RKO No He Didn’t.

For reasons that are none of your business I was just now reading about the movie RKO 281 which was made about 700 years ago and/or in 1999, which is basically the same thing.

I have both seen and enjoyed this movie. It is about the making of Citizen Kane. The movie is basically about Orson Welles (played by a dynamite and youthful Liev Shreiber) as he is lured from the NYC theatre and radio scene by Hollywood and how he then proceeds to (due to a petty personal gripe) decide to make a movie excoriating William Randolph Hearst whose nickname at the time was “Literally the Only Dude You Don’t Want to Piss Off”.

I have not watched RKO 281 in more than a decade, but it made a big impression on me when I did watch it. I have a distinct memory of Liev Shreiber shouting - about the art and industry of making movies - “It is the most powerful storytelling medium in the history of mankind and it is controlled by bankers!”

I can find no place on the internet willing to confirm the existence of this dialogue, so I guess I should go watch the movie again.

The point is salient though, right?

My BFF Mike The Director is constantly annoyed by the fact that I like to play at both writer and producer and so I will write things like, “And then the moon EXPLODED and melted all the buildings on Earth, but then EVERYONE REALIZED that buildings were not important and so over the next 300 YEARS they developed an agrarian society based on simple trade and which focused on meeting the emotional needs of human beings rather than on the erstwhile construct of “personal successes” or EXISTENTIAL VALIDATION” and then MTD is all like, “How the fuck am I supposed to make a movie out of that?” and then I am all like, “I don’t know, but we seriously do not have the budget for an exploding moon.”

RKO 281 is a fantastic movie because the actors in it are good (did I mention John Malkovich plays the writer?), the script is great (written by a dude named John Logan, based on a documentary by Richard Ben Cramer and Thomas Lennon), the subject matter is fascinating, and because it traffics in the creative process itself which we all experience in our lives, be it in the form of writing shit down the way I do, visualizing it the way my friend Mike does, or simply settling into bed at the end of the day and plotting out a series of events for the next day. We tend to mitigate the importance of creativity in our lives, but without it we would be worse off. Without it we would be in the weeds.

At one point in the movie RKO 281 - if I recall correctly - a cinematographer shows up and says something along the lines of, “Hey, I wanta work with you” and when Welles asks after the guy’s credentials he removes from his duffel an Oscar for cinematography. That is the dream for all of us auteurs. Talent and skill all coming together in the service of something good.

There is always a struggle between the effort of making and the product of that making. As a simple, lowly writer I rely only on the reader to be my partner, but even that is more complicated than I am acknowledging.

If I have to sum all of this up, I would say that there is a difference between the initial creative impulse (think: an exploding moon) and the exercise of the creative muscle (think: a short film about exploding moons). And, I guess, I think that you should get on Hulu right now and actually watch Citizen Kane 70 times and actually watch RKO 281 35 times and then let me know how transformed you are by this experience I advised you to have. Though I suppose it is possible I’m just bored and trying to Rick-Roll you into watching better movies than you normally do because, let’s be honest here, your Netflix history is pretty embarrassing.

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Quick Flick: The Social Network.

Shakespeare was mysteriously silent on the subject of social networking websites and so Aaron Sorkin had to step up. If Sorkin rewrote the phone book, I would go right now and buy my advance ticket, so I’m clearly biased, but it was a good movie and David Fincher is going to win Best Director (I already have money down on it).

What it is, is perfectly crafted. Just perfectly formed. These are talented and creative people at the top of their game. Somehow they make writing code seem interesting and legal depositions positively riveting. It is thoughtful and funny and grown-up and just good.

What it is not, is a movie that will change your life. I don’t know if you were expecting it to, but it won’t.


Myself, I'm hoping that this is just the first of many collaborations between Sorkin and Fincher on films about websites. Imagine the cinematic potential of Wikipedia, Weather.com and – of course – Youporn.


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WORST MOVIE EVER MADE BY MANKIND!

OOOOOOOH! The film The Guardian is on TV right now! This is – far and away – the worst movie ever made by man.

If you asked someone, “What is the worst movie ever made?” most people would say Battlefield Earth or Plan 9 from Outerspace, but the truth is, the worst movie ever made by mankind is this little gem The Guardian.

Let me break it down for you.

Start with: it stars Kevin Costner AND Ashton Kutcher.

Yeah, that’s right.

And! It is a movie about US Coast Guard Rescue Divers (the guys that jump out of helicopters to save your dumb ass after you somehow manage to sink your yacht). And I would like to take a moment here to say: I mean no disrespect to those of you readers who actually are US Coast Guard Rescue Divers - may the lord bless and keep you – you do good work and you deserved a movie better than this one.

So beyond the problem of the casting, this is a movie with a whole lot of “acting” in it. What Hollywood commentators sometimes call “Capital A Acting”. What does that mean? Go watch any movie where Leonardo DiCaprio plays a character whose wife is dead (this is basically every movie that has made since Catch Me if You Can [with the exception of The Departed, but that still counts, see below]) and at some point he will have a “breakdown” and squint his eyes closed tightly and raise one (or both) of his clenched fists to his face (mouth or forehead) and as you are watching this moment unfold, part of your brain will go, “Wow! This MUST be good acting because I can totally SEE how much work and practice Leo put into this.” When you are watching an actor and all you can see is the actor rehearsing the scene in front of the mirror in his Malibu beach house because of how important a scene it is for the character, THAT is Capital A Acting. Also see: Keanu Reeves’ entire filmograpgy (“I AM AN F-B-I AGENT!!!”), everything Ethan Hawke has ever touched.

Basically the problem here is self-important earnestness. That is the problem with Capital A Acting and it is also the problem with this movie The Guardian. This movie is SO self important! In the opening scene, as Kevin Costner is rescuing a stranded boater who is clinging to debris, he actually yells at the man (as they are in the water and the waves are attacking then) “Stay with your flotation!”

After this movie came out (yeah, I saw it in the theater), I spent a month saying to people, “Stay with your flotation!” No one ever seemed to heed my advice, though my advice was never actually applicable.

What The Guardian is, is an entirely Republican movie. It makes a big deal about honoring these people who serve their country and others, but in the process of doing so, it boils their commitment and sacrifice down to some kind of un-nuanced cartoon. It self-righteously applauds the quality of its actors’ performances despite the fact that the quality is simply not there, and it doesn’t ask us to care about any of it, it simply expects us to. I don’t tear up when I watch this movie, even when the score tells me that I am supposed to.

It is simply awful. It is an awful, awful film of the first magnitude.

It is terrible.

It is … the worst film ever made by mankind.

You should totally watch it next time it is on!

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A Collective Groan of Awesome.

So before “Inception” started last night there was a trailer for a movie about a bunch of people trapped in an elevator and one of them is EVIL! It was actually kind of a cool and intense trailer and the idea kind of seemed to be winking at Hitchcock’s “Lifeboat”. The theater was full of people who had been waiting for a couple of hours to see “Inception” and we were all happy to be inside and sitting and there was a lot of goodwill and you could feel (as the trailer started) that everyone was thinking, “Okay, cool. Entertain me!” and then … one thing happened.

A title card came up on the trailer that something like, “The new film from M. Night Shyamalan” and everyone in the theater actually groaned. The entire theater full of people went, “Uuuuurgh.”

It was one of the funniest moments that I have ever experienced in such a public and massive way.

Then everyone in the theater laughed out loud about everyone else having groaned. It was really a wonderful moment of life.

Sorry M. Night. Maybe if you didn’t write movies that assume the audience is dumber than you, you wouldn’t have burned up all of your credibility so fast.

Anyway, here is the trailer for “Devil”, I bet the ending is going to be lame!

Quick Flix Review.

So the other day I finally got around to watching that WATCHMEN movie.


Eh.


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Mean and Awesome!

I totally forgot about this! When Val and I were in Boston, we got a bite to eat at this little café place on Charles Street in Beacon Hill and I picked up a copy of Boston’s free glossy magazine, The Improper Bostonian.

They have this movie critic working for them named Sean Burns and man is that guy a pretentious asshole! But in a good way!

First he did not really like much of anything, except for Hurt Locker (and even that, he was quick to point out, gets muddled in the second half). He even shrugged off 500 Days of Summer, which I disagree with (he made some good points and gave voice to a lot of the small complaints that curmudgeons like me have, but he missed the big picture, which is that it is a great movie).

However, he saved a special place in his tiny black heart for Transformers. His review spewed bile all over the movie, but I wrote down my favorite part of the review:

“… (Transformers is) nothing but the pulverizing fetishization of militaristic alpha-male privilege …”
Ouch.

Now I enjoyed the first movie, but I enjoyed it partly because it was crap. I have not seen the second one, but I bet it was just as craptacular!


*** I couldn’t find the review on their website, but the review was in The Improper Bostonian in the July 29-August 11 2009 issue on page 53 ******
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