Why we’d have to be stupid to let hard copies go away

You and I, we love movies. We might even love music. Possibly books. We might’ve been happy living our lives going to movie theaters, watching videos or DVDs at home, putting on a record or a CD, then cracking open a paperback. It worked pretty well, nobody had any complaints really. But we live during the time of a massive technological shift that’s changing everything we do, including our viewing, listening and reading. Come to think of it it’s changing our way of life.

There are countless great things about digital technology, but there are also some huge drawbacks to abandoning some of the old ways. In our lust for the latest gadgets and conveniences I wonder if we’ve put enough thought into what we’re on the verge of giving up.
I wanted to finish this column before Saturday, because that’s been declared the first annual Independent Video Store Day. But one thing that got me thinking about these issues a few months ago, I was maybe gonna get a new computer. Some new models of Mini Macs had just come out. They’re way faster than the old piece of shit I have, and not as expensive as I thought they would be. The only drawback I noticed: no optical drive.

It’s true, most people don’t load software from CDs anymore, it’s mostly downloads. Fair enough. But that was never the reason why optical drives have been an expected built-in feature on all computers for years. College kids watch DVDs on their laptops, and people like me listen to CDs on their computers. Come on man, I did what you asked. You lured me into getting rid of my stereo, I play music on my computer and then I put the songs I want to on my iPod. Pour one on the curb for Steve Jobs and everything, but pretending the optical drive is obsolete is a dick move by Apple. It’s an abusive monopolistic type of strategy: make it less convenient to use long established high quality formats (forcing you to buy a separate external drive to do something that used to be built-in) in hopes that more people won’t want to bother and will start using iTunes.

NOT WANTING TO BOTHER

The shifts from VHS to DVD and from that-old-ass-TV-I-had-for-years to HD were caused by a rise in quality. After I saw what BARBARELLA looked like on DVD I wasn’t gonna go back to the tape. Unfortunately some of the other shifts we’re making are more like a home-cooked-meal to TV-dinner type of shift. It’s not as good as the real thing, but it’s easier and cheaper.

This next complaint would’ve started a shit storm if I brought it up just a couple months ago, because it’s about Netflix. I think I got a safe window here because people are mad that they raised their prices. Before that people loved that corporation more than their own grandmas. Richard Corliss learned that when he had the nerve to write in Time Magazine about his “misgivings about the service’s usefulness, especially compared with that of a real, well-stocked video store, and about the possibly harmful effect that Netflix and other online retail outfits may have on American society.” Admittedly the headline (”Why Netflix Stinks”) sounded more inflammatory than the article itself and got people’s blood pumping so they didn’t notice what the actual article said, which was mainly that he misses going to the really great video store that used to be in his neighborhood and wishes he wasn’t forced to give it up for a service that he doesn’t think is as good. But by the hostile reactions he got in various rebuttals and comments sections you’d think the headline used the n-word three times divided up by reader’s unlisted home phone numbers.

People never got that defensive about corporate chains like Blockbuster, Starbucks, Subway or Best Buy, but Netflix was different. It was okay, even cool, to wrap your identity up in their branding. Like Corliss said you couldn’t impulse-rent because you had to wait for the mail, and the selection wasn’t as good as some video stores, but it was a good deal because you pay the monthly fee and get them to mail you a whole bunch of movies. It made rental stores, who if they weren’t part of a big chain had to pay more for their movies as well as cover all the overhead of having a building and electricity and employees, seem expensive. But as it turns out, what Netflix was charging wasn’t enough to cover their overhead either.

That was the Netflix rope-a-dope that went mostly uncommented on. What most people saw as just a raise in prices was also an admission that their business model wasn’t sustainable. Getting to rent movies for that much cheaper than a store seemed impossible because it was. Using the time-honored “first rock is free” method of salesmanship they got people hooked, then brought the price up a little. Honestly, the prices now are still cheap, but they devalued movie rentals with their previous prices to the point where their customers can’t comprehend that.

Unlike the crack dealer I’m comparing them to, Netflix lost some customers with that move. DVD by mail is not as good of a service as crack delivery, it turns out. But they don’t care, because they don’t even want to be in that business anyway. They split off the mail order side of the business and even tried to rename it so they could kill it off. That’s the larger admission: not only was their previous price structure not going to be profitable, their new one isn’t either. They want out of the game. They don’t want to send you stuff, that’s a pain in the ass. They just want you to push a button to have a shitty compressed version of a movie pumped into your house like the food in MEET THE HOLLOWHEADS (a weird 1989 movie listed on the Netflix websight but not currently available):

In the movie they have everything piped into their houses because it’s some kind of post-apocalyptic situation where it’s dangerous to go outside. We just have everything piped into our houses because we want to.

THE TRADE-OFF

Of course you can’t deny the many advantages of these new technologies. For the artist (or owner of the art) there’s the matter of not having to print up copies of a DVD, record or book and ship them to people, you can just have a file available for download. That makes it easier to make art available at less financial risk, and therefore it encourages the weird and the obscure. The advent of print-on-demand books got me into the world of publishing, and it was an ebook that attracted my real publisher. Also we’ve all read about that girl in her 20s who became a millionaire writing vampire ebooks, and we all tried to figure out how to get in on that shit. The new gold rush. I wouldn’t even have to get rich, just pay the bills that way and I’d fall in love with the Kindle, even though I don’t personally plan to ever get one.

For the viewer/listener/reader, I guess the advantage is storage. Your copy of BARBARELLA is not an object, it doesn’t exist as physical matter, so you don’t have to make space for it. We got tired of all the shit in our apartment so we switched to digital files. Then we got tired of our hard drives dying and losing all our files so they want us to be on “The Cloud,” storing our files somewhere else, through the air. Another great way to convince everybody they gotta pay a monthly bill to a corporation for something they never previously thought they needed.

But I don’t know if that’ll catch on. Maybe they’ll come up with something better. I can see why people are down with switching to files instead of hard copies, but let’s just be sure everybody understands what we’re signing on to. This is the main point I want people to consider, so I’m gonna bold this shit: We’re not just using a newer technology, we’re agreeing to a re-definition of what it means to buy art and/or entertainment.

When you buy a DVD, or a CD, or a book, you aren’t buying “intellectual property,” you’re buying a vessel that contains a movie or an album or a story or what have you. You own that vessel. It belongs to you. If you get sick of it and don’t want it anymore, or if you just need the money, you can go sell them to a pawn shop or a used bookstore, or on ebay. But you can’t sell a file used. When you buy a file on iTunes or Amazon you don’t own anything, you’ve just licensed some software for home use.

It’s a weird philosophical shift, but not necessarily a big deal for most people if they don’t get hard up for money and need to sell off their shit sometimes. Or if they have things that are more valuable they could sell, like tools, jewelry or music equipment. Fair enough. But there are other ramifications. Changing the definition of buying these things also limits the possibilities of archiving them.

Let’s say the Weinstein Company buys the American rights to a great Asian film and don’t bother to release it for a couple years. What you can do now, you can find out if there’s an English-subtitled Asian release of that movie and you can import it. You might need a region free player, but you can get it, or you can watch it on VLC player (if your computer has an optical drive – ah, shit!). The Weinsteins don’t want this, so if they find out an American company is selling the import they’ll send cease-and-desist orders and scare them away. Everybody knows they have no legal ground for that, it’s just a good bully tactic because they have more money and lawyers than you do, so fuck you. Eventually they’ll release their version, Bey Logan will have a pretty good commentary track on it, everything’s fine now. Later, if they stop making that DVD, you can still find used copies for sale online, or you can rent it from a video store, maybe even borrow it for free from a library.

Now imagine this happening in a future where movies only come as downloads or streams. I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that the Weinsteins and other companies won’t suddenly turn into our best buddies because of the new technology. There might still be guys out there who act like dicks, is what I’m thinking. It seems possible, anyway.

In this scenario I’m not sure how different regions will be controlled. I assume they will be able to stop overseas companies from streaming or uploading the movie to American computers, but I’m not sure how exactly that will work. But after they release that movie, if they decide it’s no longer in their interest to keep it available, or if they lose the rights and nobody else picks it up, or if they decide they want to keep it out of circulation so they can do a new version later, or whatever, it will disappear. There will be no archive.

Right now, out of print means “harder to get.” You can legally buy it, it just might be more expensive, depending on supply and demand. But without hard copies you simply can’t legally buy it. If the corporations aren’t making it available at that moment then getting it will be illegal. We’ve already seen that corporations can track who is uploading a file, who is downloading it, and that they are sometimes willing to prosecute people for it. If Disney doesn’t want you to see TRON before TRON LEGACY comes out, you won’t fucking see TRON. If they want to put PINOCCHIO in the vault for a while then you’re not seeing it. Sorry.

And out-of-printness won’t only be at a corporation’s discretion. It will also come from economics. Let’s say Netflix has HOLY MOUNTAIN available for instant viewing. (I don’t think they do, this is just a hypothetical example using a movie that oughta fuckin be available at all times.) That means the Netflix corporation has made a deal with whoever owns HOLY MOUNTAIN to have the exclusive rights to stream it for such-and-such window of time. Once that window ends they may decide not enough people are interested in the Sanctuary of 1,000 Testicles to be worth paying for that contract again. Then it’s gone until some other company can pony up the cash.

I mean, don’t panic. I still have the dvd and the blu-ray sitting on my shelf. I’d be happy to loan it to you. But for movies that come out in a post hard copy world you won’t be able to count on my shelf.

So you see, we’re making space in our apartments, but we’re giving up our tried and true system of archiving.

I believe our boner for supreme convenience will cause us to wake up one morning lying next to an ugly corporate monster. And wearing a wedding ring. Just as nerds have increasingly learned to call their beloved characters and mythologies by business terms like “franchises” and “properties,” movie fans have learned that they’re no longer watching movies, they’re watching “content.” In this world there’s no room for a piece of art or a story or a historic document, there’s only catalogs and rights packages and availability windows.

Will there still be room for companies like Criterion or the old Anchor Bay, groups of movie lovers with a passion for a certain type of film, who search out the ones they love most, lovingly assemble them for us, try to share them with us in the best presentation possible? Or will there just be a list of titles on channel 0 that we scroll through with our remote while an infomercial for some new Kate Hudson movie plays? Where in on-demand world is there room for anybody who gives a shit? We’re not asking for tender loving care, we’re asking for content. Shove a tube in my head and stuff that shit in there as fast as you can.

OMEGA STORE

Ideally the future would include the convenience of the computery business but retain the availability of discs and books. Plenty of options for everybody. I think this is what most people assume will happen. But is it really feasible? Video stores, record stores and book stores have been falling at an alarming rate. Not too long ago we used to worry about chain stores putting locally owned ones out of business, now even those monoliths have trouble surviving, so we’ve seen the death of Hollywood Video, Borders Books, Tower Records, the bankruptcy of Blockbuster Video, and I heard Barnes and Noble isn’t doing too good either. If these companies, with the massive advantage of the deals they get by buying products by the cubic shitload, are not able to survive, imagine how hard it is for the little guy. In New York, the legendary Mondo Kim’s found that it was more profitable to sell off their building than to stay in business. In your town the independent video and record stores, if there are any, are probably struggling. I shouldn’t even say independent. The video and record stores, period.

I like going into stores. I like browsing, exploring, stumbling across things by accident. It’s a huge part of what I do here, because as much research as I do to find movies I want to see, sometimes it doesn’t beat just picking up a box and seeing Rowdy Roddy Piper or a crazy tagline or painting on the cover and realizing I never heard of that one before. Sometimes I even like human interaction: Have you seen this one? Have you heard anything about it?

When “brick and mortar” stores are gone and replaced by our computers we won’t only be losing that experience, we’ll be losing an entire segment of business. In a world of streaming and on-demand there is no such thing as an indie, is there? Under the current rules we just have to pick the store we trust to gather all the things we like. Even the so-called “Blockbuster Exclusives,” by law another video store was allowed to rent them out if they purchase them. Under the new rules of no-hard-copy we are giving complete control of what is available either to one monolithic corporation or (more likely I think) we’ll have to assemble our viewing piecemeal from a series of competing services who own the rights to different movies. There’s no going to the place you like best, there’s no supporting a business in your neighborhood that sponsors local events and charities, there might not even be not-supporting-the-one-that-gives-to-the-anti-gay-groups. There’s just you, your screen, and the corporation that shits the content at you.

THE SOLUTION

Well, the solution is to keep hard copies alive at least as a niche industry. I don’t know if it’s gonna be possible to keep these places in business, but it might be. I thought vinyl was gone forever in the ’90s, but there are still record stores in Seattle today that sell records, new and used. And I don’t know, it seems like the studios wouldn’t want to abandon hard copies of some kind. How are they gonna double dip on files? How are they gonna do special editions? How are they gonna get you to buy your dad a file of THE GREAT ESCAPE for Christmas?

But I don’t know. Who’s gonna sell the blu-rays to us if the stores can’t afford to stay in business? I guess just Amazon. If the post office can afford to stay in business.

I’m not trying to make anybody feel bad about how they get their movies, and I know there are many parts of the world where you don’t really have a choice other than Netflix, On Demand or a fuckin vending machine in a Safeway parking lot. But that’s sad, isn’t it? I wish you guys had a choice, and I want to keep mine. Since I spend so much of my time watching movies and writing about them, this is my way of life. And I think it’s worth protecting. I’ll continue to support my local businesses as long as they hang in there.

Please feel free to sing the praises of your favorite local video, record or book store in the comments. Living or dead. (Or if you know the solution to all this that would be even better, please post that.)

further reading:

The convenience trap: What the changes at Netflix reveal about an insidious trend (Onion AV Club)

Special thanks to L. Jiminez for opening my eyes to the Netflix rope-a-dope

So it was a mansion he was in? When Obama said “compound” I pictured some kind of fortified bunker. Now I’m picturing it more like Scarface’s compound.

I wonder what he was doing when they showed up? I bet he was chillin by the pool in a beach chair.
I wonder if he was easy to recognize? I bet he had a soul patch and bangs, skinny jeans, all that shit. If you think about it those videos he used to make are mostly late ’90s, early 2000s. Fashions have really changed.

Man, it fuckin figures! Motherfucker living in the suburbs. Spreading these rumors that he’s out in a cave, roughing it, turns out he’s living in a 3 story mansion. To be fair he had no internet. But he was living more comfortably than me. I bet he had an xbox and shit, he just can’t play online. Boohoo. Probly had a bunch of blu-rays, one of those fancy beds with the “sleep number”…

What if you lived in that neighborhood and didn’t know? I knew somebody in a suburb of Seattle, found out there was a cockfighting circle down the street, they had no idea. This would be even weirder.

Damn, what if Mouth was there? He probly shouldn’t say so in the comments on my websight. So I’ll just assume he was there even if he denies it.

Oh, I guess Bruce Willis didn’t do it. That’s gonna change PLANET TERROR.

Hmmm. This might slow down the FAST FIVE thread.

Let’s keep our thoughts and prayers with Geraldo during all this. He really wanted to bronze that guy’s head.

That’s crazy if there were only 4 other people that got killed. How’d they keep him alive all that time if he wasn’t under crazy lockdown? Alot of rappers have bigger entourages than that.

Who were the other guys that killed? Were they his roommates?

I’m glad it was special ops, though. They didn’t send in planes and bomb the whole neighborhood. Just a small group of highly trained bad motherfuckers. That’s how this shit should be done.

It doesn’t change anything, it doesn’t bring anybody back, I don’t feel comfortable celebrating death, even when it’s scum of the earth like bin Laden… but also I gotta admit it sounds kinda awesome. 40 minutes! They said it took about 40 minutes. They practiced the raid a couple times and then they did it. You gotta appreciate that, that’s some serious professionals.

That woulda been funny if it happened during the royal wedding. Reporters wouldn’t know what to do, they’d just start fainting and bleeding from their noses and shit.

When I first heard the rumor I tried to find news on Google and the first thing that came up was TMZ. I thought that was funny. TMZ has the inside shit on everybody. They’ll know first if Lindsey’s in rehab or if Osama got his clock punched.

I don’t agree with everything Obama has done with all these wars he’s inherited and got involved in, but it seems like you gotta give him some credit on this one. This isn’t just happening to be president at the right time. Going into Pakistan and getting bin Laden was one of his campaign promises. It’s weird to see it actually work out though. I remember him talking about it in a debate or something, it made sense in the abstract but wow, now it’s reality.

I feel a little embarrassed about these drunk kids celebrating on TV. I get it, but then I picture the footage we see on our news of people in other countries chanting and screaming about “death to America” or whatever. I hope this doesn’t come off wrong. I’m not sure how “We Are the Champions” translates.

For some reason it reminded me of when Ted Bundy was executed. He killed alot of people around here so it was big news. People were outside of the prison holding jokey signs, celebrating and all that. And yeah, I agree, fuck that guy, but I don’t feel comfortable having a party about it. Should we put it on a cake? Should we have balloons? Kinda feels like the old west when they hang a guy. At least let’s open up some brothels then.

I don’t know man. As an American it’s alot of complicated emotions. It’s a surprise, it’s amazing, it’s exciting. But makes you think of sad things that can’t be erased. There is definitely some sense of victory and revenge and closure and “he got what’s coming to him,” but mixed with the feeling that it doesn’t repair the broken families, doesn’t bring back the people who died in all these wars, that I haven’t been scared of bin Laden for a long damn time so it doesn’t seem like it’s gonna change anything, it’s not gonna stop those assholes, it might even encourage some mean fuckers to blow themselves up in public or behead some innocent people. It’s just another dead guy. Just one real significant death in the endless loop.

I’m really in awe of the skills of the Navy SEALS and everybody that was involved, and fascinated with this story. I want to know everything that happened. I’d buy them all a drink, I’d high five them like they were Hulk Hogan, but do I want to dance in the streets to celebrate an asshole getting a bullet in his head? If they had thrown the body in the crowd at Ground Zero instead of the ocean would everybody have torn it to pieces, and at what point should we feel uncomfortable with that? Where do we draw the line between what’s a normal amount of excitement and what makes us fucking barbarians? I’m not making a judgment I’m just wondering.

Personally I’m more comfortable with a morbid fascination with the mission and everything that happened than with a full-on party in the streets. I did that for “yes we can!” but it feels a little creepy for “we killed a guy!” I am a positive individual I guess.

And I mean I can understand that everybody’s excited, but let’s try not to let this overshadow National Postcard Week.

Sorry this is a bunch of scattered bullshit… thought I should write something though. More stupid reviews coming soon. It’s still me, after all.

–Vern

p.s. in case it’s unclear this is all about bin Laden getting killed, not UFC 129

So of course I was intrigued when Variety announced the other day that Jason Statham is in talks to play Parker in a new movie called PARKER, based on– well, that part’s not clear, the article doesn’t say. Some have assumed that it’s another adaptation of the first Parker book, ‘The Hunter’ (even though we’ve already seen that turned into POINT BLANK, two different cuts of PAYBACK and a recent comic strip book). Others think it’s gonna just be a new story based on the character.
Loosely based, I’m afraid. While some sights debate the merits of Statham in the role
few have said anything about the most eyebrow raising sentence in the Variety article, the part that says the movie “revolves around a thief who, though at times is forced to be a killer, still lives by a code of honor that includes never stealing money from people who need it.”

You know me, I love a good code of honor, but there’s no way around this one – that’s not fucking Parker. Parker lives by a code all right, but it has nothing to do with honor. I’ve read I guess 16 of the books now, and I don’t remember anything ever crossing his mind about it being a shame to take money from some poor sucker. That’s not something that Parker would ever think about.

The only thing Parker cares about is getting the job done correctly. Any concerns he has about killing or not killing have to do with efficiency. As another character we all love said, “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it,” or whatever. He doesn’t want to kill somebody if it’s gonna cause him any trouble. If it will make his job go smoother then yes, he’ll kill somebody.

The one thing that always seems to worry movie producers about the character – that he seems unlikely to be nominated for a Humanitarian of the Year Award – is of course the exact reason why the character is so beloved and timeless. In a 2008 interview Donald Westlake explained, “When Bucklyn Moon of Pocket Books said he wanted to publish ‘The Hunter’, if I’d help Parker escape the law at the end so I could write more books about him, I was at first very surprised. He was the bad guy in the book. More than that, I’d done nothing to make him easy for the reader; no smalltalk, no quirks, no pets. I told myself the only way I could do it is if I held onto what Buck seemed to like, the very fact that he was a compendium of what your lead character should not be. I must never soften him, never make him user-friendly, and I’ve tried to hold to that.”

So of course whenever there’s a movie they do the opposite, they try to soften him and make him user friendly. I still love several of the movies, but they never quite get it right. I’d say PAYBACK and POINT BLANK get pretty close. They certainly make him a cold-blooded bastard. But they give him emotional moments and connections, they make him just a little bit too human. THE OUTFIT and THE SPLIT moreso.

In all of those movies, though, he’s not called Parker. I’ve never been clear if this was because Westlake didn’t want anybody to use the name or if it had to do with optioning the rights to the individual books and not the entire series. At any rate I feel like if you’re gonna use Westlake’s death as a chance to snatch up the actual name I think you have a duty and obligation to not be a dick about it. You gotta make an effort to reflect the original character more than the other versions. But if that Variety description is accurate then this is clearly not the case. Too bad.

But hey, even though the movies mentioned above are not quite Parker they’re all movies I really dig. So while this one sounds like it’s unfortunate, unethical, unamerican, shameful, etc. I do hope it will still be pretty cool. Statham wouldn’t be my first choice, but maybe that’s just because he’s so associated with a big, showy type of action that Parker shouldn’t be. He does project a meanness and an intelligence that fits. I can definitely imagine it working.

I’m more concerned about Taylor Hackford being the director. Hackford is the guy that did AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN and RAY. He was actually one of the editors of WHEN WE WERE KINGS, that’s the best thing he’s been involved with as far as I’m concerned. It’s better than if Simon West or somebody was doing it, but it’s a question mark. He’s done respected movies but even in those he hasn’t displayed much chops, and who the fuck knows what his take on the films of badass cinema is.

The Variety article quotes Hackford as saying, “I don’t want to get stuck in a genre, What I like the most about this piece of material is that you can take a genre piece like this and turn it into a great movie.” You can read this as condescending, like the crime genre is usually crap but can be elevated by the vast skills of an Academy Award nominated director of glorified TV movies like himself. But he probly didn’t mean it that way. He probly just meant he was gonna take it seriously and try to do a good job.

Hell, even if he was being condescending it’s not the end of it. POINT BLANK is an absolute classic, but it’s always seemed to me like John Boorman had no respect for the book. In interviews and the DVD commentary he brags about dumping the original screenplay because it was just a straight up genre movie, presumably like the book.

You know what would’ve been exciting? If Brian De Palma was gonna direct it. Which he was, a couple months ago.  I’m glad I didn’t find that out until now, because I woulda been real bummed when suddenly they were talking about Hackford instead.

Another vital point that’s not addressed is when this movie takes place. Most of the books were written in the ’60s and ’70s, a very different time to commit a robbery. If PARKER takes place in the present day it completely changes everything. Parker of the books could never use a cell phone, didn’t have to worry about sophisticated alarms or cameras, databases or forensics. In ‘The Hunter’ he’s able to go around using a bad credit card back before they could check that shit on phone lines. If you want to contact Parker you call Handy McKay at his diner, and Handy calls Parker. If this movie Parker has email I’m not sure I can take it. Or if he has a computer hacker sidekick, or any of that high tech MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE type shit they put in modern heist movies. It was smart for Brian Helgeland to set PAYBACK in some kind of indistinct ’70s-ish period.

But right now we got no clue what it is. We’ll have to wait until more information is available. Keep in mind that every story out there at the moment is just recycled from the Variety one, and there’s alot of assumptions and mistakes getting repeated. Some have stated matter-of-factly that the new movie is based on ‘The Hunter’ or that it’s a new story, but without any new source besides Variety, which did not state either. I saw 5 versions of the story that I guess must’ve used wikipedia as a source because they confidently state that there are three movies of ‘The Hunter’: POINT BLANK, PAYBACK and Ringo Lam’s FULL CONTACT. This may come as a surprise if you’ve seen FULL CONTACT. It does involve a guy coming back to get even after being left for dead on a heist, and I do think it’s true that they got that from POINT BLANK, but the characters and details are not the same at all, and it’s not credited as an adaptation or anything.

I did look up the producers to see if they seem trustworthy or not. Steve Chasman is the producer of most of Statham’s movies (TRANSPORTER, CHAOS, WAR, BANK JOB), so that doesn’t tell us much. Les Alexander seems to just do TV movies (I KNOW MY SON IS ALIVE, SWITCHED AT BIRTH), except for NEXT OF KIN with Patrick Swayze and Liam Neeson. I didn’t like that one too much, but it’s okay. Sidney Kimmel seems like the more respectable producer, he did stuff like ALPHA DOG, THE KITE RUNNER, SYNECHDOCHE NEW YORK, ADVENTURELAND. Some good stuff, nothing completely embarrassing. The last guy listed is Jonathan Mitchell, all he did was a movie called WHO DO YOU LOVE that never came out, but it’s about the founding of the great blues label Chess Records. So who knows.

So my conclusion on that is, well, at least it’s not Millennium Films. That’s a good sign.

And then there’s the writer, John McLaughlin. He got a story credit for the Tommy Lee Jones comedy MAN OF THE HOUSE. Probly just wrote an early draft, I wouldn’t blame him for that. His only other produced credit is BLACK SWAN so far. Admittedly he’s one of three credited writers, and Aranofsky is known to work very closely with his writers and perfect everything through countless drafts. So him by himself doing Parker for Jason Statham is gonna be different. But BLACK SWAN was probly my favorite movie last year, so respect is due for being involved. That’s positive.

But whatever happens with this movie it’s still a good time for the Parker books. I know alot of new people are being turned on to the character by the two comic book adaptations by this artist Darwyn Cooke. He did ‘The Hunter’ and then he wisely skipped to book #3, ‘The Outfit,’ which is one of my favorites of all the books because it has multiple heists as all of Parker’s allies plan simultaneous hits on the organized crime group of the title. Actually Cooke condensed book #2, ‘The Man With the Getaway Face’ into a prologue to explain how Parker got plastic surgery.

They’re good adaptations, very faithful, using big chunks of the original text and dialogue, doing what can be done visually with the drawings. I would encourage you, though, to check out the books too. You just can’t beat the original. I like the retro ’60s style of these drawings, but it’s still a cartoon drawing. In your head it’s gonna be tougher, I guarantee you.

And the best news is that at last all of the books are easy to get. For years I’ve been trying to read all of them in order, scouring ebay for each one, trying not to spend too much. Some of them took a while, I kept getting snaked by guys who never bid until the last second. Sonofabitch.

I got stuck on the 15th book, ‘Plunder Squad.’ That one and ‘Butcher’s Moon’ were the last two written until he revived the character in the ’90s with ‘Comeback.’ For some reason they were never reprinted and were very rare. I never saw them on ebay for less than 80 bucks, and usually it was alot more than that.

In 2008 the University of Chicago Press started reprinting the Parker books in order. It would be years before they caught up with me, that is if they even saw the whole series through. But the time flew by faster than I thought it would, and now they’ve done it. I finally own ‘Plunder Squad’ and ‘Butcher’s Moon’ and they’ve even done ‘Comeback’ from 1997. There are only 7 left to reprint and they’re all recent enough that they’re easy to find used copies of.

‘Plunder Squad’ was well worth the wait, that was a good one. We’ve seen alot of stories before where Parker sees bad signs and it explains that he would usually back out but he stays on the job for whatever reason. In ‘Plunder Squad’ there are two jobs in a row where it doesn’t smell right so he doesn’t do it. My favorite is when he’s in his hotel room and the driver’s wife shows up at his door. Knowing this is gonna be some kind of love triangle shit that will spoil the job he just walks past her to his car and drives away.

I’m in the middle of ‘Butcher’s Moon’ right now and this one is pretty cool too, it’s a direct sequel to ‘Slayground’ where he goes back to try to recover some money he had to ditch in that one. And I like how there are all these characters who were cops and security guards and stuff that were involved in that story and you get to see them a couple years later and how their encounter with Parker changed their lives.

Anyway, let’s hope for a good movie, and please read these books. Reading shit is fundamental.

I thought this was gonna be a followup or update to a previous column, but using the power of search engines I can’t figure out where I wrote about this topic before. I don’t know if it was in some talkback or comments or on the door of a bathroom stall or what but I could’ve sworn that somewhere I wrote about the phenomenon of the multi-millionaire owners of professional sports teams blackmailing taxpayers into building them unnecessary new stadiums. So forgive me if I repeat myself here.

There was this article on the front page of the Seattle Times yesterday about a proposal for an exhibit by the glass artist Dale Chihuly in Seattle Center. Seattle Center is not literally the center of Seattle, it’s the grounds of the 1962 World’s Fair, used as sort of a combination public park and tourist trap. It contains the famous Space Needle, the Frank Gehry designed Experience Music Project/Sci-Fi Museum (that place that had the Alien Queen), a short monorail track to downtown, a Science Center where you go to see the Imax movies, etc. It also has a section of low rent carnival type rides called Fun Forest which is closing down soon, and various parties are fighting over what to do with that spot.

Personally I wish they would give it to Linda and Michelle Lee, who have been trying to build the Bruce Lee Action Museum downtown, but I don’t think they’ve tried to stake a claim on this place. Most of the proposals I’ve heard are along the lines of “it should be some grass and trees, where I can go to read a book.” That shit pisses me off because there is already a whole bunch of grass and trees there and motherfucker I never once saw you reading a book there. Until the day I see a line of people waiting for a book-reading spot I’m not building you your own private reading meadow. Realistically the neighborhood needs to lure in the tourist dollars, so as much as I know for sure I would never once set foot in the Chihuly museum unless I got turned around and thought it was the men’s room, I think it’s at least a better idea than more grass.

So anyway take a look at the highlighted portion of this ineptly scanned article here (sorry about that, it should say “CHIHULY” at the top):

The arena in question is the KeyArena, originally built as the Washington State Pavilion for the World’s Fair and known for many years as the Seattle Coliseum until it was remodeled in 1994-1995. The NBA team was the Seattle SuperSonics, who in the early 2000s were owned by a group headed by Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. In 2004 those guys started saying that geez, although the recent remodeling of the arena won’t be paid off until 2015 it’s just such an old out of date piece of crap that nobody really can use it, and it would be a shame if we had to sell the team to out of town owners who would move them to another city, but we really would have no choice but to do that unless somebody did something thoughtful like give us $220 million to rebuild the arena with more private suites for rich people to hide in during the games.

It’s a pretty good scam that has successfully bilked money from cities all across the map, but Seattle had already fell for it with the Mariners (Safeco Field) and the Seahawks (Qwest Field) and although those places are nice we felt a little weird about doing it a third time. My opinion back then was that I had recently seen Prince play the KeyArena, and if it’s good enough for Prince it’s good enough for the fucking Sonics. It had been 20 years since Purple Rain, but 25 since the one time the Sonics were NBA champions. So I’m gonna have to go with Prince on this one. Nothing wrong with KeyArena.

Sure enough the Starbucks guy sold the team, along with their WNBA counterparts the Seattle Storm, to some assholes from Oklahoma City. Those assholes had a similar “believe me, I really really want to stay here, but it almost seems like you guys don’t want to give me millions of dollars for free during a time when the city is so bankrupt that the libraries have to close down for 2 months of the year. You’re not giving me alot of choices here, guys.” type of attitude.

Of course all the local politicians tried to bend over backwards to do exactly what the rich assholes wanted, but they were thwarted by Seattle’s famous liberals. A group called “Citizens For More Important Things” drafted and overwhelmingly passed I-91, which prevented the city from funding stadiums for professional sports teams.

The Oklahomans weren’t bluffing, they packed up the Sonics and left town. It’s like that TV movie “I Know My First Name Is Steven,” they’re now hiding out with a creepy new dad, calling themselves the Oklahoma City Thunder. Those who weren’t in the 75% who voted for I-91, or who live outside of the city but were hoping we’d pay for the stadium for them, said we fucked up. People started to panic. Alot of the restaurants in the neighborhood that counted on Sonics fans for business did have to close. It was rough going for a little bit.

But here’s the beauty of it, the reason why I’m boring you with all this local history. We were confronted with a scam that many cities have faced, being blackmailed by a corporation, bullied into bailing out their broken business model. And the conventional wisdom is that you have to give them what they want because if you don’t you’re fucked. We didn’t do that, we chose our own integrity over the NBA. We said yeah, we like basketball, but fuck you man, are you kidding me? No. No way. Get the fuck out of here.

And then as they were leaving we said “But you don’t really need that women’s team though, do you?” and they said, “What women’s team? We own a women’s team?” And we said “Yeah, I think so, why don’t you look around for it and if you find it we’ll take it off your hands.” Four local business women who were Storm season ticket holders banded together and bought them from the Oklahomans so they could keep them in Seattle.

And that’s the real pisser of the Chihuly article, because look at the other front page article that’s right next to it:

Dude, the trophy is right there! Nobody cares if KeyArena is “missing its NBA team” on the day when the Storm came home from Atlanta as WNBA champions.

We love the Storm. They’ve always been a good team, and they won the championship back in 2004 when Howard Schultz was just starting to dream of that new stadium smell. But this season was unprecedented. They only lost 6 games. They were undefeated at home, in that not-good-enough-for-NBA craphole. Of course the best games are the close and competitive ones, the ones with dramatic come-from-behind victories. They had alot of those, but at one game that I went to they made a new record for the biggest blowout in WNBA history, so that was fun too.

This year they got WNBA coach of the year, MVP and finals MVP. Since ‘04 they haven’t done well in the postseason, but this year they swept both of their playoff series and also their finals. They had the highest winning percentage of any team in the history of professional sports in Seattle.

The Times heavily covered the win and the celebration and had a commemorative pull out poster in the Sunday paper. But they can still get away with that “need something to celebrate” line above because alot of men think the WNBA is insignificant or even a joke. Since it’s women they gotta find some excuse to downplay their achievement. Yeah, they did well, but their season isn’t as long, their quarters aren’t as long, they don’t dunk, whatever. In fact you could argue that women basketball players have to work much harder than men, because not getting paid as much most of them play in more than one league. For example our beloved MVP Lauren Jackson also plays for the Australian national team and has played for teams in South Korea and Russia. Even aside from that though some people who know what they’re talking about say women play harder anyway. And that’s not even bringing up that “men could never stand the pain of childbirth” thing.

Within the WNBA, Seattle is known as the largest and most passionate group of fans. The ESPN anchors often mention it and it’s noticeable in the broadcasts – the crowds are so much louder at KeyArena. I think part of that is that the idea of a great women’s sports team, and of the Storm in particular, fit the culture of Seattle in ways that an NBA team never could. They represent us well.

You may have heard that alot of lesbians love women’s basketball. It’s true and I like it. It’s refreshing to go to a sporting event where you can hear women yelling at the ref, where you can see gay couples with their kids having a family day and not worrying about getting shit for it. I also like seeing fathers bringing their daughters to the games, bonding with them the way they’re expected to with their sons. Seattle is gay-friendly and feminist-friendly so why shouldn’t we like the WNBA more than other cities?

In Seattle we respect home grown businesses, locals who do something really well and turn it into a local institution. Okay, some of those businesses grow into monsters, like Starbucks and Microsoft, and we start to resent them. But at least our rich people tend to put their money into things they’re passionate about, like Bill Gates with his foundation. Two of the Storm owners made their money at Microsoft, one was a deputy mayor, the other one an entrepreneur of some kind. But they never set out to own a basketball team, they just wanted to keep the team they loved in Seattle.

That’s the kind of business we want here. Not somebody just trying to make as much money as humanly possible. So just the ownership of this team is very Seattle. In the victory parade for the team on Friday, as one of the owners rolled by in the back of a car, I heard people yelling out “Thank you!” I’m pretty sure Howard Schultz never got that even on his best day.

I do got one complaint: this year the Storm got sponsored by “bing,” and put the fuckin bing logo on their uniforms so big you can’t even tell where it says Storm. Not only am I against the crass commercialism and what not, but I’m just so tired of the endorsements because no matter how many times they try, they are not gonna trick me into thinking that there is anything that makes sense about the phrase “the official decision engine of the Seattle Storm.”

But they also had a tie-in with the small local chain Top Pot Doughnuts, and I approve that one. If you ever get a chance to have the donuts from their cafes (not the mass produced ones they sell at Sounders games or at Starbucks) you won’t regret it. If their uniforms said Top Pot on it in giant letters I probly wouldn’t mind as much, I gotta admit, due to my strong opinions about the glazed old fashioned.

Anyway, the stuff I’m talking about is mostly symbolic. That makes it deep, that gives the Storm meaning. But you gotta acknowledge that the best thing about the Storm is just that they’re fun to watch. I like their style. They do it like THE EXPENDABLES instead of RAMBO. So many teams (not just in WNBA, not just in basketball) are built around a star player or two who dominate all. The Storm have three superstars, Lauren Jackson, Sue Bird (both of them Olympic gold medalists) and Swin Cash, but unless there’s an obvious window it’s rare that one of them just plows through and tries to force it. Their style is to pass the ball around and the other team never knows where the pain is gonna come from. They’ll put everybody on Jackson and they’ll pay for it, because she’s not the only one that can play. Even the second stringers on the team are very solid.

Another thing I like about them, and I apologize in advance for this, but I would rather watch these women running around for a couple hours than a bunch of men, you know what I mean? I’m not trying to get on some Harry K. horndog shit here, but this is telling it like it is, and it’s one angle that I’m surprised the macho assholes who don’t respect the WNBA haven’t picked up on yet. I’m not completely enlightened, I must admit. I’m only human. The athleticism is the draw, but it only makes them seem hotter. It’s a vicious circle. The stronger they are as women the more they attract that male gaze I read about one time. Sorry, ladies. I didn’t mean to.

Also, Sue Bird used to have to wear a Hannibal Lecter type mask after she broke her nose. Extra points for pulling off that look.

You may think I’m some Johnny Come Lately to be writing about the Storm now, but I swear man I’ve been enjoying their works for a few years now. Unfortunately there is a sexist stigma against the women’s sports in the U.S., except for Foxy Boxing which is very respected. So I admit, I didn’t go around bragging about it. I only spoke about it in code and little hints, like a random reference in the opening of my DEAD-END DRIVE-IN review.

As I was trying to finish this column up there was a Q&A on C-SPAN, this guy Dave Zirin talking about what sounded like a really interesting book called Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love. Alot of what he was talking about was the public subsidizing of stadiums, how many communities get suckered into it and how it never works out for them financially. It really reinforced my feeling that we won this battle.

I didn’t come here to sell you on women’s sports or nothing, I just want to show an example of how the assholes don’t always have to win. As a city we took this one stand against the assholes, we didn’t buy them a stadium, and they tried to shit on us by taking our team away, but all their shitting did was fertilize the roses or whatever. (poetic imagery) We’re so much better focusing our love on an awesome WNBA team than putting up with the abuse of a mediocre NBA one. As I mentioned in my review of WHIP IT the absence of the Sonics also paved the way for Rat City Roller Girls skating in the same arena where Jay-Z plays. That’s another feminist, pro-gay, homegrown, even volunteer run organization with loyal fans and out of control success. No national championships yet, but only by taking the NBA’s leftover stadium did they achieve the attendance record for modern roller derby. Man, it’s so much better without the fucking Sonics.

Also, in order to get out of their lease, the Oklahomans had to pay off the debt from the previous remodel, so that year KeyArena made their first profit in about a decade. It’s like the Music Man, the guy comes into town to pull this con job but he ends up enriching the town through music. And in this case I think he also ended up paying off everybody’s student loans. Pleasure doing business with you, chumps. Yours truly, the champs.

The second thing you’ll notice about these ads is their weird tendency to word their sales pitches like propaganda, as if your country is telling you it’s your duty to use whatever their service is. But the first thing you will notice is the crazy ass photos they choose to represent the sort of person they are trying to sell to – i.e. you.

At left is the first one I noticed, and I think you probly have some of the same questions that I do:

What’s up with that? Who is that man with the giant nerd glasses and cartoonish overbite? Why does his face have the waxy look of a caveman dummy at a history museum? Is he organic or digital? Why does his open collar and string necklace suggest a laidback, comfortable surfer dude when his head looks like a hideous monster? Is that a fake nose, and if so is it attached to the glasses? What does he want from us?

I mean, this is weird. Somebody made this ad, and somebody purposely chose that picture to appear on that ad. What were they trying to make us think? Who was he supposed to represent? Is he one of the 9 out of 10 homeowners who fail to take advantage of government refinance plan? I don’t think so. Judging from his smile he must be the tenth guy, the guy who succeeds to take advantage of government refinance plan. That means he’s the person who is supposed to respond to this ad. That means he’s us. He’s how they see us seeing ourselves, isn’t he?

And what’s with the “9/10:” thing? Is that a normal way to write “9 out of 10″? Is it weird that it makes me think of the day before 9/11?

Well, that ad always confused me, but it got even weirder when they started using the photo of the longhair. Check this shit out:

How do I put this? Oh, I know: WHAT IN FUCK’S NAME IS THAT?! Why do they think that face will attract us to whatever it is they’re advertising? And what does Obama have to do with this? Is this an ad, or is it really some kind of psy-ops disguised as an ad, trying to brainwash us to be against Obama? Probly not, because it seems like they also made a version for people who feel negatively about the name Obama:

See, it doesn’t have to be Obama. It could just be President.

The creepy bearded guy represents more than just cheap auto insurance, though. He also encourages you to look into getting a Pell grant. And he brags about his online schooling. The bottom of these ads say that his testimonial does not represent an actual person, but his face and hair must come from a real person, right? He doesn’t look collaged together like the overbite guy.

This was a real still of somebody, maybe a mugshot or something. Because I doubt he’s a model. And now he’s supposed to represent a relatable everyman who should inspire us to follow in his footsteps.

Here’s what we know about him:

He doesn’t have a college degree. He used to have a bad job (defined as less than $45,000 a year). He holds an online degree in government financial aid. He drives less than 2 hours a day.

We also know some personal details. He’s 25 years old (born 4-5-84), a resident of California, six foot one, 180 pounds, and his name is Harold something (Snow, maybe?). He has a Class C license meaning he can drive a motorized scooter or a 3-axle vehicle weighing 6,000 pounds or less. He can also tow a 5th-wheel travel trailer exceeding 10,000 pounds but not exceeding 15,000 pounds, although this is not something necessary for the financial aid job, most likely.

Most of that stuff we know from the latest incarnation of the ad, which shows us his California driver’s license:

Finally – and this part is more an assumption than something I got from the text on the ads – he gets strip searched at airports alot, and questioned in connection with local kidnappings.

My friends, I’m afraid I haven’t come to you with answers, only questions and creepy photos. But I’ve been seeing these things for months now, and I couldn’t remain silent any longer. I need help solving this one. Where did these photos come from? What the hell are they trying to do by putting them on these ads? What do they mean? Why do they mean? Somebody answer me that. I need to know.

The news just blindsided me and ended my day. I was researching something on IMDb, and as the page was changing I noticed the headline saying he’d been hospitalized. I was immediately worried because it said “cardiac arrest,” but thinking he was okay for now. I hit back, clicked on the link and didn’t even read the story because my eye went to the link below it, a TMZ story saying he was dead at 50. I wanted to believe it wasn’t true, a dumb mistake, or Michael doing a tasteless stunt he’d have to apologize for later. But somewhere in my brain I thought, 50, huh. Nice round number. I always wanted to see him get old with that face, keep that nose but have wrinkles and grey hair like a normal person. Walk around with a black coat and an umbrella, a strange but graceful old man. But it figures it would be something like this. Not 49, not 51, but 50. Fifty years of Michael Jackson, one half century. That’s all you get.

It took me about 2 or 3 minutes to remember how to turn the cable on, seriously. I just stood there with the remote control in my hand. I get bummed by celebrity deaths, but they never hit me like this. I was literally shaking. I got alot of singers I’m always dreading the death of, but he wasn’t one of them.

For the rest of the day it seemed like every 2 minutes my brain would reset itself, suddenly remembering “oh shit, he really died.” During the night I kept waking up and that was all that was on my mind. This morning I watch a youtube video of the legendary Motown 25th lipsynch of “Billie Jean,” and I forget again, I get so caught up in appreciation. You’ve seen that thing, right? One thing that’s incredible about that performance is that except for the moonwalk part (with its pulling-up-the-pantlegs buildup) it’s disguised as not really being a dance. It’s like that’s just how the guy moves when he’s singing. But it defies gravity. It’s like he’s the coolest strutter ever and he’s standing on a giant air hockey table.

Michael was supernaturally talented. There’s another video that shows him as a little kid auditioning for something, and he’s doing some of the same moves we associate with him as an adult. In a way, and not by choice, Michael sacrificed his own life and well-being for our entertainment. By all accounts his father was cruel. He drilled, overworked and beat those kids to be a success, to bring their family from poverty to wealth. You could compare it to the Chinese Opera that Jackie Chan grew up in, a miserable childhood of extreme training that brought him great skill. But of course that can’t explain it all because the whole Jackson family experienced that, they were all talented kids who could sing and dance and play instruments. And none of them approached Michael. He just had something.

Stevie Wonder was a child genius who grew into an adult genius, and he doesn’t seem to have the same damage. But I’m guessing he had kinder parents. I wish Michael could’ve gotten over it. But he felt he had missed his childhood and he spent most of his adult life trying to get it back. He was unhappy with reality so he built a new reality, an amusement park, a zoo, a statue of himself with a Batman costume. He apparently leaked stories to the press to make himself seem even weirder, like the one about sleeping in a hyperbolic chamber to protect his skin. And his skin was an issue. He was unhappy with the reality of himself so he transformed himself as well. He smoothed out the vitelligo and everyone made fun of him for becoming “white.” He slowly chipped away at the nose, changed the eyes, until he was a completely different person who on a bad day looked like a drag queen with an alien nose, on a good day a pixie-ish Peter Pan type like I imagine was the goal.

It seems pretty clear that somebody who would do that is deeply troubled. But I can’t lie, the bizarreness was part of my fascination. It’s just amazing to me that somebody could and would do those things. He seemed like a fictional character. Sometimes I thought of him as a weird Vincent Price anti-hero, a wronged madman living in a spooky castle, with rides and mannequins. And I was thrilled every time I read a new strange thing that he did. I remember years ago he was interviewed in TV Guide and claimed that he went door to door like other Jehova’s Witnesses, but that he did it wearing a fat suit, afro wig and buckteeth. And I thought damn, what I wouldn’t give for Michael Jackson to knock on my door wearing a fat suit, afro wig and buckteeth.

Oh man, the disguises! I loved the disguises. The first time I knew about it was a picture I saw in People magazine or some shit like that, maybe in the early ’90s. He went to Disneyland in disguise. He had a mustache and a trucker hat (at that time only worn by actual truckers). But his eyes looked like Diana Ross. It was not convincing, and I loved it. This was years before we all became accustomed to the face mask and the umbrella, later the plastic mask, recently the Zorro mask (and pajama pants). And his kids wearing Spider-man masks. I mean, if you’re Michael Jackson, why not celebrate Halloween everyday? (although I guess Jehova’s Witnesses aren’t supposed to celebrate holidays.)

I don’t think most of that stuff was a put on, but it fit nicely with his work, which was equally bizarre and eccentric. There was of course Captain Eo, the 3-D movie at Disneyland (directed by Francis Ford Coppola) where he flew around in a spaceship with robots and furry aliens, and used his dance moves to transform a Giger-esque Angelica Huston into pretty lady Angelica Huston. I always liked when his moves made sound effects or shot lasers. Moonwalker was my favorite, the home video that was basically a feature length expansion of the Smooth Criminal video. He fights Joe Pesci, saves the children, turns into a car, a robot, a space ship. Flies away like E.T.

Much later on there was his short film Ghosts, which took me a while to get a hold of, but it was worth it. Come to think of it this is probaly the last time he worked with a bunch of special effects. It’s bizarre, with creepy hints about him being a child molester, which I could never figure out how they got in there. Was somebody trying to make him look bad? But it also was the first time I saw motion capture put to good use, and still one of the best. He tears his skin off, becomes a skeleton, then proceeds to dance in ways that only Michael Jackson could, ways that could never be animated by hand.

That one came out after his first trial. It portrayed him as a weirdo in a castle who some of the neighbors want to get rid of, but then when they come talk to him and see him dance (and turn into ghosts) they are won over by him. In real life people were more eager to condemn him. I guess that’s fair. I would like to believe he was totally innocent of all charges, but I don’t. Still, when the allegations came out it infuriated me because I felt like innocent or guilty didn’t matter to anybody, he was a weirdo so he was guilty. I felt bad because I knew if he really was innocent nobody would ever believe him. And now that I think about it maybe I’m included in that, I didn’t believe him either, as hard as I tried.

I remember eulogizing Michael’s hero James Brown when he died a few Christmases ago. That was a tough one because he created some of my favorite music in existence, and inspired so much, but I’m convinced he was a total bastard. James Brown beat up women, I don’t think he denied it. Michael, although never convicted, most of us believe he molested children. If it’s true it will damage those kids just as Michael’s childhood damaged him. If you believe or know they did these things, but you think they make great art, you have to do that separating-the-artist-from-the-person thing.

But with Michael it’s hard to know where the line is between those two sides. For me the eccentricities were part of the performance. I remember watching that TV documentary by a guy named Martin Bashir, the first thing that gave an inside look at Neverland Ranch, and showed Michael going on ridiculous shopping extravaganzas in Vegas. I was so thrilled to be seeing every weird detail at the same time as I wanted to punch Bashir in the balls for being such a clueless, sensationalistic prick. I haven’t seen that thing in years but it still pisses me off thinking about it. He asks Michael why he’s so fascinated with Peter Pan and Michael says, “I am Peter Pan.” And Bashir says, “You’re not Peter Pan,” pretending that Michael meant it literally, which he fucking well knows he didn’t. The part that really gets my blood boiling is thinking about them walking around the ranch and Michael spontaneously starts singing. Bashir doesn’t give a shit and interrupts him to ask some trivial questions.

Hey asshole, you are privy to a private Michael Jackson performance, you don’t want to hear it? Fine, go stand in the corner so the cameraman can get it. We want to hear it.

But also that special broke my heart because that was when Michael addressed the allegations, and at the same time made suspicions worse (and I believe one of the kids hanging out with him there is the kid that his second trial was about. Although that one did seem like a setup.) I guess this was nothing new. He had done that interview when he was married to Lisa Marie Presley, and I listened to him and wanted to believe him, but I just didn’t.

I believe Michael Jackson was an otherworldly talent, and was very sick. He was a victim who was not strong enough to survive, and instead perpetuated the cycle of victimization. And if we believe that’s true we have to condemn him for that but also I think we should weigh his flaws against the good he did in the world. Despite his probable sickness I genuinely believe he was a good person who wanted to heal the world and spent millions of dollars helping people, feeding the hungry, caring for the sick. Believe it or not I have a friend who’s even more into Michael Jackson than I am, and he always points out how Michael is one of the only people always talking about healing the world and seeming completely sincere and unironic. Nobody these days wants to be that earnest all the time.

He also improved the world in ways that were not intentional. His phenomenal success on MTV (which would not even play black artists until his record label backed them into a corner to play him) truly did break a color barrier in pop culture that opened a floodgate that over time massively changed race relations at least in this country. He was the Jackie Robinson of the video age. He absolutely was the spark that lit the fire that brought a generation together through music. He made all kids of all races learn about breakdancing. He was a pinup in the locker of girls of all races. Little boys of all races wanted to be him. Corey Feldman dressed up as him, Alfonso Ribeiro dressed up as him. Some people say there would be no President Obama if not for the generation of white kids who grew up on hip hop, breaking down racial barriers. But I don’t think there could be that generation if Michael hadn’t integrated MTV. What if it had been Orin “Juice” Jones or somebody, nobody gave much of a shit and MTV went back to all white artists?

Shit, you can say Elvis was a white guy stealing from black music, here was a black guy stealing it back from white people. And then sharing it with them, and erasing his race altogether. There are a million ways to interpret what he did with race. Who knows what the fuck it means? It could be a good thing, it could be a bad thing, it’s definitely an incredible thing, that this really happened.

I don’t know, man, all I know is I woke up this morning knowing there’s no Michael Jackson anymore, there’s only Michael Jackson music. Like Elvis he will start to be remembered less as a person and more as an icon. A t-shirt. A magnet. I regret that I never got to see him in person, or even see a DVD of the London shows I was hoping would be amazing. But I’m thankful I got to live through his era. In death, at the very least, there is an end to his pain. If there is something beyond this I hope he finds peace and forgiveness.

Okay, I apologize in advance for giving you this mental image, but yesterday I was really crushed and grieving about this, and watching the TV for hours and feeling weak and helpless. But then I started putting on my favorite MJ songs… “Thriller,” “Billie Jean,” “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” “Another Part of Me,” “Smooth Criminal,” “Ben”… and I started to fucking dance. Or as much of an approximation of it as a guy like me can accomplish. And as long as the song was on I could smile and I could laugh. The song would end though and it would all come crashing down, because during the song I was just thinking about the music, celebrating it, enjoying it, and when it faded out I would remember “Oh shit, Michael Jackson is really gone.” And I’m still having those moments while writing this. But I know that some day not too far away it will be different. I’ll listen to those songs again, and when they end the joy will stay with me. My mind won’t dwell on how much of Michael is gone, but on how much of him is still here, and how great it is.

With WOLVERINE: X-MENS in theaters and STAR TREK: NOT THE MOTION PICTURE BUT JUST STAR TREK hitting tomorrow, the ribbon on the 2009 summer movie season has officially been cut. Doesn’t matter that it’s early May and greyer than your grandma’s hair outside my window – I’ve seen with my own eyes they got Wolverines and Terminators on the Slurpee cups, and that means it’s summer. Come to think of it, the summer movie season keeps getting earlier in the year, just like Christmas decorations. Anyway, since I got a blog now and I can just blog about anything I want to blog about here on my blog, I might as well get back to the standard movie nerd shit I used to do in the old days. So here’s my SUMMER MOVIE PREVIEW plus a little venting at the end. By the way, blog is short for weblog, that is why you say blog, it just sounds so good to say it instead of weblog.

You guys know I love the old low budget action movies, I love horror movies, I like weird movies about Michael Jackson impersonators who talk to faces painted on eggs, but I also love big commercial studio movies. So this is a favorite time of the year for me. I’m not gonna talk about everything, just the one’s I’ll probaly see. Feel free to comment about which ones you’re excited for.

I’m gonna see STAR TREK tomorrow night and hopefully LIMITS OF CONTROL on Saturday. STAR TREK looks like alot of fun and I got zero attachment to any previous STAR TREK (my favorite Star Trek movie is TREKKIES), so I got no baggage on that one. It’s kind of hilarious to me to see commercials for this one and it actually shows several different scenes that look really exciting, and not a single shot of dudes losing their balance on the deck of the Enterprise. Notice how they made it look like STAR TREK and not seem nerdy? How the fuck did they do that? Magic.

LIMITS OF CONTROL has a higher bar to jump over though. That’s Jim Jarmusch’s new one and since it’s about a hitman (and stars Isaac De Bankole) I can’t help but have visions of Ghost Dogs dancing in my head. Even worse, a reader named Mark P. tipped me off to an article where Jarmusch mentioned POINT BLANK and Richard Stark’s Parker books as two of the major influences on the movie. So obviously that got me.

You know what? Fuck it. I’m calling this as the summer of LIMITS OF CONTROL. I don’t know if they got pajamas and dolls and shit but this is gonna be a phenomenon, this will be the surprise hit of the year. Of the decade maybe. Most likely. Almost definitely.

May 21st

Actually, looking over the release dates kind of bummed me out because I realized the most exciting stuff is coming out this month and then it’s mostly just comedies left after that. As far as the traditional Summer Popcorn Movie business I got the highest hopes for TERMINATOR SALVATION. I know, I know. It’s got alot to live up to (TERMINATOR and T2 are two of the all time greats in this category) and it’s fucking PG-13. But man, that latest trailer, the one with the cheesy rock song, it really gets me going. I have no idea if McG is up to the task, and he does sound like a dumbass in some of those interviews talking about what the next one would be about. On the other hand I actually really like his CHARLIE’S ANGELS movies and think he’s unfairly criticized by people who don’t get those movies or are prejudiced towards people with funny names. Christian Bale as John Connor is great casting, Sam Worthington looks like he might steal the movie and I just like the general atmosphere shown in the trailers, kind of a realistic look like CHILDREN OF MEN but in the midst of a huge war between man and machine. Also I think the fact that it’s not another one about a robot hunting somebody in modern L.A. makes it easier to separate in my mind from Cameron’s classics, it almost seems like a new series in the same world.

But I still think the trailer shoulda said “a film by” on metal and then a big machine dramatically pounds an ‘M’ a ‘c’ and a ‘G’ into the metal. That’s what I would do if I was McG. Also I got a question, if PG-13 TERMINATOR gets a Slurpee why didn’t PG-13 DIE HARD? It’s not fair. Let’s have some balance here, Slurpee committee.

May 29th

I guess I might see THE BROTHERS BLOOM. I did think BRICK was well directed and figured I would keep an eye on this director even though I couldn’t get past the whole teen noir gimmick in that one. This looks a little too cute and Wes Andersony, but we’ll see. The must see this week is DRAG ME TO HELL. It’s exciting that Sam Raimi is going back to horror, but it wasn’t until seeing the trailer that it really hit me – this is a fuckin Sam Raimi movie! Remember when it was EVIL DEAD and DARKMAN and even THE QUICK AND THE DEAD… and that was a Sam Raimi movie? A SIMPLE PLAN, as great as it was, seemed to mark the end of that era. And there was THE GIFT. I enjoyed the SPIDER-MAN movies but working with those budgets and the corporation’s prized intellectual property he’s not really the same guy, he doesn’t have as much energy, invention and visual experimentation. When I saw the DRAG ME TO HELL trailer it was like Bobby Ewing coming out of the shower on DALLAS after he’d been dead for a season. Holy shit – he’s back! I never thought I’d see him again.

June 5th

Don’t know if they’ll be all that great but I’ll have to see LAND OF THE LOST and THE HANGOVER. The first one is from the dude who directed CASPER, but who knows? Danny McBride is in it and to me he’s the funniest dude in movies right now. I understand THE FOOT FIST WAY isn’t for everybody, but it cracks me up and his HBO show EAST BOUND AND DOWN is even better. THE HANGOVER I don’t know much about but the trailer made me laugh. Features Mike Tyson.

June 9th

Just another comedy, but THE YEAR ONE looks funny too. Cave man movie with Michael Cera, Jack Black and everybody. Judd Apatow doing a Monty Python movie I guess. One of the first caveman movies without Ron Perlman in it.

June 26th

I don’t know if I’ll make it to THE HURT LOCKER, but it’s good to see Kathryn Bigelow directing again. I think it’s an Iraq War related movie, supposedly real intense.
July 1st

This might end up being one of the highlights of the summer, Johnny Depp vs. Christian Bale in Michael Mann’s John Dillinger movie PUBLIC ENEMIES. I don’t care if nobody else liked it – MIAMI VICE worked for me as an arty version of a studio movie. The guy has undeniable talent and I like him best when he’s working in “fun” mode, even if he doesn’t know it. By the way this is a true story, that’s what it said on the trailer, who would’ve ever known.
July 10th

I’m trying not to know anything about it, but I gotta see BRUNO because BORAT is honestly the hardest I’ve ever laughed at a movie before. But what about this documentary called SOUL POWER, you guys know about this one? I just found out about it while looking up release dates. Turns out they had tons more footage of the music festival in Zaire when they shot WHEN WE WERE KINGS. So this is a documentary about the festival itself, featuring James Brown and Bill Withers. And of course Ali shows up in this one too. I kind of doubt this will play in Seattle on this date but it’s the release date I read. Whenever it is I can’t wait.

July 31st

Judd Apatow’s FUNNY PEOPLE looks real good, using his usual guys and apparently going a little more serious. Apatow started as a comedian but says he wasn’t very good, and became a joke writer for Adam Sandler, so it’s cool that they would do this movie about stand-up together. One part I’m excited for is Eric Bana plays Leslie Mann’s husband. I was hoping he’d play a comedian too since he actually was a comedian in Australia before he did CHOPPER. But even if he’s the straight man it will be good to see him playing Australian again, and it’s nice that they gave him a role after talking about him in KNOCKED UP (remember, they said Eric Bana in MUNICH is the reason for any Jewish men getting laid).
August 7th

GI JOE AND THE RISE OF THE COBRAS. This is another adaptation from one the great American storytellers of the 1980s, Hasbro. You may also know some of his other work such as TRANSFORMERS and PLAY-DOH. I felt bad for the kids who grew up on this one and still hold it close to their heart, because they were in the talkbacks going on and on about the proper way to do it and I kept trying to tell them “hey fellas, it’s Stephen Sommers. They just hired Stephen Sommers. You need to let it go. There is no chance.” But they couldn’t give up.

I razzed those guys a little about the source material but they insisted it was not the cartoon toy commercial they are attached to but a comic book series also used to advertise the toy but they were really fond of the thing. And actually the nerds convinced me that this could’ve been made into a legitimately cool action movie if it was made by a good director. GI JOE it turns out is a special forces team of dudes with colorful code names, gimmicks and specialties fighting against some evil snake themed terrorists or something. Also apparently there are ninjas and wrestlers involved. It’s like the perfect ’80s action movie. So it’s true, that is the kind of movie I could get behind if they had made that.

Instead they made a Stephen Sommers movie, but I gotta admit it looks so silly I want to see it. It could be as painful as TRANSFORMERS but I will give it a shot. I look forward to this one in the same way I did THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR last summer. Of course, I ended up feeling too guilty to watch that when there were actual good movies in theaters so I didn’t see it until DVD and then only got some light chuckles out of it. Can you top that, GI JOE? I challenge you to top “light chuckles on DVD.”

August 14th

A couple maybes this week. DISTRICT 9 is some weird ALIEN NATION type deal produced by Peter Jackson, directed by the guy he chose to direct the HALO movie that never happened, based on a short film he did that was kind of cool. The effects look amazing but I hope it’s not all done in a mockumentary fashion with interviews and shit. I’m tired of that gimmick.

A PERFECT GETAWAY is some thriller from David “Chronicler of Riddick” Twohy. Like I said, maybe.
August 21st

is obviously a big day, a day we’ve been waiting for a long time, one of those movies that has been talked about forever but finally came together this year and it’s hard to believe it’s really upon us. I am talking of course about GOOSE ON THE LOOSE! starring Chevy Chase. But also Tarantino’s INGLORREOUS BASTTIRDZ comes out the same day if GOOSE ON THE LOOSE! is sold out.

It can be kind of a pain to discuss Tarantino on the internet. There was a time many years ago when people were too worshipful of the guy. He started to be overexposed, and there was a backlash. Somehow that backlash continues to this day, even though he has more than lived up to his promise. I can understand that it’s not a style some people will like, but I think every movie he’s directed is a keeper, and the KILL BILL movies might be my favorite of the 2000s so far.

Do me a favor, don’t pull out that “he rips off movies” shit again. We went over that bullshit when some of you weren’t old enough to drive yet. It’s been settled. There is no movie fan in the world who watches a Tarantino movie and doesn’t know he’s often paying tribute to movies that he loves. No shit, Matlock. I don’t know what’s supposed to be so shocking or offensive about that. In fact Tarantino has done more to promote those movies than anybody. Just imagine how many people have watched samurai movies, Jack Hill movies, William Witney movies, men-on-a-mission movies, Pam Grier movies, Gordon Liu movies, Sonny Chiba movies, VANISHING POINT, CITY ON FIRE, or all those other things, just because Tarantino talked them up in interviews or referenced them in his movies. I don’t know why that is upsetting to people, unless it’s some movie nerd dick measuring contest, you gotta show off that you know what he knows about in order to prove that he doesn’t know more about movies than you know about movies. Or something.

I say let it go, fellas. I love KILL BILL because it reminds me of the best of a bunch of different types of movies I love: martial arts movies, spaghetti westerns, revenge thrillers, samurai movies. It synthesizes all the most potent ingredients of those genres and turns them into something entirely different, that for me anyway feels completely unique, and it makes me laugh more and moves me more than most of the movies that inspired it. And has some of the all time best martial arts scenes. Sorry, you don’t have to like him but saying he’s terrible or a hack, you got no credibility in my book.

So I look forward to his Nazi-killing movie. I believe there is a 90% chance this will be best of the summer.

August 28th

One time I loaned twenty bucks to this guy in the bus tunnel who claimed he needed it to get his car out of impound and he would come bring it to me at work later that day. I knew he was probaly lying but I was very disillusioned with the world at the time and in a weird mood. I thought why can’t you trust a stranger? and decided to do it as a test, to measure the soul of mankind. If the guy really paid me back then it would restore my faith in humanity. It would prove that it is possible to just be a nice guy and take somebody’s word for something, help out somebody you don’t know, and not be taken advantage of. Just like it should be.

So I lost my twenty bucks and I learned my lesson. Or you would think. But I still went into the HALLOWEEN remake hoping for the best. I kind of liked Rob Zombie’s first movie and really liked his second movie and I figured they were gonna remake HALLOWEEN no matter what so I was lucky they at least got a director I liked. Well, that open-mindedness wasn’t enough. I don’t hate it as much as the next guy because there are parts of it I like and I feel like Zombie was at least reaching for something more ambitious than most horror remakes. But it clearly doesn’t work.

Now Zombie’s doing H2: JUDGMENT DAY and here I am again. I find myself thinking “Well, now it’s not a remake, it’s just a sequel, he won’t have to rehash anything and it won’t have to be compared as much to the original, it just has to hold up to the sequels, which are mostly bad anyway.” I should be worried about some of the things Zombie has said about how it’s nothing like HALLOWEEN. And when I heard that Tyler Mane doesn’t wear a mask for most of the movie and then they released a picture of him wearing a Hot Topic homeless person outfit posed in front of a god damn Alice Cooper poster (!?) I really should’ve treated this as a Platinum Dunes joint. But then for some reason the trailer surprised me and I kind of got interested again.

So here’s your twenty bucks, Rob Zombie. Your car better really be impounded or I’m gonna be sad.

By the way, there’s also a 3-D FINAL DESTINATION sequel on that day, I’ll probaly watch that too.

limited release: THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE, WORLD’S GREATEST DAD

I didn’t put these under dates because most of us don’t live in New York or L.A., so God only knows when they will make it to our parts of the woods. THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE is the new collaboration between Academy Award winner for best director Steven Soderbergh and AVN Award winner for best 3-way sex scene Sasha Grey. I think this is sort of his follow-up to BUBBLE, the improvisational movie starring non-actors. But instead of getting the manager of a KFC to play a doll factory worker he’s got a porn star playing a high priced escort. Probaly not gonna be as good as THE LIMEY but I’ll still watch just about anything by this guy.

There’s another one you might not have heard of, but it was filmed here in Seattle so I read about it. It stars Robin Williams (bad sign) but is directed by Bobcat Goldthwait (good sign, in my opinion). As I understand it, this is the premise: Williams plays a failed writer who works as a poetry professor. One day his asshole son (the kid from SPY KIDS) dies in an auto-erotic asphyxiation accident. In order to save embarrassment Williams forges a suicide note. But the note somehow becomes a media sensation, which gets his failed-writer desperation going. So then he takes advantage of that media interest and forges an entire diary. That is why the movie is called WORLD’S GREATEST DAD. Of course, DEAD POET’S SOCIETY 2 would be another good title if they are thinking about changing it.
Kind of a light summer I guess, so that’s it for the preview. Now for the pep talk. I want to say a few things about summer movies.

A couple years ago they had that “TRANSFORMERS” movie. The reviews online were almost unanimously positive, except for Harry’s which I thought was being too easy on it. So I wrote one of my harsher reviews, the one that seemed to piss off the most talkbackers although it also got me a ton of emails saying “thank you, I thought I was the only one.”

I didn’t like the movie for many reasons we don’t need to rehash here. But the reason I took it so personally was because of that argument I kept hearing, “It’s not supposed to be Shakespeare.” I made fun of that cliche in the review and gave a long list of specific summer popcorn blockbuster type movies that I felt it was fair to hope a new summer popcorn blockbuster type movie might at least try to be half as good as. Still, the talkback was loaded with that same type of bullshit: Well, it’s not supposed to win Oscars. You went in expecting Schindler’s List 2. It’s based on a toy, what do you expect? It’s made for kids, you can’t hold it up to the standards of a real movie for adults, although I am an adult and am mad that you didn’t like it.

The basic idea I guess is that criticizing a movie like this means you are an elitist snob. A regular joe will automatically like any jumble of images put in front of them no matter what, because what kind of an asshole would expect anything more than there being a movie projected onto the screen with loud noises coming out of the speakers? That’s all we Joe Six Packs need, right? BOOOM!!!! This offends me because big studio action movies, sci-fi and robot battles and shit are my type of movie. In fact I am so not-elitist that I gotta admit I am way more into the TERMINATOR movies than I am into Shakespeare. And Terminator movies are not supposed to be Shakespeare either, but even the weak part 3 entertained me more and insulted/confused me less than TRANSFORMERS.

I got in alot of talkback debates about this topic and I was outnumbered. I started to wonder, if so many people thought this argument made sense, does that mean nobody even cares if summer movies are good anymore? If people can enjoy TRANSFORMERS just as much as T2 then is it any wonder they make movies like ALIEN VS. PREDATOR now? I mean, it made more money than ALIENS or PREDATOR did. And I think it came out in the summer so you’d have to be an asshole to say it was bad. Had we gotten past the days when people hoped for greatness in a summer movie? Was everybody okay with just having VAN HELSING?

I became so obsessed with these questions I started to plan out a book about the topic. It seemed to all go back to JAWS, because that was the movie that turned summer into the season for big commercial movies, and because Spielberg had executive produced TRANSFORMERS. How the fuck did we go from the pitch-perfect filmatism of JAWS, a masterpiece to this day, to the jumbled mess of bad comedy and indecipherable visual information of TRANSFORMERS? The prototypical summer movie is all about characters and story. The special effects didn’t work properly so they kept the monster offscreen most of the time, and it was all the better. Now 30 years later people believe that a movie should ONLY have fancy special effects and all other elements cannot be held to any standard of quality.

So I wanted to go back to the summer of ‘76 and watch all the highest grossing movies of each summer, in chronological order, writing about them and trying to figure out if the quality of these movies has gotten worse over the years, or if it’s always been up and down.

But then the summer of 2008 came along and saved me the effort. How can I worry that nobody cares when a movie as great as DARK KNIGHT not only exists, but is a smash hit? It’s a sequel, it’s based on a comic book, but it was good enough it should’ve been nominated for best picture. And that didn’t go unappreciated – it literally made more money than STAR WARS. That summer also brought us IRON MAN, a more light-hearted movie that was great fun without being stupid and appealed to almost everybody. And there were plenty of other good movies but those ones in particular showed that people could still make good popcorn movies and that they would be rewarded for it. So I made peace with this issue. I thought.

But now TRANSFORMERS 2 is on the way, and people who liked the first one can be excited about it, looks like it has more robot action in it maybe, and Megan Fox always sticking her ass in the air. Doesn’t matter what I think. BUT JESUS why did I make the mistake of reading a talkback about the trailer? That is what I am here to vent about. I’m assuming they’re real people and not the mythical “plants,” but there are like ten or fifteen dudes on there trotting out the same moronic arguments. “What do you expect, it’s based on a toy” (so why do you want to see it then?) “What you people don’t understand is it’s made for young kids, not for nerds in your 30s, that is why I as an adult love it unreservedly and say so on the internet, fuck you.” “It’s not supposed to be Hamlet” (yes, they used that one).

By all means guys, enjoy this movie. I didn’t even post in the talkback and one guy still bitterly complained about what I was supposedly gonna say about him for liking the movie. I don’t give a shit man, cool it. I watch all kinds of silly shit too. What I do have a problem with is people degrading the type of movies I like by claiming that it is not possible for them to be good and that you have to be a snob or a pipe dreamer to expect them to live up to basic standards of storytelling and taste. Okay, so I have learned to accept that there are a whole group of movie fans out there who forgot the existence of STAR WARS, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, ALIENS, JAWS, TERMINATOR 2, ROBOCOP, etc. etc. What I was not prepared for is that they forgot about LAST GOD DAMN SUMMER. It is less than 12 months ago. You guys seriously never heard about IRON MAN? You’re really gonna tell me you can’t make a good, fun, non-pretentious genre movie that’s not stupid and has good action scenes?

IT IS TOTALLY FINE FOR YOU TO LIKE THIS MOVIE. You don’t have to be defensive about it or prove anything to me. And you’re in the majority anyway. (like Bush voters once were. Just kidding.) I just wish that people who liked this movie would stand up for it on its own merits instead of what it is not supposed to be and accusing everybody else of being “haters” or whatever. If you honestly like the movie there must be something better to say about it.

And by the way, about trotting out that “well what do you know, you wrote a whole book about Steven Seagal” jab. Yeah – exactly! I wrote a whole book explaining what I thought was interesting about a body of work that has been looked down on and made fun of for decades. If you haven’t read it, there are no chapters about “people gotta understand, FIRE DOWN BELOW is not meant to be compared to the works of Jean Renoir.”

I’m not asking you to agree with me on TRANSFORMERS, or to care what I think about it. I’m just asking you not to degrade movies and movie watchers by saying that they’re not supposed to be good. I’m asking you to not tell me that I’m a snob if I think movies can be JAWS and not just JAWS 4. And I’m asking you to believe in yourself. Obviously you like this movie or you wouldn’t be so bitter about it. So surely you can stop laying down arbitrary rules about the limitations of its genre and just sing its god damn praises. Please?

Okay, that feels better. Still think Verhoeven should’ve done the sequel though.

[ratings]

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And then it gets messy. You know I tried out Twitter, and I don’t think it’s really for me. Here I’m testing out another technology the kids use today, the video. They got it on all the websights, etc. Anyway that’s why I haven’t had many reviews lately, I was working on this thing. So please watch and let me know what you think.

UPDATE: For those who complained that they can’t understand what the hell the robot is talking about you can click through for the text version.This is what I wrote down, I ended up cutting some of it out for the video, and the beginning part was purposely boring so I could fast forward through it. Also some if it might be spelled phonetically.

MACHETE script review

Welcome to Vern’s review of the script for Machete, brought to you by the all new outlawvern dot com. This is a video because who the fuck wants to read. that’s bullshit. This is 2009.

When Danny Trejo first worked for Robert Rodriguez in 1995, it could’ve been just like any of his other bit parts in movies like Marked For Death or Penitentiary 3. He was memorable in Desperado as a knife-throwing assassin, but that’s sort of what he does, that could’ve been the end of it. Fortunately Rodriguez must have an appreciation for grizzled mugs because he turned Trejo into one of his regulars, putting him in From Dusk Till Dawn and its DTV sequels, in Spy Kids, Spy Kids 2, Spy Kids 3, and Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

But legend has it that Rodriguez didn’t just want to give Trejo cameos and bit parts. From day 1 he wanted to make Trejo a badass cinema leading man like his Death Wish 4: The Crackdown co-star Charles Bronson. Navajas, the Desperado knife thrower, evolved into the idea of the ex-feduhralley asskicker Machete, but between all those kiddie movies the idea never really got off the ground. So when Rodriguez and Tarantino got together to make Grindhouse, and they needed some fake trailers, Rodriguez called up Trejo and MACHETE was born. As a fake movie that lives only in our dreams.

Ever since then Trejo and Rodriguez have teased the possibility of a real MACHETE movie. On one hand, it should be easy. They claim to already have half an hour shot from when they did the trailer, and Rodriguez made his name shooting no-budget, short schedule movies. We know for a fact this guy could take a week off from pretending he’s making SIN CITY 2 and make a good MACHETE movie. On the other hand, he keeps getting attached to other project after other project. Since Grindhouse he’s been supposedly gonna do Sin City 2, Sin City 3, The Jetsons, Barbarella, Conan, Red Sonja, probly Spy Kids 4 and a Sharkboy and Lava Girl prequel trilogy. He did one called Shorts, and announced some sci-fi movie. The guy is busy.

Add to that the fact that Grindhouse itself was a huge box office disappointment, and that the Weinsteins are amoral, incompetent asswipes who have failed at everything they’ve done since leaving Miramax other than getting a shitty movie about an illiterate nazi fucking a kid nominated for best picture. Machete seems promising, so if the Weinsteins ever greenlight it we should assume they’ll put it on the shelf for ten years, then release it dubbed and re-edited under the title “KNIFE WARRIORS” with a new soundtrack by Warren G.

That is the reality we, as people who want to see Machete, must face every day. So I had given up on there ever being a real Machete movie, and so had you. But then some guy sent me the script and claimed it’s about to be made. I got no idea if he’s right or not but this sure seems like the script so why the fuck not review it. ON VIDEO. because that’s how you review scripts now, it is a video, that is the technology they use.

The script I read is dated February 2009, so it looks like they’re really still trying to do this. On page 1 there’s already a character named Torrez yelling over a radio, “Machete, you son of a bitch! I told you to wait! Set up a perimeter and wait for further orders. You hear me, Pendejo!?”

So I knew this was the type of movie I’m into.

The plot is the same as the trailer. Machete is an ex-federale undocumented worker hired by a sleazy white dude (Jeff Fahey) to assassinate a right wing senator. But it’s a set up, another sniper tries to kill Machete so he has to get away and kill everybody. Usually in a story like this you also gotta prove your innocence, but Machete is NOT innocent. So he doesn’t have to bother with that.

Machete’s psychological profile describes him as having “Old Testament-style concepts of vengeance,” and he spends the movie demonstrating those concepts. And he can take it as well as he can dish it out. He has an old bullet in his skull. When he gets new wounds he has a new spin on the old home-surgery scene where he uses an Ancient Aztec technique involving onions. He says he was “born in the fire.” But he’s not just going around chopping people up like Jason, the script finds many absurd types of action. There’s a machete vs. sword duel, some souped up “road warrior cars,” a gun that fires machetes, a dog that stabs people.

The script is lookin good. This is a good recipe, now they gotta cook it well. I’ve been told it has a ten million dollar budget, which might be too much. But if Rodriguez goes out there and shoots it Mariachi style it could turn out great. Let’s keep the digital shit to a minimum and the real stunts to a maximum. If it’s executed properly it’s got pleny of things you want in a movie like this: knifings, explosions, decapitation, dismemberment, crucifixion, dog fights. There’s also a bunch of sex scenes. Women love Machete like he’s Shaft or James Bond. It is definitely not an enlightened view of women, although Rodriguez puts some Jack Hill style feminism in there by having not one but two asskicking women. But they are the type of asskickers who sometimes wear what the script calls “hot cop lingerie.”

I’m a little concerned that the female lead, Homeland Security officer Elektra Rivers, has a twin sister who she always calls “bitch” and “slut.” That might mean Rodriguez wants to cast The Crazy Babysitter Twins, which would mean shooting his own niece in bed with Danny Trejo. Kinda creepy. Oh well, Dario Argento has done worse.

This is a weird thing because it’s a movie based on a non-existent movie. So it’s in quotation marks, or it’s meta or postmodern ironical or some shit. But I don’t think it should be a joke or a parody, it should be Rodriguez really trying to make an awesome Danny Trejo action vehicle. I hope he makes it with a straight face, a little more Desperado than Planet Terror, but the script does get jokey a few times. There’s an admittedly hilarious childhood flashback scene where young Machete, wearing Zorro pajamas, has his treehouse surrounded by a SWAT team. It  will get a big laugh but I wish Rodriguez was disciplined enough to leave those type of jokes out. I don’t need no SPY KIDS shit in my Charles Bronson movie. But oh well, it’s what he wants to do and I think people will like it.

By the way, Machete is portrayed as a mythical protector of illegal immigrants. I hope somebody on Fox News gets riled up about that. This whole thing where we laugh every time they say “teabagging” can’t last forever, they’re gonna need some new material. If Machete’s immigration policy offends you I encourage you to still enjoy the movie the same way we liberals did RED DAWN in the ’80s. We knew it was some crazy shit but it was still a funny movie.

I believe Rodriguez said MACHETE would be a “mexploitation movie,” and that’s the perfect description of this thing. It’s loaded with all the stereotypes and cliches associated with Latinos in the United States, but sort of reclaims them. There’s an arms dealer who works out of a taco truck. The villains are the advisor to a right wing anti-immigration senator and the Minnitmen who follow him. Machete can disguise himself as a janitor, he leads an army of other undocumented workers, who hide weapons in their mops and garden tools. So it’s got a good class theme going too. Of course they gotta get some Catholicism in there too so they have a church and a Padre, I’m guessing still played by Cheech Marin as in the trailer. He gets to blow some motherfuckers away and in my opinion is not one of the more ethical padres.

Anyway, I hope they really are making this thing, because the world needs Danny Trejo vehicles and, more broadly, it needs this type of ’80s Craig Baxley approach to action. Not everything needs to be Jason Bourne. Sometimes you need one where the hero chops off body parts from inside a moving vehicle. Sometimes you need Machete.

you know what, this probly woulda been easier if I just wrote it all down, not sure what’s up with this video review deal

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I stand writing this on a foggy street Monday night, wondering if Bush already left the White House forever, or if he’s staying the night. I heard he already had all his shit moved out – I usually stay up all night the night before moving, still packing. I guess he was in a hurry.

Not too long ago it was hard to picture this day. Remember, some people even worried there would be a terrorist attack and they’d declare martial law and the Bush reign of terra would continue. Ha ha, now we can save our paranoia for other things. God damn, I should’ve sold all those political expose books I got for Christmases. Nobody’s gonna take that shit off my hands now. I’d feel like an asshole even bringing them into Half Price Books. No more Bush documentaries either. We’re moving on.

The grocery store is draped with American flags – I don’t remember the inauguration being an event to celebrate at home before, but this year everybody’s taking the day off and getting up early. A local bakery is distributing cookies emblazoned with portraits of the Obamas, including the silhouette of a dog with a question mark over it. I drank the Obama Jones Soda but I’m not comfortable with the idea of crunching on the first family.

You know what, it doesn’t make me sad to picture Bush walking out of that White House the last time, his shoulders hunched like Charlie Brown. Did the door indeed hit him where the good Lord split him? It would only be right. And deep down I bet he knows he fucked up. He still says history will judge him. It’s a good point. We can’t be sure he fucked up until we’re all dead. Just like we can’t be sure whether or not Seagalogy will be the #1 book taught to future generations of students to understand America in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Only time will tell.

You know who else thought history would bare him out? John Wilkes Booth. Worried about the prospect of “n—-r citizenship,” Booth put together a conspiracy to assassinate President Lincoln and two members of his cabinet. Before going through with it he delivered a letter to the newspaper which said in part, “Many will blame me for what I am about to do, but posterity, I am sure, will justify me.” I’m sure a few of those 2 million, multi-hued citizens celebrating on the streets where Booth made his escape will spend a few moments thinking about that stupid motherfucker and how wrong he was. And then they will forget about him and watch a man with Kenyan heritage put his hand on Lincoln’s Bible and be sworn in as president.

1/20/09

I can’t remember ever sitting to watch hours of an inauguration broadcast before, but this one I got up early for. As tired as I am of hearing talking heads and interviewees say that “it’s history” (ya think?) it must’ve been incredible to be there. I thought about trying to go, but I didn’t know how the fuck I would’ve found a hotel. Should’ve tried anyway I guess.

Man, it feels so good to be excited for who the president is, instead of who he’s not. It’s not, “phew, it wasn’t the worst guy” but “HOLY SHIT, IT’S OBAMA!” As awed as we must all be by what it means for our country to have its first African-American president, this is not just the first black president. This is a president many of us believe in, people who are not accustomed to believing in the president. It’s waking forgotten feelings in us. Damn, I’m gonna enjoy the national anthem more next time I go to a baseball game.

President Obama (!!!) made a great speech. I hate hearing the pundits say which parts were most important, because I figure if anybody remembers it a few years from now we can’t guess which parts they will remember. And of course they write the speech knowing what a historical moment it is, and trying to come up with lines that will remembered. So it’s all a little forced. But my favorite part was the line about our “patchwork heritage” being a strength and not a weakness. And the part about rejecting the idea of a choice between our security and our ideals. Cut to shot of Bush. (Are his ears burning?)

Speaking of which, I cannot tell a lie, watching those bastards get on the helicopter and leave was a highlight of the festivities. Cheney looked even more sinister in his wheelchair. He didn’t give a shit. But Bush looked uncomfortable. He knew some of that speech was about him, and the atmosphere of celebration too. At some point he must’ve surveyed the crowd, which went two miles back and was prone to sudden celebratory chants of “OBAMA! OBAMA! OBAMA!,” and tried to convince himself they weren’t celebrating his departure. His inauguration, to put it mildly, was not as positive. Remember, there were so many protesters at the parade he had to jump into a limo, and somebody threw an egg at him.

“All this,” he might’ve asked Laura today – “It’s because he’s a black guy, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, George, they’re celebrating all the civil rights and everything.”

What really hit me most was for the first time hearing the phrase “former president George W. Bush.” I didn’t even think of that! Former president George W. Bush! I had to repeat it out loud.

Chris Mathews on MSNBC estimated 75% of the crowd was booing Bush. On the Washington mall, some dudes had a sheet that said “BUSH GET DA HELL OUT!” And he did. I didn’t know the name of that “Na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye” song so I had to put on this instead. When I turned it off I realized the crowd on TV was singing my first choice as the helicopter flew him off to his future of clearing brush and waiting for Walker, Texas Ranger to come out on Blu-Ray.

Whew, we can all breathe now. We can close the book on that one. Doesn’t even feel like he’ll pop up like Michael Meyers after he was seemingly stabbed to death. But maybe that’s because the Bush presidency already had its perfect symbolic ending a few weeks ago. I think you can guess what I’m talking about. Bush went on what I’m sure was his last ever trip to Iraq, and he held a press conference for Iraqi reporters.

You can see why it seemed like a good idea. Before Bush invaded, Iraq was in fact ruled by a dictator. And I’m pretty sure he didn’t do press conferences. This is the new free Iraq, right? Check it out! They just didn’t know that one reporter – who had reported on the widows and orphans of the war, had been detained by US forces twice, and kidnapped and beaten by militants in Baghdad – would get up and throw one of his shoes at Bush. And then the other one.

The sight of Bush ducking two shoes was almost too good to be true. Slapstick comedy and poetic salve for the soul combined into one short Youtube clip. Before the war it still would’ve been funny – throwing his own shoes? Seems kind of random. But the same war he’s protesting, the one Bush is there trying to repair the image of, that’s the war that taught Americans that touching someone with the sole of a shoe is a grave insult in Arab culture. I couldn’t help but flash back to that day in 2003 when the statue of Saddam Hussein came down. I remember I was stuck in a hotel in L.A. watching cable news. They kept showing how the soldiers covered the statue’s face with an American flag, but then took it down when somebody told them it looked bad. Then the statue came down, they dragged it around and Iraqi children chased after touching shoes to its head, so the anchors had to keep explaining the significance. Bill O’Reilly kept saying that it was time for people against the war to admit that they were “on the wrong side of history.” Nothing personal, you know. It’s just that, this war being completely over and everything, everything is all wrapped up now and just in all fairness, you know, they should admit they were wrong.

Now it’s 5 years later, Bush never did quite get the war ended under his watch, and even that hothead O’Reilly has long since applied for a transfer to that other side of history. Nobody talks about that statue much anymore, partly because it turned out it wasn’t even a well known landmark and the whole thing was apparently staged for propaganda with the help of Ahmed Chelabi and those other crooks. But it was still an important moment because we learned that thing about the soles of the shoes, so we can fully appreciate Bush’s exit in a hail of footwear.

But by that time we had already elected Obama, and that let off alot of steam. We don’t know for sure how he will turn out, but just having him on deck took the tension out of our national shoulders. After eight years of Bush making things worse and worse and worse you’d think we’d be ready to hang him. But we’re so relaxed it’s easier to laugh at now. When he went to that summit and none of the other leaders shook his hand we could almost feel sorry for the guy. Almost. Maybe it’s like when Russell Crowe caught Denzel in AMERICAN GANGSTER. Then it seemed like they’d been through so much that they became friends. Well, not quite like that.

In 2000 some lefties said that Bush winning would be for the best, because it would politicize our side, it would wake people up and make them care. And I thought yeah, that’s real easy for you to say, asshole, you’re not the minorities and working class and soldiers and civilians overseas who will suffer from what’s about to happen. And I guess we were both right. Whatever we imagined happening in foreign policy and the economy, the reality was much worse. And that’s not even figuring in 9-11 or Katrina. Everything that’s happened has changed people that were previously apathetic or cynical, myself included. For example my weekly movie column somehow turned into my occasional cathartic unleashing of political ranting. And without all of us becoming grudgingly engaged in what was going on, I’m not sure Obama could’ve happened. We would’ve gone on believing that Al Gore is not that different from George Bush and we’ll never be able to change anything and what’s the point anyway.

Things are worse than they’ve been in our lifetime, and yet we’re more optimistic than before. And we need it. If we’re going to prove our 2000 selves wrong, here’s our chance. Why don’t you finish that Obama cookie, then we’ll pull up our sleeves, raise our flags and our chins and clean up this mess.

Westlake was a hell of a prolific writer. He started in 1960 and delivered books faster than his agent thought he should. Supposedly it was bad to try to promote more than one book in a year, so he started using pseudonyms. Under the Westlake name he wrote around 50 books – add in the pen names and that number doubles. Movies based on his books include THE HOT ROCK (a fun Robert Redford heist comedy recently reviewed by Quint), BANK SHOT, A SLIGHT CASE OF MURDER and the most recent Costa-Gavras movie THE AX. He was also a screenwriter who sometimes adapted other writers – Patricia Highsmith for RIPLEY UNDER GROUND, Dashiel Hammett for a TV anthology, Jim Thompson for THE GRIFTERS (he was nominated for an Oscar for that one). Personally I think his best screenplay is THE STEPFATHER, which does such a great job of including dark satire of ’80s family values in the subtext of an effective thriller. He was often known for lighthearted and goofy material but he was definitely good at the mechanics of a tight mystery or thriller story.

The reason this one hits me hard is that one of the other writers hidden beneath the friendly Westlake exterior was Richard Stark. If you had asked me yesterday I would’ve told you Stark was my favorite living writer. Aside from four spinoffs about an actor/thief named Grofield, Stark’s entire output was the 24 novels of the Parker series. These are the sparsely written, ridiculously badass adventures of a guy who plans heists, then leads the team executing them. He’s the best at what he does, knows how to work with the best people, and is usually disciplined enough to follow his rules and obey his instincts. But something always goes wrong anyway and that’s his other job, the problem solver. The guy who cleans up the mess. Usually, but not always, he’s able to outsmart and outfight everybody and get away with his ass intact, and most of the loot.

Part of what makes Parker a fascinating character, somehow, is his lack of humanity. He’s all business. He doesn’t have quirks, hobbies, or emotions. He doesn’t have attachments. He only sees women after a job, not during. Too risky. In so many crime stories the smartest guy still gets screwed because he thinks with his dick. Parker knows not to do that.

Parker has been put on film many times, but with more humanity and (like Westlake) not under his original name. The best and most famous is POINT BLANK starring Lee Marvin and based on the first Parker book, The Hunter. Marvin is so god damn tough as “Walker” that it’s hard not to think of him as the perfect image of Parker, even though the character (and arty feel) are pretty different from the pulpy, straightforward novel. Other actors have followed but, like pretty much all men, they’re no Lee Marvin.

One notable not-Lee-Marvin is Mel Gibson, who played “Porter” in PAYBACK, also based on The Hunter. I think both the fun theatrical version and the more harsh director’s cut are worth watching, and even if it’s not as good a movie as POINT BLANK it’s a little closer to Westlake’s characterization. Too bad they didn’t turn it into a series like James Bond. They wouldn’t even have to keep Gibson, because in the second book (The Man With the Getaway Face) he gets plastic surgery to hide out.

Another good Stark-based movie is THE OUTFIT starring Robert Duvall as “Macklin.” That one’s based on my favorite of the books, the third one, where he gets fed up running from the criminal organization he pissed off in The Hunter/Point Blank/Payback and takes the war to them. He convinces all his friends to simultaneously rob the Outfit’s affiliates, so you get several heists for the price of one. The book is better, of course, but the movie’s good. It was directed by John (OUT FOR JUSTICE) Flynn but, like his masterpiece ROLLING THUNDER, has only been released on VHS. Both are well worth searching for.

Lesser Parker-based movies include Godard’s MADE IN U.S.A. (supposedly based on The Jugger, but to me it just seemed like tedious new wave fucking around with American iconography) and the okay SLAYGROUND with Peter Coyote as “Stone.” Then there are two not on video in the U.S. so I have no idea how good they are: THE SPLIT (with Jim Brown as “McClain”!) and the French MISE A SAC (based on The Score, a great book where Parker’s crew tries to take down a whole mining town).

Westlake wrote all his books on manual typewriters, but he he still managed to have a good (if rarely updated) donaldwestlake.com. He was still writing at 75, and the Parker novels were still going. I’m not sure if he would have wanted to write a last one or not, but it turns out the last one is last year’s Dirty Money. He had stopped in ‘74 but started up again with Comeback in ‘97. I can’t vouch for the new ones because I haven’t gotten to them yet – I was reading them in order and I can’t find The Sour Lemon Score. Then I have a couple books after that but when I get to Plunder Squad and Butcher’s Moon I’m fucked

I highly recommend reading The Hunter and any others you can find. The first three are supposed to be adapted into comic books in the next couple years, but I dare you to read them without pictures first. For more information check out The Violent World of Parker. Also, talkbackers please recommend your favorite of Westlake’s non-Parker books. 361 was a nice and brutal one reprinted by Hard Case Crime, but I would like to be enlightened about the many other styles he wrote in.

Donald Westlake, aka Richard Stark/Tucker Coe/Samuel Holt/Edwin West/Curt Clark/Timothy J. Culver/John B. Allan/J. Morgan Cunningham

1933-2008

Originally published at Aint-It-Cool-News: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/39641

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