Supergirl: The Movie

Like many of my friends with a shared interest in comic books, I've been reading things about the upcoming "Supergirl" television show on CBS with great interested. Who are they casting? What will the costume look like? What will the focus be? And will it be as big a disaster as Supergirl: The Movie, the film from 1984?

OK, "disaster" might be a harsh word.

I say that with some authority, because I've watched the movie four times this weekend, and I've come to the conclusion that the movie is flawed without being completely horrible. Even worse, it seems like the people making the movie tried really hard to do justice to the concept and the character.

Except Faye Dunaway.

I think she was making an entirely different movie.

Everybody else, though, seemed to be trying really hard to make a decent movie. They just didn't have much to work with.

First, we'll give the movie some credit for trying to keep as much of the original character intact as they could. In the comics, Supergirl is a survivor of Argo City, a chuck of the planet Krypton that survived the explosion that destroyed the rest of the world:





You're probably thinking, "Hey, wait, science doesn't work that way," but that comic was written in 1959, and the focus wasn't really on factually accurate astrophysics. In later years, the same scene shown in flashback would often show Argo City as a domed city that survived the explosion, but the basics were always the same: Kara Zor-El, Superman's cousin, lived in Argo City and survived the explosion of Krypton when the city was blasted into space. Like the rest of the fragments of Krypton, the ground under Argo City began to turn into kryptonite and poison the Kryptonians living on, so they covered the ground in a layer of lead and survived for a time until tragedy struck: a meteor shower (probably made of chunks of Krypton) struck the city, puncturing the lead shield poisoning everyone, so Kara's father, Zor-El, sent her to Earth in the tiny rocket he had time to construct. Orphaned, she flew away from her doomed family and neighbors, never to see them again.

She was, fortunately, already dead when Mr. Mxyzptlk dropped a gigantic kryptonite meteor on Metropolis to kill Superman, and the meteor turned out to be Argo City, filled with poisoned Kryptonian corpses:



When comics turned dark in the late 1980's, they turned really dark.

Back to the movie, they did their best at keeping most of this origin, creating an Argo City:





that exists in "inner space", while planets like Earth and Venus exist in "outer space". They never explain why Argo City exists in this other place, but when they accidentally lose their Omegahedron, the city's power source, it's a crisis. Mia Farrow explains that the city will die in a matter of days, and that none of them can leave. People who watched the Superman movie know that none of them can leave because they have no planet to go back to, but it seems odd that the movie just glosses over that. Superman's cousin lives in this endangered city, and we're never told why. Kara feels kind of responsible for the loss of the Omegahedron, so she jumps in an experimental craft and heads out after it.

The Omegahedron, meanwhile, crashes to Earth, landing in the picnic of Selena, a frustrated witch living in a carnival funhouse. Selena immediately recognizes it as an object of great power, and sets off on what should be a path to world domination but instead ends up being the downfall of the whole movie. Selena and Supergirl, who is disguised as student Linda Lee, spend the entire movie fighting over a guy.

This guy:



The problem is that this movie doesn't have enough "super", and has way too much "girl".

Not only do we have two powerful women spending an hour fighting over a man, but there's also a couple of scenes of wacky girls' dorm hijinks:



and some rather disappointing action sequences where Supergirl fights evil bumper cars, runaway construction equipment, rapist truck drivers, uneven tilting flooring (she forgets that she can fly? I guess?), a demon, and in one really terrible sequence a giant invisible monster. I can only assume that they had to make the monster invisible because they spent all of the special effects money on Faye Dunway's wigs and outfits:



Seriously, she has a ton of hair in this movie:



and a ton of outfits:











but again, I think people were trying, sort of. The movie just can't seem to decide what kind of movie it wants to be. It's way too much "chick flick" to be a superhero movie, and way too much "superhero" for a movie about two women fighting over a man. It's kind of like the creators couldn't figure out who their target audience was, so they created a movie that doesn't really appeal to anyone specifically.

And then there's Faye Dunaway.

I get that Academy Award winners sometimes make shallow, fun movies just because they might feel like it. They might be compelled to by finances, or because they love to make movies and just don't want to stop. There are any number of reasons why award winning actors and actresses make movies like Street Fighter, Trog, and Wicked Stepmother, but you still have to wonder if Faye Dunaway looked at a giant pile of movie scripts and thought, "Yes! This is worth my effort."

Because damn, does she put in some effort.

Somewhere along the way she must have confused "supervillain" with "drag show emcee", because her acting in this movie makes her work in Mommie Dearest seem mannered, subtle, and completely understated. It's an unforgettable performance.

Especially if you see a huge wig somewhere and it triggers a flashback.

The Many Sins of Frances "Baby" Houseman

A strange thing happened to me this week. I was taking a Buzzfeed quiz on Facebook, as I often do despite swearing that I would never take another because I know myself better than any internet quiz could possibly know me, and I was informed that if I were a character in the movie Dirty Dancing then I would be Lisa.

Lisa? I thought, aghast. I'm Lisa? Vain, shallow Lisa? I'm Lisa?

Adding insult to injury, the little writeup of Lisa that accompanied my results informed me that Lisa sometimes "makes poor decisions".

Hey, wait a minute... I thought, placing myself in Lisa's fashionable shoes. Lisa makes poor decisions? You got a lot of nerve, Buzzfeed quiz. Lisa's not the one dancing across the ballroom with a statutory rapist and part time gigolo. All Lisa did was try to land a husband with potential for future success. How did Lisa end up getting such a bad rap?

Then I remembered something that I learned earlier in the summer, when I watched Maleficent: Sometimes, you might think a character is one way, but it turns out that they're something completely different, and you just had a crappy narrator. For example, you might think someone is a plotting, powerful sorceress who revels in her evil ways and laughs in the face of goodness, but then you find out that she's actually just a completely reactive, somewhat traumatized assault survivor who feels really bad about everything, cries sometimes, and really likes being a nanny to her ex-boyfriend's kid, and you kind of feel bad for her. Was it possible that Lisa got a similar deal? Especially given that the movie is narrated by Lisa's sister, "Baby", rather than Lisa herself?

What might we learn if we watched "Dirty Dancing" from Lisa's point of view?

My family and I decided to find out.



Our story begins in the car, and our first glimpse of the Sisters Houseman telegraphs their roles immediately:



Lisa, on our left, is a shuddering mass of insecurity, battered by a lifetime of familial abuse in the form of lowered expectations. Lisa's family has made it clear to her that she has no purpose, no destiny other than to be pretty enough to marry a man. There's no college in Lisa's future, no goals to attain. Lisa, worn down and unable to fight back after years of psychological damage, is instead driven to pursue an increasingly unattainable standard of beauty. Why else would she be trying to comb her hair and maintain its style in a moving car with all of the windows open?

The first time Lisa speaks, it is an expression of agony as she realizes that she has, once again, failed:



Lisa has not packed her coral shoes. The armor of fashion that she wears to defend herself from a cruel world that belittles and dismisses her suddenly has a chink, a flaw, a shoe sized hole that someone can fling an arrow through. And who does the flinging? Her sneering, faux intellectual sister, Baby. Not only does she immediately belittle Lisa's existential crisis of identity, but she takes the first available opportunity to remind Lisa of her place in the family and the world that night at dinner, accompanied by the cruel laughter of her parents.

Dr. Houseman explains, "Max, our Baby's going to change the world."

Sensing the exclusion of the other Houseman daughter, Max attempts to pull her into the discussion. "And what are you going to do, missy?"

Before Lisa can express a hope, a dream, or even a thought, her smirking sister taunts, "Oh, Lisa's going to decorate it."



Baby talks a good game in public for most of the movie, telling stories of Peace Corps aspirations and ambitions toward social justice, but in private she's a monster whose scheming heart and conniving ways would give Lex Luthor pause. The Housemans haven't even been at the resort for an entire day when Baby commits her first transgression:



Trespassing.

Followed immediately by theft.



You may have carried that watermelon, Baby, but who paid for it? Who paid for it?

Like a bee to the hive, Baby's black heart is drawn to a den of sin: lustful dancing, underage drinking, and rampant drug abuse and there, in the eye of the storm, she finds the terrible yin to her yang: Johnny Castle. Unlike Baby, who cloaks her depravity in sweater sets and sweetheart necklines, Johnny openly telegraphs his rebellious lawlessness through a selection of black outfits in this sea of resort colors, a sinister shadow driving the only black car in the Kellerman's parking lot. It's no more surprising that he later turns out to be a gigolo, statutory rapist, and suspected thief than it is that Baby loves him; her blackened soul would accept no less.

Despite Baby's constant duplicity and undermining ways, Lisa continues trying to befriend her sister, asking her to cover while Lisa takes an innocent walk on the golf course with Robby, the waiter. Baby absently agrees, Lisa's problems of no concern to her. Later, Baby witnesses Lisa's moral purity in spurning Robby's sexual advances on the golf course, and she flies into a dark rage. Barely an hour goes by before she's engaged in clandestine late night meetings, bankrolling an illegal medical procedure and endangering the life of a dance instructor that she perceives as a rival for Johnny's affections, and then masterminding a conspiracy to defraud the staff of the Sheldrake Hotel out of a salary contracted to someone else.

Not satisfied, she then ruins Lisa's only chance at love by threatening to have Robby, the waiter, fired if he doesn't stay away from Lisa.

She also physically assaults him in his workplace.



Baby may talk a good game about helping underprivileged people, but she certainly has no problem with class warfare, does she? It took her all of thirty seconds to remind Robby, the waiter, that she could have him fired, because he is an employee, and she is a privileged member of the resort's leisure class. Her word wouldn't be questioned, and they both know it, even before she drives that point home with a strategic icewater pour.

Eventually, as it was doomed to from the start, Baby's illicit house of cards collapses, pulled down by the mounting weight of her parade of lies. She steps over Penny's weeping, bleeding body, watches from the comfort of the porch as her lover beats and humiliates Robby, the waiter, informs on the elderly and infirm Schumakers to divert suspicion from herself and her lover the sex offender, and then somehow convinces her parents to forgive her of everything with a few slick dance moves.

Where does all of this leave Lisa?

Alone.

Before the final curtain, we see Lisa clinging to a desperate moment in the spotlight, yearning, trying, striving just for a moment to be recognized.



Minutes later, Lisa is once again upstaged by her sister.

Baby may have had the time of her life, but all Lisa got was a ruined vacation.

I got this movie for a dollar: "Cougar Cult"

Since I landed last night and was too tired to do anything, I spent most of today running errands and getting situated back into my life. I went to a couple of thrift stores, the grocery store, and the used bookstore, where I dropped off a bunch of books and found a movie:

Cougar Cult

As you can see from the cover, it's about... women? Shirtless college guys? Kittycats? It's about all of that, and somehow so much more.

Our story opens with a shirtless young man cleaning a pool beside three older women, who lounge in chairs and drink wine. The poolboy, Henry, mentions that he needs to get going, but really needs to take a shower first. After offering him a drink, the ladies send Henry upstairs for a shower, where he proceeds to take the weirdest shower I've ever seen:

Henry only washes his torso.

And he doesn't use soap.

And doesn't duck his head under the water, ever. He just keeps rubbing his torso and arms with his hands, getting them wet, for about four and a half minutes of the movie. Seriously, almost five minutes of the movie look like this:



While that's going on, the women start walking into the house in weird, overexposed lighting over the sound of growling.



The camera cuts back and forth between the wet torso rubdown and the overexposed walking, and then Henry hears a weird noise, gets out of the shower, only puts on his underwear, and goes to investigate. Before you know it, he's being chased through the house by an unseen, snarling enemy. He barricades himself in a downstairs room, peeks out when it's quiet, and then something grabs him.

When the lights come back up, Henry is unconscious on the floor with the three women standing around him discussing how their god is going to make them take mates to preserve their youth. Henry is apparently unsuitable for this purpose, so the sisters proclaim that they're having steak tartar for dinner...

AND THEN THIS HAPPENS:



And it happens again:



That's a special effect that makes the SyFy Channel original movies look like Industrial Light and Magic. Seriously, what the hell was that? I'm making that my Facebook cover photo.

Now there are three young men in front of the house, answering an ad for a cook, a poolboy, and a masseuse for three older ladies. The older ladies, of course, are the previously seen catwitches, and I don't bother to learn the young men's names. I've already come to the understanding that they're not here to be characters. We'll just call them Blond Guy, Pool Guy, and Other Brunette. They are hired on the spot after confirming that they don't have girlfriends, and then Blond Guy takes a nap.

By which I mean Blond Guy lays in bed rubbing himself and writhing on the sheets for three minutes.



Three minutes. I rewound and counted. During the three minutes he has visions of the two brunette catwitches sneaking in and rubbing his legs, but it turns out to be a nightmare, which he is awaked from by Other Brunette. Other Brunette is suddenly concerned about job security, confessing that he's never given a massage before, so Blond Guy tells him to take off his shirt, get on the bed, and Blond Guy will give him a massage so that he knows how to do it.

Wait, what?



Is this gay porn? Because all of a sudden Other Brunette is like, "This feels good," and Blond Guy is like, "Let me talk to you about our weird 'hot' boss women while I rub you down, in my bed, in my underwear."

And then we cut away to Pool Guy, who spends four to six minutes of the movie standing by the pool in his shorts, spraying himself down with the hose. Seriously, is this gay porn? Like with all the porn cut out? Anyway, Blonde Catwich is watching Pool Guy through the window throughout this scene while weird growling noises play, and then announces to her Target lamp and random free weight set that she guesses he'll be next.

Other Brunette shows up downstairs to give one of the catwitches her massage, and she explains that he's way overdressed, and that when she comes back he better have lost "at least" his shirt.

Then Blond Guy takes a shower, which goes about the same as the one we started the movie with, although he also gets his hair wet. While this is happening there are a lot of those overexposed shots of the catwitches walking through the house, and then one of the catwitches sneaks into the shower and almost touches him, but he doesn't see her.



(Why does she look so angry about his butt?)

The sound of snarling surprises him out of the shower and he decides that he was hearing things. The other two guys stop by the pool to talk about how boring being a pool guy is, and then they see some random guy pull up in a sports car. He comes in to talk to the sisters, and they take him upstairs and tell him to take off his clothes because he's a gigolo. They use the blond catwitch's magic necklace to knock him out, then they perform some witchcraft on him, by which I mean they pour oil on his chest and he rubs it all over himself while writhing on the bed. The catwitches raise their hands a lot, light some candles, talk about their god, talk in weird voices, and then pronounce the ritual a success.

After that they eat him (Jesus Christ, those cat heads!), because one of the catwitches is handing Other Brunette the gigolo's car keys. She tells him to park it in a public lot by the bank and leave the keys in it, so that the gigolo can pick it up later. Other Brunette finds this suspicious, but drives off anyway after talking to Blond Guy, who is apparently the cook since he's wearing an apron and briefs. Abandoned by his friend, Blond Guy takes another self-molesting nap.

Seriously?

All that guy did today was take a nap, give his friend a sexy backrub, take a shower, and walk around in an apron, and now he's taking another nap?

Wait, all three guys are taking naps. On top of their blankets. And rubbing themselves. In their underwear. It's gotten to the point where even I'm bored by the torsos, and I really like well-built male torsos. Anyway, the catwitches are walking through the house in the overexposed lighting again, the guys are writhing, and then some snarling noises wake up Blond Guy. He puts on his glasses, but nothing else, and goes to wander the house in his briefs, where he discovers that Pool Guy is in some sort of trance. He sleepwalks to the catwitches' bedroom, followed by Blond Guy, wakes up from his trance when the catwitches invite him to a foursome with the three of them, and then they do the same magic they did to the gigolo, except that they don't eat Pool Guy after they oil him down.

The next morning, Blond Guy tries to warn Other Brunette, telling him everything he's seen. Blond Guy also recognizes blonde catwitch's magic amulet as the South American symbol of an Amazon cat goddess, but blond catwitch overhears their discussion. Other Brunette stomps off, calling Blond Guy crazy, the catwitches walk in a circle and light more candles, and then they hypnotize Pool Guy into calling some other guy because they don't think Blond Guy will be suitable anymore. The other guy shows up (shirtless), blond witch hypnotizes him with her magic necklace, and then Blond Guy discovers that they've also hypnotized Other Brunette.

The witches turn into catheads again, but Blond Guy grabs the magic necklace and presses it to blond catwitch's forehead. Somehow this shorts out the magic, the catwitches disappear, the other guys wake up in bed in their underwear covered in oil, and then everybody goes home.

The end.

Unless there's a sequel.

"The Canyons" Made Me Sad

Last night I gleefully announced to my friends on Facebook that Lindsay Lohan's new movie, The Canyons, is available on demand on cable, and that I would go ahead and watch it so that nobody else had to.

And then I watched it.

And now I feel bad for doing so.

My friend Rod said that I had a moral duty to blog about it, presumably because I volunteered to watch it for others, but after sitting through it (and falling asleep for about fifteen minutes of it; I rewatched that part today to make sure I didn't miss anything that might change my opinion) I found that I didn't have anything entertaining to say about it. I read a number of articles about the making of this movie, and all of them made me feel kind of bad for Lindsay Lohan, but actually watching this made me feel guilty. It made me feel like Lindsay Lohan was a real person in pain, rather than a punchline, and that it was wrong to exploit her.

The movie itself is nothing great or terrible. The plot is a pretty by the numbers "murderous love triangle amid the glamour of Hollywood", familiar ground that B-movies and "erotic thrillers" have covered more than once over the years. The acting is tolerable, the scenery feels authentic, and the soundtrack left no impression, so I guess it was fine or that it didn't have one. I'm pretty sure this movie only got any publicity because Lindsay Lohan was attached to it, and that's too bad, because I don't think Lindsay Lohan should have been in this. Instead, she should have been in treatment somewhere.

It's easy to say that in hindsight, knowing that she went from that straight to rehab, but even if you didn't know that it would be clear while watching this that something is wrong. Lindsay looks bad throughout the movie, but not in the sense that she's ugly; she looks unwell.







This movie emphasizes the tragedy of Lindsay Lohan's life so far, which is that she had talent and has completely squandered it. I'm not saying that she was destined to be one of the great legendary actresses of Hollywood or anything, but she had decent emotional range and excellent comic timing. Had she stayed clean, she could have enjoyed the career arc that Emma Stone is having. Instead, she may have lost her talent amid the drinking and the partying and the constant tabloid-fodder behavior. This is the kind of movie that Lindsay Lohan would never even have looked at after filming "Mean Girls", and now it's the only kind of movie that she can make.

The movie is Lindsay Lohan at rock bottom, and I feel like a guilty voyeur for watching it just to see that.

Movies That Messed Me Up For Life

I was just explaining to Kristin that I was trying to decide on a topic for Day 19 of 30 Days of Blogging, so after I decided that there's no way to answer "Why do you always sound annoyed when you answer the phone?" without sounding like a horrible person I consulted the short list of remaining topics, and this one jumped out at me:

What movies have messed you up for life?

This is a great question, because I've seen hundreds (if not thousands) of movies, and some of them have left a lasting dent in my psyche. In no particular order, here are the ones that spring to mind other than "Erin Brockovich", which ruined my love life forever:

Serial Mom: I love this movie, but I cannot look at a woman in white shoes after Labor Day without thinking, just for a moment, of murder.

Stand By Me: This is a great movie, rendered slightly tragic by the excellent acting work of River Phoenix. However, I cannot watch the leeches scene (every male I know who has seen this movie knows the exact scene that I mean) without squinting my eyes and turning my head away as my body curls into an involuntarily protective fetal position. The dead kid on the tracks? I'm fine. The leeches? NO. NO NO NO NO NO.

Trainspotting: I've only seen this movie one time, because of the baby crawling across the ceiling. I can never watch that again.

The Iron Giant: The only movie in the world guaranteed to make me cry every time I watch it. Even though I know what's coming and I know what happens, when the Iron Giant closes his eyes and whispers, "Suuuuuuuuuperman..." it's like somebody reaches into my brain and turns on a lawn sprinkler inside my eyes. It's not a couple tears, or just some welling up. It's epic. I refuse to watch it with other people, because of the crying.

Heathers: I learned how to play croquet because I saw this movie so many times. I've never played strip croquet, as they do once in the movie, but that's probably for the best at this point.

And that's it. There are other movies I like, and movies I dislike, but these are the only ones I can think of that had a real, lasting impact.

Epilogue

I haven't written for the past couple of weeks because work has been really busy, and I haven't really gone anywhere out of the ordinary or seen anything very unusual. A friend pointed out that I could just tell an old story instead, but I feel like I have to have some kind of inspiration to just start rattling off this one time when I blah blah whatever, you know?

Fortunately (or not), inspiration struck yesterday: the Huffington Post published this story about how Amazon.com says that I live in America's most romantic city. A friend and I were discussing the dubiousness of that claim, and all of a sudden she came out with, "Hey, whatever happened with you and the toilet paper guy? Did you ever talk to him again?"

"Who?" I asked casually, hoping I would not have to tell that story.

"You know, the guy where you needed a lot of toilet paper."

"OK, the way you say that makes it sound really gross and horrible. The toilet paper is barely even a part of that story."

My friend rolled her eyes at my sneering tone, so I gave a weighty sigh, and began to explain that, yes, I had spoken to him again after our Dinner of Disaster, but only once, because there was a terrible incident and we never spoke again.

For those who don't remember and/or didn't click the links above, there was this guy I liked. We kept running into each other, sometimes while shopping for toilet paper, and engaging in light flirting and finally decided that hey, we should totally go to dinner. Then, when we got to dinner, we turned out to be completely incompatible. The final nail in the compatibility coffin came when he haughtily explained that, "I don't even have a TV. I read books and better myself."

For the record, I don't care if you own a TV or not. Maybe you watch everything on your computer. Maybe you're poor, and can't afford a TV or cable. (For the price Comcast is charging me for basic cable, the Real Housewives of Some City should actually show up at my apartment in person and berate each other while I watch and offer pointers.) Maybe all of your funiture is pointed at a fireplace instead. I don't care that you don't own a TV, but I do take offense when you try to present it as some kind of noble life choice that allows you to smugly judge everyone else who does own a TV and, God forbid, actually watches it.

You didn't cure cancer, or save a runaway schoolbus full of deaf orphans from crashing into an aquarium filled with endangered baby seals.

All you did was not drive to the nearest big box store and purchase a television.

I am not impressed.

Oh, and you read? So do I, actually. I'll even promise to be impressed with the fact that you read books and better yourself just as soon as your book total for the year beats the number of books that I read while laying on the couch, WATCHING TV.

I didn't say any of this, of course. Instead, I just seethed all the way through the rest of dinner, and continued to seethe about it for a couple of weeks afterward. Somewhere in my head I started taking it as a personal criticism, convinced that he had implied that I was somehow deficient because I did have a TV, and I just got seethier and seethier and all ragey and combative and then I ran into him at McKay's and everything went to hell.

And it was totally my fault.

I came around the corner, and there he was, and I was like, "YOU!" because as soon as I saw him I felt judged and belittled and enraged, and he was like, "Oh, hey. What are you doing here?" and I was like, "Oh, well, I heard from a friend that all those TV shows I like used to be books before they used to be on TV, so I thought maybe I'd give them a try and, you know, better myself."

It was like someone reached inside of me and turned my hateful-bitch-o-meter all the way up into the red zone. He gave this little kind of pinched face smile, and right there we almost could have maybe saved things, but then he said, "You know, maybe we sort of got off on the wrong foot..."

And that's when it happened.

You know how people who have been through traumatic events have trigger words, or noises, or smells, or whatever that sets them off? And it spirals into a panic attack or a flashback and they can't control it? Something like that happened to me in that second, too, where I was all angry and fired up and defensive, except instead of connecting to some horrible trauma in my past, it somehow connected to the part of my brain that stores and retrieves movie quotes, and the words shot out of my mouth like Cady Heron's word vomit in Mean Girls. He stumbled into, "Maybe we sort of got off on the wrong foot..."

And I blurted, "That's all you got is two wrong feet in ugly fucking shoes!"

Julia Roberts, Erin Brockovich, 2000, Universal Studios.

A movie that I saw many, many times.

On TV.

So, yeah, I dropped an F-bomb in McKay's over a perceived insult that probably wasn't intended toward me but was instead a commentary on American society in general. It was horribly inappropriate, and completely disproportionate to what he'd said, and we both realized it as we stared at each other in the aisle of my local used bookstore. He finally did a little fidgety thing and said, "I... guess I'll see you around," or something like that.

And we never spoke again.

I explained all of this to my friend yesterday, and she asked why I never just apologized, but I'm kind of a little ashamed at how horrible I was. On the other hand, I find the story a little humorous, because yes, I was a total dick, but so was he. He spent a good five minutes of that dinner prattling about how awful Facebook is and how terrible blogging is and how social media is a waste of time and how much better he is than everyone else because he doesn't even own a TV and, really, maybe he deserved that a little bit.

So, I'm sorry, but also not sorry.

And I'm not apologizing for watching TV.

Acting Lessons

On Monday, I had a small part in our campus production of "8", the play by Dustin Lance Black about the Proposition 8 trial for California marriage equality. I played Jeff Zarrillo, one of four plaintiffs, a role originated by Matt Bomer.

Matt Bomer and I, as I'm sure you are aware, are very similar. Go google him, then come back and compare.

The resemblance is uncanny, right?

This production marked my return to the stage after a long absence, my first work since playing "guy violating noise policy" and "rowdy drunk student who talks too much" in the Summer 1996 Orientation Skits at SUNY Cortland, so I was a little worried that my acting chops might be rusty. In order to combat that, I watched a lot of movies while rehearsing my lines, and spent the final weekend before the play watching movies in which someone put on a stage production. (I was going to watch movies about making movies, but decided that I should focus on the stage, which is a totally different animal.) It turns out that I only own eleven movies where a stage production is mounted (not counting movies where the production in question was a pageant, cookoff, fashion show, or cheerleading competition; doing so would have swollen the movie total to somewhere around twenty), but I learned something from each one of them.

Here are the valuable lessons that I gleaned from my viewing:

1) The Little Mermaid: The lesson here is that you should be sure to show up to your part and do your best. Your fellow performers, whether they are fish musicians, your father's crab, or your mersisters, have all worked really hard, and you will let them down and bring shame upon the kingdom if you miss your debut for any reason.

Especially if that reason is that you're off searching shipwrecks for a fork to comb your hair with.

2) Mean Girls: This quote sums up the lesson best:

"But I'm always on your left!"

Hitting your mark and following your blocking exactly as you rehearsed it is incredibly important. If you don't do it just like you did during rehearsal then someone is going to screw up and kick a radio into Jason's head, and Miss Norberry might not be there to jump onto the piano and haul your cookies out of the fire.

3) Moulin Rouge: Your production won't really come together unless everyone believes in the underlying message, whether it's "freedom, beauty, truth, and love" or it's the idea that all people should be equal under the law and that families with same-sex parents are just as valid as more traditional family models.

Also, you should make sure that none of your leads have consumption if you want to run for more than one night.

4) Valley of the Dolls: Again, I offer a quote:

"The only star that comes out of a Helen Lawson play is Helen Lawson, and that's me, baby!"

Every cast has a star, and if that's not you then you should be super nice to everybody, so that when the star demands that the director cut out all of your lines your agent will feel bad for you and get you onto a telethon singing a song that's just an endless bridge continuously building to nowhere, which you'll then parlay into a nightclub act and then stardom of your own.

Barring that, you should just be the star. Look out at the world defiantly while you stand inside a giant plastic mobile and loudly sing, "I'll plant my own tree, and I'll make it grow!" and let everyone know that you'll get to the top even if you have to do it all yourself.

5) All About Eve: Make sure you have no understudy. That way she can't manipulate your friend into draining the gas from the car, making you miss your train and giving her the chance to call all of the press to watch while she steps into your role and usurps your spotlight.

Also, Butler can be both someone's name and someone's job. It's a valid point; an inane one, but still a point.

6) Black Swan: Be perfect, even if that means stabbing Winona Ryder in the face with a nail file or slowly going insane and losing touch with reality to the point that you can't be sure if you stabbed Winona Ryder in the face with a nail file, if your evil double stabbed Winona Ryder in the face with a nail file, if Winona Ryder stabbed herself in the face with a nail file, or if Winona Ryder never got stabbed in the face with a nail file at all.

7) Scream 2: If you have personal pain, draw on it to bring realism to your role, whether your pain is the discrimination and casual oppression that you have faced as a gay man in America, or the pain of having a copycat serial killer stalk you while murdering all of your friends in college just like a serial killer stalked you and murdered all of your friends in high school.

8) Stage Fright: One of your costars may or may not be a murderer, but you shouldn't let that hinder your craft. If anything, it should drive you to take on a second role so that you're playing a character playing another character, but you should also try not to become the murderer's next victim.

9) Torch Song: Don't try to sing if you're not really that good a singer. Especially don't try to sing in blackface.

10) The Big Cube: Once an actor, always an actor. The theater will always call you back, no matter how long you've been away or if you've been given LSD by your stepdaughter's boyfriend.

11) A Mighty Wind: If your show is going to be for one night only, make sure it's the best one night only that it could possibly be, even if it means you have to kiss your now-insane ex-boyfriend.

I think that on Monday night we definitely made the best of our one night, and I didn't have to kiss anybody or stab Winona Ryder in the face with a nail file to do it.

Staycation Day 2: 2 Fast and 2 Furious in the Love Garage

Yesterday afternoon I decided to go to the mall to take in a matinee-priced showing of "X-Men: First Class". That third X-Men movie was abominable, but the Wolverine one was sort of tolerable, so I went in with low expectations which were handsomely rewarded. The only real problem I had with the whole experience, other than sitting through the credits for a bonus scene that never came after drinking a "medium" Diet Coke the size of a newborn baby and having to pee so bad that I thought I might rupture, was in finding a decent parking space.

There were lots of spaces outside, given that no one but the elderly and the unemployed are at the mall on a Friday afternoon (or, I guess, people on vacation), but after yesterday's experience with the sun I didn't know if I really wanted to leave my car outside to melt in the heat. Given the choice between parking outside and parking in the Love Garage, though, I decided to just risk the sun rather than risk getting run over or accidentally catching an STD just by walking through the aisles.

I don't know for sure if the Love Garage really has a name, but I refer to it as that after the bizarre experience that Kristin and I had leaving "Thor" a few weeks ago. We were running a little late to see the movie, although you have to realize that my concept of "a little late" and Kristin's are two wildly different things, and Kristin came to pick me up maybe seven minutes later than agreed on, which she thought was practically on time. I was already having a bad day, so the seven minutes threw me into high-maintenance meltdown ("We had a schedule! What if I don't have time to buy candy now? What if we get bad seats because we're not twenty minutes early?") and Kristin tried to manage it by suggesting that we park in the garage, where we could walk right into the theater.

"I've never parked in the garage before," I blurted, momentarily short-circuited. I didn't know how I should feel about this. Do I like the garage? Would it give us more time to buy candy? Or would it take us even longer now and make us have to sit in the very front and tilt our heads way way up toward the screen until our necks hurt?

"Neither have I, but, you know, we'll be fine," Kristin said, and it seemed like we were fine, until the movie was over and we tried to leave.

The first indication of trouble was the loud revving of several engines and the squealing of tires on the level above us. Kristin and I both looked at the ceiling several times as we made our way back to the car, sticking to the sides of the aisle in case one of the cars came whipping around the corner and tried to run us over.

"I think they're drag racing on the roof."

"Jesus. It sounds like 'Tokyo Drift' up there. What the hell?"

Vroooooom! Squeal!

"They really are! Oh my God!"

"Let's just get out of here."

Easier said than done. When we got to the car, Kristin was digging in her huge purse for the car keys, and I noticed some... "action"... on the trunk of the car across from us.

And by "action" I mean a high school girl with her legs wrapped around the waist of a high school boy in the throes of heavy duty fully clothed grinding.

"Look. Over. There," I Cameron Fry-ed to Kristin.

"I'll find the keys in a second! Stop ye-- Holy shit."

"Don't stare! Are they, like, actually doing it?"

"They're damn close." Vroooom! Screeeeeeeeeeech! "Let's get out of here before that girl ends up pregnant."

"Seriously. It's like ten different movies at one time."

And then on the way out, we accidentally drove into Cougartown. Somewhere on the third level we spun around the corner and the headlights washed over another couple making out against the walls and they pulled apart in surprise and she was over 40 and he didn't look old enough to drive after dark and VROOOOM! SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAL!

I'm convinced that we barely escaped with our lives, so yesterday I parked outside in the sunbaked parking lot.

Then I went home and made Ten Minute Pea Soup for dinner. According to the recipe, it was light and summery, and it looked super-easy. I needed:

2 tablespoons of butter
1 clove of garlic, minced
8 cups of frozen peas
5 cups of chicken stock
salt and pepper to taste

The recipe said to gently melt the butter in the pot:



I assumed this meant to use really low heat, so that the butter melts but doesn't burn or brown. It would have happened faster if I cut up the butter a little first, but that never occurs to me until after I've dumped butter into a hot pan and it's too late.

After melting the butter, I was advised to gently fry the garlic in it until translucent:



and then to add the frozen peas for two minutes:



I guess this was to partially defrost them?

Let me add that you do not want to spill frozen peas across your counter while measuring out eight cups of them. It's like a bag of tiny frozen marbles, and much cursing will follow.

After two minutes of stirring the peas, I added five cups of chicken stock and brought it to a boil:



then reduced the heat to a simmer, covered it, and ignored it for six minutes. After that I was supposed to put it in the blender, but didn't feel motivated to slowly spoon eight cups of peas into the blender, so I used the immersion blender instead after salting and peppering:



Then I topped it with a sprinkle of parmesan, since I had no croutons and didn't want to make any:



It didn't really taste like garlic, just like a lot of peas, but it only took a couple minutes longer than opening a can of soup and heating it, and isn't homemade always better?

I saw that in a movie, but not any of the movies that I saw in the garage.

Two Weekends Ago Part 2: "Sometimes people go there to commit suicide."

Making banana bread wasn't my only adventure two (Or is it now three? I've lost count.) weekends ago. After leaving a cryptic comment on my entry about exploring the Ross Marble Quarry and seeing the giant Alex Haley, Elizabeth finally convinced Kristin and I to go with her, Ben, and William on a mysterious hike to a secret destination.

I say "mysterious" because this is what she told us to prepare us:

1) Bring strong flashlights. You'll need them, even during the day.

2) It's nearby, but most people don't know about it.

3) "Sometimes people go there to commit suicide."

Wait, what was that last one?

"You know, sometimes people go there and kill themselves. But it's totally safe!"

OK, see, I've seen The Descent, and I don't want to die in that movie. (What movie do I want to die in? I dunno, but I prefer that it's one where Tom Welling and I spend the first half making out pretty much the whole time. And clean shaven Tom, not that mess he turns into between seasons.)

"You're not going to die! It'll be fun!"

Yeah, the chicks in "The Descent" thought they were going to have fun, too, and you saw how well that worked out. Still, I picked up Kristin, we drove the Elizabeth and Ben's, and then the five of us piled into their truck and drove to Keller Ridge in nearby West Knoxville. Sure enough, neither Kristin nor I had heard of it, and when we pulled to get onto the hiking trail I realized that we were in a totally different movie:



Abandoned, gated road leading off into the middle of the forest? Great. Now we're going to die in Silent Hill instead. You might think I'm exaggerating, but look:



Plant William alone and vulnerable in the middle of the shot, change it to black and white, and tweak the contrast so all the shadows are darker, and suddenly the forest is totally menacing.

Regardless, we followed Elizabeth into the woods anyway, because that's what you do in those movies.



I figured a couple of fun "along the trail" photos would add a certain poignancy to our demise when the searchers found my camera buried under the corner of the Blair Witch's cabin. After several minutes of uphill climbing we burst through the trees into a gorgeous view of Fort Loudon Lake:





It was a gorgeous day to be out there, but what's hard to see in the pictures is that once we reached the lake, the path pretty much clings to the ridge. If you slip, it's a long, long drop, a point Elizabeth emphasized when we reached the part where people climb onto the rock ledge and then jump off and kill themselves:



It will surprise no one, I'm sure, to hear that I did not climb down there. I'm bad with heights and a little clumsy, and there's really nothing down on the suicide ledge that I need.

Likewise, there was nothing in the cave, a little further down the trail, that I needed, either. Clearly, it was safe, since Elizabeth, Kristin, and William went inside and didn't die:





but when I got to the entrance and crouched down to peer inside my little danger voice said, "Don't. Don't go in, ok?" so I didn't. I think Elizabeth was disappointed, but I really did enjoy the trip and the hike. I'm not totally afraid of new things. I try new food and walk down creepy alleys and drive to places I can barely find on a whim, but when my little danger voice says things like, "Get out of this deserted cemetary right now" or "Don't go any further into that abandoned asylum, ok?" I listen without question, because it's never steered me astray.

And I still had a good time even without going into the Cujo bat cave.

For My Friend, Rod

A few weeks ago, my friend Rod sent me a couple of Counselor Troi action figures that he found in an antique store, because he knows of my overwhelming conviction that Counselor Troi was the most useless continuing character on "Star Trek". I've been trying to think of an appropriate way to say "thank you" (other than the thank you note I left on Facebook), and also he's been a little down lately, so I've been trying to think of a way to cheer him up.

Last night, inspiration struck, as it always eventually does.

Rod, I made you a movie:



I hope you enjoy it, and that it cheers you up.

Dinner with Madame X

Last night I was reading a book and watching Lana Turner as the title character in Madame X when I realized I hadn't eaten dinner yet. I was kind of tired and run down from the mess my sinuses have been all week, so I wanted to make something simple, and I thought I might just make some hummus. It's easy, and I could pick at it all night without worrying about it staying hot or cold, so I went to the cabinet for the beans and started looking for my recipe.

While I was pulling it out, I spotted this other recipe I had marked in a food magazine and left on the counter for roasted garbanzo beans with rosemary and parmesan cheese.

"Ooooh, let's try that!"

"What if it sucks?"

"Where's your sense of adventure?"

"A sense of adventure is why Lana Turner is faking her own death right now. That's where it leads. We should just make hummus."

"Oh, for God's sake. What does this recipe call for?"

A lot of beans, for the most part:



While garbanzo beans are easy to rinse (and I always rinse mine; I have no idea what that slime in the can is, and I never want to know), the recipe called for them to be dried, too, and that took forever. I shook the strainer, let it drip while the oven preheated, poured them onto paper towels, blotted them with more paper towels, and still they seemed wet.

Eventually I decided they were dry enough, doused them with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then spread them on my foil covered baking sheet to roast. I didn't want to deviate from the recipe on a first attempt, but even then it didn't seem like nearly enough salt or pepper. I figured maybe the rosemary, which I added in the last few minutes of roasting, would add some more flavor, as would the parmesan cheese I dusted the beans with when they were finished roasting:



I was doubtful, but hungry, and I took a spoonful and hoped for the best.

When I looked up, still chewing, I saw that Lana and I were making the same face:



That's right. The beans were as bad as being drunk, depressed, and crying while living in a Mexican flophouse under a fake name in an ugly bathrobe. It wasn't just that the roasted beans were pretty much flavorless, but they'd also had all of the moisture roasted out, so they were flavorless, hard, and dry. Even worse, the rosemary also dried out, so it was like a bowl of slightly softened BB's dusted with pine needles.

Like Madame X, I should have made different choices. She shouldn't have cheated on her husband, and I should have just made hummus.

"First Contact" is the only Next Gen movie you ever have to own

This weekend I was at Target, not because I needed anything but because Target is there and it makes me feel warm and loved inside even though they have Christmas decorations on sale already and that fills me with rage. There are ninety days and two other holidays (three if my birthday counts) between now and Christmas, and it wouldn't kill Target to let people enjoy all of Hallowthankmas season instead of just the Chriskwaanuka part.

Moving away from that rant for a moment, I was wandering the DVD section when I saw a boxed set of all four of the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" movies. For a second I was totally excited, even though I claim that I'm no longer a huge Trekkie, and I started looking it over, but then I remembered: As much as I love Star Trek, and the Next Generation, they only made one good movie and three bad ones. "First Contact: is the only movie in that boxed set worth owning, and here's why:

1) "Generations" is the movie that they had to make to go ahead and get the old Star Trek movies off the table. They had to give Captain Kirk a sendoff before anyone would accept the new movies, the same way they had to give the old series a sendoff. There's a reason why Admiral McCoy appears in the very first episode, after all. It's to wave goodbye.[1] You can practically see the Next Gen cast checking their watches and drumming their fingers impatiently on the pieces of scenery that Shatner isn't chewing while they wait for the movie to hurry up and end.

2) "First Contact" has a logical, credible enemy. In "Generations", the Enterprise is destroyed by Lursa and B'Etor, which is kind of the equivalent of the United States being invaded and conquered by WWII era Poland. Granted, they had the advantage of the Enterprise being incompetently captained at the time by Counselor Deanna "What's a warp core?" Troi [2], but still, this was almost as bad as the ship getting disabled by the Pakleds.

We'll skip right over "Insurrection"'s evil, face stretching aliens. That whole movie was like one overlong episode more than it was like a feature film, and the enemies there weren't a credible threat any more than the Duras sisters mentioned above. As for "Nemesis", yes, the Romulans are a credible threat, but the logic applied to using them in that movie was a little flawed. For one thing, where was Sela? If you're going after the Enterprise specifically, why would you not use the person in the Romulan empire who knows them best? The absence seemed glaring to Trek fans. [3] The other problem with the Romulans in that movie was the idiotic presence of a Picard clone that was, for inexplicable reasons, also bald. Picard wasn't born bald, but the movie crew must have decided that the viewers were too stupid to connect the clone to him without the shiny bald head, so they ignored that Picard had hair when he was younger, like we saw when he was de-aged in "Rascals" or in flashback in "Violations", and had a twenty year old bald clone wandering the Romulan ship instead.

"First Contact", on the other hand, has the Borg. They are the quintessential Next Gen enemies. Looking at all seven seasons, the dramatic climax of the series comes between the third and fourth seasons with "The Best of Both Worlds". Nothing before it or after it matched the drama and tension and flat out awesomeness of that two parter, and the events of that episode hung over the rest of the series whenever they encountered even a whiff of the Borg. Them showing up in "First Contact" established without doubt that this was a Next Gen movie, and in true classic movie fashion it managed to show us that everything we thought we knew about the Borg was wrong without undermining everything that came before. The appearance of the Borg Queen answered so many questions that were still hanging from the series, and she was so incredibly creepy and flat out evil that you couldn't help but love her and hate her all at once.

3) There is a logical reason for the crew to be reunited in "First Contact". Worf hadn't moved to "Deep Space Nine" yet in "Generations", so that movie doesn't really count here, but they didn't even bother explaining why he was around for "Insurrection". In "Nemesis", he forgot to go home after Riker and Troi's wedding and just started working on the Enterprise for a little while instead, as if anything like that would happen in any military in the world. While we know, as viewers, that the whole cast contractually had to be there, at least in "First Contact" they have a reasonable explanation for picking up Worf and letting him come on board for a while.

4) Everyone stays in character in "First Contact". Dr. Crusher violates the Prime Directive and the laws of time and space to bring Lilly, her patient, on board, as if this same thing didn't get her captured by terrorist in "The High Ground", didn't almost get the whole crew killed by an angry god in "Angel One", and didn't almost get her fired and drummed out of Starfleet in "I, Borg" or "Suspicions". She has a definite moral and ethical code and she sticks to it. Captain Picard's lingering scars and pain from his previous encounters with the Borg are almost palpable, and he doesn't randomly wander in Kirk's "find the female alien in charge and sleep with her" territory like he does in "Insurrection". [4] Data's striving to be human is key to the plot. Everyone hits their notes and it feels like the crew you know and love, and they're not forced to act like idiots just to satisfy the demands of an implausible plot like they are in "Nemesis", where they let B-9 freely wander the ship as if they never ran into Lore or Tasha Yar's evil sister Ishara and then act surprised when he turns out to be a tool of the Romulans.

4) Nobody gets mind-raped in "First Contact". This is kind of a nit pick, but is there a reason why Counselor Troi has to get mind-raped in "Nemesis" other than to continue painting the character as a damsel in distress and again undermining the little credibility she has? We know that Betazoid people have mental blocks to foil telepathic invasion, because Deanna's mom trots out a stream of them in "Dark Page", so why doesn't Deanna have any? Especially after getting mind-raped by the memory specialist in "Violations" or turning into a psychic waste receptacle in "Man of the People"? People who are physically assaulted get dogs, or take defense classes, or hire bodyguards, but Deanna Troi gets mentally assaulted about once a season and keeps hoping it doesn't happen again.

I'm not saying "First Contact" is totally without flaws, but out of the four movies in that boxed set, it's the only one worth watching more than once, unless you're confusing fandom with masochism.

Notes:

[1] And not just him. After McCoy, who is apprently 150 years old, shows up in "Encounter at Farpoint", Sarek shows up a couple of times, then Scotty, then Spock. They even revisted "The Trouble with Tribbles" in an episode of "Deep Space Nine".

[2] This is an actual quote, from "Disaster", and for me sums up the essence of Counselor Troi's character as a bimbo in a bunny suit who had no credibility. Sure, she was a counselor, but she was also a Starfleet officer, which means she went to Starfleet Academy like all the other cadets and had to take classes in the basic operation of a starship no matter what her specialy was. That's why Wesley had to answer that question about the matter/anti-matter ratio on the entrance exam in "Coming of Age". For Counselor Troi to show up on the bridge every day for six years and not know what the warp core was is kind of like being a flight attendant for six years and not realizing the plane runs on jet fuel. Michelle Forbes, playing Ensign Ro, deserved an Emmy for the two second, "WTF? Did you really just ask that?" look she shot at Counselor Troi when she blurted out that question.

[3] While this was not mentioned in the movie, it is entirely possible that Sela was breaking rocks in some Romulan prison or even executed following her massive failures in the invasion of Vulcan in "Reunification" and the Klingon Civil War in "Redemption". You only get so many chances in an imperial society, especially one where the Tal Shiar can have you ejected into space just for questioning their orders.

[4] Sleeping with female aliens (and the occasional genderless alien who reproduced by mutually fertilizing a husk) was Riker's job, not Picard's, even if there was that time that Picard sexually harassed the Chief of Stellar Cartography into transferring to another ship.

The Plastic War of Northern Aggression

Downtown, at the Mast General Store where I went to buy candy* after** seeing "Burn After Reading"***, I spotted this near the candy:



Yes, that's right, it's the Civil War in a bag. Not the whole Civil War, of course, because you'd need several thousand more plastic soldiers, but it still seemed bizarre to see a bag labeled "Authentic Gettysburg".

Authentic? Really? Because all the plastic soldiers have all their limbs. And the sides seem evenly matched. And the horses are all the same color. And there aren't any collaterally damaged civilians. And the Union flag isn't correct for the era. Other than that it seems totally authentic.

*I buy candy at Mast General because they're one of those fake "olde timey" stores that trades on nostalgia, without offering anything at olde timey prices. Part of that, though, means they have olde timey candy there, and there's nowhere else in town, or probably in Tennessee, where I can get a Valomilk when I have a craving.

**Yes, I know I should have bought candy before the movie, but we didn't get there in time.

***"Burn After Reading" was good. I laughed all the way through.

more grocery absurdity

I know what this is supposed to mean:



but when I saw it, all I could think was, "Caged?"



I can't get the image out of my mind of some poor Marie Allen egg, trying to keep from getting boiled working in the prison laundry or scrambled by one of the matrons for back talking.

I either need to stop going to the grocery store or stop watching old movies.