Maxed Out

This evening I went to free screening of the new documentary Maxed Out. (I love being a student. The director James Scurlock came to answer questions, as did Professor Warren, who was interviewed in the film.) It’s a movie about a fascinating and timely topic: consumer debt in America. The median American household currently spends 107% of their yearly income. Which pretty much everyone would agree isn’t sustainable. So what is it about our culture, our society – our credit card and mortgage market? – that gets us in this predicament? And what can we do about it? This film only partially addresses each idea, but it’s a big problem with a lot of players, so one can’t really expect more from a single 87-minute documentary.

Maxed Out is a documentary of the Fast Food Nation and Fahrenheit 9/11 family: relatively entertaining, a bit over-simplistic (I wish there had been a bit more data, and dates), and really best at snide comments. I kind of wish that a documentary maker would remember that he has the audience for about an hour and half – he doesn’t have to make his jokes by media footage intercut with silent text poking fun at politicians’ soundbites. It just seems like a cheap shot to make fun of politicians, especially when you don’t have to and the topic is big enough not to be partisan anyway. Also, when intercut text is the documentary maker’s version of a comedian’s one-liner, its passivity and lack of voice makes it feel like it has less integrity to me.

But this is a quarrel with the style of documentary that has become popular, and there’s probably nothing I can do about that. Within the framework of this style, the documentary is satisfactorily put together. There’s a bunch of footage, some of it really funny, some of it heartbreaking, some of it maddening. There are some great juxtapositions of a 1960 instructional video about credit and current credit card advertisements, and some pretty great stock footage that is used to make points by putting the analogies interviewees make on the screen, including one a zealous and enthusiastic collector makes comparing himself to a pirate whose job is to “push someone out on the plank as far as they can go, so then they will do anything to come back.” He said it to explain why he likes his job, but the image was just so appalling that when an old silent film scene of a pirate sword fight flashed on the screen, it was both sad and hilarious.

Perhaps it’s not saying much to say that the film was actually compelling even with its stylistic faults. I mean, how can it not be compelling? This documentary really makes you realize that debt in this country isn’t happening just at the margins of our society. Nor is debt exclusively the result of “spend money to make money” “Flip that House” TLC-show spending. It’s happening to middle class families and their kids in college. It’s happening to servicemen who were deployed for much longer than their savings and mortgages could stand. It’s happening to the poor, too, and the disenfranchised, and the mentally disabled, and the elderly, and the sick. If you aren’t aware of the scope of the issue, this movie is really worth it. But even if you do know, from academic reading or an anecdote, it’s heartbreaking to hear some of these stories from real people. A few of the stories are truly tragedies, and to see the ripple effect of bankruptcy and bad credit, sometimes to the point of death, is just... let’s just say that I was actually crying at one point.

At times, Maxed Out strays from its didactic message (“Consumer Financial Products Companies Are Exploiting America, and We’re Letting Them”), which makes the film a bit scattered. Originally, it was supposed to be a movie about consumer culture in America, and you can tell he just didn’t have the heart to lose his favorite footage. There’s a prologue and epilogue section that are far too long and don’t really mesh with the rest of the film’s story about debt, except debt’s tenuous connection to our ideas about the rich and famous (Robin Leach is even interviewed). Mr. Scurlock also included a few random scenes that seem to try to paint other entities with the same brush as the banks who charge astronomical interest rates and fees, such as a single throwaway scene of a preacher talking about tithing. I think he was trying to say that megachurches talking about tithing are like bank collectors who demand payments from people who can’t afford them. But to give the director the benefit of the doubt, there’s no explanation why that scene is in there, no connection to the rest of the film. It’s just there, like a remnant of the original “consumer culture” film idea that was just never cut. But if Mr. Scurlock is trying to imply with that scene what I think he’s implying, he’s just wrong. Which is sad, because so much of the rest of his film is solid and compelling, and now I have to go to sleep at night wondering, “Why, oh why, do we allow and even support what amounts to nothing less than predatory (and sometimes deceitful) usury?” Maxed Out can't answer that question, but it’ll certainly make you want to ask the question until someone does reply.

The Gun Seller

I don’t usually review books, but since I gave up television for Lent this year, I haven’t watched any DVDs recently. However, earlier this week I really needed a break from law school work, and so I read a novel. What a quaint idea, I know.

The book, The Gun Seller, was itself pretty quaint. The first novel by actor Hugh Laurie, it was pretty clearly influenced by the writing of P.G. Wodehouse (which is actually why I picked up the book in the first place). The book is filled with delightfully pointless sidenotes by the narrator, in the style of Bertie Wooster. For example:

She turned towards me and narrowed her eyes. If you know what I mean by that. Narrowed them horizontally, not vertically. I suppose one should say she shortened her eyes, but nobody ever does.

There are a couple jokes that don’t quite translate to the American ear, the most prominent one being a misunderstanding about a character’s name -- Murdah, not Murder, which, instead of making me have to rethink the spelling of the character’s name, made me have to rethink the pronunciation of Murder. But for the most part Mr Laurie successfully creates a deft and amusing narrating voice, which I loved.

However, the book didn’t rest on just being quaint. Instead our verbally deft narrator is set in the middle of a complicated spy novel. Characters come and go, and their dialogue often doesn’t keep clear their relationships to each other. The book itself is split into two parts, with each part feeling like a completely separate story because the main ensemble cast completely changes, other than the narrator. And if you were confused the first time you watched Mission Impossible, the plot is going to run away from you more than a couple times. My attempt to summarize will hopelessly leave out important plot points, but here goes: Thomas Lang, the narrator, is asked to kill a rich American. He refuses and decides to warn the American, but in doing so accidentally gets involved in a multinational plot to sell weapons to rogue nations, specifically by creating terrorism in order to swat it down. (Think Gulf War newsreels as marketing campaigns.) Lang gets recruited to help destroy the conspiracy, then recruited to be part of it by infiltrating and setting up the terrorist group. And along the way, he falls in love a couple times. Even with first-person narration, it’s difficult to keep track of who is deceiving whom and for what purposes.

The book works best if you’re the sort of person who loves both the TV show Jeeves and Wooster and 24. If not, there will be parts of the novel that feel slow or pointless or confusing. But if you somehow feel you’ve always wanted to read an American spy thriller and a British class comedy at the same time, this may be the only book that can fulfill your need.

Sorry, Wrong Number

After the Great Depression and a second World War, our relatively young and optimistic country was realizing (and attempting to comprehend) humanity’s great potential for evil and immorality, bigotry and fear. And so, American culture in the 40s and 50s finally created a major art form to reflect the fear, ambivalence and cruelty we seemed to find in the world: film noir.

Now maybe that’s an over simplification of film noir’s roots and purpose, but whatever its origins, film noir is understood to be melodramatic, suspenseful and ultimately unhappy renditions of “gritty” or “hard-boiled” characters. Morals in film noir are often ambiguous, and the “good guys” rarely own white cowboy hats. In attempting to explore the genre, I recently watched “Sorry, Wrong Number,” the 1948 movie starring Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster.

Based on a 1943 radio play, “Sorry, Wrong Number” stars Barbara Stanwyck as a spoiled but invalid heiress named Leona who overhears a telephone conversation about a murder planned to take place at 11:15 that night. Through the course of several telephone conversations and flashbacks (which sometimes occur within each other), Leona becomes convinced that she is the intended murder victim.

Now, if this were, say, a Hitchcock film rather than film noir, there might be a lot that could be done with this premise. Instead, it’s a pretty straightforward story about a spoiled, domineering woman and the desperate husband who hates her. There are no plot twists or surprises – even with flashbacks within flashbacks, the story unfolds almost uneventfully. It’s a decent example of film noir; both Stanwyck and Lancaster, as Leona’s husband, convincingly play selfish and desperate people. But they have very little to play with: there are really no interesting character foils or plot twists, as in Double Indemnity, a film noir classic that far better utilizes Ms. Stanwyck’s talent and toughness. Here, the characters don’t even get to do much – much of the “action” takes place in phone booths or Leona’s bedroom – much less actually tangle with moral ambiguity, thwarted plans, or clashes between strong characters.

The most fun thing about the movie is actually what makes it a mediocre movie, even for film noir: the story’s radio play roots. The original play was about a third of the length of this movie (even though the film clocks in at only 89 minutes), which means a lot of the story seems to simply be spinning its wheels until the dramatic finish. The last ten minutes definitely transform the movie into a nail-biter, and make you almost forget how slow the rest of the movie was. But not quite.

But it is fun to watch the movie realizing that almost the entire story could be heard instead of watched. Heavy narration and extensive use of radio play-type sound effects make the whole movie seem more like an opportunity to watch a radio play, which is actually pretty exciting since the radio play is an art form rarely encountered by modern American audiences (although if you are fascinated by this movie/radio play, I highly suggest you find some radio plays online to listen to. Many are public domain because of poor copyrighting, and BBC radio still airs new plays in its regular programming). But if you’re looking for a high quality example of film noir, Barbara Stanwyck, or Burt Lancaster, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

2 Stars.

The Death of Movie Genres, #1

I know, I know, this was aired for Valentine's Day. But it's a really fascinating piece about how our culture's "enlightened" relation to romantic love has created yet another casualty: The Romantic Comedy.

Maybe this is why I love old movies: they are untainted by our modern views of sex and love, and can create stories without their tongues in cheek, which leaves them free to do other things (And by "other things," of course I mean "be witty."). Ah for the days of main characters being able to be smart, funny, *and* earnest -- Katharine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, and even Doris Day come to mind for the ladies. Men could also keep their wits and still be funny: think Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, and Jack Lemmon. These days, I think the best you can do is two out of three. If you're smart and funny, you can't take anything seriously, but if you're funny and earnest, you can't be very smart.

Being a geek has its benefits: I'm easily amused

Stranger Than Fiction

People who know me best know that I've never grown out of the "What Do I Want To Be When I Grow Up?" stage of childhood. And, like the stereotypical child, I often change my mind based on what new and fun encounter I've had. In the past year and a half, I've wanted to be the following: an architect, a professor, a writer, a missionary, a third-world developer (specifically in public health), an entrepreneur, a cinematographer, a journalist, a pastry chef, and a Lego enthusiast (OK, maybe that last thing doesn't count as a job, but it certainly seems to take up a lot of time). And, of course, a lawyer. Some of those I can probably be at once (like, lawyer + writer + professor), but some are harder to fit together.

Basically, though, the common thread of all of these things is that something sparks my imagination. My father used to always have to remind my big sister that imitation was a form of flattery whenever I copied my big sister in what she did when we were little. But I still have the same tendency, and it *is* perhaps the highest praise I can give to something to say that I left wanting to do that thing for a living.

With that preface, I came out of the movie Stranger Than Fiction this weekend and wanted to be a novelist. When I come out of incredible plays, I want to be a director or actress. When I come out of exceptional movies, I want to writer screenplays or be a film editor. Stranger Than Fiction had neither of these effects on me, because in fact it wasn't an exceptional movie. It had a lot of flaws: an inability to commit (the cardinal sin of dramatic arts), and in general an intellectual feel that never quite expanded beyond the cerebral, and an aesthetic that was sometimes confusing. There were lots of wonderful details in the movie that were almost hidden - the quote around a bakery store's exterior, a throwaway background quote about the novelist's religious beliefs, fleeting visual references to books and authors throughout. If you do go see the movie, try to keep alert for these things, even as you get bombarded with silly animations of maps and calculations.

But at the same time, the movie *did* inspire me. Its premise is quite smart and intriguing. Artists create worlds and characters in order to manipulate them into something beautiful - but what if that beauty were actually destructive? It doesn't matter when they are just bits of printed words on paper, but as most artists and writers know, they often seem more separate from one's own creation. In a word, they seem more real. And so, what do you do then? Sacrifce them to the story and the beatury of Art, or do we recognize a purpose of Art other than to illuminate its own beauty? All these thoughts and more poured out of my head as I left the theater, feeling a little empty by the wishy-washy ending of the movie. The movie is about a novelist (or perhaps, more acurately, a tragedian), played by Emma Thompson, and the hero of her new novel who is, inexplicably, real. But - and here is the catch- the hero finds out that he is a character destined to die when he begins to hear the narration of the story in his head. So now he has to figure out what is going to happen to him, and if and how he can save his own life. Throw in a little romantic sideplot with Maggie Gyllenhaal (who is, by the way, delightful as a Harvard Law School student drop-out turned baker. yay!), and you've got pretty much all the important plot points down. Will Ferrell, as the bland anti-hero Harold Crick, seems a bit awkward containing his manic persona to play such a subdued and insecure character, but he does quite well. And we know there is more life bursting to get out from underneath his monotone and bewildered expression, which is important to win over the audience and make us care about his fate. Dustin Hoffman, as the literature professor Harold seeks out for guidance, has apparently perfected the likable but callous (and somewhat phoned-in) performance. See I [Heart] Huckabees and, (oh horror) Meet the Fockers for examples.

The film's biggest problem, however, is the same as Emma Thompson's character's: the ending. How do you end a film about a book character who is real? Unfortunately, you've only got two choices: tragedy and comedy. In the first you kill off Harold Crick, as Emma Thompson's character originally intended. And really, what movie with Will Ferrell as the main character is going to end with such a dramatic and terrible note? In the second, though, you destroy all the build-up of the movie, and end up with a bland cop-out. Or at least, it feels like a cop-out if you can't explain why it makes more sense - for the *story* - for Harold Crick to live. At the end of the day, this movie *is* fiction, and just saying, "oh, you shouldn't kill people" doesn't seem like enough. The script in Stranger Than Fiction makes some half-hearted and cursory attempts to explain a decision of comedy over tragedy, but they aren't explained well or even taken very seriously. Which leaves the film somewhat abrupt in its ending, with me sitting through the credits trying to figure out if there was a better ending out there than the one the film seemingly painted its way into.

All the film's weakness, though, I forgive, not because I think the movie is great, or even necessarily one that i would recommend to any movie goer (think: if you liked I [Heart] Huckabees, you'll probably like this, too). But I forgive the weaknesses of Stranger Than Fiction because I came out of that movie theater with a heightened awareness of the world around me and its beauty, and also a renewed conviction that I wanted to write about it. I came home and sat down in front of my computer and opened up an old story I started about a year ago and started working on it some more. Some new characters came out onto the page, ones I didn't know and didn't expect to meet. But I like them, these new characters of mine. And now, with Strange Than Fiction in the back of my head, I hope they survive the story.

Studio 60

When I was in elementary school, my dad told me that the most important day of my academic life was the first day of kindergarten. It's their first impression of you, he said. If you have a good first day, anything worse will just be a bad day. If you have a bad first day, good behavior will just be a pleasant surprise. While his summary of the past 17 years of my life might have been an overstatement, certainly it is true that you should always try to start off with a bang. You've got to have a great hook to keep people interested.

How disappointing, then, that Aaron Sorkin's new series, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, started off ...well, I'm not sure how they did it, but it started both slow and confusingly fast. We're introduced to characters, and then they're fired, seemingly to never come again (at least not in this episode or in anything I could find online). Some characters are fictional, but Felicity Huffman pops in briefly to play Felicity Huffman. The camera moves around a lot, but not in that smooth, hand-holding technique of the West Wing. Instead, we're given a lot of cuts and spinning around characters before we really get a chance to look at them. At the same time, it's almost boring because the plot line is directly taken from the 1976 movie "Network". The similarities are recognized by the script, but that doesn't forgive a pilot episode for having a lengthy, preachy monologue before we're ten minutes into the series.

But, mercifully, after the first segment, the show hits its stride. Little wonder that the actors who finally carry the script off are West Wing veterans Bradley Whitford and Matthew Perry. They understand that, for better of worse, Aaron Sorkin's dialogue requires a certain level of musicality -- Sorkin is a writer who loves writing, and his characters have to love language, too. Whitford and Perry's introduction into the episode also signal a shift from the Network-based plot, and the last third of the show felt eerily similar to certain episodes in West Wing or Sports Night ("What if she's for real?" is actually a line of Whitford's). From the introduction of those two characters, the rest of the episode seemed to fly by. The jokes got better, the dialogue got smarter, and I no longer felt like I was watching a cheap TV rip-off of a 70s movie that I didn't really like anyway.

It'll be intriguing to see where the show goes from here. I love Sorkin's writing, and once Schlamme calmed down from some impressive camera gymanstics in the first segment, the show found a great pace. And there's a lot of material that the Studio 60 team obviously is going to cover. The pilot introduced religious bigotry, cocaine addiction, and media self-censorship, and Sorkin is probably one of the few television writers who can address those issues without being too patronizing or didactic. I just hope he doesn't get carried away with his issues (as some of the weaker episodes of Sports Night did), and that he keeps the characters smart, inspired, and inspiring. That hope for intelligent television is, after all, what we like about Sorkin and why we tuned in tonight at all.

TMNT

For one reason or another, there was a lot of normal childhood that I missed out on. For example, I didn't grow up watching cartoons on Saturday, or watching Nickelodeon most afternoons. It took me until college to see a Brat Pack movie or a single episode of SNL. That said, I did get some pop culture of the late 80s/early 90s. And, I might argue sentimentally, I got the best part. And now I get to relive it. Totally awesome, dude.