Room 237: A Place to Hang Your Tinfoil Hat

Room 237 is on it's face a typical documentary, a movie about a movie. Now, there are a few good docs about movies, mostly about the making of them and their effect of culture and society. But Room 237 is different: it's a dissection of the deeper meanings of one film, interpretations so deep and obtuse they seem nutty and imaginary. More about that in a bit.

The film in question is Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980). He was one of the most singular and identifiable directors of his era, especially after 2001. His precise camera placements, deliberate dramaturgy and atmospheric editing have made his films playgrounds for critics. He was a fearsomely smart man, and he was unafraid to leave his films enigmatic, evocative, and downright puzzling. His movies have gathered not just fans but followers, theorists.

In comes Rodney Asher, who collected together five Kubrick theorists and gave them 102 minutes to spin out their interpretations.*

The result is hilarious, baffling and ultimately depressing.

The hilarious part, intentional or otherwise: these five "experts" on The Shining take the film and stitch it, Doctor Frankenstein style, with their pet obsessions. The result of this is we learn that Stanley Kubrick's horror masterpiece is: 1) about the Holocaust; 2) about the genocide of Native Americans; 3) about Kubrick's complicity in faking NASA's moon landings; 4) I haven't the slightest idea, and 5) The "Paul is Dead" school of criticism.

Believe it or not, none of the "experts" had anything at
all to say about these gals.

Most of the interpretations is made explicit with frame-by-frame examinations of the film. Jack Torrance uses an Adler typewriter (German=Nazi=Holocaust). A large can of Calumet baking powder is prominent in several shots (Calumet=peace pipe=Indian Genocide). These little examples go on and on, getting more unbelievable as the doc progresses.

One of the funniest bits happens when one of the "experts," citing another Shining expert so exalted he didn't participate on the film, projected the film superimposed running forwards and backwards. He then points out the juxtapositions of images of the forward and backward frames as evidence of... something. I'm not sure. He made it sound terribly meaningful, even though it was the single most meaningless bit of film criticism I've ever seen. I was waiting for the guy to continue his dissertation as he played the film while listening to "Dark Side of The Moon."

One of these "experts" gives away the whole game near the end of the film with this line: "One of the tenets of post-modern film criticism is the idea that the director's intentions is just one aspect of the meaning of a film." This line made me laugh out loud. I remember this approach was very popular when I was in college, and I believed then as I still do now that this idea is the ultimate cop-out. If the critic has an agenda to advance or is simply intellectually weak, the idea that any interpretation of a cinematic work from any source is valid turns films into funhouse mirrors, megaphones for their own biases. These sloppy, pinwheel-eyed biased interpretations happen over and over in Room 237.

We used to see a lot of
UFOs back in the 70s too.

Having said that, I think the idea that a film's meaning is a cultural construct is essentially valid. But I'm talking about things like market forces, the weight of narrative conventions, the needs of studios, producers and stars, the mood and values of the society the film depicts and is released in are all parts of the message of any film. This is actually self-evident. To that end, it is easy to see when someone is dragging wacky conspiracy theories into the mix, because it stands out so garishly. It's like that guy back in the 70s who saw "SEX" in glasses of Bacardi in magazine ads: "My God, they're everywhere!"

What's depressing here is I have over the years read some amazing works of criticism: interpretations of works so nuanced and well-studied that it changes the way you see all works of cinema. As an example: the British Film Institute put out a series of monographs on prominent films-- just one author each, a lot of research, and remarkable insight. My favorite is still Anne Billson's book on John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) She took this horror film apart, logically and passionately, getting to the core of what makes the film work: the psychology of horror, the extinction of the self and the meaning of individual identity. She did all this without bringing in one tinfoil-hat idea.

And that's what's depressing about Room 237. It's existence is a towering condemnation of the feeble critical powers of our age. Seeing and hearing the five fools Rodney Asher assembled jabbering and pointing at The Shining reminded me of the apes screeching around the base of the Monolith in 2001: It wasn't hard to see who the smart guy was in that scene.

*I'm actually not sure of Rodney Asher's movie is a sincere work of criticism or he's just giving his "experts" enough rope to hang themselves and laughing behind their backs. But that's post-modernism for you.

The Downton Abbey Spoiler Challenge

•••NOTE: there are NO Spoilers in this article.•••

Shirley MacLaine, as Fran Kebelik in "The Apartment"
(1960). I just caught this on TCM a few days ago, and
it's still a huge favorite of mine. MacLaine was never
after quite as adorable as she was in this film, short
hair and all. Has anyone ever written a scholarly thesis on
the semiotic meaning of Miss Kubelik's boy-like bob?

The long-awaited Season 3 of "Downton Abbey," ITV's extremely popular 1920s melodrama/ meditation on class harmony/ Edwardian nostalgia fest, aired in the US last night, introduced by an overly excited Laura Linney. Special guest Shirley MacLaine showed up as Cora's mother, American-ing the place up for a spell. The familiar storylines started up again, and a few new ones cranked up as well.

I forgot who pointed this out, but there is an aspect of "Downton Abbey" that should be noted by every aspiring film writer, director and editor-- a trick Julian Fellowes uses throughout the show that sets it apart from most others, something that adds energy to a potentially dull subject. As you watch the show (and you should!) make note of how long an average sequence lasts. They rarely last longer than one minute. There are something like fifty sequences in each hour-long episode-- each one dense with plot. An effective editing trick: the viewer becomes a restless eye, hovering ghost-like throughout the humongous estate, flicking upstairs and down, taking in all events occuring therein. This minute-sequence editing gimmick also pays off in reverse: in scenes where something truly momentous happens, the clock gets turned off. The extra time spent in these big sequences registers at a subconscious level, underscoring their importance.

It's a nifty show, even an important one. And I've seen every single episode of Season Three. Through the incomprehensible scheme of airing the season premiere of "Downton Abbey" in the US a week and half after the conclusion of the same season in the UK, combined with the magic of the Internet, we were able to enjoy the series on the UK schedule. So I have the power and ability to thoroughly ruin it for all of you.

I won't do it, of course.

But this brings up something else, a notion that has been batting around on sites like Slate and Vulture and elsewhere: Spoiler Etiquette.

"It's the story... of a man named Crawley...
who was bringing up three very lovely girls..."

We've all been in a situation at work or a social gathering when someone is about to discuss a recently seen TV show.* "Spoiler Alert!," someone will say. "Shush! I DVR'd it! Don't give anything away!" The potential spoiler, so eager to share a good show, is quashed, and the subject is awkwardly shifted to something else.

The question at hand: who is the villain in this little scene?

 It would seem like the "spoiler," is the social transgressor-- but he or she just wanted to share thoughts on something, to join in what likely is the national water-cooler discussion topic.

The new realization is the villain is actually the "shusher," the one who didn't see it. After all, the "spoiler" made the time for a viewing appointment-- and actually watched the show as it was being broadcast. This is how the creators of the show, the broadcasters of it and even the advertisers who paid for it want you to watch it. Even the "water cooler" discussion the next morning is a strong social positive, playing up the cultural commonality of every participant.

The "shusher," on the other hand is, intentionally or not, selfish. He or she is obviously enthusiastic about the show about to be discussed (or else why bother shushing, right?) but has recorded the show for later viewing at their own convenience. Sometimes, they don't even do that (it is cheaper, after all, to watch "Boardwalk Empire" nine months late on Netflix than subscribe to HBO). Not too long ago it was impossible to "time-shift" viewing: If you missed the last episode of "M*A*S*H" or the "Chuckles Bites The Dust" episode of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" you just had to patiently wait for summer reruns. Technology has changed all that, of course-- but it has not changed the nature of storytelling, hence the ever-spreading spoiler etiquette crisis. Shushing stifles open discussion, smothers cultural commonality, and drowns the water cooler conversation.

Yet we are a painfully polite sort of people (well, most of us are) so we make a strenuous effort not to spoil anyone's potential enjoyment. We back down from spoiling every time. The problem is, by doing so we spoil our own enjoyment.

 So please, watch every superbly edited minute-long sequence of "Downton Abbey"-- safe in the knowledge I, for one, won't give away any of the absolutely shattering, mind-blowing events that will unfold in the yet-unaired episodes. I'll take one for the home team.

*I'm talking about the phenomenon of TV Show spoilers here, one that has been abetted by new technologies like DVRs and DVDs. Movie-ending spoilers have been around for a hundred years, and I think there is a special level in cinematic hell for those who chronically spoil movies.

How to Make a Feature Film

Scene from Cowgirls n' Angels

Last night I was honored to be in attendance at the Northern California premiere of Cowgirls n' Angels, the feature-film directorial debut of Tim Armstrong, a business associate of mine.

A fine evening and a fine film-- But the coolest part about this whole thing is how it was made, a case study in how to get a feature film made, starting with a vision.

Tim Armstrong's day job is as a director of institutional videos in Glendale. He was (and still is) the go-to for Kantola Productions, Steve Kantola's business training video company in Mill Valley.  Tim directed short films about employee ethics, office conflicts, sexual harassment-- If you had to watch a mandatory video in an office, there's a good chance you have seen his work. I have known Tim professionally for five years: I am just down the production chain from him, taking his finished masters and creating the menus and DVD masters for Kantola.

In 2009 the economy nearly went belly-up, and as the specialty video market dried up Tim found himself with more and more time on his hands. (I know exactly the tough sort of time he went through: in 2009 my company had to move from an office to my garage.)  In this downtime Tim decided to try his hand at a feature. Inspired by some rodeo trick-riding he's seen, he sketched out an outline for Cowgirls n' Angels.

 He took the proposal to Steve Kantola, who invested $50,000 in development money. This allowed Tim to get the screenplay (co-written by Stephan Blinn) finished and to get the project shopped around. It was picked up by Samuel Goldwyn Films, and given a budget that big enough to land James Cromwell and Jackson (Twilight) Rathbone. It was shot on RED cameras on location in Oklahoma.

Cowgirls n' Angels is a winning little story about Ida (Bailee Madison), a “semi-orphaned” girl in Clinton, Oklahoma who longs to meet her estranged, unknown father. The only clue she has of his existence is an old postcard of a rodeo rider. Her search for him leads her to the world of Midwest small-town rodeos, where she falls under the care of Terence (Cromwell) who runs an all-girl trick-riding outfit called Sweethearts of the Rodeo.

It might be easy for those reading this article, those more in tune with edgier independent cinema, to dismiss Cowgirls n' Angels as programmatic fare, but consider this: It's a PG film that was released in 50 theatres in the midwest. Come October 2nd the DVD and Blu-Ray (distributed by FOX) will be on sale in Walmarts nationwide, and soon after on Netflix and On-Demand. Family films have a tendency to clean up in the post-theatrical markets, and I have no doubt this film will make back it's modest budget.

If the goal of making a feature film is self-expression AND reaching a large audience, Tim Armstrong has done a fair sight better than most filmmakers I know at his level in the business. No film festivals, no Kickstarter: Just somebody with a vision-- and somebody who was willing to invest in that vision. And just as a note to any potential initial investors out there: From what he told the audience in Mill Valley, Steve Kantola has already made all his money back.

And yeah, I would have loved to have gone with this production model on the screenplay John Harden and I wrote (the AFF 2009 winner), but there's a big difference between a PG film about a winsome little cowgirl and a hard R sci-fi women-in-prison movie. Content matters...

Matango: The Brady Bunch Connection

The sexy, sexy Italian one-sheet for Matango.

 This is the other old TPN post worthy of rescue (and re-editing).

In this article we're  going to discover why "The Brady Bunch" owes so much to Godzilla.

I had the pleasure of watching a Netflix DVD loaned to me by Chris, my business partner: Matango (1963). It was known in the US as Attack of the Mushroom People. It scared the living crap out me when I was a wee lad watching  "Chiller Diller Matinee" on Channel 44. Remarkable to see this film fresh and uncut, in 2.35:1 TohoScope, bright Fujicolor and subtitled Japanese. The channel 44 version was the one we ALL saw as kids: A heavily edited, clumsily dubbed, 16mm pan-and-scan print, run through a (no doubt) crummy film chain-- it was so washed out my recollections if it are in black and white.

This film was directed by Ishiro Honda, The Kaiji Eiga (Giant Monster Movie) master who directed Godzilla, Rodan and countless others. Matango is an unusual Honda film, an atmospheric horror movie with people-sized monsters.

Well, of course there's a range of Japanese action figures
available for Matango! The monsters depicted here
are much cuter than in the film.

The things that scared the piss out of me as a kid are still there: the ghastly, faceless mushroom people, the distorted laughter on the soundtrack, the air of gloom and slow death. Justifiably a cult classic.

A have heard all effective horror films play on primal phobias: violence, heights, enclosed spaces. (Daniel's brother Ed once surmised that if someone could realize a fortune if they make a horror film exploiting the number one fear in America: Public Speaking.) Matango works as a horror flick on several levels:

• The scary, lumbering mushroom folk, they're pretty scary in a monster-movie sort of way.

• The fact these fungal folks were once people and the characters are going to turn into them unless they can escape plays into fears of loss of humanity and Self.

• Matango plays on fears of germs and filth and disease. The island the principals are marooned on is lush and tropical: the abandoned ship they take up residence in is covered with mold, dry rot and fungus. They manage to clean it, but the mold soon returns. For the fastidiously clean Japanese audience the film was designed for, the creeping corruption and rot must have been harder to take than the prospect of turning into an ambulatory shiitake.

This film was based on "The Voice in the Night," a short story published in 1907 by pioneering English sci-fi author William Hope Hodgson. Conversely, it has long been rumored that Matango was an inspiration for "Gilligan's Island," that iconic, unlikely comedy series from the 1960s.

Exhibit A: Cast of Matango. Left to right: "Writer," Bombshell,
Chaste Young Girl, Skipper, Rich Guy, First Mate and Professor.
Note the First Mate has a red shirt, as did Gilligan.

After a careful comparison of the two works, allow me to lay such rumors to rest: It was. TV Producer Sherwood Schwartz (who also created "The Brady Bunch") had a motive, opportunity and even tacit permission to swipe the basic premise of Honda's film.

The basic story common to both movie and TV show involves seven people from various walks of life on a short pleasure cruise. They get caught in a storm, marooning them on a deserted tropical island. Schwartz basically took this first half-hour of Matango and pitched it to the network, adding "and then hilarity ensues!" He left off the rising themes of violence, greed, lust, starvation, and death that drives the latter hour of Matango, replacing these with coconut shortwave radios and funny guest stars.

Exhibit B: flashback scene. The dialog in subtitles is that
of the "writer," explaining why his manuscript (on
the table) seems so derivative.

But the cast of "Gilligan's Island" is almost entirely present in Matango: Skipper, First Mate, Professor, Chaste Young Girl, Glamorous Bombshell, Rich Guy. He made one cast change, and a very telling one: Instead of Mrs. Rich Guy ("Lovey" Howell), the seventh castaway in Matango is a writer. He's the first character to, when things begin to get desperate, steal food from the others, and the first to eat the fateful mushrooms. He's a morally weak character who, in a flashback scene, plainly admits to plagiarism.

Puzzling evidence.








.

Skippy The Bush Kangaroo As Embodiment Of National Character



Skippy, The Bush Kangaroo (pictured center)

 As I mentioned last week, one of the cultural artifacts my girlfriend Leanne brought back with her from Switzerland was a DVD of some episodes of Skippy, The Bush Kangaroo, enigmatically dubbed into French. To be more specific the episodes are from the 1991 revival series, The Adventures of Skippy. Still the situation is the same - unmarried Austrailian game warden and his two children, sharing adventure with the unusually smart and helpful titular Kangaroo. Pretty obviously male Kangaroo in this case. Don't ask me to give details.

Skippy has captured my imagination.  Even though I don't speak enough French to understand the dialog, it's clear that the show is not dialog driven. It's an action show. Which is why I keep thinking that it must have been unbelievely frustrating for Australians to write it.

Skippy is the main character - you can kind of think of him as a superhero but his chief superpower is indication. "What is it Skippy? What are you pointing at? Oh no, it's a toxic waste spill! Who could have done that?" Skippy's function on the show is to notice the thing that sets the plot in motion, and then accompany the game warden or children as they investigate and solve the problem. If possible, Skippy will notice and indicate something else over the course of the episode.  Perhaps he'll hop off and the little girl will follow him to discover a leaky pipe. But other than that, Skippy ain't nothin'.

Can you imagine the poor staff writers trying to crank out a script every week? "He can't speak, he can't drive a bloody car, he can't hold a gun - crikey, how the hell am I supposed to use this thing? He doesn't even have a bloody pouch." To make matters worse, the characters Skippy deals with most are children, who are similarly limited protagonists. Ultimately the real engine of the show is the game warden, who just does what Skippy and the kids tell him to.

Australians are famously simple men of action, and this show is the most passive/agressive situation imaginable.

Hollywood's Immune System

In order to see Contagion comfortably, I chose a late, late showtime: 10:55, the last showtime at the Tanforan 20. From what I'd read about the effectiveness of Steven Soderbergh's new thriller, I wanted at least a few rows of seats between me and the next moviegoer. There were only 8 or so in the auditorium, and nobody was coughing. (but there was, as there always seems to be in late-night movie screenings these days, a couple dragging their toddler-aged kid along.)

Contagion is a very good, very scary film. Soderbergh calls it a horror film, evading the "thriller" tag, and he has a good point. Good horror plays on primal fears-- remember that grotty dude hacking away without covering his mouth at Starbucks last week? Sure you do. That, coupled with the always-unsettling glimpse of the thin veneer of society peeling away at the epidemic's later stages, creates feelings of rising unease as the film progresses. And as it uses Soderburgh's signature multiple-storyline style, you're never quite sure which of the Oscar-caliber ensemble is going to bite the dust next.

Later in the film there are plenty of scenes of National Guard troops in digital camouflage and Hum-Vees keeping roadblocks. This aspect calls back to the discussion about Torchwood: Miracle Day, which covers remarkably similar ground concerning profound social disruption. But here's the thing: the high-concept sci-fi idea of everyone on earth inexplicably granted life everlasting is sort of fun to think about, but the hard-science idea of an unstoppable virus wiping out millions is not only depressing and scary to ponder, less than 100 years ago something very similar actually happened.

Aside from the micron-sized and therefore un-telegenic virus, there's a human villain in this piece: Alan Krumweide (Jude Law), a crummy, weedy fellow who sows fear and misinformation and false hope in alternative medicine cures through his blog. In a film that focuses on the selfless efforts of government scientist to save lives (a la Outbreak and The Andromeda Strain) he represents the conspiracy nuts, the anti-vaccine moms-- the whole, weird anti-science know-nothing movement that seems to depressingly be steadily gaining traction in larger society.

But I think there's something more subtle going on here. This is at least the second major feature film which paints a harsh picture of the internet in general and social networking specifically. Recall the tone of The Social Network, a film that exposes Facebook's roots as a crude sexist college diversion and it's founders as litigious snobs or prickly sociopaths. And in Contagion, it's made clear that everything would be going so much better for humanity in general if it were not for some nutty blogger from San Francisco (surprise: Hollywood yet again portrays the Bay Area as a scenic loony bin).

And why shouldn't establishment Hollywood view the Internet in the worst possible light? As far as the studios are concerned, it's a disease.

I think such negative depictions of internet culture in major movies are a sign of Hollywood's immune system going into overdrive. Even now, there is little the internet and social networking can do to help studios sell tickets: viral hits like Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project are so rare they've become cautionary tales (as in: never mention either of them when you're pitching a script). In realpolitik, internet film marketing is just another money-suck for which studios are obliged to staff buildings full of web designers and marketers to create feckless web presences for their movies.

The internet has come to represent nothing less than a full attack on Hollywood, a galloping infection that attacks both control of product and the bottom line. The studio buys a script, and they have to make sure it doesn't get uploaded somewhere. Greenlight, and there are even more potential leaks. Outright piracy begins generally at the first pre-screenings right through general release, eating away box-office as effectively as a blood-borne parasite eats red blood cells. As whole films fall into bit-torrent oblivion, snippets of their films get cut out and put on YouTube or Daily Motion and there's little to be done about that either. Finally, even the home video market and it's tidy widget-style sales model is being sapped by streaming services, offering the same film for a fraction of the cost of a DVD or BluRay version.

As falling revenues draws the industry into existential crisis, we're seeing it's immune system deploy T-cells and leukocytes, out to destroy the malignancy. Expect to see more.

Once upon a time, internet culture as depicted by Hollywood was a rich source of pseudo-high-tech, blatantly unbelievable tropes: "I'll have to hack their IP with a custom-written worm to access their triple-encrypted password. And… there it is!" Remember Hackers (1995) with Angeline Jolie as "Acid Burn" and Jonny Lee Miller as "Crash Override?" Hoo-boy. But that was then: the era of that sort of fun-loving naivete is over.

Apple Comes Out Swinging: Hits Below Belt

One of the biggest changes in the film industry right now is happening outside the general scrutiny of the public. Several months ago, Apple rolled out the highly anticipated new version of Final Cut Studio, thier well-used, well-loved professional-level editing suite. Skipping right over versions 8 and 9 to a cool Roman 10, the new product rolled out as FCPX.

It was a resounding failure.

The new program has a completely different user interface, key shortcuts and throughput capabilities. It won't export edit decision lists, capture video from tape sources, and it's not backwards-compatible-- if you have a legacy project in Final Cut 7 and want to port it upwards, you're outta luck. It bears a strong resemblance to iMovie, the free, consumer-level editing software that comes with your laptop, so much so that post-industry wags dubbed FCPX "iMovie Pro."

At some point, I understand what Apple was trying to do: make a clean break with a system that utilizes a more powerful core engine. The core engine is the video processor system that drives all the renders and makes things like FCP work. From Final Cut 1 to Final Cut 7, they've all been driven by the QuickTime engine, which was state of the art about a decade ago. FCPX utilizes an engine based on AVC and AVCHD, which is state-of-the-art (and is used by most prosumer camcorders these days) and blazingly fast.

The problem here is the calculation Apple made that professional users of FCP, a billion-dollar market, would blindly follow on the brand name alone. These professional users have deadlines, large libraries of legacy projects, and mortgages to pay-- and can't spare the time to dick around with a product that, fast as it may be, is "unsuitable for professional workflow."

People seem to have a fixation on Apple as a cutting-edge, market-making company with unique ideas, and they're right. But innovation is risk-taking, and that means Apple is less a cautious computer hardware company and more based on a movie studio model (As Steve Jobs was a founder of Pixar, this isn't a surprise, I hope.) Invest in a far-out idea, market the hell out of it, shove it out there and hope for a blockbuster. This worked for the iPod, iPhone, iPad and a lot of other stuff. It DIDN'T work for the Apple Lisa, AppleTV, and the Cube. And now it didn't work for FCPX.

If you need an example of a traditional computer hardware company's approach to marketing, consider the Toshiba laptop. They're completely reliable machines, tough and robust-- and they barely change from model to model. a 2011 Satellite looks like a 2001 Satellite. Toshiba bases their business model on market share, not market making.

But innovation becomes something of an ethical issue if you have thousands of users dependent on you for their livelihood. If that's the case, innovation becomes self-serving: killing legacy compatibility and altering features beyond usefulness makes the upgrade risky for most. And there is a definite show-biz angle to this story: A lot of people, from movie studios to indie-film hacks, cut their movies on the Final Cut Pro platform. There is a good chance that TV show you just watched, the movie you just saw, or the DVD you just got from Netflix, came to you through the FCP workflow. (Not your Blu-ray, though: more below.)

And yes, this has affected my business in a big way. I make DVDs for a living, and the suite of programs in FCPX does NOT include DVD Studio Pro. (this is somewhat understandable, as DVDs haven't changed all that much in the last 6 years or so, so upgrading the authoring software is sorta redundant.) Fortunately, the fine folks at Adobe have a wonderful suite of recently hotrodded editing and authoring solutions-- the Creative Suite. They saw Apple stumble badly with FCPX and are sweeping up market share with half-off offers for switching to Premiere 5.5-- and have subtly altered the look and feel of it to something approximating classic Final Cut Pro. I'm already using Premiere and Adobe Encore to author BluRay-- a format Apple still refuses to support! So I'm gonna persevere with FCP7 and DVD Studio pro until they rot off my hard drives (or a new Mac OS refuses to open them anymore) then head across the street to Adobe.

Apple has a right to do whatever they want with their products, of course. But as the legal aphorism goes, your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose. And there are quite a few video pros out there with bloody noses looking to hang out with a less pugilistic company.

Rama Lama Ding Dong: The DVD

Just a few days a go a real treat landed here at my day job (authoring DVDs and BluRays): a 3-disc Doo-wop concert series.

I can't go into too much detail, because of the whole professional confidentiality deal, but the disc set is one of those public television promotional titles, the kind you'll get if you pledge some determined amount. The first two discs are all relatively recent oldies-tour performances by original 1950s artists, which is a treat in itself when you watch some of these solidly senior senior citizens belting out songs like they were still teenagers-- like septuagenarian Jay Black holding, holding, holding the high notes on "Cara Mia."

The Shields.

But the fun part was the third disc, a wad of old kinescopes of original 1950s doo-wop acts, mostly culled from the old Philadelphia "American Bandstand." It completely embodied the complete bafflement, mentioned earlier, that the powers of media had with new music.

The Flamingos.

In song after song in the compilation, the Doo-wop groups deliver the goods in increasingly weird stage settings. The Shields sang "You Cheated, You Lied" dressed as naval officers at the wheel of a tall-masted ship. The Flamingos delivered a performance of their hit "I Only Have Eyes For You" in winter gear, next to a faux frozen pond. The lead singer looked quite bewildered throughout.

(note: I'd LOVE to uploads clips of this stuff, rather than just describe them. But I'd get in in sooooo much trouble. If I ever find them already posted, I'll update with links. But stills are OK-- That's more like free publicity.)

The Skyliners.

I'll assume you've all heard "Since I Don't Have You," the 1958 hit by The Skyliners, right? It's a slow, soaring Doo-wop ballad (covered by Guns n' Roses and Buckaroo Banzai). It's not hard to have a mental image of this song as a cool, sophisticated urban tune, infused with a Steel City street-corner vibe. So seeing them dressed like extras from "Bonanza," shuffling in hesitation step through a hyper-detailed Old West Saloon set (complete with balcony) is strange on an almost extraterrestrial level.

The studio audience.
The buttons they're wearing are for
a Beech Nut Gum ad campaign--
which explains why they were all
chewing like a bunch of ex-smokers.

And the studio audience of Philly teens had a hard time getting it too. In several of the performances they could be heard clapping along in "white" up-beat and "black" down-beat at the same time, combining for a dissonant double-time clap-CLAP-clap-CLAP syncopation.

These days, nobody of any ethnic affiliation would be caught dead clapping on the upbeat. Except in Disneyland. When I went there as a kid with my friend K. David (the talented guitarist who turned me onto this super-odd Rolling Stones promo), he would bedevil the tourists by insisting we all hit the 2 and 4 during the robotic entertainments. It never turned the crowd, but maybe it got them thinking.

I've always liked this old music. But I like music in general, and some new stuff (like "Fuck You" by Cee-Lo Green) is amazing. Was it better music? Can't say, but I saw a rather poignant YouTube comment on the Skyliners song that gave me pause: "I wish I was a teenager in the 50's and 60's, I cant tell you enough how much it sucks to be 17 right now when all the music around you is crap and the cars look ugly as hell and are all plastic and the styles are all junk." I said the same thing back in 1978, so I can relate.

The Gorilla Touches The Glass Again

Since our old-- and, in it's time, rather successful-- home on the Aussie site The Podcast Network is now 403'd (forbidden to be displayed), I thought I'd replay an article which, I felt, is one of those evergreen movie topics worth repeating. It also underscores what the name of our current blogsite means, a metaphor that can always benefit from another explanation.   --S

Several years ago, my wife and Mysti-- a friend of ours and a talented writer-- were having a movie marathon at the house. I wasn't there when they went to Blockbuster and I did not get to pick some of the DVDs, so one of the movies they grabbed was Return To Me (d. Bonnie Hunt, 2000).

Yeah, that Bonnie Hunt. It was the first theatrical film she directed-- and her last. Here's the summary,  by Stephen Hughes via the IMDb:

Bob Rueland (David Duchovny), a Chicago building contractor, cherishes life with his veterinarian wife (Joely Richardson) until she is tragically killed in an automobile accident. Meanwhile the family and friends of Grace Briggs (Minnie Driver), a waitress at a local Italian restaurant, are overjoyed when they learn that Grace will finally get a replacement heart (the heart of Bob's wife). Both Bob and Grace struggle to maintain normal lives after these traumatic events, until fate intervenes and brings them together.

(an aside: The phrase “tragically killed in an automobile accident” is seen quite commonly, but doesn't  it strike you as a strange qualification? “Joe Smith was hilariously killed in an automobile accident, after losing control of his car, apparently furiously pleasuring himself while listening to Katy Perry's “I Kissed A Girl.”)

So the girls got themselves a bona-fide chick flick to watch. I joined in for the beginning. Joely Richardson's doomed veterinarian character specialized in primate research at the zoo. One gorilla in particular was taken by her joyous spirit and, whenever she came close to his cage, he would put his hand up to the glass. Having read the snap-case and knowing what was in store for her, I thought: “No. You are friggin' kidding me! Are they really gonna hang a lantern on that?”

Minutes later, Joely is “tragically” killed, David Duchovny cries his eyes out (the weirdest part of the movie, like “X-Files” weird), and Minnie Driver gets Joely's heart. A year passes. Minnie is on an outing at the zoo with her friend's kids and her swell new ticker. She takes them to see the gorillas...

...I said, “If that gorilla touches that f***ing glass, I'm outta here!”

Mysti said, “Won't happen. They wouldn't--”

--as if on cue, as Minnie came close the gorilla touched the f***ing glass.

I went back downstairs.

And a new in-joke was born. To this day, during the horribly predictable bit of a movie any of the three of us will lean over and whisper “The gorilla is gonna touch the glass!” Always good for a laugh.


ADDENDA: The original posting may have been commented by Bonnie Hunt herself. But evidence of this went down the same Australian memory hole as the old site.

2001: A Media Purchasing Odyssey

2001: A Space Odyssey is still, and always has been, my favorite film. So naturally I always want a copy of it on-hand so I can enjoy the transcendent experience of viewing it when the spirit moves me. Changing technologies being what they are, to have this convenience meant I have had to purchase this film over and over and over. This is a rough timeline of my technological and financial relationship with Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece:

1968: Seen for the first time, when I was about five years old. My dad and his friend went to see 2001 in it's roadshow Cinerama release at the Century 21 in San Jose. They took me along, stuffing me in the back of a VW bug and telling me we were going to the dump ("We're getting close. Can you smell it?") I was absolutely transfixed by the film and it's message: My Dad told me, years later, I spent the trip back over the hill explaining the film to him. He also admitted that he and his buddy saw it in his generation's preferred mode: getting high and "tripping on the groovy colors." This is the likely reason I "blew his mind" with the explanation. Cost: Free.

After the movie Dad bought me the roadshow program for 2001. I was five, so it's likely I ate it, but I wish I still had it: beautifully printed, with vellum inserts, and worth a mint now.

1970-2005: saw 2001 twenty-three more times in theatres. This includes every opportunity to see it a 70mm revival. The last time I saw 2001 on a big screen was back in 2005, when the Castro threw a 70mm film festival. Cost: I don't know what the tickets added up to, but I'm sure it was considerable.

1984: Videotaped a letterboxed screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey on AMC, which was commercial-free back then. Minus overture and entr'acte, it just fit on a T-160 tape. Cost: $6 for the tape.

1990: Bought the standard-release Laserdisc of 2001, letterboxed and CLV. Laserdisc was the bomb for cinephiles back them, but Laserdisc was still an analog NTSC format, less detailed than a standard DVD. Cost: about $30.

1996: The Deluxe Edition of 2001, a four-disc CAV Laserdisc boxed set. This is still one of the most substantial versions of the movie I bought: It had a nice, big booklet, and the extras are pretty much the same ones you can get today. The box weighs over two pounds! Cost: $80.

2000: The Standard "Kubrick Collection" Letterboxed DVD. The video quality was actually a bit subpar for DVDs of this era, with expanded blacks and a bit too much compression. Still, the 5.1 audio was a revelation-- and I could watch it on my computer! Cost: $21.95.

2004: The Limited-Edition Commemorative version of 2001: a two-disc DVD set, included a booklet, the soundtrack CD, a frame of 70mm film, and a mail-in offer for a free one-sheet. The absolute best, even though the visual quality of the actual film was little improved from the "Kubrick Collection" DVD. Cost: $65.00.

2007: 2001: A Space Odyssey on HD-DVD. My company was betting heavily on Toshiba's authoring-friendly HD format prevailing over Blu-Ray in the HD Format Wars. We lost that bet, and now I have a disc that will play on only one orphaned player. Still, it's in 1080 HD, and for the first time I could get a a decent approximation of the theatrical version at home. Cost: $19.95 -- at this point, 2001 is becoming a loss-leader title, and usually grouped with the cheaper discs.

2010: The Blu-ray version. It's identical in visual quality, navigation and extras to the HD-DVD version, but it's a Blu-ray, so it works in my Blu-ray player. Cost: $12.

Warner Home Video has not yet announced the limited-edition Blu-ray version of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I imagine it will be digitized at 25 MB/sec from a brand-new 4K scan of the original 65mm internegative and will feature amazing new interactive features-- including the long-lost scenes from the original director's cut. It's just a matter of time, really. I suppose I should start saving up now.

(p.s. You might be wondering how many copies of the sequel 2010 (1984) I have purchased. That number would be zero. I'm not saying that 2010 was a colossal misfire: I'm just saying that the exec who hired Peter Hyams to direct it should be beaten unconscious with a robot arm from one of Discovery's space pods.)

Forbidden DVDs

Gautama Buddha, sitting under the bodhi tree 2500 years ago, meditated for 49 days and came to enlightenment. The most important step to inner peace he discovered was to abandon desire. Desire is our central source of suffering, for the realization that we cannot possess or achieve all we desire is the core of unhappiness. Desire distorts our very perception of reality, making that object of desire seem more alluring that it actually is.

In that spirit I present to you two films that you cannot legally own on DVD in the United States. And as you will see, they are two pieces of forbidden cinematic fruit that are nonetheless still fairly easy to get. And if somehow you obtain them, you'll know what I meant by distorted perceptions of reality.

Forbidden DVD #1. Brewster McCloud (1970)
This is a Robert Altman joint, released the same year as MASH. It is the story of an odd young man (Bud Cort) who lives in the Houston Astrodome and is obsessed with building a pair of working wings so he can fly. He has a guardian angel (Sally Kellerman) who protects him from the relentless pursuit of The Man. Like MASH, the bulk of the film consists of little intertwining vignettes, anti-establishment thinking, and overlapping dialog.

Altman is not one of my favorite directors. That everyone-talk-at-once gimmick gets old fast. He was hailed an iconoclastic auteur, whose personal style of filmmaking was often at odds with the Hollywood establishment. Personally, I think he tended to sabotage his own films. It wasn't hard to sense a pattern: A successful film (MASH, Nashville) followed by a string of duds (Popeye, OC and Stiggs).

Brewster McCloud was one of those duds. But it shouldn't have been. Unlike a lot of Altman's lugubrious later works, this one is remarkably lively, full of marvelous performances, slick filmmaking, and imaginative plot twists. Check out the opening on YouTube and you'll see what you're missing.

You can still get this film on VHS tape, but what would you do with one of those things?

Forbidden DVD #2: Pop Gear (1965)
I caught this film on AMC late one night, back before they carried ads. It's a sort of big-screen Scopitone of Merseybeat bands, hosted by Sir Jimmy Savile. He was the host of BBC's "Top of the Pops," and with his huge mop of blond hair, blackwatch plaid jacket and buggy eyes he comes off like a mod Doctor Emmet Brown.

Pop Gear is mostly a series of staged performances. And by that I mean really staged: the performers typically stand on a hastily constructed bunch of set-pieces on a cyclorama stage, lip-synching their songs and playing unplugged guitars. Occasionally they would do something, like slowly amble to secondary marks or circle en masse around the set.

The bands and songs ranged from the immortal (two Beatles songs, live performances set as bookends to the film; The Animals, Herman's Hermits and the Spencer Davis Group) to the best forgotten ("Humpty Dumpty" by Tommy Quickly and the Remo Four; The Four Pennies; The Rockin' Berries).

Pop Gear is marvelous in all it's fab details, a Pathécolour and Panavision close-up look at the British Invasion. Check out the Cuban heels; crooner Matt Monro serenading an extra next to what looks like an outhouse; Honey Lantree of The Honeycombs, cool beyond words, driving "Have I The Right" with killer drumming. Standing next to her, playing (unplugged) rhythm on a hideous Burns guitar, Martin Murray is a dead ringer for professor Julius Kelp from The Nutty Professor. I'm now convinced Peter Asher of Peter and Gordon must have been the model for Austin Powers. There's even two bits of fun choreography!

This film was photographed by Geoffrey Unsworth, perhaps the finest cinematographer England has ever produced. He shot 2001, A Night to Remember, Cabaret and Superman. The great lighting and fluid camera moves elevate this film from a cheesy variety-show musical segment to something of a lost gem.

Okay, you can't get this on DVD (I'm sure it's a music clearance issue), but you CAN see an edited version of Pop Gear in its entirety on YouTube. This link will take you to part one: it's all designed to run end-to-end in eight parts (thank you, nyrainbow2!).

the resolution is nowhere near as good as DVD, but it is the correct 2.35:1 aspect ratio.