this exigency.

Most of all, I just don’t understand people-pleasers. I cannot imagine why anyone would invest so much of themselves into the opinions of others. Admittedly, they are easy targets for my novel, but I have also discovered that their righteous indignation and overwhelming numbers can be dangerous to the less-than-conforming souls of the world. This is an issue at the heart of CHICKEN SHACK.

Nicholson Baker said it well: There is a feeble urgency behind all forced mannerisms of finery- haste and pomp cannot coincide.

Ambrose Pierce did as well: Politeness, n. The most acceptable hypocrisy.