Monsters! The Howling
WHAT DOES THE PROTAGONIST WANT? Karen White is an LA local-news anchor. She has become embroiled in a local serial-killer story. The killer is obsessed with her for some reason and she is willing to play into his obsession in the hopes of breaking the big story. He lures her to a seedy sex shop and something happens to him, something so shocking that Karen is unable to rationally process it. The killer, a guy named Eddie, is killed by trigger-happy police before he can do whatever he was going to do to Karen. What Karen wants is to know, simply, what was the deal with Eddie?
WHO IS THE MONSTER? The deal with Eddie is that he’s a werewolf, and that he’s not actually dead.
WHAT IS THE WARNING? People, The Howling reminds us, are animals. We put on clothes, build cities and try to "explain" our behavior through science and psychology, but all that denies our true nature: we are murderous, predatory, rutting beasts.
Monsters! The Fly
WHAT DOES THE PROTAGONIST WANT? Technically, all Seth Brundle wants is to get his teleporter to work. He’s a scientist, working for the betterment of the world (and his own subsequent wealth and fame). Between the lines, however, he has a deeper, more personal agenda — he wishes to transform his essential nature. This effort pays off in spades, but not quite the way he expected it to.
WHO IS THE MONSTER? Like in American Werewolf, the monster of The Fly is the protagonist himself. Unlike the protagonist of American Werewolf, Brundle actually stops to think about what’s happening to him.
WHAT IS THE WARNING? Um, you know that whole "transformation of your essential nature" idea? Don’t do that.
A financial note
A few years back, I took a substantial chunk of money to Merrill Lynch. My previous financial guy, at Paine Webber, had wantonly discarded my money and I wanted to take great care to make sure that didn’t happen again. I was very stern and commanding in my meeting with the woman from Merrill, who was a slick, expensively-dressed, well-coiffed young blonde in designer eyewear. I wasn’t going to get taken again and I asked her many probing questions about her day-to-day duties, her business, and the market in general. She blithely dismissed all doubts I put forth and cheerfully presented mountains of evidence to show how safe my money would be at Merrill.
At one point I asked her "Well, but what happens if Merrill goes out of business?" She laughed as though I had asked "Well, what if water flows uphill?" and, all but patting me on the head, said "Todd, if Merrill goes out of business, I promise you, your money will be the least of your worries, because if Merrill goes out of business it will mean the world is ending." Merrill, she told me, was too gigantic an institution with far too much money and roots far too deep to ever be so much as tickled by the worst economic storms imaginable. To elucidate, she added "Todd, I promise you, if Merrill goes out of business it will mean that giant, flaming rocks are falling from the sky."
So, this might be a good indication of how bad things are right now.
UPDATE: Not to worry, John McCain assures us "The fundamentals of our economy are still strong." Thank goodness! And here I thought McCain was just a cynical Republican tool willing to say anything to get elected.
Monsters! An American Werewolf in London
WHAT DOES THE PROTAGONIST WANT? Hey, good question. "To not become a monster" seems to be the best bet, with "to bed the pretty nurse" coming in adistant second.
WHO IS THE MONSTER? Gaaah! Run for your lives, the monster is the protagonist! The calls are coming from inside the house!
WHAT IS THE WARNING? "To beware" seems to be the dominant warning — beware foreign customs, or rather, observe foreign customs, beware your own nature. Stop being such a lovable, happy-go-lucky idiot — it can only lead to mass murder and your own destruction. Your goofball exterior masks a raging, homicidal beast and the world will kill you for it. I am glad to report that America has taken the warning of Werewolf to heart and the world is now a safer, better place for it.
Monsters!
"So what’s a monster?" — ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
ted_slaughter
monster: c.1300, "malformed animal, creature afflicted with a birth defect," from O.Fr. monstre, from L. monstrum "monster, monstrosity, omen, portent, sign," from root of monere "warn" (see monitor). Abnormal or prodigious animals were regarded as signs or omens of impending evil. Extended c.1385 to imaginary animals composed of parts of creatures (centaur, griffin, etc.). Meaning "animal of vast size" is from 1530; sense of "person of inhuman cruelty or wickedness" is from 1556. In O.E., the monster Grendel was an aglæca, a word related to aglæc "calamity, terror, distress, oppression."
See also demonstrate, but, oddly enough, not demon.
"To warn." Well isn’t that a breath of fresh air? A monster is a warning. And, I think we would say, a monster movie is a warning. "If we continue behaving in x fashion, this will be the result." A monster movie may enforce that assertion (Aliens: "if we continue to let capitalism shape the way we think, the result will be our destruction") examine it (American Werewolf: "if we are careless, even the charming and sympathetic among us may become evil") or invert it (Edward Scissorhands: "the monster is blameless, it is we who are the monsters").
Thanks to everyone for contributing to yesterday’s post — there were many excellent suggestions made, movies I hadn’t thought about in years and, sometimes, had never thought of at all.
Query
Another project has crossed my desk, this one dealing with monsters, and I have been charged with coming up with a fresh take on the monster genre. I invite my readers to submit their favorites — strictly monsters, not "horror movies" or "scary movies" or "ghost stories" or "serial killer thrillers" but pure monster movies. Points given for groundbreakers and movies that view their monsters from unique viewpoints, movies that really surprised you and made you think of monsters in different ways. I thank you in advance.
On the anniversary of 9/11…
Q: But Osama bin Laden is the one that – you keep talking about his lieutenants, and, yes, they are very important, but Osama bin Laden was the mastermind of 9/11 –
PERINO: No, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the mastermind of 9/11, and he’s sitting in jail right now.
Problem solved. Done and done. Make up a lie, declare victory and move on. Just another day in the most deplorable, most corrupt, most cynical, most shameless, most hateful administration in US history. How anyone could possibly vote Republican after this is utterly beyond me.
Two related questions
pirateman asks —
"How do you think that the movie industry, based upon the last 8 years of movies, have reacted to the Bush Administration and everything that’s come along with it? I only ask because I feel like there were a bunch of movies in Bush’s first term (3 Kings comes readily to mind) which really talked about or dwelt upon the fact that the country’s leadership was a bit fucked. Do you think that the last 8 years have had an influence? And if so, what?"
destroyerzooey asks —
Show business has an effect on politics and politics has an effect on show business and here are two examples:
Screenwriting 101: adaptations
samedietc asks:
"Do you have a theory/working principle about adaptations?"
Funny you should ask; I’ve recently reversed myself somewhat on the subject of adaptations. I used to feel that producers were willfully obtuse, that they labor diligently to purchase the rights to popular works and then, for no good reason, fundamentally change the nature of the piece out of sheer ego or sheer perversity. I felt that, if you’re going to go to the trouble of purchasing the rights to a book or play or comic or video game or bumper sticker or whatever you’ve spent your hard-earned money on, you might as well stay as true as possible to the source material — I felt that there had to be a reason why the original is popular, and the movie had to address that or else it would fail.