Further thoughts on Attack of the Clones
Many pixels have been spilled in the pages of this journal regarding Attack of the Clones. Most of them revolve around the world of Kamino, particularly the mysterious and seductive scoopy chair.
But one has not seen a movie until one has watched it with a six-year-old boy, as I did with Attack of the Clones today. I think this probably works with any movie; watch it with a six-year-old boy and any narrative flaws will become immediately clear. I must remember to try it with L’Avventura sometime soon.
The love story, as everyone knows, is an embarrassing shambles. And its not that the actors’ performances are so bad (although they are), it’s that the script makes absolutely no sense at all. From the very top, it’s simply unbelievable that Padme would fall deeply in love with Anakin, who is, throughout, nothing more than a petulant, moody, griping, disturbingly awkward pest. The most romantic thing Anakin says to Padme while he pitches woo to her is when he talks about how one day the republic will bend to the will of an iron dictator. As for his attempts at poetic flattery, search the racks of every greeting-card store on the planet and you will not find a single verse that tells a woman she is not like sand.
The detective story, “Who is trying to kill Padme and why?” works very well, thank you and is the best reason for the narrative existing. Obi-Wan tracks down Padme’s would-be killer in a crackerjack chase scene, finds a clue that leads him to a remote planet, where he stumbles upon a vast mystery that will change the course of history — as all good clues do. Super. Although I will add that Obi-Wan is a miserable detective — he can’t find a planet just because a snippy librarian tells him it doesn’t exist, but, literally, a six-year-old boy can.
The rescue story (“I must find my mother”) comes out of left field half-way through the movie, is motivated by nothing and leads nowhere. It’s ugly, brutal and racist (between the flies buzzing around the somehow-even-more semitic Watto and the characterization of the Sand People as “animals”). The action story (“We’ve got to find Obi-Wan!” “Uh-oh! Gladitorial combat!”) works well, and would work even better if the rescue story wasn’t in there. And the war story is gloriously staged and truly spectacular.
In fact, one of the interesting things about Attack of the Clones is that the CGI characters consistently give better performances than the live actors. Case in point: compare the arena scene on Geonosis with the pod-race sequene in Phantom Menace. The human extras at the pod race give terrible performances and look ridiculous in their rubber masks and silly costumes. In contrast, the giant-bug Geonosians look utterly believable and in fact give more subtle, more believable performances. And when a human has to interact with a room of CGI creatures, the effect is always awkward, but fill the screen with monsters and robots and it looks absolutely splendid and believable.
Now then: I still have some notes.
It says in the title crawl that “thousands” of solar systems have fallen under the power of “the mysterious Count Dooku.” Are we to believe that thousands of systems, representing untold billions of individuals, have decided to throw in with a leader they know nothing about?
Palpatine’s desk — it’s too clean. In fact, everything in Attack of the Clones is too clean. Everything looks like it was just unpacked yesterday.
Jango Fett comes to Coruscant to kill Padme. He contacts a female bounty hunter and gives her the squiggly bugs to drop in her window (they are apparently homing squiggly bugs — otherwise this is a stupid plan). The female bounty hunter takes the canister of squiggly bugs and loads it into a little flying thing, which takes off for Padme’s window (good thing for the bounty hunter she didn’t decide to sleep on the living-room couch at the last moment). My question: why does Jango Fett need the goddamn female bounty hunter? Can’t he load the goddamn flying thing himself? He’s already got the canister of squiggly bugs, presumably he knows how it fits in the flying thing. What the hell is his problem?
Senator Padme travels back to Naboo and chats with the new Queen. She counsels action but the new Queen chooses caution and patience. Padme nods in acquiescence because she understands from her own experience that becoming Queen of Naboo turns you a fucking idiot.
Now those Kaminoans (you knew it would come back to this): I’m sorry, I just — now wait. Play this back for me. Ten years ago, a Jedi guy came to you and placed an order for a clone army. In the ensuing ten years, you’ve been diligently manufacturing that clone army. The Jedi guy never called back to check up, and in fact business has otherwise dropped to zero due to your planet being removed from the archives, but you have kept on making this clone army. It must cost untold billions of dollars, and is useless to you personally, but that is, apparently, the way you do business. Okay. I get that.
Here’s my question. Ten years later, another guy in a Jedi robe shows up. He obviously knows nothing about the clone army and in fact seems to be lost. Don’t you even ask him for his receipt? Is this how you operate in your business? The only order you’ve had in the past ten years, and you don’t even ask for a receipt? Suppose this Jedi guy you don’t know says “Hey, nice army, wrap ’em up, I’ll take ’em with me,” and then the next day your actual client stops by? What are you going to do then, Kaminoans?
(By the way, today I counted a total of six Kaminoans, not two as previously reported: the Greeter, the Prime Minister, Jeeby, and three others, wandering around the halls of Kamino. The lack of population probably explains why the Prime Minister doesn’t even own a desk, but just sits in his windowless glowing room doing nothing while waiting for visitors to drop by every ten years.)
Note to Obi-Wan: when you’re chasing Jango Fett through a deadly asteroid field, what prevents you from simply leaving the asteroid field? You’ve got a freaking tracking device on him, and he’s heading for a giant planet, and everyone knows that in Star Wars Land every planet only has one or maybe two places to land — where the hell do you think he’s going to go?
C-3PO falls into the robot-factory machinery, then, within 24 hours, ends up wandering out onto the arena field with the rest of the just-created battle-droids. Yet all the battle-droids with him are already beaten up, scuffed and dirty. My son Sam suggests that they’re actually made to look like that. Perhaps the Separatist army prefers their droids pre-distressed, like stone-washed jeans — it gives them character and let’s you stop worrying about keeping them pristine.
From Russia With Love
Tania: woman. Rosa Klebb: mm, not so much.
WHAT DOES THE BAD GUY WANT? The bad guy is the mysterious, faceless, cat-laden “Number 1,” leader of SPECTRE. SPECTRE, the super-criminal think-tank, as in Dr. No, wants to rule the world. To do that, it is imperative that he gets his hands on a special decoder thingy. We come to understand a good deal more about SPECTRE, its organization, its training methods and its structural politics in the movie. However, what Number 1’s “Monday Morning” plan is remains undiscussed. Is he prepared to rule the world once he gets it? What are his plans for health care, security, taxation?
WOMEN? Four. The first is the ladygambler from Dr. No, who has now acquired a name (it’s “Sylvia,” for those keeping score), then Bond scores a two-for-one deal with a pair of Gypsy women (the women are deadly enemies until exposed to Bond and his culturally advanced, egalitarian genitals), and finally Tania, to whom Bond remains loyal for the remainder of the movie.
HOW COOL IS THE BAD GUY? Nowhere near as cool as Dr. No. He’s got a yacht, a cat and some fish. Yawn. However, he’s got two of the best “second villains” ever — Robert Shaw, who is incandescent in this movie, and Lotte Lenya as the aforementioned Rosa Klebb. Robert Shaw comes with a watch-wire garrot thing (which later shows up on the wrist of John Lithgow in Blow Out), Lotte Lenya comes with a pair of deadly shoes. These guys make a great pair — Shaw is the proverbial brick shithouse, unstoppable and cunning, yet also utterly believable, and Lenya is tiny but a cruel, stone-hearted monster — and also utterly believable. To make a measure of how good Shaw is in this movie, watch it and try to even imagine him, ten years later, as the Irish gangster Doyle Lonnigan in The Sting, much less twelve years later as the crusty seadog Quint in Jaws. And yet all of those performances are highly stylized, not naturalistic at all — he’s practicing a kind of heightened naturalism, his choices specific yet cartoonish. Lenya, on the other hand, knows she’s no physical match for Bond — the cowardice on her face in the scene at the end when she sneaks into the hotel room disguised as a maid is great — but you know that she’s so cold that her heart (or other body parts) could never be melted by Bond’s fiery western genitals. Rosa is there as the anti-Tania, the “bad” woman, her soul locked behind an emotional Iron Curtain.
GADGETS? A handful. Bond gets a briefcase full of crap from Q. Sniper rifle, exploding talcum powder, hidden knife, 50 gold sovereigns — all standard issue, we’re told. Which leads me to ask: standard issue, pursuant to what? These new gadgets seem to take Bond by surprise, as though it would have never occurred to him to need anything as obvious and vital as exploding talcum powder. And yet why is Q dreaming up all this stuff? Here’s what I’m saying: ideas come from somewhere. Q’s not out in the field, he’s in his lab at Q division. Agents are in the field. Obviously, agents must be coming back from missions complaining about a crucial lack of exploding talcum powder.
Q. How was the mission, 006?
006. Oh, it was all right — tell you what, though — I really could have used some exploding talcum powder.
Q. You know, you’re the third agent to mention that this week. Hang it all, that’s it — from now on, all agents shall carry exploding talcum powder in their briefcases at all times. We cannot afford the endangerment of any more agents.
006. What briefcases?
Q. W-why, your, you know, your briefcase — don’t you carry a briefcase?
006. No one ever gave me a briefcase.
Q. No br — ! All right. All right. That tears it. God damn it, we’re sending agents out there naked! I’m issuing a memo — all agents shall have a standard issue briefcase with exploding talcum powder.
006. And a hidden knife.
Q. Yes, yes — hidden knife, good —
006. And a sniper rifle —
Q. Well yes of course a sniper rifle —
006. And fifty gold sovereigns.
Q. Now how the devil am I going to get fiftygold sovereigns into a — never mind, I’ll figure it out.
006. And —
Q. Out! Out! I need to think.
NOTES: One movie into the series and already Bond is getting a little mannered, a little self-conscious. He cannot kill anyone without adding a witty bon mot, and his seductive powers are already leaning toward camp. He carries more than the weight of the western world on his shoulders, he carries the weight of his own reputation. He’s James Bond, he must act like James Bond.
Narratively, a whole different ball game from Dr. No. Apart from taking its sweet time getting started, we spend a whole lot more time examining the motives and machinations of the bad guys. My favorite bit is Rosa Klebb flying from Number 1’s yacht to SPECTRE Island, where all the top SPECTRE bad-guys are trained. She is escorted through a training field, filled with men running and shooting and killing and karate-chopping, until she comes to Robert Shaw sunbathing. Shaw snaps to attention, Klebb punches him in the gut, says “he’ll do,” then turns around and leaves. Doesn’t stay for lunch, doesn’t want to see anyone else, doesn’t have any papers or requistions to fill out — she spends an afternoon and god knows how much money flying to SPECTRE Island just to punch Robert Shaw in the gut. Now that’s a bad guy.
Dr. No
Dr. No shows off his collar, Honey Ryder shows off her shells — which will get more of Bond’s rapt attention?
WHO IS JAMES BOND? He’s a gambler. He smokes. He drinks (but not to excess). He’s charming, mischievous and occasionally bossy (when dealing with civilians). Straights bore the pants off him. He has sex with nameless women, while his boss’s secretary pines for him. He knows the rules of Chemin de Fer, he knows how to kick and punch, he knows judo, he knows how to wear a suit, he knows how to spot an assassin and how to burglar-proof his hotel room, he knows how to lose a tail, he knows his wine (he would never use a bottle of Dom Perrignon ’55 as a weapon, even against a madman bent on world conquest).
Venture Bros: Assassinanny 911
I have received numerous requests to analyze this episode of The Venture Bros; now that Season 2 is out on DVD it seems like a good enough excuse to do so.
Sexual tension and examination of sex roles is always a feature of The Venture Bros, but the sexual tension in “Assassinanny 911” rises to the level of sexual hysteria, even outright sexual panic.
Take the cold opening. In a flashback, Brock Sampson reports for duty to Col. Hunter Gathers. In short order he is jumped, pinned to the floor and threatened with all manner of phallic objects — a knife, a baton, and a jutting, thrusting cigarette holder (later, Col. Gathers will remark on how “big” Brock is –as well he might). What does Brock want in the scene? To be “made a man” — or re-made as one, anyway; as Col. Gathers puts it, a “Frankenstein.” In the context of this episode, to “be a man” is explicitly to kill. Once Col. Gathers has dominated Brock, stabbed him, destroyed his identity (with that phallic cigarette holder, no less) and knocked him down with his baton, he ejects himself from what turns out to be an aircraft of some kind, the shape of which one can only imagine.
Now that the Cold War is over, Molotov wants to consummate the flirtation that was begun with Brock 20 years earlier during a Paris stakeout. That stakeout ended with Brock being pinned down to a bed with knives in a flaming hotel room (and is apparently not the same time that he took her left eyeball, as Molotov escapes unharmed).
But Molotov is not about to get what she wants, for Brock has been called away on a mission and has asked Molotov to babysit Hank and Dean. The mission (an assassination, a killing — his “old” male identity) is just a piece of gruntwork for Brock, who finds his new role as nurturer and caretaker much more rewarding and, let’s face it, more challenging. Challenging as in Manaconda (another phallic symbol), who leaps out of the X-1 fusillage (another phallic symbol), is killed by Molotov (who, for the purposes of this episode, is the male, ie “killer” presence), and turns out to be, as Dean notes, “Womanaconda” (thus underlining the episode’s themes and foreshadowing the surprise ending).
Brock doesn’t exactly drag his feet on his way to meet his contact, he’s not that kind of guy, but neither does he have patience for the spy-spy rigamarole of his briefing — the spy biz has changed too much since he was in it, it’s no longer a “man’s world” — Brock tosses out the gadgets and weapons from his kit, muttering “gay, gay, useless…” as his briefing officer tries to tempt him with a unthreatening-looking pen(is). (In case the gay subtext in this scene is not strong enough, it is noted that Brock will get the next part of his briefing from, er, “Captain Swallow.”)
(Side note: when Brock opens the case file to see that his target is Col. Gathers, the file is, in fact, printed backwards. Is this a mere technical glitch, or are Jackson and Doc hinting at a “backwards” nature of Col. Gathers’ personality?)
Once Brock is gone, Molotov turns herself to her task of “turning Hank, Dean and Rusty into men.” This involves shooting at them with a machine pistol and getting Hank and Dean to try to kill each other. (There is, on top of everything else in the show, a puzzling dwelling on the wounds of Christ — Brock is stabbed through the hand by Col. Gathers, and Dean is stabbed through the foot by Hank with a pen[is]cil. Are Jackson and Doc suggesting that Christ was not a “real man,” as he was not a killer but rather a healer?)
Once Hank “kills” Dean (or so he crows, having wounded him), he believes himself to be a “real man.” The ability to kill gets mixed up in Hank’s mind with the desire to have sex with Molotov — one gives rise (so to speak) to the other, in spite of the fact that the object of Molotov’s affections, Brock, is a killer but no longer wants to have sex with her.
Rusty, for his part, believes his “mature” status gives him an edge over the boys (“mature” here meaning “stealing the neighbor’s newspaper for the double coupons”), while Dean, as ever, is just confused and hapless.
On the way to his rendezvous with assassination (shot from the phallic submarine in an even-more-phallic torpedo), Brock remembers his training and partnership with Col. Gathers. The phallic symbols (sharks, spearguns, oxygen tanks, the Eiffel Tower, baguettes [“don’t eat that! It’s C4!” — indeed]) and sexual confusion (Col. Gathers’s cross-dressing) abound as Col. Gathers explains the finer points of assassination etiquette — “no women, no kids.” Minutes later (literally, as the “clock” in the lower left-hand corner of the screen indicates) Brock finds these rules tested as he attempts to bed Molotov and finds himself bedded instead — it seems that he could kill Molotov if he wanted to, but is restrained by his code of assassin’s honor.
Back at the Venture compound, Molotov finds herself doing some “mother” work, perhaps in spite of herself — we see her with a very un-assassin-like bag of groceries (bought with Rusty’s double coupons?). Her single “motherly” gesture is not wasted on Hank, who becomes filled with Oedipal rage when he sees his new “mother figure” become “friendly” with Rusty and the “real man” urge to kill becomes intertwined with the urge to have sex with Molotov.
(One wonders if having a motherly presence in the Venture compound would be in any way a good idea, as the sexual dysfunctions compound themselves so quickly with the mere presence of a female.)
Brock, on his mission, shows how not-gay he is by bedding a native woman, who shops from the Bond Girl catalogue — thus signifying her as a “real woman” — a purely sexual object who comes complete with six-pack and easy-open bikini-top. The “native woman” is a lover, not a killer, not, essentially, a “man,” like Molotov.
By the poolside, Hank drowns as Dean chats with his own foil/crush, Triana. Molotov must perform the ultimate non-assassin act, bringing Hank back to life with mouth-to-mouth resusitation. Both boys suffer from swollen swim-trunks in this scene — Hank’s from his mouth-to-mouth erection, Dean’s from having his pockets fill up with water. Hank, we see, is at least physically ready to have sex with a woman (although he is pointedly not mentally ready — when his erection is pointed out, he panics, saying his “pants are haunted”).
There is a nice double climax (so to speak), twin Apocalypse Now parodies, as Hank turns his murderous Oedipal rage on Rusty and Brock confronts his target. Hank, for his part, grabs his crotch and swings his phallic sword wildly as Brock is confronted with Col. Gathers’s ultimate truth. Brock is shocked with what he finds, but he should not be: he has come to the same conclusion, in his own way. Brock has found value in life outside of killing (ie being “a real man”). Col. Gathers has taken the notion to its logical conclusion, and in the context of The Venture Bros has struck on a solution that would satisfy even
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— he has escaped the dead-end role of “real man” by becoming a woman. As the surgeon makes explicit, Col. Gathers started as Brock’s Frankenstein father and ends as his even-more-Frankenstein mother.
Brock returns home, lesson learned. The episode ends with Hank’s melancholy as Molotov drives away, suggesting that, for him at least, this struggle is not yet over.
Discussion of the other episodes of Season 2 of The Venture Bros can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
The Ipcress File
It’s a good measure of the impact of James Bond movies on the 1960s that, in addition to spawning countless imitations, they also spawned a healthy number of reactions, that is, movies that stepped forward to say “James Bond isn’t how international espionage is, this is how international espionage is.” The angriest of these reactions was probably The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, with a disgusted Richard Burton grousing about espionage being filled with degenerate, failed, perverse little men, a movie so intent on disproving the Bond romance that it becomes a romance of a different kind, a romance of failure and self-absorbtion.
And then there is The Ipcress File, which presents a whole nother vision, an anti-Bond fascinating in its own right.
There is a comically pedestrian, almost Pythonesque nature to Harry’s adventures in espionage. He is spy as civil servant, his office and its doings being barely above that of a DMV post. He bickers with his coworkers about paperwork, he’s surrounded by muttering drones, dull-minded superiors and “put the kettle on” pepperpots. When Harry needs to find a missing scientist, there are no secret meetings, code words or labyrinthine precautions; he just walks up to his contact in a library and asks him where the guy is. When it turns out the guy has a tough bodyguard, there are no razor-hats or metal teeth, just a simple punch-up on the library steps.
Michael Caine’s talents continue to astonish. He manages to make Harry a living, breathing entity; one senses the bitterness of a wasted life underneath Harry’s unflappable facade. There is an everyday, almost depressive feel to Harry, a mopey, buttoned-down dullard who wouldn’t know a casino, laser cannon or volcano stronghold if he woke up in one. The investigation Harry’s on rarely rises above the level of a routine police story, with spies wandering around in the open and trading exchanges like:
SUPERIOR: Well. It looks like we’re too late.
HARRY: If we had been on time, I’d be a hero.
SUPERIOR: But we weren’t.
(everyone prepares to leave)
HARRY: Hey. This stove is warm.
SUPERIOR: Really?
HARRY: And look, there’s something inside. (examines the thing) That’s recording tape.
SUPERIOR: Let me see it.
(examines it — it is clearly labelled “IPCRESS”)
HARRY: Do you think it means something?
SUPERIOR: It might. (pause) It just might.
In Act III, Harry is framed for murder, kidnapped by the bad guys and brainwashed, which raises his pulse a little bit but does not seem to ruffle the feathers of anyone he works with. It’s British Reserve carried to its logical conclusion; even when in life-or-death situations, Harry’s cohorts cannot bring themselves to perform desperate acts; they can only sigh and get on with it.
It is perhaps indicative of Harry’s stance that the final horror, the bad guy’s sinister world-threatening brainwashing technique, involves exposing him to modern art and electronic music.
I would be remiss if I did not mention the utterly original, stylized direction of Sidney J. Furie, which recalls nothing and exists within its own cool, implacable logic. Furie, bafflingly, went from what feels like a highly personal directing style to projects as diverse and anonymous as Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, Iron Eagle and Ladybugs, before going on to Dolph Lundgren action movies and episodes of VIP.
The Phantom Menace
Everyone knows that The Phantom Menace doesn’t work. My 5-year-old Star Wars-obsessed son knows The Phantom Menace doesn’t work (two hours into the movie, he asks “Does Darth Maul ever actually fight anyone?”). But the question I must face as a screenwriter is why. And, after seeing the movie a half-dozen or so times, I believe I have an answer.
The problem is not Jar-Jar.
Let’s go back to first principles. What does the protagonist want? I thought about this for a long time, and then I realized something — I wasn’t sure who the protagonist was.
So I thought, as a public service, I would run down the most obvious characters and examine their motivations.
It is a silly place
Esoteric 3 1/2-hour Art Film Disappoints at Box Office: Experts Baffled
All Hollywood is a-twitter about Grindhouse failing to meet expectations.
Why did it fail? Critics loved it. Audiences, such as they are, loved it. I loved it (I want to see it again before I write anything about it — it’s quite an experience, but I can almost guarantee you it is not what you expect it will be).
(I got a phone call from a female friend, no fan of violence against women or cinematic esoterica, on opening night, imploring me to run, don’t walk, to see it immediately.)
Rodriguez, Tarantino and the Weinsteins offered audiences a feast: two full-length features, plus fake previews, for the price of a single ticket (I saw it at a matinee for six dollars. Six dollars!) The package is a cinematic marvel, the movies are great, there are all kinds of extra gewgaws that come with it (fake trailers, fake scratches on the prints, all manner of filmic in-jokes). Why did people stay away?
And I, there in the audience, who love both Rodriguez and Tarantino, should be the ideal audience for this movie, and indeed I have been waiting anxiously to see it, and yet by the time the trailer is done, I’m completely confused. Is it a movie? Is it two movies? Is it three movies? Is it some kind of anthology film, made up of several short movies? Did Rodriguez and Tarantino collaborate on the movie, or did they each direct separate movies? What the hell is it? And you could feel it all around in the audience too, five hundred young filmgoers wanting to see this movie, but being utterly confused as to what the hell was just advertised. And any time an audience sees an advertisement and responds by saying “What was that?” the movie is doomed.
Look at the poster above. As far as being a spot-on parody of a sleazy drive-in double-feature poster from 1972, it’s perfect, beyond perfect. As an advertisement for a $100 million product of mainstream American entertainment, it’s confusing as hell. Two movies? A double feature? Is it a joke? Is it for real? Is it parody? Of what? What kind of movie is it? They’re asking me for ten dollars (say Mr. and Ms. Moviegoer) — I want to know what it is.
This movie (these movies — wait, what is this?) was heavily marketed — here in LA, there were enormous cardboard displays, taking up whole sections of theater lobbies, in addition to the regular posters and displays, but the displays, like the trailer and the poster here, either tried to sell the entire package, confusingly, or else, even more bafflingly, tried to sell each movie as its own entity (there are bus-bench ads for Death Proof all over LA, making it look like Quentin Tarantino has a new movie out, but with no mention of the Grindhouse title).
On top of that, lest we forget, this is an art movie. It’s part send-up, part critique, part sendup, part genre-mashup, all brilliant, but it is not straightforward commercial filmmaking. Wild Hogs is straightforward commericial filmmaking (and, not coincidentally, easily marketable). A 3 1/2-hour meditation on 30-year-old exploitation movies is not straightforward commercial filmmaking. (It is also something of a workout, two vastly different features, with a lot of meta commentary laid on top of it — it’s both one movie and two movies at the same time, with a bunch of other stuff in there at once; not so easily taken in.) (I should also add — per the title of this blog — that neither of the features offered has a single, easily-identifiable protagonist.)
I commend Rodriguez for producing the project, I commend Tarantino for his contribution to it, I commend the Weinsteins for giving their artists full power in achieving their goals, I commend the whole project — it’s American filmmaking at it’s most daring and exciting. But I am not surprised that audiences didn’t know what to think of it.
Literary Oddities: Tumbleweed Trouble
As a Hollywood screenwriter, I am exposed to bad storytelling on a daily basis. One tributary of the river of bad storytelling is misguided adaptations of pop-culture icons. “What if Superman were a gypsy farmer?” “What if Mickey Mouse was a molecular physicist?” “What if you re-imagined the Green Lantern Corps as the team from Reservoir Dogs?” (Hey, that one’s not bad — hang on, I need to make a phone call.)
In the sweepstakes of inept pop-culture adaptations, I have, I believe, a winner. This is, I believe, as bad as it gets. This is not fanfic, this is not slash Smurfs, this is not Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. This is The Road Runner: Tumbleweed Trouble by Jack Woolgar (although apparently not this Jack Woolgar.) This is a real book, sanctioned (but apparently not read) by the creators (or at least the owners) of the Road Runner (that is, Warner Bros Inc.) and associated characters, published by a real publisher, Whitman Books (a complete list of other Whitman “Tell-A-Tale” books can be found here).
What makes this book so bad? How does it rise above (or, rather, sink below) the ranks of all other bad pop-culture crap?
Let’s take a look inside, shall we?
brace yourself
Johnny Hart 1931-2007
I’m conflicted by the death of Johnny Hart. When I was a kid, B.C. was my favorite strip in the world for a long, long time. I collected the books, read them over and over, compared one to another, mentally charted the development of ideas and themes, thought about how the characters differed and how they acted toward one another, learned to draw all of them. It was a big part of my life for what seems like years.
I had not read the strip in decades when I learned that he had decided to go out of his way to inject his strict fundamentalist Christian views into his work. Strips like this, this, this and this seem unasked for at best and hateful at worst. To start with only the most obvious, how do you explain a bunch of cavemen discussing evolution? Or Jesus? In a strip titled, ahem, B.C.? It’s one thing to write according to your beliefs, but why use an art form (on the funnies page, no less) as a tool to bludgeon Jews, Muslims and, essentially, anyone who isn’t also a fundamentalist Christian? Charles Schulz was a devout Christian and wrote of his beliefs with elegance, charm and great warmth. Not every cartoonist can be a Schulz, and my early life was greatly enriched by Hart’s work, but he ended his career on a decidedly sour note of intolerance. UPDATE: An eloquent appraisal of Hart’s talents can be found here.
