Mar
2
Where Have All the Tough Guys Gone?
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Driving to work this morning, I saw billboards for “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” and “She’s Out of My League,” the kind of toothless, sissy-Mary pap that passes for adolescent power fantasies these days. Yeesh, what’s happened to young men? As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that adolescence isn’t a phase for males; it’s perpetual. I read the “Kick-Ass” graphic novel last weekend and eagerly anticipate the film. I just finished watching “G.I. Joe” Volume 1.2 and am moving on to Volume 1.3 tonight. So it’s not as though I’m some cultural elitist. I like comic book violence just as much as the next sexually awkward young man with a largely absent father.
But I don’t like weenises. Movie heroes have become too sissified. I’m working on a script for class with a tough guy hero and was trying to think of research materials (i.e. comic books) I could review with a character whose values jibe with my protag. It occurred to me that Jim Steranko’s “Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD” is probably my best bet. And that title was published in the ’60s. Jeesus Kerist! I have to go that far back in time to find flinty heroes for inspiration?
That isn’t to say I think movie heroes should be brutes. Some of my favorite movie characters are deeply troubled. Marty McFly desperately needs to avoid his future mother’s advances and set up his would-be parents before he’s erased from existence in “Back to the Future.” But despite his having to play cupid, he’s still a courageous and resourceful hero, punching out Biff Tannen (who’s twice his size) before leading him on a chase through Hill Valley on a makeshift skateboard. Nowadays, Marty’d probably be some metro candyass who resolves his problems with an elaborate musical number.
John McClane, before he turned into a boring bald-headed killing machine, appears in the first “Die Hard” as a New York cop with a bruised ego. After a long-gestating row with his wife over her career, he has to kill his way through a dozen international terrorists to apologize for not being supportive.
Martin Riggs in “Lethal Weapon I” is a suicidal wreck after the death of his wife. It’s only after befriending his partner, family man Roger Murtaugh (and killing a bunch of ex-CIA drug smugglers), that he is able to move on to the next stage of his bereavement: acceptance.
The Terminator in “T2″ is an unemotional walking tank who learns the value of human life that comes from his interactions of his surrogate son, John Connor.
These are terrific movie heroes because they’re steely sonsabitches, but they’re not completely devoid of inner-conflict. There’s a happy medium between strong and sensitive. I think that’s somehow been lost, and now the cinemas are teeming with mopey, emo dinkuses. It makes for weak sauce cinema. Movie heroes are supposed to be larger than life, not your everyday schmoes.
Anyone who goes to see “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” deserves to get beaten up, and anyone who watches “She’s Out of My League” should die a virgin. It’s time for a tough guy renaissance.
-Brad Lohan
Feb
10
Pitching and Moaning
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I pitched my screenplay in class last night. I don’t particularly like pitching, nor do I think I’m very good at it. But I think it went okay, all things considered. I was a little flummoxed when I realized that my classmates thought the script was set in the modern day after I’d mentioned the Cold War twice at the top of the pitch. Still, I hit upon all the major story points in the two minutes I had allotted. So what if I forgot to mention the hero’s name?
We’ve been reverse-engineering tons of films in class and examining their component parts. I find that sort of thing fascinating. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s redundant when a critic attacks a film for being formulaic. Well, yeah. It’s supposed to be, goofball. The trick is disguising that formula with a fresh approach to the material. Of course, therein lies the challenge of making your film sound like what Joel Silver calls, “uniquely familiar.” Once you’ve done that, you’re halfway home. Then you’ve got to condense all your genius ideas into a two-minute pitch and a two-sentence logline, distilling all your brilliance into something so reductive, it’s hard for the layperson (or some development executive schmendrick) to muster much enthusiasm.
Hey, we’ve hit upon why I hate pitching! As a writer, my last instinct is to be concise. Look at some of my overly wordy blogs about movie quadrilogies. Stripping my script down to a short pitch is physically painful. I have to leave so much out, and then everyone’s confused by the big friggin’ holes in my story. It sounds disjointed and not very well thought out. I’ve been banging away at this idea for over a year. In that time, I’ve solved many of the problems that my classmates brought up after my pitch. And so pitching’s almost an exercise in confusing the hell out of people.
One thing we’ve been doing in class is breaking down popular mainstream films into short pitches, movies like “Gladiator” and “E.T.” Problem is, we’ve all seen those movies and can fill in the narrative gaps, like how does Maximus go from being a Roman general to a slave? That seems like a bit of a leap in logic, but in the context of the film in works. The same goes for “E.T.” He dies and then he comes back to life? That sounds awfully convenient. Again, in the movie, it’s terribly effective. These are two films that either won Best Picture or sat at the tippy-top of the ten highest grossing films of all time. If you pretend you haven’t seen the movie, though, their pitches sound like they were made up on the spot.
That said, I guess I shouldn’t take it to heart when people don’t understand certain elements of my story because I couldn’t flesh them out in the pitch. There’s a lot of world-building (well, world-destroying) that’s going on in my script. I might not be able to shoehorn all of the details into a short pitch, but maybe next time I can get the character’s name in there. And I should bring up the fact that it’s the 1960s.
-Brad Lohan
Feb
4
NC-17
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I recently saw David Cronenberg’s 1996 film, “Crash.” Not to be confused with Paul Haggis’ crappy 2005 Oscar winner, Cronenberg’s movie is the one about people who are car crash fetishists. I don’t mean they’re like the dimwitted lookie loos I’m stuck behind on the 405 whenever there’s a fender-bender. No, the folks in the Cronenberg film get into pileups because it turns them on. Pretty much every review written about the movie, including this one, makes mention of the scene where James Spader frottages Rosanna Arquette’s Freudian-looking scar.
I’ll wait while you open up another tab on your browser, log in to your Netflix account and add “Crash” to your queue…
Are you back? Good, let’s continue.
For reasons completely beyond my comprehension, “Crash” — the Cronenberg version — is rated NC-17. Now I’ve seen a movie where a guy has sex with pie, and that particular gem was rated R. So what gives? I don’t even think the pie sex was consensual.
As far as I’m concerned, the NC-17 rating has virtually no purpose or place. Movies slapped with that rating are generally reedited and resubmitted to the MPAA for a softer rating. Why? Well, newspapers won’t advertise movies that are rated NC-17, and major theater chains won’t exhibit them. NC-17 was supposed to replace the X rating, but not have all the baggage. And yet, it absolutely does. NC-17 is still equated with hardcore pornography. Never mind that hardcore pornography isn’t ever submitted to the MPAA for a rating in the first place.
Still, the occasional ballsy distributor will put out a flick with an NC-17 rating. Those films will play in art houses, and if they’re any good, do respectable business. I’ve seen NC-17 movies like Bertolucci’s “The Dreamers,” starring Bond Girl Eva Green; “Lust, Caution,” directed by Academy Award winner Ang Lee; and Lars Von Trier’s talking animal picture “Anti-Christ” theatrically here in the L.A. area. None of those films are pornographic and actually have some prestige talent on both sides of the camera. Now “Anti-Christ” does have a penetration shot, something that normally crosses the line that separates an art film from wank material. But Von Trier’s making a statement with his graphic imagery, so it goes from being art to porn to art again. And that’s just the opening scene!
Perhaps the most famous NC-17 movie is also probably the worst: “Showgirls.” What an unholy piece of shit that movie is. People can somehow wring some semblance of entertainment value out of that flick’s overwhelming badness, but nothing surprises me anymore. At any rate, “Showgirls” has the distinction of being a rather resounding flop during its initial release, grossing less than half of its $45 budget. Not only did it fail to set the box office on fire, but it continued to delegitimize the NC-17 rating. Again, it seemed like a designation for the trenchcoat crowd only.
What’s so bizarre and paradoxical about the ratings system is that theater chains won’t exhibit NC-17 movies, like I said earlier, but video rental outlets like Blockbuster as well as big box stores like Best Buy will stock their shelves with films that are unrated. Remember I also said that most movies initially given an NC-17 rating are cut down for a softer rating? Well, it’s the NC-17 version that’s released on video, but without a rating to eschew retailers’ insipid policies about distributing NC-17 films. Hell, many of those unrated movies sell themselves as “The version you couldn’t see in theaters!” Now you know why. You’re watching an NC-17 flick!
The NC-17 rating doesn’t even make sense on its face. It originally meant no children under 17 were permitted to see the film, but was later changed so that 17-year-olds weren’t allowed in, either. You have to be at least 18 to see an NC-17 movie. Whut?
Having been legally an adult for well over a decade now, ratings have become fairly meaningless to me. I pretty much watch whatever I want, and I have a tendency to gravitate towards stuff that’s “challenging” (read: loaded with sex and violence). That said, it’s pretty absurd that the MPAA has conspired for two decades now to strip movies of the things I enjoy seeing most by forcing filmmakers to conform to a bogus and wildly inconsistent set of guidelines in order to avoid an NC-17 rating.
-Brad Lohan
Jan
20
Yesterday kicked off the start of Spring Semester at CSUN. It’s good to be back. I enjoyed having a few weeks off, but I found myself becoming bored and listless. I also discovered that I’d completely lost all sense of reason in my DVD rental habits. Last Friday, I checked out Rob Zombie’s “Halloween II” at 20/20 Video. Dig this: The flick wasn’t available at Cinephile, so I walked to the other video store in my neighborhood to check it out. I went to two video stores to find “Halloween II!” So how was the movie? Sucked.
Watching the film wasn’t a complete waste of my time, though. “Halloween II” is historically significant in that it literally defines the symbolic nature of white horses in movies. I’m serious. At the very beginning, there’s a title card that explains what a white horse represents — purity or some shit. I guess test audiences were left scratching their heads at the film’s more esoteric bits. At any rate, what’s important is that I learned something and then kind of forgot it again.
Equipped with my shaky knowledge of the significance of a white horse in movies, I headed up to Northridge last night after work. The pissing rain we’re having in Los Angeles let up long enough for me to commute to the CSUN campus in a little under an hour. It gave me enough time to head over to the campus library and glance over their DVD collection before class. They have the Tim McGraw version of “Flicka,” but Flicka’s brown, so I didn’t bother checking it out.
My Tuesday night course is about developing a screenplay that we’ll ultimately write in the fall. The workload, at a glance, looks to be insane. There are four books which are required reading. Our assignment this week is to have Aristotle’s “Poetics” read by next Tuesday. Pfft, what’s Aristotle know that Rob Zombie doesn’t? If he doesn’t mention horses at any point in the text, I’ll be very disappointed.
I have a fairly solid idea for a screenplay that I’m looking forward to fleshing out over the course of the semester. I think it’s commercial. I like that the course is geared towards writing a mainstream Hollywood movie. Of course, no film class would be complete without the student who fancies himself the next Jim Jarmusch or some equally insufferable arty-farty filmmaker. I wonder who will reveal himself to be that guy this semester. It sure as hell won’t be me. My shit’s got aliens in it.
I’m still looking for a place to shoehorn in a white horse, too.
-Brad Lohan
Jan
13
What’s a Best Boy?
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There’s a lot going on behind-the-scenes of any movie. I mean that literally. It takes quite a few people to get off just one shot in a film. All those credits you don’t watch at the end of the film list hundreds of names of people whose jobs you’re probably not familiar with. But they’re just as important as the schmendrick who calls “Action!”
Having worked on a few productions in multiple bottom-feeding roles, I’ve learned what people like the Best Boy actually do all day. I’ve even done some of the things a Best Boy does, making me unofficially a Best Boy myself. I’m certain my mother would be proud of her little [Best] boy. So, here’s a quickie list of different below-the-line job descriptions. Impress your friends while watching the credits of a movie next time.
1st Assistant Camera/Focus Puller: He works in tandem with the Camera Operator, whose gig is fairly self-expanitory. The focus puller is the guy who makes sure the shot remains in focus. He’s typically the guy in the behind-the-scenes featurettes you see who’s always using a tape measure to determine the distance from the camera to the subject(s).
2nd Assistant Camera: He’s the guy who “slates” each take. Well, what the shit’s a slate? A slate is the little whiteboard clapper thingie that you’ve all seen a million times. The 2nd Asst. Camera holds the slate in front of the camera, identifying the shot and take, then he claps the “sticks” together and gets out of the shot. Wait, why do they clap those stick things together? This is to provide a visual cue to sync with the audio, which are often recorded separately.
3rd Assistant Camera/Loader: He loads the film magazines with celluloid. A film magazine typically holds about 10 minutes’ worth of footage. It’s the Loader’s job to make sure a fresh magazine is always available because you can burn through 10 minutes of film pretty quickly. He also has to load the magazines in the dark, so as to not expose the film and thereby make it unuseable.
Stedicam Operator: A Steadicam is a rig that a Camera Operator wears which allows him to shoot complicated tracking shots smoothly and without the camera shake that comes from traditional hand-held cinematography. You know those ginormous machine guns the Marines wear in “Aliens” that are attached to their bodies? Those are based on the same principles of weight distribution as the Stedicam.
Grip: He’s the guy who moves heavy things: C-stands, dolly track, the dolly itself. What’s a C-stand? A C-stand is a rod with three legs that’s kind of like a tripod, but you mount lights on it instead of a camera. A dolly, before you ask, is a wheeled camera mount that you use for tracking shots. Grips are the most fun people on the set from my experience.
Best Boy: He’s the head electrician. He works closely with the Gaffer. What’s a Gaffer? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The Best Boy makes sure that there are available power supplies for the lighting crew. He talks about stingers. And what are stingers? They’re extension cords. Why are there two damn names for everything? That’s just how it is.
Gaffer: He sets up the lights for each shot.
Boom Operator: He points a boom microphone at the actors and tries to keep it out of the shot during a take. Unfortunately, he is not in charge of explosions.
1st Assistant Director: He’s the biggest asshole on the set with probably the most unenviable job. He’s the “Quiet on the set!” guy. It’s his job to do all the micro-managaing that the actual Director shouldn’t be bothered with. This includes corralling the extras. They do the lion’s share of the shouting on the set, making everyone ultimately come to hate them.
2nd Unit Director: Believe it or not, Directors don’t “direct” every shot in a movie most of the time. Chris Nolan and Guillermo del Toro do, but they’re in the minority. A 2nd Unit Director is often utilized to direct action sequences, inserts and pickup shots, whatever doesn’t really involve the actors’ performances, which fall under the Director’s purview. The truck chase in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” doesn’t have a single shot in it directed by Steven Spielberg. Weird, huh?
Script Supervisor: He is often a she, and she has the second most unenviable job. Continuity errors are a fact of life in movies. There are websites devoted to them. At any rate, she tries to keep these to a minimum by making extensive notes about every take so there are no glaring continuity errors in editing. Since films are shot out-of-sequence, it makes life difficult for them. They tend to cry a lot.
Production Assistant: He’s the angry young man who’s fresh out of film school and can probably do everyone’s job better than the dumbass that’s actually doing it, including the director and so-called on-camera “talent.” I’ve been a PA an assload of times, so believe you me, I’m familiar with the impotent rage. But it’s important to have the humbling experience of PA-ing. It prepares you for the rest of your life, where virtually no one will ever bother to recognize your mad genius and instead treat you like an imbecile. Hey, you wanted to work in showbiz, kiddo.
Many of the roles, particularly on smaller productions, can be folded together. On larger shoots, there’s a bunch of additional hands on deck in every department. Part of me misses being on-set. They’re long days, but still, that sense of magic happening is something that’s unique to filmmaking.
-Brad Lohan
Jan
8
Entertainment News I Couldn’t Care Less About
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I was at the grocery store with my girlfriend the other day, and I saw a supermarket tabloid with some broad named Kendra on the cover. I asked my GF who in the hell Kendra was. She gave me the skinny: Kendra’s one of Hef’s ex-RealDolls. I suddenly realized my question shouldn’t have been, “Who in the hell’s Kendra?” but rather, “Who in the hell gives two shits about Kendra?” And that brings me to a much larger point:
I am so sick of infotainment news, I could eat my own head.
Every day, I’m inundated with an endless stream of patently worthless gossip about celebrities, athletes, politicians, has-beens, and web-footed fish-people. I don’t care. I really, really don’t care. It is not news to me that Gary Coleman is in the hospital. If he dies, that’s news. It’s not news to me that Rush Limbaugh had chest pains. If he dies, that’s news. It was news to me when Brittany Murphy died…for a couple of minutes. Then I went back to not really having much of an opinion about her one way or the other.
What have we learned thus far about celebrity news? If a celeb dies, it’s news. If they do anything else, it is not news. I think this is perfectly fair. Then depending on their artistic contributions and cultural significance, we should care for a predetermined length of time, but no more than 24 hours. After that, we should move on with our lives, assuming we have lives. Oddly, people seem to care more about stupid meaningless bullshit, like that whole Tiger Woods kerfuffle, than what actually happens to them, day-to-day. I find my life endlessly fascinating in its mediocrity. If you regard yourself the same way you would Michael Jackson, you’ll find even your morning dump has more excitement than that tabloid you’re reading while taking said dump.
What’s sort of amazing is that people by and large lack the ability to recognize patterns in celebrity behavior. Here’s a handy list of uninteresting things celebrities often do:
They drink.
They do drugs.
They get in car accidents.
They get married.
They have children.
They adopt children.
They cheat on their spouses.
They get divorced.
They are hospitalized.
They lose weight.
They gain weight.
They say dumb things.
They date imbeciles.
They make sex tapes.
They buy expensive homes.
They sell their expensive homes.
They wear ugly clothes.
They wear fashionable clothes.
They support noble causes.
They win awards.
They mix it up with the paparazzi.
They beat a potentially life-threatening illness.
They back political candidates.
They humiliate themselves publicly.
They lose a close relative.
They cheat on their taxes.
They have legal problems.
They have sex with underage girls.
They kill people.
They go to jail.
They get out of jail.
They make a comeback.
They fade into obscurity.
None of the items I’ve listed above is news to me. Again, if a celebrity isn’t dead, it’s not news. Living celebrities are of value to me when they are doing what they’re famous for: acting, singing, etc. Anything outside of their profession is absolutely not newsworthy. But all the things I’ve mentioned become cultural obsessions when they have no right to be, not when there’s so much else going on in the world that’s much more fascinating. Fixating on airheads and no-talents directs your attention away from what’s important in life, like coming to grips with the fact that it’s okay to just be an average person with everyday problems. Celebrity is really only sought after by dicktards.
I think that people’s fascination with a given celebrity’s rise and fall stems from some sort of bizarre love-hate relationship that the ghoulish buttheads who visit trashy sites like TMZ must have with famous people. The only thing that gets them more excited than some new debutante like Taylor Swift becoming the latest of-the-moment sensation is ogling the non-stop trainwreck that is personified by Amy Winehouse. Even more stunning is the feigned sympathy that comes when one of these debutantes winds up in a morgue. Remember when Anna Nicole Smith kicked the bucket, and suddenly, we’d lost a national treasure?
So why do I think a celebrity’s death is the only thing that’s newsworthy about them? Well, it’s the one thing they can’t change with a new PR rep and a career makeover. Death’s a constant. All their other brushes with the law, infidelities, and general weirdness will come and go. However, they’ll always be dead. And in death, usually, they’ll stop giving the tabloids something new to report on.
-Brad Lohan
Dec
29
Pitch Fests, or How to Waste $250
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I periodically receive emails from various pitch festivals. It doesn’t matter how many I unsubscribe from or mark as spam. I’m doomed to get these emails for the rest of my natural life. So what’s a pitch festival, anyway? Well, it’s a way to separate novice screenwriters from their money by giving them an opportunity to pitch their scripts to top-shelf Hollywood production companies, literary agencies and the like. Twice I’ve allowed myself to be duped into attending these complete wastes of time and money. If I can prevent one person from shelling out their cash to go to a pitch fest, well, I’ll feel like I’ve done my part. After all, that $250 can be better spent on a girlfriend experience.
Wait, didn’t I say that pitch fests offer face time with high-power industry types, access that writers without agency representation would never have otherwise? Why wouldn’t that be worth a few hundred dollars to attend? First of all, and I’m going to italicize this for emphasis, you should never have to pay one red cent to pitch your work. Technically, you’re not paying the industry types themselves for their time; you’re paying an admission fee for the festival, where there are seminars and networking opportunities as well. Nonetheless, a pitch meeting should come at no cost to you, the writer. Think of it as paying for a job interview; you wouldn’t do that, would you? The endgame after all is to get someone to pay you money for your screenplay. Don’t give me that whole line about how you have to spend money to make money.
So who are the industry types that you can pitch? This is such a slap in the face. The festivals name-drop all these big-time producers and whatnot. But here’s the rub: hundreds of no-name screenwriters go to these things. You have to get there hella-early, wait in line for the doors to open, and then it’s a free-for-all as everyone scrambles to sign up for an allotted time to pitch. Maybe James Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment will be at the pitch fest, but that means jack shit if you don’t even get a seat at the table with them because a whole bunch of other jerkstores have already signed up to speak with Lightstorm.
Let’s say you do actually get to speak with a major player, like Dreamworks. Are you actually going to be pitching Steven Spielberg himself? Excuse me while I regain my composure after having doubled-over with uncontrollable laughter. No, Spielberg doesn’t go to the pitch fests, scouting young and fresh talent. Some 23-year-old douche who’s fresh out of USC and is an assistant to the assistant of someone close to Spielberg will be the one hearing your pitch. He’ll be wearing his nicest Ed Hardy shirt, too. The bottom-feeding lowlifes that the production companies and agencies send to the pitch fests are not decision-makers and really aren’t happy about being inundated with a bunch of morons’ dumb ideas all day.
Still convinced that getting a chance to pitch your script is at least something? Well, let’s talk about the pitching process itself. Ever tried speed-dating? It’s almost exactly like that. You get five minutes to pitch your screenplay to someone who’s already decided they don’t like you from the moment you sat down. Now, screenwriting manuals tell you that a logline should be 25 words or less, and you should be able to sum up the overarching story in three paragraphs or so. All that being said, you should have more than enough time if you just regurgitate your logline and brief synopsis, right? Yes, that’s true. But when you strip down your story to its bare bones, it’s probably going to sound hollow and perfunctory. Novice writers aren’t hip to all the sales-y nuances of pitching, either; they get caught up in minutiae or forget important elements. The time crunch also works against them. There’s simply too much pressure.
Well, what about the screenwriting seminars, hosted by actual working screenwriters (who never sold a single script at a pitch fest)? Those have to be somewhat worth the cost of admission, don’t they? I dunno, maybe? The thing I hate about seminars is that they get hijacked by idiots. There’s some unwritten law of the universe that the stupidest people in a room will always be the most vocal. At any rate, if you want to sit through a lengthy Q&A session about proper script format and how many script pages equal a minute of screentime (the answer is one), by all means attend a seminar with all the dullards who think they’ve got a great idea for a “Die Hard” knockoff. (My “Die Hard” knockoff is set in Medieval times if you must know…not the restaurant, but the historical period.)
But what about the success stories, the people whose scripts were bought by one of the production companies at the pitch fest? Those folks are the exception, not the rule. The ratio of people whose scripts don’t sell versus those that do is sadly disproportionate. It’s Vegas odds, kids.
Even as a networking opportunity, a pitch fest is a joke. The only people you’re like to meet are dimwits that were also snookered into paying good money to attend a pitch fest. You need those lameos on your Facebook like you need a hole in your head.
All things considered, a pitch fest is a pretty lousy way to market yourself if you’re a struggling screenwriter. There is no one tried and true method of breaking in, but this is certainly no better than pissing up a rope.
-Brad Lohan
Dec
9
Special Features Every DVD Should Have
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I’ve been an avid DVD collector since Christmas of ‘00 when I got my first player. I remember the first DVD I ever purchased was Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator.” Since then, I’ve filled two bookcases with DVDs and that’s not counting all the ill-informed blind buys I’ve sold back to Amoeba Music over the years. I have no idea how many DVDs I currently own, but it’s a fairly obscene amount.
I don’t buy as many DVDs as I used to. I’m on the fence about whether or not I should upgrade to a Blu-Ray. Part of me wishes that Blu-Ray will die on the vine like Laserdisc. For years, I was under the impression that DVD was as good as home video was going to get in terms of picture and sound. When HD-DVD and Blu-Ray came down the pike, it was like a slap in the face. I’ve dropped untold thousands on DVDs and double-dipped on more than a few of them. Now there are even better looking and sounding versions of many of those films on Blu?! Terrific. But that’s a whole ‘nother rant.
Setting aside the fact that Blu-Ray is supposed to trump DVD as far as bells and whistles go, there’s another reason I don’t buy DVDs as much as I did: DVDs have the either anemic or janky special features nowadays. I’ve blogged about extremely boring featurettes before, but I’ve never gone into detail about what features every DVD should boast. DVDs are intended to be collected and revisited. Part of what should entice people to buy the things are all the additional crap they’re going to get, stuff they’ll never get to watch if they’re just renting the thing. Interactive menus are not a special feature.
So what features should every DVD offer? Read on…
The original poster art for the film.
DVD covers, for reasons completely beyond my understanding, are the ugliest, most hideously Photoshopped nightmare factories I’ve ever seen. Many of them do not use the original poster art, opting for floating head mash-ups that always look crudely done. I don’t want to buy a DVD that looks like a bootleg. I want to see the great art that was used during the film’s theatrical run. This is especially true of older films, since many posters these days look like dog’s breakfast.
A director’s commentary that’s genuinely interesting.
Film directors by and large sound so broken down when they’re doing commentaries. They never seem to know what to talk about, so often you get long stretches of uncomfortable silence or the filmmaker talking about what we’re looking at on the screen. It’s almost as though they’re afraid to talk about what the film’s trying to say. I’m not interesting in hearing the director tell me what a “trooper” so-and-so was on the day they had to do multiple takes of a difficult scene. I want to hear about their vision for the material, which is way more interesting than the boring minutae (“We shot the film out of order!”) they get caught up in when they’re avoiding talking about anything directorial.
The theatrical cut of the film and the extended edition.
I hesitate to call the extended version of a film the “director’s cut” because oftentimes it’s not. It’s just a longer version that was cut for time and/or to get a softer rating from the MPAA. That said, it’s a total gyp when studios put out different versions of a film on separate DVD releases; there are three cuts of “Watchmen” floating around — the theatrical version, the director’s cut and the ultimate edition. I’m curious about longer versions of films, but not curious enough to buy multiple versions of the same film that are only marginally different in that one restores a handful of deleted or extended scenes. What’s worse is when the only version of a film that’s available on DVD is the extended edition, which is sometimes a crummier release.
Deleted/extended scenes, alternate endings, etc.
Every frame of footage that was chopped out of a film should be included in the DVD release. I don’t care if the special effects aren’t finished or the color timing is off. I want to see what was removed and make up my own mind as to whether or not it should’ve been left in.
“Making of” documentaries that aren’t a crushing bore.
Featurettes are a mixed bag. They’re either too comprehensive, showing every waking moment of the entire pre-production, production, and post-production processes, or they’re a few minutes long and barely scratch the surface. I can understand that everyone involved wants to save face in the event that the shoot was difficult, which it more than likely was. We’re not going to see anything like “Hearts of Darkness,” the feature length documentary about the making of “Apocalypse Now” that’s light years better than “Apocalypse Now.” But I would like to get a glimpse into all the different stages of production without being bored stiff. I also don’t want the thing to be over in an eyeblink. They need to find a middle ground.
Trailers, TV spots, etc.
Usually, the movies I like have great trailers. So it’s disappointing as hell when the trailer isn’t included in the DVD release for whatever reason. I want to see all the promotional materials for the film. It’s interesting to see how things are marketed differently in other countries. Trailers that are cut for Japanese audiences are almost always way better than the crap that hits U.S. screens (“In a world…”).
What I’m sick to death of are the inevitable double-dips. There should only be one DVD release of a film, one with all the goodies. Too often are films put out on “bare bones” discs with zero special features, and then sometime later another version will be made available with all sorts of extras. This is horseshit. If studios want to know why DVD sales have flatlined in recent years, it’s because they’ve made consumers afraid to plunk down money on a film that’ll more than likely be arbitrarily re-released again and again. “Army of Darkness” probably holds the record for most frivolous double-dips.
What are some features you think should be standard for all DVDs?
-Brad Lohan
Dec
3
What I’ve Learned in Grad School
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With one more week to go before Fall Semester is over, I thought I’d look back at the past few months and dazzle you with all the interesting bits of film history I’ve learned in grad school thus far. Remember, I have to pay for this stuff. So consider yourself lucky that I’m giving you a free education here.
The first narrative film wasn’t directed by a man
Alice Guy-Blache, a French gal, directed the first film that actually told a story, a short called “The Cabbage Fairy.” It wasn’t just a single shot of people doing something or other. In the early days of film, directors simply photographed an action, like two men dancing with each other (seriously!) and so forth. Guy-Blache, who went on to become the highest paid director in the world at her peak, actually pioneered cinematic storytelling.
The first sound film was produced by black filmmakers
A couple years before the release of “The Jazz Singer” — the 1929 version, not the 1979 one — African-American filmmakers experimented with syncing the sound that occurs within the story world (also known as diegetic sound) with the visuals.
The first action film wasn’t made in the United States
Apparently, white dudes are the least innovative filmmakers in the movie business. That said, Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 film, “The Seven Samurai,” is credited with being the first action picture, one that established many of the conventions still seen in contemporary actioners, things like the introduction of the hero performing some feat of derring-do that’s completely unrelated to the story.
The last pure noir film is not “Touch of Evil”
Though many film historians credit Orson Welles’ 1958 picture with being the last “pure” film noir, it ain’t. Robert Wise’s “Odds Against Tomorrow,” starring Harry Belafonte(!), was released the following year and has all the elements of film noir, not to mention xylophone music and a huge explosion at the end. It also doesn’t have Charlton Heston as the world’s least convincing Mexican.
Hollywood and Highland was modeled after Babylon in DW Griffith’s “Intolerance”
For five fruitless years, I lived in Hollywood and frequently visited the garish shopping center at Hollywood and Highland, not knowing that the architecture of that tourist trap was designed to look like Babylon from a 1916 silent film. Who in the hell thought that was a good idea? I don’t know, but there are giant concrete elephants. That in and of itself is an architectural triumph.
CSUN will become Starfleet Academy at some point between now and the 23rd century
Imagine how much more tuition will cost when Cal State Northridge goes from being a university to training fresh-faced planet-hopping imperialists for the United Federation of Planets! It’s still endlessly entertaining for me to see exterior shots of the Oviatt Library in the new “Star Trek” movie.
I’ve learn a ton of other things during my studies in the MA Screenwriter program, but I don’t want to bore you with some lengthy explication of “critical flicker fusion.” At any rate, I’m glad I’m learning stuff. Next semester should be even more educational. It certainly cost enough.
-Brad Lohan
Nov
24
Working at a Movie Theater
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Back when I was in sophomore in college, some 10 years ago now(!), I worked at the Newport Cinemas in Spokane, Washington. The building has since been leveled. Unfortunately, the customers and many of my former co-workers weren’t still inside when it got the wrecking ball. The job actually wasn’t all that bad. I have to admit that I felt a pang of sadness when my mom told me the Newport was no more. Call me crazy, but I look back on many of my experiences there fondly, and not just the time I made out with fellow co-worker Michele (with one “L”) after seeing “Entrapment.”
The Newport was actually the second movie theater I worked at. When I was 17, I briefly worked at an ACT III theater in Alderwood, Washington, but I got so few hours, I have virtually no stories to tell about that place. All’s I did was clean auditoriums after showings of “Speed 2: Cruise Control” where I was driven to near madness by the shit-awful island soundtrack that plays over the film’s end credits. Oh, and my manager Tammy had a nervous breakdown shortly after I left. I wish I could take full responsibility for that. I think she had other things going on, though.
Shortly after I turned 19, I put in for a job at the Newport and was hired on the spot. They were understaffed with people who could close, and being over 18, I was the perfect candidate. Most of my co-workers were 16 or 17 and female. Many of them didn’t even like movies. And all of them smoked. So it was like being back in high school again, surrounded by pimply chicks I had nothing in common with.
The Uniforms
We all had to wear these dopey uniforms. The ACT III theater chain had recently been bought out by Regal Cinemas, and gone were the swanky black vests and bowties that I’d worn at the Alderwood 7. Instead we had to wear burgundy vests and black neckties. At the time, I didn’t know how to tie a tie, so I asked a co-worker of mine to do it for me. At the end of a workday, I’d simply loosen it enough to slip it off without untying it. Then I’d slip it back on again and tighten it when I came in for my next shift. I didn’t learn how to tie and tie until the following summer after I’d quit working at the Newport.
Box Office
The worst thing about the job, worse than the chain-smoking bimbos and the brick red vests, were the clientele. It’s no mystery to me why “New Moon” has made so much money. Movie-goers are the stupidest people imaginable. They really do turns their brains off when they catch a flick. I couldn’t believe how many folks would just show up at the theater, not knowing what they wanted to see, and then hold up the line at the box office, asking me to synopsize all our films. It was also pretty amazing that they’d struggle with movie titles that had more than two words in them. Nobody could manage to call “There’s Something About Mary” by its actual title. I got a lot of people who called it “What About Mary” or “How About Mary.”
No, they couldn’t remember the title of a movie, but customers could always recall how much ticket prices used to be. At the time, our matinee price was a staggering $3.75. That was until 6 pm. After 6, a ticket was $7.25, enough to buy the presidency! People bitched and moaned endlessly about our outrageous ticket prices and reminisced about a simpler time when a matinee was a mere $3.25 and you could get a girlfriend experience from a crack whore on Sprague Street for a nickel. Then they’d pay for their ticket with a $100 bill. I hate people sometimes.
Concessions
Tickets in hand, customers would then go buy concessions. On days when we were understaffed, I’d work both the box office and the concession stand, meaning I’d have to deal with some of these retards twice. Working concessions was way worse than box. Regal Cinemas is run by space aliens who have no idea that most customers vehemently despise Pepsi. Twizzlers and all the other candies (Snow Caps?!) were also wildy unpopular. Oh, customers would still reluctantly shell out money for Cookie Dough Bites, but begrudgingly so. It’d give them yet another opportunity to lament our high prices.
Upselling was something we concessionaires were encouraged to do. Man alive, what a pain in the ass that was. Upselling is when I asked the customer, who’s ordering a small- or medium-sized beverage or popcorn, if they’d like a larger sized beverage or popcorn instead for just a few cents more. I basically told them they don’t know what they want. It’s stupid and flies right in the face of the old axiom, “The Customer Is Always Right!” About half the time, customers caved in and went for the larger size, earning Regal another couple quarters. Whoopty-shit.
Usher
Sometimes, I’d get to work the usher podium and teach customers their left from their right. You’d be amazed how many people could screw up the following directions: “Down the hall, first one on the right.” Never mind that the entrance to each auditorium had a sign over the door with the movie’s name on it, too. I guess many of them were looking for the theater showing “How About Mary.”
Cleaning auditoriums was always an interesting archeological expedition. I found empty beer bottles, full diapers and everything in between. One of my managers said he’d found a syringe once. Customers never finished their popcorn or their beverages; I guess they shouldn’t have gotten those larger sizes for a few cents more. The best part about cleaning theaters was when we got to use electric leaf blowers after a big-ticket movie dropped. Blowing around clouds of popcorn and candy wrappers made dozens of small messes into a big one.
Wowie, I’ve done all this place-setting and not even told any stories yet. I’ve got a great one about Thanksgiving ‘98, too. That said, why don’t I lower the curtain on this exposition-heavy installment and post another chapter tomorrow that’s more character-driven?
TO BE CONTINUED…
-Brad Lohan