You Have Your Moments, Lucas. Not Many of Them, But You Do Have Them

In honor of the 30th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back I thought I’d post some thoughts on the movie. Since this is almost certainly my favorite movie of all time, I could go on for infinite pages about every single shot and how each one affected me personally. I won’t go quite as far as that, though nearly every frame of this movie has been hanging in the main gallery of the art museum of my mind since I was eight years old. The cold comfort of the Hoth base, learning the odds of dying in various ways, the thunderous reveal of Darth Vader and the massive Imperial Fleet, the epic scale of the Hoth battle, meeting Yoda, Han Solo and Princess Leia’s asteroid field inspired romance, Yoda schooling Luke in the ways of the force, the calm of Cloud City replaced by the excitement and terror of the heroes desperate escape, the final clash of the lightsabers in the hellish carbon freezing chamber, and, through it all, one of the most powerful and romantic music scores ever written—these are the things I will try my best to avoid gushing over.

There’s nothing new to write about this movie that hasn’t already been written. Everyone knows that this was the Star Wars movie that had the least Lucas involvement (though he deserves as much credit for the movie as anyone), everyone talks about how powerful the “I am your father” reveal was in 1980, everyone talks about how the more mature, “dark” tone made for a much more interesting movie, and how traumatic it was that the good guys lost. And look no further then Princess Leia's horrified reaction to the THUD frozen Han Solo makes when he clangs against floor to know that this movie cared about the little details in a way few have before or since. Empire was the first Star Wars that was really Star Wars—it took the simple story from the original movie and transformed it into an epic saga. Everything said about the movie is true, and when kids growing up in the 80s and 90s thought of Star Wars, it was this movie that laid the foundation for what Star Wars was.
It’s a shame they show it on TV so much nowadays, and that the prequels and subsequent media inundation have made Star Wars less magical and almost banal. I know the movie so well that I’ll never be able to experience like I used to ever again, and new generations will never experience the way we did. Kids today turn on their Xboxes and have a lightsaber fight without understand the awed silence in which we sat when Luke turned on his saber in the carbon freezing chamber. So much of what was wonderful about Star Wars has been sucked away, for me and for millions, by unceasing overexposure.

Just for today, though, I will try to forget what Star Wars has become and just remember what it was. Oddly enough, Empire was the last of the original Star Wars movies I saw. Therefore it was always somewhat mysterious and epic, even before I watched it. I knew what happened in Star Wars, and I knew what happened in Jedi, so I therefore knew that the events that joined those two very different movies had to be explosive indeed. How did Luke Skywalker go from naïve farmboy to calm and collected Jedi knight? Why was Han Solo frozen? How did Luke meet Yoda? Where did the Emperor come from? Darth Vader was Luke’s father? And who was Lando?

So I never got to experience Empire the way older people experienced it, as a cliffhanger, as a struggle that the heroes largely lose, as the anticipated sequel to the original Star Wars. I knew that everything turned out okay in the end, so I never thought of Empire as “dark.” (And I’ll be honest, I still think the term “dark” in conjunction with any Star Wars movie is a bit much. I think I once heard Empire called the saga’s “dark opus of ever building despair” on a forum once. Whoever said that must have been thinking of the scene where Yoda beats R2-D2 with a stick. I still get chills.) But even with all that baggage, I was still struck by just how different Empire was from the much more tonally similar Star Wars and Jedi.

My reasons for liking it back then were a bit more simplistic than they are today. Luke and Darth Vader finally had a proper fight (something I was expecting, but never got, throughout all of Star Wars), Yoda was a lot more fun to look at than old Obi-Wan, and Han Solo was the coolest man in the universe. Really. Empire Strikes Back Han Solo could walk into any room today, right at this moment, wearing that stupid 80s navy blue jacket, and get every woman there to go home with him. Young boys could only watch him in jealous awe. It might be hard to understand or even remember, but for young 80s kids raised on Spielberg and Lucas, Harrison Ford was the absolute last word on movie stars.
What resonates with me now, and why, despite all that the Star Wars saga has endured in the last decade or so, people still love Empire, is the story. The simplistic values of the original film might work when you’re a kid, but when you get older you realize life doesn’t quite work like that. Empire takes the traditional hero’s journey story of the first film and asks “what now?” So you’ve proven yourself and saved the galaxy. So what? To quote Princess Leia, despite everything that happened in Star Wars “The Empire is still out there!” Nothing our heroes accomplished mattered much in the end. Empire is a story about those times when dreams don’t come true, when we fail to rescue the princess, when no matter how hard we try nothing seems to go right. Yoda taught Luke the old Hollywood standby “Believe in yourself and you can achieve anything!” and so Luke, full of confidence, goes to Vader and gets his ass handed to him.
We didn’t realize it as kids of course, but The Empire Strikes Back essentially makes a mockery of the value system in the first film, the value system spat at us, cynically, by so many movies. “Believe in yourself” “Good wins out in the end” "That evil guy you're after isn't a corrupted cyborg version of your father" “Love conquers all” “The hero gets the girl” (Remember, pre-Return of the Jedi, Han Solo was stealing Luke’s girl right from under his nose) Empire says “nope” to all of these old Hollywood themes. (And despite my oft maligning it, Jedi, when it’s good, takes this thematic evolution a step further, but more on that another time)

This is the opposite of the hero’s journey. The story where all your training and preparation amount to nothing. The story that forces you to face up to the fact that no matter how good you are and how hard you try, there are going to be times when you’re left without a hand dangling from the bottom of Cloud City. Empire shows that when everything else has left you, faced with terrible options, you still have the chance to be brave and good. What makes a hero in Empire is not traditional heroics, but the simple choice to do good. Leia’s choice to go back for Luke, Lando’s choice to help save Leia and Chewie, and of course, Han Solo’s choice to face the certain death of carbon freezing with a brave face and an immortal line. Luke’s sacrifice in choosing to jump to his death at the end of Empire is far braver than anything he accomplished in Star Wars.
Life is more complicated, so much more complicated, than staring out at the setting suns wishing for your dreams to come true until, one day, they do. A lot of times, dreams don’t come true, or when they do they prove to be nothing like we imagined. That’s why the ending to the movie is still so beautiful and powerful, because in suffering the characters have found a goodness that transcends fate: compassion and friendship and loyalty—these are the things that save our heroes in the end, not their skill, not their courage, not their hard work. As Luke and Leia stare out at the impossible vastness of space as the Millennium Falcon turns into a spec in the distance and the powerful Han and Leia love them builds to a crescendo, we’re left not sad but hopeful, knowing that these characters have stared the devil in the face, as it were, and they’re still standing arm in arm.
The enduring theme of The Empire Strikes Back, then, is a very brave one for such a mainstream movie. Genuine goodness, far from being rewarded, is often punished with increased suffering and hardship; it is worth pursuing not because it’s beneficial, but because it’s right. Beyond all the nostalgia and special effects, it’s this idea that makes Empire Strikes Back legendary.
I don’t expect there will be another movie quite like Empire in our lifetimes. Sure, “better” movies might come along, but with the amount of media out there today there will never be a movie that defines fantasy for an entire generation again. There will never be another sequel that lives up and surpasses its predecessor with quite the same energy. Empire wasn’t “Star Wars 2”, it was Star Wars times 1000. Perhaps, many years from now, when the Star Wars marketing blitz finally dies down, these movies will be discovered again and seen the way they were to our generation, the way the Wizard of Oz continues to speak to people generation after generation. Maybe, when I write my Psycho-Cosmo-Blog on the 60th anniversary of Empire, such a magical film will no longer be held prisoner by merchandising gluttony: Lightsabers will be a rarity, Darth Vader will be scary, the battle of Hoth will be epic, Yoda will be wise, and Han Solo will, once again, be the coolest man in the universe.

"Those Who Will Not Live By The Law...WILL DIE BY THE LAW!!!!!"

Another Easter is upon us, though it might be tough to notice. Unlike Christmas or even Halloween, Easter has never been fully commercialized, and without a glut of TV commercials and specials (and days off work) it can come and go without much fanfare. While we can enjoy the exchange of Christmas presents or dressing up for Halloween well into adulthood, most Easter traditions are largely kid’s stuff—I see few adult Easter egg hunts. Thankfully, one Easter tradition from my childhood is still blissfully intact: The airing of cheesy biblical movies on TV.

Though it might fall by the wayside eventually, for now ABC still airs The Ten Commandments every year on the Saturday before Easter. When I was a kid, I thought a movie like this was the pinnacle of filmmaking: Huge sets, huge crowds, and huge acting. Though it all might seem a bit over the top and cheesy now, it has a charm all its own, particularly in the way it pads up the rather thin biblical story into a four hour movie.

It’s funny how much of the pop-culture impression of the biblical story of the Exodus actually comes from this movie. The Ten Commandments is so influential that the far superior animated film, The Prince of Egypt, though it claims to be based on the book of Exodus, is actually just a remake of the 1956 film, right down to the bald Yul Brynner hairstyle of Ramses II. Moses’ time in Egypt in the Bible boils down to about a paragraph. We only know that he was raised in the house of some pharaoh and is exiled after killing a slave master. The movie, however, makes Moses the adopted younger brother of Ramses II and spends a lot of time on the shirtless Charlton Heston’s role as prince of Egypt.

A highlight of the film is Anne Baxter as the sultry queen Nefretiri, a beautiful testament just how much 1950s America hated women. In the Biblical story, the Pharaoh is actually pretty eager to let the Hebrews go once Moses starts pestering him, but every time he tries God hardens his heart so God can show off with more plagues. The God in the story’s purpose is to show how powerful he is, not to free the Hebrew slaves. They’re simply an accessory to his display of machismo. Naturally, a realistic depiction of the story would never fly with middle American Christians of the 1950s, so instead of God hardening Pharaoh’s heart against the Hebrews, the work is done by his scheming wife Nefretiri.
Indeed, without Anne Baxter’s feminine meddling, the whole Hebrew slavery crisis might have blown over without a lot of trouble. Pharaoh would have let Moses and the slaves go before it ever came to murdering the firstborn sons, and he might have gone on to rule a successful kingdom as an equal partner with the Hebrews and many other races. Instead the evil Nefretiri manipulates poor Ramses at every turn. In one memorable effort to stir Ramses against Moses and the Hebrews, she rubs Ramses' face in the fact that she threw herself at Moses. "All that you wanted from me, he would not even take!" she sneers. That's just cold.

The lesson, for all the would be pharaohs or Hebrew messiahs out there, is simple: Never listen to women—they’re evil monsters who make a mockery of the very will of God. Audiences of the era weren't willing to accept a scheming, self-involved, and cruel God and the theological implications of such a deity, but a scheming, self-involved, and cruel woman? That's no problem.
I can’t leave this movie without mentioning the line so silly that it made it to the title of this post. If you thought ridiculous action hero lines originated with the Stallone and Van Damme films of the 1980s, you’ve obviously never seen Charlton Heston literally murder a crowd of apostate Hebrews with the Ten Commandments. There are few things more entertaining than watching Charlton Heston, in a ridiculous beard, raise the tablets above his head and shout out “Those who will not live by the law…” (Pause for dramatic emphasis) “…WILL DIE BY THE LAW!!” before throwing the Ten Commandments into the crowd. Never mind that it makes no sense. Never mind that it’s a complete twisting of both Jewish and Christian religious philosophy. I can’t think of a better phrase to utter when preparing to murder a group of people with a copy of a law code.
My other favorite Hollywood Easter Epic is 1961’s King of Kings, starring Captain Christopher Pike as Jesus. Though it’s less famous, I think this movie is actually a good bit better than The Ten Commandments. It’s tough to stay true to the Biblical story of Jesus (which unlike The Ten Commandments, King of Kings actually makes an effort to do) and keep things interesting. The guy basically walks around talking for three years and then has a pretty hectic final week. King of Kings makes up for this by providing a (wildly historically inaccurate) depiction of the socio-political climate during the time in which Jesus lived. So while Jeffery Hunter’s Jesus does little more than walk around speechifying in a deep and powerful voice, we get scheming politicians, lots of background on the Roman Empire and the occupation of Judea, and actual battle scenes between the Romans and Jewish rebels. That’s right: Battle scenes in a movie about Jesus, decades before Mel Gibson ever thought of picking up a camera.
Special mention needs to be made of young Brigid Bazlen's performance as Salome. She brings an evil malevolence to the spoiled palace brat. When asked why she wants the head of John the Baptist, she replies simply “I want to look at it” in a voice so haughty and matter of fact that it becomes chilling. It’s easy to believe that this girl would derive pleasure from looking at a severed head. More importantly, her seductive dance to convince King Herod to give her the head showed just how much sex you could get away with if you were willing to creatively push the bounds of the old Motion Picture Production Code. There’s nothing as titillating as actual nudity, and nothing overt, but just by dancing around in a gold bikini Salome proved now and forever that sexiness is all about attitude.
There’s a lot more I could write about both of these movies, so perhaps I’ll write a full discussion of them at some time in the future. In the meantime, as this particular Easter winds down, I’ll leave you with the excellent main title music from King of Kings. Nothing sums up the spirit of Easter more than this bombastic composition from the golden age of Hollywood epics. It's too bad they don't make movies like these anymore--the world could always use a little more over the top earnestness.

Congrats Ferngully II !!

My feelings about the Oscar noms are a bit mixed this time around. Last year I thought it was ridiculous that The Dark Knight wasn't nominated, so to ameliorate concerns like mine the Academy doubled the number of nominations from five to ten. That translates to five movies that would have been nominated anyway (Up in the Air, Precious, The Hurt Locker, A Serious Man, and An Education--remember how much fun we all had seeing those with our friends?) and five "bonus" movies (Inglorious Basterds, Avatar, Up, District 9, and The Blind Side--really, The Blind Side? Okay.)

By my count, Avatar and District 9 are only the 3rd and 4th sci-fi films ever to be nominated, if we stretch and count Star Wars and E.T. as science fiction. While some of those latter nominees are obvious pandering so that the telecast gets higher ratings (Blind Side, I'm looking in your direction), it's great to see the nomination lists expanding to included movies that audiences actually saw. My own favorite is easily District 9, though if there was a category for "Best Use of a David Bowie Song" (and why in God's name isn't there?) I'd go with Inglorious Basterds all the way.
District 9 is proof that there is tons of creativity still out there in the film industry. I was too busy to blog about it when it came out, but trust me, I was through the roof for several days. Ditto Inglorious Basterds, but it was more zany than serious. Sure, District 9 was zany, but there was real emotional and intellectual depth there as well.

Avatar and Up sit less well with me--they're both great movies, but there's not a lot of originality there compared to some of the others. Up shouldn't be nominated for Best Picture and Best Animated Feature. I hate to say it, but Pixar films are starting to feel a little rote to me--Up was just a very touching short film about a couple growing up and growing old together accompanied by a fun but silly adventure that was nothing special. Coraline was, for me, a more inventive and exciting animated movie, and The Secret of Kells, so far seen only by the makers of The Secret of Kells, looks like nothing I've ever seen before. It's too bad most of us won't get to see it until March. (Maybe that's just the medieval history geek in me talking.) I say this with love, but Pixar films are starting to look too much like committee filmmaking to me--a little too neat, a little too predictable.


And Avatar? Good old Avatar. Where would we be without you? It's about to topple Titanic, yet it isn't half the cultural phenomenon that movie was. I can't say it's a bad movie, or that I didn't enjoy it, but it's one of the most predictable movies out there right now. (So was Titanic, I guess, but that was my generation's predictable James Cameron blockbuster!) Technically it's a masterpiece, but the story never gets anywhere beyond Dances with Smurfs. Again, it's a great movie, but I think the money and accolades it's raking up are a little excessive.

As for the others, well, I guess I need to see more movies, but movies about things that could just happen in real life never excites me the way fantasy nonsense does. So I haven't see the other five. Maybe I should. Hmm...
How about those Grammys, though? Lots of great performances there. That crazy Lady Gaga, right? You just never know what she's going to do next.

Bye Conan

Seven months ago I was thrilled that Conan O'Brien had taken over the Tonight Show. He'd been one of my comedy heroes since I was ten years old; I was sure that the new Tonight Show would bring him a whole new audience and inspire others to go after dreams of making people laugh for a living. I'm sure he'll end up on some show somewhere, but there's no denying that losing Conan on the Tonight Show is a sad moment in the world of comedy.

In what should be no surprise to anyone, Conan handled his last show with a whole lot of class. The more I see Tom Hanks, the more I realize what a funny guy he is, and it's hard to beat "Long May You Run", Neil Young's classic ode to his car and/or everyone or everything we've ever said goodbye to, for a musical number. Will Ferrell's final performance of "Freebird" was just classic Conan oddness.

What's most worthy of comment is Conan's final talk to the audience, and to his fans. It was touching, especially for those of us who did indeed stand out in the rain this past week, to see how visibly moved he was by all the fan support. But I think it was the final part of the speech that hit Conan fans the hardest.

"Do not be cynical"? For an audience of 20 and 30 somethings, especially those of us trying to find careers in Hollywood, that's an incredibly tall order. There's disappointment and discouragement around every corner, and they often strike in waves. Forces are working against us every day to try to drain the fun from the things we love. "Do not be cynical"? Asking a young person to give up cynicism is a little like Jesus asking that rich fellow to give up all of his possessions, and we all know how well that went over.

But Conan is exactly right: "Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get" is something it's always good to keep in mind. No one starts out cynical or bitter; they're shields we acquire as we struggle through life, but they're not going to get us anywhere.

"Do not be cynical"? It's not easy. But for the guy who gave us Old Time Baseball, it's worth a try.

Thanks Jay!

One of the great things about Hollywood is that some young hopeful out there might grow up to be the next Jay Leno. No matter how little talent you have, no matter how hackneyed and facile your sense of humor, you might be able to strong arm your way onto one of the most cherished shows in the history of television with nothing more than a pocket full of dreams. That’s right, it’s that easy. So don’t worry about all those talented and intelligent Conan O’Brien types out there. Theirs is a passing success, prey to the whims of the powers that be in Hollywood. But if your success is built on a solid foundation, one of bending over backwards for executives and using familiarity as a substitute for talent, no network will ever be able to take your dreams away from you.

Jay Leno has used his considerable skill and class to navigate the Hollywood trenches for decades, providing a safe haven for the type of people who find jokes about Sarah Palin’s lack of intelligence “too controversial.” When Johnny Carson wanted David Letterman to take over his spot on the Tonight Show, only Jay Leno had the courage to stand up and heroically weasel his way into the spot. Knowing that his success was due to the intervention of magic fairies (or merciless agents), Leno at least tried to smooth things over for his own retirement. Seeking to avoid more bruised egos, he announced in 2004 that he would step down in 2009, passed the show to Conan O’Brien, and was subsequently awarded his own primetime show. When that show failed to attract ratings, Leno was punished by receiving his old 11:35 timeslot back, ripping the Tonight Show from Conan O’Brien, and thus the pains of a complicated transition were safely sidestepped.

Everyone should admire what Jay Leno has accomplished. It takes a special kind of man to turn being unfunny into a career. I know plenty of unfunny people that are stuck in menial jobs. Getting paid to not be funny is like getting paid to not fix a car or not cure a disease, and yet Jay Leno not only gets paid for it, but he gets paid for it at the expense of people who actually are funny. In a paranoid, hyper sensitive country, blessed is the man who tailors his comedy to sleepy senior citizens.

When you’re just starting out in life, the road often branches. Down one path: Education, a natural passion for comedy and an innate talent to find the absurd in everyday life, hard work, patience, and a willingness to stick with a joke no matter who it offends; after all your job is to make people laugh, not to make them feel comfortable. Down the other path: A good agent and a willingness to screw anyone over to get what you want. The first path is a temptation, avoid it at all costs. Instead, work on screwing over people now. Cut in line in elementary school, have your mom call the school and complain until they make you the lead in the school play, steal your friend’s girlfriend, and never, never share anything you have with anyone else. Above all, DON’T BE FUNNY!

Act like Jay Leno, and you’re sure to find Hollywood success. Jay Leno will be remembered as the host who got back the Tonight Show. Future generations will speak of him with the same awed reverence they use today to talk about Jack Paar or Ernie Kovacs. Conan O’Brien, who used that useless, pointless sense of humor of his to not only host a show of popular cutting edge comedy, but also to write some of the best Simpsons episodes ever made, will be relegated to the dustbin of history. People will laugh at the situations and characters he brought to life on The Simpsons for as long as there’s a means to watch the episodes, and in being a comedy writer he brought joy to millions and millions yet to come. What a naïve waste of time. All that time he spent being funny could have been time spent being unfunny and climbing to the top of the Hollywood heap. His career will be a cautionary tale to everyone out there who thinks a good sense of humor is a means to a successful career as a comedian.

Jay Leno has shown us all that all you have to do to get your way is whine, and that’s a victory no network executive, however obsequious, will ever be able to take away from him.

Sometimes I Remember Why I Moved Out Here

The other day I was lucky enough to be an extra on the set of Iron Man 2. Being an extra isn’t a glamorous or even a fun job, but there are certainly worse things in the world to get paid for than watching the making of what promises to be an awesome movie.

Movie making can be unbelievably boring and tedious. I’ve been on a lot of film sets, and I’ve almost never seen people act as if they were having any fun. Especially in film school, everyone approached the process of movie-making with a deadly seriousness that bordered on ridiculousness. Part of that was probably the “school” factor weighing everyone down—school is rarely fun—but on so many sets it just didn’t feel like anyone was truly enjoying the process of making movies. Maybe I just didn’t see it.

But on Iron Man things were completely different. During one take, I caught sight of Jon Favreau, the director, watching a shot on the monitor and just giggling. It was a gigantic Hollywood production, probably one of the biggest movies out there right now, and the director was giggling and smiling like he was a kid with a video camera. In all the time I’ve been in LA, I’ve never once seen something so exciting and inspiring. People come out here to make movies because movies are fun, damn it. It can be so easy to forget that.

Watching the first Iron Man movie, it’s hard to pinpoint what exactly makes it such a fun movie. The script isn’t anything we haven’t seen before, the special effects aren’t groundbreaking—there’s nothing in the workings of the movie itself to point to and say “that’s why it works.” What makes the movie so great is that all the fun and joy Favreau and Downey Jr. put into making it shows up on screen. "I cry when I watch C.H.U.D." says Robert Downey Jr. on his love for movies--all movies. Sometimes I wonder, if you don't love movies that much, why would you do it?

Sure, there will always be bad days when making a movie. But at the end of the day, it should be fun. You can get so much out of filmmaking if you just love what you’re doing. If someone doesn’t get a thrill from pointing a camera at Iron Man, I honestly have nothing to say to them. It’s Iron Man, for God’s sake! Anyone, no matter what it is they’re doing, should be as happy as Jon Favreau was making Iron Man. Otherwise, look for something else to do.

Twenty Years Later and I Still Have Most of The Toys

In keeping up with my tradition of writing about the anniversary of things when I happen to notice it’s the anniversary, I wanted to point out that Tim Burton’s Batman movie officially turns 20 today. Sure, the movie’s been overshadowed by the Chris Nolan movies in the last few years (and deservedly so, I might add) but I will always have a special nostalgic fondness for the Tim Burton movie. It was my first introduction to Batman, my first introduction to the idea of the summer movie season, and, really, my first introduction to the process of filmmaking.

I remember the summer of 1989 so well that it’s absolutely baffling to me that it’s been twenty years already. Somehow, I managed to avoid the Batman phenomenon for much of the summer, off doing whatever it was seven year old kids do. I think I saw some of the commercials, but it never really registered for me for some reason.

That changed late in the summer, when I went to Ocean City, NJ for a routine vacation with my family. I don’t know if the movie’s marketing department had spent extra money on targeting the Ocean City boardwalk or what, but Batman was everywhere. That place gets crowded in the summer, and probably one out of every ten people on the boardwalk had on some bit of Batman clothing, be it a hat or a watch, or, of course, the ubiquitous black and gold bat-logo t-shirt. Stores had Batman junk in all their windows, and you could even get your photo taken with a guy in a lame Batman suit for five bucks. (I know I did!)

Best of all were the movie theaters. There were a few theaters on the boardwalk back then (I think there’s only one left now) and they all actually had the good old fashioned low-tech marquees out front, with the hand placed letters that spelled out the name of each movie. There were only two or three movies per theater, but each and every one featured Batman as the main attraction. And this was after the movie had been out for a month and a half. Movies just don’t have staying power like that anymore. (Except, maybe, The Dark Knight.)

Sadly I don’t remember the exact nanosecond when I was bit by the Batman bug. I do remember buying a pack of Batman movie trading cards (I would go on to collect the complete set, obviously), complete with brittle, tongue-slicing baseball card gum. I think that gum was on its way out back then, it appeared less and less as I got older, which is a shame. It’s the only real kind of gum. Anyway, thanks to the gum each Batman card had the extra bonus of smelling like sugar. By the time I’d looked at every card in the pack, I was hooked. There was no going back.

The only outlet for my newfound Bat-mania was in the form of reruns of the 1960s TV series. This was obviously stuck back on the air to cash in on the popularity of the new movie, and I enjoyed it well enough. Unfortunately, the TV series was nothing like the images on my cards of a dark, moody Gotham City and a high-tech hero. I was too young to get the satire in the series, and so it came off, as I’m sure it did to millions of young moviegoers in 1989, as passé kid’s stuff.

So I had my Batman trading cards. I had a rudimentary understanding on the Batman mythos thanks to the TV series. Hell, I even had my picture taken with Batman himself. There was just one thing missing: I hadn’t seen the movie. Every day I would look up from the beach at the marquee on the boardwalk, and every night I would beg my parents to stop as we walked past the theater. They refused: The movie was PG-13, it made Batman out to be “bad”, it was too dark, too violent.

None of my well reasoned pleas and arguments had the slightest effect. I had a lot of fun at the beach that summer. I went to Atlantic City and rode a roller-coaster (they were undergoing a short-lived, Vegas-like attempt to turn the city into a family destination), built castles on the beach, rode rides on the boardwalk, went to a water park, and laid out in the sun listening to boom boxes blaring late 80s classics. But I didn’t get to see the movie. So despite all the fun I had, I came home from the beach without success: A huge Batman fan who had yet to see Batman.

It took about another two weeks of constant nagging before my parents finally relented. In the meantime, the fact that I hadn’t seen the movie did nothing to prevent me from buying more Batman cards, Batman comic books, and all kinds of other Batman junk that was being shoveled my way. When my parents at last allowed me to see the movie, it had already stopped playing in my home town, and my mom had to drive me almost an hour to find a theater that was still playing it.

We got there a little late, about halfway through the opening titles, and I remember immediately trying to guess what I was looking at as the camera swooped through some bizarre series of caves, only to be finally blasted with the climax of Danny Elfman’s theme and my first full view of the wonderful Bat-logo. Needless to say, I loved every second of it. (Except for the part where the Joker joy buzzers the guy to death. That scared me, playing on my phobia of skeletons.)

Looking back, the movie does seem a little dated. Obviously it can’t hold a candle to The Dark Knight. (It’s a tremendous credit to The Dark Knight as a movie that even with the years of aforementioned built-up nostalgia, it still managed to blow me away.) There’s too much Joker and not enough Batman, the Vicky Vale subplot is soap opera quality, and the entire storyline is a little half-baked.

But where it was great then, it’s still great now. The crazy gothic Gotham City beats the Chris Nolan version any day. Michael Keaton is still the best Batman—I’d pay any amount of money to see young Michael Keaton Batman face off against Heath Ledger’s Joker. He was insane and dark and intense without resorting to the famous Christian Bale voice. You really believed that he was crazy enough to put on a bat suit and run out fighting crime. I still love the look of the movie, all black and yellow and purple—it just looks great, and it puts you in a fully realized fantasy world from start to finish.

Naturally, my love for Batman only increased after seeing the movie. I had all Batman school supplies when school started. (It’s a great comfort to have Batman staring at you from the cover of your spelling notebook). I was Batman for Halloween. Christmas was all Batman stuff, including, of course, a cherished VHS copy of the film.

That same fall, my dad bought a video camera for the first time. Since I had a book called Batman: The Official Guide to the Movie or some such thing, I decided that with the book and the video camera together I had everything I needed to make a movie of the same quality as Batman. And trust me, I knew everything about the production of that movie: Who the costume designer was, who the producers were, who did the music, who did the production design. I even knew the name of Michael Keaton’s stunt man. If that’s not devotion, I don’t know what is.

Thanks to Batman, then, I learned a whole hell of a lot about how movies were made for the very first time. As it turned out, taping me running around the yard in a Batman costume or my Joker action figure falling out of my tree house as an approximation of the film’s climactic scene didn’t exactly live up to the high standards set by the movie. My plans to film an elaborate Batman movie never materialized, but I never put down the video camera either. Years later, after the Batman junk hand long been relegated to the closet, I was still running around with the old camera, trying to make movies. Let’s hope none of those tapes ever see the light of day.

So that’s what I think about, twenty years later, when I see that iconic black and gold poster. I don’t think I’ve ever, before or since, gone quite so crazy over a movie. When I watch it now, all those memories come flooding back—I’m at the beach again, cracking open a pack of Batman cards while some 80s dude walks down the boardwalk wearing a dirty Batman T-shirt. It makes me just the tiniest bit less cynical about Hollywood when I stop and remember that movies can do that. Just the tiniest bit.

Girls Love Twilight

I was lucky enough to have been able to attend the MTV Movie Awards last night, seated as far as possible from the stage and surrounded by a group of screaming thirteen year old girls. There was nothing of note to see that you couldn't see on TV, but man, do teenage girls love Twilight. I'm really not sure what to make of society's future when a glowing, vegetarian, pro-abstinence vampire is every teen girl's dream man. Maybe it's a good thing, I don't know, but when you watch MTV these days it's not hard to get the idea that "the man" has finally won. There's very little envelope pushing anymore. (But to be fair I haven't read Twilight or seen the movie, so perhaps my ramblings are those of a bitter old man who just "doesn't get it.")

Not that I didn't have fun there. Some of the sketches were very funny, particuarly the "Cool Guys Don't Look at Explosions" song and Andy Samberg playing "Doubt" for the Sega Genesis. (For me Sega Genesis is a comedy flag word like Aquaman, Tito Jackson, or the band Rush--no idea why, but it is always, ALWAYS funny.)

I really enjoyed the Eminem bit--I can't say for sure whether Eminem was in on it or not, but I get the feeling he would almost have to be, considering the danger of doing a wire stunt like that and the amount of rehersal involved. But he did look genuinely pissed off, so who knows. If he's not in on the joke, he needs to get a sense of humor, othewise, kudos to him for playing off his image. Fake or not, the stunt sure landed with the audience--that's what counts, right? Anyway, for more information on the Eminem/Bruno debacle, consult the internet. Anywhere. I bet there's even a link on Eric Cantor's twitter page.

When I was a kid the MTV Movie Awards meant the official kickoff of summer (while the VMAs meant the official end of summer) so it was a great experience for me to finally get to go to one and see some celebrities sort of up-close. I definitely didn't get excited like I used to--maybe because when you're an adult summer doesn't matter so much. Maybe MTV was always geared towards preteens--that sort of thing is much harder to guage when you're a preteen.

But really. Twilight? Honestly? Nothing makes you feel so old as spending time with thirteen year olds. Oh well. It was fun.

More Phantom Menace

This article, by the former Moriarty of aintitcool.com fame, is a nice companion to what I wrote yesterday on Episode I. Much less emotional, but with a lot of the same basic points. It's a good look at what prequels and reboots have done to Hollywood. Check it out.

Bye Scrubs!

It’s taken a few days to sink in, but I’m really going to miss Scrubs. If the ratings are any indication, the show hasn’t been popular at all for a very long time, and I’ll admit it probably lasted a season or two longer than it should have. Even at its worst, though, it was a great example of a show that perfectly blends real drama with the most off the wall sort of comedy.

These days every show and movie tries to shoe-horn drama into their comedy, and personally I’ve been Apatow-ed out for a while now. I don’t always want a happy moral at the end of my story. I’m not big on characters that spent the previous ninety minutes making fart jokes suddenly trying to tell me that all I need is love.

So why did Scrubs work for me? The drama never felt forced, and the characters always felt real. People think of drama and comedy as two separate genres, but the best entertainment understands that life is as silly as it is sad as it is sweet. Sometimes Scrubs got very silly, but the silliness was almost always confined to fantasies and flashbacks. Sure, the Janitor was insane (and who would have it any other way?) but even that crazy character had a shade of humanity that made it work.

The best shows, the best movies, the best art in general comes from a real place. If it’s ridiculous, if it’s depressing, if it’s horrifying, if it comes from reality it makes sense. Even my other favorite Bill Lawrence show (and possibly my favorite show ever behind The Simpsons) Clone High, understood that zaniness is better when you’ve got solid characters. Compare any random episode of Clone High to any random episode of Family Guy, and I challenge anyone to argue that the greater attention to character and plot on Clone High don’t help it come out ahead.

When a great show leaves, you miss the characters like you miss your friends. Scrubs was a great show, no question about it. Any doubters need only take a look at the last five minutes of the finale. Not since the last episode of The Wonder Years have I gotten quite as emotional at the end of a TV show.



This is why people get into the entertainment industry—in the off chance that maybe someday, something they create will mean something, will make other people smile, even if it’s just for a little while. So thanks Bill Lawrence and Scrubs for making me smile, and, more importantly, for always reminding me why I’m here in LA, where things can seem pointless all too easily. But if it’s possible to create something that can mean to someone else what Scrubs has meant to me, well, then it's worth every bit of the trouble.

UPDATE (5/15/09): So it looks like Scrubs will probably be back again next year. Quite a shame to end the show so well and then just drag its corpse around for who knows how much longer, but that's the way the industry works. "Always leave them wanting more" has been replaced with "Make them beg you to stop."

Watching Watchmen

Watchmen is a decent movie. It has an intriguing world, a great concept, interesting characters, and a good story. I saw it, and were I not impoverished would certainly see it again. I loved the Rorschach character, loved the opening credits, I even liked the sometimes out of place soundtrack (good music is good music). But my geek credentials are pretty thin in the comic book realm, and I have never read the graphic novel. Had I read it, I may have learned how the movie fails in every possible respect, as is apparently the case. What was for me an enjoyable movie about superheroes and the issues that would drive them in a gritty, real world setting, is actually an abomination of the greatest literary work since, well, ever, I guess.

A lot of this fan complaining is legitimate: There’s not a lot of emotion in the movie, the story seems rushed and some of the bigger moments don't land like they should, and it’s clear that the characters would all resonate much more in the denser setting of a graphic novel. What leads to such zealous fan reaction, though, is not the quality of the movie itself, but the level of deification that certain comic book writers like Alan Moore and Frank Miller have undergone in Hollywood in recent years. It has become a bit ridiculous. When Shakespeare is redone in the form of She’s the Man, nobody bats an eyebrow, but when one frame of one shot of one scene in Sin City diverges from the comic, a cinematic holocaust has been committed.

In response to this, a director like Zack Snyder (sorry bro) decides to stick as closely to the comic as possible. I will say again that I’ve not read Watchmen, but I have read and seen 300, and generally Snyder sticks to doing a shot for shot recreation of the comic. From all I’ve read, the same phenomenon is present in Watchmen, and the film certainly looks like it went to great lengths to recreate exact frames from the book. It’s like when you hear a cover of a song that’s just, well, the song again, but robbed of the creative spark that made the original something special.

It’s an endless cycle. Joe Moviegoer (in this case, me) likes the movie, but goes home without being hugely impacted by it. But Joe Moviegoer’s roommate, Jerry Fanboy (or Matilda Fangirl, as the case may be) sees the movie, finds it to be an aseptic approximation of what they love, and cover the internet with complaints. Hollywood, looking for a reason why the movie doesn’t do as well as say, The Dark Knight, sees the fanboy complaints, and in turn makes a movie that is more slavishly faithful to the original. And it goes back to Joe Moviegoer, and back down the line forever.

Watchmen, Sin City, 300—these are all great stories. Hell, if the Watchmen novel is 1/100th as good as I’ve been told, it would still earn a place among my favorite books. But a good movie can take that great source material and make a great, separate work of art from it. Look at The Godfather, for the love of Christmas! Satisfying a rabid fanbase like Watchmen’s will never be possible, so directors shouldn’t let that scare them into making inferior products. With all the mindless faithfulness to the Watchmen novel, fans are still furious that the production created a new climax, eschewing some sort of Lovecraftian monster in the finale. (Okay, honestly? That sounds fantastic.) You just can’t please everybody, no matter what you do.

Watchmen does a lot right. But you can tell just by watching that, not unlike the first Harry Potter movies, it shoots itself in the foot by being too faithful to the letter of the source material and rather ignorant to the spirit. In the hands of a director that wasn’t afraid to make the sacred cow of the novel their own (I would have loved a David Fincher take, for example), this had all the makings of a masterpiece. As it is, the movie fails in greatness, and fails in satisfying the passionate fanbase.

Hollywood has never been known for taking works of literature seriously. And, in this new trend of slavishly adapting the source material, they miss the point once again. Like I said, I enjoyed this movie for 99% of the time I was in the theater. I was blissfully unaware of the crimes that were being perpetrated to the holy tome, and so I had a good ride. If you like superheroes and enjoy the movie for what it is, you’ll have a good time at Watchmen, though you might leave feeling a bit like just drove past the Pyramids doing 90 and didn’t get out to take a picture.

Watchmen is a good movie on its own merits, but as an adaptation it comes up short. Unfortunately, this as is as much the fault of fanboy internet culture as anything else. These movies are monitored by fans during their entire production, and at the end of the day Zack Snyder did the best he could under those conditions. It’s not what it could have been, but given the circumstances, it’s a pretty decent movie, squid or no squid. It’s no Watchmen Babies, but I’ll take it.

"Oh My God!"

Last night's Oscars had winners, losers, singing, dancing, and of course the much anticipated Best Supporting Actor award for Heath Ledger. You can read about it all over the internet, so there's no need to go into any detail on it--especially since I haven't seen most of the movies involved! (I have, however, been listening to the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack nonstop for roughly the last seven hours.)

I will say that I was a little disappointed at the lack of crowd reaction for Charlton Heston during the annual "Let's Honor the Dead Folks" segment. It might have been me, but I heard almost no applause when his name and face popped up onscreen. I understand that he spent the last twenty or so years of his life as a gun-toting reactionary crackpot, but c'mon people! This is the guy who told us that Soylent Green is made out of people. He kicked Stephen Boyd's ass in a chariot race, painted the Sistine Chapel, and tangled with post-apocalyptic albino mutants. He even appeared in Wayne's World 2, in the aptly named part of "Good Actor." If Heston's "Damn you all to hell!" monologue at the end of Planet of the Apes isn't worth applause, I don't know what is.

Charlton Heston was absolutely ridiculous--his performance style is bizarre and mostly laughable today, but it won him an Oscar for Ben-Hur. There is nothing more fun than screaming out a good Charlton Heston line or two among friends, old and new. It's a great ice-breaker! So lighten up a little, Hollywood. The man is dead, his guns and insane beliefs can no longer hurt you. Artists traditionally sympathize with craziness more than the average person on the street--we like people a little different, a little out there, a little beyond what society usually tolerates, because, well, we're all a little out there. And they don't come much more out there than ole' Chuck Heston. So why not show a little respect for the man whose chiseled good looks and preposterous line delivery gave us fifty years of great entertainment?

Oscars Get It Wrong Yet Again

The Oscar nominations were announced today, and as a raving Dark Knight fanboy I feel it my duty to complain about the conspicuous absence of that film from the Best Picture nominees. I'm sure this same sentiment will be echoed in literally millions of places on the internet today. However, as misguided as the decision may be I can't say it comes as a surprise.

Sometimes the Academy nominate the best movies, but more often they nominate what I like to call "play-movies"--films that have important content and subject matter, sure, but whose stories lack the visual punch and over-the-top emotional involement that belongs to movies, making them more appropriate for the world of theater than film. (Indeed, Frost/Nixon originated as a play). Unfortunately, theater has almost vanished as a popular art form, and the only way these stories will ever get the attention they deserve is by being made into motion pictures. That's fine.

What worries me is that in honoring these stories as "the best" year in and year out, people begin to think that these movies are, in fact, "the best." Nothing is more ridiculous than giving awards for the arts, but we've been doing it since at least the Pythian Games so I can't really fault anyone for it. But these awards do affect the public conception--people begin to think that a DVD with "Best Picture" on the cover, whether they like it or not, is inherently better, or more important, than one without it. We all fall prey to this kind of thinking at one point or another.

Most people, however, didn't get involved with movies because of movies like The Reader. Personally, I like movies because movies are awesome. Not awesome like YHWH is awesome, but awesome in the silliest, most ridiculous, most explosion-filled sense of the word. Do I love sitting through 4 hours of beautiful cinematography, classical music, and upper-class 18th century decadence in Barry Lyndon? Hell yes. Do I love watching Perseus take on stop-motion Medusa in Clash of the Titans? Absolutely. Why do we then assign value judgments to movies based on the content?

Movies are about starships and lightsabers, time travel and monsters and superheroes and a ridiculous vision of love and romance, muppets, gladiators and robots, witches and vampires, kings and queens, zombies, and vampire puppet shows. Now I'm not saying we should worship every Michael Bay piece of manufactured excitement that comes our way. Not all movies are good. But there are excellent movies, year after year, in every single genre. Nothing makes one genre better than another, and the modern Academy really needs to get that through their skulls. People who really love movies love a ridiculous assortment of nonsense, and there's nothing in the world wrong with that.

The Dark Knight was the best movie this past year, and for me maybe the best movie of the last ten years. (Then again, I love a lot of movies from the last ten years). Heath Ledger should rightfully get his award for supporting actor, and I'm also very happy about Robert Downey Jr.'s nomination for such a wacky part. (Also, I think it'd be great if Frank Langella won for Frost/Nixon. Anyone who's played Skeletor deserves a bloody Oscar!) If I have to pick out of what's left, I'm going to go with Benjamin Button for Best Picture. It's a great movie, big, wondrous, and emotional, and I'd be happy to see it win.

But fifty years from now, 2008 will be remembered for The Dark Knight the way 1977 is remembered for Star Wars.

(And now the punchline: I actually think Annie Hall was just as deserving a Best Picture winner in '77 as Star Wars. Now Annie Hall vs. Empire Strikes Back? No contest.)

2008: It's Finally Over!

What will I remember about this year? Obama won the Iowa caucuses, Heath Ledger died, Diablo III was finally announced, The Dark Knight came out, and Obama got elected. Then a few other things happened in between. Personally I graduated film school and was released out into the unsuspecting Los Angeles public.

I was going to do a list of my favorite movies or songs or TV shows or books or video games of the year, but there are so many of those out there that mine might feel a little redundant. Obviously I fell madly in love with The Dark Knight, but who didn’t? I recently got to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which I thought was one of the most atmospheric films I’d seen in years. But here I am talking about my favorites. Ultimately it’s hard for me to judge things like that—I’ve loved movies since I could comprehend them, and except in cases of exceptionally horrible movies (I’m looking your direction, The Happening) I’m happy just to be in a movie theater in the first place.

That's something to keep in mind when things get rough trying to get anywhere in Hollywood. As anyone who’s ever made any effort at succeeding in the film industry knows, it’s difficult out here, and I think this year has been especially so. Luckily there are a lot of film school friends out here with me in the same boat, and we struggle along together.

When I was driving home from a set at around 4am earlier this month, I stopped at a light on Hollywood and Vine. I had never seen any part of LA so free of traffic before, but at that moment I was the only other car, the only other human being, in sight. It was raining (also rare in LA) and I could just make out the rain clouds drifting over the mountains. There was a neon-light Christmas tree on top of the Capitol Records building: something you would never have noticed inching through the intersection in the usual line of cars. For just a small moment, it felt like I had Hollywood all to myself. It’s easy to beat up on Los Angeles (and fun!) but there are tiny moments when it becomes quite beautiful. For most of us out here, there’s simply nothing else in the world we’d rather be doing than working on movies and TV shows. It’s important to hold on to the small little moments that help us to remember that.

Here’s hoping for a better 2009!

(I can’t help it. More great movies: Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Wall-E, Iron Man. Still very much want to see Let the Right One In. And about a dozen others—it seems like I never get to see half the movies I want to in a year. There are always new ones coming out to get hyped up for!)