Cultural explorations with axe-wielding maniacs around the world

In an alarming bit of culture blindness, I've only just recently taken a good look at the general thematics of American cinema.

Let me say it clear. I was born abroad, in Belfast, and while I consider myself a child of two cultures there's always been a certain ability to keep a critical eye on both. I love both my homes, and I also hope that I'm not so in love that I can't discuss their flaws intelligently (and with a minimum of double negatives).

So it was to my abject shock that a group of other screenwriters were discussing which horrible crime against celluloid they loved more, Olympus Has Fallen or White House Down, that I realized I was actually really color blind when it came to the language of American film.

Hell, I can analyze film on a cultural level. Irish film is the result of not owning your own stuff for generations. Even the comedies are bleak and depressing, like A Film With Me In It. Even Dylan Moran, Ireland's finest comedy export, can't keep this from being an awful date movie. And yes, I first saw it with a young lady of recent acquaintance. That went well.

Don't get me wrong, it's a well-made film and if you like your comedy dark, this is the very bottom of that particular pit. But it takes a very certain kind of person to wring the laughs out of it.

Anyway, cinema of the world. Japan, having had a mandate that they were unbeatable in major conflict (and if you staved off a joint invasion of Koreans and Mongols, you'd probably feel the same way), had a bit of a national identity crisis after World War II. Through the 80s, you could see the vast majority of their film as a reinterpretation of their role in that war as they sought to reconcile reality with the legend they had lived under.

British film; obsessed with the class system to this day. What they produce that isn't about living in a manor or the modern interpretation of such is very introverted, very inward-focused. Great Britain had an empire and a rather embarrassing period of religious warfare, they're quite content with a mature exploration of where they are right this moment as a society.

Korean film, while often impressive lately (see The Man From Nowhere for a bleak, violent action film or The Good, The Bad, The Weird for a brainless popcorn... Asian western), still seems determined to portray the Japanese as greedy, stupid, and easily defeatable. You'd think it was some national mandate that this point be made at least once an hour.

So yes, imagine how it felt to flop face-first into this discussion and realize that I had the cultural blinders on, keeping me from connecting the dots from the two above-mentioned White House under siege films, the recent Red Dawn retread, back to virtually anything by Michael Bay; American cinema, as often as not, is fanfiction written by the secretary of defense.

Hell, for the gamers out there, let's not even touch what Call of Duty says about us. The latest one involves all of South America ganging together to invade the US and a dog bringing down an attack helicopter. I am not kidding, nor am I high.

I think the basic message of these films, beyond what the writers and directors intend to say, is that our national identity is kind of fucked. It's fairly obvious that we've been pining for an enemy as great as the Germans in WWII, fueled by an economy that has been glad to pump money into the military-industrial complex but as little as possible into the civic infrastructure. We could stop and regret that, or analyze it, but that's a pretty tough pill to swallow and as far as we keep telling ourselves, films are about escapism.

Well, no, they're about whatever we damn well want them to be. I'll not argue against escapism, I recently saw The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (which I shall review shortly) and loved it, as fluffy and inconsequential as it was. I'm not even going to defy "America under siege" as an automatically shit concept, but the current attempts at the genre read as a beast that knows it's dying and is determined to find it off with sheer wrong-mindedness, like a mad old elephant. Point is, it's telling that we have the chance to use a medium to dissect these things, to look for identity and answers in an uncertain world, but mostly we use it as a fantasy that someday, some worthy enemy will attack us and justify the fact that we have brain-powered smart rockets or whatever.

This is all broad strokes, obviously. There are certainly exceptionally thoughtful pieces out there, I do know that, but when speaking in trends, well, I believe this is plainly the way it is.

(Don't) Give Up Your Day Job

I hate work, but it's necessary for any real sense of discipline.

Let me correct that, I hate what we've turned work into. Capitalism can be pretty cool, don't get me wrong, but we've built a cathedral around money such that our economy is largely based on fooling each other into desiring shit we have zero need for. In an effort to get things moving in the right direction I got a Regular Job in high energy office-based sales, and I came to two conclusions...

1) Most successful people in the non-necessary market are probably some kind of high-functioning sociopath. I've walked through Skid Row with less fear of people eating what they can of me and fucking the leftovers.

2) I'm not, as I previously suspected due to feeling either too little emotion or ALL THE EMOTIONS, a sociopath. Despite the weird, cultish mentality, the morning vigor chants, and the incentives, I immediately find myself thinking about the bottle of "landmark" pinot noir at home. 2010 "Grand Detour". Let me digress and beg you to never touch this shit, because when it promises "earthy tones" it's not being at all subtle. It feels like trying to take a bite out of the planet. It's not nearly as alcoholic as most wines, but it is fucking mean. It is a wife beater amongst the fiefdom of wine, crude, deep, and aggressive. I am instantly buzzed, but it is a deeply unpleasant experience. It is as unwelcome as sexual advances from Carrot Top.

So I'm back at my freelance job of location scouting and managing for films, which has its own perils but is also one of the most wonderful things in the world. The autonomy is great, the travel is great, but the fact is that even ultra-competent producers have no idea how to communicate with you to adequately prepare you for the types of places you need to shoot. You really need to have a list of detailed questions and commit to annoying them to avoid wasting everybody's time, otherwise they'll wave you off and somehow conjure the idea that what they have in their head magically beams into your mind, or perhaps that the script gives you what you need (at my indie level, most scripts are AWFUL. This last one I worked on had a scene where a guy was peeing and his hydrocephalic girlfriend wanted to hold his cock while he did it, so he STOPS PEEING long enough for a reacharound.)

It doesn't work like that. If you go forth thinking the moons will align, you might get lucky. More likely, the director will suddenly start giving detailed notes they should have given in the first place. Remember that these people are, in the words of Patton Oswalt, the ones who look at a script and go "On page 32 she's eating peanuts, but then on page 96 she's wearing a hat, does that make sense!?"

This job took me out to the Santa Clarita valley, shooting grounds for such as Justified and a huge expanse of desert land where maybe on out of twenty people gives a shit about property upkeep. Read between the lines, for those of you wanting to make a post-apocalyptic piece and don't mind shitting over the edge of a cliff for lack of running water, I will lead you to the promised land.

Now if I can find the correct memory card on my +5 Desk of Horrors, I'll run you through some of the highlights.

First place is a small film ranch on the cusp of a valley opposite the Vasquez Rocks, a formation that was made popular in film and television by various westerns and Star Trek. This place is kind of terrifying in a way that makes it wank fodder for Mad Max junkies. It's dusty, quiet, and even for Santa Clarita it is isolated. But the elderly caretaker is a riot and they have three old dogs living out there that, when they learned my assistant and I were game to play fetch, followed us just the fuck about anywhere.

Go ahead, I'll wait here while you look around.

So clearly if you're looking to film a Fallout flick or some kind of hillbilly assrape scenario, this is your mecca.

Down the valley a bit is a variety of strange sites all bundled up into one rolling vista, a film ranch owned by Disney. And we start at the center, where magical ole' Jew-hating (allegedly!) Uncle Walt himself had a vacation home!

The surreal part is that this cabin is about twenty feet away. I guess in case he wanted an adventure.

The couple didn't spend any time there, apparently. They were aging and you still have to drive across hell's half-acre to get to this place.

There are two film sets on the huge expanse, and let me tell you that there is nothing more surreal and creepy than an abandoned town set. The buildings are all hollow, like blank slates, and it's all like some kind of Truman Show on acid. You can't shoot in there unless you actually build an interior, including walls. One edge of town is that kind of fake prop wall, even. Here Evan poses with the main thoroughfare and I had to get the theater facade.

Some of the scenery and other cabins between there and the end of the world:

 

The above is interesting. It's a very Stepford neighborhood, viewed here from the top of the valley as we were looking for a vineyard on the map (it's been replaced by a medevac helipad because the place is so freaking remote) that we didn't have time to photograph properly for losing daylight as we passed through. Only one house in there has an interior.

 

HEY EVERYBODY I GET PAID AN INSANE AMOUNT TO GO AROUND AND FIND SHIT LIKE THIS.

It's a small wonder that gods tend to originate in the desert. There's an almost compulsive need to put something between you and that much sky.

Finally, homeward bound. Downtown, you may be an insane clusterfuck of non-drivers, screaming hobos, and fat people in cutoff jean shorts gobbling down jumbo-sized Pixie Sticks. You may be full of historically protected buildings that have seen assault from bombs, bullets, Baseball Furies, and a hundred hook-handed whores. But as long as I have this view of the Times building at night, I can put up with you and the occasional stray molotov cocktail through the window.

Yo, Adriblaaaaargh

If I jump on the pop culture references any harder, I'll have to make a joke about the time when Lucky Charms added the purple horseshoes and whatever else. I don't want to be responsible for the chaos that would follow.

Friendship the Rat

Walking along the lovely, rose-strewn streets of downtown Los Angeles last night, I saw two of the biggest goddamn rats of all time. I mean these were Secret of NIMH big, and they were scampering away from us on feet so heavy you could hear it almost half a block away.

Not running away, as I felt they had no need to fear us. Scampering, one after the other, perhaps in some kind of obese rat foreplay scenario.

Only the thing is, as they rounded the corner and pranced out of sight, one of them turned on around and lumbered back toward us. Well, toward me. Fucking directly toward me. While I have no way of telling what was going through this trundling behemoth's rodent brain, which might as well have been "FRIEEEEEENDSHIIIIIP" the way it was kind of buoying around jovially like an RV that currently contained an orgy, I do know what was going through my mind. One word quickly followed by another, the first being what I was wearing and the second being a vaguely illogical, panic-driven survival word designed to catch my attention and spur me from my paralysis.

"Sandals. Also, AIDS."

By Alex's estimate, the thing was three feet away from me by the time I raised one foot and stomped it down in a menacing gesture, causing the rat to turn tail and run away. It looked like a rather macho gesture, both arms crooked back at the shoulder and elbow, strength displayed. Really, it was the first part of what would have been a scaredy cat dance while I yelled "EWWWWW RAT GET IT OFF GET IT OFF EWWY EWWY EW!"

I want out of downtown.

Easter ride

And so, in spite of the doctor's orders and all wisdom, I set out on my bike to see what Sunday might bring.

A butterfly in Skid Row, the first I'd ever seen in the city.

A food line for the homeless.

Celebrations in the park.

I was panhandled twice as I rode past people in the better part of town. I was asked for advice on purchasing a tablet PC by a man with two teeth in the worst. I met another location scout and was put on another contact list.

And I watched this guy apply a vinyl of a fake brick wall.

Fuck your ribbon

NOTE: I originally posted this to Facebook, where I figured it'd earn me a lot of apathy and maybe a couple of defriendings. Instead it was fairly well received (shocks me, I wrote it in a white heat with no editing. It should suck.)

Okay, these Facebook avatar-based movements are starting to piss me off.

Hey, go ahead and support something, that's cool guys. But what's aggravating is that the sum total of what you're doing is nothing. Yes, I see your green squares and your pink equal signs and I'm pretty much there. Other people see them and they're way over there, but what you've provided is the opportunity for the both of us to just nod or shake our heads and get on with our lives. Basically: Volume minus Message equals Bullshit.

Put another way, for every pro-Prop 8 or whatever ad that's out there, there's real damage done to the collective psyche. For every pink and red avatar, the healing is nil. You are not helping, you are making yourself (and your friends) feel better about yourself.

Now writing and communicating is scary as hell. I HATE putting this shit out for even limited public consumption because I have friends who disagree with me and at the end of the day, I just want to be kind of likable. Well, what I can tell you from recent adventures in my trade is that the concept of rejection is two metric shitloads scarier than actual rejection and that at the end of the day, people can be petty and bullheaded and mean but they are accepting that you will dissent with them in certain ways.

Writing is a holy chore, and needs to spread like a virus. Communication is a tool that's atrophied down to a collection of call and response on these issues because frankly the people benefiting from rhetoric want it that way. You need to get out there, practice your craft, and when people hit you with something that's difficult to deal with you go back to your hole, you study everything relevant, and you come back stronger than ever. You evolve. You understand how these people developed in such a vacuum of basic decency toward human rights and you will, slowly and maybe only incrementally, bring them toward the enlightenment that you only just previously sought out.

But your avatar is useless.

I was heading to the store last night when I heard the crazy bellowing cyclist freak boy.

In case you don't live in downtown LA and haven't read my previous missives about this guy, he's some swarthy, racially indeterminate mutt who apparently does nothing all day except bicycle through several parts of LA (he's been spotted in East LA) and he does these tricks requiring incredible core and quad strength, leaning the bike over 45 degrees to one side and circling the street, shaking what is now his upper arm and leg and performing for the crowds of astonished and scared onlookers. And he's FUCKING LOUD. Like this guy has some opera background, has to, I'm sure of it because you can hear him three blocks away in this booming, dangerous baritone voice. To top it off, his screaming is context sensitive to the neighborhood he's in. In Little Tokyo it's Asian-sounding gibberish, and in East LA it's "ARRIIIIIBA!"

One time he was doing his thing outside my shop in Little Tokyo and I went outside to watch. I applauded, and then the fifth most frightening thing in my life happened. The guy rode up to the newspaper box on the curb, put his face to the thing so I could only see his eyes, and then started smacking the metal top hard enough to make his hand bleed while yelling "IDON'TNEEDYOURFUCKINGOPINION!" about five times before riding off.

You may also remember that I'm trying to get footage of him. I also call this guy my own personal Moby Dick.

So last night I hear him and think "Damn, I don't have my tablet." But then I realized that I was on my own bike.

Oh hell yes, I was going to ride with the psycho!

I've been on this kick for a bit where I try to do anything I can, say yes to experiences, because for the last year I've been a procrastinating shut-in. One exciting near-deal and then a creative slump from hell. Total lack of inertia. And it felt absolutely horrible. Recently I had started working out again, much to the chagrin of my elbow joints and the one knee with acute tendinosis, as well as spending all night humoring a drunk friend who was desperately trying to get me to move into some 2,000 square foot art loft with him and his prick roommate. Read between the lines, the opportunity to ride next to this nut for a stretch was right in line with what I wanted to be doing.

And I did. I stopped on the curb, waited for him to catch up, and then kicked off next to him BUT AT A RESPECTFUL DISTANCE. And he was doing his thing, circling through the brutal, crushing downtown traffic, almost getting creamed by a white Honda (he never heeds the traffic, often coming mere feet from city buses, and in five years how this hasn't killed him is a mystery).

Then he looks at me and I basically go through puberty backwards with panic.

And he throws me the devil horns and screams. Hell yes. I throw them back. Rock n' roll.

I only stayed with him for a few blocks before peeling off to head to the store. Whatever weird graces some greater power protects this freak with, I'm sure it doesn't extend to myself.

Going to the store

Okay, positive energy. I can try that.

Spring Street, between 4th and 5th. Two women and a stroller, behind me. One of them is speaking passionately and mangling any quotation her sentences stumble across. I don't care, she's energetic. She's the real deal. She's a far cry from beautiful, but I'd take her over a lot of these plastic Wilmas because she's just awesome. In a city where people obfuscate normality by just picking three character tweaks, somebody at least wants something.

It occurs to me that this is where, not three weeks ago, the cops swerved up to the curb right next to me one night and came running at me. I thought I was going to get it. Instead they tackled a black guy on a bike who was passing right next to me.

Seventh Street. A hobo wearing a towel where there's usually a shirt panhandles me. Drops the towel to make his point, revealing too-large pants that hang so far down that they expose his unkempt bush to the entire block. I tell him I never carry cash. He laughs and pats me down gently, jokingly. Then he pats my cock before quickly moving away. I yell "Whoa, buddy!" but I'm laughing. I'm way past giving a shit and so is he, with eyes redder than they are white and a wasted body.

The next corner sees a beautiful Asian girl in a designer coat that probably costs more than all my clothes put together, no hyperbole. She's on the phone and using the word "like" the same way old telegrams used "stop". There's a kind of poetry to Valley Girl when you hear it enough.

So like he's been really great
This has been like the worst week of my life
and he's like been there for me

It sounds like she's trying to make a case for the underdog to a skeptical friend, or maybe that's just what I want to believe, and I don't begrudge her a damn thing but I do have to wonder how the worst week of her life stacks up to that last guy's best.

A quick stop at the library. Not a week ago I taught Sota, now fifteen, the same thing my buddy Casim showed me when I was that age; take a well-read book from the girly porn or "Romance" section and hold it by the spine. Let it fall open. Sex scene, every damn time. Amaze your friends with this tested and true trick.

Reading the script to Apocalypse Now on the sky bridge, dwelling on the themes that tend to flit by when you're watching it, and some guy is using the place the same way a coyote uses a row of houses with chained up dogs. Scan the tables, pick the babe, start chatting. Loud. I switch the music piping through my headphones to from Sarah Blasko to Slayer and crank it up. When he finds that husk dried up and only as responsive as the social contract compels her to be he moves on. I hear him barking at others for five minutes and then he leaves. No books. Probably the vaguest awareness that they're even there.

I glance over my shoulder at the woman after he's gone. She throws me a look that may or not say "Eat shit." I'm fine with either interpretation.

Trivia Night

The inventor of Scrabble was named Alfred Mosher Butts.

Sleep tight.

Good lord

Somebody tell me why this is a thing that exists.

Happy valentine's!

Tone being of a singularly difficulty to read online, I should say that I'm completely serious here: I love Valentine's Day, and I think I love it more when I'm single. I might be saying that defensively as I don't remember a single one where I was ever in a relationship, but seriously; this way you can smile at anybody and it will probably make their day, and nobody gets jealous.

May it have been said a dozen times over so as to make this redundant but you can fucking well appreciate it anyway: Happy Valentine's.

What

When Stephen Fry speaks, I'm happy

I'm just going to watch this over and over, don't mind me.

Quandaries

Is that a midget or is that woman doing a statutory rape?