'As Good As It Gets': The Second Act Stall *

Thanks to Karl Igelsias (See Our Craft, here), I took on a close reading of this script to look at characterization. The first forty pages demonstrate great characterization of complex and nearly impossible people. Melvin Udall first among them. So, thanks Karl. I think your Creative Screenwriting story is as good as self-instruction gets.

The movie left me disappointed, but I couldn't remember why. There's a nagging suspicion that the reluctant romance between Carol (Helen Hunt) and Melvin (Jack Nicholson) repelled me. So why bother with this exercise? Because the script is not the movie.

Reading it, I was damned impressed with comedy writing that avoids slam-bang of the kind of movies that make huge money fast. Incidentally, this James J. Brooks and Mark Andrus script is the seventh top grossing rom-com since 1978 (Box Office Mojo). Instead, I found clever, situational, and low-decibel stories about the timeless question: what is true love?

The opening scene is a perfect example of character exposition demonstrating the protagonist's flaws and strengths, and announcing Melvin Udall's need: this romance writer doesn't know what love is. His desire is to control his environment, and the more he stumbles into comically anarchic relationships with his neighbor and waitress, the more his world comes apart, letting real love in. (Sigh)

But the story stalled when Melvin engineers a trip to Baltimore with Carol and Simon, his neighbor. You'll remember that Simon was beaten by thieves in his own home. His treatment bankrupts him. He capitulates to his friend Frank's plan to ask his parents for money. Since Melvin made arrangements to get a good doctor on the case, Carol finally feels a bit of ease about her very sick son Spencer. Melvin volunteers to drive Simon to Baltimore so that he can give Carol a day off and try to impress her as a love interest.

During the drive to Baltimore, the script slows down. No, it pulls onto the shoulder and turns off the radio. Melvin and Carol temporarily move to the background, Simon moves to the fore with a long explanation of why his father threw him out, why he has no relationship with his mother, and why they cannot speak. It's exposition and it's late and it's all reported by Simon. Weirdly, Carol pulls over - stops the forward motion of the story - to hear Simon pull the painful threads of his life-story sweater.

It was a deliberate choice. I concede that the writers needed the information and the moment to contrast with Simon's decision not to beg for cash and instead turn for home. But Simon's confessional doesn't reveal enough about any of the main characters to have spun down the story momentum. While it puts pressure on Melvin to get Carol to pay attention to him, not Simon, Melvin doesn't reveal new traits or resources to do so. And the script doesn't regain its stride until the three return to New York.

As a side note, "things happen" to Simon, but it is Melvin's story. Simon's dog incites Melvin to dump it down the trash chute. Simon is beaten nearly to death, but Melvin calls 911. Simon is driven to financial ruin, but Melvin drives him to Baltimore. Simon loses his friends. Simon travels to Baltimore. Melvin responds, or is trapped into responding, to each of these. Dramatically, they are dependent. There's no story without Simon. There's no inner conflict without Melvin. It turns out that the movie left me cold because these two characters together make one man, but they don't form the kind of bond that shows us they recognize it.

I'm going to subject myself to the movie again, but in the meantime, fans of the script or movie should get out your flensing knives. Agree or disagree?

* John's Critique Rubric: For educational purposes only. It's hard to make a great movie: Respek, bro! Or as my friend the yogi says it, Namaste.

When Software Works, You Just Want to Kiss Someone

Can I kiss someone at Sage? Okay, frankly, not just anyone, but maybe a cute developer who looks something like Diablo Cody, more or less?

I used to use Pluck, the newsreader plug in, in Internet Explorer. It was light, clean, versatile, and gave me lots of control over how I displayed, read, and deleted new feed entries. Then I discovered Firefox. Totally turned my life around. Well, things were slow just then.

Pluck for Firefox is a different animal. You may like it. Good. Feh. I gave up the control I so love and have been bereft until last week. Enter Sage, which is everything I loved about Pluck, but made for Firefox. Easy to use, lots of control, easier than ever feed detection. Me likey!

And it's great with shallots and white wine as a marinade for chicken.

Taking it Outdoors

The Banff Mountain Film Festival annually brings two nights of adventure movies to nearly 185 locations around the US. It's a crunchy, boho pair of nights that allow you to see, for example, a guy ski off nutty vertical drops and land in deep snow, more or less on his tale. Last year a pair of German climbers scaled Eiger using equipment identical to that of the first successful climber to reach the summit. And before that, extreme trampers, who filmed themselves hopping fences and doing stunts on backyard trampolines.

The stories often stink. Which is liberating, really. The movies focus on, say, experts doing their near-death-defying thing, or carving vertical powder where no ski as ever broken the surface. Last night an eighty-year-old Pole paraglided into the valleys outside Grappa in Italy. Is he mad or is he mugging? The footage just isn't there to show us . And since their feats can't be our feats, the story could answer the question, "Why?" But few do.

A long "mountain culture" documentary, The Magic Mountain, fails to show us, after 50 minutes, who the sacrificing subject of the movie is. She started an NGO in the Lahdak province of India after seeing the poverty during a mountaineering trip. And you know, it's up to the audience to decide. I thought she was running from family, from Western society, from any conception of competition and success. And if the footage is any indication, for all the good she plainly does, she has no clue who she is either. I'm grateful this saintly promo showed us that she may also be nuts.

Happy Valentine's Day in Production

Love is like this: You do it for free, but it costs you plenty. You lose your innocence and learn things you will be glad of, but first you feel creepy and you feel glad much much later. You think you'll never be good enough. Then you accept that you're not good enough. Then it's not you, it's her (or whatever). You're right. But you can't help yourself because it's good and getting better, better than anything so far. So you show up one more time, feeling tenative but hoping to feel that bouyant, this-could-be-perfect, "we could see the clouds separate" again and actually touch the ineffable. Yeah, love is like that.

Turns out, so is having an internship at a small production company, which I've recently landed. Folks asked me not to say much about what goes on there, so I won't. I'm reading and commenting on scripts, though this falls short of coverage - very informal place.

I'm encouraged. Because now that I see other scripts in development, I think that my work doesn't suck. Is good ever good enough? Now I know the answer: No. And I understand how important, crucial it is to love and champion your work. I haven't sat in full gale of a screenwriter on a mission. But I can see how "good" can be transformed into "potentially great" with a big ration of love and umph behind it. But great should still be great on the page. I don't think I've seen it yet. Deep, fresh, and bubbly; I'm looking forward to seeing that. Okay, so I haven't lost my innocence entirely, have I?

Mysterious Skin

The answer to the question, "Why make this movie?" is, I think, because you're not coming from or going to the places these boys know. Thank god. The movie is the stories of Neal, a charismatic and desperate boy prostitute and Brian, a desperately certain believer that he was visited by aliens. Each follows a path that leads them to each other, and the truth of what happened when they last knew each other as Little League teammates.

This movie was hell to watch. It begins with cinematic flourishes that disappear too early, exposing the audience to Neal's descent into increasingly threatening, ultimately brutal, encounters with johns. The audience's anxiety comes from a real fear of brutality they'll see in Neal's next scene. Sadly, a distant second fear arises over what might happen to Neal. Flip the importance of these fears and we'd have had a much better movie.

Decisions reveal the character and story in a moment, so when they're squandered, cripes but your heart sinks. At a crucial turning point in the second act, Neal, who is looking forward to going home for Christmas (it's not clear why), does one last john on his way to the airport. This rough trade nearly kills him. Then he appears at his mother's house, claiming he was mugged. Neal had already taken a stand-up job and seemed to stick with it. His whole conception of sex and affection was blown open through an evening with an HIV-positive john who simply wanted him to rub his back. Neal was just turning into a human being. Why this last trick? Habit, self destructiveness? This decision should have told us everything about Neal. It only shows us that his best friend Wendy was right all along. And that's too little.

When Neal and Brian finally meet, they return to the scene of the transforming moment of their lives. Neal narrates as Brian loses his alien abduction alibi and acknowledges that he was sexually molested. But the emotional payoff falls short: Neal's return is vaguely motivated; Brian's immediate trust in Neal seems impossible to believe; Wendy Peterson is the voice of concern, but a character who doesn't act on that concern, a Cassandra with too much mascara; Eric, and friend and the intermediary, appears not to have a point of view despite of his affection for Brian and his love for Neal. After the brutality of the story, the story owed us tragedy. Or comedy. Or philosophy. The two boys collapsed in grief in the dark from a high POV is too little of any of these.

Reducing Well-Intentioned Mistakes by One

Thanks to all of you have gave me online and offline advice about whether to try acting in a community theater play. I wish you could have seen the auditions. When I announced that I'd do a few minutes from the second act monologue of Christopher Durang's Laughing Wild, the director said, "Oh good!"” He laughed and said "Excellent," at the end. That'’s good, right?

Here's a lesson from the audition. A giant blind woman (I mean, 5' 11", 200 lbs) declaimed the Dolly Levy speech from Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker in which she asks her dead husband permission to wed Mr. Vandergelder. It's a long monologue. Oh, long! At one point she chopped the air with both hands like the robot on Lost in Space (Warning! Warning!).

I don't know the speech well, but it calls for landing on the word "shattered," which through her very slight speech impediment came out as "sshhlattered." We forgave her, looking away. The second time around I was "“sshhlaken." But the third time, I thought I'd "sshhlatter" with laughter.

I was sure there was a role for this Venus of Willendorf, maybe as an armoire or hat tree. But the director tried her in the role of the countess. She was as broad and blousy an aristocrat as one could ever want. I hope she gets the role. She'’ll be sshhlplectacular.

Two or three people who've appeared in earlier productions by this company auditioned that night. They are good: bright and uniform on stage. I'm not sure I can even offer that. But I was looking for a way to learn about funny, not just by delivery but by revealing the desperation underneath. Because that's hard to write. So I'll wait for another production and another cast to learn what I'm looking for.

The Soundtrack, or Tell Me How I Should Feel When Writing Checks

Click on the title of the post to find a new discovery of mine: StreamingSoundtracks.com. I suppose I have to thank iTunes for loading this link in the latest release (See Radio/Eclectic).

I started listening to this donation- and community-supported shuffle service the other day while writing. I was completely distracted by the changes in mood and tone and the nagging question, "What the heck movie was that from?"

If, to be reductive, film music tells us how to feel about what we see, I've found the perfect streaming music for bill paying, lurching as it does from pathos to elation, from comedy to horror.

Should Screenwriters Act? I mean, try to, for educational purposes

Because I have my doubts. I tried out for a play yesterday. Namely You Can't Take It With You (Kaufman and Hart). And having seen this company's previous productions, I know that the right combination of material and amateurs comes off. Note my dubiousness.

A year or so ago a film guy said to me that acting was good for screenwriters. And actors I talk to tell me something similar. They want complex, shifting emotion and range within a role. They want admirable action. Of course, they want screen time, short of anything else.

So the logic runs that a screenwriter playing a high-strung IRS agent or an exiled Czarist Russian dance master (and professional remorrah) gets to see and feel what it takes to serve up characters who are as interesting to play as they are interesting to watch. Of course, this spec monkey wants to be the romantic lead. And that's because I'm not an actor. Daffy Ed, bombastic Boris, sense-itself Grandpa are the best parts. If I were an actor, I'd know that as well as I know when it's time to go in for a tanning tune-up.

So, how many of you have performed in shows or film?

Did you learn something valuable?

Or did you just find yourself drinking beer after rehearsals with the stunning (and impossible) actresses (...hoping and trying not too hard - maybe, definitely tonight, no, no, definitely only a maybe still...)?

Transamerica

In a clever double-meaning, Transamerica is a picaresque in which Bree, the transgender woman in process, crosses the nation in a beat-up station wagon. She turns the American family trip upside down. This is no vacation, but a trial that tests her desire to become the woman she knows she was meant to be.

Spoilers follow! Just one week from the transforming surgery that will complete the process to make her a woman, Bree learns that she'd fathered a son years ago when she was Stanley and married. She gets a call from a NYC juvenile lockup where a kid named Toby is being held for prostitution.

Bree believes it's a scam. But haunted nevertheless, she reports the strange call to her supportive therapist, Margaret. Bree's adjustment to becoming a woman must have been rocky over the three years of therapy and cosmetic surgery. Margaret insists that Bree see the boy before she approves Bree's final operation, "So you're not sorry about leaving anything behind." (Or a similar sentiment; the quote is an approximation.)

With the clock ticking on her surgery date, she flies out to meet the boy, Toby, and bail him out. She tries to drop him, giving him 100 bucks, and then when she takes pity on him, drives him to his stepfather's house. A bitter history emerges, violence breaks out, and she agrees to take Toby to L.A.

What's great about this movie is it's second half. From the point she meets the Indian who develops a discrete crush on her to the moment Alex runs away from Bree's parents' Phoenix house to the very end. The metaphor and sometimes shifting tone of the movie drop away and we see the new woman, flirting and adored. The story stays aloft throughout the visit (or siege) with her parents, not because of the evident comedy and tragedy of the sequence, but because all but one of her emotions is laid bare. That last one - the pain of loss shot through the moment she's achieved her goal - she saves her return home.

Other reasons to admire Transamerica:

• Kick-ass performance by Felicity Huffman, not to mention that Bree is well-hung.


• The overhanging suspense of what will happen if and when people around her discover she is, for now, a hermaphrodite.


• Periodic wittiness of the script: In response to Bree's sister offering her mother's feathered pink wrap to wear, Bree says, "I'm a transexual, not a transvestite."

John's Critique Rubric: Darkness Visible's critiques are for educational purposes only. It's hard to make a good movie. Respek, bro!

Visceral, yes, but...

"Sometimes you're so beautiful it just gags me."

- Tony Kirby to Alice Sycamore in You Can't Take it With You (1938)

And another thing to blame on the brain

Like everyone who has an inferiority complex about comprehending the science of our times, I'm fascinated by the drumbeat of insights - of varying significance - about what happens in the brain. Two recent articles in the New York Times have me reflecting on what to pay attention to when writing stories.

Recently, a study showed that we don't want to know, and that we fight against knowing, facts that contradict our closely held opinions. A Shocker: Partisan Thought is Unconscious tells how political partisan thinking "is often predominantly emotional." The rational brain was quiet - dark on the MRI - when confronted with facts the listeners didn't like. It reminds me of a friend who couldn't remember that Miles (Paul Giamatti) in Sideways was pathetically flawed. There was, if nothing else, his stealing money from his mother. "Oh, I forgot about that," she said. Once he's redeemed himself and reached out for love, he's transformed from pathetic creep. Which is another way of saying that my friend had forgiven him, forgetting the facts that no longer apply.

In other words, it doesn't matter much what they say. It matters what they do. Once we fall for a character, we're going to sort what we don't want to believe and follow our emotions.

Yes, they're telling you how you feel

Mirror neurons, that is. These are a relatively new function of particular neurons and related complex structures that may explain why movies have the power to move us as few other art forms do. Empathy, it turns out, is not just an unconscious emotional capacity, it's built into our cells and molecules.

In a story in the New York Times, Sandra Blakeslee reports that recent research shows mirror neurons may account for such things as recognizing behavior and anticipating what happens next, and social emotions - shame, rejection, loss - which register directly in viewers who see others suffer such emotions.

And get this:

"The human brain has multiple mirror neuron systems that specialize in carrying out and understanding not just the actions of others, but their intentions, the social meaning of the behavior and their emotions."

"Mirror neurons allow us to grasp the mind of others through...direct simulation, by feeling...."

We feel what others feel, apparently, for the long-term survival and growth of the species. So folks, what we're handling when we write stories is the power to touch the spark and tinder of the thing we have in common, beneath all our differences. It's why we hate the feeling of being manipulated by stories, but cry anyway. It's why we back movies that come at us like an emotional tracheotomy going for the throat. And it's why we love the success of a great movie that's true. Not just the correct facts, but true feelings, telling us exactly our mirror neurons tell us with the power to keeping us alive and thriving.

The Constant Gardener

I thought it had its heart in the right place, this movie. But where it should have a heart, it had a camera. Now, the editing, color, and overpowering framing of a bright, blank Kenya in early scenes offer so much promise. I’ll leave it to others to identify what went wrong in the choices of the DP and director. But the story cheated viewers out of nearly every moment of identification with human feeling.

First, expectations. The Constant Gardener could have been a thriller, a who-dunnit, a tragedy, a David v. Goliath crusade. Director Fernando Meirelles and screenwriter Jeffrey Caine could have woven together exciting combinations of these. The look and feel gives the impression that was their aim. But they repeatedly show and then steal questions we want answered: Is Justin’s wife really the dead woman found on the road? Answered. How is her death connected with her investigation into Three Bees corporation and its clinical trails? Answered. Did the British government play in a role? Answered. The Kenyan government? Answered. My friends? Liars and betrayers. By the midpoint when Justin is convinced that Tessa is a casualty of big pharma geopolitical profiteering, the viewer no longer knows what question matters. Justin gets on a train to Amsterdam without a plan, and so does the movie.

Why do Tessa, Justin, Arnold, and Sandy do, well, what they do? Love. But we do not see this, we hear it. It comes by conversation and incidental action. In a scene rife with possibility, Tessa lays in a hospital bed nursing a black newborn. The movie toys with us – is this the crusading Kenyan doctor’s child after all? – and then points us to the baby’s teen mother, who is dying nearby. Tessa is moved with compassion and outrage for the woman. But sharing the feeling demands knee-jerk sentimentalizing from the audience. We know nothing about the teenager or others like her. The filmmakers treat her death as an emblem not a person, much they way Tessa accuses the drug corporations of treating Africans as statistics. We do not feel because the moment is not particular.

Justin’s surrender to his own murder is the moment when I wanted to start throwing Milk Duds. Even if we had watching him face his assassins and drop the clip from his pistol, we could have called him oddly courageous because we saw his choice. It remains unclear why he felt so trapped that he should volunteer to be killed.

To cap the disappointments, at Justin’s funeral we learn that the late-appearing hero is – ta da! – Tessa’s cousin and lawyer, Ham. Justin made sure that Ham held the crucial evidence to would bring down the British senior diplomat Sir Bernard Pellegrin. While it was Justin’s unseen hand at work, the dramatic action belongs to a secondary character. And if this outing had been the first in a series of stylish third act revelations prepared and planned by the dead Justin, we would have cheered him as the avenging martyr. As it played, he wasn't clever, impassioned, good, or wise. And his company makes for a long two hours.

John’s critique rubric: Darkness Visible's critiques are for educational purposes only. It's hard to make a good movie. Respek, bro!

Biting and quoting, from 'Some Came Running'

"A little talent to a writer means as much as a little talent to a brain surgeon."

- Dave Hirsh. Hard drinking, passionate misanthrope. Sometime writer.

Inflation, Two Much, and Just Because They Are That Way

The New Yorker's Anthony Lane (January 16, 2006) barnstorms the 2005 cinematic year and as you might expect, found it de trop and le moins. But he left me second-guessing my hard earned instincts, one about length, the other about character motivation. I think he may be right.

I've gotten used to two-hour movies. And I've given up my knee-jerk complaint that two is too much. I only complain about the dull parts. Recent two-plussers gain fresh wind despite the doldrums: Syriana, Munich, Brokeback Mountain, King Kong, The Chronicles of Narnia spring to mind. But that means more Montana, more crashing dinosaurs, more characters and subplots, more incrementally revealing scenes, more Christian myth. If you trimmed the dull parts, all except Kong would be less than two hours. Two is too much.

But instead of ruthlessly disciplined story and film editing, Lane complains that what we get from greater length is more explaining. "...This want of resolution - of the will to believe that a movie, like a poem, can deliver a person or a predicament straight into our hands - ... leads to a bummer like 'Charlie and The Chocolate Factory.'" And he goes on to complain about Willy's backstory of malicious parenting. Watching A Fistful of Dollars recently, I noticed that more than two thirds of the movie pass before Clint Eastwood's character offers a single sentence about why: "Saw this once before and wasn't able to help." Whatever. He just does it. Wedding Crashers, the same. They make love and commitment a game until... They are what they do.

As screenwriters, it's our job to bear the burden of characters' psychological profiles, and shut the hell up. (The most superfluous line in Kong is the theater manager's speech to tell Anne Darrow - okay, us - that people leave her when she trusts them. There's ten seconds Jackson could have put back on our lifetime clock.) We're all inexplicable, especially to ourselves. I'm resolved to believe again that a movie can deliver a person or predicament straight into other's hands. Resolved do that this year.

Brokeback Mountain

As I settled into my gay cowboy movie seat trying I was trying to smooth my hackles. They always stand on end when a vocal majority noisily loves a movie or is afraid to criticize it. Hackles down, I found Brokeback Mountain is a great, well-made movie. I even forgave it it's two-hour topping length.

But as I meditated on unbristling, a question replaced my hackles: How will screenwriters Larry McMurtry, Diane Ossana, and director Ang Lee make the love affair of Jack and Ennis recognizable to all of us. How will they convince us all to identify with these two?

Many of the scenes that were added to the movie reveal who Ennis and Jack are with their families. I read Annie Proulx’s New Yorker short story before seeing the movie. It’s trimmed to the bone. In scenes added to the movie, we watch them make hard tough choices, and respect many of them.

At a fourth of July fireworks display, Ennis beats up a biker who’s intruding his family’s good time. At a Thanksgiving dinner, Jack challenges his father in law for control over his home. His outburst earns our respect, but his wife’s sly admiration shows us the man of house. Jack guides his son behind the wheel of a big tractor, genuinely delighted. Even Jack’s affair with another man, though nothing like his love for Ennis, shows us Jack’s desperation. These scenes bridge the gap between what's different about these two and what they have in common with any breathing human being: loyalty, love, family feeling, dedication, passion.

And at the end, after all their suffering, Ennis still believes in love and wishes it for his oldest daughter. Each of these scenes shows us men who live up to the choices they’ve made, and hard boundaries implied. They transform the cowboy code from stoic nobility, to stoic noble loyalty, commitment, endurance even in the closet. And because we all suffer silently with limits, we sympathize with their hard decisions, even though we’ll never be beaten to death because of who we are.

The Machinist

I loved the way this movie takes us to the land of Memento, but I felt disappointed by the revelation that Trevor Reznik (the sepulchral Christian Bale) worked so hard to uncover. The plotting is clever and the storytelling that reveals Trevor's madness, paranoia, and murderousness is deftly handled. Much of the movie is starkly beautiful. And they must have saved $$ on craft services.

The Machinist (Brad Anderson, director; Scott Kosar, screenwriter) follows Trevor as he pursues and is pursued by a man who may or may not be a ghost. As Trevor's madness blooms, I gave the movie the benefit of the doubt. We're headed into a metaphysical territory. Soon it will be clear that the man's identity has been stripped away by existential isolation. He's modern man in a cell of his own making. He's the figure of terminal narcissism. Whatever was coming, it would leave him, and us, feeling the emptiness of a philosophical void, or the kind of moral chasm that's revealed at Memento's final coda. When was the last time you saw a movie like that? Bring it on.

When the horrible revelation finally comes, it is particular and concrete in a way that is disappointing. Trevor's personality is split apart by the horror of his actions and he exiles the man he was. But the Terrible Thing that precipitated it was an accident. While his self-revulsion might be real, viewers (this one for sure) do not feel that he should literally disintegrate over an accident. Would we? Probably not. Even if he was speeding toward a despicable goal. Even if Trevor is identified with the innocent Nicholas, making the accident a figurative self-murder. I'm talking about stakes here. The feeling of unforgivability, of abject moral emptiness that he has lived with is not paid off in the final scenes.

New for the new year: Darkness Visible's critiques are for educational purposes only. It's hard to make a good movie. Respek, bro!

Walk the Line

This Johnny Cash story gives us its two stars working at the top of their form, channeling the celebrities they're playing. So many reviews and coverage of the film focus on this, but few people have said the obvious: the story runs in historical sequence in the most conventional way.

Walk the Line is a great success. But Capote comes to mind. It was the best movie I saw last year. More important, Capote's moviemakers perfectly chose the period that could entail his story, from reading about the multiple-murder to the execution of Perry Smith. That choice provides the focus, the theme, and our identification with his story goal.

The Johnny Cash story in Walk the Line is his public and private passion for June Carter. Imagine how the movie would have gained focus by starting the story with their meeting. After all, it ends with their wedding. The middle, like all good romances, sees them separated by various forces. While Cash's father's alcoholic meanness is an obvious influence on the man in black, all of his adult decisions move him toward playing music and June Carter. Nearly everything else is reaction. As portrayed in Walk, the turnaround concert at Folsom Prison is motivated by a desire to do good and redeem himself in June's eyes.

I'm not taking pot shots. But what's clear is that Cash really leans into the wind and trudges forward against internal and external storms after meeting June. Once they've met, viewers want what he wants. Despite his marriage, philandering, drunkenness, and addictions, we feel for him once it's clear how bad they've got it for the other.

Every character's life is encapsulated by any slice of time. But while life has a beginning, middle, and an end, that doesn't it make a good story. The selection of a slice of the subject's life that is that man or the woman reflects the screenwriter's skill and intelligence.

That's why they call him Fun

Fun Joel proposes trying really hard - without resolving anything - tracking the movies you see in a year. A good idea, since some sear the memory and some are lime Jell-o.

I'm going to try to keep my list in the sidebar in reverse chronological order, just for the sake of experiment. Darkness Visible reviews will keep coming, but you'll also see the movies I didn't review. I'm finding that some movies yield nothing after shaking and banging them to see how they work.

Neanderthal TV: Kick Ass, Take Names, and Suffer

In a New York Times article, Warren St. John scratches the surface of a trend toward "Neanderthal TV" and finds that what men want is models of moral certainty who live toward good ends by any means. Murder, revenge? As Stewart Smalley used to say, "“That's... Okay!" My first reaction: Oh, hell yeah! I knew that.

But when my brother in law Jack (not his real name) said, "I love this guy," while watching House during a cozy Christmas en famille, I heard the other note St. John avoided in the story: that people look for the release of entertainment in their real lives. Jack's a good guy. Don't get me wrong. But the guy lives under constraint: a big family, a challenging business in a low-demand market, and wishes, which sharpen limits and more solid. He's a committed Becker viewer; he wants to be House; he tries to be both, with some John McClane thrown in for spice.

In the Times article, president of Fox Entertainment and creator of FX's The Shield and Over There Peter Ligouri reports that TV producers look at strong male protagonists as aspirational characters. So what do we aspire to?
- Super-competence
- Unconditional respect regardless our behavior
- To be ninety-nine percent right one hundred percent of the time
- Openly antagonistic to authority, convention, and manners

My other brother in law - call him Norm - loves to tell stories about how he's reclaimed a plasma television or computer from a rental client who hasn't paid in two months. He'’s a terrible story-teller and a compulsive exaggerator. But he live the desires of TV characters. They want to dominate their enviornment. They aren't thinking about the cause or the cost of their motivations, the wound that festers with defensiveness, fear, and self-loathing.

At the Screenwriting Expo I heard Lawrence Kaplow, a House producer, discuss the development and structure of episodes. I was struck by his description of the show as a procedural that turns on the character moments, adding that Hugh Laurie's range made it possible for them to deepen the character opportunities. Recently a smoldering, frustrated love is complicating House's life. Who knew anyone could get close enough? And when Stacy Warner (Sela Ward) does get close, House is going to suffer. Really suffer. That's not what men aspire to. But it's pretty damned true if we are aspiring to that list above.

If men want Neanderthal TV, then they're seeing and not seeing the shows I'm watching. If not this week, then next week, the emotional slapdown is a'comin'. Because we're not Neanderthals. Some of the biggest missing links were bagged in the Enrons/Adelphias/MCIs of the past ten years. And nobody wants to be them. Not anymore.

...more to come on this.