Brass Monkey

Pursuant to

Friend Dave's recommendation

, I caught an $11.75 matinee of

The Golden Compass

yesterday. To be honest, this was also pursuant to not working, having a cold and being pretty certain that I'd do myself worse financial disadvantage if I had two hours more out amongst the Christmas fairs of New York. But I digress (shamelessly [and at great length {mostly as an excuse to ((ab))use proper parenthetical structure}]), and the title of this entry has not merely to do with ripping off

Friend Davey

's 'blog conceit.

The Golden Compass

, in my opinion, has two highly effective devices on which most of the success of the movie rides. The first has to do with the first half of the movie. Everyone's soul, you see, in this imagined world, exists outside of themselves as a sort of animal familiar that never leaves their side. Nicole Kidman's familiar (or daemon) is a monkey, with oddly metallic fur. Upon her introduction to the plot, the metastructure of the story goes a little something like this: Hey, look at how pretty our film is, how fantastical, isn't it all so calming and utopian and OH MY GOD WHERE'D THAT SCREAMING MONKEY COME FROM!? I am not kidding. There was this one time when, I swear to you, the monkey popped up from the bottom of the screen from out of nowhere. I mean, he didn't even have something he could realistically be standing on in the environment, and there he was again, screaming. If I had been one of the animators on this, I would have saved the file, program, whatever, of the monkey, for use in startling my coworkers for years to come. Just imagine sweating through your 2007 TurboTax when, from out of absolutely nowhere, a screaming golden monkey juts his head into your screen. In all fairness, the movie should have at least been

sub

titled

The (Screaming) Golden Monkey

.

Oh yeah. The other highly effective device can be summed up in two words: Bear and Fight. Bear fights. Fo' reals. Keep your eyes peeled. This could be a whole new sub-genre of action film. And if so, I am there, I am wearing the t-shirt, I am learning the terminology (

ah, the classic Rips-Lower-Jaw-from-Body technique...

) and I am enrolled in the Bear Fighting fantasy camp. Stick some giant foam paws on me. I am ready to rumble.

When the fur settles, and the dust as well, this is pretty much a good-time, only-enough-pathos-to-justify-some-violence Christmas movie. Lots of snow. Talking animals. Cute kids. And two of the most gorgeous adult actors on the screen these days, for mom and dad. (In fact: Hey: I know that movie casts often repeat themselves, but weren't these two just in that

Body Snatchers

reremake? This reminds me of the

Batman Begins

/

The Prestige

and

The Matrix

/

Memento

phenomenon. Not to mention the unholy trinity of Willis/Jackson/Travolta. Spread some of the love around, Hollywood.) They even clipped off the ending of the first book in order to make the film conclude a bit happier, which actually upsets me more than sucking the supposed Atheism out of it.

As to that (the Atheism)--I'm sorry, but I just can't stay off this topic (see

12/7/07

). Friend Younce posits in his

Comments

section that if the ultimate plot of this trilogy involves "killing God," it indicates not only a belief in God, but an actual finger, pointing to God, saying (yes, they'd probably have talking fingers in this sort of trilogy), "Hey look: It's God. I found him/her/it. He/she/it exists." I'm afraid I disagree, to a certain extent. The author, as any fantasy author may be accused, is clearly working in allegory. To "kill God" is in his allegory to eradicate the supposedly irrational belief in God from within ourselves. In fact, what will be really interesting as far as these movies go will be to see how they handle that little feat in the third film. The characters' "daemons" represent individualism, or Humanism, after a fashion.

I have a curious history with the books this franchise is sprung from. I have only read the first two, and those quite by necessity. It was toward the end of my first trip to Italy, in 2006, and I came down with a serious bug that laid me up with a high fever for almost a week. With nothing to do but lie in bed and either read, or try to learn Italian from their daytime television, I quickly tore through the novel I had brought:

The Mask of Apollo

. (A birthday gift from

Friend Patrick

, and the first Mary Renault book I ever undertook.)

Friend Heather

loaned me the first two books of

His Dark Materials

and I drank them up in lieu of the excellent white wines of Orvieto. I write about it now, similarly afflicted (though no high fever, thank...whatever providence may be), and acknowledge that my knowledge of the books is partial and drenched with fever-sweat.

I reiterate: Go Atheists. I've got nothing against them, just like I've got nothing against Christians or Muslims. Those for whom I do have something against (that made sense grammatically, I swear), is them what (that bit didn't, though) exercise their beliefs--any beliefs--by way of disparaging others'. Up with that I shall not put. It may seem only fair; the Atheists have had to deal with eons of persecution, I realize, but here's another thing I'd do away with: the symbol for justice being a beam-balance scale. Balance is good, but dichotomy is simply a deceptive paradigm for identifying anything. I'm all for clarity, but I aspire to understand all things beyond a simple yes, or no. All things are a part of a whole, in my humble opinion. Balance, in the theological, philosophical sense, cannot be expressed on a simple beam. I come around, by tender footfalls, to my point.

In my post of December 7th of this year, I mentioned in passing that the notion of "fate" is inescapable to me because it permeates every story we tell on some level. (Pullman, the author of the books in question, by the way, values stories above all else. Reminds me of

Gaiman

in that way.) Especially in theatre, fate, or some analogue of it, sort of makes the motor run. This goes for both tragedy and comedy. Similarly, I'm not sure one can tell a story without God entering into it. If we could, I'm not sure we'd want to. The storyteller is, after a fashion, God of the story. What gives the majority of humans meaning in their lives? God. Who determines meaning in a story? The storyteller. This paradigm (or matrix, if you will) manifests in our novels, movies and plays on conscious and subconscious levels. It's tough for me to point toward it in

His Dark Materials

before having read the third installment but, for those who know the series, might not the presence of "dust" (magical stuff from the universe that connects people to their souls, and their souls to the source of "dust") be a manifestation of a, albeit rather Universalist, concept of divinity?

Perhaps I am simply too influenced by what little classical education I have absorbed. All the Greek plays have a theme that can be summed up as, "Hey, you can mess with the Gods all you want, but after a few hours, they get the last word, machina or no." I agree with the Atheists when they tell us (calmly, without insult) to take responsibility for the here and now, and love humanity for being human. I'm just not sure that it's possible to kill God off entirely, in spite of Nietzsche and Pullman and the rest. Please, contest my claim; I'd love to hear theories, especially as relates to storytelling. Interestingly enough, Friend Dave is also a big proponent of role-playing games for which there is not necessarily a storyteller. In these, instead of a typical structure of a game-master, who tells everyone what's going on, the players themselves contribute to the narrative in different ways. Perhaps therein lies a way of retiring God. Perhaps, instead, it creates a pantheon of Gods.

Part of my holiday travel plans include venturing south to Friends Davey, Dave and Mark, to play this sort of game all together. It's an appointment a long time in the making, and I'm looking forward to it. These friends of mine are some of the best storytellers I know. I'll let you know what stories we create together.

You can bet a screaming monkey will enter into it, somewhere.

Like Soundwave, I've Got Something To Get Off My Chest.

Fellow victims, I caved and rented

Transformers

(2007). I'm aware of my crime. This is equivalent to buying one of the new

VW

bugs, or digging that "new song" by Elvis, which is actually an unused, dance-remastered vocal track. I have been sold my own nostalgia back to me, and I bought (in to) it. One moment I was Principled Actor Jeff, and then--

ENH

-

ENH

-

ENH

-

ENH

-

ENCH

--the

Deceptacon

,

Eightiesdork

.

The worst part is that I knew, going in, that it was directed by Michael Bay. Now look: Sure, I liked Michael Bay. When I was eighteen. I can admit that. I was young, and I needed the stimulation. I DON'T NEED IT ANYMORE. Somehow, it was easier for me to accept the idea that I

was

the camera, back then, and capable of that sort of camera

kung

fu

he's made his name with. Now, I prefer the long shot, and the relatively grounded camera that shows me precisely what is going on, so I can appreciate moments more than general motion.

I didn't even go in to the movie with high expectations. There was a reason I was renting it, and didn't catch it in the theaters. In point of fact, the only reason I rented it at all was that I caught

The Battle of Shaker Heights

on TV the other day, which convinced me that this

Shia

LaBeouf

lad might just have something to him. (Though my jury remains resolutely not-in on his worthiness to

wield

the Indiana Jones mantle in 2008.) Indeed,

Shia

made the movie for me, which would be an accomplishment of sorts, considering he was up against two-storey robots (and the gorgeous, not-remotely-in-high-school Megan Fox) most of the time.

"Would be," I say, because said two-storey robots were rendered hopelessly uninteresting by the same aesthetic that directs Bay's camera. They were astoundingly complex and animated, and utterly uninteresting. I see the need to update the dozen motion points found on the first

Transformer

designs, to spin them into something more conceivably versatile and bad-ass, but I would submit for Hollywood's consideration the idea that part of the fun of a Transformer is being able to appreciate exactly

how

it changes shape. Also, imagine if those endless man-hours spent designing and rendering the 'bots had been spent, even fractionally, on, oh, I don't know, the script?

Bay makes kids' movies, essentially. Gratuitously violent, often verbally lewd, but kids' movies, all the same, for their attention span and priority on visual stimulation over elements such as story and character.

I begin to question why these things are important to me. They shouldn't be, right? I mean, by all standards, selfish and selfless, I and the world stand to gain nothing from the successful or unsuccessful update of my childhood enthusiasms. Yet somehow it really matters. All this childish stuff from my youth is something I cherish, and I want to see it--if it must be

resurrected

--done to my current standards.

At least now I can relax. They couldn't possibly

rehash any other favorite cartoons into movies

.

Notions (Part 3 of ? [SPECIAL BIF!SOCK!POW! EDITION])

My earliest experiences with superheroes(TM) were plenty early. I can't pinpoint it, actually. I just know it was early enough that I started dressing as Superman(r) for Halloween when I was something like two. (No doubt this had something to do with the movie coming out when I was quite young.) Since then, I've had gradually increasing experience with that world. Oddly enough, I came to the origins of all that--comicbooks themselves--rather late in my youth. It wasn't until I was about 11 that I started noticing comicbooks. (Not quite true--I came upon a Conan-the-Barbarian comic when I was something like 8. It scared me.) It wasn't until late high school (and Friend Younce's collection of the Sandman comics) that I started collecting graphic novels for myself. Since then, it's been a pleasure that enjoy with very few side effects. In fact, it can contribute to weight loss. To my wallet.

So my appreciation for comicbooks as a genre is rooted in hero worship, tempered with an education in theatre and eventually realized in my early twenties, when I took my first crack at writing a comicbook script:

  • Freaky Chicks. I wrote approximately the first issue--a self-contained origin story of sorts--which introduced us to the two main heroes. The ideas were many in this little adventure, and I was trying to avoid writing a straight-forward comicbook, but ultimately the "superhero"(TM) conceit was that these girls were put together by fate, had very different personalities and abilities, but abilities that complemented each other perfectly. To wit, one was an abrasive young woman who could survive any external injury, but couldn't heal from any; the other a quiet sort who had the ability to heal, presumably through religious gift. The script was about the abrasive one discovering her ability and the two discovering one another.

This script has a long, sad history. I started it in hopeful, long-distance collaboration with an artist friend, and we never really got going with it. I shopped it around a little thereafter, but didn't really have the contacts with the kind of artist I was looking for. Now, most sadly, the only version of the actual script exists on a defunct hard drive I lug from apartment to apartment. For some reason, all my notes and correspondence on the thing transferred to my latest laptop, but not the script itself. Balls. It may be for the best, because I have to imagine at this point that it could use some reworking.

I have had another idea I could see myself sitting down to flesh out some time, though:

  • Aspirant: Two guys this time, best friends from age five. One is maniacally crazy about building himself into a vigilante a la Batman. The other is incredibly regular about his life, wants very basic things, but also feels compelled to prevent the first guy from killing himself in his foray into vigilantism. What the first guy doesn't know, is that his friend Joe Normal has superpowers. He's a rather-more-vulnerable-Superman sort. Joe just doesn't have any of the drive Guy One does to defend justice. Again, very set in a real-world environment; no capes all over the place, or anything like that. I got pretty upset when I saw this sort of relationship being outlined between Peter and his bro in Heroes, but they have thankfully taken it in a different direction.

This last would actually make a pretty great movie in my mind as well, on the indie level. An independently produced superhero(TM) movie would just be old-school bad-ass in my imagination. In practice, well . . . here again is where my lack of experience in film making makes for a dodgy proposition.

It's interesting posting my ideas on the Aviary here. For a long time I felt it took the steam out of my creativity to share my ideas with people, so I avoided this kind of entry. Now, however, I suppose I have become a more collaborative creature (as frustrating as collaboration can sometimes be), because sharing my ideas here has me more excited about them and thereby more ready to work one or two out for awhile. In the immortal words of Stephen Colbert (character): Thanks, Nation.

Happy Halloween. We're all gonna die.

As though worries about the environment and global strife were not enough, it appears that the science fiction writers were right once again. I refer you to this link, courtesy of

Friend Nat

. Read it, if for nothing else, for your own safety and those of your loved ones:

http://www.cracked.com/article_15643_5-scientific-reasons-zombie-apocalypse-could-actually-happen.html

The Invisible Man

No finsky for the quote today, only the gratification of knowing you're the grand prize winner.

"...I'm going to take back some of the things I've said about you. You've...you've earned it."

Some of you (three) may have felt I was a little harsh with the mediums of film and television a few entries back (

1/29/2007

). Let this entry serve as my apology for such slander. It's not that I find these mediums lacking in value. Rather, it is that they diverge from my priorities--and experience--to date, and I can't help but feel that they're overly popular. Something is lost if you never see the acting live, something important. But I want my MTV. I seriously worship movies. It's genetic. Next time I'm home I'm going to try to remember to photograph my Dad's DVD/video collection for you.

So today I suffered again from oversleeping (gad durn it, but how that bothers me) and commenced my breakfast over a viewing of "

Of Human Bondage

," the film adaptation of Somerset Maugham

's awfully autobiographical novel of the same name, starring Leslie Howard and

Bette Davis

. It's the first Bette Davis film I've seen (Leslie Howard too, for that matter) and it's plain to me her appeal. There's one shot of her eyes over drinking a glass of champagne that suddenly made that damn

song

from the 80s make sense to me. The movie is pretty marvelous, but awfully dated, particularly in acting style. Actually, for the time it was probably naturalism bordering on the shocking (which is apt, given the subject matter [sex, obsession, poverty, modern medicine]) but now it reads rather stilted most of the time, particularly any time Phillip (Leslie) has a moment of reverie. I still recommend it highly;

Maugham

always delivers, and if you see it for no other reason, see it for Mildred's million-dollar freak out.

What was interesting for me was to start my day in this way, then venture off to NYU to work with their TV/film directing class on a short project. The set-up for today's work was very much like a soap opera set, with three cameras, all the technical roles filled by some 20+ students: the works. We began with a five-page scene that myself and two other actors had received about a week prior. There were no given circumstances for the scene, and very little contextual background. This was intentional, as part of the lesson for the class was about learning to work with actors (apparently a much-neglected aspect of direction in film schools). So we spent a good deal of time reading through and having table discussions before putting it on its feet. All-in-all, it was two hours of rehearsal before we actors

broke

in order for the class to confer about shot lists, etc. All we were aiming for today was different aspects of rehearsal; Tuesday we'll film.

So when we returned to the set, everyone was ready in their role. And I began to learn. My character makes a surprise entrance in the scene after about two pages of dialogue. As anyone who's worked on a film or TV set can tell you, that usually means at least a half hour before you'll get taped. Like something of a schmuck, I stood backstage to await my cue. Theatre instincts. (People kept offering me a chair out in the "audience," and didn't seem to understand why I wouldn't want to sit down.) There was a monitor back there, so I could watch the action on stage through a cut-out in the set wall, or one of the three shots they were working on. As I learned to watch the monitor instead of my fellow actors, I made a couple of observations.

It could be said that whereas theatre is constructed to celebrate profound moments, film (in this case meaning anything taped) is constructed to celebrate the intimate. This is an incredible generalization, and of course the intimate can be profound, and vice versa. But I was struck in particular today by the way a camera allows us closeness and angles of visual perception that we otherwise only have when we're in an intensely intimate relationship with someone. The scene we shot today began with a couple in bed, and as camera 3 kept a tight shot on the woman, she rolled to face her bedmate. On stage, it was a simple motion, unremarkable. On screen, however, I recognized it as a specific image I had only seen with people I had slept with (and, of course, in other films). We take it for granted, an aspect of contemporary storytelling, but it's an amazing thing.

The second observation I had to make today had to do with super powers. (You can take a geek out of the comic store....) I have a favorite hypothetical question. Actually, I have several:

  • Trapped on a desert island with only a CD player for company, which 5 albums would you take?
  • What deceased historical figure would you most want to share a lunch with?
  • What animal would you most wish to be?

But the big one for fanboy #1 here is:

  • Would you rather be able to fly, or to turn invisible at will?

Most people choose flying. It often descends to a discussion of practicalities (If you flew, you'd never escape public attention...invisibility would change your personality...what good is flying unless you're

invulnerable

, too...if you turn invisible, do you have to be naked...etc. ....) but the point is to understand why one appeals more than the other. Of course, everyone would like to have both. Well, you can't. Them's the breaks. Me, I choose invisibility. Don't get me wrong--I'd love to be able to fly (invulnerable or no) but I see such wonderful possibilities for invisibility. (And once again, I'm going to have to ask you all to remove your collective mind from the metaphoric gutter.) You'd be the ultimate ninja. You'd have information. You'd be able to taunt politicians and just go around miraculously rewarding the just and punishing the unjust. It. Would. Rule.

We're already experiencing it! That is exactly what film allows for. We're not just voyeurs at a

glass wall

; we're "invisible wo/men," getting just as close to the experience as if we were literally there. We go in for the kiss. We rock back from the hit. The only thing missing is the physical sensations, which in many cases our body is all-too-willing to supplant. We are the "invisible man" when we watch a film. What's more, particularly with contemporary visual short-hand, we're allowed the additional super powers of teleportation and slowing-down or speeding-up time. Film empowers us in this sense, giving us this sense both of investment in the actions of the story, and a subtle sense of control over it. Sure, we're along for the ride, someone else is driving, but we're used to that. It's called dreaming. Haven't you ever had a dream in which you saw everything going on, but couldn't intervene or didn't perhaps even exist in the same reality? Oh . . . no? Just me then? Awesome.

Awesome

. . .

I'm certain I'm not the first to suppose this connection, but I may be the first to parse it in such geeky terms. And of that, I am proud. I'm proud, too, to have made discoveries that reignite my excitement for the technological entertainment mediums. It seems to me now that when I consider film in these terms, it is a far-less-tapped mode of exploration and expression than I had imagined. I had an art history teacher in college who insisted that there was no progress in visual art (or perhaps he meant art in general); that artistry merely changed modes, never "improved" or in some way refined itself. Naturalism is not better than cave painting, cubism is not better than pointillism. I agree.

Oedipus Rex

, across centuries and translations and reinterpretations, can still work brilliantly as a play. Film is not an improvement on mediums for acting, nor a refinement. It simply suits our time more closely, and our time suits it (art:life::egg:chicken). What does that say about our time?

Maybe that we all want to be superheroes(tm).