Update: evil robots, dirty cops,anxious Swedes and a neurotic Jew
My apologies for the recent lack of postings — I am finishing up an assignment and have been dealing with two kids over the moon about the arrival of Halloween.
I have little of interest to report — or perhaps, more accurately, I have little energy at the moment to report anything. However:
ITEM! ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
urbaniak and I watched Terminator 2: Judgment Day last night. I have little to say about this movie that hasn’t been said many times by many others. It has a screenplay of similar structure to the original (two mysterious strangers from the future show up, one wants to kill the protagonist, the other wants to save him, the first act is devoted to putting the pieces in place, the second act is about explaining the rules and catching the audience up to the action, the third act is about all the pieces coming together in a massive, bone-crushing action sequence) but vastly improved and with about a hundred million more dollars worth of production values. A pinnacle of American movie-making and James Cameron’s greatest achievement. I would also like to commend the two leads, Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger, both of whom turn in career-best performances that, for my money, stand next to another beauty-and-beast team from 1991, Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs, for sheer effectiveness. Schwarzenegger is okay but a little clunky in the first movie, but he’s just spectacular in T2 — slimmed-down, poised and in total command of his movements and voice. Schwarzenegger gets a lot of stick for playing a robot but what he does in this movie is a lot more subtle, complex and nuanced than one would expect from the big guy. He was a special effect in the first movie but here he’s a real actor giving a real performance — and not hogging the camera, either. As for Linda Hamilton, she seems like a completely different actor than the woman in The Terminator. She tough, uncompromising, no-bullshit and impossible to take your eyes off of. I watch her in this movie and am baffled that she doesn’t have a career equal to her contemporaries. I guess there just aren’t enough roles written for women with rock-hard shoulders who want to play moms whose kids can help them load machine guns.
ITEM! While finishing my assignment, I’ve been taking breaks by watching Season 3 of The Shield. If you’ve never heard of The Shield, stop what you’re doing right now, run to your video store and rent the first season. The pilot of The Shield is not only the greatest pilot in television history, it’s the spearhead of some of the greatest dramatic writing I’ve ever witnessed. Show after show for six seasons, this show kept up a seething, scathing, furious boil of urban Jacobean drama. Astonishingly intelligent, jaw-droppingly intense and complex. When I see a movie these days, I don’t say “Is it as good as Citizen Kane,” I say “Is it as good as an episode of The Shield?” Michael Chiklis as Vic Mackie is one of the great television performances of all time, on a par with Carrol O’Connor on All in the Family, Peter Falk on Columbo and Hugh Laurie on House. The fact that Mackie is perhaps the most unpleasant character ever delineated on television makes it that much more compelling.
ITEM! Before he became one of the 20th century’s most important and enduring artists, Ingmar Bergman was a screenwriter, just like me! His first produced screenplay is called Torment (there’s a calling-card title if I ever heard one). The movie was directed by Alf Sjoberg, but oozes Bergman all over the place. Students of excellent screenwriting must, must, must familiarize themselves with Bergman’s screenplays — they are expertly balanced, classically structured, compact little gems that manage to plumb the depths of human desires and needs without making a big deal about it.
ITEM! Took my son trick-or-treating tonight in Santa Monica. Certain blocks north of Montana were as crowded as Times Square the night before Christmas and as garishly decorated. A splendid time was had by all and I had the pleasure of sighting Larry David making his way through the crowd. As a New Yorker, I am forbidden to approach a celebrity in the street no matter high my admiration for his work.
Movie Night With Urbaniak: The Terminator
The Terminator perfectly embodies two crucial truths about motion pictures:
The motion of the narrative of The Terminator could not be more perfectly shaped. The first act presents all its players, tells us nothing about them except their actions, and sets them on an irreversible collision-course toward each other. There is no scene where the Terminator explains who he is, there is no scene where Reese pets a dog to make him “likable,” there is no scene where Sarah Connor complains to her roommate “look at me, I’m pushing 30 and I’m still working as a waitress! I’m such a mess, I’ll never get a guy or have kids! My life will never mean anything!” The Terminator moves implacably toward his goal, Reese moves implacably toward his, and Sarah gets caught in between. Once the characters all meet up, chase each other and exchange gunfire, they break apart for the start of Act II and we finally get a little information about who Reese is, who the Terminator is and why they’re doing all these crazy things. As the confusion lifts, solid, eternal themes emerge — destiny, fate, motherhood, fatherhood, the nature and purpose of humanity, all dealt with with a maximum of economy, grace and visual acuity. What Urbaniak calls “the moebius-strip nature of the time-travel movie” is intricately laid out in scenes that are heavily expository yet crammed with suspense and action, so that a 106-minute movie with a complicated backstory flies by in no time whatsoever. Events follow hard upon each other so that the story plays out over a matter of days, the few scenes of rest contain tidbits like a robot peeling off its face or a tutorial on building pipe bombs, the emphasis is on pursuit and jeopardy, sacrifice and honor. The love story, improbable as it is (two people meet, one a soldier from the future, fall in love, have sex and conceive a child, all within 24 hours, while being pursued by an evil, unstoppable robot) works because it stands as the inverse of the antagonist, a character who exists only to destroy.
TRUTH 2: Different narrative forms naturally lend themselves to different aspects of existence. The novel is ideal for presenting the inner lives of its characters, the play is ideal for showing people in a room talking and movies are ideal for showing large metal objects hurtling through the air. Or, to put it another way, novels are good for delineating thought, plays are good for presenting speech, and movies are good for displaying action. The action, however, cannot be action for its own sake. The lesser talents who followed James Cameron into the arena of “80s action movies” often did not share his intuitive sense of what constitutes effective action. An action setpiece in a movie is a lot like a song in a Broadway show. In a good Broadway show, the songs are memorable and powerful and also advance the plot, so that the narrative stakes at the end of the song are higher than they were at the beginning. In the bad Broadway show, the songs are “show stoppers,” big production numbers exuding spectacle and bombast, after which everyone goes back to doing exactly what they were doing beforehand. And so it is with the action movie. The excellent action sequence is a culmination of narrative, sharply expresses character, is innovative and surprising, uses location in a vital and thematic way, and serves as a plot turn without which the narrative is meaningless. The 80s and early 90s teemed with movies whose action sequences did none of these things. These movies are largely forgotten now, but the ones that remain, principally the Die Hard movies, the Terminator movies, Aliens, the first 80 minutes of The Abyss, and a few others stand as the fulfillment of not just action movies but as a genuine fulfillment of the potential of the cinematic form.
Control
Control is a bio-pic about Ian Curtis, the lead singer of the seminal British post-punk band Joy Division. I recommend it highly to those interested in the world of British post-punk music, gorgeous black-and-white photography, excellence in acting. I also recommend it to students of the bio-pic genre.
Many reviewers more qualified than myself have made the case for this movie, so I will keep this brief, but there were a few things of which I’d like to take special note.
The problem with correcting these cliches of the form is that audiences crave plot. Topsy-Turvy, Mike Leigh’s brilliant movie about the creation of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado, is one of the greatest biographical dramas you will ever see, but is not a popular favorite. The conventional bio-pic, Walk the Line for instance, conceives of its narrative (“talented hick singer strikes it rich and has trouble adjusting to fame and wealth”) and then tailors all its scenes to serve the narrative. It takes messy, surprising, disorganized life and retro-fits it into mere “plot.” The result is more commercially viable but also dramatically false. The rise to fame of Johnny Cash is not a surprise to us, because we already know Johnny Cash was famous. We know this because we’ve heard of him.
The creators of Control offer very little cultural context for the creation of Joy Division’s music. There are no fights between band members over the guitar solo that would later go on to become famous, there is no scene where the young songwriter takes in the whole of northern British culture and, at the end of the pier on a stormy night, vows to his girlfriend that one day he will shape the anxiety and alienation of his generation into a sound that set the world on fire, there are no scenes of young men being lured by the temptations of the road (scene in Walk the Line: Johnny Cash: “Gosh, that Elvis Presley has so much energy — how does he do it?” Other Guy: “He ingests illegal drugs — be careful about that, Johnny Cash.“) There is no scene where a smug, supercilious label head says “Songs about William S. Burroughs novels are on their way out, Mr. Curtis.” There is no scene where Curtis has a fight with his wife, during which he says “I love you” and then she screams, “Ian, love will tear us apart!” and then he says “Wait! Say that again!” There is little in the way of delineating the band’s struggle to get to the top — no humiliating failed auditions, no intra-band intrigue, no duplicitous management. There’s this guy, Ian Curtis, he joins this band, they’re good, they play live and excite people, they go on tour. The movie neither promotes nor judges, it merely records, secure that what it records is interesting and compelling by itself.
The ultimate goal of an excellent bio-pic, it seems to me, is to give the impression that your characters are living their lives, and your camera just happens to be in the room at the time. The temptation of the conventional bio-pic script is to have each character live out the thrust of their life story in each scene, so that a movie featuring Thomas Jefferson as a minor character must have him pine for the unfulfilled rights of men and lust after a Negro maiden. (David Mamet sums up this tendency in biographical drama as “Hello, because I am the King of France.”) In real life, people who go around announcing who they are and what they stand for are the most suspicious and false people of all. People don’t go around acting out the arc of their lives; people wake up and eat and hang out and argue with one another and watch TV and fart and make love and think about things, and those are the scenes that make up the bulk of Control.
2. The casting and acting in Control is extraordinary, down to quite minor roles. I knew nothing about the Manchester music scene of the late 70s, but after seeing the movie I went online to look some of these people up and all I can say is that the movie appears to get them all exactly right. Special creditgoes to the young men playing the band, who not only convincingly impersonate Joy Division in performance but also appear to be actual people in their own right. When I think of a movie like, say, Back Beat, about the Beatles days in Hamburg, what I remember is the Beatles boiled down and reduced to types; Control presents the members of Joy Division as bright, talented, slightly sullen young men with not much to say apart from their music. We’re on the outside of these young men; even in an interview scene, they don’t seem to have much to say for themselves. “Restraint” seems to have been a watchword for the producers of Control, and the fact that this is director Anton Corbijn’s first narrative feature makes it all the more impressive.
3. I can’t help think that the people releasing Control missed a marketing opportunity by not putting the movie out in mid-June. would have made an excellent Father’s Day movie. Dad’s in their 40s could reminisce about their youths, bond with their teenage emo kids, and best of all, end up feeling really good about themselves, because, let’s face it, there were few fathers or husbands more irresponsible or screwed up than Ian Curtis. Married in his teens, a father by 21, Curtis seems to have been opaque to his wife, horrified by his child, remote, withdrawn, passive, secretive and incommunicative to the point of robotic. Some of America’s worst dads could leave Control and feel like Father of the Year. I can see a generation of sullen teens watching Control and then sending their dads heartfelt cards of thanks for not hanging themselves in the kitchen for their moms to discover.
Further thoughts on Return of the Jedi
In the past, I’ve discussed Return of the Jedi and compared its plot to the plot of The Empire Strikes Back. I thought I was done with it, but it turns out the movie has more to offer than I have previously noticed, probably because I in the past I have spent too much of the running time looking at the seams on the backs of the Ewok costumes.
The other day, my son Sam (6) requested to watch it again and kept marveling at how swiftly it moved. No sooner had the good guys escaped from Tatooine than Sam exclaimed “Wow! The movie’s already at the ending!” What he was picking up on was the trifurcated nature of ROTJ‘s plot: it’s a 40-minute movie about the rescue of Han Solo, then its a 40-minute movie about the good guys’ adventures with the Ewoks, then it’s a 40-minute movie about the two-pronged attack on the forces of the Empire. Each one of these featurettes is tight, entertaining and beautiful to behold and no, I’d have to say that, taken as a whole, ROTJ is not a chore to sit through.
Sample conversation:
EMPEROR: The rebels have landed on the moon of Endor, exactly as I have planned.
VADER: Yes, your majesty. My son is with them.
EMPEROR: He is? How do you know?
VADER: I have felt his presence.
EMPEROR: Really? I haven’t.
VADER: If you want, I’ll go fetch him and bring him here.
EMPEROR: Yes, that’s a good idea. Exactly as I have planned.
The Emperor has only one goal: lure Luke to the Death Star so that he can turn him to the dark side. This is, in fact, the only reason he has for building the second Death Star. Because, let’s face it, “Second Death Star” is the lamest idea imaginable. The first massive, impregnable Death Star got blown up by a rebel hotshot, what star-system is going to tremble at the thought of a second Death Star, one that’s still under construction? So the Emperor isn’t planning to use the second Death Star to blow up any planets, he’s using it solely as a big shiny object to lure Luke into his trap. I can see the meeting now:
EMPEROR: I need to get that Luke Skywalker guy here so I can turn him to the dark side.
VADER: Dancing girls?
EMPEROR: No, he’s too much of a straight arrow.
VADER: Double coupons?
EMPEROR: He’s a Jedi, he gets discounts all over the place.
VADER: Second Death Star.
EMPEROR: Second Death Star, that’s absurd, it would be a monumental waste of resources and manpower. The last Death Star made me an utter joke throughout the galaxy. Why on earth would I want to build a Second Death Star?
VADER: I’m just saying, if you want to attract Luke, the ol’ Death Star trick is the best bet going. In fact, I’ll tell you what — let’s only build it half-way! It’ll save us money, it’ll bring Luke here on the run and he’ll be really overconfident!
EMPEROR: Yes. Yes. This is exactly as I have planned.
VADER: (throws up hands in gesture of helplessness)
Princess Leia starts off this movie strong, disguising herself as a bounty hunter to free Han Solo, then strangling a gangster slug to death with a chain while dressed in a smashing outfit. But then what happens? She tags along on a mission with Solo, gets picked up by the Ewoks, finds out she’s Luke’s sister. The end.
Han Solo’s destiny is the reverse of this. His motivation through Act I is “to do something about being blind and getting fed to a monster,” which, in screenwriting terms, is what we call a weak motivation. As Act II begins, he volunteers (as a rebel general, no less) to lead a commando raid on the Endor moon to blow up the Shield Generator. His daring raid gets hijacked, like the movie, by the Ewoks, and the rest of his arc revolves around dealing with the Ewoks, hanging out with them (he spends all night sitting around listening to C-3PO tell stories, then complains about being pressed for time) gaining their trust and enlisting their aid in his guerilla attack on the Imperial troops.
Which brings me to the Shield Generator. The Shield Generator, with its unprepossessing “back door,” becomes the locus of action in Return of the Jedi. The plot of A New Hope is driven by the construction, implementation and destruction of a moon-sized battle station, but the plot of Return of the Jedi is driven by a pair of sliding doors in the side of a hill somewhere in a forest. We’ve got to get in through those two sliding doors! How will we do it? If only there were a rebel army to help us! The Second Death Star, face it, barely figures at all into the plot of Return of the Jedi. It’s of minimal importance. Know how I know? Because it gets destroyed not by Luke or Leia or Han or the droids or even Chewbacca. No, the destruction of the Second Death Star falls to Lando Calrissian and this guy, a giggling, mouth-breathing alien we’ve never met before.
So the focus of Return of the Jedi is no bullshit Second Death Star; the focus of Return of the Jedi is more personal and, ultimately, more mysterious and, in part, goes back to this Shield Generator.
First, let’s divide the players of Jedi into three teams: there are the Rebels, the Imperials and the Ewoks. The Imperials dominate the galaxy with their impressive (if ultimately useless) technological marvels and employment of white, English guys, the Rebels have put together a rag-tag coalition of various species, technologies and whatnot, and the Ewoks are, literally, still living in the trees and fighting with rocks and sticks. So technologically, the lines are drawn: Upper Class (Imperials), Middle Class (Rebels) and Lower Class (Ewoks). The Middle Class, rebelling against the Upper Class, are forced to resort to employing the Lower Class to win their battle. They do not do so willingly — the Middle Class does not understand the Lower Class and their primitive ways, and would prefer not to associate with them. One wonders what is to become of the Ewoks in the triumphant new world after the victory of the New Republic. Will there be cuddly Ewoks, with their spears and animal skins, showing up in the new Republic Senate? Regardless of their role in defeating the Emperor, what kind of power would they have in a new Republican order, being so backward and primitive? It would be like the Tasaday having an ambassador to the UN.
There is also a strong religious component to Jedi. Again, separating the players into teams, what we find is that the Ewoks represent the Old God (which, ironically, includes C-3PO, a droid) (but not R2-D2, oddly enough), the Rebels represent the True God (that is, The Force) and the Imperials represent the False God (The Emperor). If we look at Jedi through a religious lens, it becomes a story about missionaries colonizing a new land and bringing their “advanced” beliefs to the funny, superstitious primitives. Luke becomes the rebellious Christ, representing the new covenant, throwing the moneychangers out of the temple, again, oddly, with the help of the superstitious primitives.
(Or, on a nationalistic level, we could say that the Empire represents Imperial England [which would explain all the English people], the Rebels represent the melting-pot United States with its crazy-quilt of races and ideas, and the Ewoks represent the Native Americans. Which means that in Episode VII, all the Ewoks will die from Rebel-introduced diseases or be wiped out as the New Republic colonizes their moon to put up strip-malls and liquor stores. A few hundred years down the line, the few surviving Ewoks will be granted casino licenses to assuage Republican guilt.)
No wonder the bulk of the movie takes place in “the forest” (after successfully negotiating an exodus from enslavement in “the desert”). It’s not “a forest,” but “the forest,” that is, the Forest Primeval. That is the Forest the Rebels and Ewoks and Imperials stumble around in while deciding the fate of the galaxy. Who is “right” in the Forest Primeval? Which god, which class, shall triumph? How will society evolve? Will we remain with our primitive superstitions, or turn to a False God with its powers to create False Worlds (that is, the Second Death Star) with is awe-inspiring technology, or will the True God prevail?
The Ewoks irritate not because of their character design or their “cuteness” or their obvious racial characteristics but because, for forty disastrous minutes, they derail the plot of the movie, keeping the protagonist from his goal (“I shouldn’t have come, I’m jeopardizing the mission,” frets Luke, perhaps not realizing how right he is) and thrusting Theme into a position of dominance over Plot.
The Shield Generator, then, becomes a metaphor for the “shields” constructed between classes, religious beliefs and friends. There is a shield between the Rebels and the Ewoks, between Vader and Luke, between Han and Leia, between Vader and Obi-Wan. When Han destroys the Shield Generator (nice that the Shield Generator is an invention of the False God), all those shields vanish, allowing Vader to see the Emperor for who he is, Han to see Leia for who she is, and Vader to hang out with Obi-Wan and Yoda in blue sparkly heaven. This is all very nice and elegant, but as I say, the plotting of the middle act of Jedi is a disaster.
Some other thoughts:
1. I wonder what happened to Jabba’s criminal empire after Leia strangled him and Luke blew up his sail barge. It was enormous and powerful enough to make Jabba a force more powerful than Vader in the eyes of the Emperor (otherwise why would Vader worry so much about offending Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back?) (I mean, apart from the fact that he’s in love with him), such a thing is not going to simply dry up and blow away like so much roasted meat in the Dune Sea under harsh Tatooine binary suns. Odds are, an intergalactic gang-war erupted after Jabba’s death with many deaths, shady deals and spectacular shoot-outs. The gangster aspect of the Star Wars universe is under-served.
2. Yoda dies, and disappears. Obi-wan dies, and disappears. Vader dies, and must be lugged onto a stolen shuttle and hauled down to the Endor moon to be cremated (or barbequed — it’s not clear; the Ewoks, after all, do eat human flesh and threaten to eat Luke and Han earlier in the movie). I couldn’t care less, but this inconsistency confuses my son Sam. Why do some enlightened beings disappear at the point of death and other writhe in bloody agony? Qui-Gon does not disappear when killed by Darth Maul, hundreds of Jedi die like dogs in the dirt in Revenge of the Sith and do not disappear. Sam posits that only those who come back as ghosts get to disappear, and yet at the end of Sith it’s revealed that Qui-Gon has come back as a ghost — why didn’t he disappear? Darth Vader not only comes back as a ghost (just in time to witness his own cremation — that must feel weird), he comes back as his 25-year-old self. That seems to me to be enough magic to allow one to disappear at the point of death, but apparently not.
3. Leia tags along on Han’s mission to Endor. She dresses in Rebel Camouflage. Then she’s captured by Ewoks, and emerges in a lovely Forest Ensemble. Where the hell did that come from? Similarly, Luke goes on a speeder chase through the woods and wanders around with Han, yet when it comes time to meet up with dad, he’s got on his Don’t Mess With Me Jedi Black. Where do these clothes come from?
4. Luke asks Leia what she remembers of her mother. Leia gives him a sketchy description of an unhappy but loving woman. Odd, seeing as how Leia’s mother is also Luke’s mother and she died at the moment of their birth. Obviously, Leia, pressed into an uncomfortable position, has decided to make up a bunch of utter bullshit in the hopes that maybe that will make her appear more vulnerable and interesting to Luke. Then she finds out Luke’s really her brother — oops.
5. Luke, who’s supposed to be a Jedi (or near enough), is a terrible negotiator. He constantly tells his enemies his plans and opinions, giving them plenty of information and tools against him. I like Luke as much as the next guy but Qui-Gon would punch him in the mouth for that bullshit, and I’m surprised Obi-wan “Truth From A Certain Point Of View” Kenobi puts up with it too. Of course, then again, Qui-Gon is the Jedi who was too principled tosteal a Hyperdrive Generator from a slave-owning junk dealer, so he’s a lame-o too. Obi-wan, though, there’s a guy who decides not to tell his own apprentice (and future savior of the galaxy) that the most Evil Guy in the Galaxy is his father because it serves his purposes. Now that’s a negotiator.
Brute Force
I’d never heard of this movie before the Criterion folk released their sparkling new transfer of it on DVD, another reason to say “God bless and keep the Criterion Collection.”
Jules Dassin, of course, in addition to this, directed the heist classic Rififi, one of the movies I watched in regard to Heist Movie, the maguffin of yesterday’s entry. Like Brute Force, Rififi was not available on DVD in 1997 — I had to watch a VHS copy of a transfer from a 16mm print. The copy I saw made Rififi look like it took place underwater, at night. Imagine my surprise when I saw the Criterion edition — it was bright, clear, dazzling — a completely different movie.
In any case, Brute Force is a stunner of a prison movie, with Burt Lancaster leading a crew of men on a massive, all-or-nothing prison break. Hume Cronyn is the smug, supercilious head guard who’s angling to replace the weak, hand-wringing warden.
Every now and then the narrative stops so that the main characters can sit and think about the women they’ve left behind. They’re all good eggs, you see, all led astray by scheming dames or by the vagaries of love. These scenes are comical in their compression and melodrama, trying to explain in a minute or less the whys and wherefores of the mens’ betrayals and weaknesses, but otherwise the tone is grim, blunt and bitter — they called the movie Brute Force and they weren’t kidding around.
Some points about the “issue” of prison reform are occasionally overstated, but then the final act comes along, forty solid minutes of suspense and action, stuffed with craven violence, noble sacrifice, righteous vengeance, kickass fights and stuff blowing up, an extended masterwork set-piece that compares favorably to the classic 25-minute silent heist in Rififi.
The theme of “society as prison,” where no one “deserves” to be there, the prisoners or the guards, remains as powerful as ever. And the central drama of Brute Force, where a smug, sniggering lackey cynically manipulates events so that people get killed and he gains power, to better feed his fascist desires and lust for torture, is far more resonant today than it could have been in 1947.
Regarding The Wilhelm Scream: it is so-called because it is generally recognized that its first appearance is in 1953’s The Charge at Feather River, as screamed by a character named Wilhelm, but I could swear I heard a convict named Wilson use the same scream in Brute Force when his hands are blasted by a welding torch. Perhaps it should be called “The Wilson.”
The Wilhelm Scream
Found this at Ain’t It Cool News. Like any movie geek, I love stuff like this.
For me, the sound effect that drives me crazy is what I call “The Wind,” a specific, whistling wind sound thatI hear in every god-damned movie. Wind is something that happens all over the world, 24 hours a day. Go out and record some new wind fr chrissakes.
True Hollywood Story: The Integrity Card
Radiohead has a new record out, In Rainbows. It’s wonderful.
Radiohead has chosen a unique distribution plan for In Rainbows: you can go to their website and download it, for whatever price you feel it’s worth.
This is alarming, and Radiohead know it is. When you place your order at their website, a question mark appears next to an empty price box. When you click on the question mark, the screen says “IT’S UP TO YOU.” And then there’s another question mark. When you click on that question mark, the screen says “NO REALLY, IT’S UP TO YOU.” It is a weird, thrilling experience to download an album for whatever price you feel like paying.
I came across a column on a music industry site where the columnist praised Radiohead for their business acumen: the pricing plan for In Rainbows, says the columnist, may result in a profit shortfall, but the resulting credibility for the band will be immeasurable and lead to much greater wealth. Ah, yes, I said, good plan: credibility will allow you to sell more records. It would, of course, never occur to a music-industry professional that a band might actually desire credibility for its own sake, or might wish to simply reach a broader audience by giving away its music for free — “credibility” can only be part of a devious scheme to hoodwink the people and make more money.
Which reminded me of this story:
My representation calls me one Friday evening, at my home in NYC, with a proposal:
A Big Important Producer has a project, which I will call Heist Movie. Big Star attached, heading into production. They have a script but it needs work. They would like to pay me Substantial Sum of Money to tweak Heist Movie. Not too much work, four weeks tops, in and out, neat and clean.
I say to my representation: but I don’t need a job. I have a job, I’ve committed to the job I’m already doing, I can’t very well stall on the job I already have in order to work on Heist Movie, even if it’s only for four weeks.
Still, it is Substantial Sum of Money.
I say let me read the script. It is at my door within moments. I read it. I say to my representation, what exactly does Big Important Producer (BIP) want me to do with this script? My representation is very clear: BIP wants better heists. The heists in the script are good but not great; BIP wants them to be great. And he wants me in his office on Monday afternoon to tell him my ideas for the great heists. They’re looking to make Heist Movie a gigantic, shiny, spectacular smash.
Monday is three days away. The clock is ticking. And, as I say, I have been offered Substantial Sum of Money.
I set aside the job I’m working on. I go to the video store. I rent a stack of heist movies. I study the heists. I spend the whole weekend examining heists, thinking of new spins on old ideas, cunning innovations, wild turns of events, spectacular derrings-do.
Monday I fly to LA, brimming with ideas for cool heists. I’ve got one wonderful idea that’s fully fleshed-out, but in case they don’t like it I’ve got several back-up ideas that I can probably make sound fleshed-out in the room.
I am being lodged at Pretentious A-List Hotel, for I am a Wonderful New Screenwriter.
I drive to BIP’s office, a charming bungalow on a studio lot. BIP is there with at least two cohorts. Also there is Excellent Young Director (EYD), who has a hit in theaters at the moment and has just directed an episode of Prestigious Detective Drama. There is the usual small-talk, and then the fangs come out. “So, Todd,” says BIP, “What do you have for us?”
I rattle off my ideas. I’m charming and funny. I detail just how intricate, humorous, spectacular and thematically relevant my heists are, how they will fit into their script and place it into the pantheon of Great Heist Movies.
BIP is pleased. He turns to EYD and says “What do you think?”
EYD says “What is all this Mission: Impossible shit? I don’t care about any of that. I want to know about the characters. How are you going to fix the characters?”
At that moment, I should have said “Gosh. I’m sorry. You and BIP obviously need to have a conversation about what movie you’re making, and I shouldn’t be in the room for that conversation. I’ll leave now, you can reach me at Pretentious A-List Hotel.” But I don’t. What I say is “Okay, let’s do that. Let’s talk about the characters.” Luckily, I have been thinking about the characters, and I can talk a pretty good game when it comes to discussing narrative. But in the back of my mind I’m thinking “BIP has a completely different movie in mind from EYD’s. This project is doomed.”
My chat about characters pleases EYD and we have lunch on another day where we talk the movie out.
Here’s the problem: I don’t have time to do what EYD wants done with the script. I signed on to do four weeks’ work, not a page-one rewrite with an open-ended commitment. That was not the deal.
Now then: there is another wrinkle. I learn, right about now, that I am not BIP’s first choice for this rewrite job. BIP wants Great Screenwriter (GS) for the gig, but GS is not available for another six weeks, as he is writing Adaptation of Great Children’s Novel. Now, I am told, I am to write a screenplay for the heist movie that is merely a rough draft for GS to come in and perfect later.
What? I say. How is that supposed to work? Have you even spoken to GS about this plan? How does he (GS is a he) feel about that? What makes you think that, on top of coming up with great heists and re-vamping the characters, I’m going to be able to somehow magically create a script that GS is going to be able to perfect? What exactly is going on with this project?
I have a long phone conversation with GS. GS is a swell guy — really helpful, totally understanding, a genuine pro, full of great advice and tips. His vision for Heist Movie is small, dark, gritty, personal and very realistic — the total opposite of everything I’ve discussed with BIP and EYD.
This is now a nightmare. I make several frantic calls to my representation — who are these people, why are they doing this, what should I do, why am I doing this, why did you get me involved in this insane project where the producer, director and first-choice screenwriter all have completely, utterly, not-even-overlapping different ideas of what the movie is? My representation tell me to hang in there, everything will be taken care of, it’s a great project, it will help my career, and it is, after all, a Substantial Sum of Money.
Somehow this all gets ironed out. They still want to move forward with the project, they still want me to do the rewrite, they’re still positive that this will be a wonderful movie that will make a lot of money.
A meeting is scheduled. I am to go to Big Studio, with BIP, EYD and cohorts to lay out the whole plan to the Studio Executive (SE), the Guy Who Can Say Yes. This meeting is to occur at 10:00am.
At 9:00am I am in my room at Pretentious A-List Hotel, getting ready for the big meeting. My representation calls me at Pretentious A-List Hotel. Excellent news, they report. The Business Affairs office of Big Studio has settled my contract and they are prepared to offer me Insubstantial Sum of Money.
What? I gasp. What do you mean, Insubstantial Sum of Money? What the hell are you talking about? The only reason I took this gig to begin with was that they were offering me Substantial Sum of Money, why should I be happy to get Insubstantial Sum of Money? The Big Meeting is scheduled to happen in less than an hour, and I’m going crazy now. Why would they do this? Why would they put me through all this crap, offer me Substantial Sum of Money, drag me through this confusing maze of personalities, change every particular of the deal, and then offer me Insubstantial Sum of Money? “Well,” my representation says, “that’s how they do it. It’s called Getting the Writer Pregnant. They get you all excited about their project, then they lowball you on the contract. It’s nothing personal, they do it to everyone.” Yes, I say, but you don’t understand: I don’t need this job. I didn’t ask for this job, this job is getting worse every day, the time commitment expands every day, I’m neglecting the other job I already have, there’s no reason for me to do this job. I say, forget it, I’m not doing it, call a car service, get me to the airport, tell them whatever you need to tell them, I’m going home, I don’t mind being a whore but I’m not going to be a cheap whore.
I hang up.
A few minutes later, my representation calls back. Business affairs, they say, has come back with an offer of Insubstantial Sum of Money Plus. I go ballistic. What the hell are you talking about?! I told you, I’m not doing the project! It’s a nightmare! No one knows what the hell is going on with it and I DON’T NEED THE JOB!
I hang up.
A few minutes later, my representation calls back. Business Affairs, they say, has come back with an offer of Substantial Sum of Money — that is, the original agreed-upon fee. I say, it’s too late. They blew it. I have no faith in this project any more. Please call me car service to take me to the airport, I’m going home.
I hang up.
A few minutes later, my representation calls back. Business Affairs, they say, has come back with an offer of Substantial Sum of Money…Plus.
Well. All right then. So it turns out they were prepared to pay me after all, they just wanted to insult me as much as possible first to see if I’d take it. All right then. I say okay, that’s a horse of a different color, where do I sign?
I still have time to make the Big Meeting. My representation congratulate me on my fierce bargaining skills. “Let me tell you,” my agent says, “It’s not a choice I would have made, but I really admire the way you played the integrity card.”
Ah yes. There it is: The Integrity Card. Don’t leave home without it. Integrity being not something one possesses, but merely a useful and canny bargaining strategy. If one holds The Integrity Card, those money bastards will lay down at one’s feet like puppies. Works every time. Shrewd move, Alcott, playing that Integrity Card.
Oh, and PS:
For reasons completely beyond my control and having nothing to do with any of the above, the project falls apart, I never do any work on it, GS never does any work on it (that I know of), the movie never gets made, and I never get any sum of money, Substantial or otherwise. BIP remains a Big Important Producer with many excellent, hit movies to his name, GS remains a Great Screenwriter and is now a Director of Note as well (and, in fact, has written a heist movie of his own which can accurately be described as small, dark, gritty, personal and very realistic), EYD went on to much success in both movies and television.
Movie Night With Urbaniak: Network
Seeing Michael Clayton got me in the mood to watch Network again. Both movies have an inciting incident where the key player of a powerful organization goes nuts (and is played by a Brit playing American), both movies feature great actresses playing soulless, corporate monsters, and both movies imagine the corporate agenda easily including capital crimes. And asking
to watch Network is like asking a puppy to chase a ball: he’ll do it all night long.
(In the interest of full disclosure, let me add that I was too young to see The Godfather, or even The Godfather Part II in theaters. My formative moviegoing experiences were The Poseidon Adventure, Papillon, The Towering Inferno and Jaws. But I know what she meant.)
But to finally come to the point at hand, I do remember when movies were serious entities to be reckoned with, and I did know it was a special time. In 1976, Network was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar — against All the President’s Men and Taxi Driver. The winner was Rocky, but just think of that. Not just Network, but All the President’s Men AND Taxi Driver, ALL IN THE SAME YEAR. Think of that.
And I knew Network was special when I walked into the theater as a callow 15-year-old, and I knew it was well-written and well-acted. (And I can still feel the electricity that went through the theater during the “Mad As Hell” scene.) What I did not know, could not know, is that, 31 years later, it would only get better. What seemed like bitter, outrageous satire in 1976 is now revealed to be sober, clear-eyed reportage. Howard Beall’s mad rantings still sound clear as a bell 31 years later, and only the vocabulary of the issues has changed — the issues themselves are exactly the same. Gas prices, terrorists, corporate takeover of our news services, assassinations for the sake of ratings, the nations of the world becoming irrelevant in the face of monetary hegemony, everything is exactly the same — in some cases, the issues have actually come into clearer focus than they were in 1976.
There is a scene mid-way through the movie where they first reveal the new “Howard Beall Show” and we see that the show no longer looks like a news show at all, but rather some kind of television carnival complete with sooth-sayer, and my wife (who was watching with us for the first time) said “This is the first thing in the movie that’s over the top.” Then, seconds later, Beall began his rant about how television networks are being bought by media conglomerates who will broadcast the most outrageous bullshit imaginable and call it news, and her criticism evaporated. The Howard Beall show exists, it’s on the air right now, and it’s called Fox News. Who would say, now, that the conversations in Network, about giving terrorists their own TV shows, about assassinating news anchors for the sake of ratings, about staging wars and coups and crises for the sake of ratings, who would say now that these conversations are wild, bitter satire? If anything, the scenarios presented in Network don’t go far enough, seem relatively benign and comical compared to the stunning, sickening mendacity displayed every minute of every hour on Fox News. Who would be surprised to find out that Fox news had knowingly put a certifiably insane man on the air for ratings, or covertly sponsored a terrorist cell in order to get first dibs on the coverage of their atrocities, or contemplated the killing of one of their own anchors to boost their market share?
(As an added note, let me just say that, in 1976, when they showed “UBS” as a fictional “fourth network” in addition to CBS, NBC and ABC, my inner bullshit-detector went off — a fourth network? That’s ridiculous! I thought. Then, the movie goes on to demonstrate how that fictional “fourth network” would necessarily rely on sensation, lies, betrayals and prostitution of ethics in order to gain a foothold in the marketplace — which is, of course, exactly how Fox got where it is. One can easily imagine Rupert Murdoch watching Network in 1976 and, electrified, taking notes. “Yes! My God! It could work! It could work!”
Urbaniak notes: “Could a movie be any better directed?” and indeed, the pitch of the direction of Network is nothing short of miraculous. The entire cast, not known as “comic actors,” all give great comic performances, because they utterly believe in the situation they’re in and play it as seriously and clearly as possible, letting the script take care of the funny. The world of television is brought to vivid life (the production design alone is incredible), the camera is restrained, passive and elegant, there is absolutely no score (as in Dog Day Afternoon, Lumet’s previous movie). The result is a movie of incredible anger, raw power and immense sophistication. They really do not make movies like this any more.
In a movie sprawling with great, great acting, from the leads to the smallest of character parts, there is only one false note. Ned Beatty (whom I love) appears late in the movie to deliver the Big Speech about how money is the only law in the world, and, frankly, he blows it. He “puts on a show” for Howard, coming on like a blustering buffoon, when the speech cries out to be delivered in the most silken, persuasive tone possible. That speech should chill your bones, make you come to a great realization, and instead it gets played for cheap comic effect.
Michael Clayton
As the applause died down and the credits rolled on the showing of Michael Clayton I attended tonight, I remembered that at Rotten Tomatoes the movie is currently enjoying a 90% percent “fresh” rating. For folks like me who think too much about these things, that number, 90, stuck out weird. It’s just too close to 100. 85, I know that’s going to be a pretty good movie, since a movie with an 85 obviously doesn’t appeal to absolutely everyone. But 90? That means that almost everyone liked it, except one or two people who didn’t. And after watching the movie (I intentionally did not read any of the reviews beforehand, as I didn’t want to know anything about it) I just had to find out who watched this movie, in a marketplace otherwise utterly devoid of intelligent, well-crafted, well-executed, adult entertainment, and said “feh.”
Rotten Tomatoes found two in their “Cream of the Crop” section — Jan Stuart seems to have been legitimately (slightly) disappointed, but the other negative review is by Rex Reed, who seems to be a total fucking moron.
He says that Gilroy’s writing and direction is illogical and incoherent, and then goes on at length about a minor story point that he, personally, knows to be at odds with how he and his friends experience the real world. Then he describes the plot of a movie that sounds similar to Michael Clayton, but is, in fact, not. Reed declares a total lack of understanding regarding a plot point that is given about twenty minutes of careful, step-by-step setup and development. Reading the text more closely, the only conclusion I could come to is that Reed did not actually finish watching the movie — rather, he checked out, or stormed out in a huff (as I have heard reports of him doing before) and then wrote his review based on his little brain’s offended imagination.
As a capper, Reed runs down Clayton as being of a piece with other “George Clooney movies:” Syriana is “loathsome,” Solaris is “unsalvageable” and O Brother, Where Art Thou? is “idiotic.” Why this man is even allowed inside a movie theater is a great mystery to me.
I enjoyed the movie a lot and so did my wife, but there was one tonal note that she found lacking: the portrayal of manic depression in the character of Arthur (Tom Wilkinson, pictured above) who goes off his meds (also pictured above) and provides the movie’s inciting incident. Arthur’s rants sounded right to me (in my relatively slight experience with bipolar folk) and my wife admits that, textually, they’re correct, and even admits that Wilkinson’s performance is exemplary, but that the rhythm of speech of the manic person is a very specific, un-wavering, unforgettable thing and that the central event of the movie was tarnished slightly by what she saw as a better-done-than-usual, but-not-perfect representation of bipolar disorder. (She knows a lot about this stuff. No, she is not, herself, bipolar.) Because I have an ongoing interest in representations of mental disorders in movies, I would like to throw this discussion open: any reader with experience with bipolar sufferers have an opinion on Arthur in Michael Clayton? And, extending from that, has anybody seen an accurate representation of bipolar disorder in a movie?
(One bipolar friend of mine was livid at As Good As It Gets, a movie that, in her eyes, had the message of “Love Will Allow You To Stop Taking Your Meds,” which she found to be inaccurate at best and grossly irresponsible at worst.)