What a world, that fan-fiction world. Is it? Anyway. Couple weekends ago, for “Battleship Pretension Live 4: The Reckoning,” I wrote an epic introduction, inspired by “The Lives of Harry Lime,” in which (in the intro, this is) the co-hosts traveled to Cedar Rapids nine years ago and stumbled upon the idea for their podcast. It was utter untruth, from start to finish, which is what made it so damn much fun. The live show should be posted in a couple weeks, and if you haven’t heard Kyle Kinane perform stand-up yet, get ready for something awesome. It was a great time, as always, and here’s roommate Adam’s poster art:
BP are you with me?!
Also! Found this from perusing good friend/ soon-to-be-reunited-fellow-player-of-Carcassonne BJ’s twitter page. It made me laugh. A lot. The site is called Our Valued Customers. Enjoy.
This will be very quick, because I’ve got a few hours of editing to get in before heading out to play Ultimate Frisbee (it’s soooo LA).
This is what I’m talking about right here. Observe below. “Shark Attack II: 2-Shark Attack” kicked off a string of jokes my friends and I were making last Saturday after Movie Night. We were just spit-balling about bad straight-to-DVD (“direct-to-market” for the douchey) movies… which are most of them. Then Adam decided to make this little gem. That he doesn’t make a million dollars a year doing this is the kind of crime that perfectly fits the tenor of Adam’s sad existence.
*(Seriously though, check out his work HERE. He’s insanely talented.)
There is nothing better than a group of friends who can all contribute to a conversation like this. There are four of us, and we don’t miss a beat. It’s the best ending to my week every week. We tend toward the absurd and have a particular penchant for creating ridiculous fake movie titles, franchises, scenarios, et al. Hell, that’s basically how “Trailer: The Movie” ever came about.
I won’t say we never sound totally pretentious, or that we only mock because we love. No. We don’t. We love movies as an art-form sure, but these jokes play more into our fascination with the way the movie industry moves and operates, especially on the outskirts. And shark attacks. Always fascinated by shark attacks. No way around them.
Anyway, we thought it was funny as hell.
Another Shark Attack... And Other Shark Attacks!!!
And… why not:
Only on CBS
Poster Adam created for the Live Show for the popular podcast, “Battleship Pretension“
About half way through David Foster Wallace’s magnum opus of a novel, Infinite Jest you realize it’s not going to end like a regular book. You realize this because the book tells it to you pretty openly. It spends much of its time ruminating and wondering about and arguing about and analyzing all of the ways in which our expectations tend more to reflect an abstracted definition of success rather than reality. And in so organizing it this way, Wallace gets to the heart not only of his book’s over-arching thematic statements (which incorporate nearly all realms familial, societal, artistic, athletic, narcotic, political)– its raison d’etre (as it would, did, does say)– but also Wallace’s own deep-rooted conflicts about the power of art to change people; of entertainment; of their place and status in our lives, and those of the artists and entertainers delivering them to us.
But it’s even more than all that too. Our expectations (in general, but for the novel in particular too, I suppose) are only important because they can help us try to figure things out or at least organize experience in a way that makes sense from one moment to the next. What should our lives be, what should anyone’s life be? What should we be doing, what does it mean to live life successfully? And in order to answer that, we have to figure out what does it mean to be successful in the first place? Whose definition? Our own? Our parents’? Society’s? And since one of the main ways success is gauged is by achievement, we look at our talents and we look at what achievements those talents can accrue and we set ourselves to the task of achieving those achievements. For Wallace, achievement lies in writing. And so this book is as much about itself as it is about its author trying to figure out what is the best type of book for a single author to attempt to write.
See? This is what happens when you start thinking about this book. Because it’s so big and so dense and can get your mind swirling very easily, I notice I haven’t been able to do more than imply the role that “addiction” in all its forms plays into all of this. But to put it simply, which is nearly impossible to do, to me the book is about addiction – to success, expectations, entertainment, family demons, et al. – and how it takes something more than (and outside of) ourselves to be able to do anything about it.
A Concise Explanation of "Infinite Jest"
It makes sense, then, that the book is all over the place, which it is, though as I said way back in September, not all over the place in a confusing, un-followable way; but instead in an ingenious, alive, playful, searching way. One of the greatest pleasures of the book is its ability to open up your own wonder at how it could possibly have been conceived by another person, how that person managed to juggle and blend and just keep straight all the pieces to the puzzle, while still creating a cohesive, engaging, entertaining piece of literature.
The best comparison I can make is the one that will also identify why I connected to this book so much — Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia.” Both are sprawling stories in which the unbeknownst interconnectivity of a community of people creates the landscape for the story; in which plot details are not simply vague but indecipherable; in which the past has a vice-grip on the characters and forces them to wonder how far back the patterns go and what, if anything, they can do to change that; and in which the ending can be described as so many different things, among which “conventional” is not one.
Infinite Jest has the advantage of being a novel which allows it to move more seamlessly through many different places in time. As well, because it shows us things with words, not images, it is able to make a character who is almost never actually present the central, dominating force of the book: James O. Incandenza. For fun, I’ll gives the most basic plot outline. James O. Incandenza was an annular- physicist-turned-tennis-academy-founder-turned-uber-anti-confluential-filmmaker (see?) who makes one particular film called “Infinite Jest,” which is said to have be so entertaining that all who watch it cannot look away and eventually die from watching it. A Canadian terrorist cell, “The Wheelchair Assassins” wants to get its hands on the film to make copies and use as a terrorist weapon. Trouble is, the film was never released, so no one has a copy, except but there must be a master copy floating around, right? The filmmaker has three sons, Orin (a kicker for the Arizona Cardinals), Hal (a 17-yr old at the tennis academy), and Mario (who is disabled and shared his father’s cinematic interests). The book also follows Don Gately, who is on staff at the half-way house down the hill from the tennis academy, where he is on parole himself and where he helps others who are connected to the filmmaker and the film itself, though none of them seem to know it. And all of this moves out in larger and larger circles.
When the book begins, James O. Incandenza has already killed himself. The book follows a few major plot lines, chronicling the events of the tennis academy — with about dozen major supporting characters and ### minor characters — and those at the halfway house – with another few dozen supporting characters and another ### minor characters — and then there are Steeply and Marathe, government officials involved in multi-layered double crosses, Marathe being a member of the aforementioned “Wheelchair Assassins.” When your book is 1100 pages long, you’d be surprised how effectively you can keep all of these strands going.
What makes the book powerful to me is the way Wallace balances his book’s world. He succeeds at creating a hilariously absurdist world, which contains so many elongated passages involving multiple complex rationales and some of the flat-out funniest writing I’ve ever read, which exposes the flaws in manmade systems. He also examines the endless minutiae of three very separate worlds – drug additions, sports [mainly tennis and football], and filmmaking – and does so in a way that is neither comprehensive nor simplified and uses them to powerfully extend into the thematic realms.
Because the writing is so funny and so smart and contains so much word-play, there is the very real danger of losing touch with the characters; of populating the world with interesting but ultimately un-identifiable people. And so Wallace deliberately slows things down sometimes and allows characters to talk, to really just talk and communicate and seek and try to make sense of their lives and circumstances and pasts. He allows them to share themselves with others in the hope of creating a connection and maybe just identifying with them. These passages come to us in a few different ways. Some are third-person narrations which take on the particular speech patterns of one specific character, as the events are relayed. Some are told through recollections of other characters, with rich, detailed prose that takes your breath away. Some are told through letters, some through terse transcripts of recorded conversations. There is the tale of the woman who refused to stop using drugs during pregnancy, gave birth to a stillborn child and carried it around like it was alive, so great was her guilt, so crushing was her grief. There is the story of Eric Clipperton, who played every tennis match holding a hand-gun to his head, threatening to shoot himself if the other player did not let him win. There is Mrs. Waite, an old lady who lived across the street from Don Gately and “basically radiated whatever mixture of unpleasantness and vulnerability it was that made you want to be cruel to her.” But my favorite is a monologue spoken to James O. Incandenza as a young boy, by his father. The section details all of the aspirations the father has for his son and also recounts an enormously painful moment in the father’s childhood that involved his father. The monologue is 12 pages long, unbroken by any prosaic interruptions. Just a father talking to his son. I could quote from these passages for a hundred pages and still it would not be enough. There is too much great writing in this book to choose economically.
These small diversions, these “systems within systems” are here because this is how people help other people and this is how Wallace hoped to help his readers, maybe the only way he knew how to. There is so very much of him in this book, so that you establish a personal connection to the writer as well as the characters. This is a writer placing himself right there with his creations, in their midst, on their level. A writer seeking to write something lasting, that will create a bond between himself and those who read the book, as well as between the readers with each other. The book is a constant reference point between myself and a friend who’s read it; not because we’ve created an elite club, but because there is a sense of shared experience between us.
I love books like this. As a writer, it has dazzled me, because it’s something so far beyond the abilities I possess. There is so much skill and craft involved, and yet love of story and of character. I also love it because reading this book is like going to writing class. It’s expanded the way I view writing in every way. It has built bridges to islands of imagination that were hitherto uncharted in my mind. I don’t think I’ve ever had this many new ideas to write about.
Infinite Jest can be overwhelming. It takes time. It takes patience. There are big words. But the effort it requires is nothing compared to the rewards that reading it affords. Please read this book. And then call me in 4-6 months. We’ll go get some food and talk about it, and we’ll have a great time.
Here are two things for your entertainment, two different examples of delightful anti-cinema. Friend/writer/director Josh and I have been discussing this notion a lot lately, and I figured I’d let readers share in the fun.
1. Filmspotting co-hosts Adam and Matty read a scene from “Anne Frank,” by David Mamet (as one listener imagines Mamet might write it, regardless of what Mamet did or did not write for the film that has now been put on hold anyway).
2. Trailer for “The Room” – Here in L.A. this movie has acquired a kind of cult status, to the point that the film is shown the last Saturday night of every month, at midnight. I’m seeing it tomorrow night. It is a film that is said to go beyond the notion of “so bad it’s good” and enter into the realm of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” People come to the screening in costume, people yell and say lines along with the movie. I’m wondering what the vibe is going to be. Will it be over-bearingly pretentious or mocking-yet-pleasant. I’m hoping for the latter. In interviews with director Tommy Wiseau, he says the movie is supposed to be a black comedy, that he just wanted to make a movie for people to enjoy. And it begs the question: is the movie intentionally bad, or just bad? I’ll see the movie and report back.
Recently, my friend Tyler Smith, co-host of the great film podcast “Battleship Pretension,” organized a silent comedy night, and I realized just how limited my viewing had been. I’d seen “The General” and “Modern Times,” as well as Buster Keaton’s “7 Chances” and an assortment of his short films. I’d seen “The Great Dictator,” which is Chaplin, but not silent (though it retains much silent comedy). I knew of Harold Lloyd, but hadn’t seen any of his films.
It can be difficult to motivate people to watch silent films, comedy or otherwise; even for film lovers, the task can seem daunting. With a group night organized around the idea, it’s both easier to be motivated and more enjoyable for initial viewings. Comedy is better in a crowd.
One of THE most classic silent comedy images of all time.
Our schedule was set. We began with Harold Lloyd’s “The Freshman,” moved on to Keaton’s “Sherlock, Jr.,” then Chaplin’s “The Gold Rush,” and finished (the next day) with Keaton’s “7 Chances,” upon my request. It’s these three men, though– Lloyd, Keaton, Chaplin– who are the three, nearly undisputed kings of silent comedy. Within the trio, the most popular was Chaplin, but all three have plenty of supporters and among film lovers, the debate is sure to be endless, though this piece will contribute its two cents as well.
The Tramp
What is indisputable is that all three had distinct, amazing talent and timing. These are great comic actors. They were contemporaries, just as today we have numerous comedic troupes, of sorts, in Judd Apatow and David Wain and Jody Hill and Edgar Wright and Todd Phillips, and all of their unique comedic sensibilities. And while there are great physical moments in each of those writer/directors’ films, their weapon of choice is their great dialogue, which is not the strength of any of the silents. The closest thing to silent comedy I’ve seen in the past few years– and this was noted when it came out, even– is Pixar’s “Wall*E,” with its beautiful, wordless opening sequence and the way Wall*E himself had to communicate multitudes in limited, subtle facial expressions.
There is a clear hierarchy, though, for the silent trio. Lloyd is on the bottom, which is not at all to suggest that he is bad. There is a recurring gag in “The Freshman,” in which he does a little dance each time he meets someone new (check it out below), and the gag is so silly and disarming, it never wears itself out. Lloyd is at the bottom simply because he does the least. He acts, where both Keaton and Chaplin also write and direct their films. It shows. Lloyd is very funny, but his comedy does not seem quite is organic as the other two, in the way it seems to flow effortlessly from them. Chaplin is the next tier. Bound to his romantic whimsy and his little mustache, Chaplin’s comedy is more about sweetness than all-out hilarity. This is not a criticism, especially if you are looking for a kind-hearted comedy. He excels at using a singular setting for endless comedic opportunities.
The Great Stoneface
But there can be only one king, and it is Buster Keaton. Where he leaves the rest behind is in his construction of a comedic sequence. In the underrated “7 Chances,” which, I am told he didn’t really want to make, the film builds for about 30 minutes with small bits of comedy in the midst of the plot. But then, all at once, the elements he’s set in motion combine and explode and he is propelled headlong into a non-stop, 20+ minute comedic action set-piece, which culminates with him running down the side of a mountain as hundreds of boulders come hurtling after him, as he tries to escape an angry mob of women, all dressed as brides. The camera cranes high above him, showing the full measure of the situation, and it stays on him longer than you’d ever expect. He operates on a scale so far beyond anything I’ve seen from Chaplin or Lloyd. In “Sherlock, Jr.” (made the year before) he combines that great physical aspect with his love of cinema (see clip below, beginning around the 1-minute mark or so). Consider what he is doing, first visually: the way the shot is composed as a frame within a frame so that we assume we’re seeing a regular shot of a movie theater. Then, he confounds our expectations of a movie screen and editing and continuity. Look how long that shot is used and how often. Keaton, in this sequence, combines technical, visual, and comedic elements to create something that awes us as much as it amuses us. “Sherlock Jr.” contains, essentially, a film within a film, except that the film-within-the-film is as long as the rest of the film. Keaton is the best because he is the best storyteller. He takes chances, he understands tone, he incorporates the movies themselves as an element in the fun, and he’s just the most original of the bunch.
If you have not sat down and watched the films of these guys (as I had not, as at some point, all film lovers had not), treat yourself to a healthy dose of all three. You may agree with me, you may not, but regardless, these films are made with such pleasure, and they are pleasing in a way that few things are anymore.
I saw “Funny People” last night, and I just can’t stop thinking about it. It’s the new movie from writer/director Judd Apatow, and if you haven’t seen it yet, you’ll probably have to wait for DVD, because unfortunately it’s kindof come and gone in theaters. Maybe it wasn’t the movie people expected when they heard Apatow, Seth Rogen, and Adam Sandler were making a movie together. Maybe they saw the trailer and were turned off (most of that material isn’t even in the movie, either. Bad marketing team…bad).
Apatow’s 3rd film is his longest, at about 2 ½ hours. It’s also the darkest, meanest, most grown-up, and least crude. I don’t know if it is his best film, I like them all, but something has definitely changed. His other movies were simpler and more direct. I’m sure there was some improv, but I never got the sense that the movie was being put on hold to watch friends joke around. If it had, this thing would be 4 hours long.
Apatow has a penchant for writing male friendships, but until now those friends have been aimless man-children and the movies have formed the path to adulthood. Here, he grows them up, and instead of six or seven, there are three ambitious friends, who are all trying to start careers in LA as actors or comedians. Kindof my place in life… RIGHT NOW.
To me, the movie is all about notions of success. Different kinds. Different ways to get it. How are you supposed to feel when your friend is the lead on a sitcom? Do you hate him for the success, are you proud of him, do you try to get a guest spot on there? How do those feelings change if the show isn’t any good? Jason Schwartzman’s character is the sitcom star (see sweet fake clip from it below), he leaves his paycheck stubs around, he blabs about wanting a role in the new Tobey Maguire movie, he’s just realized he may be just successful enough for women to throw themselves at him. In many ways, Schwartzman’s is an early version of the Adam Sandler character, who’s done countless awful looking comedies because they pay, and has become as egomaniacal as he is lonely. There are a couple of moments where both characters show someone their work, and no one is laughing. Sandler has stopped caring, he knows it’s just a paycheck, but Schwartzman tries to play it off and makes excuses for it.
Then, there’s Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill, trying to make it as stand-up comics. They do gigs for free, they just want to be recognized, they want some small inkling of success to get them by. Rogen seizes the opportunity to write jokes for the Sandler character, Jonah Hill jumps at the chance to be on his friends’ lame sitcom.
At dinner before we went to see the movie, my roommate Adam and I were talking about the downfall of Charlie Sheen, and the sad reality that more people watch “Two and a Half Men” (which is like a real version of “Yo Teach!”) than “The Office” or “30 Rock” and I asked, “What would we do if someone wanted to hire us to write for “Two and a Half Men” ? Because we’re nobody and we just want to get our foot in the door, wouldn’t we take it? Isn’t that what you do? You write or direct or act in or get on-set of anything you can stomach, hoping to get far enough to do the things you really want to do. 2008’s Apatow-produced, “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” where Jason Segal was doing music for a CSI type show, and the titular character talked about doing movies that were the “right move” for her career. Even the Tina Fey character on “30 Rock” has a past where she was one of the ladies of the night, advertising for a phone-sex hotline.
The list could go on forever, because among TV and movies that deal with this idea, there are always horror stories of how people got their foot in the door. It’s a string of unfulfilling prospects until you find your break. IF you get a break. It’s not guaranteed. And the question is, how are you supposed to be proud of yourself doing this, particularly when this may be all you ever do? One side says you have a job and at least attempt to bring something to it. Therefore, you should be happy with yourself. The other side says that it can be a fool’s errand, buying exclusively into the business side of what you used to do because it made you happy and wanted to do because you felt you should.
I go back and forth with these competing notions, and maybe the reality is somewhere in between, but the fact is I’m not even in a position right now where I can figure it out. “Funny People” is sortof about all of these things and different stages of success, embodied by different people. Sandler’s character has lost something, and the movie traces his attempts to get it back, from his health, to his career, to the woman he loves.
In the credits for the film, Paul Thomas Anderson is thanked. I learned that during the editing process, Apatow brought in a few directors to get their input, among them Anderson (who directed Sandler in “Punch Drunk Love” and James L. Brooks (who directed him in “Spanglish”). It shows. Perhaps Brooks helped him balance the personal drama of the final act with the film’s comedic sensibility? And though it is pure conjecture, it’s not ridiculous to assume that P.T. Anderson helped him with one of the most surprising aspects of the film: its meanness. Many of Andersons’s characters have an edge to them that is painful, hurtful, and hilarious all at once. Think of how much verbal abuse Seth Rogen’s character takes from Sandler. This isn’t the light-hearted ribbing from “Knocked Up,” there is a real darkness and cynicism to this character that was fascinating to see, particularly because of how nice Sandler is in real life. For me, this was like a warning. The character isn’t mean because of his fame. He’s mean because he was a mean person to begin with. Becoming rich and famous just gave him a lifelong excuse not to change. This is one of Sandler’s best performances, and it isn’t all negative. He modulates his anger with actually caring for one or two people, and he does respond when something is genuinely funny. And in maybe Apatow’s most brilliant and surprising move, the film begins with old home videos of Sandler doing funny voices and prank-calling people. Reminds you why you have to like Adam Sandler, even if it’s in spite of yourself, even when he makes bad movies. Luckily, this is one of the good ones.
I love HBO. Really do. Their shows are just better. You see a million commercials for new NBC dramas or TNT’s new show that’s more suited to 1998 (aka B.S. aka Before Sopranos). And even though I don’t at all get the craze over “True Blood,” I’m totally psyched about their new show coming Sept 20th – “Bored to Death.” Jason Schwartzman, Ted Danson, and Zach Galifianakis – show is about a writer who’s read too many detective novels and decides to become a private eye. It sounds a little like the recent (brief) Andy Richter series “Andy Barker, P.I.” except I think this one has the legs to make it. I like the look of it. (Side note: I’m very pleased by the number of solid film actors who are jumping over to TV for a few seasons to do great work. I think Alec Baldwin has really lead the charge (although Mary Louise Parker was there a few years before).)
Thing 2: “Legion” trailer
Check out this 5 minute movie trailer below and see if you can spot one actor who didn’t laugh his ass all the way to the bank! There is no way this movie is going to be any damn good, but I can’t wait to see it. We’ve come to the point that campy movies are just as well made as the good ones (check out Granny Foul Mouth, though. Hilarious!), but the dialogue is uproarious. Dennis Quaid as diner owner!? Paul Bettany as an Angel?! Movie studio, take my money now, give me some popcorn, and let the good times roll. Notice the name of the diner? Paradise Falls diner. Outstanding. God is pissed, but lucky for us, it only takes bullets to bring down the rest of heaven’s angels. I know there’s a movie where they dip the barrel of the gun in Holy Water and then blast away the demons. I get that, that’s because they’re evil. How does it work when they’re angels? (Ohp!!! Or maybe that’s a hidden commentary by the filmmaker!) Thing is, it looks completely blasphemous in concept, but my spider sense is telling me I betcha they bring it all around to be some sort of test by God or something. Either way, my friend Adam has it right: I’m going to see the shit out of that movie.
Friend showed me a great new little website – http://www.fmylife.com/ and I’m addicted. It’s a website built around 1-2 sentence anecdotes of some personal foible, screw-up, or unfortunate event, which ends in “FML” (doesn’t take a special decoder ring to figure it out). They’re all from random people, and even though I have to assume some of them are fake, it’s easy to read through about 200 of them in one sitting. You have the option to click 1 of 2 responses to the tale – either “I agree, your life sucks” or “you totally deserved it.” Good fun, you should check it out. Thanks to Dan for enlightening me.
Not nearly the best one, but it's a cartoon so it works.
RT @filmspotting: 1. You could defend any position; if you could, in fact, defend it. 2. Film criticism should be personal, subjective. ... 1 month ago
Roger Ebert showed us time & again that being a film critic meant being a film lover first. R.I.P., Mr. Ebert. 1 month ago
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