Oliver St. John Gogarty's Revolver

How Did You Do It? A Conversation with Daniel Clowes

2011-10-10T15:38:00.000-07:00

Portions of this interview were used in a recent article I wrote about Daniel Clowes and Adrian Tomine for the SF Weekly. My thanks to Mr. Clowes for his time.

You have famously criticized art school in your work. Do you think art school was a waste of time? What did you get out of it?

It wasn’t really a waste of time. At the time I went, nobody really had any notion of teaching the kinds of things that I wanted to learn. There’s something about the rarity of a kid who really wants to learn these specific skills and has a goal-oriented plan in mind where he wants to accomplish certain things very specific, and to have people tell him that those aren’t worthy goals and that nobody is going to teach him these things -- it was frustrating and humiliating.

I went there with this bright-eyed kid from the Midwest moving to New York quality of wanting to be in the town where all the great comic books were produced and learning the secret arts of how those were put together -- and then to be told that, really, you should just learn how to do second-rate abstract expressionist paintings, and that that was more valid than trying to tell a story in pictures, it was just really dispiriting.

But, that experience was also very helpful, later on -- learning that I needed to figure out all of this stuff for myself, and come at it through my own experimentation.

So they had no cartooning instruction at all at that time?

No, not at all. Nobody taught it.

What was your area of focus?

When I started, my major was drawing. I figured that would be the most helpful. And it was sort of useless. You do some figure drawing and stuff, but it was just a tiny subset of the stuff I needed to learn. I switched to graphic design, and that wasn’t quite what I wanted. And then I switched to illustration.

It was like going to school to be a dog trainer and they teach you to raise fish or something. A lot of it just wasn’t what I needed to learn. And comics aren’t that much about art. I feel like art school isn’t necessarily the place to go. It’s closer to writing than drawing in many ways. Now they have schools that are devoted to teaching comics. And maybe that’s not such a good thing, either. Maybe it’s better to learn it on your own.

What were the immediate post-college years like for you? What paid the bills?

It seemed like an eternity, but I spent a year living with roommates and sponging off of girlfriends and stuff. I got out of school, and all my teachers said, “You’ve got this great portfolio! You’ll be getting illustration work in magazines right away!” I had enough money to spend six months in New York taking my portfolio out to magazines trying to get illustration work. It seems like it [lasted] ten years.

Every day, I’d drop off my portfolio and wait around until the end of the day and I could tell the art director hadn’t even looked at it. It was the most frustrating thing. I never got a single illustration job.

And just when I was ready to give up and go back to Chicago and live with my parents again, a friend of mine got a job as the editor of Cracked magazine. He just blundered his way into that job. So I wound up getting work in Cracked magazine and that saved my life. That was my first professional work. I was about 23. I’d been out of school about half a year.

Have you made it solely off cartooning income since Cracked?

Yeah. Back then, I don’t think I made in the five digits for at least five or six years, but you could live really cheaply. I remember at the time thinking it was just a crazy amount of money we needed to come up with, but now it’s inconceivable that you could live on $7,000 a year.

How long did you stay in New York?

Not long after that. That was the first thing I had to come to grips with. “If I’m going to be doing this, I’m not going to be living here.” Not even in the wilds of Brooklyn, where I was living. But in Chicago you could get a nice apartment for $300 a month.

I heard you say recently in response to a fan’s question at a Q&A that the way your art looks now reflects the way “I always thought comics should look.” Could you expand on that? Because it almost sounds like you’re saying that comics are a visual abstraction.

I think what I was stumbling through with that is: The way I’m trying to get my drawings to look is to where – through my eye – they have no style at all. When I was kid, it seemed to me that there were certain comic artists who were drawing without any quirks or anything that differentiated it from a standardized vision of how comics would look. So I’m trying to do that. To me, my work looks almost like it has no style, like I’m trying to just transcribe reality in the way I see it.

When I read people talking about it, I get the idea that it has a very distinctive style. I’m always shocked when people can recognize my work – when they just see a face or something and know that I drew it. I think, “How would you know?”

But I think that’s what a style is, it’s that little system of psychological quirks that come through in the work that the author is probably the last to see. The kind of work that I dislike or that always seems kind of cheap to me is when somebody is really trying to have a style, and tries to make everything look a certain way to fit into their quirky style. Illustrators especially do that -- I just always find that hideous.

I thought The Death Ray was maybe the darkest story you’ve written --

Maybe.

-- and it occurred to me that a lot of the characters in your stories are angry people, but it come out in different ways. And it’s often funny. But in this book, it’s almost never funny. There’s less humor.

I find some of it funny, but in ways that I can’t imagine anyone else would ever find funny.

The protagonist becomes truly dangerous. Did you consciously shift away from humor?

When I set out to do that story, I did not think of it as something that was necessarily going to be funny. You never really know which way they’re going to go when you begin. Sometimes they become funny without you really wanting them to.

I had the character in mind – the two versions of the character: the young, naïve, lonely kid and the bitter, angry middle-aged man. And trying to navigate how one becomes the other became the focus of the story. They become about the characters and the characters come alive and you can’t really change them at a certain point – they just become who they are – and he became a really dark, angrier-than-usual character.

A lot of the response to The Death Ray is that it’s your reaction to superhero comics, which seems kind of simplistic.

Certainly it’s not a response to the last forty years of superhero comics [laughter]. I haven’t really read a superhero comic since I was seventeen years old. I tried to read Watchmen, and that was about it. It’s just not something I’m that interested in.

But it certainly is a response to how I felt when I read the early Steve Ditko Spider-Man comics when I was fourteen years old – and what I hoped to get from superhero comics as a teenager, but never quite did get. This feeling of – can’t even quite describe it – but there’s a certain quality suggested by the imagery in superhero comics that I never felt was quite delivered, that seemed really charged with emotion and kind of big and dark and strong. And then when you actually read them, they’re just kind of frivolous and silly and formulaic. So I was trying to fulfill something that I had imagined could exist when I was fourteen or fifteen years old.

Right – as in Peter Parker never coming across as a real kid?

In the early ones, he kind of did. I kind of related to him. Then all of a sudden Steve Ditko stopped drawing it and Peter Parker puts on about forty pounds of muscle and he looks like the most hateful jock creep. And the whole point of the comic is he’s this 120-pound bookworm with no friends who lives with his aunt – and then all of a sudden he’s Big Man on Campus, like he’s a superhero in his secret identity as well when he’s Spider-Man. It’s just a completely different idea. I remember even as a kid being bummed out by that.

How did you meet Adrian Tomine?

I moved to Berkeley in 1992. And he had sent me his mini-comics when I was living in Chicago, and so I knew his work. I was probably about 29 or 30, and I remember thinking that he had to be 26 and 27. He was really good, and he seemed like he might be just a few years behind me and the Hernandez brothers. I just figured he was around that age.

He had done an issue of his Optic Nerve mini-comic with his photo on the cover. At the time, my wife was studying at Berkeley, and she said, “I’m pretty sure this guy is in one of my classes.” And I said, “No, no, this guy’s like 27, 28. I’m sure it’s just a bad photo.” She’s like, “No, I’m sure I’ve seen this guy.” Next day, she says, “Oh I talked to that guy. That’s him – Adrian.” And it turned out he was the youngest guy in the class – he was only 18 or 19.

And then it turned out he lived a block away from me, which was quite an odd coincidence – that somebody that talented would wind up on the same block as me. We wound up getting together for coffee and becoming friends. Instead of having friends his own age, he used to hang out with me and all the older cartoonists – a bad influence on him.

How would you say you’ve influenced one another’s work?

He’s certainly influenced me just by the way he is so adamantly into telling these stories, and he doesn’t try to do any crazy gimmicks in his illustration. He’s just focused on telling the story in the best way possible. That’s always been very inspiring, for me to see that – to see a kid who is really trying to hone his narrative skills as opposed to just showing off with his drawing, which is certainly what I was interested in when I was 18 or 19 – just doing cool drawings in my comics. And he seemed completely uninterested in dazzling anybody with his artwork. He just wanted to affect people emotionally, and that was something to follow.

And I love that he sticks to drawing about Berkeley a lot, when he was living in Berkeley. I could recognize almost every location in those comics – the Chinese restaurant that used to be on College Avenue. It’s great to have that record of it. He had a small orbit in his world, and he really focused on it and tried to make it something universal.

Is that something you’ve tried to do as well? I certainly noticed that the locations in Wilson and Mr. Wonderful look like the East Bay.

Wilson’s certainly all Oakland, as is Mr. Wonderful. They’re in that orbit. I like the idea of imagining some random guy that I’d see every day on my dog walk – having him come to life. That’s where those two came from.

Have you seen Optic Nerve #12 yet?

I just got it.

There’s a really funny postscript he did about his struggle to continue doing the comic.

Yeah – I liked that!

You’re quoted in there, from some NPR interview. Do you think there’s any value any putting out your own anthology comic anymore?

There’s plenty of value. It’s just the marketplace seems so hostile to it. When I was coming to grips with – when I was doing Wilson, I was thinking, “Do I do this as a comic? Do I do it as a book?” It seemed like an act of defiance to do it as a comic, and it seemed to be so freighted with some kind of meaning that I didn’t intend for the book to have. I didn’t want it to be about the format or about the marketplace. I want the work to be what people are focusing on, so I want it to be in a format that feels the most natural to the readership. And I felt like that had shifted from periodical comics to graphic novels.

I love reading comics like Adrian’s, although I have to say when I read it, I felt this feeling of pain at the end, like, “This took me 20 minutes to read, and it could be two years before I read another one.”

When everybody used to do comics, you knew that next month, Chester Brown would do a comic, and after that, Peter Bagge would do a comic. There was always going to be something to read. But I can’t think of the last comic before this that I bought or read. When there’s one every year or two years, it’s a very different thing, and something kind of painful about it!

I always think that when I’m done reading – even something book-length, “God, I just read that in an hour.”

And I know Adrian worked thousands of hours on that comic. And you can’t ever do the math in that way. I always think the cumulative hours spent by all the people who read it has to exceed the amount of time you spent on it. [Laughter]

Comics seems like a great medium for a perfectionist. And screenwriting seems like it’s completely the opposite.

In terms of the final product, that’s absolutely true. But if you just think of the screenplay as the finished work, which is the only way I know how to do it, you actually have even more control over the screenplay than you do over a comic. Because once a comic starts going in a weird direction that you might want to correct, you’re not going to re-draw forty pages and make things work out. Comics are very organic. They go in their own way and you’re stuck with the final result. You could spend a lifetime re-drawing things over and over to get it right.

But in a screenplay, you can cut out 40 pages in the middle and put something else in. You can change characters’ names and descriptions. So there’s a certain fluidity to it that, to me, is really refreshing. But I have to then cut off all expectations the minute I’ve sent the script off to somebody.

But if someone writes a play, somebody could do a hideous production of that play, but that doesn’t affect the play. So I sort of think of it in those terms, even though nobody really reads a screenplay as a play – and it’s a very different thing than a play.

When you’re working in comics, how tightly do you script before you start working on the art?

My goal is always to script very tightly and plan everything out in advance. But then I find you dissipate all your energy. A big part of comics is maintaining your energy and your focus and your enthusiasm. You have to be able to get up every Monday morning and say, “Okay, I’m ready to get back to page 63 of this comic,” with the same level of interest that page 1 had.

To do that, I find that I have to be a lot more spontaneous and keep the thrill of possible catastrophic error alive the whole time. Which means I do have to re-draw things every now and then, or finesse my way around things. But after you do it for long enough, you can figure out how to make things work or minimize your anguish around mistakes.

Fantagraphics is putting out a collection of Nancy strips, many of which came from your own collection.

I found it baffling that I had the best collection of Nancy strips. I bought a bunch of them off eBay in like 1998. It didn’t take any special effort. I just found some dealer that had a whole bunch of them, and I bought all of them I could get my hands on. And when it came time to do the book, they were looking all over and they couldn’t find them anywhere. And I had almost all of them.

What form did you buy them in?

It was some crazy collector who cut them out of the paper and wrapped them in Saran Wrap in little blocks, so I have blocks of every year. And I’m missing a few, but I have pretty much everything from 1943 through 1969 or something like that.

How would you characterize yourself as a comics collector? Do you have particular areas of interest?

I’m not one of those completists who’s got to have everything by everybody. In this case, I just really wanted to read these Nancy strips. I was trying to find stuff I couldn’t get otherwise. If I’d known they were going to do these collections now, I would have just been happy to just wait for them. But for years, the only way you could read a lot of these old comics was to just get the original tear sheets. So I have stacks and stacks of old Sunday pages and things like that.

The Turtleneck and Jeff

2011-09-29T15:15:00.000-07:00

Every time that other company made an announcement, Jeff waited in the wings, sweating, thinking, "It's my time now!" He was tired of waiting. He had his lines memorized. He had quality announcements, too!

But the man in the black turtleneck always showed up -- even when least expected. He always showed up and played his part, and played it well, in that turtleneck and blue jeans. His hair cropped just so, a hint of the hipster added a certain edge to the dork factor. He always showed up, leaving Jeff waiting -- again. The Turtleneck always trumped Jeff's best chances for success.

But one's man's tragedy is another man's opportunity. Wednesday, Jeff was center-stage. He chose his costume carefully, wary of comparisons. Comparisons would be made, he knew, so why not tweak their expectations? He wore black, but it was a jacket instead of a turtleneck. His head was shaved, but he was quite bald to begin with.

That other company had design in its corner. It had slick simplicity and good ideas that people responded to. But when The Turtleneck retired, Jeff knew what he had to do. Jeff's pot was always simmering -- things bubbled, but never quite frothed over, although it’s true that the Kindle was his iPod. But streaming video was an add-on, not a revenue stream. Jeff had ideas, but was unsure how to package them, where to position them, or when. He had a sense of where his business would go, with or without him, and he was going to make damn sure he was along for the ride -- just as The Turtleneck had done at his company. Jeff was going to seize this moment with the kind of bombshell he always knew he'd need to drop. The device, the software, the demand, the market, the momentum, and the timing -- he had it all right now, at this moment. It was his.

The Turtleneck was out of the picture. Jeff was free to be his own man again. Apart from a period as a new-kid media darling in the late 1990s and his periodic text-based announcements to customers, Jeff had remained quiet, partly because he knew that The Turtleneck was the tech world's key celebrity, and he did not want to compete. But things had changed.

On Wednesday, his costume designer and make-up man came in early, following an extended color and fabric consultation earlier in the week. Jeff had a protein shake that was hard to keep down, and stayed on the treadmill until his nausea had subsided. He repeated the phrase "Twenty dwarves took turns doing handstands on the carpet" to limber up his tongue and jaw muscles. A masseuse pummeled his shoulders for a good ten minutes and a voice coach helped him keep his Spanish accent a secret as an ancient voodoo priest anointed him with perfumed oils.

His time was now. He was no longer an understudy. The lights came up, and he walked out to greet the world anew.

Michelle Amador's Heartland Tour (and Me)

2011-07-06T17:33:00.000-07:00

I'm honored to be a part of this thing.

Michelle Amador and her husband Tim Bulkley are friends of mine from way back. Now based in New York, Michelle has valiantly advanced her career in the non-profit arts world, while continuing to grow and gain recognition as a singer-songwriter. Her roots are in the jazz tradition, but her sound goes well beyond that. Tim is a drummer beyond compare - he has a jazz background as well.


Michelle Amador

This summer, Michelle is touring the nation with a grassroots angle. Each stop on her Heartland tour will entail some combination of exploration, communication with other creative people (artists and non-artists), and performance with local artists working in a variety of disciplines. The concept was developed by Erin Coppin, Michelle's close friend, and whose "Love is All Around" photo project provided a lot of the inspiration behind the tour (http://www.inheartlandia.com/).

Erin and Michelle's goal is to foster an ongoing dialogue that bridges national regions, creative goals, and modes of expression. In Michelle's words, it's "a collaborative, cross-medium artist/non-artist search for what's at the center, for what's in our hearts - our own, and those we encounter."

Barbara Gray

Tim Bulkley

Goh Nakamura

I am excited to be participating (reading from my own work) in two of the Heartland events: one in Los Angeles on Sunday, July 17th, and one in San Jose, CA, on Tuesday, July 19th.

In Los Angeles, we'll be joined by comedian Barbara Gray, and in San Jose we'll have singer/songwriter/actor Goh Nakamura with us. At each event, Michelle will perform her own work and that of others with a small combo featuring Tim on drums.

The Heartland tour is being funded by a Kickstarter-style campaign, launched recently by Michelle and Erin, and which has already raised nearly half of the tour's budget. Admission to Heartland tour events is open to the public at the price of a very modest suggested donation to the tour. Donations to the Heartland campaign - which I strongly encourage! - can be made here:

http://theheartlandtour.bandzoogle.com

Info on the dates I'll be joining Heartland are below. For the full tour schedule, check the link above.

Heartland in Los Angeles
Michelle Amador and Tim Bulkley, with comedian Barbara Gray and readings by Casey Burchby
Location TBA
7:00 p.m.
$10.00 suggested donation

Heartland in San Jose
Michelle Amador and Tim Bulkley, with singer/songwriter Goh Nakamura and readings by Casey Burchby
The Ronco Home
1651 Campbell Avenue
7:00 p.m.
$10.00 suggested donation

How Did You Do It? A Conversation with Rob Corddry

2011-06-30T10:44:00.000-07:00

Rob Corddry’s newest series, Adult Swim’s Childrens Hospital (that’s right: no apostrophe), is a gag-a-second mockery of one of television’s old standbys: the medical drama. Childrens Hospital is the next logical step for Corddry, who began as an actor in college, continued into improv with the Upright Citizens Brigade, and landed a spot on The Daily Show in 2002. Since then, he’s made some memorable appearances in movies, including Hot Tub Time Machine, and a role as presidential press secretary Ari Fleischer in Oliver Stone’s W.

On Thursday, June 30^th, SF Sketchfest will present the cast of Childrens Hospital live on stage, along with the cast of the forthcoming series National Terrorism Strike Force: San Diego: Sport Utility Vehicle [NTSF: SD: SUV] – a parody of police procedurals and action programs in the vein of 24. That show, which premieres next month on Adult Swim, was created by Paul Scheer, formerly a partner of Corddry’s at Upright Citizens Brigade, and co-stars Rob Riggle, who worked with Corddry both at UCB and The Daily Show.

I started my recent conversation with Corddry by asking him about the earliest part of his career.

What was your training prior to joining the Upright Citizens Brigade?

I was a theater and English major in college, and literally the day after graduation, I moved to New York City. I hit the pavement pretty hard and was set on becoming the highest-paid crappy Shakespearean actor ever. I would get Backstage magazine and audition for absolutely everything. And one of the things I got was a play where I met this woman who was in a sketch group. So I auditioned for the sketch group, and I got it. And I was like, “Do I really want to do this? I’m a very important Shakespearean actor.” But six months later, I was furiously writing sketches and learning how to do comedy. We were terrible. It was the worst sketch group in New York’s history. Then I started a sketch group with a bunch of friends called Naked Babies, which exists today – but then, we found UCB.

What years were you at the UCB in New York?

I was actively doing shows every night from about ’97 to about 2001, 2002. When I got on The Daily Show, I just didn’t have the time. And from then on, I’ve just performed sporadically. But for a few years, it was five to seven shows a week. Paul Scheer [Childrens Hospital guest star and creator of NTSF: SD: SUV] and Rob Huebel [co-star of Childrens Hospital] and Rob Riggle [fellow alum of The Daily Show and co-star of NTSF: SD: SUV] were in the class ahead of me.

Were you aware at the time that The Daily Show was going to be a leap forward for you? Looking back on it now, how do you think that experience affected your approach to comedy in general?

I was certainly aware of how special it was. It definitely seemed like a “right time, right place” scenario. We knew it was lightning in a bottle. I wasn’t really thinking about how much it was going to help my career – any more than I always do. [Laughs] My career has been a very long, slow, gradual turtle-walk up a long flight of stairs. But that’s good because that means there’s always an easy learning curve. But The Daily Show did teach me how to be funny on TV – which is how it informed my present work.

Has anyone in the press ever tried to pull a Daily Show-style interview on you?

There was one kid – I was in Austin for something, and somebody interviewed me on the street. Some college kids. And they kept hitting me in the mouth with the microphone. I was like, “Really? You’re pulling a Mo Rocca, circa the year 2000 on me?”

Given that you and most of the cast of Childrens Hospital have a background in improv, I wondered if improvisation played any part in the development of the show.

The development process was very deliberate. But there is improv happening once we feel like we’ve got what we need in the script. Of course, it would be a shame to waste the talents of these brilliant improvisers – I mean, Rob Huebel is probably one of the best improvisers alive. So, I can definitely point to a couple of lines in each episode that are improvised. But for the most part, it’s a tightly-scripted show. And we all have our strengths. Jon Stern, who will be at the show in San Francisco, is one of those rare producers who can write a great joke and can also book a caterer. David has way more experience with that than I do, too. I’m just the monkey in the corner spouting jokes and clanging cymbals.

Are you still the primary writer? You’re credited with many of the scripts.

I like to write about half of them. And I enjoy doing it. It’s really fun to write this show. But also, the three of us edit every script that comes in written by someone else – just to control the voice of the show.

I understand that when you brought the show from the web series to Adult Swim, you preferred the 15-minute format offered by Adult Swim as opposed to the standard 30-minute format of most comedy shows.

Absolutely. I had no interest in bringing it to television at all, until I heard that there was such a thing as a 15-minute format. I just don’t think this relentless joke-after-joke kind of show would be interesting after 15 minutes. This is joke-based comedy, as opposed to character- or relationship-based comedy.

The spinoff [NTSF: SD: SUV] begins airing next month?

As much as I’d like to take credit, it’s not a spinoff and I had nothing to do with it. Jon Stern is the connection – he’s executive producing it with my good friend Paul Scheer. And we come from the same family of comedy – I’d say it’s the same genre. But there’s no real connection to Childrens.

But it [NTSF: SD: SUV] began as a phony advertisement during the re-broadcast of the initial web version of Childrens Hospital on Adult Swim.

That’s right. Paul was nice enough to bail me out, in a way, because I was about 45 seconds to a minute short for one episode. They had shot that fake commercial as sort of a pilot, so Jon suggested sticking that in there. I said, “Great! As long as there’s a lot of punching.”

Will the San Francisco show mark the first time the Childrens Hospital cast has performed live together?

Last season we did some screenings, where we did some live bits – some successful, some not. We’ve learned our lesson and we’ve planned this show out a little bit more. We’re each going to show an episode that hasn’t been seen yet, and we’ll do a Q&A together. And we’ll do some bits. Actually, we’re slowly plotting a live Childrens Hospital tour. We wanted to get it out this fall, but that’s not going to happen. So ideally, we’d like to do it in the spring, before colleges let out. It’s a beast to put together, and none of us have a lot of time. This would be a tightly-scripted show. There would be live music – actually, I believe it’s going to be a musical.

This article is an expanded version of a piece that originally ran on the SF Weekly's arts blog, Exhibitionist. The original version is available here.

On DVD: The Company Men

2011-06-21T10:03:00.000-07:00

A topical film that grapples (somewhat aloofly) with the importance of "work" in our daily lives, The Company Men is reasonably intelligent and well-acted - and it features Kevin Costner finally pulling off an accent. Writer-director John Wells tackles the ongoing recession with sensitivity, portraying three characters (played by Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, and Chris Cooper) whose positions within a single large corporation are affected in differing ways by the company's need to continue providing good quarterly results to investors amid an ongoing economic crisis. Yet Wells doesn't quite go far enough; these three characters' identities are very much bound up in their jobs, and Wells never properly examines the consequences of self-identifying as a salesman, an executive, or a middle manager in a changing world that challenges our own ethical and moral standards.

Affleck plays Bobby Walker, a successful sales executive at a large ship-building corporation headed by Jim Salinger (Craig T. Nelson) and Gene McClary (Tommy Lee Jones). Unexpectedly finding himself the victim of down-sizing, Walker has trouble adjusting to unemployment. He doesn't want to give up his Porsche or his country club membership, stubbornly believing their symbolic value will help get him a new job. His pragmatic wife (Rosemarie Dewitt) insists that he find a job - any job - to help keep their family afloat. So Walker goes to work in construction for his brother-in-law, Jack (Kevin Costner), essentially learning a new trade from scratch. Meanwhile, his former company continues to fall apart, with company co-founder McClary and the depressive manager played by Cooper also losing their jobs.

Wells elicits fine performances from his outstanding cast, who have numerous Oscars among them. Jones is particularly fine, his face a road map of heartache and hard living that lends a somber self-awareness to McClary, who knows only too well that many have suffered at his expense over his years of hard work and empire-building. Nelson is beefy and dickish as a cold pragmatist who will do whatever it takes to keep his company in the black. And Costner strikes the right note as a blue-collar professional who wryly enjoys the satisfaction of an honest day's work.

The film's plot is a straightforward look at a loss of pride and the ensuing struggle for redemption, placed in a contemporary, realistic milieu. When Walker and several former co-workers gather at a placement agency as they seek employment, the sense of shame that attends a loss of status and income is palpable. Yet the Affleck character's struggle is diminished when we see him driving a Porsche, living in a house that's got to be 3,000 square feet, and playing golf as he sees fit. This could have been treated as a poignant reminder that many of our larger economic problems can be attributed to massive consumption and ignorance on an individual basis, but these scenes are not handled that way. Walker is simply a prideful man who doesn't want to be stripped of his toys.

And this brings me to what troubles me about The Company Men, which, as I suggested, is competently made and well-acted. Yet there's a nagging hollowness within the movie's real, tangible themes. Wells does not search hard enough for the significance of work in people's lives. Other than "having a job" as a source of pride and income, there is not much in the movie that talks substantively as to what that work really accomplishes beyond its immediate benefit to the employed. In other words, the questions I would have liked to see asked include: Why do we work at the jobs we have? Why do we have those jobs in the first place? These and related questions are exactly the ones that the newly-unemployed have the opportunity to ask and the present recession has indeed led many to shift their career tracks entirely.

The conclusion of The Company Men sees Affleck throwing in with the Jones character as they launch a brand-new enterprise together, in an attempt at empire-building all over again. The final scenes are hasty, and I have to assume they were tacked on at the last minute. This assumption is bolstered by an "alternate ending" included on the DVD as a special feature. This alternate ending doesn't add different footage, it just draws the film to a more organic close at an earlier and more appropriate point. In short, Affleck stays on with Costner's character, having decided to make a go of it in the construction business. This ending at least gets within shouting distance of the issues I would have like to see raised in the film, with Affleck re-assessing his career and the kind of people he wants to work with. But the ending we have skirts all of that, making the point that only a legitimate corporate career can provide Affleck with fulfillment - a depressing prospect, to be sure, and a low note upon which to conclude the film.

Read the full review here

On DVD: The Ambassador (MGM Limited Edition Collection)

2011-06-18T11:45:00.000-07:00

The Ambassador is a lot of ridiculous fun with a bizarre combination of elements, including a very 1980s thriller milieu involving middle eastern political strife and terrorism, a 1930s pulp adventure plot, and two major stars of yesteryear - Robert Mitchum and Rock Hudson (his last film) - being directed by the capable and prolific J. Lee Thompson. Throw in good supporting performances by Oscar-winner Ellen Burstyn and former Blofeld Donald Pleasance, and you have an entertaining (and somewhat campy) action picture that's hiding a few interesting surprises.

The film opens with United States ambassador to Isreal Peter Hacker (Mitchum) and his security aide Frank Stevenson (Hudson) traveling out into the Judean desert to secretly meet with representatives of the PLO. The meeting is broken up when the group is attacked simultaneously by the Israeli secret service and members of a radical PLO splinter group; each of these groups first attacks the rendezvous and then each other. It's a chaotic batshit sequence that confuses the participants amid decent aerial camerawork and rapid-fire gunplay.

Meanwhile, Hacker's wife Alex (Burstyn) is involved in an affair with an antiquities merchant who turns out to have ties to the PLO. The same splinter group that attacked Hacker's desert meet with the PLO is tracking Alex's movements and films her illicit trysts, using the footage to blackmail Hacker into desisting from his attempts at diplomacy among the various interested parties. (I would be remiss if I did not at least mention the, uh, two surprises that Burstyn - aged 52 at the time of the film's production - provides in these early scenes.)

As far as the story goes, it's a pulpy mess of cliches and easy action-film tropes. But the cast keeps things interesting, especially the odd dynamic between Mitchum and Burstyn's characters. These middle-aged globe-trotting bureaucrats don't have much of a marriage, and when Burstyn's affair is revealed, Mitchum's response is more empathetic than angry. The situation ends up bringing them closer together. I don't know how realistic this scenario is, but the actors bring it off well, sharing a world-weary closeness that grows interestingly as the film goes on.

Other aspects of the film are muddled at best - particularly the conclusion, which features gathering of students from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, who have convened at Hacker's behest to talk peacefully about a way forward. They wind up being massacred by the machine guns of the PLO splinter group in a violent sequence that eerily prefigures (at least in some respects) the 1987 Mecca massacre. It's a bloody scene that, like much of the film in general, doesn't accomplish much dramatically while maintaining the highest standard of sensationalism. Still, The Ambassador is weird, choppy fun that is maintained by a cast of legendary Hollywood stars.

Read the full review here

On DVD: The Boy Friend (Warner Archive Collection)

2011-06-06T09:23:00.000-07:00

The Boy Friend is equal parts throwback and time capsule - an homage to the great Warner Brothers musicals of the 1930s choreographed by the legendary Busby Berkeley, and a record of an era in filmmaking (1971 to be precise) that fostered experimentation beyond the traditions of the Golden Age studio system - even at major studios such as Warner Brothers, which financed and distributed Ken Russell's adaptation of Sandy Wilson's smash Broadway musical.

Twiggy, fashion icon of the 1960s, stars as Polly, the assistant stage manager at a second-rate theater in an English seaside town. The troupe is in the midst of its run of "The Boy Friend," except that it is short its leading lady, who has recently been injured. So, Polly is thrown in as a last-minute replacement by the troupe's ambitious director (Max Adrian), out to impress the visiting Hollywood director De Thrill. The performance goes on, with Polly gamely struggling to keep up and ultimately stealing the show by virtue of sheer unpracticed charm. Her convincing performance is aided immeasurably by her real crush on the male lead, Tony (Christopher Gable), whose level of reciprocation appears to be ambivalent throughout.

Russell's conception of the whole is as a play-within-a-movie, an old-fashioned Hollywood musical with fantasy-like dance numbers that extend well beyond the world of the film's setting. In sequences that rhapsodically depart from the creaky stage of the troupe's run-down theater, dancers perform as dice, as the characters on playing cards, as mushroom-dwelling forest gnomes, as Classical libertines, and as bits of kaleidoscopic glass that move upon gigantic revolving turntables. These numbers are made whole thanks to show-stopping music (Wilson's score was ably adapted and supplemented by Peter Maxwell Davies) and infectious, energetic choreography and dancing. The Boy Friend is easily the best Busby Berkeley musical that Berkeley never made.

Taking their cue from silent cinema as well as Hollywood musicals of yore, the cast hams it up appropriately. Gable is toothy and a touch too pretty as Tony. Adrian is anxious and greasy as the director Max. Glenda Jackson appears in a wonderfully modulated cameo as the injured leading lady, letting Polly know she'll never measure up, only to follow that with restrained encouragement. Tommy Tune has a featured role as a predictably dance-savvy cast member. As Polly, Twiggy embodies some of the same qualities that made her so influential in fashion - quiet humility, innocence, and easy, effortless charm - something like a female Oliver Twist.

Russell is known as an excessive director, and although The Boy Friend is never excessive in its content, it is rather long. I suspect a judicious editor could easily shed 20 or more of the movie's 138 minutes and not harm the film's narrative flow or spectacular dance sequences. Still, that is the only real caveat I can think of. The Boy Friend is old-fashioned filmmaking that captures a classic feel while pushing the cinematic form of the musical forward in ways that still look clever forty years later.

Read the full review here

News: New Work for the LA Weekly

2011-06-02T12:04:00.000-07:00

I've picked up a gig covering books and comedy for the LA Weekly's arts and culture blog, Style Council. My first piece has just been posted. It's an interview with Harold Goldberg, author of a new book called All Your Base Are Belong to Us. It's an engaging cultural history of video games. I have a few other pieces forthcoming, and I hope many more to come. Watch this space for future posts.

In addition, I have some stuff forthcoming in the Los Angeles Review of Books and (fingers crossed) another publication, but that one's too premature to name at the moment. This freelancing thing is finally starting to work...

In Theaters: The Tree of Life

2011-05-27T14:45:00.001-07:00

I'm still processing The Tree of Life - still turning over its many ingredients, layers, and moments. The fact that it's been two weeks since the screening and my brain is still stewing means that the film is special and unusual. Yet I don't think I wholly enjoyed Terrence Malick's Palm d'Or-winning sixth feature.

The Tree of Life is everything and nothing - a moving masterpiece and a magisterial mess, gloppy with pretension yet riddled with some of the most jarring and memorable imagery ever committed to film. Good performances and bad dialogue live side by side in Terrence Malick's sixth and most maddening film, as do profound beauty and incoherent editorial choices. The crux of the movie's soulful confusion is that it is both a visionary cosmic statement and an apologia for suburban averageness. The overarching concept here - that religious meaning and spiritual enlightenment can be found on the most unlikely and unexpected city block - is not new, nor is it alien to depiction on film. But the details are divided into two prongs - one that is dramatic and specific, and another that is abstract and impressionistic. In the case of The Tree of Life, this bifurcation is hampered by excessive cutting and, ultimately, a glut of imagery that, despite its high quality, results in a sense of visual over-stimulation and a muddying of the film's thematic waters. Malick's ambition is rare and impressive. But his editorial eye continues to suffer from benign but distracting spasms.

The Tree of Life is a mosaic. Its non-linear narrative is spiked with sequences that somewhat abstractly depict the formation of the solar system and the beginnings of life on earth. The narrative portion of the film (which accounts for the majority of its screen time) concerns the lives of a five-person nuclear family, the O'Briens, who live in the suburbs of west Texas. The close-knit family consists of Mom (Jessica Chastain), Dad (Brad Pitt), and three young boys. The oldest, Jack (Hunter McCracken), is the key figure in the film. A troubled boy, Jack is torn by his love of his parents - the unconditional kind for his mother, and a conflicted love/hate for his domineering but affectionate father.

Pitt's performance is outstanding. His role is wide-ranging and emotional, and the actor brings an authentic sense of character and period to the part. It is a performance of incredible depth and breadth, truly one of the best from any leading Hollywood star in some time. As Mom, Chastain is the object of her son's love and worship - and at the same time a second-class citizen in terms of her dynamic with Pitt's character. Put-upon, and occasionally abused by her husband, Chastain is physically vulnerable and morally inviolate. Pitt's character is very much the opposite - a pillar of physical strength with an occasionally expedient attitude toward morality.

Malick indulges in two of his favorite cinematic devices: a reliance on vague, lyrical voice-over to solidify the film's themes, and a preference for classical music on the soundtrack. Malick's other films, I think, benefit from these devices, whereas The Tree of Life does not. The film's striking imagery and subtle themes don't require the storytelling crutch of narration to sustain them. In fact, the voice-over is distracting rather than additive. On the subject of music, Malick has a well-known knack for nimbly inserting classical pieces in his films that help create an immediate mood and connection to the story: Days of Heaven uses Saint-Saëns' "Aquarium" from The Carnival of the Animals to beautiful and creepy effect, and the opening of The New World features the "Vorspiel" from Wagner's Das Rheingold as the spine-tingling sound of the first meeting between the English and Native Americans. The Tree of Life, on the other hand, feels as if it is cut to the musical selections. At times, there is a feeling that Malick is more interested in creating mini-films around the music than in making a cohesive larger work.

I say that because, in the end, The Tree of Life is not cohesive. It not feel complete. It feels like it is missing pieces here and there, and it feels redundant in other areas. We spend too long milling around in outer space and in the oceans of the early Earth. We spend too long in the O'Brien household, watching the same sets of family dynamics play out over and over again. That Terrence Malick has made a messy film is not a surprise or a disappointment, for Malick's last three films plainly flirt with disaster - they are chunky, disordered, and unpredictable. But The Tree of Life misses the mark because Malick does not seem to have gone far enough in terms of the film's conception: the cosmic inferno and the scenes of early animal life are memorable, but those sequences do not sufficiently interact with the common travails of a single and seemingly isolated family in 1950s west Texas, despite the fact that I enjoyed watching most of what was on the screen - especially the dinosaurs.

On DVD: Deep Red

2011-05-18T09:38:00.000-07:00

Deep Red might the most beautifully shot horror film ever made. The whole movie floats amid an array of rich color, sweeping camera movements, and lovingly designed sets that recall scenes from the devil's version of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Deep Red is hardly the only film by Dario Argento to share these qualities, but it might be the most confident and seamlessly executed. For all his visual gifts, Argento's films often suffer from uncomfortable editorial quirks and overly-jarring musical stings - things that take us out of an otherwise hermetic environment that only a visual perfectionist could have created. But Deep Red captivates from frame one, and I was never jostled out of the film's world by technical imperfections. The mood is consistently engaging, and although as a horror film it's not a terribly horrifying one, Argento's standard obsessions - innocent heroes, faceless sources of terror, washes of light, and, of course, flesh being stabbed and slashed by sharp things - are on full display.

A woman who claims to have extrasensory abilities is murdered in her apartment in Rome, while her neighbor, pianist Marcus Daly (David Hemmings), witnesses the attack from the street below. He proceeds to investigate the murder with the help of his gay friend Carlo (Gabriele Lavia) and a reporter named Gianna (Daria Nicolodi). Clues pile up - a creepy children's song, a missing painting from the dead psychic's apartment - leading Marcus to an old mansion that holds the key to the killer's identity and motive.

Hemmings is a brilliant casting choice. The heartless photographer turned tenacious detective from Blow-Up is re-cast here as an over-his-head musician with no aptitude for the supernatural - or for the rigors of a dangerous investigation, for that matter. Hemmings has the blank-faced intensity of the single-minded and, although he was famously accused by the Monty Python gang of being "a block of wood," his performance here is appropriately unflashy. But Marcus is driven - obsessed, even, by some of the same ideas with which Argento himself is preoccupied.

A telling - and very funny - scene in which Marcus angrily challenges Gianna to an arm-wrestling match tweaks the nose of the very English interest in following sets of pre-established rules at the same time that it reveals something about Argento's view of women and perhaps something about his proclivity for stories with female protagonists. Another regular Argento theme that runs through Deep Red is the notion of children and adolescents who witness something horrific at an impressionable age and the damage that it does to them over time - an idea present in Suspiria and others, but which relates directly to Deep Red's climax.

Argento's penchant for irregular pacing is not as evident in Deep Red, with the story unfolding at a relatively consistent rate, with set pieces spaced evenly - and, importantly, with enough exposition in between so that the plot feels cohesive. That is to say, Deep Red is more conventional in form than some of Argento's other films - for better or worse, it lacks that dream-state sensation that Argento excels at. The movie is generally rooted to its story. We never feel like we are floating away from it into a netherrealm only to learn that the story really never mattered in the first place. As such, Deep Red might make a good introduction to those who are new to the director's work.

Whatever one's assessment of the plot, which by itself is not particularly unique, Deep Red succeeds because of its visual accomplishments. Argento creates an alternate Rome where everyone speaks English - well, it's not Rome at all, really, but a bizarre Anglo-pean hybrid movieworld where things work as they do because Argento wants them to. But we see beyond the contrivances because Argento's vision is so unique and his imagery so memorable and convincing.

Read the full review here

On DVD: Cop Hater (MGM Limited Edition Collection)

2011-05-18T09:36:00.000-07:00

The clingy heat of a New York summer hovers over the characters in Cop Hater with the same oppressive quality as the paranoia that grips their Manhattan precinct as a killer stalks its officers. Adapted by producer-director William Berke - an extraordinarily prolific and largely forgotten specialist in low-budget quickies - this B-grade adaptation of Ed McBain's first novel of the 87^th Precinct (a series that would span dozens of volumes over nearly half a century) succeeds thanks to good performances and the authenticity of its setting.

Robert Loggia plays Steve Carelli, a detective investigating a series of cop murders with his partner Mike Maguire (Gerald S. O'Loughlin). With few leads, the pressure mounts as the killings continue. Carelli and Maguire's case - and their information - is pursued by a tenacious reporter (Gene Miller), who winds up indirectly endangering Carelli's deaf-mute bride-to-be (Ellen Parker).

Unambitious visual choices and pragmatic editing allow Berke to zero in on maintaining suspense and staying true to McBain's characters. The cramped precinct rooms are sweaty with summer heat and the palpable, top-down pressure applied by police superiors on the detectives working the case - in addition to that applied by their fellow cops, who are ravenous for justice as their own continue to be hunted down on city streets.

But Berke was also plainly interested in the exploitative aspects of filmmaking, and knew that sex and violence sells tickets. There are a handful of scenes that might not have made it past the censors in 1958 had this been a major studio picture (it was released theatrically by UA). These include a sequence involving Carelli's fiancée emerging from a shower and being threatened with rape. Additionally, there are a handful of moderately racy moments provided by Shirley Ballard as Maguire's aloof glam-queen wife.

Loggia is excellent, exuding great if restrained charisma as Carelli. The supporting actors are all fine, with O'Loughlin particularly convincing as a weary blue-collar kind of guy (if anything, Loggia is almost too handsome for the role). Keep an eye out for terrific early appearances by Jerry Orbach as a street tough, and Vincent Gardenia as a hopheaded informant.

Read the full review here

On DVD: Soldier in the Rain (Warner Archive Collection)

2011-05-18T09:34:00.000-07:00

Steve McQueen was not a good comedian, and I've always thought Jackie Gleason was more threatening than funny. They were co-billed as the stars of 1963's Solider in the Rain, the title of which certainly doesn't evoke smiles. Nonetheless, it is a comedy, with a screenplay by Maurice Richlin and Blake Edwards from an early novel by William Goldman. The movie struggles against low production values and pat TV-friendly material that doesn't invite either actor to inhabit their characters beyond the level of overly-familiar types.

McQueen is supply Sergeant Eustis Clay, a happy-go-lucky schemer in league with Master Sergeant Maxwell Slaughter (Gleason). Slaughter lives the good life in his well-appointed peacetime office, thanks in part to the machinations of Clay, who helps Slaughter gain access to the newest and most sought-after goods coming through the base. Slaughter is a career officer, but Clay, who can hardly wait to get out of the Army, tries to lure the older man into civilian life so they can go into business together. Slaughter regularly extracts Clay from one jam or another, and in return, Clay sets Slaughter up with a blonde chippy less than half his age named Bobbi Jo Pepperdine (Tuesday Weld). However, the next time Slaughter comes to Clay's rescue, it has unexpected consequences that lead to the film's rather mawkish conclusion.

Tone is a problem in Soldier in the Rain, which has dramatic pretensions that come off as forced. But the "comedy" is problematic, too. The movie just isn't funny. Gleason has a handful of decent moments, but I keep thinking he's going to hit someone - which is ridiculous, because the character he is playing is a sweetheart. McQueen is horrible - mugging idiotically and putting on a completely made-up "hick" accent. He plays Eustis Clay as a "dimwit," but for those of us paying attention, Clay isn't actually that dim as written - so what's with McQueen's performance? Watching Soldier in the Rain has made me re-assess other McQueen roles - roles that I've never bothered giving much thought - and I'm realizing that there may be a gross falseness to everything the actor ever did. Even worse, however, is Tony Bill who, as the resident goofball, tries to channel Jerry Lewis and fails spectacularly.

Soldier in the Rain could have been a funny, acerbic take on the complacency of the US Army in the 1950s and 1960s - on the ridiculous wastefulness of the biggest and best-armed military force in the history of the world, its men and women spending their days daydreaming and cooking up prison-like schemes to trade surplus mattresses for electric fans. But satirical angles are wholly ignored; in fact, the movie takes time out to honor the military establishment. There's nothing wrong with that, except that there's nothing very honorable about the film's characters. They are layabouts and scatterbrains, and they would have been more at home in a military satire as opposed to a straight comedy.

Director Ralph Nelson adds nothing visual to the film, shooting it as one might a live television play. The plot moves along quickly enough (the movie only runs 87 minutes), but there are no ups or downs - the story and tone are flat to the extent that scenes become indistinguishable from one another in the memory.

Read the full review here

On DVD: The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday

2011-05-14T15:43:00.000-07:00

The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday is an Only in the '70s kind of experience, from the elongated title down to the crappy film stock on which it was shot. A ribald, anarchic comedy that wants to be more edge and politically savvy than it actually is, the movie is ultimately let down by a lack of imagination at the conceptual level and the blind eye that director Don Taylor casts over matters visual.

The "great scout" of the title is Sam Longwood (Lee Marvin), a former Army scout and now a has-been frontiersman. He and his half-breed partner Joe Knox (Oliver Reed), are out to recover money stolen from them by former mining colleague (and current rail magnate and gubernatorial candidate) Jack Colby (Robert Culp). A chance encounter between the old partners spurs Longwood and Knox to chase Colby across the West as Colby stumps for presidential candidate William Howard Taft. Along for the ride are a disenchanted young prostitute known as Thursday (Kay Lenz) and filthy old souse Billy (Strother Martin).

Great Scout's screenplay, by Richard Shapiro, strives to embrace the radically shifting racial and sexual politics that were dominant in the 1970s, but can't quite keep up. Reed does manage to have a lot of fun with the character of the half-breed, Knox, handling him as a kind of split personality - an educated white man with traditional values that conflict with a delusional self-identification as a wild Indian given to scalping and rape - although he has never done either. It's a well-written role that addresses the schizophrenic, bifurcated white perception of Native Americans as exemplified by the idea of the "noble savage."

Beyond the character of Knox, the script stumbles on other important points, particularly in the areas of pacing and jokes. Great Scout is a slow film that resorts to truly ridiculous slapstick to get itself out of narrative jams. An early cameo appearance by a fire hose gives us a taste of things to come.

Sadly, the movie is unable to provide its terrific cast with enough to do. Marvin is wasted, reduced to pratfalls. Lenz looks cute but is forced to whine and flail helplessly about. Strother Martin plays a one-note lecher. There are "jokes" about rape (another Only in the '70s ingredient). There are "jokes" about scalping. There are "jokes" about lesbianism. They're not necessarily offensive - although some might say otherwise. Mainly, they just aren't funny.

On top of this mucky stew of undeveloped characters and situations is a dreary layer of visual gruel that reflects a total lack of interest in the western United States of the 1900s. The sets and costumes look like leftovers from Petticoat Junction. The buildings look like they could be easily collapsed at the end of the day and stored in a warehouse someplace. There's not a shot in the movie that looks like anyone made a single step toward any kind of authenticity - even if that authenticity is just based on visual cohesion. Visually, the movie is a zero.

Read the full review here

How Did You Do It? A Conversation with Maria Bamford

2011-05-03T14:56:00.000-07:00

Maria Bamford is known for her highly distinctive, painfully funny, and uncompromisingly personal stand-up comedy. Though often cited for her mimicry of family members and various regional “types,” Bamford’s “voices” are anything but a gimmick. She uses her vocal skills to satirize common experience and social maladies in ways that are impossible to compare with any other comic. (To wit: her well-known bit in which she adopts the persona of a certain type of female comic who will, in exchange for shoes and chocolate, allow her date to “go through the back door.” Bamford’s characterization is flat-out funny, but the joke itself challenges audiences to ask themselves what they find funny and why.)

Bamford has raised her profile significantly over the last half-decade. Her recent live album, “Unwanted Thoughts Syndrome,” appeared on a slew of top ten lists. Constantly touring far and wide, she remains furiously active in the L.A. comedy scene, starred in her own web series (“The Maria Bamford Show”), and made multiple guest appearances on “Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job!” and its spin-off, “Check it Out! with Steve Brule.” All of which is to say nothing about her robust career as a voice actor, which has included regular featured work on “Sit Down Shut Up,” “Kick Buttowski,” “Adventure Time,” and “Ugly Americans.” In 2009 and 2010, an even wider audience saw her in a series of well-received television commercials for Target, in which she played a tightly-wound suburban holiday shopper.

In her stand-up act, Bamford describes her voice as “high and child-like,” but over the phone, the main thing that comes across is that she is – as advertised on her website – a “nice lady.” She’s so immediately personable that I instinctively want to refer to her by her first name instead of the more journalistic “Bamford.” She speaks of her youth and early career as a performer with direct, eye-opening frankness. Far from being a self-mythologizer, she is an incredibly productive, forward-thinking artist who is not content to rest on her laurels.

So, how did she do it? In discussing her career and life, Bamford is matter-of-face about her history with depression and the role it continues to play in her life, as well as the paramount importance of the creative moment (easily beating out public reception and prestige). I started our conversation by asking Maria to give me a picture of herself as a kid – how she expressed herself and what early creative activities she was exposed to:

MB: My dad always brought home stacks of blank paper because I liked to draw and make stuff. My dad was always very supportive: “Oh, what are you doing?”* And I went to a lot of gifted children’s arts programs in the summer that were given by the public school. You’d do a play or something. And my parents put me in a Suzuki violin program when I was three. Now that I look back, of course, I realize how lucky I was to get a lot of support to be creative. But there was also a production aspect to it. My family are very much “producers,” so they like to ask you what you’ve been doing and you’ve got to show what you’ve been working on. I’m real grateful for all those things. I didn’t realize that those things were sort of luxuries.

CB: So you’re at a very young age here. All of this stuff was being set up for you by your parents.

MB: For music camp, for sure. The weird thing about it is I did not enjoy it that much, but I was a pretty obedient kid – it’s hard not to be obedient when you’re three – and later the peer pressure kicks in. It’s so funny because I didn’t see the violin stuff as very artistic. It was very prestige-oriented or about accomplishing something. I don’t remember enjoying it and losing myself in the music – that type of thing.

CB: How long did the violin lessons go on?

MB: Ohhh, till I was 21! I quit for the last year of high school, and then guiltily tried to re-up myself over and over again over the years, and then finally about ten years ago... I let it go.

CB: When did you start doing your own thing – whether it was an interest in acting or comedy? When did that start to kick in?

MB: I think in high school and junior high. I liked to run for office. I liked the idea of doing a speech, or plays. And that was very self-motivated – like, nobody really cared that I was doing that, and I think that was a good thing. That was really great. I went to a very tiny school, which was good for me too, because I wonder if I would have fallen through some sort of crack. You look back and you think “Thank God…” Or thank somebody. Maybe I should thank my parents. Thanks, Mom and Dad!

CB: So, did you know in high school that you wanted to be a performer? Or did that come later?

MB: No, I didn’t know that. I did acting in high school, and it was fun and exciting, but it wasn’t something I thought about. If someone said, “You can be an actress,” I would have been, like, “Uh… I don’t… ummm… huh?” I was terrified, in high school, of what was supposed happen next.

CB: You mean of post-high school life?

MB: Oh yeah. I was absolutely terrified. I remember going to college and feeling like, “What am I doing?”

CB: I read that you attended three colleges. Where did you end up graduating?

MB: From the University of Minnesota. I went to Bates College for two years. It was small, and I got to participate in a lot of things. Then I went on a junior year abroad to the University of Edinburgh. I transferred out of Bates because I was having real problems with depression, and an eating disorderrrr. I ended up going through an outpatient treatment program at the University of Minnesota while finishing my degree there, which was awesome possum.

CB: What did you end up getting your degree in?

MB: Creative writing. It was kind of murky. I remember going, “Uh… If I do this, can I get a degree?” Like, “If I write this thinly-veiled autobiographical play, would that count as something?” And they were like, “Sure!” I don’t remember being super-organized or focused about it. It was more like: get ‘er done.

CB: If you were frightened of post-high school life, what about post-college?

MB: It’s hard to say. I’ve had depression throughout my life. From the age of ten, I really started having some issues with enjoyment in life. So it’s hard to say what ups and downs are really caused by. But I did a lot of shows in Minneapolis and felt very goal-oriented and motivated to do things creatively. And just as I was stopping feeling motivated, I auditioned for this thing to go out to California and be a “Star Trek” character tour guide.

CB: Had you developed more interest in performing while you were still in college?

MB: I just wanted to finish my degree... I started to get more focused on what exactly I wanted to do and having some specific vision when I was kind of depressed and I was talking to this mentor-comedian Frank Conniff. He’s in Los Angeles, but was living in Minneapolis at the time. (And I think that’s important: to have mentors. You know, people who are ahead.) He said to read this very hippy skippy dippy book called “The Artist’s Way,” and I totally grabbed onto that. That book changed my life. Sometimes people will hand me a book and say, “This book changed my life,” and I’ll be like, “Really? Oh, that’s weird.” But it totally helped me focus and gave me this courage to believe in myself. I think I was 22 or 23 when I got my hands on that delightful thing and it provided me with the idea that it’s okay for me to say I’m a comedian, even if no one else thinks I am. Everyone else can be on the fence – but at least I’m on board.

CB: So you moved out to LA to take the “Star Trek” tour guide job.

MB: Yeah – which was very uncertain. It didn’t go on for that long. And I really didn’t have life skills – how to pay bills, how to hold down a job. I had always lived in these hippy cooperatives, and even then didn’t do very well. Like, I didn’t pay rent for a year once! And the rent was only $140 a month. And the hippy cooperative leader (or the guy who had been there the longest), he was like, “Hey, man, listen, uh… You gotta, kinda… C’mon!” And I was like, “God! You’re so uptight!” I think in smaller cities and artistic communities you can kind of keep scraping along and do okay – especially in Minneapolis, where there are more social services. And being young, maybe it was okay to be poor. But then I moved to Los Angeles, and not only was it super isolating, but it’s sort of terrifying to not have any money here, or family. So I went through a couple of hard years, realizing I needed some help. There was a hippy cooperative I could have moved into when I came out here, but part of me had that, “Come on! Bootstraps!” thing. And I think part of it was like The American Success Story: I Can Do It on My Own! And I think that’s kind of mythological, because you can grow more isolated that way.

CB: So you’re in LA, and you had the tour guide job, and maybe things weren’t going great for a couple of years. What marked a turning point? Was it a particular job? Or a change in your approach?

MB: I got a ton of outside help. Support groups. 12-step groups. I have gotten and continue to get help there. I know not everybody’s into them, and I’m not into them half the time. But they’re free and it’s a bunch of people who have been in the same situation or are in the same situation.

CB: Like free group therapy?

MB: Some of it’s not therapy. It’s what you get from any community. Like, “Oh, you haven’t taken care of getting your teeth cleaned in three years? Let’s call each other and see if we can get that done.” I read an article in “The Week” that made me feel good because sometimes it feels like these groups can be cultish. But the article said that there was scientific study that this works – that any group helps people. Mental health-wise, people benefit from being a member of a group. So, I got a lot of help with how to have a job, how to keep showing up for a job… And you can get that through programs with the government and stuff, but I found it through these 12-step groups. Super, super helpful.

CB: What kind of jobs did you have while you were trying to build up a career as a comic?

MB: I always worked food service jobs, which was interesting, because I’d had an eating disorder, so that was sort of a poor job choice. But I did not have the confidence to say, “Hey Maria, you can type 70 words per minute and you have a degree. Why wouldn’t you try to get any job that would pay better than $6.00 an hour loading trucks at night?” That’s where I needed some sort of community to help me say, “Hey, you can do this.” For some reason, I didn’t even think I could answer the phones places, which sounds cuckooberry, but I was really scared that people knew how to do things and I didn’t. I had very remedial life skills.

CB: Those confidence problems must have impacted your pursuit of a show business career.

MB: My parents cut me off, which is probably one of the greatest things they’ve ever done. Because then I had the opportunity to say, “Oh, I can do this. I can earn enough money and take care of myself.” And I can’t imagine that that didn’t help me creatively to feel like I could take care of myself.

CB: Plus it frees your brain energy, right? Once you know you can handle practical stuff.

MB: Yeah. But with mental illness, it doesn’t matter if you have money or prestige. It’s devastating no matter what. People have killed themselves at the top of their careers, with loved ones all around. I don’t know if achievements always make a difference in people’s self-esteem or state of mind.

CB: One of your first credits was writing for “The Martin Short Show.”

MB: Yes.

CB: Had you written for anyone else prior to that?

MB: No. I think I just got that job because of some weird buzz. I was a young lady and they thought I was funny. It was like some mystical thing. Frankly, it wasn’t a great experience for me because I wasn’t very good at interpersonal relationships and group dynamics, interestingly enough.

CB: That “room full of writers” thing?

MB: Yeah. Because it’s working with others and I didn’t always do that very well. So I got fired. But I did give it my 100% shot!

CB: What did you want to follow first and foremost? Was it acting or writing or stand-up? Or all of them?

MB: I kept being driven to do stand-up in the way I was doing it, which was more of a “one person show” or performance art kind of thing. It didn’t always go super well in comedy clubs – and still doesn’t! Unless people know what they’re coming to see, I don’t always do well in front of a crowd of people who are just there to see “comedy.” I just wanted to do what I was enjoying, and I’m not sure I even had a name for it.

CB: Right, which is what this interview series is about: people who are doing something they are compelled to do even though there might not be a name for it. And how you can make it work.

MB: You just do it and do it and do it. And maybe somebody takes notice. And maybe they don’t. But at least you’re doing it. And that’s the victory. Because the most important thing is this moment. If I’m not creating something today – that act of creativity and the joy from that is the one thing that stays steady. That’s the only reason for doing it. Prestige, and looking back on what you’ve done isn’t really that satisfying. I’m excited about my jokes now. I don’t really care about stuff I’ve already done. I want to say, “What about this joke? Have you heard this one?” Because you always have the freedom to create things – whether or not people are interested!

CB: Do you set aside a time to develop new material, or is that something you’re constantly doing?

MB: I try to force myself to do it. Sometimes it’s hard to get myself to do it. As I’m talking to you right now, I’m thinking, “Oh God. I should go write something down…” I don’t know if it’s a workaholic thing. I always thought I would feel rested, like, “Okay, I did that. Now I can coast.” I never feel that, or I feel that for maybe a minute. Did you watch that Joan Rivers documentary? It’s just her rushing around going, “Okay, where’s my next gig? What’s the next thing?” That’s where the joy and excitement is – it’s in the thing you’re doing now. She’s this icon and I’ve looked up to her forever, and she’s like, “I’m busy. I’ve got to do this now. See you later!”

CB: Are there specific things you would still like to do that you haven’t gotten to yet?

MB: Yes! I made a pilot, and I’m gonna try to sell it. And I’m always excited about a new thing. I have an idea for a live show I want to do weekly, but I can’t talk about it because then I might not do it. And there are always new jokes, new dreams, new visions. And as far as success and affirmation: If you have a critical mind, those things don’t make a difference in the end. My brain has made it a magical trick for me where instead of using my success as a feeling of, “Oh, you’re great at what you do!” my brain makes it into pressure – added pressure. “You’ve got to keep producing.” So, uh, just enjoy the day, is what I’m trying say. (Laughs) It doesn’t get better up ahead, just different.

* Italics indicate where Bamford switched over to one of her many alternate voices; often enough, she uses a different voice even when impersonating herself.

How Did You Do It? A Conversation with Tom Shadyac

2011-05-02T13:53:00.000-07:00

Tom Shadyac is known for directing blockbuster comedies featuring some of the biggest names in show business. From his (and Jim Carrey’s) breakout movie, 1994’s low-budget “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective,” Shadyac went on to direct a string of enormous hits including “Liar, Liar” and “Bruce Almighty” with Carrey, and the remake of “The Nutty Professor” starring Eddie Murphy. Shadyac's most recent feature was “Evan Almighty” starring Steve Carell, the most expensive comedy ever made.

But in the fall of 2007, Shadyac suffered injuries in a bicycling accident including a concussion and a broken arm. The after-effects lingered for many months, rendering Shadyac virtually inert with intense headaches and an extreme sensitivity to light and sound. In his new documentary “I Am,” Shadyac recalls being resigned to death during his agonizing convalescence.

Yet he recovered, at length, with a renewed desire to investigate the world's ills - and his own. Shadyac's discoveries - all of which are documented in “I Am” via interviews with leading scientists, philosophers, poets, members of the clergy, and historians - resulted in personal transformation. Not only did he have his health back, he also sold his palatial Pasadena estate, gave away much of his own wealth, and adopted a minimal lifestyle. He also became committed to beginning and sustaining an ongoing public dialogue around the two main questions asked in “I Am”: What’s wrong with the world? What can we do about it?

“I Am” represents a major change for Shadyac, not just in terms of subject matter, but in terms of the way he perceives the world, himself, and his life’s purpose. I spoke to him recently in San Francisco. After a short exchange about the reading material he had with him (Rumi and Emerson), I began by asking him about his early days.

CB: How long did it take you to get to Hollywood and a show business career in the first place? Let’s say, starting after college – what were the steps you took?

TS: I got to show business fairly quickly. During my fifth year at the University of Virginia (I had to go back for one last class), I started writing jokes for Bob Hope. He responded, and I started working for him. So I got to show business fairly early. But, for eleven years, I was adrift. I wasn’t fulfilled by joke writing – it didn’t seem like “it” for me. I tried a little bit of everything, experimentally: stand-up comedy, acting, I taught acting, I wrote sitcoms, I wrote screenplays. Eventually, I went back to school to direct at UCLA’s grad school. And that’s when heavens parted. But what I had to grow into was a freer, less fear-based self. My personal journey was about learning to stand with my own authentic creative self, regardless of what the energy in a room was. Often times, I felt a fear that I would be rejected for expressing myself. So, I was living under someone else’s vision, and not my own. When I finally threw all that out, after years of therapy, I was no longer seeking approval but simply authenticity. And then, it was about a New York minute before I got my first big break, which was “Ace Ventura.”

CB: And how long after the grad program was this?

TS: About two or three years. I went to grad school in ’88 or ’89, and I got “Ace” in ’91 or ’92. But I had done a lot of preparation to be ready when that opportunity presented itself.

CB: And the grad program helped confirm that you wanted to zero in on directing?

TS: Yeah. It was that “knowing” – like Spielberg might have had when he was 8. I had it when I was 28. But then it was another several years before that knowing was realized in terms of employment. I did a lot of observing of sitcom directors. I would go anywhere I could potentially learn something. I would sit in rooms like this and hear them talk about story problems. And I would have what I thought was a wonderful idea or fix. But I wasn’t able to express myself because it wasn’t my time. But then, because I had much more fearlessness – having moved through whatever fear I had – that’s how I got “Ace Ventura.” I told them very strongly what the script needed. I came up with very specific ideas. I still remember the meeting I had with the Morgan Creek people: I handed them ten pages of a rewrite, and they said, “We’ve been in business twenty years and we’ve never had anybody do work for free. It’s our first meeting and you’re handing us ten pages.” All the work before that was preparation for being tossed into the flames.

CB: So the script had already been in development for some period of time?

TS: Years.

CB: With others, before Jim Carrey?

TS: Jim was perceived as a stretch as a choice – other directors had considered him, but many people simply thought of him as a television star, even though he’d done several movies before. I eventually said, “This is who I really believe in – if we can get him, it’ll be a blazing, blinding light.” Jim had to actually audition for Morgan Creek. And I remember he acted out part of the movie in a Hamburger Hamlet up on Sunset Boulevard, to convince people that not only was he the guy, but that this could really be something.

CB: Hard to imagine him being asked to audition now.

TS: Yeah – hindsight! I called some very good friends who were writers and very creative, and I said, “I’m thinking of hiring Jim Carrey.” And everybody knew him from “In Living Color.” And I often got, “He’s a TV star. He’s not a film guy.” I had to listen to my own intuition, which was, “No, I think if we tap into this guy, he could be amazing.”

CB: Now, when did the injury happen?

TS: September of 2007.

CB: And “Evan Almighty” had been released?

TS: Yes, “Evan Almighty” came out in June that summer. I hurt myself in September.

CB: Making strong, principled, philosophical statements like “I Am” doesn’t seem to happen often in Hollywood. How has your relationship with the industry changed – if at all – since this all took place?

TS: Lots of people haven’t seen it. But the few who have, have been very supportive. My agency, which may run on the current economic system that I have questions about, have been incredibly supportive. Artists who have seen the film – The Black-Eyed Peas, Peter Gabriel – gave us songs at incredible discount rates. Artists are good people, with big hearts. They’re on a journey just like I’m on a journey. They’ve been raised in a culture just like I was raised in a culture. And, I do think that films do speak about moral issues, whether they’re aware of it or not. Although this is a very direct examination.

CB: Yes, this is a very direct statement, with a very particular way of looking at things and asking particular questions.

TS: And it’s not just show business; our culture doesn’t encourage this kind of conversation. We tend to look at things symptomatically. I was just reading a Rumi poem that says, “You don’t want to hear, yet, about the reality that’s underneath, whether you call it God or life or the divine spark.” Basically, he’s saying, “So turn the news on, ‘cause that’s what you want to hear.” And that’s sort of what we encourage. I wanted the freedom to express what I had been feeling and seeing and intuiting for years and years and years, and that accident is what compelled me to do it. I had to face my own death to get over the fear that kept me from doing it before.

CB: Going back to the idea of “So turn the news on” – what is it about bad news? There are a lot of documentaries out there about –

TS: Bad news.

CB: – social and cultural ills, whether it’s war or the economy or whatever. But they’re always about the badness of those things and revealing what the badness is, as opposed to being constructive or offering alternatives or just asking questions as your film does. Why do you think that is?

TS: I think we’re young. And this vision that we have of the world is not that old. The human species has been around for 175,000 years, and this particular vision – call it the “Consumer Vision” or the “Me First Vision” – is only about 10,000 years old. And that’s really young, especially when you look at the history of life on this planet, which is 4 billion years old. I think there’s a place for, as you said, the identification of the bad. But I think we’re hungry for something new. We know the bad. We know something’s happening with the environment. We know that war after war is happening. We know that greed has surfaced in many forms. But I think it’s the challenge of each of us to heal the internal greed that we have, which is what our movie talks about. So I think it’s easier to say that the greed exists on the outside. That’s one step. But the step that we need is the one that says, “Before I heal the greed on the outside, I need to deal with my own greed, my own internal violence, my own internal anger. And emanate that.” Listen, I know these films are valuable, but I got very depressed and frustrated with this style that’s 85 minutes of the problem and two minutes of, “You can go to this website,” or whatever.

CB: How much of what ended up in “I Am” was a discovery for you in the process of making the movie?

TS: Much of it. The connective idea of unity and interconnection – I was well aware of that and felt strongly about it as a truth. But all the flesh, all the muscle on that skeletal structure was new to me. Like Heartmath. I had no idea that there was science now – fringe science, but still science – that was emerging to tell us that intuition may actually be measurable. That the heart may be the source of that intuition. That it may be able to predict the future. That the heart has an electromagnetic field that extends ten to fifteen feet from the body. Elizabeth Satoris is an evolutionary biologist who told me about the history of cells. And Rupert Sheldrake – his work wasn’t in the movie – his ideas, like, “When does your dog know when you’re coming home?” It’s when you make the decision to go home that the dog moves to the door. So all that stuff, all that evidence, that confirmed the intuition and the kind of philosophical, spiritual, and moral principles that I had been awake to through Emerson and others – that was what was really fun on the journey. To be able to say, “Wow, there’s all this cool work being done to confirm this.”

CB: Did you have personal connections to the people you talked to? How did you wind up coming to everyone you interviewed?

TS: The journey started with people I wanted to speak to who had moved me in some way. So I had read their work, or seen them in a documentary, or heard them speak. So that would be Coleman Barks, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky. And then often one thing led to another. We were turned on to certain people by some of the interviewees. And Harold [Mintz, Shadyac’s friend and the film’s publicist] turned me on to Mark Ian Barasch. There are many people I wanted to interview that we didn’t get to. I tried to talk to the Dalai Lama. Mary Oliver is a friend; she’s the best-selling poet in America. She was my first request, and she politely said, “My poetry speaks for itself. My poetry articulates what I believe.”

CB: How long did you shoot?

TS: We shot for two years, and there was a good solid year and a half in the editing room. Documentaries – you gotta write in the editing room, so it’s a long time.

CB: As far as the changes you’ve made in your own life since completing the film – selling your property, changing your whole lifestyle – how do view your pre-2007 self? When you look back at your career and your success, how do you view it now?

TS: The bike accident didn’t so much change my perspective as make me talk about it. But if I can step outside a bit, I would hope to have empathy for the person that I was. I had always walked with the intention of wanting to be a part of the healing, wanting to be a part of making our world better. And I simply wasn’t aware that, with my right hand, I was helping to heal the world, and with my left hand, I was helping the world continue exactly the model that was so destructive in many ways. Eventually, I was able to see that there were many hypocrisies and tensions in my life that I wasn’t comfortable with. There are still hypocrisies and tensions in my life that I need to examine. So on the one hand, I would have said I love the Sermon on the Mount: “Don’t store up treasures on Earth, where moth and rust destroy…” Yet, I was comfortable storing up treasures. I was giving money away, but I was still participating in a philosophy that was very destructive, that you don’t see reflected in nature.

CB: Where do you see things going now? How have your recent experiences changed your interest in filmmaking?

TS: I hope to go deeper and deeper into whatever this idea is that animates me. The more I read these cats [indicates nearby copies of the works of Rumi and Emerson], the more I feel at home. I’ve often wanted to walk as an ascetic – just leave it all. But somehow I think the world is calling for a reasonable path, so that we can continue with this celebration, this creative art we call life – but to find a reasonable to path to walk with each other and with the natural world. I just hope I go deeper.

CB: Do you see additional documentaries, potentially, about related subjects?

TS: There are a thousand subjects that have surfaced that I’d love to explore in terms of documentary. I personally think that what’s most needed now is an ongoing conversation about the ideas and themes that this film provokes. I’ve got a talk show that I’m probably going to host – I may do it with the Oprah Winfrey network – to continue this conversation and to take people’s questions and frustrations and share them. Years ago, I started waking up to the hypocrisies that I was a part of and that our culture accepts, and it took me a long time to get here – to get to the film that you see. I had to ask a lot of questions, and I didn’t have a lot of help in terms of places I could go with those questions. So I think it may be important to provide a place where some of those questions can be aired. But I will do films. I have two films that are in development right now that are real close to getting made, with stars. And we just got one financed!

CB: Is there anything you’d like to add about what you are communicating with “I Am” – which addresses big problems in a hopeful way?

TS: I think what people forget is that we rail against all these negative stories that are out there because they are the aberration. The way we behave with each other, by and large, is the collective story of humanity. We’re kind to each other, we’re compassionate with each other, we want have fun and explore… The larger story of humanity gets ignored because somebody will steal a car today, and that will make the news. But the thousands and millions of people in this city and others who engage in cooperative behavior will not be reported. The aberration is reported simply because it’s the aberration, and we’ve accepted the aberration as who we are and we’ve crafted our society around that. The other day, I was checking into a hotel and they literally had me sign – I couldn’t believe it, it was like I was buying a house. They said, “We have to protect ourselves. Our rooms are non-smoking, and we had a guy who smoked in one of the rooms.” They’ll have thousands of visitors this year, but one person who smoked in a room – that’s their story. And that’s a fear-based idea. We’re deluded. You’re a writer, I’m a writer. Why would it hurt me if I was able in some way to help you become the best writer you could be? And why would it hurt you, if you were to help me in some way to become the best writer I could be? Because we’ve both been deluded into thinking that if you’re a better writer than me, I’m not gonna eat.

New Interview Series: How Did You Do It?

2011-05-02T13:49:00.000-07:00

After too many weeks of hemming and hawing, I am finally launching my new interview series, here on the site.

The title of the series is "How Did You Do It?" and the intent is to present a series of case studies on how careers in the arts and entertainment are built.

As as person with creative goals of my own, I want to demystify the cliched, perfunctory career "advice" usually offered to those who want to make a living by following their creative or expressive instincts. This series will provide real, working knowledge of how successful early- to mid-career artists have developed and elevated their careers. We all know that hard work, luck, and talent play a part; but how they play a part varies wildly because artists are forced to find innovative ways of pursuing and achieving their dreams.

My interview subjects will range across all creative disciplines in the world of the arts and entertainment in the hope that variety will not only maintain reader interest, but will result in interesting parallels among the different approaches and tactics used by those who forge their own paths in life.

I'll be posting the full-length version of an interview I did with film director Tom Shadyac shortly, a truncated version of which was recently run over at DVDTalk. And tomorrow, I'll post an interview I did with comedian Maria Bamford.

More to come!

News: Current Projects

2011-04-22T12:30:00.000-07:00

I recently stopped doing disc reviews for DVD Talk after two years and 190 reviews. (I am continuing to provide reviews of new theatrical releases on an occasional basis.) This decision was only a pragmatic one; I love writing for the site and being among the illustrious company of so many good and thoughtful writers.

I dropped disc reviews in favor of personal projects that have for too long been simmering quietly on back burners.

Those projects are:

1) My first comics script. It's a standalone graphic novel. My friend Bridget is doing the artwork. The script is nearly complete, and Bridget has begun work on character design. We are both very excited about it. It's a silent comic. The story concerns a man and a woman - strangers to one another - who are stranded in mid-20s ennui, groping their way through a variety of challenges while struggling to attain expanded perspectives and fuller, more authentic lives.

2) A series of interviews collectively titled "How Did You Do It?" The series is intended as an ongoing group of case studies that document the myriad ways people in the creative arts build their careers. Since artists don't have a codified, professionalized path laid out for them in advance, they usually have to find their own way. This series will serve as a corrective to the simplistic, ready-made "advice" available to artists in lazy, self-help-type books that ignore the realities and consequences of following your creative instincts. I recently interviewed Maria Bamford and Tom Shadyac for the series, and have already scheduled additional interviews. Now it's just a matter of getting them into print.

3) A screenplay about a family that experiences the many changes in Silicon Valley life that take place during the PC revolution of the early 1980s. This story has been germinating for almost two years. I had begun a draft, but realized after about 30 pages that the story wasn't all there yet. So I went back and started outlining more heavily. Now, I have a 15-page narrative outline that encompasses much more in the way of plot and character development. I have a few more weeks of outline work before I'll be ready to write a complete first draft.

This is the most productive - creatively - that I have been in ten years. It's barely a first step toward a writing career, but it's something. Besides, getting shit done is the most satisfying thing of all.

Note: The picture above shows the novelist Edna O'Brien's writing room, which shares many characteristics with my own imagined future office. The photo comes from The Guardian's great series on writer's rooms.

Event: Daniel Clowes at Bookshop Santa Cruz

2011-04-20T11:33:00.000-07:00

Last night, my wife and I went to go listen to Daniel Clowes talk about his new book, "Mister Wonderful," an expansion of a serial strip that appeared in The New York Times Magazine a few years ago. The book is nothing less than vintage Clowes: a deceptively simple character study of Marshall, a middle-aged bachelor out on the town for a blind date that may very well be his last chance at love. Marshall's story is sweeter than the kinds of tales Clowes is known for - that is, it's sweeter on the surface. Because just below that surface bubbles a hidden reservoir of self-destructive tendencies. For starters, Marshall admits to having a problem with his temper. But perhaps most important is Marshall's self-absorbed narration, which dominates the book's action. Clowes renders Marshall's "voice-over" in heavy blocks of text that often obscure other characters' dialogue and faces - a concrete graphic representation of Marshall's neuroses.

Clowes' presentation featured the author standing at a lectern in front of an audience of about 35 people; an assistant manned a laptop computer, which fed a PowerPoint presentation to a projector. Aided by the slides, Clowes reviewed his career briefly before launching into a more detailed discussion of "Mister Wonderful"'s genesis in The New York Times Magazine and how he arranged and added to the story for the book. Clowes focused mostly on anecdotes about his experience working for the Times, and on his own storytelling techniques.

As witty and enlightening as Clowes was, one of the evening's highlights came courtesy of a questioner in the audience. In fact, it was this exchange that kicked off the Q&A following Clowes' talk:

Questioner (a middle-aged hippie lady, standing in the back of the room in a neon green jacket, and a weird faux-Indiana Jones hat): Who are you? (pause) I'm sorry - I mean, what have you written? What was your first book?

Clowes: Did you miss the presentation?

Q: I'm sorry. I just came in.

Clowes: My best-known book is called "Ghost World." It's about ghosts.

Q: Oh, okay.

Clowes: Just kidding. It's about two girls. People want it to be about ghosts, but then I tell them it's about two girls and they're like, "Oh..."

Q: Should I read that first?

Clowes: You should buy all my books. I can tell you'll like them just by looking at you.

It was a very Clowesian moment, to have his presentation capped by a question from someone who had no clue what was going on. Thankfully, the remainder of the questions weren't quite so "Santa Cruz" in nature.

The remainder of Clowes' tour dates can be found here.

Essay: Ode to Sweets

2011-04-18T16:20:00.000-07:00

I have an insatiable sweet tooth. In the morning, I wake up wanting only toast with jam despite the ill-advised carbs and sodium contained therein. When I arrive at work, I make a double espresso and it's hard work to resist the candy and other snacks that are freely available in the office kitchen. At least three days a week, I get lunch at Jamba Juice, where I consume a small smoothie and oatmeal topped with a sweet compote of apples and brown sugar. On the walk back to the office, I often stop in the kitchen for Fig Newtons, M&Ms, or cookies. At 3:30 every day, I take a sanity break. I walk downstairs, fix a cup of tea, and take it outside to the back patio with cookies. When I leave the office for the day, I usually stop by the receptionist's desk (she's already left by then) for a quick fistful of whatever's in her candy dish. After dinner, if we're out of brownies and mochi, I'll eat the bulk chocolate that's kept with the baking stuff in our kitchen cabinets.

First of all, I'm lucky that my weight is at least within the normal range (even if it's on the high end). I'm lucky I'm not diabetic (although that may very well be coming). I'm lucky I don't have dentures (my grandmother, from whom I'm convinced I inherited this weakness for sweets, lost most of her teeth by the time she had kids).

I will eat pastries, cake, cookies, ice cream, candy, and chocolate with reckless abandon at nearly every given opportunity. Over the past year, I have reined it in somewhat and yet my typical day, as described above, still consists of eat least three stops specifically for sweet snacks. I would rather skip protein and have pie instead. I would prefer ice cream to dinner. I've been known to make my own lemon curd. One of my specialties is a many-layered trifle. I make fruit pies in the summer, fudge at Christmas, and cookies and brownies on a year-round basis. If you get too close, I will stuff you with sugar and butter.

Now that the weather is warmer, I want to try my hand at ice cream. I remember my parents making it in an old wooden barrel-like thing with a loud, crotchety electric motor attached. This contraption required that one add salt and ice continuously over an extended period of time. I know that technology has improved matters and now the process it not as arduous and physical. However, I must research what the preferred methodology is, nowadays. I wish for nothing quite so much this summer as the finest peach ice cream made with freshly-picked fruit.

Essay: The Function of Wealth in Silicon Valley

2011-04-18T12:43:00.000-07:00

Readers of this blog will know that I take grave issue with the dominant culture - or lack thereof - in my hometown of San Jose, California, the self-proclaimed "capital of Silicon Valley." Like many people, I have a strong love-hate, push-pull feeling about my town. Living in other parts of the country has given me some extra perspective on the place I am from - a place that I mostly took at face value well into my twenties. I know what San Jose once was: a near-paradise of sorts, lush with fruit orchards and craftsman-style houses, both of which were still visible in remnant forms when I was growing up. And I know what San Jose is now: a crushing, treeless sprawl of imagination-free tract homes and shopping centers, and a Mecca for the consumption-obsessed.

Everyone knows that Silicon Valley is a place where people earn above-average wages, and where it also costs a lot to live. Necessities may be more expensive than elsewhere, but necessities aren't the problem. It's the luxuries that baffle the mind and disgust the senses. In Silicon Valley, money is wasted on a gargantuan scale, on things that do nothing but depreciate in value. Instead of property, art, or travel, people tend to "invest" in cars, electronics, trips to Vegas (which do not count as "travel"), and other nonsense. Even in this economy, Silicon Valley remains nothing if not an enormous accumulation of wealth. That wealth is visibly tied up in the outré symbols of conspicuous consumption - gargantuan and grotesque houses, expensive cars, tasteless glitz and glam and bling worn on the body, and snide, obnoxious, entitled, socially-unacceptable behavior of many varieties.

Look around you. Everyone is driving a BMW, a Lexus, or a Mercedes - if not a gas-guzzling, herpes-infected SUV of some kind. People grocery-shop at Whole Foods and Draeger's and Andronico's. Everyone has a gigantic television with a surround sound system. People own a lot of recreational equipment: gigantic RVs (houses on wheels, with all the conveniences of regular houses, only powered by huge amounts of fuel), jet-skis (those idiotic, noisy relics of the 1980s), power boats, and dirt bikes. These vehicles do not, as their owners and proponents will say, encourage an appreciation of nature or exposure to the great outdoors. They are merely obscene, obstreperous noise-makers designed to advertise the wealth and testicular insecurity of their owners.

At the same time, Silicon Valley is marked by a dearth of fine arts institutions, a cash-strapped and land-poor parks system, and terrible architecture.

This is what the so-called "triumph of the nerds" has wrought. Geeks might be bright, creative, interesting people. But their sense of civic duty or pride is zero, and their taste is worse. They pour their money into selfish, absurd trifles at the expense of their neighbors' quality of life. They live on hillsides and shut themselves off from real life. Their wives are made of plastic and their children are soulless misfits.

Since the geeks' money is tied up in material garbage or sitting in a bank someplace, it has not - and never has - found its way back into the valley that gave it to them in the first place. Our schools and other institutions suffer because of it. Our culture is a big fat zero. My experience working for area non-profit organizations taught me that the generosity of our local population is a prickly and elusive beast; raising money for cultural institutions in Silicon Valley is a challenge of demoralizing proportions.

I'm not just talking about "charity," either. I'm talking about something much bigger and much more important. I'm talking about the vision necessary to make good use of wealth. That vision starts not with charitable organizations, nor with corporations who want to make a good name for themselves by funding some cause or other. The vision must start and be owned by individuals who have the means to make a difference. They must first understand the size of their estate and the potential their wealth represents. Maybe these geeks should be forced to take the undergraduate courses that they skipped before having access to six-figure salaries and stock options: sociology, economics, art history, and geography. Then maybe they will begin to be equipped with the skills and knowledge necessary for the building of a great society.

This is, ultimately, a typical "new money" problem. People who suddenly find themselves rich literally don't know what to do with their money and are prone to wastefulness. Indulgence is understandable - for a while. But we are past this point. Silicon Valley residents at all income levels must be made aware of the potential of the vast resources we have access to, and those resources must be turned toward the greater benefit of what should be a robust and rounded culture. A great society doesn't require a utopian superstructure to manage class divisions; it requires the wealthy to understand that they bear the burden of a special responsibility - not necessarily the redistribution of their wealth, but the responsibility to make use of it for the greater good.

In Theaters: The Conspirator

2011-04-15T09:36:00.000-07:00

As an actor, producer, and director, Robert Redford's contribution to film is marked by close, thoughtful preparation, detailed pre-production, and polished execution. Although no one's filmography is flop-free, Redford's best films are marked by tight scripts, excellent casting, and a shot-by-shot flow that suggests precise storyboarding and pre-visualization. On The Conspirator, Redford serves as director and one of eight credited producers, and the surprise of the film is its sloppiness and the feeling that the entire project was rushed through production. The Conspirator suffers from an underdeveloped script, miscasting, and a perfunctory visual style. Nothing about the film suggests the involvement of Robert Redford - or any director with decent narrative sense or a judicious eye. The Conspirator is a flavorless political statement in the guise of a historical drama. It could have been directed by anyone - or, for that matter, by a committee of dullards.

The Conspirator's fact-based plot couldn't be more promising as the basis for a riveting film: Following an opening sequence that shows the assassination of President Lincoln at Ford's Theater, along with the attempted murder of Secretary of State Seward and Vice President Johnson, the film tells the story of Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy), a Civil War veteran and lawyer newly employed by Senator Reverdy Johnson of Maryland (Tom Wilkinson). Johnson arranges the defense of the conspirators who plotted Lincoln's assassination, one of whom is a woman, Mary Surratt (Robin Wright). Surratt owned a boarding house where the conspirators were known to have met, but her role in the conspiracy itself is hazy at best. Johnson tasks the reluctant Aiken with defending Surratt, who proves to be an opaque figure that refuses to readily explicate the nature of her role and her relationship to the conspirators. Aiken encounters further opacity in the form of the politically-expedient but extra-legal military tribunal that tries the conspirators, a body of men who are there not to analyze but to condemn. They serve at the pleasure of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (Kevin Kline), who wants to punish the accused to help heal the nation's grief.

The Conspirator feels like a made-for-TV quickie with a larger budget. Its narrative is rushed, first and foremost. Every scene feels hurried and false, as though a large story has been assigned to a narrow time-slot, forcing arbitrary last-minute shortcuts. We are hustled through an un-thrilling depiction of the assassination, which sets up the film's dramatic situation. Surratt's quandary is established not with a sense of historicity, but with the dry tone that usually accompanies a finger-wagging lesson being impressed upon a naive or naughty audience. The parallels between the incidents portrayed in The Conspirator are too close to events occurring in our own era. That doesn't mean that they don't bear examination; it means that a film based upon those incidents is going to have to fight not to look cheesy, forced, and obvious. The Conspirator doesn't fight hard enough.

Although he's the protagonist, we don't know much about Aiken's interior life - even though, during the film, he undergoes a serious intellectual and moral challenge. He is a Civil War veteran who desperately wants to see the conspirators punished, and at first he unquestioningly assumes Surratt's guilt. Despite a deep desire to see her hang with the rest, Aiken begins to suspect that the trial is not Constitutional. Yet we don't know what he's thinking or feeling, especially regarding the transition he experiences. I don't think this is McAvoy's fault, although I will say that his entire performance seems cribbed from the Tom Cruise Playbook of Mannerism and Line Reading. It's the script's fault. It's unacceptable that a highly conflicted protagonist should remain so veiled, when his thought process and emotional experience is really what the film wants to be about. Other characters are given more careful exploration, both by the script and by the actors who portray them, particularly Surratt, whose screen time and dialogue is relatively minimal, but whose presence, in the form of Wright, is dominant.

But the movie is too bogged down in earnest political philosophizing to ever become a truly character-driven drama. The movie's argument is clear within its first half-hour: military tribunals thwart the rights of US citizens. As post-9/11 Americans, we are familiar with this argument and the issues that surround it. The parallels are obvious. A feature film that deals with political topics has the opportunity to play out ideas in a dramatic fashion, illustrating abstractions and principles in terms of human lives and relationships. But The Conspirator doesn't go past the level of chat show talking points: military tribunals are wrong; Surratt may have been wrongly executed; Aiken was transformed by his realization that Constitutional rights belong to every citizen. These concepts are easily summarized, as I have just done. It doesn't take a movie to explicate them.

Read the full review here

The Heedless Overuse of Certain Words: Start-Up

2011-04-12T10:30:00.000-07:00

If you are a small business owner and are serious about your work, never use this term.

Here in Silicon Valley, we originate and perpetuate our own brand of bullshit. Words that sound like they indicate "business" or "money" or "technology" are released from the Valley of Heart's Delight onto an unsuspecting nation that has lulled itself complacent with the common parlance. This phenomenon bloomed to maturity in the 1990s, of course, when Silicon Valley ruled an imaginary kingdom of wealth and beauty - a kingdom that only recently fell apart, but which lives on in the hearts and minds of the people here as a high watermark left behind by the destructive power of the imagination and the human capacity for self-delusion.

During that era of greedy innocence, one term that was loosed like a mighty falcon across the vast plain of tech-boom hyperbole was "start-up."

"Start-up" inspires many questions, including the following:

What does it start?
When does it start?
What does it look like?
Does it only start and never stop?
Does it only start and not do anything else?
Is it a thing I can put in my pocket (sounds small)?
Is it a place to buy things?
Does it make money?
Who does it make money for?
Will I like it?
Is it a place where mature adults apply skill and talent to solving problems through industry and commerce?
Can I get it to turn into something else - for example, a profitable and practical business?
Is it just a bunch of guys eating Tofutti and playing with Hacky Sacks?
Is it something that exists only in the mind?

The short answer to the last question is "yes" (elaboration to follow in a bit).

The funny thing about "start-up" is how amateurish it sounds if you stop and take it at face value. It sounds like some guys in a basement, just fucking around with some stuff. And yet the connotation is that it is a heavily-funded venture that is certain to blow up into a massive enterprise in no time.

But what "start-up" actually means is this: a group of fast-talking tools who are working to gather the balls to pitch their concept to so-called venture capitalists and convince them to fund the operation to a certain extent, despite the fact that said concept only exists in their minds and has not sustained anything like the rigors of the marketplace.

So yes, a "start-up" is a thing: it is nothing more or less than a shared delusion.

And here is why: Because someone might decide to give a few hundred thousand - or several million - dollars to someone who persuades them to do so. Because "start-up" actually means a business that is not a business - it's an organization that has not weathered the true tests a money-making enterprise must take and continue to take, nor has it been subject to a pragmatic decision-making process that transforms initiative into marketplace viability.

The fact that start-ups were a common feature of the wholly-absurd technology boom of the 1990s is not a surprise. The concept fits well with the opportunistic salesmen and wide-eyed techies who drove that period with a surreal combination of technical skill and mystifyingly retarded social skills.

But now that we have seen the long-term damage wrought by that era of heedless, jingoistic fantasia, there is no excuse for the term "start-up" to exist at all, let alone the fact of start-ups themselves - entities that attract "investors" by virtue of mere rhetoric.

As is always the case, the perversion lies not with the words themselves but with the thoughts that inspire their use.

On DVD: Inferno

2011-04-11T10:23:00.000-07:00

Dario Argento is a filmmaker whose work is easy to appreciate but difficult to love. He is easy to appreciate because his movies are the product of a specific vision and a unique, influential aesthetic. Argento's neon-lit sets and moody, Lovecraft-infused plots have atmosphere to spare. Yet he is difficult to love because his brand of horror, although suspenseful and engaging, is devoid of emotional content. His characters are often types - innocent virginal women and naïve, confused men - cast merely as the vulnerable targets of evil predators. There is little psychology or personality driving Argento's films - other than the director's own.

Inferno starts out strongly, with a voice intoning the mythological premise of an ancient book known as "The Three Mothers." We learn that three evil sisters secretly rule the world from lairs constructed specifically to harness their special powers. In New York, Rose (Irene Miracle) discovers that she may be living in one of these lairs - an old Gothic apartment building. She sends a letter to alert her brother Mark (Leigh McCloskey), a music student living in Rome. The letter finds its way into the hands of Mark's classmate Sara (Eleonora Giorgi), which in turn brings her to a tragic fate. Mark finds his way back to New York, but is too late to help his sister, who has already been found by the evil forces she has accidentally unleashed.

As an exercise in style, Inferno has a hermetic perfection about it. The visual method is characterized by large swathes of color (washes of light, spans of empty wall space, unusually large doors and windows) and graceful camera movements that always maintain compositional integrity. Argento creates his own visual grammar.

But Argento is somewhat undone by the characters he creates - one-dimensional types who don't have inner lives to speak of, nor are we ever certain that they have much comprehension of what is happening to and around them. This makes it difficult to empathize with them. If characters on-screen have some grasp of the plot (even when we don't), this makes it easy to forgive plot holes. We follow stories based on characters' experiences. It's never very clear that Rose or Mark understand that evil has been let loose in their world - and that might be acceptable if we knew that they know or don't know. Inferno leaves its characters in the lurch, however, without establishing clarity as to the protagonists' relationship to the horror they face. And this causes the film to lose momentum in its second half.

It's a shame that Inferno isn't strong enough to deliver on its many interesting ideas. Ultimately, a film's ideas need to be enshrined somewhere concrete within the film - and most often that place is within its characters. But Argento relies too heavily on visual technique, which, while impressive and often arresting, can't undo the awkwardness of characters who have been abandoned at the film's center.

Read the full review here

On DVD: The Tourist

2011-04-11T10:12:00.000-07:00

The Tourist is beautifully shot by the accomplished Oscar-winner John Seale. It captures classically romantic locations like Paris and Venice with a visual caress lacking in Hollywood productions for some time. The look of the film reminds us not so much of the gritty Bourne series as much as David Lean's Summertime and Stanley Donen's Charade. Unfortunately, the comparisons end there. As much as The Tourist attempts to capture not just the look but the tone of those and other jet-setting comic thrillers of the past, it fails to generate tension or laughs. In fact, the picture is just another big-budget dud of the type we have come to expect from studio tent pole projects these days.

The freakish Angelina Jolie - who I'm certain will later be remembered as a sort of female Victor Mature, with her exaggerated, artificial good looks - plays Elise Ward, a mysterious Englishwoman being pursued by a number of international police agencies, all of whom are hoping she will lead them to the shadowy master criminal Alexander Pearce. On a train to Venice, she selects Frank (Johnny Depp) as a decoy for Pearce, and takes him along on her jaunt across Europe. A series of twists and turns allow the leads to have some fun with power-play reversals - and then all of a sudden we're supposed to believe that romance is blooming between the two. The rest of the film is a leaden chase, stunted by the leads coming off as virtual ciphers with no emotional lives or explicit goals.

The Tourist is a big mess with high production values. The fact that it is visually successful proves that the film was better-prepared than the shoddy, misshapen script would suggest. It had to have been thoroughly storyboarded. Yet the script, credited to director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck as well as Oscar-winners Christopher McQuarrie and Julian Fellowes (and based on the well-reviewed but little-seen French film Anthony Zimmer from 2005), tries too hard to capture a classy retro mood and scenario rather than reaching for a clear notion of its leading characters. And even that fussed-over scenario lacks credibility. An early scene in which a Scotland Yard investigator pieces together bits of a note Ward had burned to a crisp is handled with a ridiculous observational straightforwardness, instead of being the comical take on spycraft it could have been. Whether or not the technology exists, its portrayal lacks all plausibility. Also, it's worth pointing out that the chief reason Pearce is being pursued by so many different agencies is because he owes the British government back taxes!

Jolie is like a Jordan almond. You think this nice-looking candy treat is going to be sweet and delicious, but really it's just weird idea that turns out to be bland. Depp continues his pursuit of projects that provide overexposure without the balancing benefit of furthering his range of characterizations - or utilizing his talent at all, for that matter. Both actors are charisma-free in The Tourist. The movie's lush production values, in addition to allowing DP Seale to capture some of the most iconic vistas in Europe, affords an engaging score by James Newton Howard. In all other respects, The Tourist is a shamefully expensive wreck of a movie.

Read the full review here

The Heedless Overuse of Certain Words: Definitely

2011-04-07T12:21:00.000-07:00

An ongoing concern of mine is the mangling and perversion of the English language by those who do not think before they speak. It's alarming and unsettling how commonly and naturally people are lulled into a sense of verbal complacency. I refer generally to many things here as they pertain to spoken English, but one of them is overuse of words as symptomatic of a corroded verbal culture. I don't believe that the chronic overuse of particular words is a product of limited brain function, but rather the result of an environment in which words are simply not valued for their communicative power. This leads to words being sapped of strength and meaning, and in this way, spoken communication can be rendered not only lifeless but purposeless.

A concrete example of what I'm referring to can be seen in the heedless overuse of the word "definitely."

Before I begin, I should point out that the case of the word "definitely" is very possibly localized to California and/or the West Coast. I have lived other places, and I do not hear the word used elsewhere in the same sense that it is typically used in this region.

What I mean to talk about is the word "definitely" being used to indicate unnecessary emphasis that, when thus applied, comes off as somewhere between disingenuous and dishonest:

"We should definitely get together."

"I'll definitely try to be there."

"We definitely loved your performance art!"

Or, simply, and most commonly:

"Yeah, definitely!"

The false emphasis of "definitely" is a linguistic perversion of the most insidious kind. What is insidious about it is the fact that the word is used to mean something that is virtually the opposite of what it should normally indicate. "Definitely" does not mean "with certainty," but rather something closer to: "I would like to bring about some positive personal transaction, but really can't be bothered to do so in a genuine way, so I'll just insert this emphatic word that indicates intentions that I'd like you, the listener, to perceive."

The use of "definitely" in this sense isn't restricted to socially awkward teens or self-absorbed college kids. It's used by older adults. It's used by "'professionals." It's used by people old enough to know better.

In the case of "definitely," and in many others, the multi-layered nature of its misuse isn't just an affront to some idealized notion of linguistic felicity. By using "definitely" to mean the equivalent of "almost definitely not," we offend each other. We insult our auditors' intelligence, and degrade our individual ability to communicate - because once we stop thinking about and meaning what we say, we cease to be ourselves entirely.