Yes, but what went right in Wild Wild West?

Wild Wild West (1999) holds a 38 rating on Metacritic, where the positive reviews say things like

Lots of laughs, lots of fisticuffs, lots of cool toys, lots of stuff getting blown up: Who could ask for anything more from a summer movie? (Peter Brunette)

which seems like damning with faint praise; and

A movie that's dazzling as you watch it and immediately unsatisfying afterward. (Stephanie Zacharek)

I'd go farther than that and say that this is a film that's rarely satisfying while it's being watched. And you might wonder at that since it has so much going for it: Will Smith and Kevin Kline are always charismatic; Barry Sonnenfeld does a lot of quality entertainment; and there's clearly a lot of money behind what the producers hoped would be a crowd-pleasing action-sci-fi-comedy.

Now I'm not really sure I could enumerate what went wrong with this film. I mean, I could point to a few things, but that would probably only scratch the surface--and this is a rich film, with something special that won't work for everyone.

Maybe you're annoyed that Salma Hayek as the good girl isn't given much to do or that the other women--mostly dressed in bustiers and working for the evil Loveless--are given little-to-no agency. Maybe you don't like the racial humor and the sight of Will Smith playing at a Sambo accent doesn't work for you. (I think it actually does work as a race joke, since Smith's character West is using that accent to disarm some Southerners. That is, the jokes on the racists. But it doesn't work since it's out of character.) Maybe the ridiculous puns and "witticisms" don't work for you, especially when the joke has to do with a reference to our time. (After building an airplane, Artemus Gordon decides to name it "Air Gordon"--a joke that only makes sense in the 90s, when Air Jordan was a recognizable name.)

(Special ughs for when Will Smith beats up a guy with knives for hands and then says, "No more Mr. Knife Guy.")

And then there's all the action and sci-fi sequences: the giant mechanical tarantula, the fight in the engine room, the death machine chase, etc. These might work by themselves, but the whole framework of the movie fails to give them much weight, and mostly just uses them for cheap jokes. (When Gordon (Kline) and West (Smith) get giant magnets on their neck, how long will we have to wait for the inevitable drawn-to-your-belt-buckle-fellatio joke? Not long.)

So... what went right here?

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 214: Lois Bryan Adams, Meeting “Father Abraham” (#214)

Lois Bryan Adams, "Meeting 'Father Abraham'" (1864) from The Civil War: The Third Year Told by Those Who Lived It:

Lois Bryan Adams was a Michigander journalist who went to D.C. to work as a clerk during the Civil War and who wrote dispatches (signed "L.") back home to tell about D.C. life. Today's reading is two letters from her, both involving cameos by President Lincoln.

In the first, Adams leads the reader like a tour guide through the crowds--

Look a moment; does it seem possible that we can ever work our way through that thronging, crowding mass, pouring down the broad pavement in one incessant stream?

--till she reaches the president, since he's holding an open reception day. Adams is firmly pro-union, anti-slavery, and pro-Lincoln--so much so that she ends up tongue-tied when she greets him. Which is where the tour guide frame sort of breaks down, though she resumes it later, saying that we'll make better use of the next open reception.

The next piece is about a fair being held at the Patent Office building, and it's radically different from a lot of the other Civil War reportage I've read in this series. There's no mention of the war (or of Adams's service in soldiers' relief organizations). Only a description of the opening speeches, including a cameo of Lincoln being dragooned into making a speech, which he pulls off admirably by talking about how unprepared he is.

Adams also discusses the decorations and displays at the fair, including a diorama of U.S. Grant's camp (the closest we get to the war) and a display of authentic New England pioneer life. My favorite part of this is when Adams notes that the "authentic" New England accent keeps turning into black dialect.

Alien Raiders and A Film With Me In It: Good scripts and cheap sets

What are these movies?

Alien Raiders is a terribly-named movie, though I can kind of see what they're going for: a bunch of criminals takes over a supermarket and holds the people there hostage--because (twist!) they are trying to protect all of us from alien invasion. So the raiders are both the aliens doing the invading and the humans trying to raid the aliens. Cue waa-waa horn.

A Film With Me In It is a super-dark Irish comedy about two affable schlubs--a failed actor whose brother is locked-in, whose girlfriend is growing apart, whose landlord is mean, whose apartment is falling apart; and a drunk screenwriter who never writes--who then have to deal with an escalating farce of death. The deaths are ridiculous, but the real comedy here is in how these two guys try to deal with everything, which is so god-damn hard for them. (At every single moment: so when Dylan Moran--the drunk screenwriter--introduces himself at an AA meeting, he does so in the most awkward way possible.)

The good, the bad, the replicable
Alien Raiders has many characters--the raiders, the hostages, the cops--which kind of splits the attention and drains our identification with most of the characters. So, say, when something terrible happens to character X, it's easy to say, "oh well, what's character Y up to?" At the same time, many of those characters are given some interesting thing to work with.

It's also so perfectly self-contained--just in and around this one supermarket. Not only does that heighten some of the danger and suspense, it also probably does wonders in cutting down cost. Which they could then spend on bloody special effects and squibs, since the film sort of boils down to regular joes vs. aliens.

A Film With Me In It has a similarly constricted location/scope, mostly taking place in and around this one house. And, similarly, most of the special effects budget probably went into fake blood. But the characters are so well-defined through just one or two scenes--the actor failing to make an impression at an audition, the drunk writer making the wrong impression at an AA meeting--that we don't need to see much of their lives outside of this house to understand who they are. And once we have their characters outlined, almost every thing they do is hilarious since they keep being put into tense situations.

The only negative thing I have to say about A Film With Me In It is a warning about the dog in the film, who does die. For some reason, people dying in Looney Toons fashion is amusing, but when it happens to a dog, it seems less so.

If you need help, ask the internet

The other day, while walking the dog, I heard my name--from my iPod. If you've ever had that experience, you know it can be a little odd, especially if what's playing is a podcast that often deals with occult and supernatural issues: Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff. In this case, I asked for Ken and Robin to tell us about some hidden gems in the film world. (They often talk about films they saw at film festivals, which doesn't help much, especially since I don't get very odd films in the single theater here.) So, Ken and Robin gave a list of films that are already out in some form that could get more play. Here's the list:

Robin's list:

Muk Gong (Battle of Wits / Battle of the Warriors)

Beyond the Black Rainbow (streaming on Netflix)

A Film With Me in It

Ken's list:

Absentia (streaming on Netflix)

Alien Raiders

Tomorrow at Dawn

Forbidden Quest (note: not the 2006 Korean film)

I've already watched and loved A Film With Me in It, a black comedy from Ireland about a pair of friends who are stuck in their lives--an actor who can't book a film, whose relationship with his girlfriend is falling apart, whose brother is paraplegic (or locked in or brain dead--it's unclear), and whose landlord is quite hostile and uninterested in fixing the decaying apartment; and a drunk screenwriter-wanna-be who also has a gambling problem. The film starts off small and depressingly realistic (or realistically depressing)--and then people start dying in hilarious and unusual ways. (Warning: a cute dog also dies.) And now these two inept people have to decide how to deal with all the deaths, leading to more black comedy.

But the lesson here is clear: with Twitter and email, it's easy to ask people for their thoughts or opinions on things.

The flip-side to that is, why not pitch a hand in if you can? So, I recently wrote a review for the website SF Signal (where I often read reviews and notes) and wrote a list/essay for Pornokitsch (where I always read the other posts).

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 213: Seymour Krim, Making It! (#213)

Seymour Krim, "Making It!" (1961) from The Cool School: Writing from America’s Hip Underground:

I'm on record as disliking the Beats. Not so much the poetry or the style, but the political stance of detached purity that really ignores the reality of oppression that others  might experience. Like Thoreau buggering off to Walden Pond--knowing that his women relatives would take care of him--there's a certain blindness to Kerouac's On The Road, to his adventures with the poor and the minorities while still failing to see how those adventures were impossible for them.

And Seymour Krim shows very nicely one more lack the Beats have, which is an awareness of women as people. See, Krim's piece is a dialogue/rant between someone who has accepted the bourgeois measure of success--money, a job, status, women--and someone who holds on, tenuously, to the artistic and spiritual goals. Notice that "women" are one of the objects/goals of life, not subjects of their own lives.

That said, the LoA headnote makes much to-do out of Krim's marginal status: he started off as an establishment book reviewer, so his attempts to slip into Beat think-pieces never quite got the attention that (some people think) they deserved. Krim certainly seems to have the style down: at times, this piece feels like it would be better read aloud as slam poetry at a coffee shop.

Columbia professor, poet, painter, ex-Trotskyite, Partisan Review editor, G. E. engineer, Schenley salesman—they all live in the same world for a change and that world says, go!

That sort of breathless rant works best over a short piece and at eight pages, I definitely felt myself start to slip away. Krim's piece certainly speaks to an important issue about how we define success, both socio-culturally and personally, and how those definitions of success may not jibe. 

And while I'm sensitive to the idea that monetary success may be an endless trap of getting and spending, I'd love to see Krim make this case to some of the working poor who didn't have jobs as book reviewers.

The Furies vs. Silvertip: Westerns and Ambiguity

I recently finished Max Brand's 1933/1941 Silvertip, a pulp Western book, and Anthony Mann's 1950 The Furies, a non-pulp Western movie; and I'm trying to close that circle. How are these both Westerns when they feel so different?

What it is: Silvertip:
Silvertip tells the story of a larger-than-life, badass, oath-bound rambler; after mistakenly gunning down a young Mexican man, Silvertip promises to replace him; this leads him to a land-war between an evil white clan, the Drummons, and the vengeance-obsessed Mexican family, the Montereys. He fights, he wins, he continues to ramble.

It's very straight forward and the only bit of ambiguity is when Silvertip seems to recognize that the Monterey quest for vengeance is soul-eroding and family-destroying. E.g., Papa Monterey is devastated to lose his son--because he trained his son to enact his vengeance. Then, when Silvertip starts fulfilling those quests, Monterey doesn't seem too bothered by losing his original son. But even with that drop of ambiguity, Silvertip goes on, does the violence thing, and moves on.

What it is: The Furies:
The Furies... is a little more confusing: old rancher T.C. Jeffords is a king on his land (The Furies), so powerful that he issues his own money. He's obsessed with his late wife, uninterested in his son, and very VERY close to his daughter Vance. (She's the only one who matters--T.C.'s son is barely in the story, almost as if he's only here to give us exposition.)

Vance is very friendly but not romantic with Mexican squatter Juan Herrera; Vance even helps to protect the Herreras when the other squatters are being evicted. Vance isn't interested in Juan because she's interested in oily gambler Rip Darrow, who thinks he has a claim to the Darrow Strip, a strip of land belonging to Jeffords/The Furies. But when T.C. offers Rip money to leave his daughter alone, Rip takes the money, leaving Vance to become virgin queen of the Furies.

Into this stable situation, T.C. brings a beautiful older woman, Flo Burnett, who makes it clear to Vance that she's a gold-digger who wants to get rid of Vance (by sending her to Europe). Vance throws scissors at Burnett and runs away to the Herreras. T.C. hunts her down and burns out the Herreras, even hanging Juan for stealing a horse. Vance vows vengeance on her father and goes out to buy up all of the money he issued at pennies on the dollar.

T.C. desperately needs money, even going to his now-scarred wife Flo to ask for the money he gave her. She explains that she can't give him the money, because then he'll leave her, a rejection that T.C. takes in stride, expressing affection and respect for this scarred gold-digger. Even T.C.'s accountant reveals that he's been stealing money from T.C., but is willing to give it back to help out; T.C. refuses the offer, laughing at the betrayal.

Then T.C. gets an offer to buy his cattle, and he rides out, to prove that he's still king of his land. His men sing songs about how great he is.

Then Vance reveals her double-cross to her dad, buying his cattle with his own (worthless) money. T.C takes even this in stride, saying that he was always happiest when building an empire, not holding it. Rip and Vance plan to marry. Then Juan's mom kills T.C.

So?
So... yeah. Silvertip is easy to summarize because it hews close to standard Western tropes--land-war, wandering gun-slinger, the beloved daughter as romantic object--and it keeps pretty far from ambiguity or other genre tropes.

By contrast The Furies has a Western setting, with some traditional Western tropes--cattle baron, the round-up, dealing with a (crooked-ish) bank, squatters/land-war. It also has a noir-ish touch, with its ambiguities, especially around love and loyalty. (Director Mann started in noir, so you can make that connection.) You can even see a certain Shakespearean family drama--King Lear, if you like this essay. Maybe there's even a bit of the women's weepy genre with the daughter caught between two-three men (Juan, Rip, T.C.).

And, of course, let's nod towards the mythological aspect of The Furies: the punishers who are especially vicious towards those who betray their family.

It is, in other words, a perfect film to write a paper about. (Sample: Freudian: Vance uses her mother's GIANT scissors to castrate her father's sexual interest in the other woman by scarring her.)

I repeat: So?
Well, The Furies is a bit of a mess at the end: T.C.'s vicious hanging of Juan is all but forgotten except as pretext for tragic murder; asshole Rip Darrow gets sentimentalized as soon-to-be proper husband; even Vance gets a little tamed, accepting her father as a third member in the family/ownership of the Furies.

So to make a happy ending, so many of the ambiguities get washed away in a way that feels artificial, which isn't really a problem for Silvertip: he starts out as a larger-than-life, cardboardy figure, he exits as same.

I can't help but feel like there's a warning here about tonal shifts: in its own way, Silvertip is more successful, while being less ambitious. At the same time, a little mix of genre gives The Furies a lot more interest in its characters and plot.

Writing Against... Bradbury

In many cases, I lean towards the anti-censor-ship view that bad speech shouldn't be silenced, but combatted with good speech. That's not a universal principle and most self-satisfied anti-censor-ship people tend to be rather dense on the dangers of speech: do you let people in crowded theaters yell "fire" and just hope that someone else in the theater makes a compelling case that there is not, in fact, a fire?

But I'm especially think that we need good speech to combat bad speech when the bad speech isn't totally bad. When Edgar Rice Burroughs writes Tarzan, with all of its ante-diluvian attitudes towards Africans and women, we can't just drop it down a well and hope no one reads it. It's an entertaining book and the Wild Man is one of the most important/common archetypes to come out of the 20th-century pulp tradition.

Or take Bradbury: "The Veldt" is an interesting view of a holo-deck style entertainment room and generational conflict--that relegates the wife/mother to shrill alarmist. (She happens to be right, but the story never really validates her and she's not good enough to actually profit from her alarm.) Or in "Usher II," where we get an impassioned defense of imagination and fantasy--along with a murderous hatred of science.

So there's a lot to like about Bradbury and a lot to dislike. (Depending on the ratio, you'll either like him or, like me, wish he wasn't as deft with a sentence considering how reactionary his attitudes are towards the world.) So how do we write against Bradbury?

For a comparable case, we could look at Pullman writing against Lewis: God is the central fact of life for Lewis's cross-planar fantasies, but in Pullman's cross-planar fantasies, God is dead and only present as a figurehead for an oppressive institution. In that way, Pullman is writing in dialogue with--and against--Lewis.

So let's say you want to write against Bradbury's sexism, his vision of the 1950s suburbs as a natural order in "The Veldt" (and elsewhere).

We could make that subtext into text: a man uses his virtual reality room to recreate his dream of the 1950s. (Sure, while the kids aren't using that room for Africa, dad could be using it for his recreation--and knock before entering, gosh-darn-it!) Here the man is totally in charge, just as he wishes he was out in the real world.

We could write the parallel and hidden reality to the original story: all the work mom has to do to prop up dad in the 1950s.

We could write the reversal: mom is in charge here.

Or the update: instead of being happy with her 1950s-style role, the mom here reads feminist material and takes up the call of liberation. (Like the parallel/hidden reality version, this is basically about adding history back to the story.)

Any other ways to write back against something you don't like in an author?

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 212: Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour (#212)

Kate Chopin, "The Story of an Hour" (1894) from Kate Chopin: Complete Novels & Stories:

Interesting backstory here: (a) the story of a train accident-caused widowhood was Kate's mom's story; (b) the story was rejected by Vogue at first; and (c) was only accepted after the success of her collection Bayou Folk.

Which means that, yes, Vogue existed in the 1890s.

I'm not that surprised that the story was rejected by many places: it's a tiny story that focuses on a woman's feelings--and does so in rather stark terms. That is, the protagonist of this story has learned that her husband has died and feels a crushing sadness for one page; then, on the second page, she feels... free. Sure, she loved her husband, but whether he had good or bad intentions, his very existence limited her.

Then, on the third page, he shows up alive, which is such a shock to the ex-widow with a heart condition (established on page one) that she dies.

So we have a nicely constructed story with a shocking twist; and a view of a woman's interest in being free of men (which must have been disturbing to people who were busy constructing the ideal of the Angel in the House for women to stick to). An interesting story whether you're interested in structure or history.

Jonah Hex, heavy metal music video western

For all that Lone Ranger was a mess in some ways, it was also well-structured in other ways.

Jonah Hex is just flat-out a mess, the kind of film that might find an afterlife as a midnight movie because it's such a mess. But I want to stress that might--because usually midnight/cult movies aren't just messes, but fun messes, and Jonah Hex isn't a lot of fun.

Honestly, Josh Brolin is OK as Jonah Hex, though that face wound turns his Southern drawl into something unbearable: an attempt to seem gritty and cool. Megan Fox and John Malkovich are both wooden, but not in a fun bad way. Honestly, the only one who looks like he's having any fun is Michael Fassbender as this psychopathic, Maori-style tattooed, bowler-hat-wearing Irishman. Maybe because there's no depth to that character and just a collection of traits that Fassbender can push.

There's a fine story buried here, with ex-Confederate loner Hex learning to care about the country again (or something) when faced with the evil unreconstructed Confederate played by Malkovich, who is seeking a doomsday weapon.

But so much of the story seems organized around what a 12-year old would consider cool, without any consideration of drama or reality. For instance, Hex starts out anti-social, as we'd expect of the anti-hero to hero journey; only his anti position is almost parodic without being funny. When he comes to collect a bounty and gets double-crossed, he doesn't just kill the double-crossing sheriff, but destroys the whole town. Naturally, he's riding his horse as the town explodes behind him.

For another example, Hex tracks down someone from his old life who now runs an underground fight ring. So naturally, we see this fight between a giant guy and a snake guy. Is that a metaphor for the fight within Hex? Is it important to the plot? Is there any connection at all? No, they just wanted to show us a fight between two weird guys. (I'm guessing 300 was an influence here.)

For another, final example, so many of the fight scenes that actually involve Hex are scored with over-the-top heavy metal. It's ... odd. I think it's reaching for something fun and awesome, but it comes off as trying too hard and not getting there.

But let's take a basic lesson from this mess: every scene needs some dramatic tension and conflict. Man, this film is maybe 80 minutes or something and it fails that basic test? That's a mess.

30 Years of Mac

I have no big theories or thoughts here. Only a recollection:

In 1984, my parents bought a Mac. This was the very first model, Macintosh 128k--except we just called it a Mac back then because it was the only kind. We had no games to start with, only MacPaint and MacWrite, which were more than enough for me. I probably used MacWrite to write stories; and I used MacPaint to learn about cause and effect. That is, to this day, 30 years later, I remember some of the special, strange features.

For instance: there were a lot of silly patterns (instead of colors), so I learned to make unbroken lines so that I could fill in spaces with a silly pattern--and try to keep it from spilling out. For another example, MacPaint had a mirroring function, where you could make your cursor action mirrored by another across various axes. (For instance, you could set it to mirror horizontally--turning one mark into two--and vertically--turning those two into four. And then you could go to town making snowflake like patterns.)

It couldn't do much, but man, I loved that computer.

Library of America Story of the Week Read-Along 211: Bernard Malamud, The First Seven Years (#211)

Bernard Malamud, "The First Seven Years" (1950) from Bernard Malamud: Novels and Stories of the 1940s & 50s:

It seems to me that there are two great divisions of parents in fiction: there are the supportive and pushy parents who want more for their kids than they themselves had; and there are the criticizing and pushy parents who think that any attempt the kids make to rise above shows disrespect to the parents. In other words: "I want more for you" vs. "What, you think you're better then me!"

Malamud's story concerns a parent in the first category: aging cobbler Feld wants his daughter Miriam to rise in the world, which is why he gives her number to the student Max. Max may not be all that high-minded, as the story hints with his asking for a photo of Miriam and his studies being in accountancy rather than a different field. (Feld isn't thinking rabbinic studies, but maybe a doctor or a lawyer he could be?) And all this time, Feld's irreplaceable, poorly-paid, constantly-reading assistant Sobel sticks around at the store. Feld isn't sure why until the end, when he admits that he knew all this time: the cobbler in his 30s loves Miriam (just 19). Miriam and Sobel read the same books, but, oy, Feld wanted more for Miriam than she should marry a cobbler and have her mother's life over again!

Apologies to those goyische readers who have trouble with Yiddish syntax, though you might get a primer for it in reading Malamud. Curiously, as the LoA headnote tells us, Malamud started writing these stories of immigrants in the New World when he himself moved from the East (natural home of Jews) to Oregon to teach there. I've heard this story and thought on it some ever since I moved to my Texas desert. ("Texile" is too cute and dismissive--but I've thought of it.) There is something to the idea of knowing a place by leaving it.

But what's funny about "The First Seven Years" is how little leaving the old country seems to matter to these people. Feld remarks on the ridiculous sadness of Sobel's situation: escaping Hitler to live out a life of basic toil, falling in love with a 14-year-old girl. (Sobel's worked there for five years and Miriam is 19 now, so... there's a Lolita-ish quality if you do the math--or maybe just an old-world quality.) But how much different would their lives be if they had lived in the old country in the old time? There's talk of subways and college (and college for Miriam), but that's about the only hint that they live in 20th-century America.

In fact, we can go even further back to explain the title, which is a Biblical reference to the marriage of Jacob and Rachel--or maybe Jacob and Leah. Which, if you don't remember, goes like this: Jacob wants to marry Laban's daughter Rachel, works seven years for it, gets tricked into marrying older daughter Leah, and THEN works for seven additional years to marry Rachel. So when the story is titled "The First Seven Years," keep in mind that the guy doing the working may not get what he wants. Is that because in the New World, daughter Miriam has some say in the matter of who to marry? Or because cobbler Feld will pull some Laban-style switcheroo?

Why does an episode of Gilmore Girls work?

Have you been watching Agents of SHIELD? No, of course you haven't--the only people I hear talking about the show make it clear that they're watching out of a sense of duty: "we're watching it because it's Marvel/Whedon and it has to get better, right?" One complaint I had--and that I've heard repeated about the show--is that it's taking its damn time to set up the interesting things... rather than actually doing the interesting things.

Now Sarah and I are in Gilmore Girls season six and one thing I've noticed about it is that things tend to go pretty slowly. So, at the end of season five, Lorelei and Rory fought because Rory wanted to take time off from Yale. Now we're in season six and it's only in the seventh episode that these two have talked to each other again--which was pretty much the core of the show (mother and daughter who are more like friends). And a lot of the episodes--in this season and earlier--share a certain form:

• we meander through a few subplots--Paris and her boyfriend/struggles, Lane and her mother and her boyfriend, Luke and Lorelei, Lorelei and Sookie, wacky happenings at the Inn, something with Taylor...
• and then at the end we get some sort of kick with the main story--Richard shows up at Lorelei's to say he was wrong to help Rory quit Yale or Lorelei proposes to [redacted], etc. 

Theory: Gilmore Girls works by being slow because so much of the pleasure is hanging around and watching our friends/people we like--which cannot be said of Agents of SHIELD or possibly any genre show, which promises plot-based excitement.

Some little experience in self-publishing

And I do mean "little." As part of NaNoWrimo in November, I blew off some steam/pressure over projects that I cared a lot about by writing some silly little things that I didn't care about all that much. Not to mince words, I wrote some ridiculous romance.

(And why not? Though there's a certain tendency towards conservative gender relations in romance, there's also the possibility for feminist and sex-positive work. Still, while I think this genre is OK, I have no personal attachment to it--no favorite authors to impress (or beat), no worries about repeating tropes, no dreams of being a great romance author.)

Then, for some extra fun, in December, I decided to put these two stories I wrote on Amazon. (It's what all the kids are doing these days.) Not under my own name, of course, but under a pseudonym. (And my first choice was already taken!) And I even sold a couple of stories?

So what have I discovered through this whole process? A lot of little things so far: how to make my own covers from free images online and where to get cheap, semi-pro covers; how to upload stories to Amazon and how to add tags and create an author page; how to create a Kindle file in Scrivener. In other words, I know all the basics to selling ebooks on Amazon.

Now I've just got to get to writing stuff.