I want to love The Matrix. I really do. But on my first viewing of it as a trilogy (My fifth time watching the original, third time for Reloaded, and second for Revolutions, for those of you keeping score), I’ve decided that I just can’t do it. At one point I became acutely aware that I was reaching my maximum tolerance for philosophical doublespeak… and then I realized that I had a whole other movie to go.
I’m going to go ahead and assume that if you’re reading this, you know the story. Well, let me try and encapsulate it in a few sentences: A computer hacker named Neo (played by Keanu Reeves) learns that the real world is really an illusion, a virtual reality fed into our brains by a massively intelligent computer that has taken over the world, turned humans into living batteries to power itself, and has created a fake world for our minds to live in so that we continue to survive and produce said power without knowing anything’s wrong. A small group of human rebels “unplugs” the hacker, and he tries to lead them to victory in a war against the machines, hopping back and forth between the blasted wasteland of reality and the “normal-world” illusion of the Matrix, where – if you know that it’s all fake – the laws of time and space can be bent to produce some spectacular action set pieces. How’s that?
The first film, as a stand-alone, holds up just fine. The prospect that the real world is only what a computer is telling our senses really cranks up the turn-of-the-millennium conspiracy paranoia. It ends with the main character Neo (Keanu Reeves) realizing that is some sort of Messiah, and has more control over the machines than any other person in the world. In effect, it’s a superhero origin story. The idea, it seemed, was that we all could be living in a Matrix right now, and maybe if we simply allow our minds to accept the impossible, we can actually change the world.
But in the second and third films, we learn that’s not really the case. Things start happening that couldn’t happen in the real world, not without people noticing. People start flying, others get randomly taken over by agents of the central computer that runs the world, gigantic fight scenes take place in broad daylight in front of hundreds, if not thousands, of witnesses. By the end of the third film, everyone in the world has been possessed by a man who is technically a computer virus. Okay, so this is some other world, not ours. The empowering idea that we have more control over our world than we think has been effectively snatched away. I suppose it’s something like how people felt when we learned that a Jedi gets his ability to channel The Force through some kind of cellular symbiote called midichlorians. Suddenly, this idea that we can mentally affect the physical world isn’t the product of the right focus and training. People don’t like it when their superpowers are promised, then suddenly pulled back out of their reach. The Jedi thing I’ve somehow been able to forgive, but the Matrix’s back-pedal seems somehow more underhanded to me.
On top of that… In between all the wire-fu and bullet-time special effects, the whole subtext of the movie is put forth in lines that go by so fast you’re still thinking about what was just said when you realize you’ve missed five other things. Outside of the first film, there’s not a lot of overlap between the action and the words that explain what’s actually going on. You’re sometimes forced to endure interminable stretches of dialogue that are full of lines like this:
Neo: I have come here to ask some questions.
Oracle: I know.
Neo: What are those questions?
Oracle: The questions you wish answered are irrelevant.
Neo: If that’s true, then why am I here?
Oracle: That’s the question you should be asking.
Neo: Okay, why I am I here?
Oracle: That question is also irrelevant. The bigger question is, why did I want you to come here?
Neo: I came here of my own choice.
Oracle: So you say. But what about the choices you made earlier? You decided to come because of a series of choices you made in the past, which began long before you knew who I was.
Neo: I’m going to go punch many things very fast now.
Scenes like this seem rigged with what video game designers call “replay value”, which they use to describe elements that make you want to undergo the experience again. It’s stuff you will either miss or not fully understand the first time around.
Another thing that bugs me is the fighting. And there’s a lot of it. With a catalogue of kung-fu styles available for direct download into the human’s brains, the weapon of choice in the Matrix is their fists. But most of it seems oddly slow and bloodless. Maybe it’s in the editing… the Wachowksi brothers (who wrote and directed all three films) clearly took pride in extended takes of sequences of karate moves, but the result is that it looks like most of the punches weren’t designed to land, or wouldn’t cause any damage if they did. A lot of it looks like choreography. And I can understand that… as much as they may have trained for the films, Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, and Hugo Weaving aren’t primarily physical actors.
There’s also no real understanding of the film’s main antagonist, Agent Smith. He starts as a computer “agent”, a program that is intent on finding the human resistance inside the Matrix and wiping them out. He hates mankind with a passion, and has a famous monologue proving the theory that humans are, technically, a virus. However, once Neo “destroys” him he goes renegade, and eventually becomes a virus himself (why?), taking over every human presence in the Matrix. While it’s clearly established that he is a computer program, he’s inexplicably found a way to take over at least one human in the real world. Both those things don’t make a lot of sense to me, and kind of feel like acts of convenience, especially when there’s no explanation given. And there’s also no solution put forth about why he immediately self-destructs after assimilating Neo at the end of the trilogy. I think it’s a mistake for a film that has been building up to a final confrontation between two characters end so ambiguously.
In the end, it’s mostly the philosophy of the trilogy that I find hardest to plug into (like I said, the original takes its stand and sticks to it. However, since it’s widely held that the Wachowskis conceived of the entire trilogy as one piece, I’m not sure how that works.). To me, it seems kind of disingenuous for a movie to put forth a philosophy that is so heavily rooted in the idea of fate, and yet trumps it with the importance of personal choice at the same time. It’s like they’re purposefully throwing so many motifs and methods of faith at you that, no matter what your spiritual persuasion, you’ll find something that matches up with yours. Like the Matrix itself, it somehow smacks of self-conscious design.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
9/12/01: Ten Years Later
There’s been a quote floating around the last few days… “It’s not what happened on 9/11 that defines America, but what happened on 9/12.” The meaning here is that it’s not the tragedy itself that should be memorialized, but the way we as a people reacted to that tragedy. If that’s true, I think we’ve created a legacy of embarrassment to pass down to our children.
Don’t get me wrong. There was a lot of good that people did those first few days. Professionals and civilians alike diving into the rescue effort, others across the country donating time and money, the whole country rallying behind the government, confident that any steps they would take would make us safe from further attacks and avenge what had been done to us. One of the things that actually gave me hope on that day – when we still didn’t know whether there were more attacks on the way – was the fact that I went to the local Red Cross blood donation center, only to be turned away because so many others had shown up, unable to think of anything else they could do.
Unfortunately, that sense of rallying together, the days when every American was a friend and we were all on the same side, lasted only a few days. In our search for answers to the question “Why would anyone do this?”, we began looking for people to blame.
The government needed someone to hate too, and something to do. But how do you go about attacking an enemy that isn’t a particular country or a particular race, but is only people with a certain belief system? Given a carte blanche by the people, with the only edict being “Do what you have to – don’t let this happen to us again”, the government chose to blame a country that had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden. Iraq, they announced, was not only funding the Taliban, but building weapons of mass destruction. It’s easy to see why the ruse worked… the thing we were most afraid of was a replay of what had already happened, maybe a similar attack on an even more monumental scale. I’ll admit, when I saw the satellite photos and was told what our intelligence purported to be was true, I believed it and supported the decision to invade Iraq. What I didn’t know – what none of us knew – was that the ones we trusted with our military’s course of action either flat out lied, or merely saw what it wanted to see. There were no weapons, but at least there was a dictatorial regime that we hadn’t been quite able to root out ten years previous (on the watch of our current president’s father, no less). Not only that, it gave us a focus to our hate. Saddam Hussein was the culprit, and had to be deposed.
The paranoia didn’t stop there, of course. Because that’s not how paranoia works. It’s a virus that occupies an area and then expands, finding something new to fixate on. The easiest targets were Muslims, simply because they were the same religion as the man who perpetrated the attacks. And even that wasn’t true – anyone familiar with Islam will tell you that what Osama bin Laden practiced can hardly be called Islam at all. It’s ridiculous, like blaming all Christianity for Timothy McVeigh’s bombing in Oklahoma. But Muslims has factors working against them… they’re recognizable for their manner of dress, and they’re a minority in America that no one paid much attention to. And why? Because they hadn’t done anything to merit negative attention. But thanks to the government and media reportage, all of a sudden people everywhere in the country thought that Islam routinely preached hatred and violence against America as one of its basic tenets. The racial profiling and bigotry persists even today.
Next came the people who criticized the government’s actions. Even the slightest hint that you disagreed with how the United States was handling the decision could garner death threats – look at what happened to the Dixie Chicks. That door swung both ways too… people with extreme right-wing ideas and evangelical Christians with their rhetoric about the “end times” suddenly were gaining credibility and followers. (But really, why does a terrorist attack in America herald Armageddon any more than all the other daily atrocities in the world?) It’s something we’re seeing now more than we did even in the midst of all the “national security” fervor, and it makes me worry that something so far away from real-world facts is actually being taken somewhat seriously.
So we have a lot to answer for, this generation that lived through 9/11. I wish I could say that I was always above it, but I can’t truthfully do that. I’m reminded of the time in late 2001 when there was a series of photographs being passed around via email, in which a Middle Eastern man sets fire to an American flag, but then drops it, and accidentally sets his own clothes alight. This was being virally sent around *as* *comedy*. And I passed it on, just like almost everyone else.
Recently I heard a point made on the radio, and restating it is the best I can do at ending this with any kind of silver lining. The question posed was this: Would the people’s revolutions in Egypt and Libya have occurred, if they hadn’t been shown that their dictatorial leaders weren’t entirely unassailable? I suppose if they had happened in 2005 instead of 2011, I’d be more inclined to say yes.
Don’t get me wrong. There was a lot of good that people did those first few days. Professionals and civilians alike diving into the rescue effort, others across the country donating time and money, the whole country rallying behind the government, confident that any steps they would take would make us safe from further attacks and avenge what had been done to us. One of the things that actually gave me hope on that day – when we still didn’t know whether there were more attacks on the way – was the fact that I went to the local Red Cross blood donation center, only to be turned away because so many others had shown up, unable to think of anything else they could do.
Unfortunately, that sense of rallying together, the days when every American was a friend and we were all on the same side, lasted only a few days. In our search for answers to the question “Why would anyone do this?”, we began looking for people to blame.
The government needed someone to hate too, and something to do. But how do you go about attacking an enemy that isn’t a particular country or a particular race, but is only people with a certain belief system? Given a carte blanche by the people, with the only edict being “Do what you have to – don’t let this happen to us again”, the government chose to blame a country that had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden. Iraq, they announced, was not only funding the Taliban, but building weapons of mass destruction. It’s easy to see why the ruse worked… the thing we were most afraid of was a replay of what had already happened, maybe a similar attack on an even more monumental scale. I’ll admit, when I saw the satellite photos and was told what our intelligence purported to be was true, I believed it and supported the decision to invade Iraq. What I didn’t know – what none of us knew – was that the ones we trusted with our military’s course of action either flat out lied, or merely saw what it wanted to see. There were no weapons, but at least there was a dictatorial regime that we hadn’t been quite able to root out ten years previous (on the watch of our current president’s father, no less). Not only that, it gave us a focus to our hate. Saddam Hussein was the culprit, and had to be deposed.
The paranoia didn’t stop there, of course. Because that’s not how paranoia works. It’s a virus that occupies an area and then expands, finding something new to fixate on. The easiest targets were Muslims, simply because they were the same religion as the man who perpetrated the attacks. And even that wasn’t true – anyone familiar with Islam will tell you that what Osama bin Laden practiced can hardly be called Islam at all. It’s ridiculous, like blaming all Christianity for Timothy McVeigh’s bombing in Oklahoma. But Muslims has factors working against them… they’re recognizable for their manner of dress, and they’re a minority in America that no one paid much attention to. And why? Because they hadn’t done anything to merit negative attention. But thanks to the government and media reportage, all of a sudden people everywhere in the country thought that Islam routinely preached hatred and violence against America as one of its basic tenets. The racial profiling and bigotry persists even today.
Next came the people who criticized the government’s actions. Even the slightest hint that you disagreed with how the United States was handling the decision could garner death threats – look at what happened to the Dixie Chicks. That door swung both ways too… people with extreme right-wing ideas and evangelical Christians with their rhetoric about the “end times” suddenly were gaining credibility and followers. (But really, why does a terrorist attack in America herald Armageddon any more than all the other daily atrocities in the world?) It’s something we’re seeing now more than we did even in the midst of all the “national security” fervor, and it makes me worry that something so far away from real-world facts is actually being taken somewhat seriously.
So we have a lot to answer for, this generation that lived through 9/11. I wish I could say that I was always above it, but I can’t truthfully do that. I’m reminded of the time in late 2001 when there was a series of photographs being passed around via email, in which a Middle Eastern man sets fire to an American flag, but then drops it, and accidentally sets his own clothes alight. This was being virally sent around *as* *comedy*. And I passed it on, just like almost everyone else.
Recently I heard a point made on the radio, and restating it is the best I can do at ending this with any kind of silver lining. The question posed was this: Would the people’s revolutions in Egypt and Libya have occurred, if they hadn’t been shown that their dictatorial leaders weren’t entirely unassailable? I suppose if they had happened in 2005 instead of 2011, I’d be more inclined to say yes.
Friday, September 9, 2011
My Dad’s Journal
My mother has been cleaning out a lot of old papers lately. There’s actually a lot of stuff there I wanted to see… she kept her old day planners from the eighties and nineties, and there’s info about the day-to-day activities of my childhood in there I wouldn’t have otherwise. But the most interesting thing I’ve found so far is a journal my father kept as a class assignment his freshman year of college. This was back in the fall of 1960…
Of course, I had to flip to the back page and see what kind of grade he got even before I read anything else, and of course it was an A. Underneath it, the professor’s comment was (I’m paraphrasing) “Very elegantly, and sometimes beautifully written, but not much personal insight. I still don’t feel I know much about you after reading it.” And to some degree that’s true. That reluctance to expose one’s feelings is a trait that I’ve inherited from my dad, and have been actively trying to fight against most of my life. I like to think I’ve risen above it to some degree.
My mother has her own thoughts about where this comes from… she once told me the story about how, after high school graduation, my father and two of his friends exercised some of their teenage freedom and took a cross-country drive. They drove all the way from Ohio to California – no mean feat back when the national highway system was practically brand-new – and came back about three weeks later. But when he came back, no one in his family asked him how he was, or had any questions about his trip – what he saw, what he felt about it. He felt as if he had achieved something and had stories to tell, and no one was interested. My mother said that from that point, he was so disappointed that really putting forth the effort to communicate wasn’t worth it. Or maybe it just exacerbated his usual tendencies. His college journal would have been written that very fall, mere months after that event.
In addition to this, as my father has gotten older and his multiple sclerosis has taken deeper hold, he’s had a whole other wall that has been erected around his psyche. This time, it’s part of his disease… one of the traits MS has in common with Alzheimer’s is the creation of “plaques” in the brain, which are small areas that have essentially hardened and aren’t usable anymore. Recently, this has been a little more evident in my dad… my wife says that once when she was visiting my parents she found him staring into the upper corner of a room until he was called out of it. Once he phoned me saying he wasn’t able to use the TV remote, and no amount of my talking him through it could get any results. From his comments and the sounds I heard, I think he might have been holding the other phone extension instead of the remote.
Being so familiar with what my dad is like today, I felt compelled to sit down and read about he was like back fifty years ago, when he was 18. My first impression of the journal was its physical appearance -- his handwriting is so tiny and neat. He wrote in cursive, so cleanly and uniformly that it almost looks like a printed font. It’s a mile away from today, when his hands are too numb to hold a pen for any length of time, the letters huge and scrawled. Even when I was small, his handwriting was already larger and shakier than it was in college. And his choice of words are slightly flowery, just the way I remember him speaking when I was little.
The content of the entries themselves aren’t too remarkable for the most part – it really does seem like what a teenager would write about to make an English professor take note: evocative phrases about the weather, stuff he did over the weekend, etc. But I can also see a few places where glimpses of his opinions do shine through. In one entry, he talks about how he never thought rock and roll would last so long (about five years at that point, I figure). He wasn’t (and never became) a fan of popular music, and hearing him call what was then modern music “artless” and full of “gimmicks” is kind of entertaining. In another, he talks about the inept tiling work on some columns in his dorm, and he puzzles over what the uneven green triangles and squares are supposed to evoke. At the end, he says that every time he walks by he’s tempted to take a chisel and tear them all off himself, so that he can do the job correctly. It reminded me that my dad was a pretty handy guy in his day – he could build theater sets, upholster furniture, and during at least one summer when I was little he spent his days painting apartments. There’s one really well-written entry where he is frustrated because some mold has grown on a piece of his mother’s pumpkin pie he had been saving. But when he takes out a magnifying glass and really takes a look at the mold, he comes to appreciate how beautiful the tiny white forest and greenish patches really are.
He does talk about his family a little too… he spends one entry marveling at his mother’s generosity and kindness. Just before this particular entry was written, he explains, one of his uncles was struck almost entirely deaf, for no apparent reason. With his wife and five kids to look after, it sounds like my grandmother helped them out, especially in terms of keeping everyone fed. He talks about how he hopes that one day he’ll be as well thought of by others as she is by members of her family. He also weighs in on JFK’s presidential election right after it happens, and while he clearly dislikes all the Nixon supporters who say that the new president is going to literally lead to the destruction of the world, he talks about feeling somewhat removed from government politics in general, and how little it appears to affect his everyday life.
I think my father, as he is today, is even more disassociated from the outside world than he was back then. Partly that’s due to his introverted inclinations, which were apparently forming even back then, and it’s partly due to his illness. Now, it seems to extend to a disassociation with himself. He just seems to go through his day, not thinking about why does the things he does, or why he feels the way he feels (if he feels anything, that is, since he doesn’t share that with the rest of us). I’ve learned to accept him as he is, but the journal entries his college professor saw as “impersonal” back then are, by comparison, some of the deepest insights into my dad that I’ve seen since I was young.
Of course, I had to flip to the back page and see what kind of grade he got even before I read anything else, and of course it was an A. Underneath it, the professor’s comment was (I’m paraphrasing) “Very elegantly, and sometimes beautifully written, but not much personal insight. I still don’t feel I know much about you after reading it.” And to some degree that’s true. That reluctance to expose one’s feelings is a trait that I’ve inherited from my dad, and have been actively trying to fight against most of my life. I like to think I’ve risen above it to some degree.
My mother has her own thoughts about where this comes from… she once told me the story about how, after high school graduation, my father and two of his friends exercised some of their teenage freedom and took a cross-country drive. They drove all the way from Ohio to California – no mean feat back when the national highway system was practically brand-new – and came back about three weeks later. But when he came back, no one in his family asked him how he was, or had any questions about his trip – what he saw, what he felt about it. He felt as if he had achieved something and had stories to tell, and no one was interested. My mother said that from that point, he was so disappointed that really putting forth the effort to communicate wasn’t worth it. Or maybe it just exacerbated his usual tendencies. His college journal would have been written that very fall, mere months after that event.
In addition to this, as my father has gotten older and his multiple sclerosis has taken deeper hold, he’s had a whole other wall that has been erected around his psyche. This time, it’s part of his disease… one of the traits MS has in common with Alzheimer’s is the creation of “plaques” in the brain, which are small areas that have essentially hardened and aren’t usable anymore. Recently, this has been a little more evident in my dad… my wife says that once when she was visiting my parents she found him staring into the upper corner of a room until he was called out of it. Once he phoned me saying he wasn’t able to use the TV remote, and no amount of my talking him through it could get any results. From his comments and the sounds I heard, I think he might have been holding the other phone extension instead of the remote.
Being so familiar with what my dad is like today, I felt compelled to sit down and read about he was like back fifty years ago, when he was 18. My first impression of the journal was its physical appearance -- his handwriting is so tiny and neat. He wrote in cursive, so cleanly and uniformly that it almost looks like a printed font. It’s a mile away from today, when his hands are too numb to hold a pen for any length of time, the letters huge and scrawled. Even when I was small, his handwriting was already larger and shakier than it was in college. And his choice of words are slightly flowery, just the way I remember him speaking when I was little.
The content of the entries themselves aren’t too remarkable for the most part – it really does seem like what a teenager would write about to make an English professor take note: evocative phrases about the weather, stuff he did over the weekend, etc. But I can also see a few places where glimpses of his opinions do shine through. In one entry, he talks about how he never thought rock and roll would last so long (about five years at that point, I figure). He wasn’t (and never became) a fan of popular music, and hearing him call what was then modern music “artless” and full of “gimmicks” is kind of entertaining. In another, he talks about the inept tiling work on some columns in his dorm, and he puzzles over what the uneven green triangles and squares are supposed to evoke. At the end, he says that every time he walks by he’s tempted to take a chisel and tear them all off himself, so that he can do the job correctly. It reminded me that my dad was a pretty handy guy in his day – he could build theater sets, upholster furniture, and during at least one summer when I was little he spent his days painting apartments. There’s one really well-written entry where he is frustrated because some mold has grown on a piece of his mother’s pumpkin pie he had been saving. But when he takes out a magnifying glass and really takes a look at the mold, he comes to appreciate how beautiful the tiny white forest and greenish patches really are.
He does talk about his family a little too… he spends one entry marveling at his mother’s generosity and kindness. Just before this particular entry was written, he explains, one of his uncles was struck almost entirely deaf, for no apparent reason. With his wife and five kids to look after, it sounds like my grandmother helped them out, especially in terms of keeping everyone fed. He talks about how he hopes that one day he’ll be as well thought of by others as she is by members of her family. He also weighs in on JFK’s presidential election right after it happens, and while he clearly dislikes all the Nixon supporters who say that the new president is going to literally lead to the destruction of the world, he talks about feeling somewhat removed from government politics in general, and how little it appears to affect his everyday life.
I think my father, as he is today, is even more disassociated from the outside world than he was back then. Partly that’s due to his introverted inclinations, which were apparently forming even back then, and it’s partly due to his illness. Now, it seems to extend to a disassociation with himself. He just seems to go through his day, not thinking about why does the things he does, or why he feels the way he feels (if he feels anything, that is, since he doesn’t share that with the rest of us). I’ve learned to accept him as he is, but the journal entries his college professor saw as “impersonal” back then are, by comparison, some of the deepest insights into my dad that I’ve seen since I was young.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Star Wars: Things Pondered on the Way Down a Reactor Shaft
Okay, now that I’m falling to my death, I can admit it; I lost focus. I was so intent on killing that Skywalker punk that I completely left my back open. Curse that Vader! Who would have thought that the little kid I first met on Naboo would one day be the best apprentice a Sith Master could have hoped for, much less that he would turn on me just as I was about to cement my victory against the Rebellion? All because his son wouldn’t give up on the idea that, somewhere deep in the metallic soul I worked so hard to forge, there was still a little bit of Anakin left. Luke is just as much a fool as Qui-Gon, who had such empathy for the most ridiculous, insignificant creatures. But then again, he turned out to be right in the end, didn’t he?
All those years of work, undone because I underestimated the sentimentality a father always has for his son… not that I would know first-hand about any of that (at least, not in a way I’m ever going to admit to anyone). I never had the time for a conventional family, simply because I was setting my sights higher. You see, I wanted the entire Galaxy to be my children. I wanted to be the stern Godhead that everyone needed, but no one else was stepping up to become. And like all good fathers, I would keep my children in line with an iron fist. But some kids just won’t respect you because they’re told to, so the only way to get through to them is by a show of force... so to speak.
Forty years I was working on this plan… and I was so close to completing it! If I remember the Death Star blueprints correctly, this is quite a deep shaft, so I guess I have a little time left to marvel at my own cunning. People seem to forget that I, almost singlehandedly, overturned an entire Galactic government! The easiest part was becoming Chancellor. Valorum was easy enough to unseat… it just took some intricate and well-placed deals with the Trade Federation and the banking clans (which in themselves took years to weave) before I could get enough systems to lose faith in him, and then I swooped in to take over. How they all trusted me!
The Jedi were a much bigger problem. I always knew they would be the biggest obstacle. An independent police force, with thousands of years of history and respect. How would one even attempt to discredit and depose them? Well, it became clear very early on that the only way to do it was to get rid of every last one! That would have to be the penultimate step toward my goal… but I also realized that it would take a significant portion of an army even to assassinate one Jedi. My mind went into action, moving on to the next rational step… it would have to happen all at once, so that none of them had any warning. Not only that, but it would have to be done by the most massive galactic army ever assembled! I would have to spread them out, and then literally stab them all in the back simultaneously.
So I had established that I needed a massive supply of trained manpower. But what could I possibly do to justify such an action? Could I push the Jedi into a position where the galaxy would turn against them on its own? Unfortunately, the answer was no. I couldn’t come up with a single idea that seemed even remotely plausible. Ah, but then… How well I remember the moment when the idea clicked and fell into place! I was brooding over this plan that seemed like it was never going to get off the ground, and then a question suddenly occurred to me: What if, instead of being the targets, the Jedi were the *leaders* of this army I was cooking up? That would at least put them in close proximity to the weapons that would slay them. And if I played it correctly, I could even weaken their psyches before I dealt the death blow.
You see, up until that point, the Jedi had ruled through wisdom, fairness, and benevolence (ick). By definition, they’re not warriors. But I could force them to become so! I’d put them in charge of my yet-to-be-determined army; turn them from teachers into fighters. And if this war I was whipping up actually encompassed the entire galaxy, they’d be thinned out, separated. Who knows? My “noble cause” could even require their presence in such great numbers that they would be forced to elevate their younger members to the level of generals, so that war would become all they knew as full-fledged Jedi. I would turn the order against the very things it stood for!
Still, I wasn't going to underestimate them. Doing all these things would only weaken them, but I wasn't kidding myself about how many soldiers it would take to deal the final blow. There was only two words I could think of that could carry out such a synchronized mutiny: droid army! They can't be bargained or reasoned with, and won't think twice before shooting someone in the back. But Jedi would never lead a droid army against any living beings, no matter how evil they were.
Living beings, yes, but what if it were another droid army? A good idea, but I had to take a moment to assess. I still didn't have a "noble cause", and now I needed not one, but two massive droid armies. I have admit, this is where I almost gave up. Anyone else would have. But did I stop when my plan suddenly required a doubling of effort? No! Hey, I've taken over a galaxy and coordinated the building of two Death Stars. I'm nothing if not a great project manager.
I couldn’t just create two droid armies fighting against each other. That would be ridiculous. Who would care? That's when I realized that what I needed was the human element. I needed clones. Lots of clones to support the Jedi side of the battle. It was a necessary ten-year delay in my plot, but it couldn't have been done any other way. They were real live beings, but could be sneakily programmed, loyal until I was ready to strike. My plan kept getting more and more complicated, but more and more insidious as well (sorry for the pun, but I’m about to die, so what the hell).
The Jedi fell for that like a bag of spanners... all I had to do was place the clone order under a false name, drop a few hints, and lead that idiot Kenobi right into "discovering" the clone army, just in time to use them against the encroaching droids! Did he really not realize how convenient the timing of that was?
Then pieces just fell into place. All I had to do was introduce a few Separatist plants -- every one under my thumb, of course -- in control of a droid army, and I had a fully prefabricated war. I let the scenario play out as long as necessary, and then excuted Order 66.
And what fun it was to hear the reports of the Jedi falling everywhere! I wish I could have been everywhere at once, when the clones suddenly turned around and opened fire on their former masters. I tried so hard to pretend to be horrified, devastated. But inside I was turning cartwheels. In a matter of minutes, my decree had effectively flipped how the galaxy worked… clone armies became stormtroopers, the separatists were suddenly a negligible alliance of rebels, Republic became Empire. The benevolent Chancellor was suddenly an Emperor to be feared and heeded!
And do you see how cleverly I planned it? My enemy, the Jedi, had already expertly removed every tie I had back to the Separatists, and all other Dark Side practitioners – Dooku, Grievous, Maul. By the time the Jedi Scourge was over, only he and I stood on the dark side, and Kenobi and Yoda on the other (if only I had known that at the time!) And that was how it stayed for almost twenty years, just long enough for that cursed young Skywalker kid to grow up and learn about his past.
Which brings me to where I am now. I’m not going to answer the question of whether I created Anakin myself out of pure midchlorians the way Darth Plagueis theorized, but I will say that I never guessed he would have killed me when I tried to destroy his son. At least I know I pumped him full of enough lightning that there’s no way he can survive -– I’d rather leave one last good Jedi alive than to run the risk of Anakin turning back...
And here's where the Force exerts its glorious, beautifully symmetrical nature again. By effectively killing Vader in my last moments, I am ultimately the one balancing the Force, the one the ancient prophecy told about! Because I have one final surprise waiting for the young Luke out there. He will soon find out that there are two Jedi left -- one light, one dark -- himself and Mara, my Hand, who even now waits nearby, ready to pounce.
Friday, July 1, 2011
Things Lily Loves
I’m becoming more and more aware of how things that I take for granted every day of Lily’s early childhood might start slipping away. I’m starting to notice things in the background of pictures of her babyhood that make me think, “Oh yeah! We used to do that all the time!” Things that were common back then, but we’ve moved on from. It’s surprising how few of those things there are when you don’t have kids. But now everything, from a day’s overall schedule to specific mealtime rituals, morphs over the course of months until it’s entirely different. I want to set some of these things down, so that maybe I’ll be able to hold onto them when this phase of her life has turned into something else.
So here is a short list of things that Lily loves…
Dancing in the Morning – We have this CD of horrible cover versions of kid-friendly rock songs (“Walking on Sunshine”, “We Are Family”, “Build Me Up Buttercup”, etc.) that she loves to dance to first thing in the morning. More accurately, she likes *me* to dance to them while she throws herself over my shoulder. We always do it in the bathroom, and sometimes she dances too, but more often she just looks at herself in the mirror while I sway back and forth. I like it too… she’s still sleepy and warm, and I know it’s something I’m going to look back on fondly once she’s outgrown it.
Strawberry Shortcake – This is the first non-educational TV show she’s fallen in love with. She loves the books, the figurines, the DVDs, everything about it. The franchise has gone through some changes in the past few years (S-Short and her friends now look like they’re dressed for prep school and have long, straightened hair), but that doesn’t seem to confuse her at all.
“Girl Stickers” – Melissa and Doug has a line of sticker books, and Lily’s favorite is the one full of dress-up stickers. Each of the 10 sheets you get in one pack has 8 stickers of undressed girl figures, and then enough shirts, pants, dresses, shoes, gloves, hair bows, tiaras, etc. to outfit them all. She would do these *all* *the* *time* if we were to let her, but they’re kind of expensive so we have to limit her to one sheet a day. She’s amazingly accurate with putting the clothes on correctly, and matching ensembles by color, even though they’re not laid out that way on the sheet.
Megabloks – We have 2 big bags of about 80 big building blocks that Lily likes to build with me. When she was smaller, she wanted to build “showcases”, which meant a single tower that would be as big and as tall as we could make it. Now she likes me to make little sections of wall that she can arrange into stores with aisles and escalators, tunnels, etc. One of her favorite arrangements is to make a restaurant, which means an area inside which we’ll put little square blocks for tables, and little rectangular blocks for seats. Then she’ll get a bunch of her Fisher Price Little People and seat them all. Occasionally she’ll ask me to build characters from one of her favorite TV shows (Team Umizoomi or Yo Gabba Gabba), and I’ve kind of figured out how to make crude representations of them – making them the correct color seems to be the most important thing.
Reading – Often the first thing Lily will do when I come home is to bring me a book and ask if she can read it to me (which means if I can read it to her). She has a pretty good number of several series (Curious George and Mr. Putter & Tabby come to mind), but she also loves the Little Einsteins Picture Dictionary, and knows a whole lot of words thanks to it. She’s going through a little bit of a phase of looking at catalogs – American Girl, Oriental Trading Company, Fisher Price, Party Outfitters, etc. I dread the day when she figures out that everything in those is purchasable.
Singing/Dancing competition shows – Ever since she was born, Lily’s been interested in American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, etc. Right now we’re watching The Voice. I think the main draw is the fact that they’re live shows with audiences, and have lots of music and colors. Plus, they’re the only shows that we tend to watch while they’re actually airing, so it’s a good time in the evening to play on the living room floor and watch.
Outer Space – Lily loves things that deal with space. She can recognize some of the more obvious planets (Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars) and can even tell you if they’re hot or cold. We bought her some little plastic glow-in-the-dark planets and hung them from a mobile in her room. The mobile’s been there since before she was born, and is designed to clip photos to, but we never got around to printing any out to use for it. Amy’s mom got the idea to clip the planets to it, and voila! Instant model of the solar system. Also, Lily’s nightlight is a ladybug with a hard carapace that has little star-shaped holes in it. When you turn it on, an LED light inside projects constellations on the walls and ceiling in one of three colors.
Jigsaw Puzzles - A few weekends ago when we were at my parents' house, Lily and I started working on a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle. She’s gotten really good at the 10-20 piece floor puzzles we have both at home and at their place, and she wanted to try a different one. We didn’t get very far, of course, but she liked running her hands through all the pieces. While we were all seated around the table for dinner, I said to her, “If you stay as interested in outer space and jigsaw puzzles as you are now, we’re going to get along just fine.”
So here is a short list of things that Lily loves…
Dancing in the Morning – We have this CD of horrible cover versions of kid-friendly rock songs (“Walking on Sunshine”, “We Are Family”, “Build Me Up Buttercup”, etc.) that she loves to dance to first thing in the morning. More accurately, she likes *me* to dance to them while she throws herself over my shoulder. We always do it in the bathroom, and sometimes she dances too, but more often she just looks at herself in the mirror while I sway back and forth. I like it too… she’s still sleepy and warm, and I know it’s something I’m going to look back on fondly once she’s outgrown it.
Strawberry Shortcake – This is the first non-educational TV show she’s fallen in love with. She loves the books, the figurines, the DVDs, everything about it. The franchise has gone through some changes in the past few years (S-Short and her friends now look like they’re dressed for prep school and have long, straightened hair), but that doesn’t seem to confuse her at all.
“Girl Stickers” – Melissa and Doug has a line of sticker books, and Lily’s favorite is the one full of dress-up stickers. Each of the 10 sheets you get in one pack has 8 stickers of undressed girl figures, and then enough shirts, pants, dresses, shoes, gloves, hair bows, tiaras, etc. to outfit them all. She would do these *all* *the* *time* if we were to let her, but they’re kind of expensive so we have to limit her to one sheet a day. She’s amazingly accurate with putting the clothes on correctly, and matching ensembles by color, even though they’re not laid out that way on the sheet.
Megabloks – We have 2 big bags of about 80 big building blocks that Lily likes to build with me. When she was smaller, she wanted to build “showcases”, which meant a single tower that would be as big and as tall as we could make it. Now she likes me to make little sections of wall that she can arrange into stores with aisles and escalators, tunnels, etc. One of her favorite arrangements is to make a restaurant, which means an area inside which we’ll put little square blocks for tables, and little rectangular blocks for seats. Then she’ll get a bunch of her Fisher Price Little People and seat them all. Occasionally she’ll ask me to build characters from one of her favorite TV shows (Team Umizoomi or Yo Gabba Gabba), and I’ve kind of figured out how to make crude representations of them – making them the correct color seems to be the most important thing.
Reading – Often the first thing Lily will do when I come home is to bring me a book and ask if she can read it to me (which means if I can read it to her). She has a pretty good number of several series (Curious George and Mr. Putter & Tabby come to mind), but she also loves the Little Einsteins Picture Dictionary, and knows a whole lot of words thanks to it. She’s going through a little bit of a phase of looking at catalogs – American Girl, Oriental Trading Company, Fisher Price, Party Outfitters, etc. I dread the day when she figures out that everything in those is purchasable.
Singing/Dancing competition shows – Ever since she was born, Lily’s been interested in American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, etc. Right now we’re watching The Voice. I think the main draw is the fact that they’re live shows with audiences, and have lots of music and colors. Plus, they’re the only shows that we tend to watch while they’re actually airing, so it’s a good time in the evening to play on the living room floor and watch.
Outer Space – Lily loves things that deal with space. She can recognize some of the more obvious planets (Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars) and can even tell you if they’re hot or cold. We bought her some little plastic glow-in-the-dark planets and hung them from a mobile in her room. The mobile’s been there since before she was born, and is designed to clip photos to, but we never got around to printing any out to use for it. Amy’s mom got the idea to clip the planets to it, and voila! Instant model of the solar system. Also, Lily’s nightlight is a ladybug with a hard carapace that has little star-shaped holes in it. When you turn it on, an LED light inside projects constellations on the walls and ceiling in one of three colors.
Jigsaw Puzzles - A few weekends ago when we were at my parents' house, Lily and I started working on a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle. She’s gotten really good at the 10-20 piece floor puzzles we have both at home and at their place, and she wanted to try a different one. We didn’t get very far, of course, but she liked running her hands through all the pieces. While we were all seated around the table for dinner, I said to her, “If you stay as interested in outer space and jigsaw puzzles as you are now, we’re going to get along just fine.”
Friday, March 18, 2011
My Top Five Artists
I thought today I’d take a little time to honor some important artists… ones that have influenced me strongly in some way. Men who I’d like to have dinner with, whose talent I’d like to have, whose paths I’d like to follow. Thanks for showing the way, gentlemen, even if I fail in following your precedents as closely as I’d like…
1. Clive Barker – Clive is the artist all artists should want to be like. He’s done it all, and every step of the way he’s had a devoted following who has backed him and bought into his twisted/true visions. The appeal of his art stretches across all strata of people: men, women, young, old, white, black, straight, gay… and from what I’ve seen the three times I’ve met him in person, he’s a gracious man who takes nothing for granted and gets out there and talks to people because he genuinely wants to hear what they have to say, and find out how his work has drawn them all together.
Clive started as a playwright in his native Liverpool, England, and his friends in the theater troupe they created (“Dog Company”) have stuck with him until the present. He wrote short stories between plays, and got noticed by the publishing community, ushering the gothic horror story garishly into 80s with The Books of Blood. Then he moved to Los Angeles and started making movies as well, getting the Hellraiser and Candyman franchises on their way – although he would disown then when they fell prey to that other unfortunate byproduct of the 80’s… the horror movie sequel machine.
Instead, Clive started working on novels… huge, sprawling masterworks of imagination like Weaveworld, Imajica and the two books (so far) of The Art. Something I like about the tales of people like Lovecraft and Stephen King is how there are themes, places and characters that overlap, but I also admire how Clive can create entirely separate, whole universes with completely different mythologies. He seems to have no limit to his imagination; he renewed a multimillion dollar publishing contract just by giving the *titles* of his next four books, for crying out loud.
Right now he’s working on one of the most ambitious projects of his life, The Abarat Quartet (which I now hear has expanded into five books), in which a girl named Candy Quackenbush finds herself traveling through a mystical world, and each book is illustrated with hundreds of original paintings Clive created as he found his way into the story. Amazing. Clive lives and breathes art, and can only hope that someday I’ll have a life that will afford me the same luxury.
2. Carl Sagan – Carl was the ultimate scientist, a man who was open to all possibilities -– as long as it was scientifically provable -– and brought ideas to the masses in a personal, organic fashion and valued the need for science to be presented in plain English. People who had never taken a science course in their lives could listen to Carl (for example, on his many appearances on The Tonight Show) and understand what he was trying to explain. That’s the rarest talent for a scientist, who necessarily lose themselves in the tiny details of one particular field. Carl loved it all, and while he was sometimes criticized as a dilettante, that encompassing love translated into the way he spoke to people.
His passion for science reached me when I was only 8 years old, when he starred in his PBS series Cosmos. I remember watching it on 13 consecutive Sunday nights in the summer of 1980, completely enraptured in the thoughts and ideas he put forward about astronomy, math, history, biology, physics, time travel, space travel… all of it rooted in real theory. Carl showed me that the Universe is an infinitely beautiful, infinitely delicate balancing act between order and chaos, and we have a privileged vantage point because we get to see and understand so much of it.
Carl also gave me an important credo I still live by -– “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. My mind is open enough that I would *love* to believe in alien life and paranormal phenomena, and I absolutely will if it can be proven. In a world where we can create everyday wonders by manipulating atoms and energy, there shouldn’t be anything we can’t potrentially examine and understand.
While there are wonders out there that we can’t possibly understand, he believed that we *will*, one day. I can’t think of a better tribute to him than the fact that I believe it too.
3. Stephen King – In 1985, I read the opening novella of King’s story collection Skeleton Crew. It was called “The Mist”, and affected me like nothing I had ever read before. By the time I finished reading it, I was horrified and sad, thoroughly creeped out and completely unable to stop reading. And I’m still going, over twenty years and tens of thousands of pages later.
What makes King’s style so readable to me? No one can get inside a character’s head the way Steve can. His characters are so *real*… their voices are like ours, full of their own internal shorthand thoughts, the little in-jokes we have with ourselves, and it makes it that much more resonant when those characters run smack into The Unknown. And they do… whether it’s a huge mass of tentacles out in the mist, or a shape-shifting creature that lives in the sewers and takes the forms of your worst fears, or a particularly vicious ghost that dwells in forgotten hotel room.
And then there are the tantalizing crossovers… most of them revolve around his epic seven-book (soon to be eight-book) series The Dark Tower, which is a cross between Spaghetti Westerns and modern fantasy, where Roland, the last of a line of knight-like “gunslingers”, undergoes a mythic quest across times and worlds to save the Dark Tower (which is really the linchpin of all creation) from being destroyed by The Crimson King, an act which would not only result in the collapse of Roland’s universe, but the collapse of all possible Universes, including worlds where many of King’s other books have taken place. There are at least 3 other novels of his that are basically Dark Tower books, only not in name, and the main villain turns up in other guises in even more. It’s all one big Universe, and all things are connected. That’s yet another way that King’s literature is like life.
4. Orson Welles – The first thing I remember seeing Orson do was a narrating job for a TV special about the treasures of Tutankhamen’s tomb back in the ‘70s. I just remember being amazed by this imposing guy with a cool salt-and-pepper beard wandering around a museum exhibit and talking about the pharaoh’s treasures in a deep, ominous voice. I didn’t know that what I was watching was the sad, lackluster end of a artistic career that started out as one of the most promising anyone had seen before or since.
When I first knew him, Orson was a narrator of TV specials and commercials, and a frequent guest on the Tonight Show who could do a magic tricks and weave tales of old Hollywood better than anyone else could. From there, I started learning more about him, about how he started out as a wunderkind of the theater, working with John Houseman to produce amazing Broadway spectacles such as the “voodoo Macbeth”, done with an entirely black cast from Harlem. He moved into radio, not only being the star of many classic shows like “The Shadow”, but creating his own Mercury Theater Playhouse that brought stories of classic literature to radio life (the most famous, of course, being his fake-documentary version of War of the Worlds that frightened a nation one Halloween). Then he went straight into film, and co-wrote, directed and starred in Citizen Kane, one of the most enduring and technically dazzling debut films ever made.
Everything he touched, it seemed, turned to gold. He could do no wrong… and then it all fell apart, almost as quickly as it began. His films, although still amazing, never had the popularity they deserved, and he didn’t help the situation by wandering off to other projects before seeing the previous one through, and as a result we are left with half-baked “studio cuts” of could-have-been classics like The Magnificent Ambersons, Touch of Evil, and Mr. Arkadin. He finally ended up as I saw him in my childhood, overweight and tired, frustrated at how he had to take bottom-of-the-barrel roles to pay his bills and finance the occasional film that he could scrape together.
I think I identify with folks who have more than a few choices of things they can focus their talent – it’s hard to stick to one thing when your creativity is pulling you in several directions at once. Orson seems to be a living cautionary tale about this very thing, what can happen to you if you don’t settle down and choose a path. I also admire the way he dove into everything he did… he lived his life large before that phrase was even coined. He burned through fortunes, ate huge meals, married movie stars like Rita Hayworth, and really *lived*. Unfortunately, for all his accomplishment, his life ended up as a mostly-failed experiment, less than everything he could have been.
I think it’s just as valuable as lesson to learn from than those who succeeded.
5. David Lynch – You’d never know what David Lynch’s art is like from looking at him. He’s an Eagle Scout from Missoula, Montana, whose biggest vice is coffee and cigarettes, and who always fastens the buttons on his shirts all the way up to the top. You’d never know the stories that come from the depths of his mind just by looking at him. But the contents of that mind are summed up in the first minute of Blue Velvet, where a man watering his front yard suddenly has a stroke and falls over onto his perfectly manicured suburban lawn. The camera draws in close to him, then drifts underground near where he lies. There are countless ants there in terrible close-up, their feet and mandibles clicking, the sound growing deafening as things get darker and darker…
Lynch’s entire career has been built around this notion, that there is darkness and madness beneath the normal life that we try to lead. So many of his films and TV projects (Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Lost Highway, Wild at Heart, Mulholland Drive) deal with the peeling back of normal life to expose what’s really going on behind the scenes, and it’s never a pretty picture.
I’ve always been the kind of person who loves the idea of huge, overarching plots where everything means something, and Lynch’s is the closest I’ve ever come to seeing exactly that. Granted, it doesn’t always work out that way, but the beauty of a Lynch film is that you *feel* that everything is following some sort of dream-logic, even as the most bizarre things are happening.
What Lynch has shown me is that you don’t have to be a rebellious nihilist to tell stories that are full of sex, violence, and madness. David doesn’t even *swear* as far as I know, but he created Frank Booth, the most venomous, foulmouthed character to come out of 80’s cinema. And he also is a fascinating example of how you should follow your creative instinct, no matter where it leads. He’s notoriously vague about what his films *mean* -- he has never done a DVD commentary, and doesn’t even like his films to be split into “chapters” because he thinks movies are spells that you should experience all the way through in one sitting -– and to tell the truth, I don’t even know if *he’s* aware of he’s doing. A typical quote about how he makes a movie is something like: “A film is all about mood, and you just try to maintain that mood.” Still, he follows his muse faithfully, and never questions it, and I truly admire that.
1. Clive Barker – Clive is the artist all artists should want to be like. He’s done it all, and every step of the way he’s had a devoted following who has backed him and bought into his twisted/true visions. The appeal of his art stretches across all strata of people: men, women, young, old, white, black, straight, gay… and from what I’ve seen the three times I’ve met him in person, he’s a gracious man who takes nothing for granted and gets out there and talks to people because he genuinely wants to hear what they have to say, and find out how his work has drawn them all together.
Clive started as a playwright in his native Liverpool, England, and his friends in the theater troupe they created (“Dog Company”) have stuck with him until the present. He wrote short stories between plays, and got noticed by the publishing community, ushering the gothic horror story garishly into 80s with The Books of Blood. Then he moved to Los Angeles and started making movies as well, getting the Hellraiser and Candyman franchises on their way – although he would disown then when they fell prey to that other unfortunate byproduct of the 80’s… the horror movie sequel machine.
Instead, Clive started working on novels… huge, sprawling masterworks of imagination like Weaveworld, Imajica and the two books (so far) of The Art. Something I like about the tales of people like Lovecraft and Stephen King is how there are themes, places and characters that overlap, but I also admire how Clive can create entirely separate, whole universes with completely different mythologies. He seems to have no limit to his imagination; he renewed a multimillion dollar publishing contract just by giving the *titles* of his next four books, for crying out loud.
Right now he’s working on one of the most ambitious projects of his life, The Abarat Quartet (which I now hear has expanded into five books), in which a girl named Candy Quackenbush finds herself traveling through a mystical world, and each book is illustrated with hundreds of original paintings Clive created as he found his way into the story. Amazing. Clive lives and breathes art, and can only hope that someday I’ll have a life that will afford me the same luxury.
2. Carl Sagan – Carl was the ultimate scientist, a man who was open to all possibilities -– as long as it was scientifically provable -– and brought ideas to the masses in a personal, organic fashion and valued the need for science to be presented in plain English. People who had never taken a science course in their lives could listen to Carl (for example, on his many appearances on The Tonight Show) and understand what he was trying to explain. That’s the rarest talent for a scientist, who necessarily lose themselves in the tiny details of one particular field. Carl loved it all, and while he was sometimes criticized as a dilettante, that encompassing love translated into the way he spoke to people.
His passion for science reached me when I was only 8 years old, when he starred in his PBS series Cosmos. I remember watching it on 13 consecutive Sunday nights in the summer of 1980, completely enraptured in the thoughts and ideas he put forward about astronomy, math, history, biology, physics, time travel, space travel… all of it rooted in real theory. Carl showed me that the Universe is an infinitely beautiful, infinitely delicate balancing act between order and chaos, and we have a privileged vantage point because we get to see and understand so much of it.
Carl also gave me an important credo I still live by -– “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. My mind is open enough that I would *love* to believe in alien life and paranormal phenomena, and I absolutely will if it can be proven. In a world where we can create everyday wonders by manipulating atoms and energy, there shouldn’t be anything we can’t potrentially examine and understand.
While there are wonders out there that we can’t possibly understand, he believed that we *will*, one day. I can’t think of a better tribute to him than the fact that I believe it too.
3. Stephen King – In 1985, I read the opening novella of King’s story collection Skeleton Crew. It was called “The Mist”, and affected me like nothing I had ever read before. By the time I finished reading it, I was horrified and sad, thoroughly creeped out and completely unable to stop reading. And I’m still going, over twenty years and tens of thousands of pages later.
What makes King’s style so readable to me? No one can get inside a character’s head the way Steve can. His characters are so *real*… their voices are like ours, full of their own internal shorthand thoughts, the little in-jokes we have with ourselves, and it makes it that much more resonant when those characters run smack into The Unknown. And they do… whether it’s a huge mass of tentacles out in the mist, or a shape-shifting creature that lives in the sewers and takes the forms of your worst fears, or a particularly vicious ghost that dwells in forgotten hotel room.
And then there are the tantalizing crossovers… most of them revolve around his epic seven-book (soon to be eight-book) series The Dark Tower, which is a cross between Spaghetti Westerns and modern fantasy, where Roland, the last of a line of knight-like “gunslingers”, undergoes a mythic quest across times and worlds to save the Dark Tower (which is really the linchpin of all creation) from being destroyed by The Crimson King, an act which would not only result in the collapse of Roland’s universe, but the collapse of all possible Universes, including worlds where many of King’s other books have taken place. There are at least 3 other novels of his that are basically Dark Tower books, only not in name, and the main villain turns up in other guises in even more. It’s all one big Universe, and all things are connected. That’s yet another way that King’s literature is like life.
4. Orson Welles – The first thing I remember seeing Orson do was a narrating job for a TV special about the treasures of Tutankhamen’s tomb back in the ‘70s. I just remember being amazed by this imposing guy with a cool salt-and-pepper beard wandering around a museum exhibit and talking about the pharaoh’s treasures in a deep, ominous voice. I didn’t know that what I was watching was the sad, lackluster end of a artistic career that started out as one of the most promising anyone had seen before or since.
When I first knew him, Orson was a narrator of TV specials and commercials, and a frequent guest on the Tonight Show who could do a magic tricks and weave tales of old Hollywood better than anyone else could. From there, I started learning more about him, about how he started out as a wunderkind of the theater, working with John Houseman to produce amazing Broadway spectacles such as the “voodoo Macbeth”, done with an entirely black cast from Harlem. He moved into radio, not only being the star of many classic shows like “The Shadow”, but creating his own Mercury Theater Playhouse that brought stories of classic literature to radio life (the most famous, of course, being his fake-documentary version of War of the Worlds that frightened a nation one Halloween). Then he went straight into film, and co-wrote, directed and starred in Citizen Kane, one of the most enduring and technically dazzling debut films ever made.
Everything he touched, it seemed, turned to gold. He could do no wrong… and then it all fell apart, almost as quickly as it began. His films, although still amazing, never had the popularity they deserved, and he didn’t help the situation by wandering off to other projects before seeing the previous one through, and as a result we are left with half-baked “studio cuts” of could-have-been classics like The Magnificent Ambersons, Touch of Evil, and Mr. Arkadin. He finally ended up as I saw him in my childhood, overweight and tired, frustrated at how he had to take bottom-of-the-barrel roles to pay his bills and finance the occasional film that he could scrape together.
I think I identify with folks who have more than a few choices of things they can focus their talent – it’s hard to stick to one thing when your creativity is pulling you in several directions at once. Orson seems to be a living cautionary tale about this very thing, what can happen to you if you don’t settle down and choose a path. I also admire the way he dove into everything he did… he lived his life large before that phrase was even coined. He burned through fortunes, ate huge meals, married movie stars like Rita Hayworth, and really *lived*. Unfortunately, for all his accomplishment, his life ended up as a mostly-failed experiment, less than everything he could have been.
I think it’s just as valuable as lesson to learn from than those who succeeded.
5. David Lynch – You’d never know what David Lynch’s art is like from looking at him. He’s an Eagle Scout from Missoula, Montana, whose biggest vice is coffee and cigarettes, and who always fastens the buttons on his shirts all the way up to the top. You’d never know the stories that come from the depths of his mind just by looking at him. But the contents of that mind are summed up in the first minute of Blue Velvet, where a man watering his front yard suddenly has a stroke and falls over onto his perfectly manicured suburban lawn. The camera draws in close to him, then drifts underground near where he lies. There are countless ants there in terrible close-up, their feet and mandibles clicking, the sound growing deafening as things get darker and darker…
Lynch’s entire career has been built around this notion, that there is darkness and madness beneath the normal life that we try to lead. So many of his films and TV projects (Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Lost Highway, Wild at Heart, Mulholland Drive) deal with the peeling back of normal life to expose what’s really going on behind the scenes, and it’s never a pretty picture.
I’ve always been the kind of person who loves the idea of huge, overarching plots where everything means something, and Lynch’s is the closest I’ve ever come to seeing exactly that. Granted, it doesn’t always work out that way, but the beauty of a Lynch film is that you *feel* that everything is following some sort of dream-logic, even as the most bizarre things are happening.
What Lynch has shown me is that you don’t have to be a rebellious nihilist to tell stories that are full of sex, violence, and madness. David doesn’t even *swear* as far as I know, but he created Frank Booth, the most venomous, foulmouthed character to come out of 80’s cinema. And he also is a fascinating example of how you should follow your creative instinct, no matter where it leads. He’s notoriously vague about what his films *mean* -- he has never done a DVD commentary, and doesn’t even like his films to be split into “chapters” because he thinks movies are spells that you should experience all the way through in one sitting -– and to tell the truth, I don’t even know if *he’s* aware of he’s doing. A typical quote about how he makes a movie is something like: “A film is all about mood, and you just try to maintain that mood.” Still, he follows his muse faithfully, and never questions it, and I truly admire that.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
SYZYGY - 17
INT. RAVEN’S MAZE
JAKE
I can hear you, Raven!
JAKE
I assume you found my gun. The only
thing that I ask is that you leave
yours, as well. I would like to hear
it, please.
JAKE
I should let you know that I have
planted several explosive devices
in this maze.
JAKE
Good.
JAKE
It’s getting lighter, isn’t it,
Raven? I think I’ll give you until
sunrise to solve the maze. When the
sun appears, that’s it. It’s all
over. I’ll be forced to make some
light of my own, and I think you
can guess what that means.
RAVEN
You’ve got to give me more time!
JAKE
Have you ever thought about what it
would be like to feel as fearless
as when you carried out those first
missions for Big Ed? When you felt
like nothing could hurt you? And it
never did. Until you clouded your
actions with your feelings for my
little carousel pony out there. I
want you, Raven. I want you to work
with me. People have made this world
too ordered. I am the Cleanser, the
one to scrape the world clean and
prepare it for the next order. And
I want you to help me.
JAKE
I see we know each other too well.
Always the liars, aren’t we? It’s
something I’ve come to love about
you.
JAKE
Well played.
JAKE
Or how about God? You still believe
in God, don’t you, Raven?
JAKE
Hedging your bets. That’s very
human of you. But well played. The
answer is that neither of them are
real. We all know the basic elements
of the universe. Chaos and order.
And the two of us were doing fine,
weren’t we? Always in balance, always
in check. But then you had to go and
multiply. Until there were millions
of you running around, creating your
societies and languages and technol-
ogies… Well, I’m sick of it! It’s my
turn now!
RAVEN
Shit.
TOM
Raven?
KARA
(whispering)
He’s got bombs with him. He planted
them somewhere back there.
JAKE
Raven?
JAKE
(teasing)
It’s getting light out there…
EYEBALL
Are you sure you want to do this?
JAKE
Very clever. But I’m afraid the
deal still stands. It’s apparent
that you refuse to acknowledge your
true calling, so I’ll be leaving
you now. Goodbye, Miss Airheart…
I’m sure I’ll be seeing you again!
TOM
You’re not going anywhere.
TOM
Then that’s all I need to hear.
TOM
Oh God… Raven? Can you hear me?
RAVEN
(faintly)
Got him.
TOM
Raven, I’ve got to get you some
help, baby. You… you don’t look
too good.
TOM
Yes! Yes you did. Um…
TOM
Jake, or whatever he was, would
have just kept on killing, right?
We weren’t going to be the last. So
you saved a lot of people, Raven.
A lot.
RAVEN
Hurry back, okay? I’m cold…
RAVEN
I love you too, Tom. Hurry.
JAKE
Come to me…
TOM
No… no, this isn’t right…
KARA
I never even got to see what she
looked like.
TOM
She asked me about her soul.
EYEBALL
I think you were right.
EYEBALL
Come on, I’ll tell you.
At first it looks as if Raven has stepped into a forest. Trees stretch off in infinite rows in all directions, their branches and leaves forming the low canopy of the ceiling. She steps straight ahead cautiously, until her outstretched hand comes into contact with glass, slightly distorting the view in front of her. It now becomes apparent that the trees cover the junctions between the mirrors, so it is almost impossible to tell where they are.
Raven turns right, finds that way blocked, too. She turns to the left and finds the true passage.
INT. JAKE’S MAZE
Somewhere else in the maze, Jake stands over his wife. He has covered her mouth with tape, and is binding her wrists and ankles behind her, so she is kneeling on the floor. His head snaps up to the sound of cautious footsteps on the wooden floor.
I can hear you, Raven!
No response.
I assume you found my gun. The only
thing that I ask is that you leave
yours, as well. I would like to hear
it, please.
No response. A few more footsteps.
I should let you know that I have
planted several explosive devices
in this maze.
A pause. The sound of a gun being dropped on the floor.
Good.
INT. RAVEN’S MAZE
Raven silently picks up her gun and sticks it into her belt in back. She continues feeling her way through the maze, which still looks empty in all directions.
INT. JAKE’S MAZE
Jake is leaving Kara behind him, moving toward the center of the maze stealthily.
It’s getting lighter, isn’t it,
Raven? I think I’ll give you until
sunrise to solve the maze. When the
sun appears, that’s it. It’s all
over. I’ll be forced to make some
light of my own, and I think you
can guess what that means.
INT. RAVEN’S MAZE
Raven bumps into another mirror, then breaks her silence.
You’ve got to give me more time!
JAKE
(far away)
I’ve given you plenty of time. When
the night is gone, so are both of
you!
RAVEN
God dammit! Come out here! Fight
me like a man!
JAKE
(far away)
Always underestimating, aren’t you?
First we have things to discuss, a
debt to repay. Did you ever think
that maybe Kara isn’t the whole reason
I followed you all these miles?
RAVEN
Okay. I give up. What was the reason?
JAKE
(far away)
It was you. I look at you, and I
see the second-best servant of chaos
there is.
She stops. Jake is standing twenty feet in front of her. Something catches her eye. She turns to the left, and he’s there too. She turns right, and he’s also there. She keeps turning her head from one to the other, trying to discern which is real.
Have you ever thought about what it
would be like to feel as fearless
as when you carried out those first
missions for Big Ed? When you felt
like nothing could hurt you? And it
never did. Until you clouded your
actions with your feelings for my
little carousel pony out there. I
want you, Raven. I want you to work
with me. People have made this world
too ordered. I am the Cleanser, the
one to scrape the world clean and
prepare it for the next order. And
I want you to help me.
Raven draws her gun. She points it at one of the Jakes, then the others. He laughs a little.
I see we know each other too well.
Always the liars, aren’t we? It’s
something I’ve come to love about
you.
RAVEN
I just know better than to trust
a sick fuck like you, that’s all.
Jake draws his gun too. All three barrels simultaneously point at her.
Well played.
RAVEN
So why did you bring me in here?
We could have handled this outside.
JAKE
Do you like the park? One of my old
victory grounds that I had imported
especially for you. New England, 1929.
A bolt came loose on the Ferris
wheel, sending twenty-four people
crashing down into the crowd that
was waiting to get on the carousel.
The sheer madness of it! You would
have enjoyed it.
RAVEN
Who the hell are you?
JAKE
Who do you think I am?
RAVEN
Jake Brennan.
JAKE
What? Oh, Raven, you disappoint me.
I though you all people would under-
stand. What if I told you that the
devil doesn’t exist? Would you believe
me?
Raven is silent.
Or how about God? You still believe
in God, don’t you, Raven?
Still no answer. Just the pointing gun.
Hedging your bets. That’s very
human of you. But well played. The
answer is that neither of them are
real. We all know the basic elements
of the universe. Chaos and order.
And the two of us were doing fine,
weren’t we? Always in balance, always
in check. But then you had to go and
multiply. Until there were millions
of you running around, creating your
societies and languages and technol-
ogies… Well, I’m sick of it! It’s my
turn now!
RAVEN
All I know is that you’re trying to
kill a woman and I’m trying to stop
you.
JAKE
Because she’s yours, right?
RAVEN
Not any more.
JAKE
So noble… Go ahead. Take the shot.
One in three.
Raven swings her gun to the Jake in front of her and fires. The figure disappears as the mirror shatters. The remaining Jake’s fire, and a puff of blood explodes from Raven’s right shin. She cries out and falls, landing on her back. She fires a shot at the figure on the left, shattering another mirror. She throws her hands above her head and tilts her head back to fire at the remaining Jake, but he’s disappeared into the darkness.
Shit.
INT. TOM’S MAZE
Tom creeps along in the near-dark, knife held out in front of him. He calls out.
Raven?
RAVEN
(far away, in pain)
Tom, get out of here!
TOM
Raven, are you okay?
RAVEN
I’m all right. Just get the hell out!
Tom presses on. He turns a corner and finds Kara bound on the floor in front of him. He hastily cuts the tape. She stands and he carefully pulls the tape off her mouth. She winces, then turns away from him as he starts cutting the tape at her wrists.
(whispering)
He’s got bombs with him. He planted
them somewhere back there.
TOM
(whispering)
Just get out. I’m going after Raven.
KARA
I’m sorry for all this, Tom. I’ll
be waiting.
Tom hugs her, then turns and rushes further into the maze. She watches him go, then slowly starts retracing her steps toward the exit.
INT. JAKE’S MAZE
Jake is down on his haunches, opening his knapsack and taking out a remote control device. He watches himself in the mirror as he does this.
Raven?
INT. RAVEN’S MAZE
Limping nearby, she hears him. She’s leaning against a mirror, propped up against her own reflection.
(teasing)
It’s getting light out there…
RAVEN
Fuck you! If you’re going to blow
the place, then do it!
JAKE
Last chance, Raven. It would be so
beautiful, you and I, together, killing
and maiming as we tear through this
world… of course, I’ll do it without
you if I have to.
EXT. AMUSEMENT PARK - DAWN
Kara sits behind the wheel of Raven’s car. Eyeball stands just outside the window.
Are you sure you want to do this?
KARA
Stop talking, or I’ll lose my nerve.
If he sees the light, he’ll kill them
all.
She floors the accelerator, points the car straight for the entryway to the maze. For a moment, the carousel, the car, and the maze door are all in an EXACT LINE.
INT. RAVEN’S MAZE
All of a sudden, Raven hears the sound of a car, followed by the splintering of wood and crash of glass. The light that has been growing from the front door of the maze goes out as it collapses. Raven starts laughing and cheering loudly.
EXT. MIRROR MAZE - DAWN
Eyeball throws a few beams aside to help Kara, shaken but uninjured, climb out the window the car, the front half of which is buried in debris.
INT. JAKE’S MAZE
Very clever. But I’m afraid the
deal still stands. It’s apparent
that you refuse to acknowledge your
true calling, so I’ll be leaving
you now. Goodbye, Miss Airheart…
I’m sure I’ll be seeing you again!
He turns to grab the detonator from his pack, but Tom is standing there, ready to attack with the knife. Jake raises his gun.
You’re not going anywhere.
JAKE
You’ve come back to save the woman
you’ve betrayed?
TOM
I didn’t betray anyone. I saved an
innocent life.
JAKE
No one is innocent.
RAVEN
Don’t listen to him, Tom! You don’t
have to be forgiven for anything.
She’s standing about ten feet away, behind Jake, aiming her gun at him.
Then that’s all I need to hear.
JAKE
You fire, I fire, Raven. We all fire.
Simple.
RAVEN
Why don’t you just hit the button
and end it now?
JAKE
I brought you here to see you suffer,
and I will see you suffer.
Jake fires at Tom, who manages to jump out of the way just in time. Jake shoots his own reflection. As Tom dives, Raven takes a shot at Jake, hitting him in the shoulder. He drops the bomb remote, then turns to fire at Raven. The two nearly empty their guns at each other, the mirrors behind and to the sides of them cracking and falling apart, to expose other mirrors…
They both slump to the floor. Tom, who has managed to stay out of the way, steps into the horrible silence and sees the two bodies, Jake face down, Raven leaning back against one of the trees. He moves forward, glass crunching under his shoes, and realizes that the faint, rhythmic whistling he’s hearing is actually Raven’s breathing, wind from a hole punched in one of her lungs. He rushes over to her, kneels in the glass.
Oh God… Raven? Can you hear me?
She nods slightly, blood running from her mouth.
(faintly)
Got him.
TOM
Yeah. You got him.
She smiles weakly.
Raven, I’ve got to get you some
help, baby. You… you don’t look
too good.
RAVEN
Am I going to be all right?
TOM
I’m going to send Kara and the Kid
for help, and then I swear to God,
I’ll come right back and wait with
you—
RAVEN
No… I mean, will I be okay?… Did I
save more than I destroyed?
TOM
Baby, I don’t know what you…
She starts to fade. He grabs her shoulders, pulls her upright.
Yes! Yes you did. Um…
He glances at Jake’s body.
Jake, or whatever he was, would
have just kept on killing, right?
We weren’t going to be the last. So
you saved a lot of people, Raven.
A lot.
RAVEN
Yes… thank you, Tom.
TOM
Please, baby, will you hold on
until I get back? Can you do that?
She nods, smiles.
Hurry back, okay? I’m cold…
TOM
Okay. I love you.
He kisses her lightly, some of the blood staining his lips.
I love you too, Tom. Hurry.
He runs off. She closes her eyes.
She hears a noise. She looks over at Jake, finds that he is slowly rolling over, crunching the broken glass under him. Raven painfully raises her gun, still in her hand, and pulls the trigger. It clicks: empty.
She puts it down, watches as Jake finds his gun and starts working with it weakly. He’s loading one more bullet from his pocket into the chamber. His hands are wet with his blood, but manages to complete the task. He sits up and points it at Raven.
Come to me…
She looks at him blankly, then lifts her hand. The bomb remote is in it. Jake pauses, utter rage overcoming his features. Raven in a final act of defiance, leans over to her own reflection in the mirror next to her. She looks deeply into her own eyes, and slowly kisses her reflection. Jake howls inhumanly, starts to pull the trigger. Raven pushes the remote button and all is lost in a tremendous explosion. The infinite forest is swallowed by and infinite fire, enveloping it like a flash flood.
EXT. MIRROR MAZE - DAWN
Fire blasts out of the front door of the Maze, knocking down Tom, who is standing nearby with Eyeball and Kara. The hot wind flattens them as the structure collapses. Then everything goes silent.
Tom gets to his knees and sees all that is left: burning piles of wood floating on pools of glowing molten glass. He stares into the crater numbly as Kara and Eyeball come up behind him. Kara puts her hand on his shoulder.
No… no, this isn’t right…
She rubs his shoulder as he starts to cry.
I never even got to see what she
looked like.
EYEBALL
(softly)
She was beautiful.
They stare into the fire, which is already beginning to dim.
EXT. KARA’S CAR - MORNING
The three of them walk toward the car slowly. They stand still for a few seconds, watching the first light at the horizon fill the sky.
She asked me about her soul.
EYEBALL
Hm?
TOM
If she saved more than she destroyed,
something like that. I told her she
did.
Eyeball smiles a little.
I think you were right.
TOM
Why did she ask me that?
Eyeball sits up on the hood of the car, lies back against the windshield.
Come on, I’ll tell you.
KARA
What are you doing?
EYEBALL
Looking at the stars. I think there
might be a new one out this morning.
They join him, lying back on the hood. Up in the sky, there are still many stars out, fading as the sun wipes them away, although it’s impossible to tell if the sky is fuller than it was before.
FADE OUT
ROLL CREDITS
THE END
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