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the cardboard girls

April 24, 2012 in reviews, television reviews

Last week HBO premiered the new series Girls, from the privileged and whiny mind of Lena Dunham.  Thanks to the shows producer, comedy powerhouse Judd Apatow, there was considerable buzz surrounding it.  As soon as it aired the criticism began: it was racist, pointless, whiny, and unfunny.  Essentially, it didn’t live up to everyones high expectations.

What those expectations were, I’m not really sure.  Girls is practically a carbon copy of Dunham’s breakout film Tiny Furniture, which she wrote, directed, and starred in.  The story follows Aura, who has just returned home to New York from college with seemingly no applicable skill set for the real world.  She lives with her mother as she tries to adjust, and as it turns out, life is hard.  Nothing really happens for the next hour and twenty minutes and then somehow the film is resolved.  I asked myself why?  Why make this?

Girls follows Hannah Horvath (Dunham) who is a recent college graduate with an unpaid internship, receiving $1,100 a month from her parents to survive.  The conflict arises when her parents visit New York and inform her that at twenty-five it’s finally time that she support herself.  This is followed by twenty minutes of whining.  Girls felt just like Tiny Furniture.  Either you loved or hated the movie, so why were expectations for the television show so high?

Dunham is part of a new(ish) youth movement you often hear about on NPR concerning white and privileged college graduates who can’t accept the harsh realities of life.  These are kids whose parents pay their cell phone bill, their water, their gas, their electricity, and even their rent, “Do you know what the economy is like right now?” Might as well be their catch phrase.  White People Problems is another.  This group is just one notch down the ladder from the twenty-eight year old college undergrad to afraid to leave the protective confines of the University.

WAPS’s (White and Privileged) are among the least sympathetic people currently gracing film and television screens.  Their problems are so benign that it’s a challenge to get a majority of people to care.  In turn they’ve been on the receiving end of much criticizing, telling them to grow up and deal with it.  I’m a WAP and I owe a considerable amount to my parents who have helped me out greatly over the years.  I’ve been lucky to have my wife keep me grounded for ten years with her own experiences which were the exact opposite of mine.  I suffered from white people problems, my wife suffered from real problems.

Much of the show’s criticism seems to hint that the stories of WAP’s are unimportant.  Shit, Wes Anderson has made a career out of it.  The major difference is that his characters are constantly dealing with the pressures of living up to expectations amidst extraordinary circumstances.  Even when they fail to reach the third dimension, at their emotional core anyone can relate to them.  Girls inability to point a finger at themselves and have a sense of humor about white people problems is detrimental to the show.  Were someone to step up and say “Yes I know we’re white and privileged, to you our problems may seem trite, but to us they are earth shattering.”  There’s humor in that.  They don’t have to be a parody of WAP’s, just a little wink to the camera now and then.

Despite everything I’ve said, I didn’t hate the show.  I didn’t love the show either, it’s just not my cup of tea.  I will applaud Dunham for managing to pack more plot and purpose into thirty minutes, than she’d previously done in twice that amount of time with Tiny Furniture.  It had humorous moments, not hilarious but not completely unfunny.  I also genuinely applaud the fact that these look like real people.  Even the dork in your typical television show is freakishly attractive.  While you’re not going to find anyone terrifyingly ugly here, they actually look like people I know or could know, and that is a real rarity and definitely applause worthy.

My biggest problem has to do with the characters who are like cardboard cutouts of people.  I have no idea what these people believe in, what makes them angry, what gives them joy, what they want.  Aside from feeling entitled, their just blah.  They live from moment to moment, without any drives or desires.  It makes everyone seem unlikeable because they always hover at about a three on the emotional scale.  Certainly Breaking Bad has proven that the definition of likable is liquid, but you neither love or hate the characters in Girls, you feel nothing for them.  Perhaps not so coincidentally it’s Hannah’s parents who have the most dimensions.  Despite the shortest screen time, they run the gambit of emotions and by the end I feel mostly for them.

Nearly all the actors are recast straight out of Tiny Furniture, with just a few exceptions.  Most of them have unique qualities that make them watchable.  It’s Dunham who really falls flat, she’s the least capable actor in the bunch and I wonder if she shouldn’t have stuck to writing and directing and passed the acting off to a more capable actor who doesn’t whine through every line.  Every line is delivered with such nonchalance that an emotional ten for her is a five for the rest of the world.

All that said we should give Girls a break.  They’re just two episodes deep into a full season, there is a compelling conflict with Hannah suddenly forced to fend for herself.  If given a chance they’ve got a place for these characters to go.  Everyone could become more bearable and they might actually grow up a little.  It makes sense that they might follow the trajectory of whiny WAP’s who actually become self aware and considerably less whiny.

The critics came down hard on the show and while much of the disapproval was deserved, some of it was overboard.  Dunham has been attacked by more than a few for being racist.  I just don’t get that.  To criticize the lack of diversity in the shows casting is to criticize every movie or television show without ample ethnic diversity.  Glee might be able to get away with their melting pot of a cast (if just barely) but most shows can’t.  Clearly Dunham was comfortable writing the stories of white characters.  Trust me, you don’t want to watch a twenty-five year old attempt to write roles for racially diverse characters when she’s not comfortable writing them.  Take your frustration, which is justified, out on the studios and producers who continue to inundate us with the same people and stories over and over.

Much of Girls is pointless.  I’m not sure who to root for or what anyone really wants, or why I should care.   You could probably squeeze a decent story from this lemon, the question that begs to be asked is: wasn’t there a better story with more interesting characters out there?  This is all my opinion of course.  We can’t forget that Girls target audience is most likely other WAP’s.  I don’t care about their meaningless struggles, you probably don’t care or sympathize with their meaningless struggles either.  There is a growing number of white and entitled kids out there to whom this story does speak to.  It’s not going to have the broad appeal that so much of HBO’s other programming has had, and that’s fine, as long as HBO is okay with that.  They’re the one’s with the finger hovering over the little red button.

One episode of the show was enough for me.  I like dimensional characters, not necessarily ones I have to like, but ones capable of expressing some interest in something with emotion, not just cardboard cutouts.  Obviously there is an audience for this type of show out there, mostly WAP’s.  My question is, would Hannah and her friends want to watch this show?

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interview with molly prather

February 9, 2012 in interviews, molly prather

In the Fall of 2007 my wife (then girlfriend) and I moved to Los Angeles.  We were in our early twenties and we moved without jobs, knowing just two people in the entire city.  Looking back I can’t believe we did that.  Nevertheless our years in LA would shape our personalities, our relationship, and our friendships.  One of those friendships was with writer/performer Molly Prather.

Our apartment was kitty-corner from the Upright Citizens Brigade theatre on Franklin avenue, I could see the sign from our bedroom window.  With limited funds, my wife and I spent two or three nights a week there watching the best comedy around for nearly free.  The performers there became my heros.  After two disastrous and short lived jobs my wife found herself working for a newly opened Silverlake coffee shop.  This is where my wife met Molly and by proxy I did too.

One of the truly hidden joys in living in a city like Los Angeles is meeting someone and having no idea who they are, then later learning they are an incredibly talented artist.  Molly was a severely funny person to hang out with and get to know, but she was also a gifted performer on the stage.  She collects stories like their little bricks, then takes those bricks and builds a house of humor. 

She walks in the footsteps of solo performers and monologists like Spalding Gray, Josh Kornbluth, Bette Midler, and early Whoopi Goldberg.  Her stories are painfully honest, had many of us gone though the same ordeal we would probably be too afraid to confess to a room full of people.  Because on some lower level Molly is confessing to the audience, confessing the exploits of her past.  When she’s on stage you continually find yourself saying to yourself, “I can’t believe she’s telling us these things.”  Then you laugh hysterically because not only is she funny but her shows are well constructed.  Molly’s quick to contribute that to her creative partner Eric Hunicutt.

Her first fully produced show was That Girl, compiled from years of service at a New York bar, Jake’s Dilemma.  This is the heart of Molly’s work, boys and bars.  They say that you should write about what your familiar with and that’s exactly what she does.  Her ability to comment on the patrons of a bar are as acute as Mamet’s ability to write for lowlifes or Fitzgerald’s to write aristocrats.  When necessary she can even point the finger at herself and admit to being one of those embarrassing patrons.

Along with her solo performance pieces Molly has worked as an actor most notably on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, portraying sluts, hookers, and a combination of the two- politicians.  Perhaps most bizarrely she wrote numerous fitness videos including Tera Patrick’s Fit for Sex.

Anyone who knows me even just a little, probably knows that I have a deep love for solo performance and comedy.  Molly is a genius at both.  It was a given that we would consider her a secretly-important person.  Through the magic of the Information Superhighway, I, my wife, and Molly sat down together via Skype for what was a typical Molly conversation…

Full speed-gems-of-intense awesomeness, blunt, and hilarious.  In my experience with Molly, what you see is what you get.  A brilliant writer performer with sharp wit, and a love for Andy Sidaris films and musical theater.  Of the interviews I’ve done to this point, most translated to the page pretty smoothly, this one not so much.  This interview is a great teaser for the full podcast of the conversation we had.  That podcast will be released Monday February 13th and is a must listen.

Brian

You lived in Seattle briefly when you were young but then moved to Orange County.  What was it like growing up there?

Molly

I hate when people ask me where I grew up, because I feel it’s not indicative of my personality at all.  I feel like I didn’t grow up until I moved to New York.  I was a total tomboy, I wore overalls and Vans and followed my friends band Kleenex around like it was my fucking job.  I went and saw punk bands every weekend.  I didn’t even care about boys until my junior year of high school.  Orange County is such a benign place to grow up, I didn’t drink in high school, I didn’t do drugs, I didn’t have sex, I skateboarded and went to the Block and walked around.  And I was a fucking cheerleader.  My goal junior year, no joke, was ‘do I become a Clipper girl or a Laker girl?’  I heard that they both made $50 a game, and I was really weighing the pros and cons of being a Clipper or Laker girl.

Then my friend was like, ‘Did you apply for college?’ And I was ‘what?’  By the grace of god she applied to Cal state Fullerton in their musical theater department.  And so I did that too- I was raised by wolves and had no idea what was happening.  I was so uninteresting until I was 22, then I fucked one of my college professors and that’s when it all started.

What was the catalyst for moving to New York?

Me and my best friend Courtney moved moments after graduating [college].  Because we were going to be on Broadway.  Again, not high aspirations, much like the Clipper or Laker situation my goal was to be the understudy for Epenine in Les Miserables on Broadway.  It wasn’t even to be a role it was to be an understudy.  I truly believed, ‘six months hands down I will be understudying on broadway.  Cut to that not happening at all.  I did book my first off-Broadway audition which was Frankenstein the rock musical.  It was a dark time in my theater career.

I moved to New York with the full intention of being a broadway musical theater actress.  As soon as I got there I didn’t understand how insane it was that I had $900 and a backpack.  Looking back that was crazy.  We literally were like ‘hmm, the guy who used to play piano for our high school musicals lives there, let’s sleep on his floor for a month.’  Cut to me sitting on my backpack in Times Square sobbing outside TGI Fridays, on the phone with my mom like, ‘we have no where to go’-sleeping on a floor, not on a mattress, sleeping on a linoleum floor in Astoria Queens for a month before we could get an apartment.  No one was going to rent to two girls whose parents wouldn’t cosign and [had] no bank accounts because we didn’t have enough money.  It was crazy.  The fact that everything worked out was because we were twenty-two and so fucking stupid we didn’t know any better.

When did you start working in comedy?

In college I’d taken some classes at the Groundlings and when I moved to NY I was, ‘I think I want to do more of that kind of stuff’- and right away I did.  Second City had a program I did, and I started doing UCB [Upright Citizens Brigade].  I think it was 2006 when I was like, ‘oh, I don’t want to do musicals.’  The reason I did musicals was because I like doing musical comedy and making people laugh.  When I was at UCB I was like, ‘I don’t give a shit if I sing, I just want to make people laugh.’  And that kept evolving, I did some sketch stuff, and I did some improv, but when I started writing my own material for cabarets, that’s when I started to be like, ‘oh, maybe this is what I do’- tell little stories about things that have happened to me.  The thing that I like to do was make the things that happened to me funny.  I think it was a way I kept from being severely depressed.  Either we can make fun of this stuff or we can fucking kill ourselves.

What were those early stories about?

Boys, always boys .  When I am eighty and they do a retrospective on my life it’s just going to have been about boys.  I wish I was more interesting.  I’ve always had that fascination with the broads like the Mae West’s and the girl who drinks whisky and kisses boys and kicks them.  I want to be that girl.

What was the reason for your move from New York to Los Angeles?

One of my really good friends at the time had sold a pilot, and I’d worked on it (he would say I didn’t) but I helped him with it and watched him take his idea from his one person show [and] turn it into a pilot and sell it.  UCB had just opened up their theatre out here [Los Angeles] and people were starting to migrate.  I felt like I had gone as far as I could go in New York.  I spent the last year in New York going ‘what the fuck am I doing here.’  It felt like everyone that I knew that moved to LA were all writing for shows.  It was really based on the fact that UCB had opened up out here and all the people that I knew that were here didn’t have survival jobs.

I lived in New York for eight years and I always felt two steps behind, and LA- I came here with that same mentality, but now I feel like I’m two steps ahead all the time.

When you got to LA was there an adjustment period when you learned that they weren’t just handing out industry jobs on arrival?

The first year was interesting.  My last four months in New York I started writing my one person show about bartending [That Girl].  And when I moved out here I was like, ‘I’m going to put my one person show up out here then [I’ll get] famous, because that’s what happens to everyone else when they do a one person show.  My goal was to get my show into the Aspen comedy festival because that’s how everyone got everything at the time.  By the time I’d written my show the Aspen comedy festival was over and it never happened again.  So i’d spent a year writing a show for a festival that didn’t exist.  That’s when I took a class at IO [Improv Olympic] and Eric Hunicutt was my improv teacher and I said to him, ‘I just moved here I need some help.’  So I sent him my script and he was like, ‘i’m directing your show.’  And that was the beginning of Eric and I working together for the last four years.

My show did really well, I started doing it at the perfect time at UCB, when they didn’t have a lot of shows.  I did it like fifteen times there, which would never happen now, but they didn’t have enough programing, so I would literally get an email at the beginning of the month [saying] can you do two spots this month?  Thanks to Eric that show became the best version of itself and I got really great press, and getting really great press got  me more shows and getting more show got me more press.  That first show is why I got meetings and I know people and I’ve built relationships that I have now.

I had a meeting with Seth Morris the artistic director at UCB at the time, I had asked to do Harold Night because that’s how you promote your shows, and he was like ‘how about instead of Harold Night you do monologues for Asssscat.’  And I was shaking I was so excited.  To this day I don’t know if I’ve ever been more excited.  I grew up in New York going to Asssscat every Sunday watching Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, the fact that they would want me to stand on stage and participate was mind blowing to me.

What is the difference between standup comedy and solo performance?

Seeing a lot of story telling shows but not a lot of stand up, the difference is- with storytelling, whether your doing the Moth or a one person show, the audience enters with the agreement that not everything you say has to be hilarious.  That you can be real and have your vulnerabilities and express who you are.  There’s almost a safety in storytelling that you just don’t have to make everybody laugh every second.  With stand up there’s that pressure, if you go up and you’ve got five minutes, the whole idea is to make people laugh, laugh, laugh.  the goal of storytelling is to make people listen and engage them.

For me coming from such a strong comedy background I had to train myself to not freak out during a one person show when people weren’t laughing.  You have to learn that people are listening and their totally engaged.  It took me years to get to the point where I’m okay with silence.  If I write a punchline and nobody laughs- I’m such an asshole, there will literally be times where I’ll write a stupid joke like my mother would tell and nobody laughs and I’ll be ‘you guys’ and I’ll say it again because I’m that desperate for attention.

Your most recent show is Fuck! Mary! Kill! can you tell me about that a little bit.

My inspiration was, I wanted to have a show with the word fuck in the title, I came up with the title of the show first.

I feel like my first one person show, That girl, was my education in telling a story.  Between my first show and the Moth I feel like I got a better sense of who I was as a storyteller.  My best stories are about boys, so I had this title and I have these great stories that I found through either doing Asssscat or the Moth or the Armando show.  So I have these stories that are about these dudes, how do I make this title and these stories  come together- I fucked a lot of dudes, some of them aren’t around anymore and I’ve yet to get married, we’re going to make this work.  And I did, I forced the party of ‘I’m going to make these two things work together.’

What do you have coming up next?

I’m going to try and start performing again.  I took the year off from performing go finish my feature.  I’m hosting Asssscat on February 12th.  I feel like I’m at this point where I don’t know what happens next, for the first time in years.  I don’t know, I turn 34 on January 12th, I’ll probably fucking die soon.*

 

 

Molly took much of 2011 off to work on her film and television scripts, which we can only hope will be made soon.  I would like to express my hope that Molly does return to the stage soon, she a breath of fresh air in what is an art form dominated by the melodramatic.

You can catch Molly hosting Asssscat at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in Los Angeles February 12.  You can find pretty much anything you could ever want to know about her at her website mollyprathercomedy.com, where you can also watch the entire performance of That Girl.  A little side note about that specific performance, I proposed to my wife about thirty minutes before hand… so every time I recall my proposal I will think of Molly’s show.

Don’t forget to stay tuned for the full podcast.  If in the past you just read the interviews and don’t listen to the podcast let me highly recommend listening to this one… it’ll be well worth your time… I promise.  The podcast will be available on the website and in itunes Monday February 13.

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patti smith~just kids

December 1, 2011 in book reviews, reviews

Our latest column looks at books. Books that you should read, books you should be familiar with. Some might have been bestsellers but still haven’t received the recognition they deserved, some you might never have heard of.

For the first book on our required reading list I look at Patti Smith’s Just Kids, a book which I’ve already talked about briefly back in April after I finished the book, but I’m going to talk about it again anyway.  It’s already gained notoriety winning the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2010; so why is this book on the list?  Because it’s the best book I’ve read in the last few years. That and because I went into it with a plethora of preconceptions that had kept me from reading it. The idea that this was just another boring rock biography, that Patti Smith was pretentious, that I already knew everything I needed to know about her, which was very little.

Rock biographies are generally some of the worst, most pointless books available.  They’re often filled with unchecked facts from fourth hand accounts, and feature the same tired structure.  Rise to fame, fame, sex and drugs, diminished fame, rock bottom, rebirth, new found fame.  You name the artist and that’s how their story goes the only thing that changes (and only sometimes) are the names.  What get’s forgotten with these books is that you need a compelling story, preferably one we haven’t heard before, at the very least one with a fresh voice.

Patti Smith is not as famous as her immediate predecessors: Grace Slick and Janis Joplin, nor her peers, Lou Reed and John Cale.  She’s well known if you know who she is and a complete enigma if you don’t.  You probably can’t list any of her songs or name her seminole album Horses.  Her most famous song Because the Night is still less famous then the version by the songs cowriter Bruce Springsteen.  When finally I picked up the book and read a few random passages it was her mystery that drew me in.

This isn’t a typical rock bio so much as a romantic memory of New York in the late 60’s early 70’s, and her relationship with controversial artist Robert Mapplethorpe.  In fact with the exception of a brief chapter or two concerning her early life growing up in New Jersey the story of the book is her relationship with Mapplethorpe.  From their unlikely chance meeting in the former apartment of a mutual friend, from Pratt, to his death in 1989.

The temptation to categorize this as a rock bio is strong, but it’s more of an artists emotional journey.  From the beginning I kept waiting for the story of her music career to begin, only to realize that she began as a visual artist and poet.  Her passion for music was an underlying theme but it wasn’t until much later that it really flourished and made her the “godmother of punk.”

I was fascinated by how her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe evolved. I’d known him only as a controversial photographer who was gay and died of AIDS.  Like Smith, he doesn’t find photography until much later and early on despises the medium.  Smith takes us on a real journey through the sexual, emotional, and romantic portions of their relationship.  As unconventional as it might be it is perhaps the most honest and tender story about love I’ve ever read.

Her experience as a poet allows her to summon beautiful, romantic and at times horrifying images.  Like a spider she spins a breathtaking web that ensnares a who’s who of the time, extracting stories from her encounters with Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and Robert’s eventual lover Sam Wagstaff.

She spends days in the Chelsea Hotel with Robert as they trade art for a room, and hours in Max’s: Kansas City  attempting to get close to Andy Warhol.  Later Smith meets and has an affair with a young and prolific Sam Shepard.  You might not be overly familiar with the name Patti Smith but her imprint can be found everywhere.

From virtually any other author this is where the shameless name dropping and over the top, unintended pretension would get overbearing.  But Smith uses this not as a means to rub in your face all the iconic artists she interacted with, but rather to show how they helped form her artistic and spiritual growth.  She played a specific role for each person she met in the book and in return they “educated” her.

When writing your own story it could be tempting to paint a more flatting image of yourself, or get so lost in reflecting on the past that you represent yourself as you are now and not as you were at the time.  Smith represents herself flaws and all. When Robert expresses his homosexuality she does not react as the supportive and accepting friend but rather that of a hurt lover who can’t understand what she did wrong.  I also expected her to be an unabashed supporter of Mapplethorpe’s more controversial works, but like many of us she was conflicted.  More often than not she protects Robert who had a reputation for being selfish and manipulative.

Her greatest accomplishment however is the way she lets her voice grow from that of a naive twenty year old struggling to find work and a warm place to sleep in New York, into an experienced mother of two, lovingly describing the final time a visibly ill Mapplethorpe photographed Smith holding her newly born daughter Jesse.  Occasionally when events get fuzzy and fractured she brilliantly pieces things together using small nostalgic vignettes.  A collage of scents, a bouquet of emotions, or just a single feeling.  The book is uniquely her voice and I could easily hear her speaking as I read.

One section still stands out to me eight months after reading the book.  Early on when Robert takes Patti home they decided to tell his religious parents they’re married.  This lie sticks all the way up until Patti moves away from New York in 1979.

 “‘What about us?’ Robert said suddenly.  ‘My mother still thinks we’re married.  I really hadn’t thought about it. 

‘I guess you will have to tell her we got a divorce.’ 

‘I can’t say that ,’ he said, eyeing me steadily.  ‘Catholics don’t divorce.’”

To understand the beauty, the sadness and the humor of this moment you need to read the book.

The book ends with a mystic meditation on life and death. It concludes with a love letter to Robert, New York and an incredible time in America full of good, bad, evil, and almost indescribable beauty.

Despite all the recognition this book has received and the strongest recommendation from my wife, I resisted reading it for far too long.  It was not what I had expected in the best way possible. A truly inspiring read for romantics, the nostalgic, and young artists searching for inspiration, but really this is for everyone.  One selfish night in Los Angeles a year and a half ago I denied my wife the opportunity to see Patti Smith in person at Skylight Books.  Last Christmas I did my best to make it up to her with a first edition signed copy.  She recommended this book to me and I can’t recommend it enough to you.  Don’t let your preconceptions get in the way.

 

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occupy-secretly-important

November 16, 2011 in columns, mostly non-fiction

Generation Y has been called lazy, privileged, sheltered, and narcissistic.  We grew up with an all volunteer army, the internet, video games, five thousand television channels, twenty four hour news cycles, and reality t.v.  If those born during the Great Depression were as Tom Brokaw called them “the greatest generation” then Gen Y must be the worst.  To which I take offense.

We didn’t invent the internet, video games, cable television, twenty four hour news, or reality t.v.  We also didn’t cause the financial crisis, spend ten trillion dollars, deregulate Wall Street, invade two countries, and give pay raises to Banking CEO’s after we bailed them out.  Actually when you think about it Gen Y has a lot more in common with “the greatest generation” then you might otherwise believe.  We’ve lived thought the second worst economic depression in the countries history, we developed innovative companies like Facebook, we destroyed the traditional music business, we were instrumental in electing the countries first black president, and to date nearly eight thousand of us have died in service to our country while fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

When someone says to us that we “don’t know what a hard days labor is like”, they lay a guilt trip on us as if it were our fault.  When in fact it was previous generations who shipped our factories and manufacturing jobs overseas, it was previous generations who began to hire illegal immigrants to help keep the overheads low and redistribute the wealth to themselves.  If we don’t know what a hard days labor is, that’s because previous generations made sure the we wouldn’t.

We also get treated differently by the media.  When Babyboomers with Medicare and government issued wheelchairs, oxygen tanks, and social security decided they were fed up with the taxes required to pay for those services and called for a radical change in the government, the media legitimized them.  Teapartiers have no official centralized message or leader and for every one person in the movement who is serious and knowledgable there are ten complete nutjobs.

On September 17th 2011 a group of Gen X&Yers “occupied” Zuccotti Park in New York.  Within weeks people were occupying just about anything that could be occupied.  They wanted what most of us want today, government accountability, punishment for Wall Street, redistribution of wealth.  Perhaps they just want some basic acknowledgement that what they think matters, and that they think the powers at be are fucking things up.

There was little media coverage at first, it just didn’t seem newsworthy to people that thousands of X&Yers were protesting.  Then after being shamed by the likes of Jon Stewart, Rachel Maddow, Stephen Colbert, Keith Olberman, and the protestors themselves, the media begrudgingly acknowledged their existence.  What little coverage they did get was less than favorable, and they were dismissed as lazy, privileged, narcissistic kids who didn’t even have a centralized leader or message.  Never mind the similarities between Occupy and the Teaparty, these kids didn’t know what they were talking about.

As the movement grew people naturally wanted to know what the end point was.  The problem; there isn’t an end point.  They want change, big change, change that might be futile.  I saw the end point not so much as “winning” anything specific but rather inciting as much change as possible, while acquiring as much legitimization as possible.  Yesterday the Seattle city council unanimously passed a resolution to examine the cities banking practices, which very well might lead to the divestment of the cities money from big banks.  It’s a small victory but not a meaningless one.

Yesterday the protestors in Zuccotti Park were forced out by Police.  Apparently local residents found their presence to be somewhat inconveniencing. This is being repeated all across the US as Occupiers are being asked and often forced (sometimes violently) from their strongholds, because they are disrupting everyday activities.  No one is saying they can’t protest, that’s our right as American citizens, they just want them to protest somewhere more convenient and less disruptive (like from their homes).

Isn’t the point of a protest to be disruptive and inconvenience people to the point where they say, “hey, give them what they want so we can get back to our lives.”  Protests are not supposed to be neat and pretty, they’re supposed to be in your face and demand your attention.  What if Martin Luther King had thought that the Million Man March would be too inconveniencing to Washington D.C. and decided to take it to Montana instead.  That would have had the same impact, right?

The New York Times asked the question, “with their outposts gone, will their movement wither?”  It might, but it doesn’t have to.  There are many things you can do to keep it alive beyond sitting in a park holding a sign.  You can pull all your money out of big banks, you can start a letter writing campaign to your local politicians, or you can take Artie Moffa’s suggestion.

He began taking all the credit card offers he was getting in the mail with prepaid postage and started sending it back.  Sending it back with all the information it came with including the original envelope.  Sending it back with the other junk mail he got that day.  Sending it back with wood shims inside.  He also sent them back with valuable information the big banks should be aware of.

Watch his video here, when you’re done watch his other videos as well.  Artie is a remarkably well spoken and intelligent guy, he deserves to be listened to.

The week after I watched this video I began sending back full envelopes to credit card companies.  It was a refreshing to feel like I was really sticking it to the man, but as Artie says, this should also be about communication and I wanted to communicate something.  So last week I had an idea.  Why not come up with a flyer that you could print out with a message and our internaut logo.  So now I present to you 6 different flyers that you can print out and include in your own returned credit card envelopes.  Generation Y gets a bad rap and it makes me nuts (I’m not making excuses for us) but…  pervious generations haven’t exactly handed us a healthy world.

Please note that many of these printouts include quotes from author Matt Taibbi’s book Griftopia, Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America.  This is a must read for… anyone.

 

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who used it best #1: step brothers vs. (500) days of summer

August 8, 2011 in columns, who used it best


Occasionally my wife will buy US Magazine and when she does I usually make sure to check out one of my favorite tabloid pictorials “who wore it best.”  If you have chosen to spend your time by bettering your life rather than flipping through the pages of celebrity toilet paper then let me explain the premise.  Who wore it best will pit two celebrities against one another by showing a side by side comparison of each wearing the same outfit.  Online readers then have the chance to vote on… who wore it best.

In honor of my favorite tabloid pictorial we will be introducing a new series here on the website, Who Used it Best.  In this series we will take a look at two movies that use the same song.  For our first Who used it best, we will compare and contrast the use of Hall and Oats, You make my dreams come true in both Step Brothers and 500 Days of Summer.

Step Brothers

This is not the first time this instant classic has been featured on the website, you might remember its previous appearance in Comfort Movie.  That said it was the first of a pair of movies to bring about the relative resurgence of Hall and Oats from the depths of music trash can.  Readers should take comfort in knowing that while Step Brothers is one of my favorite movies, this will not sway my decision on way or the other.

How they use it.

I won’t delve too deeply into the plot of the film but what you need to understand is that the two main characters Brennan Huff (Will Ferrell) and Dale Doback (John C. Reilly) become 40 year old step brothers when their parents marry.  At first they are unreceptive to one another, you might even say bitter enemies but after a dinner with Brendan’s brother Derek Huff (Adam Scott) in which they both find a common hatred for someone other than each other, they become best friends.  In fact the song begins with Brennan saying, “Did we just become best friends?” To which Dale responds “Yup!”

What follows is a montage of two 40 year old boys becoming friends in ways you would expect two 10 year old children to.  Karate in the garage, measuring their penises, mixing mentos with Diet Coke, sword fight (the one with pee), watching Steven Seagal films, and concludes with both turning their two twin beds into a makeshift bunk bed.

What makes it great.

Watching John C. Reilly and Will Ferrell act like ten year olds is comedy gold and this montage is filled with the activities that brothers and best friends do when they are young to help bond one another.  What makes the whole thing better is the fact that they seem to bond by doing all of them over the course of two hours after having spent the first third of the movie as bitter rivals.  Each activity as described above is funny enough on its own but when combined they become outright hilarious.

Drawbacks.

Quite honestly there are only two drawbacks to the song as used in the movie and they equate to someone answering the, “What are your weaknesses?” question with “I work to hard.”  The fact is all I could really come up with is that the whole scene is far too short, the song could have gone on longer to include more bonding experiences.  Perhaps it would have thrown the pacing of the film off, but I don’t really care about pacing when watching two 40 year old men have a “sword fight.”

The other drawback to the scene is that because the movie is already off the charts hilarious the montage doesn’t stand out as particularly great.  Sure whenever I hear the song You make my dreams come true, I always hear “Do you want to do karate in the garage?” in my head.  But that is not better than say “I smoked pot with Johnny Hopkins,” or “It’s okay that mines not movie quality.”  While a great scene it does not rise above the rest of the movie.  If you’re wondering what exactly those two quotes mean then you have not yet experienced the immortal genius of Adam McKay’s Step Brothers.

(500) Days of Summer

This movie tends to be rather polarizing, people either loved it for it’s sweet indie odd ball qualities or they hated it for all the same reasons.  Personally I fall right in between, it’s a great concept which is executed well, the script is sometimes wonky but with a great actor like Joseph Gordon-Levitt to balance it out most of the time I forgive it’s flaws.  My real problems with the film are that A. Zooey Deschanel is not the incredible woman the film asks us to believe she is.  In fact she’s just a bitch, never once do I see her side of the story.  B. The film takes place in Los Angeles but the characters seem to be living in a city more like New York.  It was not a surprise to discover that it was originally written to take place in San Francisco.  C. During a Karaoke scene Joseph Gordon-Levitt sings The Pixies, Here comes your man which I head never once heard anyone sings at Karaoke.  Just as with Step Brothers, I will act as a mostly partial judge and will not allow my frustrations with portions of the film to obstruct my decision making.

How they use it.

Just as with Step Brothers let me give you some context for the use of the song.  (500) Days of Summer, is a story about 500 days of Summer (Zooey Deschanel) in the life of main character Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt).  The story is told out of order jumping from day 5 to day 105 in just moments, most often happy scenes jump to scenes of sadness and depression.  In the story Tom meets Summer and is instantly in love with her, Summer meanwhile sends mixed messages to Tom about what exactly she is looking for, a fling, friendship, or a relationship.  The song comes into play when finally Tom gets into Summers apartment and they have sex for the first time.

He awakes refreshed and ready for a new day, emerging from the building and thrusting a fist of triumph in the air.  As the song plays he dances his way down the street, hugging and high fiving strangers as he goes along.  At one point to stops to fix his hair in a shop window and instead sees Han Solo winking back at him.  From there we delve further into an absurd dance sequence where the ridiculousness climaxes when a cartoon blue bird lands on Toms finger. He continues by dancing his way into the elevator at work.  The song closes as the doors to the elevator close, when they open we have jumped ahead a hundred days or so and now Tom is depressed.

What makes it great.

At times the film can be a bit moody, though there are very funny moments this scene really stands out as outrageously hilarious.  The director uses various story telling techniques including a split screen that depicts a scene in fantasy and reality, the songs bit of absurdist humor comes at just the right moment in the film to help try and justify the use of a mysterious narrator, or the unique story telling techniques.  The Han Solo reflection is a stroke of genius, it takes you by surprise and the director really earns the laugh and then justifies it to the audience with the dancing.  The last part of what makes the scene great is that unlike Step Brothers where the song is used as a back drop, in (500) Days of Summer it is used as narrative.  The characters are dancing to the music, they can actually hear it, and this takes it to a whole other level of musical theater mockery.

Drawbacks.

In (500) Days of Summer the scene completely stands out as arguably the best in the movie.  Subtract the scene from Step Brothers and I don’t love it any less, subtract the scene from (500) Days of Summer and the movie loses a great deal of likability.  While I was formulating the idea for this article I discussed the movie with a number of people some who did and some who didn’t like the movie but across the board everyone thought this was the best scene by far.

The other drawback of the scene is context, as the audience we immediately understand what has occurred, Tom has finally had sex with Summer and he is celebrating.  The problem is that Summer is such an appalling character that I have a hard time believing that one could really be that happy about reaching home plate with her.  I can’t really think of any actress who contains the qualities that the character of Summer supposedly possesses, Zooey Deschanel definitely does not have them.

Final thought.

Before Step Brothers and (500) Days of Summer I can’t say I was a fan of You make my dreams come true, now I have it on my ipod and use it as an instant pick me up.  This I credit directly to two movies that use it well.  I didn’t develop any kind of scoring system to determine the winner, instead I will rely solely on intuition.

It was very close and could have gone either way but in the end I had to go with (500) Days of Summer.  While I enjoy the movie, to me it is just not as good as Step Brothers, but the fact that the song use in the movie was so much better from everything else I had to give it the nod.  As I mentioned before there are plenty of equally funny scenes in Step Brothers but for (500) Days of Summer the scene really stands out.

Of course this is just my unsolicited opinion, go ahead and watch both scenes and then vote in our poll here.

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girl adventure, giiirrrlll

July 16, 2011 in events

Getting ready backstage for Girl Adventure Parts 1-4, May 2011

How lucky am I?  I have been involved in so many wonderful, fun pieces of theatre this year, with performers and directors who, if not already, have become my friends.  I have never enjoyed my life in the theatre this much, and my upcoming performance of Girl Adventure: Parts 1-3 for Dixon Place’s HOT! Festival, is no different.

Girl Adventure is a compilation of original and found text, videos, songs and dances.  It draws on the Ramayana, a Sofia Coppola film, the travel channel and how people dance at weddings.  You may be thinking, what?   I have described it before as an exercise in “Yes, and…” because the creator and director, Nina Morrison, brilliantly finds a way to say “yes!” to seemingly anything that comes her way, include it in the show, and make an engaging, beautiful piece of theatre in the process.

I originally performed in the excerpt Girl Adventure Part I: Exile in January, after being recommended by another actor who had worked with Nina before.  From the beginning of the process, I was amazed by the talented group of women involved, with a huge range in age and experience.  In an industry where, in general, most plays and available roles are for men, it is a treat to be in a play created/written/choreographed by and starring women.

Dixon Place enjoyed the piece so much that we were invited to return, with Girl Adventure Parts 1-4 in May.  This time, we added many more dances (choreography by Isabel Gotzkowsky), many more dancers, singers, actors and astounding visual art by Vandana Jain.  It certainly was an ambitious event.

One of the most important lessons I have taken from working with Nina is that you do not have to be a bitch to get things done.  The way she relates to the actors, singers, dancers, artists, etc. is always kind and patient.  As with any artistic endeavor, there were moments of confusion and frustration, but Nina never loses sight of the joy of working with each of us.  She maintains the utmost sensitivity to each artist’s process.  Because of this we were all able to enjoy the development of the piece and ourselves within it.  When negativity is eliminated, magic happens.   It is extremely freeing to work under such an encouraging eye and the process turns into pure fun.  Nina’s ability to say yes and involve people who say yes with her turned her great ideas into a gorgeous, epic collaboration.

Once again, Dixon Place was impressed, and now we have the honor of performing Girl Adventure: Parts 1-3 in their 20th annual HOT! Festival: The NYC Celebration of Queer Culture, this coming Tuesday, July 19th at 7:30 pm.  The process since May has included some minor changes, of course with the same enthusiasm that makes Nina so unique to work with.  I am thrilled to say yes to anything she asks me to do, and hope there will be many more opportunities to do so in the future, if not in another branch of Girl Adventure, then in the next original Nina Morrison adventure.

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brother louie

July 1, 2011 in reviews, television reviews

Summer is here, well it’s here for most of the country, summer won’t arrive in Seattle till after July 4th if it arrives at all.  Weather aside there is one thing summer brings across the US to all cities, and that is the lack of good television shows.

Just like our nations school children when May and June roll around most television seems to end and the summer crap begins, until the fall when the regular shows return and our nights are once again spent with our eyeballs glued to a screen.

Having not worked in television, I don’t have the real answer for why the arrival of summer is the standard break for tv.  My guess however is that Summer is supposed to be a time for families to travel, when children are out of school and staying out late and playing baseball, when the natural order of things shift and television no longer becomes a priority.  This is when the networks have decided to give their regular shows a break and inundate us with crap they found laying around the editing room floor and reruns.

I am not a slave to the television schedule as I don’t have cable (not even basic), though I am on some kind of Netflix schedule.  For those of you mourning the loss of your shows there is a cure.

Louie.

Arguably one of the best shows no matter what season it’s in. Louie created by comedian Louis C.K. is hard to describe to someone who either A. is not familiar with C.K.’s humor or B. expects a television comedy to be a laugh riot.  One part Seinfeld, one part Curb Your Enthusiasm, and one part gritty indie film. The humor is often dark and sometimes difficult to figure out just where it’s going, but crafted with an expert hand.

The “Louie” character navigates his life full of absurdist humor, simple observations, and arguments with existence.  Occasionally the first go around of an episode will leave you confused and it won’t be until the second viewing that the episode clicks for you and suddenly you realize why the first fifteen minutes of the episode were spent focusing on a horrifying depiction of a doctor brought in s catholic school graphically demonstrating just how Jesus was crucified.

Each episode exists in its own reality and there is little or no story continuity and it doesn’t seem to follow any familiar story structure.  A splicing together of short vignettes of story, performances in night clubs, conversations with his therapist, and discussions with his friends (who are all notable New York comics).  This all seems like a recipe for disaster but in the hands of the ultra talented and passionate Louie C.K. it really sets itself apart as something special.

The show is written, directed, produced, acted, and even edited by C.K.  Where normally I would see those credits and immediately cast him aside as an egomaniac who refuses to let others touch his precious product.  Louie does it all out of passion and necessity, the pilot was put together on just a $200,000 budget.

My love for the show comes from my identification with Louie. He often seems to go through life awkwardly not quite knowing what to say to people in conversation or other social situations.  He makes choices that appear to make little sense to outside observers but total sense to him.  He’s a good person but can come off as a complete asshole.

I often feel like that, I suspect that most people can feel that way too and to see a character who embodies that life is refreshing.  Louie is a show that takes all the little moments of Louis C.K.’s life and exploits them in brief little hilarious and brilliant moments.  This is not just a show that makes you laugh, it truly makes you think.

You can catch Louie when those summer nights have got you down, every Thursday at 10:30 on FX.

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bitches be crazy

May 25, 2011 in events

 

 

 

One evening in September of 2009 a group of actors, directors and writers came together in Manhattan to create a series of 10-minute one-act plays for AWE Creative Group’s 24Hour PlayFun. The teams were chosen at random, and each play shared the same opening line, same random line, and use of the same prop. This was the birthplace of Crazy Bitches! , a story of Momma and her two haggard daughters, Cantina Marie and Lisa Marie, and the men they entertain/abduct. I had the good fortune of being drawn from a hat to work with the writer, David Slate, and I’ve been performing it ever since.

The story is an absurd comedy, one that involves sex, serpents, cannibalism, donkeys, Mexican jail, tattoos and sausage. There are many reasons we each keep coming back to perform again. It has, over the last two years, been one of the most rewarding theatrical experiences of my career. In a city of individuals, where everyone is busy and set out to succeed on their own, the bitches have surpassed stereotype and found loyalty to one another. Against all odds, the majority of us have come back and made the time to play with each other. If I had known when I first moved to New York eight years ago that I would have the opportunity to continue to perform a play that was written specifically for me, with people I loved and cherished, I wouldn’t have believed it. I’m still pinching myself.

One of the most rewarding aspects of this play is the audience reviews we receive. After a dear friend of mine watched our recent performance, he told me it reminded him of why he got into theatre in the first place: because it was fun! What a concept. I have been acting since I was a child, and certainly was first interested in this career because it was fun. I want to play, to enjoy, to create characters and relationships on stage. Since that time has passed there have been moments when it was easy to lose sight of what first intrigued me. Somewhere along the line a different kind of pressure is exposed and one can forget about the pleasure of acting. I am a trained actor and I take my work seriously, and I also perform in a variety of styles. No matter how dramatic or silly the play may be, I believe it is important to put in the table work. However, when the joy in sharing the story of the play is lost, the audience stops caring to watch. There is nothing worse than watching an actor uncomfortable or disenchanted on stage. It has been a gift to rediscover the amount of fun I can have while acting, and I am convinced that is why our audiences keep coming back. Crazy Bitches!encourages the actors to be as ridiculous as possible, and the audience and actors alike get to reap the benefits.

The excitement of this play stimulates ideas from the entire team. The writer has plans to extend the play further, we have talks of taking it on an East Coast tour, filming it for webisodes or a short film, etc. It is extremely thrilling to be part of such a twisted, perverse package. Right now we seem to have found our home in gay bars, namely the Stonewall Inn, the perfect place to try new things and play to a quirky and receptive audience. We have performances coming up May 30, 31, June 6 and 7, and assuredly more on the way, if not at Stonewall then at other venues.

What I have learned from the success of Crazy Bitches! is that audiences want to watch people act like fools on stage, and that I am honored to oblige. I will continue to play Lisa Marie, the badass Southerner who spent months in a Mexican jail for smuggling heroin across the border, for as long as the people will let me. I look forward to the future adaptations of this infectious tale, and can’t wait to play with my friends again on the 30th.

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the end of LA LA land

December 10, 2010 in columns, mostly non-fiction

On Halloween of 2007 I was awake at 5:30 am loading my girlfriend, myself and a wailing cat into the cab of a seventeen foot U-haul bound for Los Angeles, just like the millions of naive 24 year olds before me.  On Halloween 2010 I was again awake at 5:30 am a 10 foot U-haul parked in the driveway of my apartment stuffed with boxes a few pieces of furniture and random treasures like a Millenium Falcon, a stuffed Pink Panther and the head of a bull Pinata from my 27th birthday party.  I my wife, my two cats and my dog loaded up bound for Seattle.

The trip is 1,100 miles and takes around 21 hours depending if I or my wife is driving.  When we were moving to LA it seemed like 11,000 miles and 41 hours,  I spent the whole time bouncing in my chair my hands tightly gripping the steering wheel trying to control this 17 foot behemoth behind me I couldn’t wait for this incredible unknown before me, I would have driven straight through to LA if I could have.  A new apartment, a new city I’d spent less than seventy-two hours in, no job, no family and everything was an exciting mystery.

Now moving back to Seattle things could hardly have been less similar, the trip seemed like a handful of hours and felt like we were just driving to Santa Barbara.  I was full of reservations and I spent the entire drive looking back at where I spent exactly three years of my life where I spent the bulk of my non college  adult life.  It was where I learned to live without family and all the ways in which they can be there to protect you.  It was in LA where I learned how to make new friends from scratch and make them my family away from my family.

I’m a nostalgic person and as we left Los Feliz (definitely the coolest place in Los Angeles) and drove through Glendale and Burbank and Valencia our truck pointed due north on I-5 a course we would not deviate from until we reached a crossroads in the Kent Valley and take the 405 for the last 10 miles of our trek home.  I found it surprisingly easy to forget things like the shitty overpriced food, the insane drivers, the completely narcissistic culture and smog.  Instead I lamented the loss of my neighborhood, the sun, my friends and the thought that just around the next corner could be something completely new and surprising.

Seattle is still full of unknowns but they are less thrilling and honestly a little less unknown.  Seattle is home and is full of friends and family and despite having no jobs it was safe and quaint.

I lived in Seattle for 26 years before I packed up and left it for three and a new beginning in Los Angeles, now I am moving back to Seattle for a new beginning again.  There were plans and there were goals I’m finding that rarely I follow either.

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