ImpossibleFunky Productions

Un-bullshitting Tarantino

noreply@blogger.com (Mike White) — Sun, 17 May 2026 19:27:15 +0000

Quentin Tarantino's Cinema Speculation is a book that can't stop talking about itself. Critics noted on release that its chapters get lost in a vortex of digressions and asides before abruptly moving on, that it reads like a first draft no editor was allowed to touch, and that its cult-of-personality side too often grabs the wheel from its more thoughtful side. Every chapter threatens to become a memoir or a Video Archives oral history before it gets around to the movie it was supposed to be discussing. The chapter on The Outfit (1973) is no exception — Tarantino buries his analysis of Parker adaptations under a mountain of eighties Hollywood war stories and auteurist chest-puffing that has nothing to do with the subject at hand. What follows is that chapter stripped to the bone: all the digressions cut, factual errors flagged or corrected, the Parker and Westlake material kept, and the argument — that John Flynn's film is the definitive Richard Stark adaptation — allowed to breathe on its own.

The Outfit (1973)

Beginning in 1963, the mystery writer Donald Westlake, under the pseudonym Richard Stark, wrote a series of books about a professional armed robber named Parker.

I discovered the books sometime in my twenties and went gaga for them.

Parker was a cold, emotionless bastard whose only identity was his armed robber's code of professionalism. He robbed banks, bonds, rare coin collections—you name it, Parker stole it.

The conflict in most of the novels came from the fact that, usually, the other members of whatever crew he was working with weren't as professional as he was. And that's when the armed robber could become the unstoppable killer.

Parker may not have been burdened by the normal human emotions most of us have, but that shouldn't suggest he was cynical. In book after book, he kept expecting his criminal colleagues to be as professional as he was, and when they weren't, he was appalled.

Some of the books featured Parker helping a former colleague out of a jam, or righting wrongs for a former colleague, or going after a greedy former colleague.

Even though Parker wasn't a professional killer, he dealt in armed robbery and all that implies. He wasn't trigger-happy (that would be unprofessional), but he wasn't afraid to use his gun if need be. You always risk certain consequences when you carry a loaded firearm into any endeavor. And Parker was always willing to face those consequences.

In Stark's first Parker book, The Hunter, our main character ties up and gags a female secretary in an office he's robbing, and inadvertently ends up suffocating her to death. Well . . . that's unfortunate . . . especially for her . . . but them's the risks. And Parker never shied away from the risks inherent in his chosen profession.

What makes both the character and the books so interesting is their insistence on the code of ethics involved in a criminal activity. It's as if, by insisting on a professional code of ethics, the characters can convince themselves that being a thief is a trade.

The closest thing to a humanizing trait that Stark allows the character is Parker's genuine fondness, bordering on affection, for his only friend, a fellow thief named Cody. Cody appeared in the books every so often and his presence is always welcome.

Still, discovering a heartless, lethal, uncompromising character like Parker was a breath of much needed foul air.

The first three Parker books, The Hunter, The Man with the Getaway Face, and The Outfit are drastically the best ones. Once it became next book, next score, they lost something. But even in the later Parker books I started but never finished, Parker was always true to Parker.

The first three books in the series are connected. The Hunter was made famous by John Boorman's cinematic adaptation Point Blank, with Lee Marvin becoming the first of many movie Parkers (in this one named Walker).

The movie doesn't really follow the plot of the book that much, but they both get to the same place. Parker stalking, terrorizing, and murdering a bunch of high-powered mobsters—who aren't used to this type of treatment—over his share of a score they owe him (45,000 dollars). By the end of the book, he's created such bloody havoc throughout the organized crime syndicate (or "the Outfit" as they call it in Stark's universe), that even Parker knows he must disappear.

And his attempt to disappear is the plot of the second book, The Man with the Getaway Face, which has never been made into a movie.

On the first page, Parker gets a completely new face from a shadowy underground plastic surgeon, who performs such operations for people trying to disappear. Unfortunately for Parker, after the operation the plastic surgeon is murdered. The doctor's family believes Parker is responsible. And they intend to alert the Outfit about Parker's new identity and face. Parker insists he had nothing to do with it, and he asks for a week to track down the real killer before the doctor's family does anything drastic.

He spends the rest of the book accomplishing this. Even, in a stroke of poetic justice, removing the new face the shadowy plastic surgeon gave his killer.

At book's end, he arrives back to the family, explains who the murderer was and why he did it, and presents them with the cut-off face. Only, the doctor's family—sure of Parker's guilt—didn't give him the week he asked for. They've already informed the Outfit of Parker's new identity and new face. Thus rendering everything that happened in the book ironically useless.

The Outfit is the third book in the series. Knowing his powerful enemies are going to come after him—instead of running away from the mob—he runs at them.

For a character as rough as Parker, he's been remarkably well served by the movies. There's been as many Parkers as there's been Philip Marlowes. And when you consider Lee Marvin, Jim Brown, Robert Duvall, Mel Gibson, and Anna Karina have all played some variation of the character, quite a wide array.

They haven't always been called Parker. Till recently they never were. Stark didn't mind selling his books, but he never sold his character. As the director John Flynn explained to me, "Westlake didn't want his character to be affected by whatever happened in some dumb movie."

In my opinion the best movie Parker isn't from an adaptation of one of Stark's novels. It's Robert De Niro as armed robber Neil McCauley in Michael Mann's Heat. While it's not literally based on a Richard Stark novel, it's pretty fucking obvious McCauley is, at least inspired—if not outright based on—Parker.

His professionalism, his creed, his held-in-check emotions, even McCauley's motto, "Allow nothing in your life that you can't walk out on in thirty seconds flat if you spot the heat around the corner," sounds like some shit Parker would say. McCauley is a little more expressive than Parker, Mann having him verbalize lines Stark would have expressed in prose. And the end—McCauley missing his window of opportunity of escape and staying in L.A. to get revenge for a respected colleague—is totally a Parker dilemma.

However if it had been a Stark book, Parker's professionalism would have led him to flee. Because Parker knows there's nothing more important than not getting caught. Sticking to the code is how one maneuvers in this world without getting caught. Consequently, in twelve books Parker never gets caught and never gets killed. At the end of Heat, McCauley gets shot by the law. Not just because I wanted to see De Niro get away, not just because I didn't want him to break his code, and not just because I didn't want Al Pacino's detective to win. But from the moment Jon Voight tells him he found the guy who killed Danny Trejo, you know how the movie's going to end. The close-up of De Niro driving, making up his mind . . . incredible. But once he jerks the wheel, you know he's doomed. The by-rote moralistic functionality of the last fifteen minutes, compared to the two hours and fifty minutes that preceded it, is a drag.

Of the straight Parker adaptations, most people choose Boorman's Point Blank and consider Lee Marvin the living embodiment of Parker.

I've never understood the reputation that baby-boomer critics assigned Boorman's nonentity crime film. Yes, it has a dazzling (for its time) opening ten minutes. But the truth is, it seemed more dazzling when I was twenty-six than it does now. Even in terms of ruthless Lee Marvin gangster film openings, it can't hold a flickering birthday candle next to Don Siegel's opening for The Killers.

What's effective about Boorman's opening is the way it builds and keeps building. The way the forward momentum of Marvin's shoes tap out a rhythm on the floor brings to mind both the sizzle of a dynamite fuse and the screech before a car collision. And the sequence pays off when Marvin bursts through Sharon Acker's door, blasting his pistol. But that's by far the best filmmaking in the movie. After the opening ten minutes, except for the violent fight in the discotheque, it never hums again.

After the show-off opening, Point Blank settles down into sixties television. It's pretty much indistinguishable from a Mannix episode of the same era.

I disagree that Lee Marvin is the quintessential Parker. I don't even think it's a good performance. Marvin was one of the most exciting actors of the fifties and in The Professionals and The Dirty Dozen he modulated that excitement into stardom. But starting with Point Blank, Marvin went from his greatest lead performance in The Dirty Dozen to acting like a leafless tree.

But Point Blank, when compared to other Stark adaptations—like the abysmal Jim Brown one The Split (not Brown's fault), the practically comedic Point Blank remake with Mel Gibson, and Godard's non-adaptation Made in U.S.A., which wastes Stark's book, the audience's time, and a lot of Kodak film stock—Boorman's movie is at least an honorable effort.

My nomination for best Richard Stark novel adaptation (by far) is John Flynn's The Outfit, starring Robert Duvall as Macklin (Parker), Karen Black as Bett (in the Angie Dickinson role from Point Blank), and a perfect Joe Don Baker as Cody. If you like Point Blank, fair enough, then The Outfit is its de facto sequel. The events in the book The Hunter and Boorman's movie are what lead the syndicate to target both Parker and Cody, and then lead Duvall and Baker to execute a full frontal assault against The Outfit. Flynn, forced to start from scratch, has Duvall's Macklin finishing up a prison sentence for getting picked up by the cops in a bar during a vice raid for carrying a hot weapon. He relates that story to someone and they reply, "Damn, that's some hard time."

As he gets out, his brother is assassinated by two mob triggermen (in a real cool opening that just screams seventies cinema). Then two triggermen (familiar ugly face Tom Reese, who would've been a great post-plastic surgery Parker), disguised as quail hunters, show up at the woodsy breakfast diner that Cody (Joe Don Baker) runs when he's not doing a score. However, they pick the wrong time, because the local sheriff (who has no idea about Cody's double life) is in the joint having his morning coffee. But now Cody knows a couple of out-of-town torpedoes are on his trail.

Macklin (Duvall) is picked up from prison by his old lady, Bett (Karen Black), who sets him up for a hit at a local hotel. She's forced into this betrayal after she endures a torture session conducted by the Outfit, where they burned a cigarette up and down her arm (we later find out it was none other than Timothy Carey who used her arm as an ashtray), but she tips Macklin in time for him to ambush the gunman (Felice Orlandi), by breaking a bottle across his face ("I've got glass in my face"). Macklin tortures him for information, learning why the Outfit is targeting him.

Apparently, before he got pinched in the vice raid, Macklin, his brother, and Cody robbed a bank that unbeknownst to them was a mob front. Upon his release from jail, the word has come down from the Outfit's big boss man Mailer (snicker-snicker) played by Robert Ryan to eliminate these small-timers.

Macklin and Cody figure the best defense is a strong offense. Instead of running away from the mob, they run at them. With Bett operating as their getaway driver, Macklin and Cody start robbing Outfit-fronted operations. Not used to being fucked with, almost every robbery starts with somebody screaming, "Do you know who runs this place?" To which Baker yells back, "I don't give a rat's ass if your mother runs it!" Or Macklin just smashes them in the teeth with his gun. A big part of the movie's enjoyment stems from the mob associates' shock at the brutal treatment they receive at the hands of Macklin and Cody. But there's more to their plan than just revenge for Macklin's brother and a mad crime spree. Both figure if they can cause enough trouble and hurt the syndicate where they're most sensitive—in the pocketbook—since Mailer fancies himself a businessman, maybe they can broker a deal. Well, naturally that doesn't work.

So the movie ends with Duvall and Baker doing an all-out assault on Ryan's home compound. And it's one of the more satisfying sequences of that type I've ever seen — it puts the similar climax in Michael Mann's Thief to shame. And the scene between Duvall and Baker on the stairs is the epitome of poignant masculinity. With the picture's final freeze-frame capper displaying a self-mocking tone that ends the whole film on a hearty macho guffaw.

In a 1981 cover story for the magazine American Film (done to promote Duvall in True Confessions), the writer described him as a "Hard-boiled Olivier." Not a bad description of Duvall's performance in this movie. In the Santa Clarita, California, newspaper The Signal, film critic Phillip Lanier wrote about Duvall as Macklin: "Earl is one of the most interesting gangster figures to screen in a while. He is intelligent and his brutality is as calculated as it is unsympathetic. To him, robbing and killing is just a nine-to-five job which he has to take home with him too. His [Duvall's] quiet determination brings across a character who appears to be a desperate man by choice. It's a mysterious kind of masculinity that only he seems to possess."

Macklin may be Stark's Parker, but both Flynn and Duvall open up the character. Macklin definitely has more of a sense of humor than Parker (in the movie Duvall laughs every once in a while). But it's Macklin's affection for Cody that separates him from the literary Parker. The Parker of the books has affection for Cody as well. But Duvall's masterful performance conveys it stronger without abandoning that turtle shell he uses as a face. And he and Baker make a marvelous team, with Duvall mumbling all the cryptic lines and Baker spitting out all the funny ones. When the two men discuss how they're going to attack Ryan's heavily guarded home compound, they even predate Flynn's greatest cinematic moment, the "I'll just get my gear" scene between William Devane and Tommy Lee Jones in Rolling Thunder.

While I doubt any actor could be the definitive Parker, Joe Don Baker is absolutely the perfect embodiment of Cody. Joe Don has always been one of my favorite screen actors, but for me, it's his performance in this film that's my personal favorite. The movie even gives Baker the film's terrific curtain line. According to fat hack James Bacon in a profile he wrote on Baker, when director Flynn, producer Carter DeHaven, and MGM studio head James Aubrey went to a screening of Walking Tall together, halfway through the picture they shouted in unison, "He's our man!"

As I pointed out earlier, Point Blank has that canned quality of sixties television. Marvin aside, it even has a television cast. The whole supporting cast could have been the guest star lineup of an episode of Cannon. John Vernon, in the sixties and early seventies, was constantly playing the heavy on episodic TV. And while I like Vernon, it was after The Outlaw Josey Wales and Animal House that I started liking him a lot more. But back in 1967, Vernon's part in Point Blank was too big for him. He couldn't hold his own with even a low wattage Lee Marvin (Keenan Wynn would have been better in Vernon's role).

And then there's fish-faced Lloyd Bochner. The type of tight-lipped stiff who regularly appeared on Quinn Martin–produced TV shows. Any movie that casts Lloyd—fucking—Bochner has serious casting issues.

But by contrast the supporting cast of The Outfit is filled with one terrific actor's face after another (Timothy Carey, Richard Jaeckel, Sheree North, Marie Windsor, Jane Greer, Henry Jones, Bill McKinney). Director Flynn told me he cast the film with his buddy Walter Hill by going through a book of great B-movie character actors.

When it came to casting, Flynn told me he was happy with the lead cast of the movie. He liked Baker and Black, and thought Duvall was a fine actor and an interesting rising star. But they wouldn't have been his first choice. If he could have, he would have rather gone less modern-day seventies casting, and more film noir. His dream cast would have been Burt Lancaster as Macklin, Kirk Douglas as Cody, and Angie Dickinson as Macklin's wife. I considered doing an adaptation of the book in the late nineties, with Robert De Niro as Parker, Harvey Keitel as Cody, and Pam Grier as Bett. And just writing that now makes me wish I would have done it.

The Outfit was one of the last films made under the tenure of MGM studio head James Aubrey (aka the smiling cobra). Aubrey was pissed off at the way the New York and Los Angeles critics had treated his slate of MGM films, so he began opening new MGM movies regionally first. It took The Outfit an entire year to make the rounds through the United States—starting off in October 1973 in Chicago and Baltimore, and not opening in California (its last stop) till a year later in October 1974.

The first press clippings to appear about Flynn's film were almost all from fat hack James Bacon, who wrote in his syndicated column on Oct 23, 1973, "Saw The Outfit the other night at a cast and crew preview and it's The Godfather of 1973." But the less-biased critics across the country were in a three-way split between declaring the film a routine crime picture, a slightly above routine crime picture, or a drastically below routine crime picture.

Vincent Canby of the New York Times wrote that The Outfit "doesn't attempt to do anything except pass the time, which simply isn't good enough when most of us have access to television."

Greg Swem of the Courier-Journal (out of Louisville, Kentucky) obviously enjoyed the movie but ultimately concluded it was "well written and well directed by John Flynn, but the script and direction are fragmented. The film as a whole doesn't have any great attraction."

Gary Arnold of the Washington Post declared it "a lugubrious, derivative thriller," concluding that "Flynn has a flat, dawdling way of spinning a yarn, so the essential grubbiness and brutality of the conception aren't leavened with much flair or excitement."

Jeanne Miller of the San Francisco Examiner referred to Flynn's work as "dismal direction" and the film itself as "disastrous."

Bernard Drew of the Journal News (White Plains, New York) disparaged Flynn further: "Writer-director John Flynn, who once unwittingly made one of the funniest pictures of the sixties, The Sergeant, and later succeeded in making a bore out of the holy land in The Jerusalem File, now rises to new heights of ineptitude in The Outfit."

But Roger Ebert, in his Chicago Sun-Times review in October of 1973, gave the film three and a half stars out of four, writing that "The Outfit is a classy action picture, very well directed and acted, about a gangster's revenge on the mob death of his brother." Ebert went on to clarify: "We don't care much about what happens, the same things are always happening in action movies, and when you've seen one car burst into flames you've seen them all. But the people in this movie are uncommonly interesting."

Then a full year later in October 1974, in the Los Angeles Times, Charles Champlin concluded his positive review: "There is always a particular pleasure in watching a movie which is in command of itself all the way, an exercise in professionalism, and The Outfit offers that kind of satisfaction as the bonus beyond the surprises, the suspense, and the vivid portrayals."

But it was only John Fox, writing for the Oakland Tribune, who offered any serious insight that went beyond a plot summary and a good, bad, or indifferent verdict. "The film is perceptive in its understanding of the attitudes men have towards each other. And although the violence may prevent some viewers from seeing the message, there is a fine statement about an individual's ability to overcome a threatening force if only he can find the means and the nerve."

I first saw The Outfit when it played in Tennessee in March of 1974, under the title The Good Guys Always Win (actually, if you've seen the movie, not a bad title). Due to Joe Don Baker's incredible popularity in that state because of Walking Tall, it was Baker and the Buford Pusser connection that was emphasized.

And eight months later, when it finally opened in Los Angeles under its original title of The Outfit, I saw it again at the United Artists Cinema in Marina del Rey on a double feature with Sam Peckinpah's The Getaway (talk about an action-packed PG-rated double feature!).

I actually thought I was buying a ticket to the sequel of The Good Guys Always Win. No worries. It was even better the second time. And the hearty audience of macho guys scattered around the little cinema made it even more fun. They laughed at everything Joe Don Baker said. Including his terrific curtain line that brought the little house down.

Editor's note: Tarantino refers throughout to Parker's criminal ally as Cody, which is correct for the film — Joe Don Baker's character is named Cody in Flynn's adaptation. In Stark's novels, however, the same character goes by the name Handy McKay. Flynn renamed him for the screen. For a full breakdown of the novel-to-film changes, see The Violent World of Parker.

The Coming Storm: Class Conflict in The Dark Knight Rises

noreply@blogger.com (Mike White) — Sat, 16 May 2026 15:24:02 +0000

Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises may be the most politically conflicted superhero blockbuster of the 21st century. Released in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse and in the shadow of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the film arrived at a moment when conversations about wealth inequality, institutional collapse, police militarization, populist anger, and class resentment had moved into mainstream culture. Nolan's film absorbs those anxieties, filters them through the mythological machinery of DC's comic book vigilante Batman, and produces a work that feels at once reactionary, confused, and deeply revealing.

My Superpower Is Being Rich

The Dark Knight Rises desperately wants to say something meaningful about class conflict and social collapse, while simultaneously struggling to imagine ordinary people as meaningful political actors. Gotham — here closest to New York City — is portrayed on the brink of revolution, but its citizens barely exist as citizens. The narrative remains trapped among billionaires, vigilantes, corporate board members, police officials, and theatrical supervillains. "The people" are invoked constantly yet rarely seen, and that absence may be the key to understanding Nolan's intentions and limitations.

From its earliest scenes, the film establishes Gotham as a city built atop inequality. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has withdrawn into aristocratic isolation. Wayne Manor resembles an English estate more than an American mansion, evoking old-world nobility rather than entrepreneurial capitalism. Bruce Wayne is not simply rich; he is patrician. He belongs to a ruling caste — and that distinction matters. Nolan's trilogy operates on the thesis that society functions best when guided by enlightened elites. Institutions fail repeatedly — police departments are compromised, politicians are weak, the legal system proves fragile — but salvation continually arrives through exceptional individuals possessing wealth, discipline, and access to militarized technology.

When Marvel's Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) acknowledges that without his Iron Man suit he's still a "genius, billionaire, playboy, and philanthropist," he's motivated to make the world better by dismantling his own legacy of war profiteering and falls when he makes the misguided decision to build "a suit of armor around the world." Like Stark, Bruce Wayne's superpower has always been money. However, his raison d'être stems from the death of his parents and a thirst for vengeance. Nolan intensifies that aspect until Bruce Wayne becomes less a superhero than a privately funded shadow state.

Both Stark and Wayne are billionaire technologists who use advanced weaponry to reshape global events. Both operate outside traditional state structures. Both rely upon privately owned military technology to enforce their vision of justice.

Yet the two characters are perceived very differently because their films approach power differently.

Tony Stark's story begins with a direct confrontation with the consequences of his own industry. Iron Man explicitly links Stark's wealth to global violence and arms profiteering. Stark attempts — however imperfectly — to reform the system that made him powerful in the first place. Bruce Wayne lacks a comparable reckoning. Wayne Enterprises develops military technology, surveillance systems, and advanced tactical weaponry, yet the trilogy rarely interrogates the broader implications of Bruce possessing unilateral control over those resources. Instead, Batman's authority is largely treated as morally necessary.

This distinction helps explain why Nolan's Batman often feels colder and more authoritarian than many other superhero protagonists of the same era. The films acknowledge the dangers of concentrated power while ultimately placing enormous trust in Bruce Wayne's ability to wield that power responsibly.

The Surveillance State and the Post-9/11 Superhero

Nolan's realism ironically strengthens and weakens his series. The Batman Begins trilogy helped establish the modern template for "grounded" superhero cinema. Nolan attempted to place Batman within a world shaped by surveillance technology, terrorism, military hardware, and urban sociology. The villains were no longer flamboyant comic-book figures operating in fantasy spaces; they became reflections of contemporary fears.

That realism gave the earlier films enormous cultural weight. The Dark Knight in particular captured post-9/11 anxieties about extremism, institutional fragility, and the ethics of mass surveillance. Batman's use of invasive technology became one of the defining moral conflicts of the film. Realism also imposed new constraints; once Gotham begins resembling the real world, audiences naturally scrutinize its politics more intensely. The symbolism in The Dark Knight Rises therefore becomes harder to separate from contemporary political debates.

Nolan's Batman exists within the logic of the post-9/11 security state. Throughout the trilogy, Batman deploys surveillance systems capable of monitoring entire populations. He weaponizes military-grade technology developed through Wayne Enterprises contracts, bypassing democratic structures entirely. Wayne Enterprises' Board of Directors are a puppet regime. Even when the films critique his excesses — as Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) does in The Dark Knight when Batman creates a surveillance system that makes Fox balk — the narrative ultimately validates Batman's actions because the threats are always catastrophic enough to justify authoritarian intervention.

The sonar surveillance network in The Dark Knight remains one of the clearest examples. Lucius Fox openly condemns the system as unethical because it grants one individual total access to the private lives of Gotham's citizens. Yet the narrative simultaneously validates Batman's decision because the threat posed by the Joker (Heath Ledger) is presented as so overwhelming that extraordinary measures become necessary.

This logic mirrors the political arguments that justified the Patriot Act and the broad expansion of the post-9/11 intelligence apparatus — the same reasoning that wrapped a surveillance state around American life in the name of keeping it safe. The trilogy repeatedly raises concerns about authoritarian overreach while simultaneously insisting that exceptional crises justify those methods. Batman becomes a kind of privatized intelligence apparatus operating entirely beyond public accountability — more shadow state than superhero. That tension becomes even more visible in The Dark Knight Rises, where Gotham's survival ultimately depends not on public institutions but on heavily militarized intervention led by elite figures. Batman's role increasingly resembles that of a private military actor preserving social order through force and surveillance.

In this way, Bruce Wayne anticipates a figure out of British imperial mythology — and presages the contemporary American billionaire. Bruce does not simply inherit wealth; he inherits cultural authority. Wayne Manor resembles an aristocratic estate deliberately detached from ordinary urban life, and Bruce himself operates less like a capitalist entrepreneur than a member of an entrenched ruling class whose legitimacy is assumed rather than earned. Batman's authority emerges not from democratic legitimacy but from inherited privilege combined with specialized violence. Gotham does not choose him. He appoints himself as its protector, because the trilogy assumes that someone with Bruce Wayne's resources, intelligence, and discipline naturally possesses the right to govern the city's fate. He is not elected. He is not accountable. He simply is.

In Nolan's revised origin story, Bruce travels abroad, acquires secret knowledge through elite training, and returns home armed with techniques and discipline inaccessible to ordinary people. He then imposes order on Gotham from above. The narrative admits two readings: the colonial tale, in which aristocratic figures venture into distant lands, absorb "forbidden" knowledge, and return as self-appointed guardians of civilization — or the radicalization story, in which a traumatized young man disappears into the margins, is shaped by extremist doctrine, and comes back to reshape society through fear and force. Nolan never fully reconciles these readings, and perhaps doesn't need to. The ambiguity is the point.

Gotham Built on Lies

By the time The Dark Knight Rises begins, Gotham's peace rests on a lie: Harvey Dent's (Aaron Eckhart) false martyrdom. The city's stability has been purchased through mythmaking and concealed violence. Nolan is clearly fascinated by the idea that civilization itself may depend upon carefully maintained illusions, pushing that fascination into overtly political territory by staging what appears to be a populist uprising. Or at least a distorted fantasy of one.

The film's imagery unmistakably evokes the French Revolution. Bane (Tom Hardy) gives speeches about returning Gotham "to the people," while scenes of wealthy elites dragged from their homes and subjected to public judgment deliberately conjure revolutionary iconography. Public tribunals unfold in frozen city streets. Mansions are occupied. The wealthy are dispossessed while Gotham descends into chaos.

The parallels to A Tale of Two Cities are explicit. Nolan repeatedly references Charles Dickens throughout the film, culminating in Commissioner Gordon's (Gary Oldman) recitation of Sydney Carton's famous closing lines. Dickens's novel portrayed the French Revolution as both a justified eruption of rage against oppression and a terrifying descent into mob violence. Nolan borrows the imagery and emotional architecture of Dickens, but he strips away much of the ambiguity. In Dickens, revolution emerges from systemic injustice. In Nolan, revolution feels imported from outside reality — an artificial performance orchestrated by terrorists masquerading as populists.

This distinction becomes especially important when considering the film's relationship to Occupy Wall Street. When The Dark Knight Rises premiered in 2012, audiences immediately connected Bane's assault on Gotham's financial district to Occupy imagery. Protestors had spent months criticizing the concentration of wealth among the "1%," condemning financial institutions, and challenging neoliberal economic structures. Attacks on stock exchanges, rhetoric about giving power back to "the people," and imagery of class upheaval all echoed contemporary headlines.

The film ultimately treats populist revolution less as a legitimate political movement than as a form of manipulation. Bane is not a sincere revolutionary. His rhetoric about liberation conceals nihilistic destruction. The uprising is fake from the outset because Bane never intends to empower Gotham's citizens. Instead, the revolution merely functions as cover for annihilation. Revolutionary politics are portrayed not as misguided attempts to correct inequality but as forces that inevitably collapse into authoritarian violence and social chaos. At the same time, the film also recognizes that Gotham's existing order is unsustainable.

Nolan appears genuinely aware of structural inequality, aware of elite decadence, aware of institutional collapse — but incapable of imagining democratic transformation outside aristocratic stewardship.

The fusion reactor subplot reflects another recurring anxiety within the film: fear of losing institutional and economic control. The reactor initially represents technocratic optimism — a clean-energy solution capable of transforming Gotham's future. Yet the film quickly reframes that achievement as a catastrophic threat once it can be weaponized.

Bruce Wayne's greatest vulnerability throughout the film is not simply physical destruction but economic collapse. Bane attacks Wayne's fortune, destabilizes his corporate power, and strips away the institutional structures that sustain Batman's identity. Bruce's wealth is inseparable from his ability to function as Gotham's guardian. Without Wayne Enterprises, Batman loses access to the technological and economic infrastructure that allows him to operate above society. This reinforces the trilogy's broader worldview: social order depends heavily upon elite stewardship, private capital, and centralized control. Gotham's collapse begins not only with terrorism but with financial destabilization.

The Dark Knight Rises acts less as a coherent critique of populism than an expression of upper-class anxiety about populism. The film repeatedly acknowledges inequality, corruption, and institutional fragility, yet it remains deeply fearful of what mass political unrest might produce. That fear shapes nearly every aspect of Gotham's revolution. Public anger becomes inseparable from mob violence. Economic resentment leads not to reform but to authoritarian spectacle. The collapse of elite control results in chaos rather than democratic transformation.

At the same time, the film cannot entirely dismiss the grievances driving that anger. Gotham's wealthy are insulated, detached, and frequently corrupt. The system is visibly unequal. Selina Kyle's frustrations are treated as understandable. Even Bane's rhetoric occasionally brushes against legitimate social concerns before collapsing into nihilism.

This unresolved tension is part of what makes the film endure as a cultural artifact. The Dark Knight Rises captures a historical moment in which public trust in institutions was eroding, economic inequality was becoming impossible to ignore, and fears about social instability were moving into mainstream political consciousness.

Neither Lady Nor Tiger

Outside of the machinations of the secret cabal of Talia al Ghul (Marion Cotillard) and Bane, and the brief appearance of Bruce Wayne's butler Alfred (Michael Caine), the lower classes get little to no representation in the film other than Selina Kyle/Catwoman and her "friend," Jen. Because of this, Catwoman becomes central to this tension.

Anne Hathaway's Selina Kyle is arguably the film's most politically coherent character because she emerges from Gotham's lower classes to fleece the rich. Unlike the mobsters in the earlier films — who accumulate wealth yet remain culturally coded as outsiders — Selina represents precarious survival within an unequal system. She steals not because she seeks domination but because she wants escape. She's looking for a mythological "reset" akin to Tyler Durden in Fight Club, whose master plan is to reset the world to zero by blowing up credit card companies.

Her famous warning to Bruce Wayne about an approaching reckoning remains one of the trilogy's sharpest moments: "There's a storm coming." This calls to mind the third part of A Tale of Two Cities, "The Track of the Storm." Unlike Bane's speeches, Selina's critique feels rooted in lived experience. She understands resentment because she inhabits the world beneath Gotham's elite structures. The relationship between Bruce and Selina briefly transforms class conflict into something emotionally tangible.

Their attraction carries ideological tension as well as a heterosexualization of Catwoman. Her relationship with Juno Temple's Jen character is never made overtly clear but they are coded as being "more than roommates." This bucking of the heteronormative power structure is yet another threat to Bruce Wayne and Gotham. In each film Batman must have a love interest, and in The Dark Knight Rises he is given a "lady or the tiger" scenario — but the feline Selina Kyle is the easier of the two main women to conquer and normalize over the daughter of his one-time mentor who now lives to destroy Gotham, even at the cost of her own life.

Selina Kyle's relationship with Jen introduces another layer of instability into Nolan's Gotham, one the film gestures toward without ever fully exploring. Jen is coded less like a traditional roommate and more like an intimate domestic partner. Their apartment is one of the only genuinely lived-in lower-class spaces in the trilogy, and its atmosphere contrasts sharply with the cold sterility of Wayne Manor or the masculine institutional architecture of Gotham's police and corporate structures. Selina and Jen occupy a fragile pocket of emotional and economic mutual survival existing outside the power structures that dominate the film.

That dynamic matters because Nolan's trilogy repeatedly restores order through heterosexual normalization. Bruce Wayne is continually paired with women who either stabilize his emotional life or reinforce his moral authority. Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal) functions as Batman's ethical conscience. Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard) presents herself as a philanthropic capitalist partner capable of legitimizing Bruce's reentry into society. Selina Kyle initially resists that structure. She exists outside bourgeois respectability, outside institutional legitimacy, and outside the clean moral binaries that define Gotham's ruling elite.

Her connection with Jen subtly complicates Batman's inevitable attraction toward her. Selina's life already contains emotional intimacy and domestic structure independent of Bruce Wayne's wealth or paternal authority. That independence creates another form of instability within Nolan's worldview because Gotham's social order depends heavily upon the restoration of recognizable hierarchies: wealth over poverty, order over chaos, institutions over outsiders, heterosexual domesticity over social ambiguity.

Batman's eventual union with Selina therefore functions not merely as romantic closure but as ideological normalization. Catwoman, historically one of Batman's most socially disruptive figures, is ultimately folded back into the same aristocratic structure she once navigated from the outside. The film grants her escape, but only after integrating her into Bruce Wayne's orbit. In another version of the story, Selina's refusal of Gotham's power structures might have remained unresolved or even revolutionary. Nolan instead domesticates her by the conclusion, transforming one of the trilogy's few genuinely destabilizing figures into a companion within Bruce's restored social order.

Batman and Catwoman are drawn toward one another despite embodying opposing relationships to wealth and social order. In another version of the film — a more daring version — Catwoman herself might have become the revolutionary figure. Ultimately, Nolan cannot commit to that possibility because he cannot fully imagine ordinary people changing history. He's fully invested in the "Great Man" narrative. Revolution therefore requires a superhuman avatar like Bane, whose theatricality removes class conflict from recognizable political reality and transforms it into operatic spectacle.

The Great Man of Gotham

One of the most revealing aspects of Nolan's trilogy is how completely it embraces the "Great Man" theory of history. Gotham does not evolve through collective political struggle, civic reform, labor organization, or democratic action. History moves only when exceptional individuals intervene violently enough to redirect it.

Batman operates as the ultimate expression of this worldview. His wealth grants him technological superiority, his training grants him physical superiority, and his moral certainty grants him political superiority. Gotham's citizens are not asked to shape their own future. They are asked to endure catastrophe until elite actors restore order above them.

Even the film's revolution cannot emerge organically. Nolan appears incapable of imagining genuine populist energy without attaching it to a singular mythic figure like Bane. The underclass never becomes politically legible on its own terms. Instead, social unrest must be filtered through charismatic theatricality and militarized leadership. Gotham's citizens remain spectators to their own history.

This is one reason the film repeatedly feels emotionally detached from the city it depicts. The trilogy speaks constantly about Gotham while rarely portraying civic life beyond police departments, corporate boardrooms, prisons, and elite spaces. Ordinary people appear primarily as crowds needing rescue, manipulation, or containment. The result is a version of urban politics stripped of actual public participation.

The irony is that Nolan clearly recognizes systemic instability. The trilogy understands corruption, wealth inequality, institutional decay, and elite manipulation. What it cannot imagine is collective democratic transformation. Every crisis ultimately demands a singular savior figure capable of imposing order through force, sacrifice, or deception.

This explains why Gotham's citizens feel strangely absent throughout the film. Bane speaks about "the people" while Nolan rarely depicts them as individuals possessing agency, desires, or contradictions. During Bane's speech outside the Stock Exchange, there are no people visible or even present — an awkward edit that reveals Bane's limited audience of the Gotham media. Crowds exist as symbolic masses: panicked civilians, trapped police officers, or faceless mobs.

The film's treatment of revolution becomes even more striking when compared directly to the imagery it borrows from Charles Dickens and the French Revolution. Dickens portrayed revolutionary violence as horrifying but inseparable from the injustices that produced it. Nolan removes much of that causal relationship. Gotham's revolution arrives less as a social eruption than as an invasion.

Bane repeatedly speaks in the language of class liberation, yet his movement has no visible ideological infrastructure. There are no organizers, no workers, no neighborhoods, no communities, and almost no meaningful civilian participation beyond looting and spectacle. The revolution exists primarily through televised imagery: tribunals, explosions, frozen streets, and rhetorical performance. Nolan wants the iconography of revolution more than the lived social reality of it. Gotham's underclass remains strangely invisible even while supposedly taking control of the city.

The result is a revolution detached from material politics and transformed into operatic nightmare imagery. Public anger becomes aestheticized. Social collapse becomes cinematic texture. The film therefore acts less as a study of populism than as a portrait of elite fear imagining what populism might look like from inside a billionaire's nightmare.

Order Restored

What does Gotham look like when the dust settles? Exactly as it did before.

That is perhaps Nolan's most revealing political choice. The Dark Knight Rises gestures persistently toward systemic critique — acknowledging inequality, institutional rot, elite decadence, and the legitimacy of public anger — yet it cannot follow any of those threads to their democratic conclusion. The solution to Gotham's crisis is not structural reform, civic renewal, or collective action. It is Batman's return.

Every argument the film makes circles back to the same ideological center. Bruce Wayne's aristocratic authority is treated as natural and necessary. The surveillance state is validated because the threats are always just catastrophic enough to justify it. The revolution fails not because its grievances are wrong but because it was never a real revolution — just theater, orchestrated by terrorists wearing the costume of liberation. And the one character who genuinely inhabits Gotham's lower classes, who understands resentment from the inside, who resists the power structures that define everyone around her — Selina Kyle — is ultimately domesticated, folded back into the aristocratic order she once navigated from the outside. The storm she warned Bruce about arrives. And then it passes. And Gotham's ruling class is restored.

This is the worldview Dickens was willing to challenge and Nolan is not. A Tale of Two Cities portrayed revolutionary violence as horrifying but causally inseparable from the injustices that produced it. Nolan borrows Dickens's imagery — the tribunals, the frozen streets, Gordon's recitation of Sydney Carton's final words — while quietly removing the causal relationship. In Nolan's Gotham, revolution does not emerge from the bottom up. It is imported, manufactured, and imposed. The underclass never becomes a political subject. It remains an audience.

Seen from a distance, The Dark Knight Rises feels less like a coherent political statement than a portrait of a particular cultural moment's anxiety. The early 2010s produced a society struggling to process widening inequality, collapsing institutional trust, and the first serious populist rumblings of what would become a decade of political upheaval. The film absorbed all of those tensions and reflected them back — not as analysis, but as fear. Elite fear. The billionaire's nightmare of what the streets look like when the people finally decide they've had enough.

Batman wins.

The city survives.

Order is restored.

But the storm Selina Kyle warned about was never really stopped. It was only postponed.

RIP Stuart "Feedback" Andrews

noreply@blogger.com (Mike White) — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 00:24:00 +0000

I recently learned of the passing of Stuart Feedback Andrews. He was our co-host on the Adventures of Ford Fairlane episode but, more than that, he was a friend.

I don’t remember how or where I met Stuart. Despite what listeners may think, my memory, especially about myself, is rubbish. I'm sure a mutual friend must have introduced us as I have a number of friends in Toronto.

When I met Stuart he was still the host of the Rue Morgue Radio podcast. I know we had talked via email before we met in person. I’m pretty sure I met him in December 2010 where I had set up a screening of John Paizs’s Crime Wave at the Toronto Underground Cinema. If I remember right, I met up with a lot of friends including Mr. Paizs, for dinner beforehand and I was either almost or actually late because of Stuart.

Stuart could talk -- and, as evidenced by this show, so can I. We got together at the Rue Morgue HQ which, on a Saturday, was completely empty. Stuart showed me around a bit and then we sat down to talk about the book, Impossibly Funky: A Cashiers du Cinemart Collection, and mostly Quentin Tarantino for at least four hours -- if not more.

Now, that episode of Rue Morgue Radio never came out. And me, like a dope, went back again to the studio on another trip to Toronto -- that might have been 2017 but I think it was earlier. Whenever it was, I sat with Stuart again for at least another five hours where we discussed Columbo -- going through the NBC years episode by episode. Again, that was never aired. I’m not sure if either of those even got edited. Stuart was an inspiration when it came to editing as I loved how his Rue Morgue episodes would cut in sound clips, trailers, and songs as the episodes went along.

Stuart was an odd bird. I remember him complaining that Rue Morgue kicked him off the air and that they were taking all of his episodes down. He gave me a lot of details of this that I don’t want to get into too much here. I don’t really want to make any new enemies.

I don’t know why he didn’t have back-ups of all of his shows and published them himself or at least had them available for download somewhere else. Or maybe he did and just didn’t care.

He has done a radio show on CKLN-FM 88.1 and I remember even going to the studio with him either on that first time I met him or another. The show was Cinephobia Radio and he turned it into a podcast as well. I’ll admit that I had a hard time keeping Cinephobia and Rue Morgue Radio straight as Stuart had such a strong personality that they both seemed like one show.

He also had a very interesting use of language. He already had the English accent -- I think it might have been a Liverpudlian accent but he emphasized those melodic tones in his voice with his vocabulary that brought in bits of Nadsat like “Slooshy Well” or, rather than Chodes, he’d say “Chones” and double down on this with a Cinephobia episode called “Attack of the Chones”.

I always enjoyed listening to his shows despite some of the dramatics and behind-the-scenes drama that would bleed through into the episodes. I remember it took a long time before I could tolerate Stuart’s co-host, “Last Chance” Lance. I ended up meeting Lance in person once and he was a decent bloke and I wonder if he was supposed to be as obnoxious on air as he came off.

I met Lance at one of the two Fanexpo events that I was invited to. That’s where I moderated Q&A sessions one year for Orlando Jones and Danny Trejo, and the next for Christopher Lloyd. And who did I have to thank for that gig? Mr. Stuart Feedback Andrews. He looked out for me.

In 2013, Stuart was responsible for connecting me with the person who figured out that Lianne "Spiderbaby" MacDougall was a serial plagiarist just like her then-boyfriend Quentin Tarantino. Stuart gave me just enough information and forwarded enough emails for me to piece together the same evidence that Paul - is it okay to finally say it was Paul Corupe who did all the hard work for that? Anyway, it’s been 12 years. I always wanted to give Paul credit and I felt bad being something of the “public face” of unmasking the scandal but I was far enough away from it and had my reputation of being a burr under Tarantino’s butt to maintain.

Back in 2015, Stuart latched on to a story about Tarantino’s buddy, Eli Roth. 2015 was an interesting year for Roth as his cannibal movie, Green Inferno, had a US Theatrical run starting September 25, 2015 -- despite it playing the Toronto Film Fest back in 2013. He also had the remake of Death Game called Knock Knock coming out October 9, 2015.

I remember being reached out to and asked if I could please give Knock Knock ten stars on IMDb in what felt like a weird marketing effort. I definitely was going to the IMDb page for Knock Knock as I was trying to correct the credits as there were no mentions of it being a remake and based on a previous script. Though, I’d ask for people to listen to our two Death Game episodes to find out more about the writers and the antecedents for Death Game.

Anyway, there was also another marketing plan going on for Green Inferno and that was a fake petition on Change.org trying to ban the film. Stuart took to the air to debunk the petition and take the piss out of the pissed off people who were outraged by the petition, not knowing its spurious origin.

Going back to the idea of Stuart’s digital footprint, his Cinephobia episodes are in short supply. I did my best to try and even find just how many episodes he did. I know it was at least 35 but this was over a long period of tim. Maybe as long as from 2007 to 2025. It’s unclear. And just a handful of those survive.

If people have those collected or even individual episodes, please send them along and I will start an archive of them.

All of the removal of episodes or recording things and never releasing them felt like self-sabotage more than anything. Stuart had a paranoid streak and this came out in spades via the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and the COVID pandemic in 2020. Stuart and I talked to each other just a few times after that. I was still friends with him on Facebook up until at least December of 2022. I had long before ignored his posts on Facebook which kept getting more and more unhinged.

Stuart had to be right about everything he thought and that everyone was entitled to his opinion. I don’t know when he fell off or if he’d even identify as such but he became a big time anti-vaxxer. His Twitter feed is filled with things like calling Anthony Fauci a modern Mengele and terms like “Moderna Gate.” Suffice it to say, I had to cut him out of my life but I doubt he even noticed or cared.

The last I heard from him was December of 2022 when he told me this:

I live in Niagara. I work in medical cannabis and manage the building where I live (12 units). I also produced the movie PG (Psycho Goreman) which requires constant attention.

And I know I've threatened this before, but I am resurrecting my old podcast.

Going through some of this old stuff is part of the process.

But this time, it's not going to be all nice and cuddly like it was before. This time, it will be weaponized.

And he concluded with this:

I'm retiring at 77 and will completely remove myself from all public platforms.

I will die at 83.

That's the plan.

The plan didn’t work out.

Stuart passed away at 57 years old on November 23, 2025. I don’t know how he passed but I hope it was peaceful.

It was only after hearing that he went that I learned that Stuart Andrews wasn’t his real name. His musical name to his friends from his band days was Andy Feedback, and the listing for his cremation has him as Andrew Stuart Morton.

Whatever his name, he made quite an impact on my life and I appreciate all he did for me and the horror community. He loved to stir up shit, and I so liked that about him. He will be missed.

Clueless

noreply@blogger.com (Mike White) — Mon, 08 Apr 2024 11:00:00 +0000

When I was working at Federal-Mogul (later re-named DR1V after they were aquired by Tenneco -- the reason I left the company), I worked quite a bit on all of the brand websites for things like Wagner Brakes, Fel-Pro gaskets, Champion Sparkplugs, etc. My boss, Jessica, really liked the idea of each of these brands having a "Merch(andise) Store". I didn't necessarily see the point of that for most of the brands but helped get them built out anyway. I always felt that of all of the brands under the Federal-Mogul banner, Champion was the most recognizable. This was proven out when I saw an on-set photo from Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood where Brad Pitt was wearing a Champion t-shirt. I saved out the photo and sent it over to my boss as well as our social media manager.

"I don't know if they needed to get permission for this but I think it's a great opportunity for us to sell some Champion t-shirts!" I wrote to them along with details of the film and its release date. I figured they would take this information and run with it -- coming up with potential tie-ins, a social media calendar, and more. Instead, they did nothing.

I left the company shortly after that (and a few months before the July 26, 2019 release date). I kept tabs on my co-workers for a few weeks after I left (as one is wont to do). I went out to dinner with one of the guys who took over my position and I asked him for an update about the Champion Merch Store. Did they ever do anything to capitalize on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood? No. Nothing. They didn't even order extras. The style of the shirt worn by Pitt "mysteriously" sold out by August, 2019 and was never re-stocked.

I don't know when the Merch Store went away but it's not on the Champion website -- which is riddled with broken links and hasn't had its copyright updated since 2022. Looks like all of my hard work wasn't appreciated despite almost literally gift-wrapping a great idea for them. More reasons that I left.

Sick of It

noreply@blogger.com (Mike White) — Sat, 06 Apr 2024 21:42:00 +0000

I don't have anything against Karina Longworth or her podcast, You Must Remember This. I've listened to a few dozen hours of the show and apart from Longworth's delivery and over-ennunciation, I think it's a very well-researched and produced show. Am I jealous that Longworth has a staff to do the production and some of the research? Not really. Do I think she got anywhere due to her husband, Rian Johnson? Absolutely not. She's doing something right and I just wish I knew it was.

I spotlight Longworth because You Must Remember This consistently lands on lists of the best movie podcasts available. What prompted me to write this piece is that I recently read The Best New Podcasts of 2024 (so far) by Nicholas Quah from Vulture / New York magazine. Since 2015, Quah has consistently put You Must Remember This on "Best of" lists and that's his perogative. He apparently loves the show, writing about it at least 9 times over the last 9 years (potentially a lot more as not every plug is on Vulture nor is every piece on Vulture tagged "You Must Remember This"). This latest listicle stuck in my craw, however, as the episode Quah named to his "Best Podcast of 2024 (so far)" is "The Hard Hollywood Life of Kim Novak — 10th anniversary restoration" which was a "restoration" of the first episode of You Must Remember This. So, not exactly new.

The episode was (re-)published April 1, 2024. Quah's post was published on April 1, 2024. This seems very odd to me, unless this is some kind of elaborate April Fools joke.

Again, I'm not picking on Longworth or You Must Remember This. I'm not even picking on Quah. I'm complaining that there are a handful of podcasts that consistently fill these listicles which either cannibalize one another or are written by publicists in the employ of these podcasts. These shows are backed by the handful of companies control "big podcast", hosted by celebrities, or a combination of the two. Now, this may be a really bad look for me to complain about the repetition and redundancy of these lists as I've been trying to crack that secret formula of getting on one of them for 13 years. But, the "best new" label for a podcast that hadn't had an episode since October 2023 and whose first episode shows up on the day the listicle is published was just a bridge too far.

Really, it's probably just sour grapesssssss.

The State of Plagiarism 2023

noreply@blogger.com (Mike White) — Thu, 14 Dec 2023 19:41:00 +0000

No one seems to be learning a lesson from Lianne Spiderbaby. Instead, things are worse than ever -- at least on YouTube. This is a great video that looks at several YouTube "personalities" that are shamelessly copying and pasting as a career.

We Don't Use That Word Here

noreply@blogger.com (Mike White) — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 21:52:00 +0000

After my adventures with VMLY&R, I moved over to Quicken Loans. This was something I thought I'd never do. Hell, I didn't think they would have ever hired me since I've written so many bad things about Dan Gilbert (the founder of Quicken) over the years. His shenannigans had cost me a pretty penny due to some stock options I had at ePrize years before.

Regardless, somehow I snuck into Quicken -- and landed a director level position at that. Though, it was a bit odd that I was a director reporting to another director rather than a director reporting to a VP. And reporting to that VP as well.

That would change just a few months into me being there. It was a day in October 2019 when I learned that my boss, Sarah, was leaving for another company. That should have been my cue to start looking for another gig. If that wasn't it, then my complete humiliation that same day should have been.

Quicken has a weird corporate culture that tries to pretend it's not corporate. Rather than a "boss", I had a "leader." Rather than a "co-worker", we were all "team members." That same October day I was in a meeting with about 20 strangers where we were going around the table and introducing ourselves. I said, "I'm Mike White and I'm in the Experience Strategy and Design division...." Suddenly I was interrupted by a guy across the table, "We don't say that here!"

I was flummoxed, trying to replay my own words in my head. I started again... "I'm Mike White..." (Did I say that part right?) "And I'm with the ES&D group..." (Maybe he liked abbreviations rather than me saying the whole word). I could see the steam coming out of this guy's ears again when a "team member" next to me said, "We say 'team', not group or division."

I wanted to say, "You gotta be fucking kidding me." Instead I restated who I was for the third time, making sure I said "team" before the next person had their turn. I sad there, my face as red as a beet, flush with adrenaline. I wanted to jump across the table. Instead, I waited until everyone had introduced themselves before leaving the room to compose myself.

That was the beginning of the end. I just didn't know it.

I was on vacation when my boss left. When I came back I was now reporting full time to a veep named JT. He was a nice enough guy but I had a hell of a time understanding him -- as did just about everyone else. It got to the point where I started recording our conversations so I could play them back and try to make sense of them later. I also had been "tricked" a few times by hearing him say one thing but him meaning another. Not only did I have to record and play back his conversations, I had to start writing down what I had heard and send it to him no more than 24 hours after we met. Then he'd add corrections/ammendments to my notes which were meant to clarify but only made me feel like I was being gaslighted.

During one of my meetings with JT, he came out and asked if I thought I was meant to be in my position. Two weeks later he did the same thing as well as saying that I was more suited to a position a few rungs down the ladder. If not that, how about I start looking around the company for another job altogether? This freaked me the fuck out.

I ended up going to HR (of course we don't call it that, it's fancy name is "Team Relation Specialist") and they told me how I was just one of many people having issues with JT. We ended up setting up a meeting between me, JT, and his boss, Rebecca. We cleared the air a bit and JT assured me that he wasn't trying to threaten me with his suggestion... "I'm new to this culture," he would say, even after he'd been at Quicken for a year. At least my "team" faux pas was only six months after I had joined.

I kept my distance from JT as much as possible after that. He moved me literally across the floor to work with the "Partner" team. I was just starting to get into the swing of things when the global pandemic hit. Right around that time, too, I could tell that Rebecca had been busting his chops. He seemed frazzled and my HR person's assurances to "Act like JT isn't your boss," felt like they were carrying more and more weight.

When we went into the pandemic, I was still the director of UX Strategy at Quicken. JT was my boss and I had quite a few people reporting to me. JT was the kind of guy who liked to switch stuff up all the time, whether things worked or not. He would get frustrated at me because I was more of the "wait and see" person. I would do trial periods of things rather than just knee-jerk decisions that would upset the apple cart every few months. Obviously, the pandemic upset the apple cart quite a bit.

My primary concern when the pandemic hit was to try and maintain a sense of normalcy while checking in with my people quite often. I encouraged people to take time off, to not get stressed about this new world we were thrust into, and to keep me in mind if they needed to talk. I continued to be in meetings nearly 8 hours every day so I didn't feel very lonely. If anything, I was getting "Zoom Fatigue" from being on camera all day. More than half of my time was in meetings, the rest of the time was spent talking with my folks.

A few weeks into the pandemic, my HR person's advice came to fruition. No more JT as my boss. I was now reporting directly to Rebecca. One of the first conversations we had was at my review where she hand't worked with me at all and just delivered what JT had written about me. He liked to portray me as weak and indecisive.

A few months after the pandemic started I had a really bad week:

One of my reports and her reports were having a series of miscommunications. I thought I defused the situation and set up a meeting with our HR person to talk things out.
I was having a lot of issue with one of the people I worked with -- he liked to talk down to and bully my co-workers. I made mention of this to Rebecca in a meeting. "He's really good at managing projects but not so good at managing people."
A leader in another division contacted me to see about moving two people from their area over to my area. Made total sense to me and it seemed to be fitting with the plans of another director so I started that process going. There was one stipulation, that one of the people coming over would be getting a promotion. I talked to Rebecca about this and she said that no one would be coming over in a leadership position. I had to go back to the guy who was asking and tell him this -- running from one side to another like a damned middle-man. That didn't fly with him, esp. as he had told the person that they'd be getting a promotion. So, back I went to Rebecca...

"Did you not ask this question before? You're not acting like a director!" She read the the riot act about this situation which really caused by a lack of communication between Rebecca and another director. There was another major communication gap between the two that had come up that same week. Rebecca also told me that I had handled the situation with my report and her report. And, last but not least, I shouldn't have "spoken out" about the bully co-worker like I had. I felt like I was just handed the shit end of the stick and most of the shit on it was hers.

She "politely encouraged" me to step down as director and take a role as a Team Leader.

I knew this was a losing battle so I conceded.

Demotion One

The next time we spoke, two days later, she let me know what kind of pay cut I'd be getting. This was news to me.

So, I was now making $7K less than I was the week before (less than I had been making at VMLY&R), and now reporting to someone that used to report to me.

I spun it as "I'm stepping down as director to spend more time with the Partner team."

That was all well and good until the end of 2020 when we finally got a replacement for JT. More than a replacement, it was replacements. I spoke with the User Experience portion of the two-headed director just a few times one-on-one. I was often in meeting with him and his other half dicussing how we were going to reorganize the team. Funnily enough, the idea of the reorganization was exactly the same as what two of my "team mates" and I were working on. But, no one said that or gave credit where it was due.

The reorganization came and I noticed a very funny thing: no where on the presentation of the new structure could I see my name. It was like I had been fired by ommission.

No, no, no... that's overreacting of course. No, it was all clarified at 4:30 on a Friday when the two halves of the director met with me to ask where I wanted to be. "Would you rather be a UX Designer or a UX Researcher?" I made a pitch that I would be great in a QA (quality assurance) role. Nope. That was quickly brushed aside.

The next Monday I met with them again and said, "Out of the two positions, I think I'd be a better UX Designer." "Great," they said, and made me a UX Researcher.

That was when I knew I had been set up for failure.

Demotion Two

Not only was I supposed to be a UX Researcher but I was supposed to be among the best. Here was something that I hadn't done, hadn't been trained to do, and I was supposed to be great at it. "You've got thirty days and then we'll revisit this."

Spoiler alert: Thirty days passed and I never heard from them. I never had another (two on one or one on one) meeting with him again.

After I wasn't a Team Leader anymore the touch-base meetings with the whole team went away. The re-organization put people in places where I no longer saw most of my co-workers. I went from 8 hours of meetings a day to maybe 1 or 2. Nearly a year after the pandemic started, I suddenly felt the loneliness that I had tired my best to help my reports from feeling.

Sixty days later, I ended up hearing from my new boss (this is the fifth one!) who had also reported to me when they started less than a year before. I was told that I should be doing a much better job at the position I hadn't asked to be in.

Two weeks after that I saw that my boss had made some notes in my personnel area. What I read there sealed the deal. I knew that I was going to get demoted for a third time if I didn't do something soon. I learned that:

I was only taking on easy projects (I was taking on projects that were assigned to me).
I was asking for help from my fellow researchers (I thought this was called collaboration).
I was ignoring my boss's feedback (I had acted on every point they ever gave me).
I wasn't presenting things at our weekly learning sessions (as I'm learning the job myself, I didn't feel like I could contribute anything).

I found out in this post to my record that I had been given a verbal warning (the first of three steps in firing). I didn't know I got a verbal warning. Again, I felt like I was beign set-up.

I began looking for a new job in earnest.

I managed to get a job with Quicken's biggest competitor in the "Partner" space. I had heard that anyone who moved there would be "dead to" the rest of the team so I held my tongue after I put in my two week's notice.

That is, until my exit interview.

The Exit Interview

I wanted to unload all of the above and more at my exit interview but didn't. I thought I'd go out gracefully. No use burning bridges. Plus, nothing I would say would be taken seriously. I was just bitter and holding a grudge, right?

So, I let it slip in my exit interview where I was going. That was at 2PM yesterday.

At 3PM I missed a few messages via Teams from my boss and their boss -- the same one who wanted to connect after I put in my notice but never made the effort to actually do it.

This morning when I got up, I was excited for my last day at Quicken. I was going to clean up my laptop before sending it back, say goodbye to the Partner team at 11:45AM and then have a lunch with my fellow UX people at noon to say goodbye to them.

That was the plan.

The reality was that when I got up at 9:24 (why not sleep in, it's my last day?), I had a 9:30 meeting waiting for me with my boss.

When I signed in, I found her and another HR person waiting. Without any explanation I was told that I was no longer needed at Quicken. I was to sign off as soon as the meeting was over and close my computer. This was less than three hours before my farewell lunch and basically I was getting fired on my last day. At least, that's how it felt.

The day I got humiliated for not saying "team" should have been the beginning of the end but, after all that, I ended up exactly where JT wanted a year and a half before. It felt like he had been working behind-the-scenes the whole time to bring his plan to fruition. I know that sounds paranoid but I know my boss's boss spent a lot more time talking to JT than he ever did to me.

It was a dick move but not out of character.

The Clay Files

noreply@blogger.com (Mike White) — Tue, 04 Feb 2020 14:26:00 +0000

Here's a little story I had to write (to document) at my last job. Enjoy!

I had heard rumors about Clay Carpenter before I started here at TPM (Taylor Properties Main), one of many satellite offices of the Ford Motor Company. Almost more than making cars, Ford is really good at owning real estate and they certainly have quite a lot of it around Metro Detroit.

While I knew of Clay by his reputation, I did my best to come at him with no preconceived notions. My presence at TPM was meant to signal a new day; a breath of fresh air. At 46, going on 47, with 20+ years in the web world, I was supposed to bring an air of experience and a calm demeanor.

However, it’s been difficult to remain the calm center of the universe. Clay’s reputation, it seems, is well-earned.

At 38 going on 39, Clay has the demeanor of a teenager. I find it difficult to not treat him like a very junior designer. I am constantly surprised that his demeanor has allowed him to progress to where he is in his career. Clay has a habit of starting every sentence with an exclamation: “Look!” he’ll say before launching into a pedantic explanation of why he has the best ideas and that everyone around him is wrong.

In particular, Clay feels that VMLY&R – the company for which I work – is a useless organization and has the incorrect impression that VMLY&R are interlopers who have insinuated themselves into the Ford Motor Company organization and add no value to the work being done. This first became evident toward the end of March 2019, when the team on which we both work was asked to participate in an exercise in “board building.”

If you’re not familiar with the advertising / marketing world, there’s an idea that the best way to garner feedback and insight is to deal not in the abstract but the concrete by physically presenting one’s work and ideas. This is done most often by taking a “gator board” – a large (roughly 7’ by 4’) black foam core board on which you tape actual pieces of paper that can include drawings, wireframes, designs, user flows, ideas, etc. These can and should be marked up or littered with sticky notes featuring comments, ideas, etc. It’s something like an open dialogue that can help shape the overall trajectory of a project. It’s like a living brainstorm.

As the gator boards began appearing in our area and pages were being hung, I received a rather large earful from Clay about how this is not how Ford does things. I told him that that was the idea. It’s the way VMLY&R – and just about every other creative agency – does things and it’s helpful for dialogue. Also, it was something that we (VMLY&R) wanted to do before a few upcoming meetings with some of the higher-ups at Ford.

As I hadn’t really been properly introduced to the project on which I was working I began the process of tracking down all of the background information so that I could speak intelligently to it and build the board as Clay was not willing to lift a finger to help.

I began soliciting the help of various members of the VMLY&R strategy team. On March 28 I was sent an incredibly helpful deck describing the overall idea to overhaul the vehicle service process and where the work I had been doing fit in to the big picture. I went over this deck with one member of the strategy team via the phone and physically met with two others (on April 3) for more insights.

I worked with another member of my team, Aravindh Baskaran, to help locate other insights about the research that had been done around the project. As we talked together about this, Clay couldn’t help but interject into our conversation that VMLY&R’s research was incomplete and that only Ford’s research has merit. He asserted that VMLY&R had not done anything. I tried to correct this by saying that VMLY&R had initially come together with Ford to craft the research and strategy. He didn’t think that was the case and seemed to get angry that I was trying to find out more information.

This incident was coupled with another one a few days prior where Aravindh had suggested that we speak to a strategist about another project that we had both been working on – Service History. We both wanted to know how this project would operate on both the FordPass (App) channel as well as the Ford website.

I am always frustrated to learn that multiple people or teams are working on the same project and not sharing information. To that end, I’m always searching for as many pieces of the puzzle as possible before diving in to form the larger picture.

Again, this idea incensed Clay. He also interjected into this discussion of the Service History conversation that he had already come up with everything that was needed for it and proceeded to bring up a drawing that he had shown me a few times before. I assured him that he had done a great job with this but that I wanted to see who else was working on the same thing. I tried to make him a partner in this, “I’m sure you’ve seen how different teams might all be working on the same thing. I want to make sure that your vision of this process is known. You’ve already done so much work on it, I don’t want it to be lost…”. This didn’t appease him. This was March 27. Clay didn’t speak to me on March 28 or 29.

To clarify, I was doing my due diligence to locate as much information as possible about the projects on which I was working. I was reaching out to people who knew more about things than I did, or that might have information that could further enhance these projects.

I got to work on my gator board March 29. As soon as work began, Clay got up from our desk (we share a very small workspace) and wasn’t seen again for the rest of the day. Aravindh was very helpful, getting everything printed for me as I don’t have access to the printers at TPM.

The following week (April 3) I had heard that “the designers” would be presenting the boards to the Ford client at 7:45 AM on April 5. “I’m not presenting anything,” Clay assured me. “Friday is my day to sleep in.” I told him that that would be fine and that I could speak to the work “we” had done. However, Clay was singing a different tune just a few hours later at our weekly team meeting where he presented concerns about me presenting to the Ford client.

“Mike doesn’t know anything about this project,” he asserted. “What if Jamie (the client) asks him something and he doesn’t know the answer?” He quickly rallied two other Ford employees to his side and eventually bullied his way into presenting the board – on which he had had no input – two days later.

The next morning, April 4, I was given the silent treatment again.

The meeting with the Ford client went pretty well. When Jamie asked about the future of the project, I showed him some of the examples of the next steps that came from the strategy deck on the gator board. Then I turned the proceedings over to Clay.

The strangest part of that morning was when Clay started talking to Jamie about the Service History project and requested five minutes of his time to go over the aforementioned picture that Clay likes to show about it.

Going back a bit, I had heard from the two aforementioned strategists that while I had been working on my main project that there was also a group of people who had “submerged” themselves in the same project. They were in what we call “a submarine” – away from the fray of Ford and solely dedicated to exploration of a single subject. This was the same kind of swirling that I had been afraid of. Rather than just plunge ahead with our assumptions, I reached out to one of the people who had been in the submarine, Jeff Huber, to see if I could get a debrief and include his learnings in the work I was doing.

I set up a meeting with Jeff to talk about the project. Clay heard about me doing this and told me that he needed to be at the meeting. I’m not used to having a designer following me to every meeting, especially when I’m on a fact-finding mission. This takes some getting used to in this environment. I forwarded the meeting invitation to Clay, but he didn’t get it. Rather than realize that VMLY&R employees can’t forward Ford invites to Ford employees, he thought I was trying to exclude him. I told him what room I was going to be in, but this wasn’t good enough. He wanted that invite.

He also wanted me to invite his boss, Sumanth Muthyala, to the meeting. I was hesitant to have too many people in the meeting. This wasn’t supposed to be a big production but a rather simple conversation. Clay has a way of wheedling and being aggressive at the same time. He was insistent on Sumanth’s inclusion. Again, I tried to forward the invite from Jeff Huber but it wouldn’t go through. Clay even watched as I forwarded the invitation. Finally, at the end of the day, I set up my own invitation and sent it to Sumanth and Clay.

The meeting with Jeff Huber on April 9 went well, though he has yet to share the information from his “submarine” (as of April 17). Though Clay took over the meeting about half-way through to again show his Service History drawing and turn the meeting into a Service History discussion rather than sticking to the intent of the meeting.

Through the project that I had been on as well as another Aravindh project I realized that there were two concurrent discussions of how users of FordPass would receive reminders for service due. One project had users getting calendar reminders while another gives users getting in-app “push” reminders. I decided that we should test the two ideas and see which users preferred. I began working on how these two things compared and contrasted while also telling the product owner of my current project that we should shelve the reminder process until the user testing results were in.

When I informed Clay of this, he got very close to my face and told me that I was wrong to want to formally test these ideas. “We should go down to the first floor and grab twenty people and find out what they like. I’ve done this tons of times before.” I asked if there was any proper documentation or survey process that he might have archived to help me set up such an ad-hoc process. He had none.

Clay was so insistent and so forward with his firm opinions that I felt shaken the rest of the day, as if I had been assaulted. I didn’t fear any physical violence, but I felt cowed by him. I wanted to get out of the building and get away from Clay.

I met later with Aravindh to discuss proper user testing and we have since pursued a path with several people to determine the various user testing platforms available to us from surveys to more formal tests. This is still in process as of this writing. I’m waiting for Clay to find out that we want to do things the right way rather than the quick way and getting up in my face again. Even as I’m writing these words, I’m getting a bit of a stomach ache at the thought.

On Tuesday April 6, Clay went on a fascinating tirade about those darned gator boards. When Juan Castro came over to my desk to ask Aravindh and me how long we would need to update boards for monthly meetings with the aforementioned Ford client, Jamie. This set Clay off. He began railing against the boards, saying that several people had come to him and told him that they looked like “grade school projects” and that his boss had charged him with improving the board process. Why not use PowerPoint?

Juan pointed out that PowerPoint is not a public thing and does not invite the collaboration of the boards. Clay countered that boards were a waste of time and that he spent sixteen hours working on them. I don’t know if I laughed out loud at this outright lie or managed to maintain my composure. As Juan and Clay went over to the boards I do remember saying, “If this wasn’t so pathetic it might be funny.” Clay railed against the placement of items on the boards, insisting it was undignified to have items so low on the board that one might have to squat to see things.

This “discussion” went on for at least 20 minutes. I really had hoped that Juan would say, “These make your boss’s boss’s boss’s boss happy so that should be good enough for you.”

But, no, Clay knows better than all of us.

When Clay hasn’t fucked off to places unknown in the office, he’s often working projects that are unfamiliar to me. I found out recently that Clay claims to be part of the Innovation Team. This runs counter to what I was told initially that he’s a dedicated resource to the projects on which I’m working. Though, to be honest, there’s not enough to keep either of us busy during the day. Eventually some projects will be transitioned to us but even those run at a snail’s pace.

For every ounce of work, there’s a pound of reviews and opinions.

Since I’ve been at TPM I’ve primarily worked on a single aspect of the FordPass application. This has branched into a few side conversations as noted above such as in-app reminders, scheduling, and even button shapes and sizes. All of these are things that should be vetted before implementation though Ford has troubles with testing insofar as there’s one guy who is allegedly in charge of testing, Mark Duer, but there’s a lack of trust in his ability to actually get the work done.

Jeff Huber describes Mark’s work as “a black hole” into which projects go but never come out. In the meantime, I’m also trying to work with my own team regarding testing while also being told that Sumanth Muthyala is also taking up test organization. This feels like more of the “Ford on Ford Crime” that I’ve heard about since joining VMLY&R. It’s something we desperately try to cut through but it’s often like running one’s head against a brick wall.

I know this is supposed to be a documentation about working with Clay, but I have to say that the whole TPM / FordPass experience is pretty screwed up.

In Mid-April there was a gathering to let everyone on FordPass know that there would be a switch-up of teams of who was working on what. This seemed a completely arbitrary decision and was not communicated well with the people doing the work. Likewise, the roll-out of these new teams has been haphazard at best.

I started receiving emails about something called “Hydra.” (Hail, Hydra). A few weeks later I was added to a group on Slack called “Orion.” These are apparently code names for two of the teams I was suddenly on. I was never introduced to the team leaders and have yet to get any invitation to a physical meeting with the Orion team. Meanwhile, I keep meeting with the Hydra team and what they’re working on seems to have nothing to do with what I’m working on or have been assigned to do. Color me confused.

Two of the projects to which I’ve allegedly been assigned deal with insurance and integrating it with the FordPass application. I’m having a really difficult time with at least one of those projects which is meant to help users when they’ve had an accident to document the accident, call for help, etc. The interface is complicated, and the core idea seems flawed. It feels like FordPass is trying to intrude on a user’s life, not help them. Likewise, it’s another case where FordPass is trying to be all things to all people.

The App as it stands wants to do things that other Apps do better. There are maps, guides, and the weather (for just that moment). I already have Google Maps, Yelp, and a weather app on my phone. I don’t need FordPass for that. Allegedly there are many more things that the App can do but even as a Ford owner, I can’t see these things. Meanwhile, the testing tool that I have been promised since day one at TPM still has yet to come through meaning that I’m flying blind most of the time, unable to see various user scenarios and the actual interaction of the interface. This kind of thing exemplifies the divide between VMLY&R and Ford.

Another example of the “bass ackwardsness” of the whole TPM/Ford set-up is the need to have two laptops. There’s the VMLY&R laptop which can do 99% of tasks and then there’s the Ford laptop which does 1%. On the Ford laptop I can print, and I can read my Ford email. In order to do anything, I have to keep switching from the Ford WiFi to their Public WiFi because proxies have not been set up. This means that I usually save all of my printing for Fridays when I go to the VMLY&R office – though over there I can only print 8 ½” x 11” as a lot of the other printer functions are locked out to VMLY&R employees. This just give the impression that everything is being held together by masking tape and bubblegum.

And, I suppose, the real kicker of it all goes back to our good friend Clay. He’s not someone conducive to a good team environment nor is he really that good of a worker on more “menial” projects.

After we had an employee who walked out after six days at TPM, there was a concerted effort to circle the wagons and figure out what’s wrong here and if the situation can be fixed. It took a few weeks, but we had a “team building event” happen on May 1. It took a little bit for some of my fellow VMLY&R folks to realize that this was related to the walk-out, though I’m not sure it’s important that they did. Some people thought a “team building event” would be something like whirlyball or a customer experience workshop. Instead, it was partially the customer experience workshop and partially a bitch session about sins of the past.

There were three people at the workshop that I had never met before. These folks were from the “Innovation Team.” Color me surprised when the next day Clay told me that he’s a member of the Innovation Team. That finally explained some of the work that he’d been doing, though his statement doesn’t pass the sniff test.

There’s a lot about Clay that doesn’t pass “the sniff test.” He always strikes me a sneaky guy. He’s like Eddie Haskell but so many people see through his act in seconds – at least that’s the case with VMLY&R people. After we had our “team building event” I was told that the VMLY&R moderator easily picked out my “little buddy” after just a few minutes into the proceedings.

If Clay being the sore thumb wasn’t obvious at the start of the meeting, it was clear by the end when we went around the room saying how we were feeling. “Hopeful,” “Energized,” those were some of the words being bandied about until we got to Clay who brought down the entire room with one phrase, “Déjà vu.” He felt like all of these issues had been brought up and discussed before, so he managed to deflate everything. Rather than discussing this, the group was already dispersing. This is something that should have been addressed right then and there either with the group or between Clay and the organizers. Instead, it was just another act of Clay being pithy and not facing any consequences.

There are the issues with the team structures, the pace of work, the core functionality of the App itself, the bureaucracy, and more. It’s not just a Clay thing but he doesn’t make anything easier. If Clay wasn’t part of the FordPass app team, I don’t know how much better things would be. There’s still the awful lack of personal space – I had some of my things disappear because they were apparently inconveniencing someone.

Not having a spot to call one’s own at work is an odd feeling. I’ve never “hotelled” before at work. When I return to the VMLY&R office I feel welcomed by both the people and my desk. It’s great to have a mug for coffee, a few toys, a couple of decorations, and just a place to call my own. At TPM I get about six inches of space on either side of my computer -- things constantly threaten to fall off my desk onto the person’s next to me or intrude into Clay’s spot. Likewise, his stuff is always infringing on my area but it’s easy to do when even having a sheet of paper in one’s area can violate boundaries.

Having my stuff disappear (thrown away) was more upsetting than it should have been. Why should I get bent out of shape about losing a few protein bars and the cup I use to make my daily shakes? Probably because it feels like a little violation and yet another sense of invalidating me as a person. Yes, there are lockers here at TPM and I have taken over one of them though these tiny lockers get pretty full between one’s coat and bag. It’s typical of the lack of space at TPM.

For a while it was discussed that the VMLY&R people (and their Ford counterparts) would get a space of their own at TPM - someplace to brainstorm and collaborate. And, when I first got to TPM I sat at a desk that had three other VMLY&R people. Unfortunately with the team rejiggering people were dispersed across the floor, most of them too to see from where I sit.

On May 14, Clay spent a good 20 minutes trying to tell me about a vast Masonic conspiracy that has infiltrated the music world. “Look at this triangle on this Steve Miller album! And over here on Dark Side of the Moon. Even Justin Bieber has a triangle tattoo…” This reminds me that Clay allegedly moved from Wisconsin to Michigan to meet his wife after he had a dream about her and was inexplicably drawn to work at a company where his “dream woman” just happened to be. That sounds like a stalker situation to me, “You’re the girl of my dreams…” Man, what a creep.

Speaking of creep… Just last week I was on a personal call and Clay messaged me via Slack to ask me where I was. I told him and let him know when I would be done. Instead of waiting, he just barged into the room, plopped his ass in a chair, and listened to my half of the conversation. Whenever I would speak he’d respond as if I was talking to him.

Every day I was set to go into TPM I would wake up the night before at 3AM and not fall back into a peaceful sleep. I dreaded heading back into that place. I dreaded seeing and interacting with Clay. There was such a relief when I would come in and his chair would be empty. That hour/hour and a half I would get in before he would arrive was the only time I felt I could really get any work done. Otherwise I had Clay in my shit almost all day. It got to the point where I couldn’t even wear headphones and listen to music while I worked. Every time I would put them on, Clay would start talking to me -- almost like he was just waiting for it. It was like a bad “Saturday Night Live” skit. Then again, are there good “Saturday Night Live” skits anymore?

I ended up putting in my notice and Clay ended up ostensibly being promoted.

Pigs Continue To Fly

noreply@blogger.com (Mike White) — Mon, 31 Dec 2018 23:02:00 +0000

Artwork by Waldemar von Kozak.

Cult Documentary Survival Of The Film Freaks to Premiere at HorrorHound Film Festival

noreply@blogger.com (Mike White) — Thu, 02 Aug 2018 14:09:00 +0000

August 6, 2018 – How does cult cinema survive and thrive in the 21^st century? This notion will be explored when Survival of the Film Freaks has its World Premiere at HorrorHound Weekend Film Festival (#H2F2), Sunday August 26 at 11AM CST in Indianapolis, IN.

Joe Bob Briggs, Ted Raimi and Adam Green are just a few of the familiar faces that you'll see in this documentary that is both a love letter to and in-depth study of "cult."

"It's a wonderful, full-circle feeling," says co-director Kyle Kuchta. "Bill and I both started our respective professional careers at horror conventions; that's actually how we met. So to be able to premiere our film at one of the biggest conventions in the country feels amazing."

Kuchta was directing Fantasm, a documentary about horror conventions when he met Bill, the host of the cult film podcast Outside The Cinema.

"Ever since I was a young kid I always remember being fascinated by the idea of weird and wonderful films," Fulkerson states. "So after over two years of work, it's really exciting to premiere the flick, especially for a group of like-minded individuals. It makes me happier than the VHS box art for The Barbarians."

Film Freaks will be premiering in good company that weekend. #H2F2 will also include the world premiere of the Joe Dante-produced Camp Cold Brook, screenings of horror favorites Jason Goes To Hell and The Lost Boys, and more. The film festival is part of HorrorHound Weekend, and all details about the convention can be found here.

Keep up on everything at the Survival of the Film Freaks Facebook page.

It's The (Gasp!) Rondo Boys Club

noreply@blogger.com (Mike White) — Sat, 24 Feb 2018 04:01:00 +0000

It's awards season, ladies and gentlemen, and this always brings to mind the questions of legitimacy and purpose for awards overall.

I've given my share of awards over the years. As a judge at the MicroCineFest I often encouraged my fellow jury members to go beyond the standard "Best Feature" and "Best Short" to come up with many unusual awards, knowing that sometimes that laurel leaf design wrapped around "Best Whatever" can often give a filmmaker a shot at being in another festival or even garnering something greater. I'm not saying that we single-handedly helped Rian Johnson land the Star Wars: The Last Jedi gig but... we didn't. His Evil Demon Golf Ball from Hell was in the 1997 program before the festival had awards.

Regardless, awards can be helpful. Movies that are nominated for Academy Awards can suddenly regain box office momentum. This "seal of approval" from peers earmarks a work or a person as being special, of being noteworthy.

I have a love-hate relationship with the Academy Awards. I watch the show religiously though I am not necessarily invested in it. I don't rush out to see all of the Academy Award-nominated films in hopes of winning my Oscar pool by knowing which films, performances, audio editing, or costumes truly deserve to walk home with an award.

I think back to Dustin Hoffman railing against the Academy Award for which he was a winner in 1980 (for 1979's Kramer Vs. Kramer):

I'm up here with mixed feelings. I've been critical of the Academy, and for reason. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to be able to work.[...]I refuse to believe that I beat Jack Lemmon, that I beat Al Pacino, that I beat Peter Sellers. I refuse to believe that Robert Duvall lost. We are a part of an artistic family. There are sixty thousand actors in this Academy – pardon me – in the Screen Actors Guild, and probably a hundred thousand in Equity. And most actors don't work, and a few of us are so lucky to have a chance to work with writing and to work with directing. Because when you're a broke actor you can't write; you can't paint; you have to practice accents while you're driving a taxi cab. And to that artistic family that strives for excellence, none of you have ever lost and I am proud to share this with you. And I thank you.

And that brings me to the Rondo Awards. The website states: "Since 2002, the Rondo's have been fandom’s only classic horror awards — decided by fans, for fans." Let me say up front that The Projection Booth podcast - which I have co-hosted for seven years now - has been nominated five times. Also let me say that The Projection Booth is not necessarily a "horror podcast". The name of the Rondo Awards is officially "The Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards". A better name would probably be "The Rondo Hatton Genre Awards" where "genre" typically gets translated these days into Science Fiction, Horror, and Fantasy.

Take a look at the nominations this year for "Best Film of 2017" and you'll find films like Blade Runner 2049, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Justice League, Thor: Ragnarok, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, War for the Planet of the Apes, and Wonder Woman. Those clearly are not horror films.

What's stranger is the second part of the Rondo credo: "decided by fans, for fans." The nomination and voting process of the Rondos is murky at best. I'm not asking for Price Waterhouse Coopers to oversee the process but a little more transparency would be nice. As it is, the nominations seem to come from the Classic Horror Film Board. I don't want to cast aspersions upon the members of this particular forum but they seem to be rather myopic.

The man behind the Rondos, David Colton, says: "It's an imperfect process, obviously, but we try the best we can to represent the best each year. [...] there's so much out there that sometimes things fall through the cracks."

While that may account for a few things getting by Colton and the 8600 members of the Classic Horror Film Board, it seems very odd that almost an entire gender escaped notice this year. When the Rondo Nominees were announced on February 18, 2018 there was a glaring gender gap.

This year's Rondos have 29 categories. Of those, six are strictly write-in categories, leaving 23 with nominations. Of those 23, roughly a dozen recognize individual achievements (categories like "Best Blog" or "Best Multimedia" can be argued to be group efforts). Of those, there were only seven that had a single female nominee of any kind and only one that had two or more female nominees (Best Short Film).

This caused a small uproar on Facebook, leading to the addition of two more nominations -- one in the Best Commentary category and one in the Book of the Year category. Yet, this felt like a case of "too little, too late."

Traditionally, people picture the stereotypical nerd living in his mom's basement as the the kind of person that would be interested in the horror genre but that is an outdated and incorrect. Shock of all shocks, there's even been a concerted effort to shed a light on women in horror with the aptly titled Women in Horror month!

Setting aside the gender gap for a second, let's look at the nominees overall and ask if they're even worthy of being in the running. Some of them are doing fantastic work but among their ranks are several writers, producers, podcasters, etc. who are just "phoning it in" and getting awarded for their flagrant mediocrity. Let us not forget that Lianne Spiderbaby is a Rondo Award winner. She could get a nomination (and win) while the people she ripped off for her articles and YouTube show did not: Lianne wasn't cribbing from the handful of consistent Rondo-nominees that have shown up time and again since the 2002 inception.

Where are the people who are doing the work? Putting in the hours, pounding the pavement, providing quality research into the horror genre? Where are Amanda Reyes, Heather Buckley, Bill Ackerman, James Gracey, Kier-la Janisse, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Chris Hallock, and Heather Drain? Where's The Cultural Gutter website and the Daughters of Darkness podcast? That's just a cursory list. I can't even say that I am a "Monster Kid" and those are just a few names that come to mind. The people who know horror will know these names and many more. These aren't the kind of people to nominated themselves on the Rondo thread (which I saw repeatedly when just taking a cursory glance). They're too busy actually busting their butts to do the work and then don't get kudos when the time comes for the farkakte nominations get announced.

If David Colton and the guys who provide the nominations need help, I suggest they join a few Facebook groups and follow some sites. As it is, I'm a casual fan and seem to know more of what's going on than these ardent fans. Or, is it just that they don't care? Or, is Facebook too new of a medium? Are they stuck with forum groups? I mean, the awards themselves still rely on antiquated things like "Email me your votes" rather than any kind of real online tabulation system. It would be nice to know who's actually getting votes. But, again, that's transparency and that's not what the Rondos are about.

Going beyond the bigger question of "should there even be awards?" I want to ask:

Who did the Rondos miss for work that appeared in 2017?
Who should get a little notice that hasn't?
And, should you even bother writing them in or are the Rondos just a sham?

This rant will likely preclude me from getting another ill-conceived nomination for a Rondo Award but, as Groucho Marx said, "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member."

Update: Apparently this piece along with some better sentiments have managed to touch a nerve. Mr. Colton writes:

I hesitate to do this, because if you have to list the women we've nominate then yup, there must be a problem (which there is). But just for those who might not know, this year's Rondo ballot includes: directors Jovanka Vuckovic, Annie Clark, Roxanne Benjamin, Karyn Kusama, Natalie James, Izzy Lee, along with writers, artists and pros like Sheena Joyce, Susan Svehla, Heather Wilson, Samm Deighan, Kat Ellinger, Deborah Painter, Tiffany DuFoe, Holly Interlandi, Stacey Asip-Kneischel, Andrea Subassati, Amanda Reyes, Laura Wagner, Sara Deck, Elvira, Graveyard Shift Sisters, Women in Horror Month, Etheria Film Festival, Rebekah McKendry, Homicidal Homemaker, Joanne Fulton, Vanessa Harryhausen, Susan Sarandon, Arachna, Marlena Midnite, Robyn, Penny Dreadful, Clizia Gussoni, Sara Karloff, Nancy Allen.

Past Rondo winners have included Jovanka Vuckovic, Kier-La Janisse, April Snellings (Writer of the Year, 2016), Jessie Lilley, Donna Lucas, Marian Clatterbaugh, Kathy Burns, Julie Adams, Lorraine Bush, Hannah Neurotica, Jackie Blaisdell, Vicki Smeraldi, Sue Howison, Sara Karloff, Vampira, Elvira, Linda Wylie, Trish Geiger, Rhonda Steerer, Debbie Rochon, Heather Buckley, Alycia Forum, Victoria Price.

Me thinks he doth protest too much. I also wonder if all of those winners even add up to half the total of Rondos that Tim Lucas has won over the years.

Also please note that even more things have been added to the list since I wrote this piece yesterday.

Tarantino Tales

noreply@blogger.com (Mike White) — Sun, 07 Jan 2018 00:30:00 +0000

As I mentioned way back when the Lianne Spiderbaby scandal broke, I'm the guy that people bring their Tarantino news to. I'm also the guy people bring their wild stories to.

The "take down" of men who have been accused of sexual misconduct has also brought about some incredible conspiracy theories as well. "Look at who's being accused! They're lower level nobodies, no one who's making Hollywood any significant bank these days. They're all sacrificial lambs while the real criminals carry on..."

Couple those two things and I've gotten an in-box full of Tarantino Tales that implicate him as a sexual predator -- specifically against Death Proof actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead -- and that his disavowal of Harvey Weinstein was nothing more than a smoke screen and that Sony is now protecting Tarantino from any accusations of misconduct now that he's in pre-production on his Manson film.

Let's not forget that Quentin Tarantino was dating Mira Sorvino -- playing a role in getting her in The Replacement Killers, which was right around the time Peter Jackson was in pre-production for Lord of the Rings. Some say this was an orchestrated revenge against Sorvino on Tarantino's behalf. ("Some say" is that same kind of crappy phrase Trump uses like "People are saying...").

There are also "casting couch" stories in regard to all of the movies that Tarantino has bandied about but never made: the Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill remake, the Vega Brothers movie, etc. But, again, those are rumors. Baseless accusations.

While these allegations against Tarantino have yet to come to light, they still may. However, I've also been treated to some stories about Tarantino that Alex Jones may find far-fetched.

Let it be said right now that I don't think that these hold any water. I don't think that Quentin Tarantino gave Roger Avary a spiked drink, leading to a fatal car crash nor do I think that Harvey Weinstein pushed Tarantino's long-time editor Sally Menke off a cliff while Tarantino video taped it, in order to make a snuff film to which he could masturbate later. Quentin Tarantino may be a lot of things but I don't see him as a Bond villain-level mastermind committing a string of crimes.

I don't even buy him throwing Hadrian Belove to the wolves as Cinefamily is a digital threat to the analog New Beverly; or doing the same to Harry Knowles because Knowles no longer serves a purpose. No, I see Tarantino as a guy who likes to hole up in his house and smoke too much dope.

I also don't see Harvey Weinstein as a serial killer who had both Philip Seymour Hoffman and Robin Williams killed. This seems the definition of "fake news" and batshit crazy.

I'm sure not what to think about Robert Rodriguez's involvement in the Weinstein story. The casting of Rose McGowan in the notorious Grindhouse project presents some problems especially when I remember that Rodriguez cheated on his wife with McGowan before he abruptly broke up with her.

And what role does Amber Tamblyn play in all this? She allegedly encouraged Quentin Tarantino to "come clean" about what he knew about Harvey Weinstein but it all seems overly-calculated. This is both show and business.

I don't see it as any coincidence that Bryan Singer was removed from Bohemian Rhapsody right before being sued for sexual assault.

Now I am starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist but I will say that not only do I think we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg in regard to the mechanisms of the entertainment industry but that what we've read reeks of pre-approved studio releases.

There's absolutely no journalistic integrity to this blog post so it shouldn't be considered news. Consider it a bit of "pulp fiction" as it were. If there are hard facts out there to support any of these things, it's improbable they'll ever come to light but stranger things have happened.

Shanghai Diary: Three Weeks Later

noreply@blogger.com (Mike White) — Sat, 06 Jan 2018 23:30:00 +0000

It may sound like I'm exaggerating but not an hour goes by without thinking of Shanghai.

I won't give my usual list of what I miss -- food, people, etc. One of the strangest things that I miss was everyone around me speaking Mandarin. When I was over there I went out to lunch a few times with co-workers and they would speak to one another most of the time, leaving me out of the conversation and just speaking to each other in their native tongue. I have more experience with this than I might like.

Just today I was at lunch with three of my American co-workers and they were speaking to one another and leaving me out of the conversation. They were speaking another language -- or might as well have been. They were talking about sports of one kind or another. Football, mostly, and some hockey too, I think. I honestly could make out more from listening to the conversations in Mandarin. Plus, it was a little less aggravating to hear the Mandarin.

Having all of those conversations going on around me in Mandarin made my life a lot easier. Not knowing what was being said was akin to being able to just tune things out. Too often I'll be in public and my ears seem to pick out a single speaker -- someone annoying -- and can only hear them, even louder than my companion(s). I didn't have that problem in Shanghai.

Being here in the subzero temperatures of Michigan and seeing the 40-60 degree temperatures in Shanghai also make things a bit painful as well.

Being in the nicer weather and being in the big city lead to a lot more physical activity than I've been capable of doing over here. The good news, I suppose, is that I didn't gain much weight when I was there -- despite being so freaked out about not being able to maintain my diet. When I went in for a weigh-in I had only gained three pounds.

I've gotten a lot of compliments at work over the last week. However, every time that happens I realize that I'm only halfway there. One hundred pounds down, one hundred to go. And then it'll be time to maintain that weight.

I keep trying to think of a way to talk the powers-that-be at work into sending me back but I can't seem to find the right combination of words yet to make that happen. In the meantime, I'm just slightly miserable.

Shanghai Diary: Melon!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike White) — Mon, 18 Dec 2017 00:05:00 +0000

I'm back in the U.S. With everything that's been going on, I'm amazed the place is still standing. One of my relatives said, "I'm glad you back safe and sound," and I couldn't help say, "Yeah, especially with all the mass shootings that have happened since I've been gone."

I wrapped up work on Thursday and sent all of my Thank You emails to the folks in Shanghai (and even some in Southfield). Eileen came over to give me a drive with some videos on it for work and told me that she had a going-away present for me. She was having it delivered from her home town (found out that it wasn't kuai di but delivered halfway by her brother and the other half by her husband. It's a picture under glass of a panda made with human hair. That might sound gruesome to some folks but I love the long history of hair art.

We agreed to meet for dinner the next night. We went to a place that Serena had picked out where she felt I could get the most traditional Shanghai food before I left: Xiaolongbo, Hong Shao Rou, Sea Cucumber, and more.

I was scheduled to fly out Saturday at 12:20 PM but the flight kept getting pushed back until I got notification Saturday morning that the flight was delayed until 5:15 PM. That gave me another five hours in Shanghai.

As the Didi left my apartment for the airport, the weight of emotion hit me and I started crying. I thought about my trip to the UK when I was a teenager and how much I wanted to get back to the U.S. back then and how much I wanted to stay in Shanghai now. This depression hit me again on the flight and even last night as I lay in my own bed after three months. I'm fighting it back now as I write. I didn't expect to fall in love but I did.

And speaking of love, apparently the people on WeChat love eating melon because it keeps coming up in different sticker sets. Here's a small example:

And I wanted to have a shot of a bunch of Ele.me guys but I got this one of a bunch of other delivery guys hanging out:

Now I'm back and I'm trying to get my groove back. I've decided that I'm going to do another purge of books, CDs, DVDs, etc. I didn't miss any of these things when I was away so I don't really need them. I'm also getting back on the horse of weight loss. I don't think I gained much if any weight there and now I can get back to ordering and eating the right food for me. And, I'm going to do everything in my power to get back to Shanghai. I only had a few people from the U.S. tell me they missed me.

That brings me to the stunted conclusion of this diary. I'm sure I'll return to it and soon. I'm doing everything I can to not be that guy who says, "Well, ya know, in China they..." about everything.

Shanghai Diary: So Long and Thanks for All the Pork

noreply@blogger.com (Mike White) — Mon, 11 Dec 2017 05:54:00 +0000

Yesterday I went back to IAPM mall and met with Dan Katz, a Projection Booth listener from L.A. who's now living and working (as a teacher) in Shanghai. He graciously asked if he could take my scooter off my hands. I was so sad to say goodbye to the machine that's provided me freedom to roam the streets of Pudong and get me to and from work most of my days here.

Saturday I met up with Serena and we went to the China Mobile office to reduce me phone package to the minimum to keep my number going. I'm trying to be optimistic that I'll be back to Shanghai. I'm also going to be keeping money in my ICBC account in order to autopay my phone bill every month. It's amazing how inexpensive phone service is over here. I'm paying maybe 100 RMB a month presently and I'm reducing to 18 RMB a month. That's going from about $16 to $3 USD. Meanwhile for two lines in the US I'm paying $160 USD.

We stopped at "Hey Juice" for a Coconut drink afterward. Hey Juice don't make it bad...

The final in my "photos on the way home" series:

The 7-11 in the building where I work where I can get a new face mask and corn-to-go...

I've never said this but I often see street vendors peddling through Pudong selling baked sweet potatoes or corn on the cob. I still want to stop by Carrefour and buy one of the vendors' sweet potatoes as they smell amazing.

Last Wednesday I went out to lunch with some of my co-workers that I have really supported me while I've been here. I was really touched and it took a lot for me to not shed a tear.

From left to right: Mike Lowai, Emily, Eileen, Jason

Another picture of food -- this is the eel and rice dish (with a fried egg) that I had at the place next door to where I work:

I've probably had more eel and peanuts (sometimes in the same meal as evidenced above) in the last three months than I ever have before.

Shanghai Diary: Memes Are In the Air

noreply@blogger.com (Mike White) — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 15:25:00 +0000

Things are wrapping up here in Shanghai for me, but you wouldn't know from my work load. If anything, things are just as hairy now as they were two weeks ago. Just like my back.

I'm still working the day job and the night job. Today's one of those days with a couple hours between the two sessions.

It's like there's a party going on and I need to go home to get up early for work the next day. Shanghai is the party. While not all my friends are here, I'm still very bummed to leave the party and will constantly wonder what is going on and what I'm missing.

I wanted to share a picture of something I see all the time in Shanghai and that's the lap blanket that many of my fellow scooter-drivers employ. It's usually paired with these oven-mitt type gloves that are fitted to the handlebars. I haven't taken any pictures of the elaborate plastic shells that some folks have to protect them from the elements.

I am going to miss my scooter.

One of my listeners from The Projection Booth lives here in Shanghai and he asked if he can buy my scooter. So, I'm heading over to Puxi on Sunday. I told him how much I paid for it and asked for 200 RMB less. I should have asked for the exact amount I paid plus one dollar, "Man's gotta right to make a profit..." In all seriousness, it's great that he asked, especially as my machine is going to be a spare for him!

If Metro Detroit supported it, I'd get a scooter for my ride to work in a heartbeat. I wouldn't drive a motorcycle but I'd do a scooter. But there's no scooter lanes. It's car vs. everything else.

You'd think that the abuse of English would cause me a lot of distress but I have no issues. I just laugh at some of the odd little messages.

I've gone three months without hearing anyone talk about basketball, football, or baseball. I kind of love it.

I had a request to take more pictures of food so here goes. He's my meal yesterday at the local noodle place. I also took some pictures of how crowded it is as well as the projection on the main wall of the guys in the back cooking.

At Pub Quiz the other night there was a category all about memes. This was a coincidence as I had just been trying to explain memes to Serena. I was saying that in China, Doge is huge. I see him everywhere. Then, today, I get an update on WeChat from That's Shanghai (I think, all the local news sites tend to run together) with a list of ugly holiday sweaters and there's a Doge X-mas sweater.

It's nice to see Three Wolves One Moon come back around, too.

Doge even has his own Sticker Set on WeChat:

Where do you go when the record is over?

Shanghai Diary: If I Wanted To Read, I'd Have Stayed In School

noreply@blogger.com (Mike White) — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 08:21:00 +0000

As I've been writing about China during my stay here, I've hit upon a few of these topics but wanted to share some articles.

From RadiiChina there's a piece about Literal Whitewashing in China which speaks to the idea of beauty standards in China. This idea of fair skin being more desirable isn't just a Chinese phenomenon. During my stay here, the Dove ad of a black woman turning herself white happened. This idea of "the whiter the skin, the less likely you're working in the sun and the more posh you are" can arguably be linked with the more historic idea of foot-binding but, also, parallels can be drawn to the idea of women having long finger nails with the idea of long fingernails somewhat incapacitating a woman. "She can't do manual labor, look at those nails." In other words, I'm talking about a standard of beauty in China that is just as arbitrary as standards of beauty in the West.
Being obsessed with sex, I was looking at Shanghaiist articles about sex in China and ran across this one: Siblings arrested for operating illegal ultrasound business from their minivan. It's not hard to imagine that revealing a baby's sex in China is illegal as infanticide used to (and probably still does) happen. We're not that far removed from the one-birth policy and the country is now up to two-births. Like most laws, however, this is a paper law and not necessarily followed in real life. A doctor will not come out and tell a parent the sex of a child but there may be a nod and a wink situation when asked.
In America, we like to think that we're free from surveillance, then we turn on TV and watch the sleuths of "CSI" use security footage from two blocks away to see the license plate of a criminal. Meanwhile, the observation is just out in the open in China. You have to register your phone with your personal ID number which and then you're on the grid and it's nearly impossible to live without being there. Thus, reading China's Tech Giants Have a Second Job: Helping Beijing Spy on Its People didn't shock me at all.

Shanghai Diary: Seventy Seven Days

noreply@blogger.com (Mike White) — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 12:15:00 +0000

I don't know if I miss doing the podcast or not. I think I do but it's tough as I'm just so busy here. I've gotten a break from the podcast but not from working. I'm also still doing a lot of audio editing between special episodes, bonus episodes, and The Kolchak Tapes. I've just not been doing all the recording and interviewing I normally do on a weekly basis.

I reached out to my co-hosts for the next episode I plan to record, though I also need to start setting up recordings for January, too, while I'm at it. I know I'd go crazy(ier) without a creative outlet but right now the idea of getting back into that grind seems rather daunting. I was hoping to cut down to doing an episode every two weeks but the lack of episodes while I've been here in Shanghai forced my hand and, starting in January, I'm back to one a week until at least July. Sure, I've got some interviews recorded for those but not many.

Saturday I went to see a film called Seventy-Seven Days about a guy crossing the Xinjiang province. It was good, though there were some very cheesy CGI wolves used a little too often. The real scenery was remarkable, however, and the direction solid. It reminded me a lot of Never Cry Wolf. I may have to see about getting a copy of NCW. I'm still in the midst of watching a lot of "comfort films". Over the weekend I also re-watched Raising Arizona and The Hudsucker Proxy, ya know, for kids.

Sunday I went out with my co-worker, Eileen, and her husband. We went out to lunch and then for a long walk down Nanjing Road which is (mostly) closed off to cars and a long promenade of shopping and food stands. It reminded me of a far-longer Fremont Street. We also walked a bit along The Bund before going back to the car and driving over to Jing'an Temple.

Oh, and to answer your question.. yes, you can use WeChat Pay or AliPay to buy your incense at the temple:

After that we walked a bit in the park across the way and then went for Hot Pot in Pudong and then beers and pool at the restaurant across the street from my apartment. They wouldn't let me pay for a thing which was nice but also maddening. I wanted to at least treat them to dinner but they wouldn't hear of it. At least I got to buy beers at the end of the night.

All in all, I walked almost 12000 steps that day, though I still came in second on "WeRun" which is a step-counter that WeChat uses -- you compete against your friends who have it and I never get close to the top except that day.

Random Things:

John Woo's latest, Manhunt is playing in the local cinemas (though not very often -- at least not as often as that awful Justice League movie -- though I don't know if it's got English subtitles or not.
Seventy-Seven Days is the first movie where I saw a few previews. Sure, not many and very quick, but it wasn't just all car commercials this time around.
In China there's not "an app for that," there's an "A-P-P" for that. I always hear it spelled out like that in English which is a bit disconcerting.
I signed up for Mandarin 1 at Schoolcraft college. It starts January 23 and runs 12 weeks on Tuesday evenings.

Shanghai Diary: Thanksgiving in Shanghai

noreply@blogger.com (Mike White) — Fri, 24 Nov 2017 06:55:00 +0000

I've been doing my best to document my more unusual or noteworthy experiences over here. But, when all is said and done, I'm here to work. I've been doing a lot of that lately -- things are finally starting to move with the China incarnation of the corporate website.

Last night I felt like such a "big boy", going over to the movie theater after work, going into a restaurant and being able to order (albeit from a menu with a lot of pictures), and then off to the show. I was fully prepared that I'd be seeing a Mandarin-dubbed version of A Better Tomorrow or at least one in Cantonese with only Chinese subtitles but -- surprise! -- it had both English and Chinese subtitles. And, of course, the English subtitles were absolutely terrible. It took me back to seeing the film the first time in the early 1990s. At one point a character is supposed to be shouting, "I will!" Instead of that, the subtitles say, "I'll!" Technically correct but...

Midway through the movie I suddenly panicked. When I had driven over it was dark and, unlike a lot of scooter drivers here, I turned on my headlight. I pictured my scooter out in the plaza parking area with its light on, slowly going dim. Would some Good Samaritan have turned it off? Would my scooter be dead when I got out there? Would I have to grab my battery and take a taxi back to my place and come back the next morning? Should I run out there and miss ten minutes of the movie? Should I just leave and watch the rest of the film in my apartment?

I ended up just chilling and watching the rest of the film, though I scooted out of the theater fairly fast. When I got to my scooter I put in the key to see if it'd turn on. It did. And the headlight with it! So, when you turn off the scooter, the headlight goes off too. Remarkable. "What'll they think of next?"

Then it was back to the apartment for an evening meeting. With the U.S. being shut down today/tomorrow, my meeting evening meeting schedule has lessened a bit, it's just me and the Europeans who may be talking tonight and tomorrow. Tonight is slightly doubtful as I'll be heading out for some kind of Chinese Thanksgiving dinner tonight along with Serena. We have reservations at Lost Heaven over in Puxi (the one on Big Deer road, not the one on The Bund).

The next day...

I went out last night and had my Thanksgiving dinner. ice plant salad, baby cucumber flower salad, Mongolian buns, a terrific beef dish that came with kim chi and what I think was some other pickled cabbage, and some mulled wine with orange and cloves.

Beforehand, Serena and I met at Tianzifang to do some shopping. Andrea had requested a few things so we picked those up along with a couple knickknacks for some friends back home. The tough this is that there's little that can be gotten in China that can't be gotten through the web. It's more the novelty of it, I suppose.

I met Serena at a coffee shop (right next door to a Starbucks) where they sold Kopi Luwak coffee. One cup of just coffee could run 298 ¥ which, at today's rate, would be approximately $45 USD. When I mentioned Kopi Luwak to Serena she said, "Oh, cat shit coffee?" As she rarely swears, this made me almost choke with laughter.

I opted for a coffee shake for 30¥ instead.

Photos from outside and inside Tianzifan:

In today's edition of "the drive home from work:"

Saw this guy doing the "Asian Squat" next to the local Papa Johns. Yes, they have Papa Johns here (as well as Pizza Hut). I don't eat there in the US, I'm not about to try the China incarnation:

Shanghai Diary: Picture Dump

noreply@blogger.com (Mike White) — Tue, 21 Nov 2017 12:24:00 +0000

The drive home on Friday and Monday:

This is in every men's stalls on my floor at work. The translation is something like: "Please be civilized in the toilet! Thank you." The label on the toilet is "public toilet Yan" and the man (Yan?) says, "I do not do it on purpose!"

Going into my place of employment (not pictured):

Picture of today's lunch - curry beef with egg (very thin over a pile of rice) along with soup, something pickled, and a peanut smoothie:

Shanghai Diary: Trump Makes China Great Again

noreply@blogger.com (Mike White) — Mon, 20 Nov 2017 14:10:00 +0000

When I was working at Organic Inc and Daimler Chrysler AKA Chrysler, AKA Fiat Chrysler was our biggest client, I used to just shake my head that they weren't at least trying to get into the hybrid car market. This was around the time of the Chevy Volt and when I was driving a Saturn Vue Hybrid. Meanwhile, Chrysler stubbornly stuck to the gasoline market.

I bring this up because I'm hearing that by 2019 that Shanghai and Beijing will replace gasoline cars with electric cars. This may be a little easier because (unlike Detroit), they've actually embraced Tesla and other electric automakers.

Like almost everything else that I've seen in China, there's a "what's in it for me?" as well as a strong hand of the government. "What's in it for me" is that one of the many fees to own and operate a car -- roughly $500 US a year -- will be waived when drivers go from their typical license plates to their new green plates, signifying that they're driving an electric car.

I've seen more Tesla vehicles in two months of being in Shanghai than I have in the last two years. And, while I've been here, they announced a new factory that will most likely be built in Pudong.

I know there have been times that I've been slagging the U.S. pretty hard over the last few months. I'm not blindly saying "Everything in China is better," but when you have Trump at the wheel in the U.S., it seems like almost anywhere is going to look better.

China has problems, sure. I mean, pornography is banned here. Likewise, the whole issue of what's blocked and what's not blocked online is a confusing mess.

The sentiment I often hear from people here is "sometimes too many choices are a bad thing." This anathema to the idea that "everything deserves a vote" but... Trump got the vote and look what happened. Or did he get the vote? That's the big question that has yet to finally get answered. It's easier to swallow that the system is rigged rather than taking a hard look at my own country and thinking that 47% of Americans are that stupid to have voted for that blockhead.

Shanghai Diary: The Chinese Squat

noreply@blogger.com (Mike White) — Mon, 20 Nov 2017 03:00:00 +0000

Whenever I walk down the street and see someone doing the "Chinese Squat", I sing this little line which is a bastardization of "Intergalactic" by The Beastie Boys.

I am known to do the wop
Also known for the Flintstone Flop
People here do the Chinese squat
Beat-see Boys known to let the beat
"MMM, D-r-r-rop!"

What is the "Chinese Squat"?

Shanghai Diary: Into the Groove

noreply@blogger.com (Mike White) — Sun, 19 Nov 2017 12:00:00 +0000

I've had a couple of really nice days at work.

This has been kind of a nutty week when it comes to work. Most weeks I do my usual 9-5 at the Shanghai office, go back to my place for dinner and then get on the phone around 9PM and have one or two hours worth of conference calls. This week I had an early call on Monday (meant I needed to skip Pub Quiz again) and a bunch of calls Tuesday... and Thursday (caught a break on Wednesday). And, maybe tonight will also turn into that.

Yesterday there was a bit of a group lunch where about a half dozen of us went over to the Element Fresh right near my apartment complex. I had gone to EF once before and enjoyed it. I tried going back a few other times but, for whatever reason, it was closed during the day. It's a decent enough place and they have some carrot cake with ginger ice cream on the menu that I've been wanting to try...

Anyway, I got sat across from a co-worker from our Singapore office, Aparajita. We talked a bit about Singapore and I found out that she used to live in India. "Oh! There's a really good Indian place just up the block from here. You should come over tonight and we can have dinner!" I told her. And, surprisingly, she agreed. We met up around 6PM last night and split some dishes at Bollywood. I was in high suspense whether she'd like the food or not but, fortunately, she seemed to really enjoy. She was having trouble finding vegetarian dishes here in Shanghai where sprinkling just about anything with pork is not unheard of.

This morning I hung out in the lobby at work, using the free WiFi from Starbucks (which doesn't have nearly as many hoops as the US WiFi -- again, you put in your phone number, confirm that it's legit, and off you go. I waited for my Shanghai co-worker Eileen to come over and take me to the TSC (Technical Service Center) where we met about the "Kung Fu Masters" section of the site.

I would think that that name is terribly offensive as a China replacement for our "Garage Gurus" program but apparently it's not. I blanched the first time I heard it like, "Is that the only thing you know about China is Kung Fu?" Glad that's not the case.

Eileen doesn't know English very well but she knows a lot more English than I know Mandarin. She kept apologizing for not knowing certain words or terms. She had even go so far as to buy a translation machine in order to help facilitate communication. I spoke to her very slowly and clearly, trying to avoid slang and turns of phrase as much as possible. "I am speaking to you slowly but I know you are not stupid. Please do not be offended if I sound like I am speaking to you that way."

Swag from the TSC -- a "Kung Fu Masters" flash drive (now stocked with photos for the upcoming website):

Eileen ended up being the co-worker that I had hoped to meet a few months ago. She was thrilled when I told her that I would help her with her English if she helped me with my Mandarin. She and family live just a few kilometers away from my apartment and she asked if we could all go out this weekend so they could show me the sights. I deferred for this weekend. I plan on just holing up and editing again so I can get a few weeks break from it during the last bit that I'm here. I also plan on seeing a few movies.

Picture from my ride home Friday:

Shanghai Diary: The Numismatist's Dilemma

noreply@blogger.com (Mike White) — Thu, 16 Nov 2017 03:00:00 +0000

I've gotten very few coins while I'm here. I occasionally get a 1RMB coin and sometimes a coin that says "5" and one that says "1" on it. The 1 is .1 RMB so I imagine that the 5 is .5 RMB.

Another thing to love about China is that prices are pretty much just in RMB without any coins. It's rare that I'm paying for things and get a .1 or .5 coin back.

And, get this America... The .1 is smaller than the .5 coin! Imagine that! And, they have numbers on them! Crazy, right? It's not like a dime which doesn't say 10 on it anywhere and that's significantly smaller than a penny! This lack of enumeration and the disparity between size and value makes American money incredibly difficult for foreign people (and kids) to understand. Same even goes for our paper money. There's no color or size differentiation. Why is a $100 exactly the same dimensions as a $1?

American money is so far over-due for a face-lift, it's not even funny.

We've had changes to our bills but it's still the same old white men staring back at us. And some of the biggest anti-counterfeit things seem to happen on our $100 US and $50 US bills. I don't know about you but having one of those in my wallet is something of a rarity. Meanwhile, tin-foil hat-wearing Americans think that the anti-counterfeit strip in our money is a tracking device.

Americans are living under the delusion of privacy. We are either being tracked or could be tracked with ease. Over here in China, everyone knows that everything is tracked. I mean, again, almost every transaction can be done via the phone and the companies that run those apps are in bed with the government. Hell, the government gave them breaks in order to get the readers and acceptance of those payment methods in place. And they gave breaks to consumers to use them. Even a couple RMB back can make a huge difference, especially when everyone is hustling to make a .1 RMB.

Since I was a kid, the US Mint has tried time and again to introduce and re-introduce a dollar coin. Of course, there was the unwieldy Eisenhower Dollar which came out the year before I was born. Before that was the Peace Dollar. However, after Eisenhower was the disastrous Susan B. Anthony dollar which I remember being decried for -- get this -- being bad because blind people would mix it up for a quarter. Now, I know that's a valid concern but that is a very odd concern for sighted people to have. More than anything, I think it was an excuse being used to cover up that people didn't like having a woman on their money. Same goes for the Sacagawea dollar.

Canadians have been using loonies and toonies for decades and they seem to be doing okay. Likewise, they eliminated pennies in favor of a round-up / round down methodology that would probably cause riots in the U.S. "How dare you cheat me out of my two cents!"

Meanwhile, efforts to give a facelift to the $20 US have stalled yet again. Not only is this a gynophobic thing, but there's also racism involved. At least, that's like my opinion, man.

Shanghai Diary: After They've Seen Paree

noreply@blogger.com (Mike White) — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 05:36:00 +0000

I have a little more than four weeks left of my Shanghai trip. As I write that, my stomach drops. Over the course of the last two months, I've gone from being skeptical to depressed to elated and now back to depressed. The initial depression came from being alone during Golden Week, away from home, beating myself up over the stuff I did when I was 17 (due to transcribing those old journals from when I was in the UK). Now I'm depressed at the idea of not being here. It's not that I'm necessarily sad about going home but this trip has been something of an adventure and I don't want the adventure to end.

How Ya Gonna Keep 'em Down on the Farm (After They've Seen Paree)?

I've formally requested a return visit. My visa is only a 90 day work visa (and I'm here for 86 days) so I need to apply for a new one. I also am not sure if my request is out of line, necessary, or even desired. I need to be better about selling myself and why it would be good to have a person like me -- specifically me -- on the ground here in Shanghai. Likewise, I could also travel to some of the other countries in the APAC region that are ramping up their sites and online presence -- not only to work directly with the people in country but to help bridge the gap with the home office. I have a pretty good rapport with the IS group (as well as my own Marketing peeps and the Brand folks) which would make gathering and disseminating information a little smoother. Three months ago, I never thought I'd have written something like that.

Three months ago, I wasn't exactly sure what I'd be doing over here. I had one or two tasks -- and I'm working on those -- but wasn't sure if things would go well, or poorly. I brought a ton of books that I have yet to read, podcasts that I have yet to listen to, movies I have yet to watch. I'm not proud of that. I'm just saying that I've been busy -- in a good way. Yet, I haven't been busy enough with learning Mandarin. I'm only a few lessons past where I was when I left Detroit. True, when I listen to people talking here I can pick out a few more words but it's like hearing snatches of conversation rather than a full sentence. I don't have the building blocks for a full structure. I just have a few bricks.

I'm rather disappointed in myself. Today I got a phone call and the person on the other end started speaking Chinese. Rather than asking if he could speak English, I passed the phone over to Emily and asked her to translate. She handed it back and told me that he was switching to English. That was pure laziness. I must do better. Even if I don't understand someone, I need to tell them that rather than just passing the buck. Moreover, I need to learn the language better.

There aren't many teachers from high school or college that I would have liked to have kept in contact with apart from two or three of my film professors, my high school history, math, and Spanish teachers. I constantly think about Sra. Loder and the great job she did giving me a fairly robust education in Spanish. I wish that I could find someone who would make learning Mandarin as fun.

Let me just take a moment to emphasize again how important smart phones are over here. I've already talked about how you can just about leave the house with only your phone -- no wallet -- and be okay. For me, I still bring a wallet as my way to get into my apartment is a key card (like a hotel) and I don't want to carry that right next to my phone. I get paranoid that it will get de-magnetized.

When you have to sign in for public wifi, you'll get asked for your phone number and then have to enter the "captcha" (not really a captcha) code that gets sent to you via text in order to sign in. When you register for an app, you have to do the same thing. You pretty much have to have a phone number (and 99% of the time it's a China phone number) in order to do anything. They don't even ask for the country code / area code. It's assumed that you're +86, baby.

I was in a meeting recently where one of my co-workers (not Chinese) was talking about people signing up for a service with their email address. All the Chinese guys were like, "What?!? We don't do that!" And I had to agree with them. Email is not used over here very much. You use your phone number for contact. You use WeChat for keeping up on things.

When you pay your bill at a restaurant with WeChat Pay you might get them added to your WeChat as their friend / follower and start getting updates from them. Oh, you got some noodles at this place? Well, now you'll find out what the lunch specials are from their WeChat account.

I went to a restaurant with Andrea in the basement of Jin Mao Tower. When the waiter brought the bill, I asked to pay for it with WeChat. Nope. They do AliPay (no big deal), so I opened that app and he pointed to a QR code on the table. I scanned that and found that my complete itemized bill was associated with that table's QR code. I was asked to confirm the total and enter in my pin.

Emily tells me that there are a few restaurants in Shanghai that have robot servers as everything can be controlled via computer / app apart from the cooking.

I've noticed that the people here are much less concerned with the buzzterm from the U.S.: "staying hydrated." When you get a meal you may get a complimentary cup of tea. You don't usually get the whole pot. And you always have to ask for water. When you get your drink it's a rarity to get it refilled. There's no endless refills, just because they don't think you need them. When I go to lunch with the guys from work I'll get a glass of tea, a glass of water, and about four refills on the tea (and a to-go cup at the end) and one on the water. That -- and that everything has ice in it -- would be anathema to folks here.

Sure, bottled water is plentiful but it's still not typical to see people chugging from their Nongfu Springs bottle as they're wandering around the city.

QR codes were a topic for a hot second in the US. I remember scanning one on a table-top display at a Famous Dave's in order to join their mailing list. However, there were a couple problems:

I had to download a QR reader in order to read the code. It's not like here where almost every app has a QR reader in it, esp. WeChat
Almost every QR reader I used in the States is buggy as shit and it takes forever to recognize/read the code
When I was finally taken to where the code was taking me, to a page on the Famous Dave's website, the page was not optimized for a mobile device. How fucked is that? You're showing people a QR code that will be read with their phone and then show a page where you're scrolling from side to side to fill in a form where the labels are separated from the fields and none of them are coded to show the right keyboards for the information requested

Yes, I'm on my user experience high horse on this one. But, damn it, think about this shit before you put it out in the world.

I'm so excited that A Better Tomorrow is opening this weekend in Shanghai. I'm not sure why it is, but it'll be great to see on the big screen again. I saw it that way once at The Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor years ago. I want to say it was a double feature with Hard Boiled but I could be wrong. I just remember having seen both of those on the big screen and I think they were at the same theater. They could have been different screenings.

I know, I know, A Better Tomorrow won't have English subtitles but that's fine. I've seen the movie enough and it's universal enough for me to follow along with. This will also give me a story to tell when we record our A Better Tomorrow Series episode in December. I have maybe a half dozen or more movies to watch for that: The three A Better Tomorrow films, Bullet in the Head (the unofficial ABT3), Once a Thief (the '60s film, not the Woo film), Story of a Discharged Prisoner (the HK film that has roots in Once a Thief and that ABT is something of a remake of), The Korean ABT, and Return to A Better Tomorrow. Plus, I want to read the original Once a Thief book. I've already read books on Woo, ABT, and Bullet in the Head. Yeah, I usually try to do a little research before recording. Not everything I watch and hear may not come out in the episode -- I don't just vomit facts if I can help it -- but I think that a more informed host makes for a more informed discussion. And, if I can avoid asking stupid rhetorical questions that could have been answered with some fucking research...

Also opening this weekend is Justice League. This is the first time I've seen a movie open in China the same day as the U.S. -- at least I think it is. It's tough for me to keep up on release dates sometimes. It's not like the new Star Wars where I have the date memorized (it's easy as it's the day before I come back to the States). I really have no desire to see Justice League other than to see how it was "Marvel-ized" and to hear people speak English for two hours. Knowing DC it'll be well over two hours. Those movies are usually bloated messes. Yet, despite that, I have seen all of them. My unpopular opinion is that Wonder Woman, the best of the lot, is an okay movie. Not great. There are a few great parts to them but David Thewlis's mustache as Ares made me laugh my ass off (not the intended effect).

I hear that Henry Cavill's digitally-masked mustache is going to do the same for me.

"Let me tell you something: My father was a very big man. And all his life he wore a black mustache. When it was no longer black, he used a small brush, such as ladies use for their eyes. Mascara."

I put shit like that in these posts and I hope that people either know where their from or, moreover, that I'm making references to stuff. I don't know if I like that my brain works this way but it's the way it works.

I've learned that the right term for white people here is "lowai". Translates to "old white" which is doubly applicable to me. I was asking at lunch the other day, "Give me some good insults for white people."

Emily's response: "We are Chinese. We do not insult anyone. We are too polite."

Pictures from my drive home today (starting to get dark around 4:30, and the rain doesn't help), as well as the noodle place I've gone to a few times.

I still need my Chinese coworkers to order for me. Note the seating which is kind of communal. You don't get a table to yourself unless you're at a posh restaurant or someplace fairly empty. Otherwise, be aware that someone can sit at your table. With over a billion people, you're not guaranteed a four top to yourself.

Currently Reading: I'm still reading The Girl in the Volkswagen at night and I have the 33 1/3 book about Dead Kennedys's Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables that I read when I go out to eat on my own.

Currently Hearing: I downloaded "the Chinese Spotify" -- I can't tell you the name because it's in Chinese. It's got a ton of great music on it and is all free. One thing about being here in China is that copyright is a lot "looser". I have an app for movies/TV shows and this one for music. When I'm not on the VPN, I can use both to watch and listen to stuff for free.

Currently Watching: I'm downloading the latest episodes of "Jeopardy" so I can keep up on the Tournament of Champions. I just finished binging on "Mindhunter". I enjoyed it but it felt almost like a pre-quel to another series. I described it to Andrea as "Criminal Minds Lite" and "Like True Detective without all the mystical horseshit." It really ended, however, just as it seemed to get going.