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.