August 2006. 13-year-old Avery sees a Blockbuster VHS case (my God, those are archaic words, right there) in her dad's hand. "What's that?" she asks.
Dad holds it up so she can see the title. The Rocky Horror Picture Show. "What's that?" she asks again, because up to this point, her only exposure to this cult classic has been the Kidz Bop cover of "Time Warp," which she hasn't listened to in forever because, at this point, she has clearly outgrown Kidz Bop. (But, being the child-at-heart she is, if she still listens to those old CDs time to time...well, who's going to know, really?)
"It's an old musical. From the 1970s." Her mom and dad exchange a look. Is their child old enough to see this? After all, their objective thus far has not been to censor her viewing material (she's been allowed to watch Big Trouble and My Cousin Vinny and The Replacements--movies that most of her friends would have had to see behind their parents' backs) but this is considered widely to be the most raunchy musical of all time. Can they really...?
Finally, assuming (and rightly so) that most of the jokes will go over her head, her mom casually says, "You should watch it with us. It's got Meat Loaf and Tim Curry in it. You'll like it."
And for the first forty-five minutes or so, she does. She giggles at "Dammit, Janet," gets up and dances to the Time Warp, and squeals in delight at her first sighting of Dr. Frank-N-Furter. "That is Tim Curry?" she gasps, not recognizing the man who co-starred in Pirates of the Plain and Home Alone 2--some of her favorite movies of the day. She's a little nervous when Rocky is born, but when she sees not a hideous Frankenstein monster but a muscle-bound jock running around in shiny gold underpants, she starts laughing again. So far, as her parents predicted, she loves it. Sure, a lot of the sexual references are lost on her, and she's a little confused as to why Frank-N-Furter seems to be gay or at least bi (since she knows, from years of watching Eddie Izzard, that "most transvestites actually fancy women"), but those are minor things and overall she's happy.
And then comes Meat Loaf's entrance. And, with it, his gruesome death at Frank-n-Furter's hands. That's when she starts to cry. That's when her parents start to think, oops, might've introduced this one a bit too soon. They let her watch for a bit longer, right up through "Touch-a Touch-a Touch Me," which they hope she will find sufficiently funny to erase the memory of Meat Loaf's untimely demise, but they're careful to shut off the movie before Eddie the Delivery Boy's final...uh...resting place is revealed. Because if she can't handle an ice pick and some blood, they know she won't be able to handle that.
One year from now this movie will be one of her favorites, and she will go to see the play live, dressed as Magenta and singing to every song, squirt gun in hand and a smile on her face. But you couldn't convince her of that now. Not for all the money in the world.
~
So fast-forward now to Halloween 2012. After a lifetime of actively avoiding horror movies, I was facing a conundrum because, you see, my teacher had put The Exorcist on his syllabus, as it's one of the most famous (and, admittedly, one of the most groundbreaking) horror films of all time. Most of my classmates are psyched. It's a great horror film, they insist, and it's just perfect that we're watching it on Halloween night. I'm sure they're right, but I have a problem. I hate horror. I really, truly hate it. There are few times that I've seen a horror film and not hated it: The Blair Witch Project, Let the Right One In, Psycho, and of course Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow. That's it. The number of horror movies that haven't terrified me into oblivion can actually be counted on one hand.
My mother always said that my problem with movies--and she still says this, now, in 2015, when I'm a college graduate who consistently sleeps with the lights off--was that I had a hard time telling fantasy and reality apart. Maybe that's true. All I know is that up to my college days I could not watch a horror movie without my parents holding my hands. In fact, during a Genres class at Interlochen, we watched Diary of the Dead to study "documented" horror, and I was so shaken I had to leave halfway through the screening and, afterwards, spent the night at a hotel with my parents because I was too afraid to sleep alone in the dorms. I believe by now I have hammered the point home: horror and Avery did not mix. Just couldn't happen.
But on Halloween night, 2012, I caved for the sake of my grade. My teacher was very nice about it, but he would not let me get out of seeing the film. He let me bring my girlfriend and looked the other way when I buried my face in her shoulder during the worst parts, but still I had to sit there, without sneaking out of the room, and watch the movie. And I hated it. Take away the terror factor and I still doubt I'd have liked it; I can see why it's hailed as a masterpiece, but The Exorcist just isn't my taste. But I could handle it. I hated it, but I watched it. The whole thing. Levitation, head-twisting and all.
And I cannot stress how big a deal it is that I stayed for the whole thing. Up to that point I'd even avoided horror films that were part of a class (see: Diary of the Dead incident) and skipped out on Halloween parties because my friends always wanted to watch, well, the Halloween movies and I couldn't do that. I still covered my eyes during certain parts of Lord of the Rings, for crying out loud. I went out of my way to avoid anything scary, much to the frustration of just about any teacher who had me in their class wherein a horror movie was present. This same teacher, the one who gently refused to put up with my B.S. where The Exorcist was concerned, had already had to convince me the previous semester that Planet of the Apes was really worth a second look and that Alien was not, in fact, more terrifying than Paranormal Activity.
So willingly going and not only seeing The Exorcist, but taking notes on it and calmly discussing it in class the following Monday, proved something to me: whether I loved or hated them, I could watch horror movies. I could handle it. I would not collapse into a panic-stricken jelly lump just because a movie had some scary scenes in it. I could do it.
I started pushing my boundaries that very night. I let my girlfriend talk me into seeing Scream - my very first Wes Craven movie - and discovered a simple fact about me and horror films: if it could be defeated, I wasn't afraid of it. A flesh-and-blood killer was something I could deal with. I didn't like gore and I didn't much care for the supernatural (hence my disdain of films like Saw, The Evil Dead, and The Exorcist), but as long as there was a way to defeat the villain I could not only watch a horror film, but find some enjoyment in it. I didn't love Scream, but there were a lot of parts that made me laugh and, unlike Diary of the Dead, I didn't regret going to see it.
More incidents like that one followed. I went to see Warm Bodies, the first - and, to this day, the only - zombie film that I absolutely loved. I started watching Supernatural, a show that I'd avoided for years because I thought it would be too scary, and delighted in watching the villain get defeated in every single episode. Ditto for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I realized that I'd been scorning horror for years, without realizing that there was so much that I already liked (Tim Burton, Alfred Hitchcock, German expressionist films like Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari - heck, Roman Polanski's Fearless Vampire Killers had captivated me long before Twilight Fever rocked my high school), and I had been limiting myself out of fear. I resolved not to do that anymore.
When I transferred to Oakland University, my World Cinema teacher showed us Somos Lo Que Hay (translation: We Are What We Are) the same week that I re-watched Let the Right One In for the first time in years. I fell in love with foreign horror - especially of the European variety. I came to the realization that what I really loved, not just tolerated for a grade's sake but loved, was psychological horror. I watched The Sixth Sense and loved it. I watched The Shining all the way through for the first time, and loved it. I watched Silence of the Lambs, I watched all the Hannibal Lecter movies, and I loved them. That fall I saw Peeping Tom in a film theory class and absolutely adored it. My love of psychological horror stemmed from my love of Tim Burton, of Loki the God of Mischief, of the Goblin King and Alex DeLarge and all my other "favorite villains" - the idea that everything isn't what it seems. I realized that without pre-conceived assumptions and fear getting in the way, I could see whatever the hell I wanted to.
I also began to understand my own rules. I needed to have some degree of control over the movie. I needed to be able to pause it and walk away if I had to. I needed to have someone with me, or at least near me, to remind me that it was only a movie. With those few guidelines in place, what couldn't I watch?
I still have moments of doubt, believe me. No power on this earth can make me sit through the Evil Dead or Saw canon. And good luck convincing me to ever, for any reason, sit through an episode of The Walking Dead. I won't go through haunted houses or haunted mazes (acting in one my senior year of high school was more than enough, believe me) and I will never, ever go to an amusement park "fright night" again. I didn't suddenly morph into a horror-lover. I have my limits. If I see a movie that I might like, but looks like it's a scary one, I'll wait for the DVD, thankyouverymuch, and there are plenty of deal-breakers for me. Zombies are a red flag. Cannibalism is pushing it. Possession is a hard limit. And God forbid I ever see anything with the word "exorcism" in the title again.
But this Halloween I will watch Nightmare on Elm Street with Ian. I've always wanted to see it, but dodged it based on the assumption that it would be too scary for me. But it's a fantastic movie, or so I've always heard, and it's one of the defining horror classics, and it's got all the elements I love: a villain with a dark past who attacks his victims on a psychological level, highly stylized aesthetics, and the headship of a kick-ass director. (No one can see Red Eye and not believe Wes Craven was a genius. I'm 100% sure of that.) Maybe I'll have a sleepless night or two over it. But I'm not worried.
After all, I've already handled Pazuzu. After that, how bad can Freddy Kruger really be?
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Tuesday, September 15, 2015
Hannah Montana, Harry Potter, and the Hollywood habit of blaming everyone but yourself
So, fun fact: before I wanted to be a filmmaker, I wanted to be Hilary Duff when I grew up. Well, not necessarily Hilary Duff. Maybe JoJo, or Ashley Olson, or Selena Gomez or Emma Roberts or, of course, Miley Cyrus. Didn't matter who I patterned myself on, the point is that I wanted to be a Disney Girl. I'd never say as much out loud; I'd phrase it as "I want to be an actress," but I wanted the whole package. I wanted the Tiger Beat photospread, the sold-out pop concerts, the chain store clothing line. I wanted to be Starlet Avery, instead of being the ordinary twelve-year-old girl I really was.
And hey, I could have been, if my parents had thought it was really what I wanted. Had I lived in Burbank, CA instead of middle-of-damn-nowhere Michigan, I could have had a shot at being Hannah Montana. Why not? I was a cute, sassy preteen girl with a giant ham for a dad and mad piano skills. I could dance. I could model, I could pose. I had braces, but sometimes girls need someone who's a little "ordinary" to look up to, isn't that the Disney press-conference line? I could have been, if it had been serious, if it had ever been more than a fantasy.
But thank God I realized that wasn't what I wanted. Acting was fun, but creation was more fun. It was better, I eventually realized, to be Woody Allen than Ashley Olson. Better to be a jack-of-all-trades who could write, shoot, edit, and star in your own movie, rather than someone who said other people's lines both on and off the camera and was literally paid to be cute because, as Mara Wilson so accurately pointed out, when the cuteness goes away, so does your career.
I'm not perfect now, but I'm relatively happy. A few days ago I got into a lecture/argument with my mom, who basically reminded me to shut up, stop complaining that I don't have my dream job (I'm only 22; what the hell did I expect?) and count my f'ing blessings, already. I have a fantastic boyfriend who has gone above and beyond to make me feel loved and supported, and parents who have sacrificed for me and gone to bat for me and cheered me on since the day I was born. I live in a house with a swimming pool in the backyard, my parents let me drive the car pretty much whenever I want, I'm educated and not in debt. I'm working on my next movie, and I'm positive this one will be in more festivals than the last. I'm damn lucky. I'm no popstar, but I'm damn lucky.
Now, does someone want to give Miley Cyrus that talk that my mom gave me? Because I think she needs it.
Look, I clearly can't comment on how it feels to be a child star, because I never was. And I'm not stupid, I know that most people who were raised in the spotlight turn out to be addicts or worse...but wait, is that really true? What about Mara Wilson, Cole Sprouse, Emma Watson, Dakota Fanning, Hilary Duff, or Daniel Radcliffe--people who went to college, got married, had families, found new jobs and new lives apart from show business, or else went on to be successful in their careers despite being the dreaded "child stars?"
We look at entitled dumbasses like Justin Bieber, or lost souls like Lindsay Lohan, and assume that must be where children who are raised in Hollywood end up. It's inevitable. There's no escaping it. It's why Miley Cyrus dirty-danced with a married man at the VMAs. It's why she got naked in her music videos. It's why she smoked salvia and runs around in onesies and curses like a sailor. She's just trying to show that she's grown up, give her some space, dammit; she was a child star, she is to be pitied.
Except I don't feel sorry for her. Not one little bit.
And let me be clear, I have no comment--actually, one sort-of comment, but that's it--on Cyrus' revelations about her gender identity and sexuality. Good for you, Miley. If you're down to date any consenting person regardless of the plumbing God gave them, more power to you. If you identify as androgynous, no problem. Hell, if you come out as trans I wouldn't bat an eyelash; it's your body and your life and you can do whatever you need to do with it.
My problems with Miley Cyrus have nothing to do with where she falls on the LGBT spectrum. I do, however, have a problem with her apparent belief that having any kind of negative experiences in her Disney career somehow gives her a get-out-of-jail free card.
In an interview with Marie Claire, Cyrus claimed that being on Hannah Montana caused her to develop body dysmorphia. Furthermore, she claimed that working 12-hour days gave her anxiety attacks and prevented her from having a normal childhood. Now, all of this may well be true, or it may be exaggerated; I don't know. I do know that the entertainment industry has a long history of high standards and impossible demands when it comes to women's bodies (and, honestly, male bodies too, in most cases) and that teenagers are particularly susceptible to the effects of said impossible standards set by that industry. But...hold up...wouldn't you know that, if you've ever watched, say, one hour of TV in your life? Look at Pretty Little Liars for crying out loud, you've got 28-year-olds playing 16-year-olds; do you really think normal high school girls look or dress like that? Even at age twelve, I knew that being Hollywood-standard pretty came with a price; being unwilling to pay that price was part of what drove me into filmmaking instead of acting.
And to the other point, Miley, you were a twelve-year-old with a six-figure job. Did you think that would be easy? Again, this isn't a case of hindsight. Even when I was ten years old, reading Disney Adventures because I was too young for Popstar, I'd come across articles interviewing the Harry Potter kids (more on them later), all of whom gave full, detailed descriptions of what it was like to be a kid on a movie set. Long hours. Tutoring instead of going to school. Uncomfortable costumes. Demanding directors. Unpleasant shooting conditions. I refuse to believe that if I, at age ten, could read an interview in Disney Adventures and think, huh, this acting stuff isn't really that glamorous, is it, that Miley Cyrus couldn't have come to the same conclusion before landing the role of Hannah Montana.
Furthermore, Cyrus claiming that the show was the sole reason for her body issues or anxiety issues is kind of like me exclusively blaming Interlochen, my former boarding school, for giving me an eating disorder. I was sixteen, living away from home for the first time, and naturally it was a hell of a stressful time. Certainly that stress may have contributed to the situation--but there were so many other factors, and I firmly believe that if I hadn't gone to Interlochen, it would've happened when I went away to college. Or if I'd lived at home for college, I'd have developed that same disorder when I moved out into my first apartment. You get the picture. My circumstances may have exacerbated my issues, but they didn't create those issues. It's not my dorm counselor's fault that I couldn't handle being on my own, nor is it her fault that I didn't ask for help before the problem got out of control.
I'm not saying that Miley Cyrus is a bad person. I am saying that I would have a hell of a lot more respect for her if she would take responsibility for herself and her actions. And as a recent college graduate who is currently working in a fast-food restaurant, allow me to tell you, Miley, that there are much worse jobs you could've had. You could have worked at McDonald's or a super-store like Target, to put yourself through college. You could have lived with your parents until you were 25. You could've been a single mother, or gone to community college because you couldn't afford a 4-year degree, or did what my mom did and wait until you were married with a kid to get your master's degree. My mom has given me a lot to live up to. But I don't mind. And you can bet that if I had gone the Hollywood-starlet route, she wouldn't have let me get away with whining to a magazine that my job just sucked and gave me all kinds of mental issues...but only after it made me a multibillion-dollar household name.
Daniel Radcliffe once said that in the early days of his career, when he was a little kid on the Harry Potter set, he would occasionally whine to his father about how hard his job was. To which his father would reply, "Well, at least you're not down a coal mine." Radcliffe later admitted that fear of failure, and the pressure of fame, led him to drink while on-set of the final Harry Potter film and occasionally turn up hungover for filming, until he recognized his behavior as "unhealthy and damaging" - his words - and went sober in 2010. Notice, however, that while he acknowledges the role that fame played in his troubles, he does not blame his drinking on 12-hour workdays or unwanted beautification; he acknowledges that it was his own fear and insecurity that got him into trouble. And he is quick to credit the Harry Potter franchise for kick-starting his acting career and providing him with experiences that he otherwise never would have had.
I tend to go looking for information on the way the film industry affects people who are so deeply involved in it because, obviously, that is where I want to be. And when my time comes - and I am still optimistic that it will - I don't want to be like Miley Cyrus. I don't want to use my fame to my advantage, and then denounce the very thing that made me successful. I want to be Daniel. I want to be that grounded, and that self-aware. I want to be able to look back at the work that made me who I am, and be proud of it, and think to myself yep, that's it, that was the way to do it.
And hey, I could have been, if my parents had thought it was really what I wanted. Had I lived in Burbank, CA instead of middle-of-damn-nowhere Michigan, I could have had a shot at being Hannah Montana. Why not? I was a cute, sassy preteen girl with a giant ham for a dad and mad piano skills. I could dance. I could model, I could pose. I had braces, but sometimes girls need someone who's a little "ordinary" to look up to, isn't that the Disney press-conference line? I could have been, if it had been serious, if it had ever been more than a fantasy.
But thank God I realized that wasn't what I wanted. Acting was fun, but creation was more fun. It was better, I eventually realized, to be Woody Allen than Ashley Olson. Better to be a jack-of-all-trades who could write, shoot, edit, and star in your own movie, rather than someone who said other people's lines both on and off the camera and was literally paid to be cute because, as Mara Wilson so accurately pointed out, when the cuteness goes away, so does your career.
I'm not perfect now, but I'm relatively happy. A few days ago I got into a lecture/argument with my mom, who basically reminded me to shut up, stop complaining that I don't have my dream job (I'm only 22; what the hell did I expect?) and count my f'ing blessings, already. I have a fantastic boyfriend who has gone above and beyond to make me feel loved and supported, and parents who have sacrificed for me and gone to bat for me and cheered me on since the day I was born. I live in a house with a swimming pool in the backyard, my parents let me drive the car pretty much whenever I want, I'm educated and not in debt. I'm working on my next movie, and I'm positive this one will be in more festivals than the last. I'm damn lucky. I'm no popstar, but I'm damn lucky.
Now, does someone want to give Miley Cyrus that talk that my mom gave me? Because I think she needs it.
Look, I clearly can't comment on how it feels to be a child star, because I never was. And I'm not stupid, I know that most people who were raised in the spotlight turn out to be addicts or worse...but wait, is that really true? What about Mara Wilson, Cole Sprouse, Emma Watson, Dakota Fanning, Hilary Duff, or Daniel Radcliffe--people who went to college, got married, had families, found new jobs and new lives apart from show business, or else went on to be successful in their careers despite being the dreaded "child stars?"
We look at entitled dumbasses like Justin Bieber, or lost souls like Lindsay Lohan, and assume that must be where children who are raised in Hollywood end up. It's inevitable. There's no escaping it. It's why Miley Cyrus dirty-danced with a married man at the VMAs. It's why she got naked in her music videos. It's why she smoked salvia and runs around in onesies and curses like a sailor. She's just trying to show that she's grown up, give her some space, dammit; she was a child star, she is to be pitied.
Except I don't feel sorry for her. Not one little bit.
And let me be clear, I have no comment--actually, one sort-of comment, but that's it--on Cyrus' revelations about her gender identity and sexuality. Good for you, Miley. If you're down to date any consenting person regardless of the plumbing God gave them, more power to you. If you identify as androgynous, no problem. Hell, if you come out as trans I wouldn't bat an eyelash; it's your body and your life and you can do whatever you need to do with it.
My problems with Miley Cyrus have nothing to do with where she falls on the LGBT spectrum. I do, however, have a problem with her apparent belief that having any kind of negative experiences in her Disney career somehow gives her a get-out-of-jail free card.
In an interview with Marie Claire, Cyrus claimed that being on Hannah Montana caused her to develop body dysmorphia. Furthermore, she claimed that working 12-hour days gave her anxiety attacks and prevented her from having a normal childhood. Now, all of this may well be true, or it may be exaggerated; I don't know. I do know that the entertainment industry has a long history of high standards and impossible demands when it comes to women's bodies (and, honestly, male bodies too, in most cases) and that teenagers are particularly susceptible to the effects of said impossible standards set by that industry. But...hold up...wouldn't you know that, if you've ever watched, say, one hour of TV in your life? Look at Pretty Little Liars for crying out loud, you've got 28-year-olds playing 16-year-olds; do you really think normal high school girls look or dress like that? Even at age twelve, I knew that being Hollywood-standard pretty came with a price; being unwilling to pay that price was part of what drove me into filmmaking instead of acting.
And to the other point, Miley, you were a twelve-year-old with a six-figure job. Did you think that would be easy? Again, this isn't a case of hindsight. Even when I was ten years old, reading Disney Adventures because I was too young for Popstar, I'd come across articles interviewing the Harry Potter kids (more on them later), all of whom gave full, detailed descriptions of what it was like to be a kid on a movie set. Long hours. Tutoring instead of going to school. Uncomfortable costumes. Demanding directors. Unpleasant shooting conditions. I refuse to believe that if I, at age ten, could read an interview in Disney Adventures and think, huh, this acting stuff isn't really that glamorous, is it, that Miley Cyrus couldn't have come to the same conclusion before landing the role of Hannah Montana.
Furthermore, Cyrus claiming that the show was the sole reason for her body issues or anxiety issues is kind of like me exclusively blaming Interlochen, my former boarding school, for giving me an eating disorder. I was sixteen, living away from home for the first time, and naturally it was a hell of a stressful time. Certainly that stress may have contributed to the situation--but there were so many other factors, and I firmly believe that if I hadn't gone to Interlochen, it would've happened when I went away to college. Or if I'd lived at home for college, I'd have developed that same disorder when I moved out into my first apartment. You get the picture. My circumstances may have exacerbated my issues, but they didn't create those issues. It's not my dorm counselor's fault that I couldn't handle being on my own, nor is it her fault that I didn't ask for help before the problem got out of control.
I'm not saying that Miley Cyrus is a bad person. I am saying that I would have a hell of a lot more respect for her if she would take responsibility for herself and her actions. And as a recent college graduate who is currently working in a fast-food restaurant, allow me to tell you, Miley, that there are much worse jobs you could've had. You could have worked at McDonald's or a super-store like Target, to put yourself through college. You could have lived with your parents until you were 25. You could've been a single mother, or gone to community college because you couldn't afford a 4-year degree, or did what my mom did and wait until you were married with a kid to get your master's degree. My mom has given me a lot to live up to. But I don't mind. And you can bet that if I had gone the Hollywood-starlet route, she wouldn't have let me get away with whining to a magazine that my job just sucked and gave me all kinds of mental issues...but only after it made me a multibillion-dollar household name.
Daniel Radcliffe once said that in the early days of his career, when he was a little kid on the Harry Potter set, he would occasionally whine to his father about how hard his job was. To which his father would reply, "Well, at least you're not down a coal mine." Radcliffe later admitted that fear of failure, and the pressure of fame, led him to drink while on-set of the final Harry Potter film and occasionally turn up hungover for filming, until he recognized his behavior as "unhealthy and damaging" - his words - and went sober in 2010. Notice, however, that while he acknowledges the role that fame played in his troubles, he does not blame his drinking on 12-hour workdays or unwanted beautification; he acknowledges that it was his own fear and insecurity that got him into trouble. And he is quick to credit the Harry Potter franchise for kick-starting his acting career and providing him with experiences that he otherwise never would have had.
I tend to go looking for information on the way the film industry affects people who are so deeply involved in it because, obviously, that is where I want to be. And when my time comes - and I am still optimistic that it will - I don't want to be like Miley Cyrus. I don't want to use my fame to my advantage, and then denounce the very thing that made me successful. I want to be Daniel. I want to be that grounded, and that self-aware. I want to be able to look back at the work that made me who I am, and be proud of it, and think to myself yep, that's it, that was the way to do it.
Monday, August 3, 2015
My work: 'The Auteur at Work,' 'Moving Along,' and 'Professors'
My senior year of college was spent doing more writing, studying and researching than filming. I wasn't too happy with that. But I did manage to make three short films during that time, one of which I submitted for my senior capstone.
First, there was The Auteur at Work. I teamed up with Morgan, my Michigan-based partner-in-crime, to make a mockery of Auteur Theory, which we'd been learning about in our hard-as-hell film theory class, for our final project. Rounding out our team we had Ian (who is a fairly good actor, and don't let him tell you otherwise), Morgan's brother Collin, and her BFF Cody. Morgan, Ian and I nailed down the concept, I wrote us a script, Morgan took the helm as director, and we convinced Cody and Collin to act for us. Let the games begin!
Since most of us had worked together on Morgan's final project for production class, Death Lets it Go, we were pretty well gelled as a team already. The trick was pulling off a short film in less than three weeks, which as I mentioned when talking about Auto-Incorrect is no small task. The script was completed in two drafts. We didn't have time for storyboards or a beat breakdown. Casting came down to "wanna be in it? cool." Ian and I had to round out the cast, since we only had two real actors and the script called for at least four characters. To top it all off, we had technical difficulties as well: the day-of, we had to call in our production teacher to help with an audio issue, intermittent sunlight made setting up a shot nearly impossible, and we had to location scout on the fly. Then, once we had the damn thing shot, Ian had to work through a cold the last week of class to get it edited, and I was left to help choose the music and take care of post-production effects. Sleep? What's that?
But we pulled it off, and The Auteur at Work turned out to be the most fun I'd had on a film set in a long time. Watch it HERE.
I like making narrative films. I love to watch documentaries, but I don't consider making them to be my strong suit...so how the hell is it that I've ended up making so many of them?!? I've made three for various classes, two for good-cause events at my school, and two just because I felt like it. Huh. That's...a lot, now that I think about it.
Had I stayed at McDaniel, my first college, my senior-year project would have been a narrative. But I transferred to Oakland University, where I had to take a film-exhibition class for my capstone credits, and he wouldn't let me make a narrative film. So I made a documentary on the changing film exhibition industry, with special focus on why Blockbuster went out of business and the ways that theater and other video-store owners are staying in business despite the rise of Netflix and other on-demand services. If that sounds like a lot to pack into a five-minute capstone video, believe me, it was. But the end result was worth it.
The interviews were the easy part...but even the "easy" part involved traveling to Ann Arbor and Bloomfield Hills, coordinating with my mother when and where I could take the car, borrowing equipment from my production teacher, and printing and filing a handful of release forms for all the interviewees to sign. The hard part was finding B-roll and archive footage, as I didn't have any old photos or videos from Blockbuster that I could conveniently slip into the final cut. I ended up taking to the Internet for archive photos, hunting YouTube for old Blockbuster commercials, and asking Ian if I could film inside Disc Replay. And the hardest part of all was editing several hours' worth of material into a five-minute video that told a story without presenting too much of a bias. But all the work paid off when I saw the final cut--and when I saw my grade.
I never pictured myself making a documentary for my last-ever college project--but I'm so glad I did. Check it out HERE.
After all the hard work of my last semester of college, it almost felt like a relief to make another comedy short with Morgan. We were a "production team" for OU's end-of-year showcase, and our task was simple: create content. Make it OU-related. And above all make it good. This is for the school, after all.
Faced with this task, Morgan and I started out making a documentary, which turned into a loosely-scripted mockumentary about our favorite professors. For each of the four teachers we profiled we chose a well-known quirk and blew it way, way out of proportion. Our theory teacher, for example, was known for choosing a wide, often disjointed selection of films for his various classes. We filmed him choosing movies out of a hat and putting them into his class syllabus.
How Well Do You Know Your Professors was probably one of the easiest films I've ever made. The difficult part was finding the time to finish it; at the time that we were making the film, Morgan was writing a 90-page script for her class and I was shooting Moving Along for my capstone assignment. But we were lucky, because our professors cooperated every step of the way. And the reaction we got when we premiered it at the OU end-of-year cinema department showcase? Priceless.
Watch our dorky mockumentary HERE.
First, there was The Auteur at Work. I teamed up with Morgan, my Michigan-based partner-in-crime, to make a mockery of Auteur Theory, which we'd been learning about in our hard-as-hell film theory class, for our final project. Rounding out our team we had Ian (who is a fairly good actor, and don't let him tell you otherwise), Morgan's brother Collin, and her BFF Cody. Morgan, Ian and I nailed down the concept, I wrote us a script, Morgan took the helm as director, and we convinced Cody and Collin to act for us. Let the games begin!
Since most of us had worked together on Morgan's final project for production class, Death Lets it Go, we were pretty well gelled as a team already. The trick was pulling off a short film in less than three weeks, which as I mentioned when talking about Auto-Incorrect is no small task. The script was completed in two drafts. We didn't have time for storyboards or a beat breakdown. Casting came down to "wanna be in it? cool." Ian and I had to round out the cast, since we only had two real actors and the script called for at least four characters. To top it all off, we had technical difficulties as well: the day-of, we had to call in our production teacher to help with an audio issue, intermittent sunlight made setting up a shot nearly impossible, and we had to location scout on the fly. Then, once we had the damn thing shot, Ian had to work through a cold the last week of class to get it edited, and I was left to help choose the music and take care of post-production effects. Sleep? What's that?
But we pulled it off, and The Auteur at Work turned out to be the most fun I'd had on a film set in a long time. Watch it HERE.
I like making narrative films. I love to watch documentaries, but I don't consider making them to be my strong suit...so how the hell is it that I've ended up making so many of them?!? I've made three for various classes, two for good-cause events at my school, and two just because I felt like it. Huh. That's...a lot, now that I think about it.
Had I stayed at McDaniel, my first college, my senior-year project would have been a narrative. But I transferred to Oakland University, where I had to take a film-exhibition class for my capstone credits, and he wouldn't let me make a narrative film. So I made a documentary on the changing film exhibition industry, with special focus on why Blockbuster went out of business and the ways that theater and other video-store owners are staying in business despite the rise of Netflix and other on-demand services. If that sounds like a lot to pack into a five-minute capstone video, believe me, it was. But the end result was worth it.
The interviews were the easy part...but even the "easy" part involved traveling to Ann Arbor and Bloomfield Hills, coordinating with my mother when and where I could take the car, borrowing equipment from my production teacher, and printing and filing a handful of release forms for all the interviewees to sign. The hard part was finding B-roll and archive footage, as I didn't have any old photos or videos from Blockbuster that I could conveniently slip into the final cut. I ended up taking to the Internet for archive photos, hunting YouTube for old Blockbuster commercials, and asking Ian if I could film inside Disc Replay. And the hardest part of all was editing several hours' worth of material into a five-minute video that told a story without presenting too much of a bias. But all the work paid off when I saw the final cut--and when I saw my grade.
I never pictured myself making a documentary for my last-ever college project--but I'm so glad I did. Check it out HERE.
After all the hard work of my last semester of college, it almost felt like a relief to make another comedy short with Morgan. We were a "production team" for OU's end-of-year showcase, and our task was simple: create content. Make it OU-related. And above all make it good. This is for the school, after all.
Faced with this task, Morgan and I started out making a documentary, which turned into a loosely-scripted mockumentary about our favorite professors. For each of the four teachers we profiled we chose a well-known quirk and blew it way, way out of proportion. Our theory teacher, for example, was known for choosing a wide, often disjointed selection of films for his various classes. We filmed him choosing movies out of a hat and putting them into his class syllabus.
How Well Do You Know Your Professors was probably one of the easiest films I've ever made. The difficult part was finding the time to finish it; at the time that we were making the film, Morgan was writing a 90-page script for her class and I was shooting Moving Along for my capstone assignment. But we were lucky, because our professors cooperated every step of the way. And the reaction we got when we premiered it at the OU end-of-year cinema department showcase? Priceless.
Watch our dorky mockumentary HERE.
Avery Tries to be a Critic: 'Inside Out'
I saw Inside Out yesterday and all I have to say is: wow. Just. Wow. That movie. In the immortal words of white girls everywhere, I can’t even. Once again, Pete Docter does his absolute best to reduce the entire audience to tears. Grown men included. I move that from here on out, every Pixar movie should be screened for an audience entirely comprised of the most macho pro wrestlers, marines, and bikers they can find. If they all cry, your movie is TOO FREAKING SAD and needs to be modified before wide release. No, really. This is a safeguard that needs to happen, because I swear there wasn’t a dry eye in the theater yesterday.
Let me back up here and admit that, yes, I am a member of the Pixar Generation. As in, the kids who were born in the early 90s, around the time of the first Jurassic Park movie, for instance, and never had any idea what a world without CGI would look like. The kids who got first crack at falling in love with Buzz and Woody, never feared monsters in the closet again after meeting Mike and Sulley, squealed in delight when they found the light-up Squirt toy in their happy meals, and crawled around their living rooms pretending they were ants for days after seeing A Bug's Life. I’m one of those kids.
I actually don’t remember seeing Toy Story for the first time, but I know I did because I remember how thrilled I was when Dad picked up the VHS for Toy Story 2 on his way home from work one day. I remember eating a peanut-butter-and-cereal sandwich as I watched Rex trying to take down Zurg. I remember laughing hysterically at the “outtakes” at the end. I remember telling my dad that I wanted to be Jessie the Cowgirl. But above all I remember just plain loving every minute of it. There wasn’t one part of that movie that made me reach for the fast-forward button. As a kid growing up afraid of my own shadow, those kinds of movies were rare for me.
Over the years there have been Pixar movies that I loved (Wall-E, A Bug's Life, Up) and movies that I didn’t like (Cars, The Incredibles, Monsters University) and ones that I just plain never got tired of (Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo and, of course, the Toy Story series). Throughout it all, I never missed a chance to see a Pixar movie, even if I didn’t like the concept or the first trailers. When I got older and actually started going to theaters, I’d make Pixar movies my priority.
Okay, I’ve convinced you that I’m a complete sucker for a good Pixar film. So of course I went to see Inside Out and of course that movie made me cry like a small child. I don’t think there are enough words in the English language to express my love for Pete Docter. The guy gets it. He knows--not just tries hard enough, he knows--what it’s like to be a kid. He knows how it feels to be afraid of a monster in your closet. He understands the power that a persistent, innocent child can have over a grown-up. And after seeing Inside Out I am convinced that he knows better than any other grown-up on the face of the earth what it feels like for a kid to be uprooted and moved to a new place just as their childhood is winding down.
I think the reason that Inside Out hit me so hard was because I had a very similar childhood to Riley’s: I grew up an only child, very close to my parents, in a house in a neighborhood that I absolutely loved. But when I was about Riley’s age, my parents moved into a new house about an hour’s drive from our old one, in a very different area, and I absolutely hated it. I never ran away from home, or tried to, but there were days that I seriously considered it. And of course this completely baffled my parents, who assumed that because I’d liked making the drive from our old house to check on the progress of the new one I would like living in the new one. I couldn’t understand it either. I understand now that what I liked was having the time in the backseat to listen to music, getting to record and play with the camera while we were on-site, and getting to spend time with my parents. Whereas when we actually moved into the new house, there was a sense of finality. I hated it. I wanted to go home. Some days, I still do.
Recently I went back to St. Clair Shores, my childhood hometown, and saw everything through the eyes of a grown-up. (Or, okay, as close to grown-up as a 22-year-old can really be.) It’s a little run-down there now. The movie theater where I first saw The Santa Clause 2 and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets has long since closed down. There are cigarette butts all over my favorite park. A lot of businesses have changed hands or simply closed due to lack of income. In my old backyard, the tree that once held my swing has been cut down. But for all the changes, it is still my hometown, and I still love it. I always will.
So, yes, Inside Out really hit home, pun not intended. I was watching with my dad and I kept promising myself, no, I will not cry, I will not cry dammit, I’m a grown woman here and I will keep it together, Dad doesn’t need to see me cry (my dad hates it when I cry, even if it’s just over a movie), so I’m not going to cry--only to look over and discover that my dad had tears in his eyes too. That, my friends, is the power of Pixar. All the way back to the car he raved about what a great movie it was, and I have to agree.
What I love most about Inside Out is that it so perfectly captures how it feels to grow up. Just like Toy Story 3, which also reduced me to tears as I watched it right before going into my senior year of high school (can you say right in the feels?) and still had all of my American Girl Dolls and stuffed animals right there in my bedroom when I got back from the theater. I love the way Pixar can do that. I love that a team of animators, most of them grown men and women with kids of their own, can look around them and find inspiration for a film that hits kids and their parents alike right where it hurts in the best way possible. I love watching a film that makes me turn around and hug my mom and dad as soon as it’s over. I love that I can pop Toy Story 2 into the DVD player and still love it just as much as I did when I saw it back in 2002. I love that someday, I will show these movies to my kids, and see the looks on their faces when they reach the outtake reels at the end of the films. I love that.
So thank you, Pixar, for giving me something to love, something to look forward to, and something to aspire to. Because you can bet that as soon as I got home from the movie theater yesterday, I started working on my own script (more about that later) and contacting as many filmmaking friends as I could about getting this thing into pre-production. Oh…didn’t I mention my favorite thing about a Pixar film? No? Oops.
Well, here it is, then: every time I watch a Pixar movie, it makes me love cinema as a whole all the more. And every time I turn off the TV or walk out of the theater after watching a Pixar film, all I want to do is go and make something that makes someone else feel the way my favorite Pixar movie makes me feel.
Let me back up here and admit that, yes, I am a member of the Pixar Generation. As in, the kids who were born in the early 90s, around the time of the first Jurassic Park movie, for instance, and never had any idea what a world without CGI would look like. The kids who got first crack at falling in love with Buzz and Woody, never feared monsters in the closet again after meeting Mike and Sulley, squealed in delight when they found the light-up Squirt toy in their happy meals, and crawled around their living rooms pretending they were ants for days after seeing A Bug's Life. I’m one of those kids.
I actually don’t remember seeing Toy Story for the first time, but I know I did because I remember how thrilled I was when Dad picked up the VHS for Toy Story 2 on his way home from work one day. I remember eating a peanut-butter-and-cereal sandwich as I watched Rex trying to take down Zurg. I remember laughing hysterically at the “outtakes” at the end. I remember telling my dad that I wanted to be Jessie the Cowgirl. But above all I remember just plain loving every minute of it. There wasn’t one part of that movie that made me reach for the fast-forward button. As a kid growing up afraid of my own shadow, those kinds of movies were rare for me.
Over the years there have been Pixar movies that I loved (Wall-E, A Bug's Life, Up) and movies that I didn’t like (Cars, The Incredibles, Monsters University) and ones that I just plain never got tired of (Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo and, of course, the Toy Story series). Throughout it all, I never missed a chance to see a Pixar movie, even if I didn’t like the concept or the first trailers. When I got older and actually started going to theaters, I’d make Pixar movies my priority.
Okay, I’ve convinced you that I’m a complete sucker for a good Pixar film. So of course I went to see Inside Out and of course that movie made me cry like a small child. I don’t think there are enough words in the English language to express my love for Pete Docter. The guy gets it. He knows--not just tries hard enough, he knows--what it’s like to be a kid. He knows how it feels to be afraid of a monster in your closet. He understands the power that a persistent, innocent child can have over a grown-up. And after seeing Inside Out I am convinced that he knows better than any other grown-up on the face of the earth what it feels like for a kid to be uprooted and moved to a new place just as their childhood is winding down.
I think the reason that Inside Out hit me so hard was because I had a very similar childhood to Riley’s: I grew up an only child, very close to my parents, in a house in a neighborhood that I absolutely loved. But when I was about Riley’s age, my parents moved into a new house about an hour’s drive from our old one, in a very different area, and I absolutely hated it. I never ran away from home, or tried to, but there were days that I seriously considered it. And of course this completely baffled my parents, who assumed that because I’d liked making the drive from our old house to check on the progress of the new one I would like living in the new one. I couldn’t understand it either. I understand now that what I liked was having the time in the backseat to listen to music, getting to record and play with the camera while we were on-site, and getting to spend time with my parents. Whereas when we actually moved into the new house, there was a sense of finality. I hated it. I wanted to go home. Some days, I still do.
Recently I went back to St. Clair Shores, my childhood hometown, and saw everything through the eyes of a grown-up. (Or, okay, as close to grown-up as a 22-year-old can really be.) It’s a little run-down there now. The movie theater where I first saw The Santa Clause 2 and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets has long since closed down. There are cigarette butts all over my favorite park. A lot of businesses have changed hands or simply closed due to lack of income. In my old backyard, the tree that once held my swing has been cut down. But for all the changes, it is still my hometown, and I still love it. I always will.
So, yes, Inside Out really hit home, pun not intended. I was watching with my dad and I kept promising myself, no, I will not cry, I will not cry dammit, I’m a grown woman here and I will keep it together, Dad doesn’t need to see me cry (my dad hates it when I cry, even if it’s just over a movie), so I’m not going to cry--only to look over and discover that my dad had tears in his eyes too. That, my friends, is the power of Pixar. All the way back to the car he raved about what a great movie it was, and I have to agree.
What I love most about Inside Out is that it so perfectly captures how it feels to grow up. Just like Toy Story 3, which also reduced me to tears as I watched it right before going into my senior year of high school (can you say right in the feels?) and still had all of my American Girl Dolls and stuffed animals right there in my bedroom when I got back from the theater. I love the way Pixar can do that. I love that a team of animators, most of them grown men and women with kids of their own, can look around them and find inspiration for a film that hits kids and their parents alike right where it hurts in the best way possible. I love watching a film that makes me turn around and hug my mom and dad as soon as it’s over. I love that I can pop Toy Story 2 into the DVD player and still love it just as much as I did when I saw it back in 2002. I love that someday, I will show these movies to my kids, and see the looks on their faces when they reach the outtake reels at the end of the films. I love that.
So thank you, Pixar, for giving me something to love, something to look forward to, and something to aspire to. Because you can bet that as soon as I got home from the movie theater yesterday, I started working on my own script (more about that later) and contacting as many filmmaking friends as I could about getting this thing into pre-production. Oh…didn’t I mention my favorite thing about a Pixar film? No? Oops.
Well, here it is, then: every time I watch a Pixar movie, it makes me love cinema as a whole all the more. And every time I turn off the TV or walk out of the theater after watching a Pixar film, all I want to do is go and make something that makes someone else feel the way my favorite Pixar movie makes me feel.
Friday, July 31, 2015
When Idols Die
I was twelve years old the first time someone I liked died. It was my favorite comedian at the time, Mitch Hedberg, and I honestly can’t remember how I felt at that exact moment. I remember in the following days there was a sense of confusion--how could he have died? I didn’t know he was sick, I didn’t know about his addiction, how could he be gone? I never saw him live, never got to send him fanmail, never got to tell him “you’re my favorite”--and a lot of surprise, but no sense of loss. I remember thinking that it sucked, but I never cried for him. I was just surprised.
Fast forward about nine years or so, to August 11, 2014.
This I’ll never forget. A punch to the gut. An actual, sickening sense of loss, the feeling that something had been taken away. The feeling that the world had actually changed. How could the death of one man change the entire world? I remember saying “This isn’t real, this isn’t happening, he can’t be dead, he just can’t.” I didn’t believe it at first. I thought it was a cruel joke by a few bored news outlets.
But then it was confirmed. And that night, I cried myself to sleep over a man I’d never met. Because now I knew I’d never have the chance.
I never knew Robin Williams personally. Neither did the millions of fans who mourned him when he died. We didn’t meet him, didn’t know him, weren’t on a first-name basis. But it didn’t make our grief any less “real,” because we knew the Robin Williams that he wanted us to know. I talked to my friends the day after he died, and we all had a personal story relating to something that he had done, some movie he’d been in, that had changed our lives in some way.
For me, it was RV. I saw that movie with my dad, my permanent “bad-movie partner,” and we both loved that film more than either of us thought we would. It was a bonding experience for us, and it came at a time when most girls were scorning their dads for being “too embarrassing” to hang out with. The father-daughter relationship demonstrated in that film cemented what I already knew: that it was okay, really okay, normal even, to love your dad and still not know how to talk to him. But for my dad and I, movie quotes are our “language,” we speak it to each other and we speak it fluently: a quick Back to the Future reference when something goes wrong (“This damn thing doesn’t work at all!”), a bit of Replacements snark when accusing each other of tomfoolery (“A good Christian boy like you would never do nothing like that!”), a little bit of Disney here (“Not yet, Baloo!”), a little Steve Martin there (“Don’t forget to fasten your condom--seatbelt, I meant seatbelt!”). And of course RV was added to the legion of quotable movies. I first saw RV in 2006 and to this day I still answer the phone when my dad calls with a rapid-fire “Yo, my mobile homeboy, what’s trippin’ in the wood?” It’s a little thing, it really is. But it was something that had an impact, however minor. And it still means something to me.
And it’s silly, it’s really silly, but I love to think that wherever Williams is now, he can hear it when those of us who loved his work quote him. I love to think that wherever he is, he knows he’s loved, he knows he’s remembered, he knows he’s missed. I really truly believe that he does. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, maybe it’s faith, but I feel like he hears us, and he knows we miss him, and he knows we still care.
My selfish reaction when an actor I love dies always falls squarely into the “bitter filmmaker” category. When Christopher Lee died, I got teary-eyed thinking of all the movies I will never make with him. I’ll joke about it sometimes; I told my best friend once, “If Ian McKellan dies before I get to work with him, I will have words with God when I get to heaven.” I joke about it because I’m not sure what else to say. Because I know it happens. Celebrities aren’t immune to death. No one is. And what do you say, how do you react, when your favorite actor or singer or comic’s death reminds you of your own mortality?
The hardest part about losing a celebrity idol is that you don’t have license to mourn them the way you do when someone you personally knew dies. If your favorite teacher dies and you cry over their death, people understand. They say comforting (or theoretically comforting) things and bring you food and send you sympathy cards and reassuringly cuddle you as they remind you that the person is in a better place now and they’re watching over you and don’t worry, they loved you too. But when your favorite celebrity dies…it’s almost like you aren’t allowed to be sad, because people will side-eye you when you cry for them. “But you didn’t know them. I mean, yeah, they did some great work, and they’re cool and all, but…” Or they say, “Stop it. You’re being selfish. Think about how their family must feel,” implying that you have no right to be upset because you weren’t married to or related to that person. Or, my personal favorite, the implication that the person somehow deserved it. As in, “Well, Michael Jackson was great, but he was on drugs when he died.” Like he got what was coming to him, and I should feel forewarned instead of sad. And then you feel sad and guilty and alienated because there’s no protocol in place there. It’s almost like the five stages of grief are presumed to not apply here simply because the person being mourned happened to be in a few issues of People magazine.
My boyfriend’s favorite wrestler (well, one of them, I should say) died today. Now, I will warn you all, what I know about “Rowdy” Roddy Piper could probably fit on a mosquito’s toenail, because my only exposure to him was Comic-Con related. Ian made me watch a few of his matches before we went, because he wanted me to have some context, but being a total novice in the world of pro wrestling--again, thanks to Ian; I only started going to matches when he asked me to come with him--I legit had no idea who the hell the guy was. All I knew was that he wore a kilt (which I thought was kind of hot, but don’t tell my boyfriend I said that or he’ll think I want him to wear one too), that he was extremely good at his job, and that he was anti-bullying. Well, that was good enough for me. So when Ian asked if I wanted to come with when he went up to talk to Piper at Motor City Comic-Con my reaction was something along the lines of “well, why the hell not.”
Now, I’ve had a bad experience here and there with being completely, thoroughly let down by someone I really looked up to. At the tender age of fourteen I discovered that my favorite singer, Tyson Ritter, tended to act like a horny frat boy when on tour, and I was irrationally devastated. So, come Comic-Con, I was as nervous for Ian as I was for myself, because I was half-afraid that my favorites wouldn’t live up to my image of them (I was terrified of meeting Billy Boyd...turns out I didn’t need to be...but that’s a story for another post) and half-afraid that Roddy Piper would be a let-down for Ian. Because yes, I’m that kind of sensitive that means I can’t stand seeing other people in pain. Yeah, yeah, I know. Moving on.
Anyway, I needn’t have worried, because Piper was unbelievably kind to Ian. I’ll never forget that. First the guy called me beautiful (and if/when I post stills of myself on-set, you’ll see why that was such a shock) and implied that Ian had done well for himself by getting me as a girlfriend, then he threw in a comment about how “cool” my boyfriend seemed (reminder: we were at Comic-Con, a.k.a. Nerd Heaven; conventional definitions of “cool” seemed irrational here). I don’t remember much else of what was said, I just remember how unbelievably happy Ian was, how thrilled he was to meet his favorite, and how patient Piper was with the whole thing. Like how many people had that guy had to talk to that day? And yet he made damn sure to treat Ian like he was the only other person in the room. Didn’t rush us through the line or make the “yeah, whatever” face. Listened to Ian’s stammered thanks for supporting an anti-bullying group. Noticed our insecurities and complimented us in a way that would minimize them. Noticed me, despite my half-serious efforts to hide behind Ian (I was a little scared to meet a legit pro wrestler, okay?). Now, again I say, I didn’t know this guy--but based on one short meeting, and all the information that Ian piled on me in the weeks before Comic-Con, he seemed like a hell of a nice guy.
So how do I react, now that he’s gone? What the hell can I possibly say to my boyfriend that will ease his pain over the passing of someone he admired? What could those few friends of mine who didn’t think Robin Williams hung the moon have said to me when he died, other than “I’m sorry?” Because “I’m sorry” doesn’t seem like enough, but to say more feels contrived. And the fear of saying the wrong thing is very real, because one wrong word and you sound about as sensitive as Nurse Ratched. I remember feeling so frustrated when one of my friends jokingly said “You just had a crush on him, didn’t you?” when another comedian I liked passed a few years ago. It was infuriating. It completely dismissed my pain at losing someone whose art meant so much to me.
But what did I expect her to say? What can you say when someone’s--idol? I don’t like the word “idol,” I really don’t, it’s taken on such an awful meaning over the years (American Idol...ugh!), but it seems appropriate here--is taken away? It’s not like you knew the person, but on another level you did, and what the hell can someone say to you that will be comforting but not patronizing? How do you mourn someone who felt like a best friend to you, despite the fact that they never knew you existed?
All I know is that we did know them. I knew Robin Williams and Christopher Lee exactly the way they wanted me to know them: as Mrs. Doubtfire or Saruman; as a crazy OB-GYN or wacky Genie or beloved teacher, as a Bond villain or vampire or intergalactic dictator. I knew them as they wanted me to know them, and I will never stop loving the characters that they brought to life or being incredibly thankful to them for bringing those characters to life in the first place.
Ian, my love, I know that nothing I say now can make it hurt less that someone you admired is gone forever. But here’s what I believe: I believe that those few minutes you talked with him were invaluable. I believe that he knew, even just for those few minutes, how much he meant to you. And I think that wherever he is now, he knows that he is loved and missed and remembered. And don’t let anyone belittle your connection to him, or call your feelings for him “superficial” or laugh it off as hero-worship or say dumb things like “but you didn’t know him, how can you mourn him?” They’re wrong. You did know him, you knew him the way he wanted you to know him, and because of you, because of all the people who knew him and loved him and put his picture on their walls and read his book and asked him for an autograph at Comic-Con, he will never be forgotten.
Fast forward about nine years or so, to August 11, 2014.
This I’ll never forget. A punch to the gut. An actual, sickening sense of loss, the feeling that something had been taken away. The feeling that the world had actually changed. How could the death of one man change the entire world? I remember saying “This isn’t real, this isn’t happening, he can’t be dead, he just can’t.” I didn’t believe it at first. I thought it was a cruel joke by a few bored news outlets.
But then it was confirmed. And that night, I cried myself to sleep over a man I’d never met. Because now I knew I’d never have the chance.
I never knew Robin Williams personally. Neither did the millions of fans who mourned him when he died. We didn’t meet him, didn’t know him, weren’t on a first-name basis. But it didn’t make our grief any less “real,” because we knew the Robin Williams that he wanted us to know. I talked to my friends the day after he died, and we all had a personal story relating to something that he had done, some movie he’d been in, that had changed our lives in some way.
For me, it was RV. I saw that movie with my dad, my permanent “bad-movie partner,” and we both loved that film more than either of us thought we would. It was a bonding experience for us, and it came at a time when most girls were scorning their dads for being “too embarrassing” to hang out with. The father-daughter relationship demonstrated in that film cemented what I already knew: that it was okay, really okay, normal even, to love your dad and still not know how to talk to him. But for my dad and I, movie quotes are our “language,” we speak it to each other and we speak it fluently: a quick Back to the Future reference when something goes wrong (“This damn thing doesn’t work at all!”), a bit of Replacements snark when accusing each other of tomfoolery (“A good Christian boy like you would never do nothing like that!”), a little bit of Disney here (“Not yet, Baloo!”), a little Steve Martin there (“Don’t forget to fasten your condom--seatbelt, I meant seatbelt!”). And of course RV was added to the legion of quotable movies. I first saw RV in 2006 and to this day I still answer the phone when my dad calls with a rapid-fire “Yo, my mobile homeboy, what’s trippin’ in the wood?” It’s a little thing, it really is. But it was something that had an impact, however minor. And it still means something to me.
And it’s silly, it’s really silly, but I love to think that wherever Williams is now, he can hear it when those of us who loved his work quote him. I love to think that wherever he is, he knows he’s loved, he knows he’s remembered, he knows he’s missed. I really truly believe that he does. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, maybe it’s faith, but I feel like he hears us, and he knows we miss him, and he knows we still care.
My selfish reaction when an actor I love dies always falls squarely into the “bitter filmmaker” category. When Christopher Lee died, I got teary-eyed thinking of all the movies I will never make with him. I’ll joke about it sometimes; I told my best friend once, “If Ian McKellan dies before I get to work with him, I will have words with God when I get to heaven.” I joke about it because I’m not sure what else to say. Because I know it happens. Celebrities aren’t immune to death. No one is. And what do you say, how do you react, when your favorite actor or singer or comic’s death reminds you of your own mortality?
The hardest part about losing a celebrity idol is that you don’t have license to mourn them the way you do when someone you personally knew dies. If your favorite teacher dies and you cry over their death, people understand. They say comforting (or theoretically comforting) things and bring you food and send you sympathy cards and reassuringly cuddle you as they remind you that the person is in a better place now and they’re watching over you and don’t worry, they loved you too. But when your favorite celebrity dies…it’s almost like you aren’t allowed to be sad, because people will side-eye you when you cry for them. “But you didn’t know them. I mean, yeah, they did some great work, and they’re cool and all, but…” Or they say, “Stop it. You’re being selfish. Think about how their family must feel,” implying that you have no right to be upset because you weren’t married to or related to that person. Or, my personal favorite, the implication that the person somehow deserved it. As in, “Well, Michael Jackson was great, but he was on drugs when he died.” Like he got what was coming to him, and I should feel forewarned instead of sad. And then you feel sad and guilty and alienated because there’s no protocol in place there. It’s almost like the five stages of grief are presumed to not apply here simply because the person being mourned happened to be in a few issues of People magazine.
My boyfriend’s favorite wrestler (well, one of them, I should say) died today. Now, I will warn you all, what I know about “Rowdy” Roddy Piper could probably fit on a mosquito’s toenail, because my only exposure to him was Comic-Con related. Ian made me watch a few of his matches before we went, because he wanted me to have some context, but being a total novice in the world of pro wrestling--again, thanks to Ian; I only started going to matches when he asked me to come with him--I legit had no idea who the hell the guy was. All I knew was that he wore a kilt (which I thought was kind of hot, but don’t tell my boyfriend I said that or he’ll think I want him to wear one too), that he was extremely good at his job, and that he was anti-bullying. Well, that was good enough for me. So when Ian asked if I wanted to come with when he went up to talk to Piper at Motor City Comic-Con my reaction was something along the lines of “well, why the hell not.”
Now, I’ve had a bad experience here and there with being completely, thoroughly let down by someone I really looked up to. At the tender age of fourteen I discovered that my favorite singer, Tyson Ritter, tended to act like a horny frat boy when on tour, and I was irrationally devastated. So, come Comic-Con, I was as nervous for Ian as I was for myself, because I was half-afraid that my favorites wouldn’t live up to my image of them (I was terrified of meeting Billy Boyd...turns out I didn’t need to be...but that’s a story for another post) and half-afraid that Roddy Piper would be a let-down for Ian. Because yes, I’m that kind of sensitive that means I can’t stand seeing other people in pain. Yeah, yeah, I know. Moving on.
Anyway, I needn’t have worried, because Piper was unbelievably kind to Ian. I’ll never forget that. First the guy called me beautiful (and if/when I post stills of myself on-set, you’ll see why that was such a shock) and implied that Ian had done well for himself by getting me as a girlfriend, then he threw in a comment about how “cool” my boyfriend seemed (reminder: we were at Comic-Con, a.k.a. Nerd Heaven; conventional definitions of “cool” seemed irrational here). I don’t remember much else of what was said, I just remember how unbelievably happy Ian was, how thrilled he was to meet his favorite, and how patient Piper was with the whole thing. Like how many people had that guy had to talk to that day? And yet he made damn sure to treat Ian like he was the only other person in the room. Didn’t rush us through the line or make the “yeah, whatever” face. Listened to Ian’s stammered thanks for supporting an anti-bullying group. Noticed our insecurities and complimented us in a way that would minimize them. Noticed me, despite my half-serious efforts to hide behind Ian (I was a little scared to meet a legit pro wrestler, okay?). Now, again I say, I didn’t know this guy--but based on one short meeting, and all the information that Ian piled on me in the weeks before Comic-Con, he seemed like a hell of a nice guy.
So how do I react, now that he’s gone? What the hell can I possibly say to my boyfriend that will ease his pain over the passing of someone he admired? What could those few friends of mine who didn’t think Robin Williams hung the moon have said to me when he died, other than “I’m sorry?” Because “I’m sorry” doesn’t seem like enough, but to say more feels contrived. And the fear of saying the wrong thing is very real, because one wrong word and you sound about as sensitive as Nurse Ratched. I remember feeling so frustrated when one of my friends jokingly said “You just had a crush on him, didn’t you?” when another comedian I liked passed a few years ago. It was infuriating. It completely dismissed my pain at losing someone whose art meant so much to me.
But what did I expect her to say? What can you say when someone’s--idol? I don’t like the word “idol,” I really don’t, it’s taken on such an awful meaning over the years (American Idol...ugh!), but it seems appropriate here--is taken away? It’s not like you knew the person, but on another level you did, and what the hell can someone say to you that will be comforting but not patronizing? How do you mourn someone who felt like a best friend to you, despite the fact that they never knew you existed?
All I know is that we did know them. I knew Robin Williams and Christopher Lee exactly the way they wanted me to know them: as Mrs. Doubtfire or Saruman; as a crazy OB-GYN or wacky Genie or beloved teacher, as a Bond villain or vampire or intergalactic dictator. I knew them as they wanted me to know them, and I will never stop loving the characters that they brought to life or being incredibly thankful to them for bringing those characters to life in the first place.
Ian, my love, I know that nothing I say now can make it hurt less that someone you admired is gone forever. But here’s what I believe: I believe that those few minutes you talked with him were invaluable. I believe that he knew, even just for those few minutes, how much he meant to you. And I think that wherever he is now, he knows that he is loved and missed and remembered. And don’t let anyone belittle your connection to him, or call your feelings for him “superficial” or laugh it off as hero-worship or say dumb things like “but you didn’t know him, how can you mourn him?” They’re wrong. You did know him, you knew him the way he wanted you to know him, and because of you, because of all the people who knew him and loved him and put his picture on their walls and read his book and asked him for an autograph at Comic-Con, he will never be forgotten.
Avery Tries to be a Critic: 'Pixels'
So basically, I’m a fangirl. I will go see any movie--don’t really give a damn what it’s about--as long as it has one of the following qualities: 1) it was made by a director I like, 2) it has an actor in it that I like (bonus points if there’s multiple favorite actors), 3) it was written by a screenwriter I like, or 4) it was based on a book by an author I like. (It doesn’t matter whether I’ve actually read the book. Yeah, yeah. I know.)
So, Pixels had a lot of strikes against it--it’s CGI-heavy, which I usually hate; it has Adam Sandler, who I absolutely despise; it was written by a screenwriter whose movies I generally don’t like; and the reviews were absolutely terrible, which shouldn’t influence me but it usually does. BUT. It involved Pac-Man (which I absolutely love) and, more importantly, was directed by one of my all-time favorite directors, Chris Columbus. To make matters even more complicated I knew that one of my favorite actors, Peter Dinklage--and if you don’t know who that is, I beg you to go and watch The Station Agent, it is a work of art and your life won’t be complete until you watch it--had a prominent role.
So I decided, what the hell, I’ll see Pixels. Why not? Could be great or awful. I’m just enough of a Columbus fangirl to find out. I only hoped it wouldn’t live up to those awful reviews.
And, to my immense delight, it did not live up to those awful reviews. Not even close.
Okay, I’ll admit, the script is…well, it’s about as good as I expected it to be. It’s choked with a lot of throwaway jokes and heavy with nostalgia about the “good old days” before video games became violent and “realistic.” If you’re like me, and the thought of playing Walking Dead instead of Super Mario makes you want to puke, you’ll like it; if you call everyone who says Pac-Man is better than Call of Duty is a gaming snob, then you probably won’t appreciate it. I tried not to watch it from a political angle, but with all the critics calling it misogynist, it was hard not to. And yet I couldn’t find much in the way of political message here, unless Sandler & Co thought it highly important that we all understand the danger of aliens thinking our video games are a declaration of war. Gotta wonder where all the people who are crying “It’s just like Gamergate!” are coming from, because I sure as hell didn’t get that vibe from the movie at all.
Now, I’ll admit, there are some places where the plot is a stretch. “There’s no career for a gamer.” Really? Uh, okay, could this guy not have designed new video games, opened his own arcade, or if he was really ambitious become a Disney Imagineer? Hell, couldn’t he have made a career of collecting, trading and selling vintage games or game machines, if he really couldn’t think of any other possible game-related career? That part was a stretch to me. Especially given that his BFF, whose childhood claim to fame was stealing quarters from little girls’ lemonade stands, grew up to be the President of the United States. Okay, we’ll just pretend that was in the realm of possibility.
And yet to quibble about realism when the plot of the movie revolves around an alien invasion is kind of pointless, when you think about it. The reasoning behind the entire story of Pixels is soft sci-fi at its finest. We’re not meant to question why the aliens took what was clearly a time capsule and read it as a declaration of war. We’re not meant to question the “light guns” that fight off those aliens. And we’re definitely not meant to question how Dinklage’s character could possibly have used cheat codes in a real-life situation. No, if you’re sitting there marking every continuity error, scientific impossibility and minor anachronism, you are definitely watching Pixels the wrong way. The effects are impressive, the humor is surprisingly clean, and of course Q*bert is about as cute as it’s possible to be. With all of that, it’s fairly easy to overlook the plot holes. Just don’t think about it too hard.
The finest moments of Pixels are when the movie points out its own weirdness. Now, I’ll admit I’m a sucker for self-aware movies--I’m a Mel Brooks fan, what did you expect?--so my favorite parts could be (and, judging from some of the reviews I’ve seen, definitely were) someone else’s biggest irritation. So be it. But I thought the scene where Sam goes over to install Matty’s new TV and ends up drinking wine with Violet in the closet was one of the best in the film. We expect them to kiss and fall in love at first sight because that’s how movies work, but they don’t, and it’s a moment that’s as funny and heartfelt as it is cringe-worthy. Later on, one of the good-guy aliens (you’d have to watch the film to understand) transforms into Lady Lisa, the longtime crush of one of the game nerds. “Am I the only one who’s weirded out by this?” Sam questions, while everyone else goes “Aww.” No, you’re not the only one, Adam Sandler. We’re all a little weirded out right now. But that’s okay, we’re supposed to be.
For all the movie’s flaws, the characterization is damn good. Critics are trashing the film for misogyny, but I personally thought that Violet was very well-written and well-acted. We all remember what I said about perfect female characters, and I am very happy to report that Lieutenant Colonel Violet Van Patten is the absolute opposite of perfect. Physically attractive she may be--and unbelievably smart, to boot--but she too is prone to hissy fits and juvenile snark, just like Sandler’s Sam Brenner. The “nerd team” of video game expert fighters is about as stereotyped as you could expect, from the insecure leader to the weirdo in love with his favorite game character, but somehow the script still manages to make them lovable in their own way. I read a lot about misogyny, lack of female gamers and Gamergate in the reviews, but I have to say I never felt threatened as a female viewer. Yes, I’d have loved to see more women as gamers in the film, but--minor spoiler alert--Violet has enough badass moments to make up for it; after all, she does invent the light guns that are the only defense against the aliens.
So that brings me to the outlandish reaction to Pixels. The accusations of sexism were what really got my goat, because upon watching the movie I found nothing outrageous about it. It all ties back into what I said about the Perfection Curse that we slap onto our female characters and call it “equality” for “strong female characters.” We as a society demand more female representation, and then complain when those characters don’t live up to our expectations. “We want more women in the films!” we cry, and then hastily add, “but if those women aren’t exactly the way we want them, you are sexist and we hate you!” Hence, our reactions to Black Widow, Katniss Everdeen and Violet Van Patten. We demanded them, now we throw them back when they aren’t just what we wanted.
Ladies and gentlemen, don’t take this the wrong way, but give me a freaking break.
I’m not going to say Pixels was fantastic, because it wasn’t. It’s a great “popcorn” movie--the kind you watch with your best friends on a Saturday night or pop into your DVD player when you’re ready for a nice hit of nostalgia--but I won’t defend it as Oscar-worthy or say it changed my entire perspective on Sandler. But I think the reaction to it says a lot about us as a society of movie-watchers. We are ready and waiting to rake anything that doesn’t live up to our exacting expectations through the coals, and then complain that filmmakers don’t “try hard enough.” And to someone who’s primed to go into the film industry…holy shit, that is scary.
So, Pixels had a lot of strikes against it--it’s CGI-heavy, which I usually hate; it has Adam Sandler, who I absolutely despise; it was written by a screenwriter whose movies I generally don’t like; and the reviews were absolutely terrible, which shouldn’t influence me but it usually does. BUT. It involved Pac-Man (which I absolutely love) and, more importantly, was directed by one of my all-time favorite directors, Chris Columbus. To make matters even more complicated I knew that one of my favorite actors, Peter Dinklage--and if you don’t know who that is, I beg you to go and watch The Station Agent, it is a work of art and your life won’t be complete until you watch it--had a prominent role.
So I decided, what the hell, I’ll see Pixels. Why not? Could be great or awful. I’m just enough of a Columbus fangirl to find out. I only hoped it wouldn’t live up to those awful reviews.
And, to my immense delight, it did not live up to those awful reviews. Not even close.
Okay, I’ll admit, the script is…well, it’s about as good as I expected it to be. It’s choked with a lot of throwaway jokes and heavy with nostalgia about the “good old days” before video games became violent and “realistic.” If you’re like me, and the thought of playing Walking Dead instead of Super Mario makes you want to puke, you’ll like it; if you call everyone who says Pac-Man is better than Call of Duty is a gaming snob, then you probably won’t appreciate it. I tried not to watch it from a political angle, but with all the critics calling it misogynist, it was hard not to. And yet I couldn’t find much in the way of political message here, unless Sandler & Co thought it highly important that we all understand the danger of aliens thinking our video games are a declaration of war. Gotta wonder where all the people who are crying “It’s just like Gamergate!” are coming from, because I sure as hell didn’t get that vibe from the movie at all.
Now, I’ll admit, there are some places where the plot is a stretch. “There’s no career for a gamer.” Really? Uh, okay, could this guy not have designed new video games, opened his own arcade, or if he was really ambitious become a Disney Imagineer? Hell, couldn’t he have made a career of collecting, trading and selling vintage games or game machines, if he really couldn’t think of any other possible game-related career? That part was a stretch to me. Especially given that his BFF, whose childhood claim to fame was stealing quarters from little girls’ lemonade stands, grew up to be the President of the United States. Okay, we’ll just pretend that was in the realm of possibility.
And yet to quibble about realism when the plot of the movie revolves around an alien invasion is kind of pointless, when you think about it. The reasoning behind the entire story of Pixels is soft sci-fi at its finest. We’re not meant to question why the aliens took what was clearly a time capsule and read it as a declaration of war. We’re not meant to question the “light guns” that fight off those aliens. And we’re definitely not meant to question how Dinklage’s character could possibly have used cheat codes in a real-life situation. No, if you’re sitting there marking every continuity error, scientific impossibility and minor anachronism, you are definitely watching Pixels the wrong way. The effects are impressive, the humor is surprisingly clean, and of course Q*bert is about as cute as it’s possible to be. With all of that, it’s fairly easy to overlook the plot holes. Just don’t think about it too hard.
The finest moments of Pixels are when the movie points out its own weirdness. Now, I’ll admit I’m a sucker for self-aware movies--I’m a Mel Brooks fan, what did you expect?--so my favorite parts could be (and, judging from some of the reviews I’ve seen, definitely were) someone else’s biggest irritation. So be it. But I thought the scene where Sam goes over to install Matty’s new TV and ends up drinking wine with Violet in the closet was one of the best in the film. We expect them to kiss and fall in love at first sight because that’s how movies work, but they don’t, and it’s a moment that’s as funny and heartfelt as it is cringe-worthy. Later on, one of the good-guy aliens (you’d have to watch the film to understand) transforms into Lady Lisa, the longtime crush of one of the game nerds. “Am I the only one who’s weirded out by this?” Sam questions, while everyone else goes “Aww.” No, you’re not the only one, Adam Sandler. We’re all a little weirded out right now. But that’s okay, we’re supposed to be.
For all the movie’s flaws, the characterization is damn good. Critics are trashing the film for misogyny, but I personally thought that Violet was very well-written and well-acted. We all remember what I said about perfect female characters, and I am very happy to report that Lieutenant Colonel Violet Van Patten is the absolute opposite of perfect. Physically attractive she may be--and unbelievably smart, to boot--but she too is prone to hissy fits and juvenile snark, just like Sandler’s Sam Brenner. The “nerd team” of video game expert fighters is about as stereotyped as you could expect, from the insecure leader to the weirdo in love with his favorite game character, but somehow the script still manages to make them lovable in their own way. I read a lot about misogyny, lack of female gamers and Gamergate in the reviews, but I have to say I never felt threatened as a female viewer. Yes, I’d have loved to see more women as gamers in the film, but--minor spoiler alert--Violet has enough badass moments to make up for it; after all, she does invent the light guns that are the only defense against the aliens.
So that brings me to the outlandish reaction to Pixels. The accusations of sexism were what really got my goat, because upon watching the movie I found nothing outrageous about it. It all ties back into what I said about the Perfection Curse that we slap onto our female characters and call it “equality” for “strong female characters.” We as a society demand more female representation, and then complain when those characters don’t live up to our expectations. “We want more women in the films!” we cry, and then hastily add, “but if those women aren’t exactly the way we want them, you are sexist and we hate you!” Hence, our reactions to Black Widow, Katniss Everdeen and Violet Van Patten. We demanded them, now we throw them back when they aren’t just what we wanted.
Ladies and gentlemen, don’t take this the wrong way, but give me a freaking break.
I’m not going to say Pixels was fantastic, because it wasn’t. It’s a great “popcorn” movie--the kind you watch with your best friends on a Saturday night or pop into your DVD player when you’re ready for a nice hit of nostalgia--but I won’t defend it as Oscar-worthy or say it changed my entire perspective on Sandler. But I think the reaction to it says a lot about us as a society of movie-watchers. We are ready and waiting to rake anything that doesn’t live up to our exacting expectations through the coals, and then complain that filmmakers don’t “try hard enough.” And to someone who’s primed to go into the film industry…holy shit, that is scary.
Thursday, July 9, 2015
The genre judgement conundrum
Okay, I’ll admit it: sometimes I don’t practice what I preach. I’ll write here all night and all day about not judging a movie before you see it, watching a variety of movies instead of sticking to your favorites, seeing movies outside your preferred genres, giving movies a chance even if they don’t get good reviews…but I confess, there are a lot of movies where I take one look at the trailer (or a DVD cover) and go, “Nope. Not a chance.” I have my pet peeves within a film, and if I know going in that the film I’m watching has those issues, it’s practically guaranteed I won’t like it.
I can’t stand gore or torture porn. If you ask me to watch Evil Dead or Saw I will run away. I don’t like supernatural horror, mainly because it scares the hell out of me, but also because those movies have a tendency to rely on archetypes and jump scares instead of fleshing out a real story. I don’t like R-rated comedies where 90% of the jokes revolve around sex, controlled substances, or petty crime. Oh, and don’t even ask me to consider knockoff parodies like the Scary Movie series--there is no chance in hell. I hate those cheap comedies most of all, because all I can think about when I watch them is, if only I had those resources…God, what I could do instead of making crap like this.
So when I found myself putting Ted into my DVD player, all I could do was stand there, disgusted, and ask myself, what in God’s name am I doing.
Let me back up here and explain that back in May, Ian took me to Motor City Comic-Con and it was pretty much the best date of my life. I got to sit in on a panel with a Supernatural writer, meet some of my favorite actors, and oh yeah, meet and talk to Billy Boyd--thanks to Ian, who surprised me by not only taking me to the con, but getting me a photo op with my favorite Hobbit. So, to thank him, I offered to let him pick the next ten movies we saw together. So far I’ve loved all of the ones we’ve seen (up to yesterday we’d watched treasures like The Truman Show and Angels in the Outfield) but when he came over the other day he handed me a DVD that I desperately wanted to throw in the trash can.
I hate, hate, hate movies like Ted. They are full of raunchy, cheap jokes that rely on shock value and foul language instead of actual humor. The acting is usually half-assed at best, unless a weirdly good actor randomly ends up in an otherwise-shitty movie. One of the reasons I get so pissed off when people like Ethan Hawke compare all mainstream films to “hamburgers and hot dogs” is because it means they’re lumping in truly brilliant blockbusters, like Back to the Future and Jurassic Park, to crap like This Is The End and Epic Movie. These films are, in my mind, truly empty entertainment. I can’t remember the last time I watched one of those movies and came away thinking, “Y’know, I’m glad I watched that.” I’d sooner watch any of the junk featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 than put myself through Superbad, Bridesmaids or The Hangover.
So you can imagine it took a fair bit of convincing to get me to watch Ted. Ian had to repeat over and over that it was really cute, that the jokes weren’t all centered around sex, that it was one of Seth MacFarlane’s better projects, and that the acting was actually pretty decent. I tried to guilt him out of it, reminding him that my ex had once forced me into seeing Scary Movie 5 and it gave me nightmares and I hated porn jokes and can’t we please watch, I don’t know, Nightmare on Elm Street instead? But he reminded me of my promise and I finally gave in and watched Ted.
Now, I won’t say I loved it. I didn’t. It was decent, but it’s not going to be on any of my top ten lists. And I can see why it wasn’t an Oscar favorite. I can’t say I’m suddenly interested in watching another handful of similar comedies. I’m not about to run out and see the sequel, and God knows it’s not going to turn me into a MacFarlane fan.
But…
But for all its flaws, Ted is actually pretty damn cute. It’s raunchy, yes--for anyone who hasn’t seen it, allow me to drop a little spoiler: the teddy bear gets laid--but there’s enough wit in the humor to offset some of the more tasteless potty humor. Okay, maybe it’s still about as stupid as you’d expect (at one point I told Ian “if they make one more fart joke I’ll throw something") but there are some pretty good lines, there’s some nice banter here and there, the celebrity cameos are well-timed, and the romance between Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis’s characters is actually fairly believable. Not only that, but there are some moments that would make any Tumblr warrior proud: a gay love story is casually tossed in and treated like it’s no big deal, and at one point Wahlberg’s character sarcastically says that if he’s assaulted it’s his fault for “asking for it.” Little things like that keep the movie from collapsing into pure, unadulterated piles of yuck, but underneath all of the both PC and non-PC humor, the whole thing is actually…sweet. Surprisingly sweet, in fact, given that the film is about a foul-mouthed twentysomething teddy bear and his childish human BFF.
Like I said, I’m not about to run out and rent all three of the Hangover movies. And no power on this earth will make me see the rest of the Scary Movie franchise. And, please, someone shoot me on the spot if I ever think about making a movie with that many fart jokes. But watching Ted--and actually enjoying Ted--gave me a new perspective. I’ve been sulking furiously over every last indieWIRE article that makes fun of Jurassic World or insinuates that blockbusters are empty brain candy, only to turn right around and call a whole other genre “brain candy” without even watching the majority of the films in that category. And that, as I’m sure any sane person would tell me, is not fair.
No, Ted isn’t a masterpiece. But it’s still a movie that took time and energy and, yes, a lot of money to make. Someone had to come up with the idea, however cringe-worthy, of letting a cute, fuzzy teddy bear have sex with Norah Jones. (And can we just take a minute to admire the guts it took for that woman to take on a film role where she fondly reminisces about getting it on with a frickin’ stuffed animal? I’m not sure I would’ve done that.) Someone had to write, direct, film, edit, and distribute this thing. Just like all my favorites, Ted was the product of a group of very dedicated people who didn’t give a shit about anything except the fact that they had a story to tell.
And whether you liked the film or not, you’ve got to at least give it some credit for that reason alone. At least, I have to. Because I can’t call myself a bad-movie champion, and give the critics hell for judging a movie based on its genre, and then refuse to give movies like Ted a chance.
I can’t stand gore or torture porn. If you ask me to watch Evil Dead or Saw I will run away. I don’t like supernatural horror, mainly because it scares the hell out of me, but also because those movies have a tendency to rely on archetypes and jump scares instead of fleshing out a real story. I don’t like R-rated comedies where 90% of the jokes revolve around sex, controlled substances, or petty crime. Oh, and don’t even ask me to consider knockoff parodies like the Scary Movie series--there is no chance in hell. I hate those cheap comedies most of all, because all I can think about when I watch them is, if only I had those resources…God, what I could do instead of making crap like this.
So when I found myself putting Ted into my DVD player, all I could do was stand there, disgusted, and ask myself, what in God’s name am I doing.
Let me back up here and explain that back in May, Ian took me to Motor City Comic-Con and it was pretty much the best date of my life. I got to sit in on a panel with a Supernatural writer, meet some of my favorite actors, and oh yeah, meet and talk to Billy Boyd--thanks to Ian, who surprised me by not only taking me to the con, but getting me a photo op with my favorite Hobbit. So, to thank him, I offered to let him pick the next ten movies we saw together. So far I’ve loved all of the ones we’ve seen (up to yesterday we’d watched treasures like The Truman Show and Angels in the Outfield) but when he came over the other day he handed me a DVD that I desperately wanted to throw in the trash can.
I hate, hate, hate movies like Ted. They are full of raunchy, cheap jokes that rely on shock value and foul language instead of actual humor. The acting is usually half-assed at best, unless a weirdly good actor randomly ends up in an otherwise-shitty movie. One of the reasons I get so pissed off when people like Ethan Hawke compare all mainstream films to “hamburgers and hot dogs” is because it means they’re lumping in truly brilliant blockbusters, like Back to the Future and Jurassic Park, to crap like This Is The End and Epic Movie. These films are, in my mind, truly empty entertainment. I can’t remember the last time I watched one of those movies and came away thinking, “Y’know, I’m glad I watched that.” I’d sooner watch any of the junk featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 than put myself through Superbad, Bridesmaids or The Hangover.
So you can imagine it took a fair bit of convincing to get me to watch Ted. Ian had to repeat over and over that it was really cute, that the jokes weren’t all centered around sex, that it was one of Seth MacFarlane’s better projects, and that the acting was actually pretty decent. I tried to guilt him out of it, reminding him that my ex had once forced me into seeing Scary Movie 5 and it gave me nightmares and I hated porn jokes and can’t we please watch, I don’t know, Nightmare on Elm Street instead? But he reminded me of my promise and I finally gave in and watched Ted.
Now, I won’t say I loved it. I didn’t. It was decent, but it’s not going to be on any of my top ten lists. And I can see why it wasn’t an Oscar favorite. I can’t say I’m suddenly interested in watching another handful of similar comedies. I’m not about to run out and see the sequel, and God knows it’s not going to turn me into a MacFarlane fan.
But…
But for all its flaws, Ted is actually pretty damn cute. It’s raunchy, yes--for anyone who hasn’t seen it, allow me to drop a little spoiler: the teddy bear gets laid--but there’s enough wit in the humor to offset some of the more tasteless potty humor. Okay, maybe it’s still about as stupid as you’d expect (at one point I told Ian “if they make one more fart joke I’ll throw something") but there are some pretty good lines, there’s some nice banter here and there, the celebrity cameos are well-timed, and the romance between Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis’s characters is actually fairly believable. Not only that, but there are some moments that would make any Tumblr warrior proud: a gay love story is casually tossed in and treated like it’s no big deal, and at one point Wahlberg’s character sarcastically says that if he’s assaulted it’s his fault for “asking for it.” Little things like that keep the movie from collapsing into pure, unadulterated piles of yuck, but underneath all of the both PC and non-PC humor, the whole thing is actually…sweet. Surprisingly sweet, in fact, given that the film is about a foul-mouthed twentysomething teddy bear and his childish human BFF.
Like I said, I’m not about to run out and rent all three of the Hangover movies. And no power on this earth will make me see the rest of the Scary Movie franchise. And, please, someone shoot me on the spot if I ever think about making a movie with that many fart jokes. But watching Ted--and actually enjoying Ted--gave me a new perspective. I’ve been sulking furiously over every last indieWIRE article that makes fun of Jurassic World or insinuates that blockbusters are empty brain candy, only to turn right around and call a whole other genre “brain candy” without even watching the majority of the films in that category. And that, as I’m sure any sane person would tell me, is not fair.
No, Ted isn’t a masterpiece. But it’s still a movie that took time and energy and, yes, a lot of money to make. Someone had to come up with the idea, however cringe-worthy, of letting a cute, fuzzy teddy bear have sex with Norah Jones. (And can we just take a minute to admire the guts it took for that woman to take on a film role where she fondly reminisces about getting it on with a frickin’ stuffed animal? I’m not sure I would’ve done that.) Someone had to write, direct, film, edit, and distribute this thing. Just like all my favorites, Ted was the product of a group of very dedicated people who didn’t give a shit about anything except the fact that they had a story to tell.
And whether you liked the film or not, you’ve got to at least give it some credit for that reason alone. At least, I have to. Because I can’t call myself a bad-movie champion, and give the critics hell for judging a movie based on its genre, and then refuse to give movies like Ted a chance.
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