The Legend of Billie Jean: Fingers crossed it’s as good as I remember.

In 1985 I went to the movies and saw the film The Legend of Billie Jean. I remember liking it a lot, but I was fourteen years old at the time, so my standards regarding the quality of a film were possibly questionable. The movie stars Helen Slater as a rebel teenager who gets in trouble with the law over a scooter repair.

Sort of a teenage version of Thelma and Louise. Except events center on a scooter repair.

The movie’s tagline was:

When you're seventeen, people think they can do anything to you. Billie Jean is about to prove them wrong.

I’ll be honest. I don’t remember the scooter at all. I’m sure it fits in seamlessly with the highly evolved plot, but it sounds a little odd without context.

The film also stars Christian Slater (not related to Helen, though their mutual appearance in the film would lead some people to assume that they are brother and sister to this day) and a host of B-level movie stars from the 1980's, including Yeardley Smith, Dean Stockwell and Peter Coyote.

Not exactly an all-star cast, but that doesn’t mean anything.

Right?

The movie comes up often in conversation because of the movie’s soundtrack, which featured Pat Benetar’s Invincible, a song specifically written for the film. Whenever I hear the song, I am compelled to ask whoever is around if they ever saw the film, and I have yet to meet anyone who did.

Not one.

Based upon my wife’s most recent response to this question, I suspect that I may have asked it more than once.

So I decided to purchase a copy of the film for her to watch, so the cheese would no longer stand alone.

It wasn’t easy. The movie was never released to DVD, even though Yeardley Smith said in a recent interview that she had recorded a DVD commentary in 2008 and that the DVD was supposed to have been released that same year. In 2009, Columbia Pictures released the film to Europe, and after much finagling, I finally managed to purchase a copy.

With a bowl of ice cream in hand, we are about to watch it.

I’m a little afraid.

I’m starting to regret tracking the film down in the first place.

I fear that it will be terrible and all of these years of searching for someone who watched The Legend of Billie Jean will be for naught.

Fingers crossed, I’m hitting Play now.

Nothing like an ominous hammer cock

I watch a lot of partial movies on AMC while I am working out. Depending on the elliptical machine, I often have closed captioning automatically turned on for the film. It turns out that the captioning can be quite amusing, particularly when it comes to captioning the sounds in a movie.

How a deaf person is supposed to interpret the description of a sound that he or she has never heard before is beyond my understanding, but the descriptions are still fun and often provide an additional level of entertainment to the film.

While watching a western this week, I saw the following captions:

Sonorous beer fizzing (used just prior to a gunfight)

Frisking about (used to describe the unseen activity taking place in the saloon below the protagonist’s bedroom)

How drinking, gambling, shouting and piano playing became frisking about is also beyond my comprehension.

Ominous hammer cock (used to describe the thumbing back of the hammer on a pistol prior to firing, though the description certainly allows for a variety of interpretations)

Not cool. I think. Actually, maybe it’s very cool.

It’s hard to imagine that this was unintentional.  Right?

Maybe? 

I’m not sure. 

My question is this:

If it is intentional, is it wrong?

If little kids are unable to pick up on the hidden message on a conscious level or even understand its meaning, is this a problem?

My first reaction was less than favorable, but then I remembered that I am the teacher who wants to develop subliminally-based broadcasting software for my classroom Smartboard that flashes messages to my students like:

Work hard.

Mr. Dicks knows all.

Don’t interrupt.

7 x 8 = 56

Homework is cool.

Can I begrudge a film studio’s attempt to make a children's movie more appealing to the adults who have to accompany their kids to the theater?

If intentional, it’s deceitful and and a little crass, but it’s clever, too, and clever usually wins in my book.

Top Gun and Homer Simpson? What’s next?

I have a hard time fearing the economic power of China after learning that China Central Television ripped off explosions from Top Gun in order to show off a Chinese J-10 fighter plane firing a missile during maneuvers and destroying another aircraft. I realize that the Chinese are famous for ignoring copyright, but this is ridiculous.

And not the first time.

“In a previous case in 2007, China's state-run Xinhua news agency issued a news story about a discovery related to multiple sclerosis, which was accompanied by an X-ray showing the head of cartoon character Homer Simpson.”

What’s next?

Moonraker footage to support claims that they landed men (and scantily-clad women) on the Moon?

My daughter may be in communication with aliens

Yesterday morning Clara began systematically removing balls from the ball pit and placing them in various kitchen accouterments.  

Later in the day, at her birthday party at her aunt’s house, she did this:

 

Remember Richard Dreyfuss’s character and his obsession with Devil’s Tower in Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Dreyfuss’s character spent hours creating models of a mountain that he had never seen before, in potting soil, clay and most famously, mashed potatoes. Until he saw an image of the mountain on a news broadcast, he had no idea what he was doing or why.

For those of you not familiar with the film, Devil’s Mountain was the ultimate landing site of the alien spaceship.

Clara’s behavior with the balls and the pretzels reminded me of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Inexplicable, seemingly obsessive, varying in medium, and yet somehow somehow methodical and with a sense of order and purpose as well.

Maybe it’s a sign?

My wife, who is afraid of aliens and even the thought of them, will not be happy to hear my suppositions.

Mammoths, octopi and a whole bunch of spoons

Three random observations: 1. Anyone who criticizes Alanis Morissette’s song "Ironic" for its lack of irony is an intellectual douchebag. It’s a four minute pop song. It need not be held up to a literary standard.

And sure, “...ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife” is not ironic by the truest definition of the word, but it seems pretty damn ironic to me.

2. I know it was based upon the Ian Fleming novel, but how does the movie Octopussy get made with its original title?

3.  Woolly mammoths returning to the world? It’s about time.

iCarly trumps Robert Frost and Val Kilmer

I am reading Shakespeare’s Richard II to my students. On Friday we came across the phrase “rue the day” in the text. I was prepared to tell them all about Frost’s poem Dust of Snow:

The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued.

I also planned on briefly reviewing the excellent “rue the day” reference from the 1985 film Real Genius.

But when I asked if anyone knew what the phrase “rue the day” might mean, almost every hand in the class went up.

Had they studied Frost in fourth grade?

Did they recently view a Val Kilmer film retrospective at the local college theater?

No. They had all learned the phrase from something called iCarly, which I initially thought was a video game. Apparently an episode of the program featured the phrase rather prominently.

I’m not sure how I feel about this.

Three very different films

I watched three movies over the course of the last two days. Here is my brief summation of each film: Tron Legacy:  Dumb and fun. Kind of like the girl you are willing to date but never get serious with.

The Social Network: You leave the theater wondering if Zuckerberg has Asperger's Syndrome or is simply a jerk (the last line of the film seems to imply the latter, but it was a stinker of a last line, and I remain unconvinced). You also find yourself wishing that real life dialogue was as bristling and witty as Aaron Sorkin envisions. But that happens with every Sorkin script.

The King’s Speech: The Karate Kid meets speech therapy. I am fairly certain that the real King George VI was not this funny nor this pathetic.

For the record, I thought The Social Network and The King’s Speech were outstanding, and Tron Legacy was a suitable afternoon diversion.

Avoid ambiguity in the demise of a character

I don’t mind endings that make you wonder what might happen to a character had another scene been written or filmed. Both Something Missing and Unexpectedly, Milo end with the protagonist’s future in doubt. But at least you know that both protagonists will have a future.

What I despise are endings in which the existence of the protagonist in a subsequent scene is in doubt.

This is why the last episode of The Sopranos annoyed me.

Either kill Tony or don’t. Don’t avoid taking a position on the matter by creating some multi-layered scene that might be interpreted as Tony’s eminent death but might not.

This was a mobster show. Whack the guy or don’t.

This is why I didn’t like the ending to The Wrestler.

Yes, it’s very likely that the viewer is meant to assume that Randy dies at the end of the film, but again, his fate is ultimately left to interpretation.

Does he suffer another heart attack as he dives off the top ropes?

Possibly. Probably.

But aren’t there medical personnel on hand?

Didn’t he survive his first heart attack?

Kill him or don’t.

Ambiguity in the possible death of a character is an act of cowardice on the writer’s part.

If my nightmares weren’t already consumed by armed robbers and gunshots to the head, this would most assuredly be my nightly psychological torment

I want to see this film but it’s being released in just five cities.

How annoying.

Important parental service announcement

I have to admit that I have had similar concerns for my daughter.

Hearts in Atlantis: A fine name for an entirely different film

Have you seen the movie Hearts in Atlantis starring Anthony Hopkins? It’s a movie about a man with a mysterious power who is being hunted by “low men.” It’s an adaptation of a Stephen King novel by the same name, and though I am a huge fan of King’s work, I hadn’t gotten around to read the book until recently.

Turns out that Hearts in Atlantis (the book) is actually a collection of five short stories centered in the 1960’s, and the title of the book is also the title of the second story in the book.

But this is not the story from which the movie was adapted.

The story upon which the movie is based is titled “Low Men in Yellow Coats.” "Hearts in Atlantis" is the short story of some college boys who fall in love with and become addicted to the card game hearts (and is a tremendous short story).  there is nothing about hearts or card games or college boys in the film whatsoever.

I can understand renaming a movie that is based upon a book, as producers did when they adapted Stephen King’s short story "The Body" into the film Stand By Me or when they adapted his short story “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” and renamed it Shawshank Redemption.

But to name the movie after the wrong short story seems pretty stupid.

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.