Mask Scare

social media traps

Popular Misconceptions

Actors are most often the people interviewed in promotion of a movie and actors are usually the most entertaining personalities. Audiences may persist with the idea that movies are made up by actors. It may even get to a point where some actors - if not all - believe that hype. They may think of themselves as Will Farrell, or the cast of a Christopher Guest production, made up of the top comedy names that may not embrace a script. But the craft of a screenplay and serious regard for the written dialogue have suffered over time. There is so much money and politics involved that a screenplay that itself would make a fascinating movie might be compromised for no reason other than competing egos insisting on pissing into the soup. If I have written a screenplay, I really have no genuine interest in trading out my dialogue for someone else's variation. That is by no means a formula for success. Improvisation as an exercise might be great for getting actors some stage time in the theatre, but it is like watching a first draft be written on the fly and it is more of a sport than a final product. There is a halting and self-conscious quality to it. I would rather have someone say no, they don't like a script, than have a mutiny in the middle of a shoot or find out there are undisclosed expectations. Best to provoke the truth, and it can be VERY difficult to pry the truth out of actors who might actually like to be part of a movie - any movie - for experience. Then there is the perception of directors. People from theatre may be in the habit of throwing shade at the term director by referring to a progression of excellent shots as the "cinematography." Frankly, I would rather make a movie with no dialogue at all which demands visuals carry the attention than an all-diaogue film that becomes rote pictures of people talking. In the latter case, the only reason to proceed would be if I like the dialogue and to protect it from arbitrary or political deviations. I can see people with a clear measure of success and status who I can't quite envy because I discover that their writer or director credits should have an asterisk beside them. There is a terrible trend toward looking at the term writer or director in film and saying, "yeah, yeah, nudge, nudge, wink, wink." I once had a Humber College instructor ask what I plan to do after graduation and I mentioned directing my scripts He said, "So you want to pass yourself off as a writer-director." And to this day I am agitated by the cynicism of that comment. I'm not interested in co-writers or co-directors or de facto co-directors or de factor co-writers.

Wedding of Jessica and Justin

Thoughts and Arguments

Thoughts and Arguments Human behavior is nuanced, rules pushed on social media are not. Bill Murray can wrestle a woman in an early-eighties comedy and we know she is not in danger of being raped and the attention is not actually unwanted. If we watch these scenes through reactionary and self-congratulatory eyes of nostril-mining twitter activists, all hijinks are a joyless exercise. Indiana Jones of the Nineteen Eighties killed a lot of people and was the American exploring the world in a way that provokes the term xenophobia but is in fact merely adventure. Indiana Jones of 2008 was relatively safe, still conflating unnamed indigenous figures with magical creatures, but much of the movie takes place in the United States, Indy kills only one person, and instead of being a middle-aged man who can take a punch and look like it hurts he is a senior who can take a much worse beating and shake it off. The era where vegetarian people of India eat chilled monkey brains and the same Thuggee cult we saw in Gunga Din were still operating was frankly a lot more entertaining than the apologetic and tentative offerings of today. Point of view is vital to any story engagement, and the Western Caucasian or North American view is as good a starting point as any - especially since the white guy can be a flawed character and even an idiot without that being taken as a comment on a culture. https://plus.google.com/share?url=https://goo.gl/images/xUGcJD I recall the first article on pop culture that really alarmed me about how film could be hurt. A columnist was overanalyzing a moment from Beverly Hills Cop where Axil Foley passes someone who is wearing a Michael Jackson replica Thriller jacket and laughs to himself. The moment is the sort of thing we are better off taking for granted and going along with, but the columnist feeling like an outsider could not get past the idea that a lead fish-out-of-water is presented as superior to the culture he visits. No mention of Eddie Murphy's two concert films in which he wore leather suits approximately as tacky as the Thriller outfit. Detective Foley is not a millionaire comic and movie star, but is a more grounded everyman who has the right to laugh at whatever he finds frivolous.

Lady of the Flies

Ink FB page "discussion" about a gender-flipped "Lord of the Flies" remake. Resulting Twitter storm claims, "but that won't work because girls and women are not like that." One headline calls this a "Mean Girls" remake nobody wanted. Only one commenter pointed out Mean Girls was based on a 2002 non-fiction self-help book Queen Bees and Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman about patterns of aggression in girls. The movie was directed by the brother of Daniel Waters, who wrote Heathers (great satirical movie; no comment on the TV remake I have not seen). But the first thing that came to mind was whether Stephen and Tabitha King were lying when Carrie was written. "Plug it up, plug it up." Then I see the new movie of "It" and how Beverly gets garbage literally dumped over her by girls who s**t-shame her. The dominant conceit the discussion thread is: "Because women and People of Colour (POC) are statistically disadvantaged the punching up / punching down rule is to be enforced and it is only okay to characterize white male heterosexual CIS overlords as aggressive and capable of any evil or ignorant character." This is why I belong to no socio-political tribe. There is so much jibber-jabber about gender not being binary but fluid -- until there are Optimum Points to cash in for the permanent critic-proof self-defined Victim caste. If justifies any vindictive acting-out as the result of systemic abuse. At every turn, you want to make sure you are not aiding and abetting a Heather Chandler. (And yes, someone did post one of those memes under my one post showing a cat at a typewriter - because I am a silly man-splainer with the mind of a kitty, easily dismissed.)

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