The Big Chill (2019)

Trigger warning: This blog is not romancing, placating, or marketing. It is resigned to inevitable alienation, and that is what this entry is about. It is also inherently hypocritical because blogs are crap and "part of the problem." It may even be boring. And also please excuse the formatting. I NEED, NEED, NEED paragraph breaks and haven't figured out how to avoid how Blogger crams everything together. Other than maybe adding videos or pictures. ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Most controversial thought: Victims are ticking time bombs. If they don't have guns like Halloween (2018)'s Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) they will gravitate toward whatever forms of weapons are available, even social media networking, to take something back and feel effective instead of powerless, maybe in perpetuity, whether they realize it or not. Only they may not be I have to examine and question the whiff of radicalization that permeate social media, and I am totally inept at maintaining a bubble of protection against bullshit. Lately what comes to mind is a Lawrence Kasdan film released back in 1983 - the same year as the last Original Trilogy Star Wars film Return of the Jedi which Kasdan co-wrote if that helps give younger people context. I had assumed for years that the title The Big Chill referred to death, because the premise is old friends coming together at a funeral over the suicide of their most charismatic friend. But special features on the DVD have Kasdan explaining how years after college he met an old mate of his whose youthful idealism had changed over the years and his politics had become repugnant to him and that is what Kasdan calls a big chill. Today, I think most fragmentation happens over sub-issues. There are many people I like with whom I might not get along. Would I get into a tiff with him because I think his son Jon is too SJW ? It has come to that. I may respect Oprah Winfrey for many things she has done. She did after all receive a Schindler ring from Steven Spielberg. But more recently she failed to do her due diligence as a broadcaster with such reach; she jumped onto the post PoundMeToo freight train with Dylan Farrow, as did her chum Gayle King, without having read the copious fact-checking articles by Robert Weide that would have caused any reasonable person to look elsewhere for a case study to examine and make an example of. The BelieveHer movement also decided to ignore Soon-Yi Previn's claim that Mia Farrow had abused her. It didn't fit the enforced narrative any more than Moses Farrow making the same claim. Can't question Mia - the blind spot of Ronan. He can joke, "Aren't we all?" as a reply to whether he might have been conceived by Frank Sinatra, even if someone else was allowed to pay his child support. But I digress. There is no point in paraphrasing the well put writings of Robert Weide on the subject. Here is just one sample. ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// https://ronanfarrowletter.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/qa-with-dylan-farrow/ ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// That saga alone can be the wedge that separates friends or causes them to fill in the blanks of verbal DNA to construct your character as a human being. Common social media topics that have engaged chilly debate may be Terrorism and Rape - two crimes that nobody on either "side" of the argument would ever support. If the argument splinters for either, it is either "Keep living exactly as you do, or that is how the terrorists win" or "here are some safety tips to minimize vulnerability to crime A or B." In either case, even discussing (on-line especially) with a reasonable person who knows you as a three dimensional human being, you can have your head bitten off by a shrill creature on the sidelines. People on the right think I am a bleeding heart liberal or SJW and people on the extreme left think I am a regressive conservative. Just left of the middle is about correct, and I reject package deals because each case under discussion deserves its own respect. ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Consider any victim of a tragedy or a crime or trauma. Is it likely that someone raised with alcoholic or physical abuse might grow up to act out in similar behaviour? That had been a taken-for-granted danger for decades. If someone loses parents at an early age, will he/she grow up to be Batman or a criminal having had to fend for themselves or deal with instability? I can only say anecdotally that I have clashed with one con artist whose parents died in an explosive car crash when she was five. I am inclined to believe that violence begets violence. Surely not all victims of child molestation end up offending as adults, but many do. Victims of rape may spend their whole lives trying to fend off or get revenge upon an attacker or violator who is long gone. That energy and indignation has to be vented somehow. Don't take my no-nothing word for it -- look it up. That hostility can become the eggshell-paved floor of a dysfunctional home or it can be a twitchy existence on Twitter. There was a tag line for the Louis Malle film Damage, "Damaged people are dangerous because they know they can survive." It may not be in fashion to suggest that the victim-offender continuum still exists, because that would be called "blaming the victim." /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// "I was raped," someone can say to shut down a conversation or make any follow-up seem cruel. "The United States bombed my town and killed many of my family," another person can say with similar impact. Nightmares. Either a true mike drop or akin to Al Franken calling 9/11 George W. Bush's "Little Black Dress." How do you best control the discourse? And what value is the discourse? And is it THE discourse or merely A discourse? I once had to unfollow someone who was constantly posting about rape and rape culture and I had tried to contribute to discussion and get to the bottom of it as politely as possible but it was a distraction. I won't say trigger. More like just one more thing I can't do anything to help. Once she tried to describe her frustration with an anecdote that she once reported her apartment had items stolen after a party and she was affronted that the police asked questions and checked out the place. Nevermind that plenty of insurance fraud cases would love to be furnished with a police report, so police do have to vet information. If that robbery represented a rape, the Crown Prosecutor needs to know there is a chance at conviction so the questions had better be asked at the outset. And yet people can be demonized for asking questions. I have encountered some vile people, many of whom like the same films and espouse similar political positions. It is fairly easy to find people with a healthy hatred of Doug Ford or the forty-fifth "President" of the United States. But wow, under the surface of a so-called liberal can be a seething control freak sending a cyber swarm after someone who disagrees on a point. To paraphrase the villain Phillip Seymour Hoffman played in Mission: Impossible III, "You know someone's character by how they treat someone they don't have to treat well." That can be a guy who is all about posturing and telling women what they want to hear. It can also be about the victim of past trauma who will never meet her attacker again and must find a substitute. I was once in a play where the woman playing my wife was really punching me and it hurt. She admitted she was actually losing control because she was thinking of her real husband. In the absence of a true monster, people are often looking for micro aggression or signals -- anything that can take as a tip of the iceberg indicator or dog whistle that this person is "the other" infiltrating a conversation and must be shamed instead of having their views absorbed and actually assessed. If you belong to a critic-proof permanent victim class, what may even be a psychotic pattern of mind-fuckery can be masked as a showy social activism. Never mind that it intrudes on others and what they do or what they like, because that is the point. It may only be unconscious abuse but it is still abuse. It is still following through on the cycle. The world did something to you and now you will do something back. A friend of yours died in a pool, so nobody should have a swimming pool. You had an abortion, so the sound of someone else's baby is triggering. Caucasians historically have kept others down, so their success or the appearance of it is triggering. Have a spite against the Catholic or Christian Church? Down with Nativity scenes. (No, there's not a war against Christmas but there are some griping and badmouthing only because those are the weapons available.) The inmates - at least on-line - run the asylum. You read a tweet of a blog about Baby it's Cold Outside and some twisted victim or self-styled white-knighter told you it was rapey so now you can take mall musac as an insensitive act against you. Because it may trigger memories of rape or if you are just a sensitive soul it evokes the terrible social ill of rape that you definitely don't want to think about in those spare moments between Googling "rape culture" and insisting that back to the Future would play far better for everyone if it started with a rape trigger warning over Biff's attack on Loraine. You are not a fan of RoboCop, so it means nothing to you to forbid the best scene where he shoots a rapist's balls off. Just as it is reasonable for the pro-choice movement to say, "keep your laws off of my body" it is also fair to say "keep your agenda out of my movie enjoyment." The iconic death of Chrissy (Susan Backline) at the start of Jaws unnerves me to this day. But it is part of the contract with a storyteller and the engagement and stakes of it. So much of the discussion and debate in issues of the day have to do with TRASHING a craft and an art ostensibly to protect the fragile minds of a few. It is no different that the right wing constantly saying "what will we tell the children?" when confronted with gay or transgender people they would rather sweep under the carpet. As I said at the outset, a victim can be a ticking time bomb. If someone is selflessly feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless, that is genuine commendable heroism. If someone is merely expressing anger and letting fly with rage and looking to make enemies ostensibly for the sake of social justice it may not be so remarkable. It may be a pathology. The instinct is to show empathy and offer to solve the problem but even reaching out can be like diving in after someone who is flailing around in the water. They can pull you under or it turns out they are in the jaws of a shark. I don't know that plane crash survivors go on to try to crash planes, but the movie Fearless does explore some of the psychological fallout people can suffer. The reality is that I may have to just accept that some people I like (or whose facades I like) may not consider me part of the tribe. I had someone with a hostile edge who chimed in on a few of my comments and so I blocked her. Too much work to do a back and forth, like answering washroom graffiti. I find I spend far too much time on-line visiting with people I don't like instead of those I most care about. Anyway, I blocked this person. . . even though her boyfriend is also someone I know and had not needed to block. . . but he must have shown her a post on his phone when I answered a comment of his about Baby it's Cold Outside and the rush to abandon all things that aren't deemed "relevant" and "okay" by bat-shit people and she had a discussion about it and a common friend remarked how surreal that was. Not my finest moment. It is almost better to not know people and let them rant and rave and splash in the water. A few years back, I neglected to disable FB alerts on my cell phone and ended up idly replying to useless things while watching a movie at home. Not worth it. Better to leave a comment and then unfollow the thread if possible. A statement is a statement. Someone had posted a blog railing against the male gaze in movies and used as its examples of this Fifty Shades of Grey (neglecting its director and author/boss were women) and Avengers: Age of Ultron (omitting that Joss Whedon was a high profile feminist-- who hadn't been embarrassed publicly just yet), and then as a positive example it threw a bone to Mad Max Fury Road but then jumped through hoops and offered charts to prove that its female focus was forced by the frame. . . . I had to address that and also note that if you like Imperiator Furiosa you can thank the 70 year old male gaze of George Miller because she is his baby girl. I let myself get drawn away from those specifics to a wider sphere of discussion where I had no real opinion and did not realize it was basically a tactic like Bruce the shark leading the Orca further out to sea. People will test the water to put your name out there and make it about you when it is not. To make matters worse, an actor I had to unfriend for abuse the previous year chimed in with shade for me because I had neglected to block him. The sort of guy who likes to use terms like "mansplain." The sort who might not make it to the end of this longer-than-planned post. I don't see this as explaining much, but more trying to reach into the dirt and chaos of life and work out what it is about and name the demons. Social activism (charity, kindness) is not a symptom of anything but someone who wears the sarcastic term Social Justice Warrior as a badge of honor and spends their time on such missions as coloring those of us who in 2016 preferred Sanders over Clinton as "BernieBros" or those of us who wanted a continuation of the Eighties iteration of Ghostbusters as GhostBros to help Sony spin their bad remake idea into something about sexism. . . and then to get rid of any song or film or cultural touchstone that may trigger your girlfriend or your own wounded bird self is to encroach and to take and to invade and undervalue and ultimately to harm or abuse. It is just another form, and it is apparently a perfect crime because they are getting away with it. That is the activism or slacktivism that stands in for physical attack. It completes the circle. It may not satisfy the victim-centered person but it will give them a jolt of "so there - take that." Every now and then I can feel that actress from a community theater play, Dark of the Moon, still jabbing my arm just under the shoulder. It is annoying. All I can say is keep your hard copies of old movies or music or everything that needs to be protected until after the storm where people are constantly spattered with bat-shit.

Movies They Should Make: Jaws 5 (People 0)

In the early 80's, John Hughes was assigned a script that was never produced, National Lampoon's Jaws 3 (People 0) about producers who hire a novice director for a doomed film hoping for him to fail. The aesthetic of Jaws works against the idea of comedy, since there is nothing relaxing about the dangers under the water surface. But if they stay in the realm of fakery, trying to avoid the pitfalls of the original Jaws, and shoot in a tank it might have potential. One gag I remember from the script is the introduction of an actor who is to wear the shark suit with his legs sticking out the bottom (presumably chroma green) as having "experience playing Godzilla." The movie-within a movie could involve more than that version did, which got caught up in jokes that were off topic and not up to the standard that Hughes eventually evolved into. It was more like his work on National Lampoon's Class Reunion, which is not necessary to look for. Suppose there is an audition for a "Young Robert Shaw" for a pre-credit sequence depicting Quint saying goodbye to his first wife and her patting her tummy as he leaves, implying that even if that marriage failed or he died in war there was a child. Events from the Indianapolis could be shown, with Quint the last up the ladder to the PBY after witnessing a fake Great White shark who looks like Bruce kill someone in front of him and appear to flip him the fin and cause him to go from a patriotic believer and optimist to a grizzled bastard who decides to abandon his first family as he suffers post traumatic stress disorder. His granddaughter could show up at a book signing of Matt Hooper and fail to introduce herself because he is a no show due to Richard Dreyfuss refusing to return. The girl might be the opposite of her grandfather. She might be a Greenpeace activist fighting to protect the last Great White shark from extinction. But things go horribly wrong when her fellow activists end up getting eaten one by one and she has to consider whether to enlist the help of her adversaries the shark hunters for protection. She ends up feeding them to the shark. A real shark should invade the tank through a miscommunication with production e-mails and the guy in a shark suit might have to fight it off. Ultimately the novice sacrificial director should end up having to sacrifice executives to the shark. Due to objections from John Williams, the original shark theme should have to be traded out for the A&W Root Beer "Root Bear" theme.

Writer-director

Over Easter, I had beer with a few high school friends. It's the kind of thing where you expect to account for the last 20 or 30 years of your life. Even though the broad strokes are already known. Graduated from Film and TV Production at Humber, did a lot of volunteering and being unemployed, and kept writing and making my little movies even while taking on a job as a security guard, which I thought would be temporary. ************** Some helpful and supportive thoughts and ideas were offered. I won't mention one business plan which might easily be used by others. But along with that came the opinion that a person has to decide whether he/she is a writer or a director. I keep remembering what one of my instructors said to me as graduation approached and he asked what I planned to do. He asked, "So you're going to pass yourself off as a writer-director." Since this was someone who might still be able to mess with my grades, I must have said something polite instead of, "Better than passing myself off as writing and directing instructor." He must have failed upward because he became head of the department. I could have also said, "Yes, I'll pass myself off by writing a screenplay and then directing it; that will surely fool people into thinking I am a writer-director." :):):):):);):):):):) What I have been seeing typically for years is that many directors develop their own projects. If they have found an already written screenplay, it is considered a draft and they will want to "work with" the writer or just walk away. It is like the old joke of producers or executives lining up to take their turn pissing on a script. It's not like I have people lining up with excellent scripts for me to direct. But I have participated in readings over the years and given detailed notes on many scripts. It is enough to know that you either click with something or you don't. I may not have time to see every story idea through to completion. I have too much in my inbox anyway. I have directed another writer's work and the process was the process. Once a script is ready, it can basically be locked. Especially after group readings and storyboards have drawn out possible areas of improvement or necessary tweaks. All of my own scripts go through that process. And once I have drawn it out and had to meditate on each beat of the story or of a scene, I can relax as long as everybody else is open to actually looking at my plan rather than just trusting the whims of the day. ________________________________________________________________________________________Being the writer and the director does not mean that I do "everything." I have had a few people offer me scripts to "produce" which they would want to direct, but that is like hiring me to do many of the chores I only reluctantly do for myself or for which I have waited years to delegate. I would be the wrong person to finance a film, given that it is mostly guard income I survive on. But I have had to do just that many times. Even if you get a producer, you have to have that awkward talk about whether you both understand the duties and responsibilities of that post. If suddenly the director has to recover funding that had not been properly locked down while a project is near or in progress, that could be a disaster. If you start revising a script because it has to be done with no resources, you are wearing the producer had and Murphy's Law is not co-writing and co-directing. There are a lot of opportunities or windows to shoot something I have let go by because now I am not as naive and certain of my destined path. But for me it is a matter of keeping an eye on the expected final result. A compromise on one end of the time-line will have its result on the other end. Each crew member is important. Each is a link in the chain. ________________________________________________________________________One logistical snafu and nothing can nor should be shot without the necessary element. I have in the past accommodated people leaving early from a big shoot and I've had to shoot around them to disguise the fact that they were not present. At that point, the best shots for those moments may be lost. Except that I was in the habit of doing storyboards and it helped the re-organization considerably. What may be lost is subtle. A room full of people has a certain energy. At this point I've caught on to how certain shots can't be easily achieved in reality. Even a 360 degree pan of people might not give the smooth other-worldly mood necessary and build viewer confidence in the project. So those elements become part of preparation. Too much emphasis these days is on simply "covering" the content of a scene, and assumes that it is two people talking. I am going to blog about this in more detail. But on the subject of writers handing over their scripts to a director, each project is its own. If I have written a stage play, I am oddly open to someone or several someones directing and re-staging it however they like. Perhaps because of the expectation that plays will be remounted or go on the road indefinitely. A movie is rarely remade. Even if it seems like the Seventies and eighties are being raided constantly for remakes. Also, part of my interest in directing a script is its potential for necessary invention and use of cinema language. So many movies are just master shot, over shoulder of everyone, close-up of everyone, and the scene from top to bottom. Flipping a burger. In those cases it seems like the director's role is merely symbolic or a matter of reviewing whether the actors are sticking to the plan from rehearsal or casting discussions. Jon Favreau has said that often studios would give him storyboards and say "just shoot this." Or he has hired the animator from Samurai Jack and the first style of Clone Wars cartoon to "direct" on paper the movements and framing of a battle in Iron Man 2. To be honest, the proper application of cutting and shooting is the key to my love of movies. MANY articles and interviews I've studied pay lip service to storytelling and visual elements but then run a camera merely recording conversation - as Hitchcock said, "pictures of people talking." Ironically, I am poised to do something that simple perhaps just because I have no production team and nothing to pay them so I will be writing like the wind and confining everything to the simplest location for the sake of. . .well not just savings of money but the Aristotelian unities of time, place and conflict. Then at least I won't be doing my "first feature" when I tackle the larger project I have been developing. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________I would LOVE to have a decent income. I would LOVE to have more of my titles from the past 10 years on imdb. I envy an enemy of mine who was savvy enough to start a film festival and once it was recognized by imdb simply put her own film titles up there - even at least one I know to be some sort of inside joke (a so-called doc that isn't anything more than an interview of her boyfriend). Much of my play and my passion has gone into preparing projects that at least were my own and/ or had an interesting element. I would be doing more for other people, but in my nerves I feel I am out of place in that capacity. If you advise anyone else on directing you are pissing up a rope. Everyone thinks he or she can direct, so this may not be unique. I won't co-write the work of others, so the idea of working on someone else' script to direct is not on the immediate horizon for me. Maybe after I've gotten my stuff out of my system. Most projects I should have done in my twenties or thirties. I know how sane I felt immediately after completing a film shoot in late 2003 and my brain felt more free to write. I got a lot of good work typed up, and some that still needs to be fixed up. I would certainly give certain scripts to another director and let them stage them and even cast them while I am directing one of my other scripts. As long as I'm not expected to pay for the pride of being a writer-john. I haven't given in to the vanity press. For now all I can do is be thankful for the people who have taken an interest in what I am doing and have helped. _______________________________________________________________________________You know, as I recall, the Canadian Film Center had its Feature Film Projects that as a rule only budgeted for an individual to be paid for one of the positions he or she held. This meant that it made great economic sense for the writer to also be the director. I know that if I were merely surrendering a script I would consider my job done. It would be all over but the compromise. So better to have me doing something, actually directing. As a producer I would be a liability because there are producer-minded people who could be going to bat for the project. You need a load bearing member of the team to be the producer. Obviously the cinematographer and first A.D. are essential. People expect a producer to be production manager as well. There are many positions that I have occupied, but the only one where I feel I am actually the best for the job (for the money) is writer-director. Even then, when directing it is to an extend acting if the scope is large. I wouldn't want some pip squeak wandering along and sizing me up and trying to spread dissent in the ranks. George Roy Hill was much like a general. Apparently so was Milius (who is recently featured in a great doc by Chop Shop). But I tend to be more quiet and hope to plan enough in advance that we don't miss anything. It is a cause for concern that I have not climbed up the imaginary ladder of the DGC for be a PA/AD, then a 3rd AD, then a 2ND AD, with payments and minimum numbers of hours on set in between. Unless I get in straight as a director, I might have to forget about union shoots. I can't be playing that game at age 45. I pretty much have to stick to what I am doing. ___________________________________________________Every now and then you will see a directing credit like Vincenzo Natali on Hannibal that you recognize and you can settle in and watch more carefully, but for most shows it just seems arbitrary who comes in to direct. The shows have good image quality, so the shooters know what they are doing, but I think it will only be taken as a grouchy position to evaluate the quality of TV directing or movies at least in an open forum. I need to be doing this more often, though I have no love of logistical tensions and politics. I feel like I am getting back into it and starting over each time. I keep seeing posts (by female directors) saying there are not enough female directors. I can understand someone boosting the stock of something they've got. But the one thing definitely needed is more excellent directors and a better image for directors. There is clearly an impatient view of directors by and large and a perception that they are all doing something by rote that is so standardized that they are redundant. Whether it is me or someone else, we need to see the DIRECTING evaluated as directing and not so much for content and politics. Some films are more fun to watch than others. The writing is often a meandering mess, which might make it closer to life but also makes the proverbial natives restless. Anyone can do it, so why am I merely wasting my time blogging on a Saturday when my time and my ind are my own? I am either hyper-ambitious, or hyper-apathetic.

Some of the family at Thanksgiving this year

Trying to use my annoying little camera as much as possible. Still doesn't handle well but the image is okay. I especially like inter-cuts of bickering while trying to get directions to the place. Also amusing (to me) is my youngest nephew watching a Jaws videogame montage during the dinner. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItFrpXZ5_4A&feature=youtu.be Excuse the cropping of this blog when it comes to "HD" content on youtube. You may want to just click on the title of the video and go right to youtube.

New waters, new era

Good news. Just having fun with the obamicon site.

http://www.obamicon.me.pastemagazine.com

Welcome

This is the blog of Jawsphobia. It will not be limited to my condition which causes me to flinch and look away from the Jaws logo or most pictures of sharks. In fact it will mostly be a collection if reviews old and new and general comments, a few of which are salvaged from my comments on imdb.com and other sites.

I don't much like critics, so I am an anti-critic.

Happy New Year