Film Friday: The Box (2009)

When it comes to films, I’m all for creativity. Interesting camera angles, unique visual tricks, and neat twists of chronology all have the potential to truly enhance a film and make it stand out. But there’s a catch. The creativity needs to serve a purpose, otherwise it’s just a gimmick, and gimmicks get annoying fast. One film that suffers from misuse of such gimmicks is The Box, a 2009 science fiction story based on Richard Matheson’s short story “Button, Button.”

** spoiler alert **

Matheson, by the way, is one of science fiction’s greats. His most famous works include “I Am Legend” and “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” and many of his works have ended up as films or Twilight Zone episodes. Even “Button, Button” was made into a Twilight Zone (1985 version) before it was made into The Box.

The Box is the story of a young couple (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden, who have no chemistry) who receive a box from a mysterious man, who offers them one million dollars if they push the button on top of the box. The catch? Someone they don’t know will die when they push the button. In and of itself, this makes a fairly interesting premise for a psychological character study. Would you push the button? Does it matter that you do or don’t know the people? What happens if you and your spouse disagree? What happens if you push the button and then change your mind?

Yet pushing the button is only the beginning of the plot. Without giving too much away, it soon turns out that the box delivering man, Arlington Steward (Frank Langella), works for some very powerful people, and they have the power to control the minds of people all around the unhappy couple. This turns the film into a mystery the characters try to solve who these people are, how they are controlling people, and why they are doing it. All told, this should make the plot very interesting and well worth seeing. But there are major problems with this film that kept me from enjoying it, and those problems were entirely avoidable.

First, director Richard Kelly sets the film in 1976. So what's wrong with 1976? Well, for starters, this is not the kind of film that benefits from being a period piece, unless there's a good reason for it, e.g. you're spanning time. Here the reason will not be obvious to most people and is not strong enough to justify making this a period piece (he wants the film to coincide with a Mars probe). That makes this feel like a gimmick, and it becomes annoying as you find yourself waiting to find out why the film is set in 1976. . . only to discover there's no real reason. Further, 1976 is not far enough back to be a sufficiently interesting period. Consequently, you end up feeling that the director chose 1976 just so he could play music from that period and have several scenes where the television announces some “new” sitcom that eventually would become a classic -- a total cliché for modern period pieces.

Secondly, even though this film could have taken place anywhere in the world, Kelly chose Richmond as a setting. Normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal, except that Kelly uses the setting as a reason to have Cameron Diaz fake a “Virginia” accent, something she does very, very poorly. Again, there is no reason to have done this and it comes across as yet another gimmick.

Third, Kelly tries to build drama by stretching out his scenes. This is a trick that various great directors have mastered -- Quentin Tarantino comes to mind. But whereas Tarantino fills his scenes with compelling dialog and a steadily building level of tension, Kelly just stretches each scene. This causes the film to feel slow and meandering, even though the nature of the plot should make it fast-paced. It also comes across like a heavy-handed, film-school gimmick.

Kelly also repeatedly demonstrates a lack of faith in his audience. For example, he keeps beating you over the head with the idea that he's withholding key elements from the audience and that this is the kind of film that won’t explain everything. But at the same time, he tells you the information he is supposedly withholding if you just pay attention to what the radio and the background characters tell you. And in case you miss it the first time, they repeat themselves a dozen times. And just in case you still missed it, he repeatedly interjects scenes where two characters suddenly begin explaining to each other what is about to happen (or what just happened) and what it means.

Yet, at the same time, Kelly is too coy and waits too long to get into the plot details. Thus, you’re confronted with scenes like the opening scene, where a student humiliates Diaz seemingly for no reason. You will understand much later what possessed the student to act this way (though Diaz’s reaction makes no sense), but until that happens you’re left with a scene that just strains credibility and drags the movie down.

Continuing the lack of faith issue, Kelly doesn't trust that his audience will accept his characters' choices, so he stacks the deck. Indeed, rather than letting the young couple decide on their own whether or not to push the button, the first several minutes of the film are a set up where everything the couple has relied upon financially is slowly taken away from them. Thus, the film itself justifies their decision to push the button and thereby resolves the moral issue that theoretically sits at the center of this movie, i.e. the film excuses their behavior. Kelly then repeats this trick several times throughout the film to make the paths the couple should choose obvious in each instance. It would have been much better not to manipulate the circumstances, but to let the characters deal with their own thoughts and emotions honestly.

All in all, Kelly had in his grasp a fantastic story with incredible potential. But he kept mucking it up with pointless gimmicks that did nothing but distract from the film, and he weakened the underlying dilemmas by manipulating the circumstances to make the moral decisions much easier for his characters. If he hadn’t done these things, I would be screaming that everyone should see this film. As it is, all I can really say is that it was an interesting film that I'm glad I saw, but I don’t want to see it again, and I can’t help but think that I would have been better off just reading the short story.

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Modern Literary Fiction Stinks

Do you know what literary fiction is? Literary fiction is fiction that doesn’t fit into other genres and is somehow supposed to be above other forms of fiction. People believe this because literary fiction traces its roots through a line of authors like Steinbeck, Fitzgerald and Updike, whose books did indeed change the world. Whether it was simply changing the way Americans saw each other, or sparking legislation to change the injustices identified in their books, these literary giants helped shape our country. But those days are over. . .

If modern literary fiction could be summed up in one word, that word would be pretentious: self-indulgent themes, a disdain for its audience and the public at large, the use of erudite sounding but actually quite poor analogies, and a continuing struggle to use larger-than-necessary words that don’t fit the meaning as well as they should. Those are the hallmarks of literary fiction today.

Though, in truth, I don’t think literary fiction can be entirely defined with one word. It takes two. And the second word is cliché. Most literary fiction offers little more than well-worn clichés masquerading as intellectual depth. Indeed, which of these stories isn’t about the repressed wife who puts on the happy facade as everyone around her dies of cancer?

The problem with modern literary fiction is that it has lost its focus. Old school literary fiction didn’t view the public as evil or corrupt and didn’t look down its nose at its audience. It wanted to elevate the audience. Today’s fiction wants you to wallow in the author’s imagined pain. Moreover, literary fiction used to look out at the world, hunting injustice and pointing accusing fingers at the indefensible. Today, literary fiction isn’t concerned with injustice, it’s concerned with the inner struggles of characters in the mistaken belief that this somehow tells us something about ourselves.

They even have an excuse to justify their own aim-low approach: “the American scene is just too complex -- and too aware of its own complexity” for the likes of an Updike to come along again. That’s loser speak.

Time magazine just did a story on the latest “greatest” in the field. His name is Jonathan Franzen and even the article about him is pretentious. His last novel “told the story of a Midwestern family that goes to pieces spectacularly as the father succumbs to Parkinson’s.” Uh huh. His new one is about a “superficially happy household” in the Midwest where everyone is really dissatisfied with their lives, especially the repressed housewife. Oh, and there’s an alcoholic father and a date-rape. Nope, no clichés there.

What really bugs me about the Time article, aside from horrible writing and the pointlessness of it all, is that the “journalist” completely buys into the rather stupid idea that this form of literature has any real meaning to us: “he shows us how we live” gushes the “journalist.” Really? Or does he show you how you coastal liberals want to think the rest of us live? Are we really all unhappy alcoholics in Hicksville just wishing we could be like you? Or is that just wishful thinking by liberals who tend to be horrified when they run into genuinely happy people in Mid-America?

The truth about fiction is that it’s fiction. It’s not real. To the extent that it includes facts, it can inform us. To the extent it teaches us reasoning or logic, it can educate us. But teaching us something about ourselves by looking at made up, clichéd characters? Nope. That it cannot do. All it can tell us in that regard is what the author thinks, nothing more.

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How To Un-Cliché Your Villain

A cliché is an artistic idea that has been so overused that it offends the patience of the audience. It’s the kind of thing that gets an audience rolling their eyes and saying, “oh no, not again! Can’t they think of anything new?!” And nothing ruins a movie quicker than a clichéd villain.

Examples of cliché villains include anything resembling a James Bond villain and the evil corporation as the bad guy motif. Other examples include the liberal boogeymen trinity: greedy corporate bosses, bloodthirsty military men and perverted religious leaders.

What is it that each of these have in common? Two things: simplistic, unrealistic motivations and melodramatic characteristics.

Humans come with a whole range of good and bad motivations. But this is too complex for Hollywood. Instead, Hollywood follows a formula where each villain they use has only one motivation, and that motivation is an amplified form of the most prominent characteristic of that character’s profession or role. Thus, for example, because business strives for profit, the corporate villain is always motivated by greed, and only greed. Because the job of soldiers is to kill the enemy, the soldier villain is always motivated purely by bloodlust (ditto on “the hunter"). The politician is always motivated purely by power. And so on.

But humans aren’t like that. Humans are complex creatures with many motivations. And this is where you need to begin your search for the non-clichéd villain. Indeed, the surest method for avoiding a clichéd bad guy is to employ a motivation other than the one Hollywood always uses. Thus, avoid the greedy businessman. Instead, consider a businessman who might act out of fear of being replaced. Avoid the power hungry politician and go for a politician with a pathological need for approval. Avoid the bloodthirsty solider. Instead, consider a soldier like Captain Stransky in Cross of Iron, who tries to send the heroes to die to keep them from reporting his cowardice.

Still, these are dangerously close to the clichés, so let’s dig a little deeper.

As I’ve pointed out before, it is a fact that real life villains never think of themselves as villains. They may recognize that they’ve done evil things, but every single one of them thought they were justified in doing so -- either to rectify some injustice done to them or to further some “noble goal” they wanted to achieve. For example, serial killers often report that their victims wanted to die or that they were doing the work of God. Hitler viewed himself as the savior of the German people, and he justified his evil as necessary to achieving that purpose. Ultimately, his justifications were insane, but they made sense to him, and that’s the key here: people just don’t see themselves as evil.

This translates into the story arena as well. Think of the best film villains and you will find a group that rarely sees themselves as evil. Darth Vader thought he was bringing peace to his Empire. The Borg in Star Trek were simply doing what came naturally, as did the Alien and Jaws. The Terminator was just following its programming. Captain Bligh was a sadist, but thought he was in the right. Bartholomew in Rollerball thought he was doing what had to be done to protect society. Dean Corso in Ninth Gate was just doing his job and following his curiosity. Even the guys in Rope thought they had the right (if not the duty) to murder their friend. These are all characters who would be shocked to hear that they were cast as the villains in their stories.

Here’s another great example of this. In the Star Trek episode “Conscience of the King,” the character Kodos was the governor of Tarsus IV. When a famine wiped out their food supply, he ordered the execution of half the colony to save the rest. He thought he was doing the right thing. Or look at the bureaucrat in Torchwood: Children of Earth (left), who makes the cold-blooded calculation that turning several thousand children over to a horrible fate is worth it to save millions more, and then goes about callously selecting them. Both of these characters did what they thought they had to do, even though it pained them personally.

What this tells us is that the easiest way to avoid a cliché is to remember this key fact: if your villain can’t legitimately explain how they’re justified in doing what they’re doing, then you’re probably on the precipice of a cliché.

Moreover, there isn’t always a direct link between the motivation and the end result. In other words, the villain need not always be motivated to cause something evil, sometimes it’s just a byproduct of their misbehavior. A perfect example of this would be a scientist who thinks he’s doing something great, but actually invents something horrible, or a bureaucrat who turns a blind eye to right and wrong because he’s unwilling to act outside of his assigned box, or even a prosecutor who pushes a little too hard even where they suspect the defendant might be innocent (see Breaker Morant).

If you want a great example of this evil by-no-design, look at the movie Cube, which had an incredible premise (ignore the sequels). The premise was that people awoke trapped inside a huge cube that is full of traps. Why? Who built it? Apparently, no one did. . . at least not intentionally. It was built by thousands of people, each doing their parts, without ever knowing exactly what they were creating. And the reason it was built? Again, no one knows. They speculate it was just some bureaucratic idea that took on a life of its own -- which happens more than you would think in the modern world.

Also, keep in mind, that sometimes the villain is simply someone who was put in a situation way beyond their competence, and they didn’t have the strength of character to admit that. So as things spin beyond their control, they get busy trying to cover their rear ends to hide what they’ve done or they try to fix things and only make them worse (see Brazil).

Finally, there is one more thing that needs to be done to avoid the cliché: drop the melodramatic traits. The truly evil among us don’t go prancing around reveling in their evil and shooting henchmen for sport. And if you think about it, you’ll understand why: it doesn’t make sense in the real world. Could someone as unstable as the Hollywood “greedy businessman” ever make it to the top of a corporate empire? Would anyone promote the soldier who laughs maniacally as he gives insane orders to shoot his own troops? Would anyone work for the villain who shoots his henchmen when they get his coffee order wrong? No. It is the rarest of rare stories where something like this could make sense.

That’s my thinking.

Ultimately, the key to avoiding clichés is to avoid over-used motivations and the melodrama that always attaches to those clichéd motivations. Understand your characters. Make sure they would feel justified in every action they take, and avoid ever thinking that they would see themselves as evil. If you do this, you’ll also find that your story necessarily adjusts away from cliché storylines because those types of storylines can’t reflect the character’s more natural motivations and responses.

Or maybe it’s best summed up like this: realism kills clichés.

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Film Friday: Surrogates (2009)

Surrogates could have been a fascinating film about the consequences of losing ourselves to the virtual world. But it wasn’t. The writers never could look beyond their knee-jerk liberal worldview to create a believable future and they were terrified to explore any of the issues that arose. At the same time, the director couldn't decide if he wanted to make a science fiction film or a summer blockbuster. He ended up with neither: an action movie without any thrills and an intellectual movie without any brains.

** spoiler alert **

Surrogates takes place in the near-future when mankind has invented human-like drones that people literally use as substitutes for themselves. As the operator lies in a sensor chair, the drone lives their lives for them, obeying all of their commands. Theoretically, this premise makes the film ripe for a fascinating set of philosophical questions and social commentary. For example, you’ve got questions of privacy, questions of anonymity and knowing who or what you’re really dealing with, questions of people losing touch with the real world, questions of the loss of our physical health as people vegetate in front of computers, and questions of what defines us.

That’s a lot of fertile ground for a pretty compelling and interesting take on the modern world. Indeed, this is the kind of premise that could easily showcase both the best and the worst of our increasing reliance on the internet, and could result in a film that is simultaneously both inspiring and deeply disturbing. But it wasn’t. And there are two main reasons the film never came anywhere near its potential: (1) The knee-jerk liberal worldview adopted by the writers (it actually came from a comic book) and (2) the director’s desire to appeal to a mass audience.

Bad Writers

Right out of the gates, the audience is hit with a liberal worldview that matches nothing that thousands of years of human existence have shown us about human nature. Consider this: what would happen if people suddenly learned they would no longer bear any of the negative consequences of their actions? In other words, they could no longer get hurt no matter what they did, they could look however they wanted no matter how they maintained themselves, and they could move through the world anonymously. If you said, “crime and discrimination would disappear,” then you’re an idiot. . . or you’re one of the writers. No rational person would believe this. It makes no sense. Put humans in a consequence free environment and they take advantage of it, they don’t suddenly lose their worst instincts.

Yet, the film starts with this nonsensical premise -- which is based on the liberal fallacy that crime is supposedly the result of disadvantages and is not a conscious personal decision. And in so doing, the writers immediately create a huge disconnect with the audience, which makes it impossible for the audience to relate to the people in the movie.

Moreover, this premise falls apart immediately as the writers introduce all of the standard liberal boogeymen. You have the blood-thirsty military, the corrupt cops, the dirty businessmen, the religious fanatics who are actually hypocrites and really work for the corrupt businessman. Yep, the only thing missing was Dick Cheney. And each of those standard issue boogeymen was made all the worse because they found themselves in a consequence free environment. . . the exact opposite of the premise upon which the movie world is based. Thus, the writers undercut their very own liberal knee-jerk world when their other liberal knee jerked. Jerks.

Further, the writers were clearly too afraid to touch upon the issues that would make this film so much more interesting. Willis suffers from anxiety when he’s out in the street in person rather than in his surrogate. But it passes right after it’s mentioned. People who have done nothing but lie around for ten years immobile, can suddenly get up and walk around without showing any signs of the atrophy that comes with being bedridden. It’s mentioned several times that you never really know who is operating the surrogate (as you can look like anyone), but we aren’t shown any of the kinds of depravity or betrayals this would lead to . . . and which occur every day on the internet where predators and perverts lurk anonymously. And for all the talk in Hollywood about racism, they never touch upon this subject even though the obvious question would be: would minorities continue to be minorities in public? They also completely skip over the question of kids being raised by parents acting through robots. And they utterly fail to grasp the social consequences of any of this. For example, if people are partying through their robots and never really meet in the flesh, who is getting married and having kids? Wouldn’t there be a population plunge? What about the irresistible human desire to pull pranks, to hack, or to exploit a system? Nada. What about the herd instinct? Wouldn’t everyone try to look like the latest supermodels? And how exactly do people in the poorest parts of the world afford these surrogates? And so on. . . all skipped.

In short, they hint at some interesting issues, but they whitewash them all, and they ignore a great many more -- especially those that would require them to think of how the world would actually change. In other words, we’re supposed to accept the premise but not really think about what the premise would mean. This makes the film bland and pointless. And it probably won’t surprise you to learn that the writers are the same team that wrote Terminator Salvation, another pointless, lifeless, generic yawner meant to keep your brain from ever coming on.

Bad Director

Beyond the writing problems, lies the problem of the director: Jonathan Mostow. Mostow either didn’t quite know if he wanted to make a contemplative science fiction film or a summer action film, or he was too afraid to lose the summer kids because he never veered from the summer formula -- and he doesn't even do that with any creativity.

Bruce Willis plays the same character he always plays. . . a middle-aged, slightly out of place cop (FBI) with an unhappy family life. The story takes place when Bruce and his partner (Radha Mitchell) discover that someone has a weapon that lets them fry surrogates and kill the user in the process. This of course turns into a global conspiracy involving the standard bad guys: the U.S. military, corrupt cops, evil corporations, and a psychotic inventor who is the real mastermind behind whatever the evil plot actually is. Bet you never saw that coming! The plot is generic. The characters are generic -- Ving Rhames, Rosamund Pike, and James Cromwell are all wasted in this. The plot twists are generic. The pacing is generic. And the ending is uninteresting -- in fact, the movie beats you over the head with “the right answer” so much that when Willis finally is called upon to makes his decision, there’s just no suspense. Nothing interesting, original or spectacular happens in this film. It's entire potential is squandered and it ends up neither as a good action film nor an intelligent science fiction film.

It’s kind of sad that a movie with this much potential achieved so little. In this regard, it reminds me a lot of I Am Legend, which had so much potential, but chose to ignore it all for fear of losing the summer kids.

Oh well.

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Shine On You Crazy Diamond

The music industry claims that its collapsing sales are the result of piracy. Arrrrrrgh. . . give me a break. The music industry has been making mistake after mistake for decades now. It got greedy and lazy and risk-averse, and now it’s paying the price. The reality is they haven’t turned out anything worth listening to in years. Their biggest failure is. . .

. . . hold on, we'll get to that in a minute.

I miss progressive rock. Yep. It’s true. Normally, “progressive” is a dirty word, but not in this instance. In this instance, progressive means “experimental,” and that’s a good thing.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, the music scene was very different. You had pop bands. You had stoned hippies with guitars. You had country. And you had this thing known as progressive rock. Bands like Pink Floyd, Supertramp and pre-pop Genesis roamed the music world turning out strange, sometimes-horrible, and often times completely brilliant music.

What made progressive rock what it was, was that its creators wanted to experiment musically and lyrically. They wanted to expand the bounds of music and try things that hadn’t been done before. Instead of the 90 second songs of the 1950s, they introduced 5, 10 and 15 minute songs. They introduced concept albums. They added new instruments and new sounds. And lyrically, they took on topics that no pop song would dare touch: some were philosophical, some were angry, some were full of angst, and some were utter nonsense. But most were interesting and deeply thoughtful. Indeed, it's the kind of music you listen too when you want to ponder the imponderables.

It's true a lot of progressive music turned out to be garbage, but a heck of a lot more turned out to be original, intense and brilliant. Moreover, the influence of progressive rock spilled over into every other aspect of music. Even 1970s pop music was much more varied that the pop music of other eras because of the influence of progressive rock. But those days are over and those bands are all on social security. And there is nothing comparable today.

Since the mid-1980s, the music industry has played it safe. They no longer experiment, they manufacture. They’ve been repeating the same sounds and the same mindless lyrics. The only thing that changes is the bimbo or pretty-boy doing the singing. And bimbos and pretty boys they are because the music industry is more interested in selling images than music.

Until and unless this changes, the music industry will continue to turn people off until there is no music industry left, and that's the problem with the music industry.

I miss progressive rock.

What do you think?

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The End of Toontown

I’m a big fan of cartoons. Done right, cartoons are the purest form of escapism. They are also a fascinating storytelling medium because they literally have no bounds. You can use any type of characters, any style of drawing, and any storylines. The story need not even make sense or follow conventional story-telling techniques, and deus ex machina reigns supreme. At least, that’s how it was. Modern cartoons depress me because they’ve surrendered their unreality and they replaced it with an uncomfortable mimicking of the real world.

Now before I start, let me say that there are a handful of amazing cartoons today. For example, Up and Wall-E are incredibly subtle and intelligent movies. And South Park is the best social satire since Rocky & Bullwinkle, and Futurama is what The Simpsons once was. But then it starts to get a little iffy.

The problem with so many modern cartoons is that they’ve discarded the very things that made cartoons such a wonderful medium. They've tried to grow up, and in the process they lost the fairy dust. Consider what modern cartoons have lost:

1. Cartoon Physics: The biggest loss to the cartoon world is the loss of cartoon physics. What is cartoon physics? It’s the physical reality in which cartoons used to operate. In other words, this is what let toons run off a cliff, but not fall until they became conscious of their mistake. This is why traps never sprang on good guys, only bad guys, why good guys could pass through solid walls painted to resemble tunnels, but bad guys couldn’t, and so on. This was the innocence of their world.

(FYI, many of these rules are on display in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, an excellent film that really shows a love for its subject matter. . . “You could [escape from those handcuffs] the whole time?!” “No, only when it was funny!”)

Unlike cartoons of yesteryear, today’s cartoon characters live in a world that largely approximates our own. The physics of their world is slightly exaggerated, but not by much, and certainly nowhere near as much as it used to be. If you run off a cliff, you fall. If you walk into a wall, you hit the wall. Thus, many of the most memorable moments from cartoons of old could not be repeated today. But more importantly, this has made modern cartoons much more “real-world” in their look and feel, and this has killed their essence. Indeed, there is little distinction today between cartoons and live-action movies.

In addition to the sadness of this loss, there is a danger element as well. If we take at face value the complaint people used to make about kids not being able to tell the difference between cartoon violence and the real world, what should we make of modern cartoons? In the past, when you smacked a cartoon cat in the face with a frying pan, something unreal happened: its face took the shape of the frying pan before it returned to normal. Nothing similar happens today. In fact, the outlandishness of the violence is gone today, i.e. it is much more real. But since cartoon violence still doesn’t result in realistic injury, are we not sending a worse signal today than we were in the past?

Also, doesn’t the violence seem a little more disturbing? When Jerry smacks Tom with a hammer, we laughed. But would we laugh if someone smacked Dug from Up with a hammer or would we recoil?

2. Indestructibility: By the same token, cartoon characters have lost their indestructibility. I’m not saying modern cartoon characters can be killed, but you certainly get the feeling they could. Think about it. In the past, you could blast a toon full of holes and water poured out when they drank. They could take an explosion, a shotgun to the face, a dissection from falling knives or any one of a dozen other Rube Goldbergian deaths. . . but they never died. They weren’t even hurt.

Yet, today’s characters get hurt when they are assaulted. They scream and try to avoid the danger, rather than facing the inevitable with a sarcastic stoicism and a sign that reads “Help!” Modern cartoonists even wrap their injuries in bandages and let them express the pain they’ve endured. Seriously, think about this: is there anything you can think of that could kill Bugs Bunny? Now, what about Buzz Lightyear?

Once again, the problem here is that we are wiping out the consequence free world that makes cartoons so escapist. In their place, we are seeing real world consequences, that change the look, feel, spirit and purpose of cartoons. Indeed, rather than dealing with fantasy, cartoons now become nothing more than live action films done on the cheap with computer graphics instead of film and sets.

3. That’s “Daffy,” Not “Stupidy”: Something else that really bothers me is the change in the kinds of defects cartoon characters display. It used to be that toons suffered from a variety of defects, all brought about by “bad” characteristics. In other words, their flaws were the result of inflated egos, hubris, obsessions, and other negative human traits. This made them daffy, and it made it easy to laugh at the egotistical jerks as their elaborate schemes blew up in their faces.

But modern cartoons are different. Now villains all suffer from megalomania and sidekicks all suffer from low self-esteem. Gone are the overly-elaborate plans, the Yosemite Sams who blinded themselves with anger, and the Elmer Fudds who could always be talked into making a huge mistake. Gone are the "tragic" villains, in the classic sense of having a tragic flaw. In their place are characters who are simply stupid, pathetic or rotten. Consequently, the very nature of the characters has become more nasty and less interesting.

4. Voices In My Head: Modern cartoons also have given up on finding talent like Mel Blanc. Instead, they now use famous actors to play the majority of the parts. This is done to help market these cartoons. But in the process, we’ve lost the believability of the characters. Indeed, you no longer see Bullwinkle or Scooby Doo, you see Robin Williams, Dan Aykroyd or a dozen pop stars. It’s like hiring Tom Cruise and Arnold Schwarzenegger to star in Star Wars just because they’re famous, not because they fit the part. This makes it so much harder to “get into” the cartoon. Also, doesn’t this just reinforce our vapid celebrity culture?

5. $$$$: Finally, we come to the blatant commercialization. In the past, cartoons were drawn to satisfy the creative process. Animators created what they envisioned and they pioneered various interest techniques to improve their processes. Today, cartoon characters are designed to make merchandizing easier. When sales considerations trump creative considerations, we all lose.


That’s my problem with modern cartoons. At one point, these were pure escapist fun, though they often held interesting satire and hidden meanings. But today, they’ve mostly become disturbingly realistic and bland. In fact, part of what made cartoons so fun in the past was seeing how creative the cartoonists could be. But today’s cartoons are so restrictive that they might as well shoot them as live action films and just convert them to cartoons with a paint program.

To me, this represents a real loss of innocence and creativity.

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Film Friday: Smokin' Aces (2007)

Smokin’ Aces fascinates me, but for the wrong reasons. On paper this movie must have looked great. You’ve got a solid cast, a director with a hip style, and a downright clever script. But something went wrong on the way from paper to film. As I see it, the director worked too hard to be clever and not hard enough on getting control over his film reality.

** spoiler alert **

Problem No. 1: Script-Abuse

If you just consider the script itself without paying attention to the final film product, you would think this would be a pretty good movie. For one thing, the story has an interesting premise: Buddy “Aces” Israel (Jeremy Piven) is a Vegas magician/mafia associate, who wants to turn informant. As Piven waits in the penthouse of the Nomad Casino in Lake Tahoe, while his agent negotiates a deal with the Department of Justice -- headed by Andy Garcia, the mob puts a massive bounty on Piven's head. This gets half a dozen assassins racing for the million dollar prize. Sounds like fun.

Further, script-wise, everything ties together nicely. Everything that needs to be foreshadowed is foreshadowed. All the motivations make sense. The dialog fits the personalities. The characters are interesting and there are dozens of moments of cleverness, both verbal cleverness and plot cleverness. But something has gone wrong from script to screen.

Specifically, the film feels gimmicky because the director ties together each scene by having the first line of dialog in each scene reference the last line of dialog in the prior scene. Thus, one scene might end with a character saying: “what time it is?” and the next scene would begin with a character in a different scene saying something like: “Five o’clock is when it happened.” This was used incredibly effectively in The Fifth Element, where multiple scenes were sometimes combined into one through interlaced dialog. It allowed the director both to speed up the story AND to bring the characters together -- giving the movie a more tied-in feel. But in Smokin’ Aces, this was done in a such a heavy-handed, obvious and unrelenting way that it screams: “look how clever I can be!” It's like giving the punchline to a joke in the middle of the next joke, and while that can be clever if done sparingly, it becomes unpleasant done constantly. Indeed, it quickly becomes tiring trying to sort out the double meanings of each scene transition.

Problem 2: Too Many Lead Actors

The next problem comes from the use of the cast. The cast is very large and mostly famous: Ben Affleck, Common (Terminator Salvation), Alicia Keys, Jason Bateman, Ray Liotta (Goodfellas), Ryan Reynolds (The Proposal), Chris Pine (Star Trek), Matthew Fox (Lost), and a couple more you’ll recognize. And it’s hard to complain about this group as they all do a pretty good job. But the director decided to give them all “a moment.” Thus, the film starts to feel disjointed as each character is given time to do their “shtick,” whether it helps the movie or not. And some scenes do nothing but distract from the film, e.g. Jason Bateman's scenes could be removed entirely.

Problem 3: Loss of Control

But the real problem with this film is that the director loses control over the film’s reality. Smokin’ Aces feels like the director shot seven or eight distinct stories with each character eventually ending up in the same place, then cut each film into equal length segments and assembled the movie by alternating these segments starting from the end of the film and working his way to the beginning without regard for how they fit together. This causes an amazing amount of time distortion in the film.

For example, one character starts up in the elevator toward the penthouse but somehow doesn’t reach the top floor before another character can drive from across town to the casino, interview staff members about the assassin in the elevator, get into a second elevator, and meet the assassin at the penthouse. In the same amount of time, another character flies from Los Angles to Tahoe and still arrives only a few seconds after everyone else. In another egregious example, one character actually gets shot in the parking lot, dumped in Lake Tahoe, finds his way out, runs into a stereotype white trash family, takes a bath, borrows a gun, returns to the hotel, hops in the elevator and rides to the penthouse in the same amount of time that the guys who shot him take to make it from the parking lot to the penthouse.

The director also lets characters see things and know things they couldn’t possibly see or know. Thus, one character in a hotel 1000 feet across the street can shoot through walls that she can’t see through and hit specific targets in the main hotel without wasting a shot. Others seem to know where their competitors are, even though they don’t actually know there are competitors. Characters also seem to be able to suddenly appear wherever they are needed to make a scene work. Moreover, the ending makes no sense except to allow for a dramatic conclusion.

These are the kinds of problems that really make the film feel unbalanced and strange, and keep you asking “when did he have time to do that?” and saying “that doesn’t make sense.”

In the end, this was a clever script and a solid cast ruined by a director who never had control over his sequence of events and who tried to substitute hip for smart. And that’s why I find this film so fascinating. If you had looked at this project before it was shot, this movie must have appeared like it couldn’t fail. But it did.

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Newsvertising

A lot of people talk about the blurring between news and entertainment. That’s certainly a problem because it’s led to the dumbing down of the news to a point where you need attention deficit disorder just to watch it. But I’m more concerned about the blurring of news and advertising. I see this as a very serious problem.

I first noticed this phenomenon when a free subscription to Entertainment Weekly appeared in my mailbox. Not only was this turd of a “magazine” written at the first grade level, but it didn’t take long to realize that this “magazine” was nothing more than one giant ad for the movie industry. Page after page were “stories” whose sole purpose was to get me to go see various films. Even when they panned a film, they still somehow managed to suggest that I see it. . . just not in the first week.

Soon I realized that the entertainment “news” presented on the nightly news was no different. The days of a reviewer cautioning you to avoid a lousy film were gone. In their place were pretty boys and ditzy girls who showed you promotional clips and gushed about every film; they even developed ways to sell the bad ones. . . “so bad it’s good.” And when they weren’t selling the movie directly, they did stories hyping these films as “events,” and encouraging you to take part in the “excitement” leading up the film. Basically, they ceased being reporters and became salespeople.

Then they added “gossip.” But there’s something you need to know about this gossip: most of it is manufactured to promote a film. It’s no coincidence that you will see a “random” story about Actor X’s new house or some “funny moment” Actor X had at a night club, the week before Actor X’s new film hits the screen. This is all intended to create a buzz. . . which will, of course, lead to stories about the buzz. That's called marketing, not reporting.

Then Hollywood hit upon a brilliant stroke. You know those interviews where some reporter sits down with Actor X to "discuss" their new film? Do you know how those are done? It's not actually a one on one experience. Instead, a slew of reporters show up to a pre-set location. Actor X sits in front of a blue screen as each reporter is cycled through. Each reporter is usually allowed only a couple questions, so they know to stay on script. And what's really key is that the actor will pretend to know the reporter. Thus, each reporter gets to look like they are “players” in Hollywood because their viewers think they managed to finagle an interview with a busy actor that they know personally. In exchange, the studio gets a couple hundred free ads on the local and national news. This is a quid pro quo, and reporters aren’t supposed to do that.

And it’s not just Hollywood. Sports “news” also has entered the pimping world. For generations, sports news meant providing a box score, a quick description of the key moments in the game, and a few quotes from one side or the other. No longer. First, they added highlights, which is understandable as television is a visual medium. But then they started adding “top ten hits of the week” and other segments that look an awful lot like advertisements for the league.

Then the NFL hit upon a great idea: use the promise of access to control the media. In exchange for locker room access and press access to Super Bowl week, the NFL began telling the media what they could or could not report. This included, for example, removing the journalistic “credentials” of people who criticized the NFL, and it included limits on what kinds of videos the media could use and for how long they could use them (nothing longer than 45 seconds and must be removed from websites in 24 hours). The media caved without even a whimper. Soon, the NFL was providing canned “news” stories to the media, which the media dutifully reported without change. Suddenly stories about brain damage resulting from concussions, drug use, arrests and labor unrest disappeared or became dismissive. In their place were NFL-approved stories about “the NFL experience,” the importance of new stadiums to cities, and NFL efforts to make sure that merchandise was high quality. . . usually accompanied with a mention of where you could buy said merchandise.

And lest you think, “well sports and entertainment people really aren’t journalists,” it’s hit the business news as well. CNBC doesn’t send reporters out to uncover news and report upon it. No, they let the "news" come to them. Thus, their programming days are packed with fund managers who come to say something generic about the market as they pimp their funds. They bring in CEOs to talk about new products or their latest books. And they’ve become a vehicle for damage control. Whenever a company gets caught doing something it shouldn’t, you can bet the CEO will appear on CNBC within a couple days to provide a whitewash version of what happened and to tell us about all the great things the company is doing. And don't think the reporters use this moment for a couple of hard-hitting questions. No, they put on well-practiced stern looks and then pitch a few softball questions before concluding: “I’m glad to hear you’re fixing this.” Then they trot out an analyst to tell you that now (or maybe in a week) is the time to buy the company’s stock, right before they cut to commercial, which (purely by “coincidence”) will be a paid ad for the company. Finally, they take the segment highlights and replay them ad nauseum.

Even the “regular” news is slowly giving way to product tie-ins and segments that look like sponsored ads. That story about how hard it is to find certain toys? That was suggested and assisted by the marketing department at ToyCo. That story about which national chain has the best fries or “will Company X’s new product sell”? Ditto. The story about the new healthy menu at Restaurant Z, or the new innovations at Tech Company A? Same thing. The story about the “latest trend” that just happens to tell you what brand you need to buy and where to buy it. . .

In each instance, what you have is a symbiotic relationship between the media and business. Business has learned that it can use the news to advertise its products. It offers ready-made stories and incentives to the media to report these “stories,” and the reporters accept them because it makes their jobs easier. . . just sit back and a script will come to you.

So why does this bother me? Two reasons. First, I want news that I can trust, and that requires an impartial media that seeks out the truth, rather than just passing along marketing-department-created propaganda.

Secondly, I hate sounding like the left, but I am concerned about the effects of this on society. Science has shown that humans are very susceptible to the cumulative effects of advertising; and the effects are much stronger when the advertising comes from a trusted source. I suspect that advertising is largely responsible for driving consumers to the point of bankruptcy, increasing patient demands for drugs, increasing obesity, and a host of other bad behaviors. But as bad as this is, at least with advertisements, people know that Madison Avenue is attempting to brainwash them. That’s no longer true when “the news” starts telling you what to buy and where to buy it. And that is truly insidious.

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Films: Down With The Apocalypse!!

There was a time when I used to enjoy a good end of the world movie. But I’ve gotten to the point where I really can’t stand them anymore. This has me a little perplexed. What’s changed my opinion about these movies? After careful deliberation, I’ve concluded that the nature of these films has changed: they no longer have a point except to present grotesque imagery. And that makes them kind of sick.

Apocalyptic films trace their history way back. Indeed, the term “apocalypse,” a Greek word meaning “lifting the veil,” derives from the Bible’s Book of Revelations, though every culture had its own version of the end of the world story. It seems that as a species, we are fascinated with our own demise. And I suppose that’s natural because humans are social creatures and we’re big on trying to control our own destinies. Apocalyptic stories sit at the crossroads of these two impulses, as they are warnings about what can go wrong if we let society do the wrong thing.

This, I think, is what made the early apocalyptic films so interesting: they were warnings, i.e. message movies. The writers/directors saw something in our world or in our behavior that troubled them, and they created their movies as a warning about what they saw. Hence, you had films warning about everything from the dangers of nuclear/biological/chemical weapons to the dangers of robots and automation to the dangers of not being able to cooperate to meet challenges to the dangers of divine retribution for our sins. And because these were message films, the majority of the film was about showing us both how we could avoid such a fate or, alternatively, how we could end up rushing head-long into it. In other words, they were lessons.

Now let me be clear: I am not saying that these films were all great or that I believed the messages. In fact, most of the messages were laughable, e.g. their “science” was usually truly awful, and the apocalypts’ interpretation of human nature was pathetic, they seem incapable of grasping that there is a good side to human nature that balances and checks the bad. But at least these films were working on exploring something worth exploring, and the themes were interesting: will weapon X be our undoing? If we give in to our darker sides, what kind of damage can we cause? How will humans respond to such horrors? Etc.

But today, this has all changed. And nothing shows this more than the change in what causes our demise in the films. In the past, our demise was always caused by something that society found acceptable, like our own chemical or nuclear weapons, or science that we marveled at even though we were not yet ready to control it. Because of this, these films always gave us something to think about. When Chuck Heston cursed us all in Planet of the Apes, we wondered if we could really knock ourselves down the food chain if we pushed the button. When we saw humanity enslaved by a computer in Colossus: The Forbin Project, we wondered how far we should trust computers to control our weapons. When Matthew Broderick nearly kill us all in War Games, we wondered how secure our weapons really were? And so on. In each instance, our comfort with the status quo was questioned, and we were asked if we really felt comfortable with things as they were.

Conversely, today the causes are either beyond our control (like an asteroid) or they are the result of criminal behavior by clichéd bad guys. Consequently, there is nothing for us to consider anymore. Indeed, while we may have wondered about the wisdom of hording nuclear weapons after seeing Fail Safe, no one thinks “gee, maybe we should make it more illegal for corporations to make killer, mutant viruses” after watching Resident Evil.

Thus, the nature of these films has changed before a single frame of film is even shot: modern apocalypse films all but wipe out the social commentary aspect of the genre.

Moreover, the focus of the story has changed. The older films dealt mainly with the events leading up to the disaster, with the intention being to warn us of the dangers we supposedly faced and how we could bring about our own demise as a result of those dangers. Even when these films did deal with the after-effects, it was done mainly to add emphasis to the story. By comparison, today’s apocalypse films are all about the after-effects. Indeed, whereas the older films were intended as critiques of human nature, the new films are slick CGI snuff films showing the many ways the film crew could come up with for killing human beings.

What this means is that whereas the older films served a purpose, the newer ones are purely gratuitous. In the older films, the slaughter, when shown, was intended to heighten the drama or to heighten the impact of the consequences of ignoring the director’s warning. But in the new films, the slaughter is what is being sold to you. It is the backdrop for an otherwise bland action story, and it is the action itself. The difference between these two approaches is the difference between a treatise on humanity and a book of gory pictures.

And I that’s why I don’t like apocalyptic films anymore. Even though I disagreed with the older ones (and found many of them laughable) at least they were earnest and the drama was interesting. They had a purpose. Today films have lost all of that. They have instead become mass snuff films, whose only purpose is to satisfy our bloodlust.

I guess I just don’t find that cool.

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Characters Who Are Too Stupid To Live

I’ve mentioned several times the importance of maintaining enough realism within a film that the audience can suspend its disbelief and accept the story as true. And there are many things that can kill the realism of films, everything from continuity errors to stunts that don’t seem real to plot points that don’t make sense. But the crème de la crème is the character who is too stupid to live.

The character who is too stupid to live is a character who does stupid, inexplicable and/or dangerous things apparently just to advance the plot. Examples abound. In fact, if you are a movie character, you might be too stupid to live if:

• You go skinny-dipping right after finding your friend chopped to pieces by the indestructible serial killer the radio keeps talking about...

• You knock down the evil kickboxer and then turn your back to do a victory dance, even as the crowd points to the villain as he rises up after grabbing a weapon...

• You hand over key evidence for safekeeping to the guy who is laughing manically...

• You and your ninja friends surround the hero, but then you all wait your turn to fight the hero...

• You are a villain who chooses the Rube Goldberg method for killing the hero and then leaves before the job is done...

• You overcome the first armed guard with an incredible combination of luck and stupidity on the part of the guard, but then you don’t think to pick up his gun to help you in the rest of your escape...

• You see your friend’s body ripped apart and covered in werewolf hair, but you decide there is no danger because there’s no such thing as werewolves. . . as if that somehow invalidates the fact that something used your friend as a chew toy...

• Ditto on those of you who think that zombie that used to be your friend Rick is coming to pick your brain, rather than eat it...

• You say the words: “let’s split up” for no apparent reason when people around you are disappearing...

• You’ve ever said the words: “Turn around? I’m not falling for that!” when there are dinosaurs or purple people eaters in the ‘hood. . .

I can accept characters with poor judgment and people who make mistakes in the heat of the moment. Indeed, stress causes people to do stupid things. Some get confused, others are overcome by fear; some freeze, some run, some do stupid things. Indeed, they have found that in true moments of crisis (like an airline crash) a small percentage of the population will do truly bizarre things like collecting their luggage or picking fights.

But when you’re talking about people in films who have time to think, you need to make sure the characters act with some sense of self-preservation. And if they don’t, then you need to explain why not and you need to lay the ground work for that.

In that regard, the one thing I have never bought into is “the jerk” as explanation. You know the guy, he’s introduced as the conservative businessman who yells and screams and talks about his worship of money from the opening frame. When he’s confronted with danger, he decides to ignore all good advice and do something incredibly stupid because. . . well, he’s a jerk. . . he’s like that. That doesn’t make sense. Even the biggest jerk has a sense of self-preservation.

An offshoot of this, which I also don’t like, can be seen in the Ron Weasley character in the Harry Potter books. By the third book, Weasley had really stopped acting like an independent human being with his own personality and life. Instead, he became a vehicle to move the plot. If Harry was too close to doing something that would solve the puzzle, Ron would appear, encourage him to act irresponsibly, and then leave. If Harry needed a push in a different direction, Ron appears, gives the push, and then leaves. Basically, whatever needed to be done to keep Harry moving forward with the story, Ron would provide it whether it made sense or not. Indeed, many of the things he did made no sense except as ways to move Harry through the plot.

I am a firm believer that every character in a movie or book should stand on their own. They should have their own motivations, their own desires, and they should act accordingly. If that means it takes a little more thought to get them alone with the werewolf or to get the hero to the next plot point, then so be it. Audiences see through characters who are merely plot convenience devices.

That’s my thinking.

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What Makes An Actor Great?

I’ve often wondered what makes an actor a great actor. It’s not as obvious as it may seem. Indeed, to answer the question of what makes an actor great, you need to start by asking what it is that we ask of actors? But that’s really where this whole problem begins. For it appears, that we want two contradictory things from our actors. And in the end, I think that truly great actors need to deliver both things. . . even though that sounds like a contradiction.

Looking at the films Hollywood has produced, it appears that actors generally fall into one of two categories: those who play themselves in each role and those who disappear completely into their roles.

Indeed, in the first category, you find people like Tom Cruise and Arnold Schwarzenegger. No matter what role they play, they remain Tom and Arnold -- just try to name the characters they’ve played. But that’s not to denigrate them. In fact, Tom and Arnold did wonders playing themselves. They managed to put millions of rear ends into seats across the entire planet, people remember their roles and still quote their dialog, and their movies still have staying power today. But something is missing, isn’t it? There is something about Tom and Arnold that keeps us from calling them great actors.

At first, I thought this might be a problem with the category itself, but that doesn’t seem to be the issue. I say this because Robert De Niro and William Hurt, both of whom have been called “the greatest actor of our generation,” fall into this category as well. And before you try to tell me that De Niro is “versatile,” tell me when he hasn’t played an Italian mobster or an Italian cop? And do you have any doubt that what you see on screen isn’t what you would meet in person? It’s the same thing with Hurt, though it took me a lot longer to realize that he fell into this category, because the roles he chooses are so varied.

So what is the difference between Cruise/Schwarzenegger and De Niro/Hurt? Could it be as simple as De Niro and Hurt sticking with drama, whereas Tom and Arnold stick with action flicks? Perhaps. But I think there is more to it. Indeed, I can’t see Tom or Arnold playing any of the roles in The Usual Suspects, Glengarry Glen Ross or L.A. Confidential even if they wanted to -- though De Niro or Hurt could do that with ease. So there must be something more missing than simply their choice of roles.

To continue, let’s leave that category for a moment. The other category includes actors who simply vanish into the roles they play. These actors so thoroughly become the characters they are playing that we all but forget they are actors. Instead, we see their characters as real people. Some of the better character actors fall into this category, as do guys like Daniel Day Lewis, Robert Shaw and Jeremy Irons.

But simply disappearing can’t be enough either. Tim Curry and Christopher Lloyd disappear into their roles quite nicely, yet they aren’t considered “great actors.” And if disappearing is all it took to be considered a great actor, then shouldn’t anyone who pulled off a monster suit character be considered a great actor? Again, there must be something more to it?

I think that “something” is the ability to stand at the top of both groups. Cruise may be at the top of the first group, but he simply can’t disappear into a character. Shaw became whoever he played, but people didn’t clamor to see his movies. But when you look at someone like Johnny Depp, you suddenly see the difference.

There is no doubt that Depp’s name on a movie pulls people into theaters, just as Cruise’s name does. There is something about Depp that is simply compelling and makes you want to see him act. Part of this could be that we know from prior experience that he will bring great acting to the role, but part of it must also be that there is something we like about him personally. Indeed, the fact that his interviews pull high ratings tells us this. But Depp also gives us more than Cruise. We know that once the film starts, Depp will not be playing “Johnny Depp as the spy.” Indeed, Depp more than anyone these days disappears into his roles so believably that we no longer see Johnny Depp at all. Instead, we see the quasi-inebriated Captain Jack Sparrow of Pirates of the Caribbean or that the slimy, cowardly, and yet compelling Dean Corso of The Ninth Gate. And that, I think, is the real difference. To be a great actor, an actor must have the compelling personality that makes us want to spend time with them, but once the film begins, they need the skill to vanish into the role so that all that is left is the character. The audience can’t be left seeing “Johnny Depp the pirate.”

Another actor who fits into this category would be Gene Hackman, who is a compelling actor but also presents compelling characters. Bogart and Jimmy Stewart pulled this off as well. I would add Harrison Ford to the list, at least until the last few years. From the actress ranks, I’d offer Glenn Close.

If I’m right, and I leave that up to you to decided and to comment upon, then the best advice we could give an actor would be to carefully hone a public persona that is irresistible to the public, but also to work hard to lose themselves in their roles.

So what do you think? Am I right? If not, what makes an actor a great actor? And tell us who you would include in that list?

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Shortchanging Actresses

Many Hollywood actresses claim that Hollywood shortchanges them. They claim the industry doesn’t take them seriously and that there are no good roles for women. You might not believe this, but I think they’re right. And I don’t think this is a good thing.

The way Hollywood selects actresses has become perverse. Forget about acting talent or being right for the part, those days are gone. Instead, Hollywood asks three questions these days: (1) are you under 35 year old, (2) do you have the dimensions of a Playboy centerfold, and (3) do you look like every other Hollywood ditz. If you can’t answer “yes” to all three, then don’t apply. This bothers me.

1. The Age Thing

What is the fascination with jamming twenty-somethings into every role? It doesn’t work. It strains credibility beyond the breaking point when they cast some silicon enhanced “young thing” to play the nuclear scientist (Denise Richards) or the head of corporation X or. . . well, any woman in a position of authority. I’ve met powerful men and women in my life, and they just don’t look or act like MTV-raised young hotties.

And stop casting these girls as the wives of old, old, old male actors. It’s ridiculous. Teri Garr and Richard Dreyfuss worked in Close Encounters because it was believable that these two would marry. Octogenarian Harrison Ford married to a Megan Fox is not believable. Not only do we have a hard time seeing them getting together in the first place, but there is no way we will see such a couple as a “normal, loving couple.” Instead, the words “gold digger” and “cradle robber” spring to mind much more so than “husband and wife.” And holy cow, stop casting “mothers” who are only a year or two older than their movie “daughters.” That just reeks of “fake movie family.”

These young girls simply don’t have the maturity or the depth to play the parts of women.

2. Ban Cloning

Another thing that really bothers me is that Hollywood is basically looking for clones when they cast modern actresses. They seem to want no trace of individuality. If you have so much as a hair out of place or a bone structure that is 1% less than optimum, then you’re gone. This just bugs me to no end.

First, this makes it impossible to cast people who look the part. Forget the nuclear scientist mentioned above, what about the average waitress or the mother of three or the nurse? In the real world, these women don’t look like Barbie. . . no one does. Heck, you can’t even cast the awkward girl next door anymore (the kind of girl who would date Jimmy Stewart or one of the Goonies), because all the actresses look like strippers now.

Secondly and most importantly, by casting clones, Hollywood guarantees that few modern actresses will be memorable. Indeed, it’s the actors and actresses who are not physically perfect that we remember. Seriously, think about it. Very few of the top male actors fall into the “pretty boy” category. Outside of a Redford, a DiCaprio, or a Cruise, few leading men look anything like male models. Bogart was a small man with a crooked face and a lisp. Stallone looks like he lost a fight with a blender. Bruce Willis beat the blender, but it took 12 rounds. Jack Nicholson is the blender. How about James Cagney, the Marx Brothers, Bill Murray, Charles Bronson, Steven McQueen, Clive Owen, Benicio Del Toro, Alan Rickman, Adrien Brody, Daniel Day-Lewis, Dustin Hoffman, Ben Stiller, Kirk Douglas and his chin, Tommy Lee Jones, Richard Dreyfuss, etc. . . not a standard profile in the bunch. And when you get into character actors, the defects and distinctions multiply. . . Steve Buscemi anyone?

Believe it or not, the same thing has always been true with actresses as well. Indeed, the most memorable actresses can hardly be called “classic beauties”: Lauren Bacall was rather butch, as was Katharine Hepburn, and is Sigourney Weaver. Lucille Ball was hardly a looker. Sophia Loren and Julie Andrews were beautiful, but not in a standard way. Judy Garland was downright homely. Betty Davis, Barbara Eden and Angela Lansbury all looked 60 the moment they were born. Etc. Yet, these are the actresses we remember so much more than the beauty queens.

Compare those names to today’s actresses, who all look alike. Heck, when I say names like Hudson, Winslet, McAdams and Blanchett, I’m not even sure I could identify them from photographs, even though I’ve seen their films. Indeed, they are so interchangeable these days that I sometimes wonder if anyone would notice if you swapped a couple out in the middle of the film?

Moreover, consider this difference: Which of the modern names couldn't take over Megan Fox’s role in Transformers or Kate Hudson’s role in. . . well, anything? Now ask yourself, who could have taken over for Bacall in To Have and Have Not or Hepburn in The African Queen?

That’s the reason this difference is important. Just as no pretty boy could have taken over for Jack Nicholson in The Shining, no bland, blond hottie could have taken over for any real actress in any of their definitive roles. But today’s actresses are so forgettable, so interchangeable, that any of them can play any role. They simply don’t stand out.

3. Strong Roles Need Strong Actresses

And that relates to the last issue that always arises: “there are no strong roles for women today.” You hear this all the time, and I actually think it's true. And I think this is a consequence of modern casting because there are almost no actresses left in Hollywood today who could even handle a “strong” role. Ask yourself, if you were going to replace any of the guys in Glengarry Glen Ross with a modern actress, who could possible fill one of those roles? Hepburn could have. Hudson sure as heck can’t. What if you wanted to replace Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada? Could Garner or Fox do it? Could any of the current crop? No, they don’t have the gravitas to play that strong of a personality.

That's why I think it’s no surprise that when Hollywood needs a strong woman, they hire a British actress like Judy Dench or Helen Mirren, because the Brits don’t seem to throw their actresses out once they hit the onset of middle age. If you've ever watched the new Doctor Whos or anything else from the BBC lately, you've seen a ton of impressive middle-aged, not-hot actresses. You just don't see that in Hollywood anymore.

I think this is horrible for films. Not only does it strain the credibility of films, as noted above, which makes it harder to believe what you are seeing on film, but it makes it that much harder to produce memorable roles for female characters. Memorable roles are what make movies interesting and what give them longevity. But you can't produce memorable roles if you don't have actresses who can play those roles. Thus, by repeatedly casting pointless fluff and should-be-strippers instead of talented actresses, Hollywood has made it all the harder to give us films that stay with us, i.e. great films.

And that stinks.

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Dear Hollywood, Stop The CGI Madness!

This one may seem like a no “duh” kind of post, but Hollywood doesn’t seem to get it. So I’ll say it. I’m a big science fiction fan and I love good special effects. Indeed, there is nothing quite like losing yourself in the grandeur of another world or seeing “the future” in ways we haven’t imagined before. But I’m really coming to hate CGI because Hollywood abuses it.

1. Now You’ve Gone Too Far:

The first problem with CGI is that directors routinely go too far with it. Indeed, while they think they are making their movies cooler, they really are only making them less realistic.

Consider the new penchant for massively overdoing the numbers of combatants in action films. The Mummy Returns, for example, was a reasonably good film, until the evil army meets the assembled army of the Magi. This is a secret order, right? Yet, suddenly, you are presented with the image of somewhere near half a million Arabs on horses -- more guys than the Ottoman Turks fielded in World War I. Ditto Pirates of the Caribbean III, where the two assembled navies number around 10,000 ships each -- as far as you can see to the horizons. Is that realistic or stupid? There were only 71 ships at Trafalgar (the biggest naval battle of the era). Ditto The Lord of the Rings where the Riders of Rohan, who brought 6,000 riders in the book, managed to bring around 2.3 million in the film.

None of this improved these movies and it didn’t improve the action. To the contrary, it just made these scenes into impossible, unrealistic messes. Not only was the quantity of the action simply unbelievable, but the massive quantity obscured the quality. . . if there was any. Also, this mass quantity of combatants cheapens the stories because it takes away the challenge of being outnumbered by the bad guys. It substitutes a stupid video game for drama. So stop trying to fill the screen!

And this is becoming a bigger and bigger problem every year. Seriously, what action movie these days doesn’t put far too many creatures onto the screen. . . enough to fill every little terrifying, empty space of film. It’s like modern director have been told horror stories about directors who were eaten alive by monsters that crawled out of the empty spaces on films they shot.

Also, while we’re at it, stop trying to turn fires into firestorms, and stop making all explosions into nuclear explosions, and stop turning car wrecks into supercollider collisions. When two cars meet, even at high speeds, they don’t obliterate each other. And semis don’t blast 100 feet up into the air. And you sure as heck can’t “duck” under it to avoid it when it comes rolling down the road.

Get some sense of proportion people.

2. Stop The Video Game, I Want To Get Off:

Another way CGI goes too far is in stunts. There is something about real stunts that just can’t be duplicated with CGI. Actually. . . let me rephrase that: I’m not sure if real stunts can be duplicated or not with CGI, because no one tries. Instead, they get digital actors doing things that aren’t physically possible. They move in ways that physics doesn’t allow. Sometimes, they even move in ways that cartoon characters wouldn’t dare try. Yet we’re supposed to “ooh” and “ah” as some actor bends themselves in half, backwards as they summersault their body underneath a flaming, rolling semi, only to escape untouched.

And I’m not even talking about movies like The Matrix or Wanted which used the ability to do impossible things as plot points. I’m talking about regular movies with supposedly regular characters. It’s no coincidence that people continue to rate the car chase in Bullit as the best ever, because it was real and it was gripping because we’ve all been there when a car gets pushed a little too far. Nothing similar can be said of modern films -- no one on earth has experienced the kinds of action we are shown now.

Further, much of this has hit the level of story-ruining ridiculousness. When I see Tom Cruise wire fighting on top of a speeding bullet train as a helicopter flies faster than it can so that the pilot can somehow keep its rotating blades inches from Cruise’s neck, I don’t cheer. . . I don’t marvel at the “genius” of the director or the computer guys. No, I laugh and I wonder what kind of idiot thought this wouldn’t ruin a movie that had otherwise been pretty well done.

Ditto again with Pirates of the Caribbean III, which had a pretty decent movie going, if you exclude the director’s obsessive compulsive need to add a moment of slapstick at the end of each scene. But just as I was about to drop a little praise on the film, the director apparently went home for the night, leaving the following instruction to the CGI nerds: “Go nuts for about 20 minutes, then roll the credits. But remember, ‘nuts.’ Nothing believable. Nothing possible. Nothing that makes sense.”

Stop ruining films by telling your CGI guys to “run wild” with the endings. If the stunt people say it can’t be done, then don’t try to fake it with CGI. And when you get that little voice in your head that says, “you know what would be really cool. . .” -- ignore that voice, you’ll make a much better film.

3. It’s The Story Stupid:

Special effects should enhance a story. They should assist an already exciting plot or interesting characters. They should not be used to make a story. But too often these days, you see movies like Transformers II or the third Matrix film, which rely almost entirely on special effects to carry the movie. In fact, sometimes it’s so bad that I imagine the screenplay was written on a cocktail napkin, with a few lines of dialog surrounded by the words “CGI guys to fill in.” CGI is not a substitute for good characters and interesting plots, and Hollywood needs to stop using it that way.

4. You Couldn’t Act Your Way Out Of A Virtual Bag

Finally, the last problem with CGI is that too many actors simply don’t have the skill to act in front of blue screens. For every Matrix that you get, with its seamless interweaving of actors and effects, you get a dozen Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, with Gwyneth Paltrow staring blankly in the wrong directions. And you get a dozen movies like the most recent Star Wars films where nothing on the screen seems real because no one can touch anything.

Come on people, this isn’t hard. Just stop trying to do too much.

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Making Books Into Movies

It may be obvious to say this, but books and movies are different. And turning books into movies is a tricky thing. You’ve got the problem of meeting expectations. You’ve got the problem of converting a written text into a spoken product. And then you have the question of how closely you should follow the book? That’s the one that has me bothered.

It is virtually impossible to be 100% faithful to a book when making a movie. For example, books and films work at a different pace. Books can be much more contemplative. They can be far less linear. They can delve into in-depth discussions, motivations, backgrounds, and even the thoughts of the characters, something that is very difficult for films. Indeed converting a book into a screenplay takes a specialized skill that requires the writer to force narrative into dialog.

And even when it is possible to stay entirely faithful to a book, it is still impossible to meet everyone’s expectations. Books rely on written descriptions, whereas films present complete imagery. Thus, while every reader of a book may see a particular image differently, film goers are all given the same image. Therefore, it is impossible to produce the same images that each of the readers expects.

However, before the filmmakers even face any of these problems, they face the question of how faithful they intend to remain to the book. Some films, like the first Harry Potter or Presumed Innocent or L.A. Confidential stayed fairly faithful to the books. But others don’t. For example, The Ninth Gate had almost nothing to do with the book Club Dumas, upon which it is based. Or you have Blade Runner which, thankfully, took almost nothing from Phillip Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? In fact, these films were so different from the books that you might not even know they were based on these books if they didn’t make this claim in the credits.

And “based on” is the key here. Blade Runner didn’t call itself Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and proclaim that it was turning the book into the film. It was upfront about taking only a few ideas from Electric Sheep and creating its own derivative work. Thus, nobody went to the theater expecting to see Electric Sheep and instead finding some bastardized, barely-recognizable version.

Other films are not so honest. I’ve been a life-long fan of The Lord of the Ring and I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve read those books. So when I heard that they were making LOTR, I cringed. I didn’t know what indignity they would do to this masterpiece, but I was prepared for almost anything. Then they sent out their actors, producers and directors to swear to us that they were going to be faithful to the book. A couple of them even claimed, “we all had copies of the book on set and whenever there was a question of how the book went, we looked it up.” That got my hopes up. But they were lying. “Faithful” in this case meant jamming a love-story into the book and discarding the one already in there, converting one character to comic relief, and other Hollywood gimmicks.

And LOTR is far from alone and it’s far from the worst. If you’re going to make a book into a movie, if you’re making “Book: The Movie,” shouldn't you do your best to remain faithful to the material? Fans of the book want to see it brought to life, they don't want to see it torn apart, twisted and recreated as something new. Don’t change the characters, don’t play with the motivations, don’t insert Hollywood gimmicks, and don’t add or remove plot points. If you just can’t help yourself and you feel hopelessly compelled to slap the book around, then stop claiming that you’re making the book into a movie. Give it a new title and tell us it's “based on” the book.

There is plenty of room for both kinds of films, those that try to faithfully bring the book to life and those that look to use the book as a base and create derivative work. But claiming that you are being faithful when you aren’t is misleading. . . it’s false advertising. It's also asinine. People loved the book for a reason. Who is the filmmaker to try to change the book? By all means, shoot it as creatively as possible, but stop trying to turn these things into something else and then pretending to the world that you stayed faithful.

It's time to stop abusing original material. If you don't love the book, then don't try to turn it into a movie. Leave that to someone who actually enjoyed the book. And stop listening to that whole industry of people who do nothing but look down upon any faithful recreation, i.e. most film reviewers. They claim that staying faithful is not "artistic." But that's just the weak thinking of a small mind. A film can be artistic whether it follows a book or not. The real challenge is bringing the book to life, which is incredibly difficult. Indeed, tinkering with a book does not make a film artistic. Artistic is writing the book in the first place, or bringing it to life on film, or using it as a starting point for something greater. But tinkering, as these small minds advocate, is not art. That's hackwork. It's the equivalent of putting a hat on the Mona Lisa rather than rendering her in 3D or taking da Vinci's style and creating a new masterpiece. . . that's art. Stuff your hat.

That’s my thinking on this.

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