No Film School

I just finished the final season of what will go down as the greatest standard-definition TV series in history, HBO’s “The Wire.” And while someday I’d like to write a eulogy for my now-concluded favorite show, at this point it’s easiest to react to the reactors: I’ve been following along with Slate’s episode diary. In one entry, Slate’s columnists discuss the pronunciation of the word “shit”–drawn out to comical duration, so that it sounds like “sheeeee-it”–by the character of Clay Davis (Isaiah Whitlock), as if it were something heretofore unheard, as if Whitlock invented it. Their final entry attributes it to Whitlock’s uncle. But as I was reading their entries I was wondering where these people were from that they hadn’t heard it before.

Still, I didn’t want to respond with “I’m from Durham, North Carolina, a predominantly black southern city and y’all are white fools for thinking “sheeeee-it” is something new,” as I’m in fact from the suburbs of Durham and am myself half white(/Asian), but as I was reading Jack Kerouac’s On The Road last night, I stumbled across the word and its particular pronunciation three times in the space of a page (200):

Yah, what’s good’s a ball, life’s too sad to be ballin all the time, said the tenorman, lowering his eye to the street. “Shh-eee-it!” he said. “I ain’t got no money and I don’t care tonight.”

…

We saw a horrible sight in the bar: a white hipster fairy had come in wearing a Hawaiian shirt and was asking the big drummer if he could sit in. The musicians looked at him suspiciously. “Do you blow?” He said he did, mincing. They looked at one another and said, “Yeah, yeah, that’s what the man does, shhh-ee-it!

…

The big Negro bullneck drummer sat waiting for his turn. “What that man doing?” he said. “Play the music!” he said. “What in the hell!” he said. “Shh-ee-eeet!” and looked away disgusted.

Not to suggest that On the Road premiered the term, but it does offer proof beyond the anecdotal that the elocution is (at least) fifty years old. So there you go, Slate folks: it ain’t nothin’ new. Sheeee-it.

A year ago I wrote, “in an effort to post more regularly, without having to increase my output of original material, I’m going to start embedding interesting short films or other video content from the far corners of the interweb, most of which (I hope) you will not have seen before.”

I went back to check because I was curious as to how many Seen posts I’d made over the past year; the sad answer is a trifling three.

So here is the Danish documentary Good Copy Bad Copy, which was released gratis last year on the internet. Fitting, considering its subject: copyright, specifically laws pertaining to attribution and payment, both in music and film. The doc, directed by Andreas Johnsen, Ralf Chistensen, and Henrik Moltke, moves briskly from music sampling techniques in American hip-hop, to baile funk remixes in Brazil, to movie pirating in Nigeria, to file sharing in Sweden (and plenty more). It features interviews with Girl Talk and Danger Mouse, music by RJD2 and Santogold, and is globetrotting, informative, and entertaining. It’s also an hour long, so I’d recommend clicking the full screen button and kicking back.

A couple of years ago on this site I deemed Crash “one of the worst films I’ve seen in recent memory.” Shortly thereafter, the film went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Affronted, I quoted an overwhelmingly negative review by LA Weekly critic Scott Foundas to back up my claim.

This year, after watching Atonement and harboring similar feelings about the Oscar-nominated and Golden Globe-winning period piece, I returned to the Internets in hopes of finding a review I could again quote, but a cursory review of Rotten Tomatoes produced no such satisfactorily negative text. Two quick pulls, however: The New York Times’ A.O. Scott called it “an almost classical example of how pointless, how diminishing, the transmutation of literature into film can be,” and The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane, in an assessment surprisingly free of vitriol, allowed that he “hardly believed a word of it.” However, Atonement currently has scores of 82 and 85 at Rotten Tomatoes and metacritic, respectively (which metacritic categorizes as “Universal Acclaim”). These are even higher marks than Crash’s; Atonement also took home the Best Drama Golden Globe, which has been a decent predictor of Oscar-winners. This scares me.

That said, I’m no critic, and I’ve no desire to become one–on some level I think film critic and filmmaker are mutually exclusive occupations–so it’s unlikely that I’ll elucidate my feelings about the film as well as a bona fide professional would. Nevertheless, my problems with Atonement stem from its cart-before-the-horse writing; sure, it has drama, beauty, twists, reveals, and all the things they teach you in screenwriting class, but none of the events feel justified by truth. The characters aren’t driving the story; the narrative is instead driven by the writer(s) wanting to get to a certain point, and coming up with totally implausible ways to get there. I say “writer(s)” because these complaints may be uniquely directed at screenwriter Christopher Hampton’s adaptation–or they may be equally valid criticisms of Ian McEwan’s source text. Not having read the book, and now harboring no desire to do so, I can’t say. But without getting into any spoilers, let me ask: have you ever written multiple version of a letter–say one was handwritten and one typed, so by appearance they are quite differentiated, even at a glance–and then proceeded to sign, fold, seal, and send the wrong one, with the right one sitting on your desk face-up (right next to your Cambridge scholarship)? What if one of the letters was a filthy joke you’d written for your eyes only (implausibly), and the other one was an apology you were sending to your true love–via the hand of a nosy 12 year-old girl? Perhaps not the time to haphazardly stuff an envelope with (apparently) your eyes closed. Well, that’s just what a certain character in Atonement does, setting off many of the tragic events to follow. If there’s anything to atone for in the film, it’s apparently Being A Dumbass.

This, along with several other occurrences in the film’s first act, left me with an overwhelming desire to walk out of the theater; instead, I subjected myself to the remainder, in order to write home that Atonement is nothing to write home about. Indeed, the film is a shoddily-constructed soap opera–finely crafted at times, but less believable than an episode of “As the World Turns” (or whichever daytime soap is the least plausible). If Atonement was a construction project, and director Joe Wright was the foreman on the effort, then he should be evaluated as having done a proficient job with the interior decoration, weatherproofing, HVAC, and plumbing; however, he built the whole house on a faulty foundation, made not of concrete but rather of shit.

If it wins the Oscar I’ll tell you how I really feel.

Zack and I just wrapped our longest shoot to date for The West Side, a two-day weekend session in Brooklyn consisting of five scenes spread out over four episodes. Episode Three is now in the can. (Photo by Cate Corley).

Episode Two of The West Side is finally live, a long four months after we posted the first; blame Murphy’s Law. Be sure to start with Episode One if you haven’t seen it. If you have an iPod or iPhone (or you use iTunes), subscribe to our podcast in iTunes and get new episodes automatically. Episode Three should be up in much shorter order.

After a full year spent writing and producing our urban Western, The West Side, Zack and I finally premiered the first episode of the serialized feature in July. Now, months later, Western films are dotting the Hollywood landscape like so many buffalo on a windswept plain. I’ve been joking with friends that, similarly to Justin Timberlake and Sexy, I brought the Western back. But Sexy never left; the Western’s been gone awhile.

Regardless, the truth is, I didn’t bring Westerns back. George W. Bush did.

–

The release of 3:10 to Yuma and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford–along with There Will be Blood and even No Country for Old Men–would be enough to justify the statement that Westerns are currently enjoying a revival in this country. The fact that the first two films (the only ones I’ve seen to date) rank as some of the genre’s finest, however, indicates Something Is Going On Here.

What makes the Western more relevant today than it was ten years ago? I can’t speak to the other filmmakers’ thought processes, but regarding The West Side, the idea for it dates back to 2001.

In American hearts, minds, and most importantly, media, the year 2001 connotates one thing. Not since communism has there been a struggle portrayed in oversimplified “good vs. evil” terms as is the war on terrorism. The Western, with its traditional focus on cowboys and Indians, fits perfectly into the democracy-versus-terrorism, us-versus-them model that our administration would have us buy into. It’s not a stretch to see how a violent, gung-ho American culture begets the resurgence of a violent, gung-ho American genre.

Our so-called commander-in-chief poses as a cowboy on his Texas ranch, posts “Most Wanted” lists, constructs a wall on the Mexican border (remember the Alamo!), and generally extols frontier-style justice. Whether Americans are conscious of it or not, Bush has given them a new framing device for Western imagery. Movie trailers featuring men in hats and gunbelts feel more relevant than they did before he took office. Western-style commercials are increasingly common, with Coors selling beer, Chevy selling trucks, and Wrangler selling jeans–all in the same weathered, big-sky, tough-guy image he cultivates:

What an asshole.

One could argue that the Western has also always been tied to war, but I’m not enough of a historian to back up the point. Cursorily, it would seem that the Western’s previous heydays have all coincided with, or followed, America at war. The John Ford pictures of the late 40s and early 50s followed World War II (Ford himself served in the Navy), Sergio Leone brought back the genre (albeit from an Italian perspective) during the Vietnam War in the late 60s and early 70s, and now we’re seeing a resurgence during the Iraq War (ahem, “occupation”). It’d be sickening to think that our taste for fictional shootouts increases during the times our actual citizens are fighting and dying; but it may just be we’re a nation frequently at war, and it’s impossible to tie the Western’s ebb and flow to that of our warmongering.

It’s possible James Mangold, Andrew Dominik, Paul Thomas Anderson, and the Coen brothers would all deny that they are responding to Bush or the Iraq War (although Anderson’s There Will be Blood is based on a book originally titled Oil!). But one doesn’t have to set out to respond to specific current events to be a participant in a larger cultural shift. Also, keep in mind that all of these films are based on books: with the exception of the Coen brothers’ adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel, each film is based on a source text that has been around for many, many years. So why are they all being simultaneously adapted into films? Perhaps it has less to do with the director’s own whims, and more with the out-of-touch studio executives who green-light the projects–they are almost certainly relying on cultural artifacts like Coors commercials for their understanding of the zeitgeist.

But several films merely coming out at the same time is not enough to read into the cultural tea leaves. The fact that these films are some of the best of the year, however, is indicative of import. No Country for Old Men is getting terrific advance reviews. 3:10 To Yuma is a tightly-crafted crowd-pleaser, a film doggedly determined to single-handedly bring back the genre. When I saw it last month, I ate it up; the surrounding audience applauded when the credits rolled. Its better-than-expected box-office performance–the film made back its production budget during the domestic theatrical run alone–will ensure a slew of revivalist Westerns in the coming years.

But The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, at its finest moments, is one of the richest Westerns ever made. The film is inconsistent (especially at the end), but that’s like criticizing a runner trying to set the world record for having imperfect form (especially at the end). Director Andrew Dominick set out to make a contemplative, atmospheric film in the mold of Terrence Malick; unfortunately, he succeeded in more ways than one.

Malick’s The Thin Red Line, one of my favorite films, didn’t start as a screenplay full of commercial conceits, but rather as a project made in the white space of the page. Studios should be applauded when they fund such risky projects–albeit rarely–but in the case of both The Thin Red Line and Jesse James, the director’s original vision was compromised during the editing process. Rumors have circulated about Malick’s original cut running six hours; according to Wikipedia, Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Sheen, Gary Oldman, Bill Pullman, and Viggo Mortensen all acted in the film, but none of them appear in the cut released by Fox. Clearly, the meditative epic suffers in the editing phase, when executives are more focused on the project meeting certain revenue figures (and running times) than they are with catering to the director’s vision.

Dominick’s Jesse James suffered a similar fate (though perhaps the studio-director relationship was not as contentious), as it’s just now being released, two full years after shooting wrapped. As with The Thin Red Line, there were reportedly numerous re-edits, but the fact that the film still runs two hours and forty minutes is likely a testament to the presence of Ridley Scott and Brad Pitt as supportive producers, more so than Dominick’s cache with the studio (as it’s only his second feature).

In the case of both films, I would love to see a Director’s Cut released on DVD; with DVD being a firmly-entrenched format, directors should put in their contracts the rights to an alternate DVD release in case of intractable disagreements with the studio.

Blame for the fate of such ambitious films does not lie solely with the studios, however. If the best films of the 70s were shown to test-audiences today, they would certainly receive unfavorable ratings. How and why audiences have changed is a subject for another time or another person, as I wasn’t even alive in the 70s. But Rocky won the Best Picture Oscar over Taxi Driver in ‘76, so maybe audiences haven’t changed all that much.

So who’s left to blame? Critics.

Film critics reviewing movies are like schoolteachers grading papers; they often hand out better grades to projects that do the expected very well, instead of rewarding those that push the boundaries. Risk-taking films (like so many 70s pictures) might be a bit rough around the edges, but the most polished movies rarely advance the art form; critics tend to forget that when they point out a movie’s faults. And plenty of them have jumped at the chance: Jesse James is receiving somewhat mixed reviews, with a current score of 72% at Rotten Tomatoes. Compare this with last year’s critic’s darling, The Queen–holding steady at 97%–and you have a prime example of critics rewarding spit-shined blandness over more erratic, edgy fare. Also, I love Pixar as much as the next moviegoer, but the uniformly glowing reviews their movies receive are starting to rub me the wrong way; while it’s true the folks at Pixar make movies that everyone can agree on–and do a wonderful job of it–a Ratatouille at its best is not nearly as valuable to the art form as is a Jesse James at its best.

Not that Jesse James is rough around the edges; indeed, it’s such a gorgeously crafted film that I hope one day we see a version of it without the explicit narration. The story, acting, production design, music, sound design, and especially cinematography flesh out the film’s themes so effectively that I found the narration detracting and redundant at times.

As an industry outsider, it’s not often I see a film before it goes into wide release, although living in New York does help. But, despite my opinion on embracing small screens, Jesse James is truly a picture that needs to be seen in a good theater. If you find the film uneven, take heed: as a still-young art form, films should be judged on reach rather than grasp. And The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford has not only the longest title, but also the longest reach, of any film I’ve seen this year.