Wonderful Clouds

Public Enemies is a little short for a Michael Mann film and the ending is satisfying, which threw me. But it runs deep with the qualities that made Heat and Miami Vice resonate and confound. It's shot in digital, and it's beautifully loose. The cross-cutting is Mann's tribute to Godard's A Bout de Souffle (Breathless); the storyline a tip of the hat to Pierrot Le Fou. The big machine gun sounds that jump the cinema's broadcast levels could be a nod to Arthur Penn's infamous sound mix for Bonnie And Clyde but other (real) film critics attribute this to Mann's determination to mix his own movies despite the fact that he's going deaf. And it's true that the dialogue is muffled at key moments but after so many takes on the gangster flick, what is there really left for these characters to say? In a classic New Yorker cartoon a woman proclaims, "I don't care what Socrates thinks: I want to know what he feels!" I'm of the same mind with Mann. Never mind the width: feel the quality.

Public Enemies feels good -- or rather, well. The digital lens picks up skin, wrinkles, make up, faces: you can touch this film better than anything in 3-D. When a lone informant angsts over her betrayal of Dillinger in a crowd, you can pick her out of the line-up. But the lens is also drawn to clouds and fields, and the contrasting aesthetic thus revives Mann's noirish shorthand, giving the movie's characters the stark choice between sweaty proximities and an untouchable, epic landscape. When moviemakers began working with digital I thought it would be the end of cinema. Now I'm thinking it's a beginning: a return to the days when movies were lensed rather than storyboarded, and before the mis en scene got swallowed by the design department.

The story is The Untouchables deconstructed -- or The Black Dahlia put together right. Nobody knows Billy Crudup's Hoover is gay, but the audience does, and Mann's camera catches the white flash of his eyeballs as he greets Christian Bale's Purvis. Bale gets to act and not carry the film, telegraphing George W (Oliver Stone sought him for the biopic role). Depp plays it cool and wins: it's nice to see him dialling it back. Marion Cotillard is luminously pretty and real, surrounded by jugheads and thugs that more than recall Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy. The underbelly of James Ellroy and Chinatown is just a stone's throw away.

The references would swamp a lesser filmmaker but Mann keeps them submerged. In the pig-headed manner of Howard Hawks, he mines the prosaic until it becomes flinty poetry. His stated purpose (storytelling, detail) is pursued so obsessively that it becomes romantic folly: more real than real, more cruel than cruel, more beautiful than any of the characters is permitted to acknowledge. This isn't period filmmaking: it's a full stop. A jerky, nouvelle vague watershed -- the feeling man's shoot-em-up. And a great romance, too. Stare at it long enough, you all might notice.

I Love Larry

Curb Your Enthusiasm, the new series from Seinfield co-creator Larry David has the familiarity of a strange, looping dream. Larry David himself was the basis for Seinfield's character of George Costanza, played by Jason Alexander, and both men (or should we say, all three) share the same owlish stare. David is as tall as Kramer and stands with a similar stoop and when he speaks he sounds like Kramer or Jerry. When he shouts, it's impossible not to think of George. When he whines, you can hear Jerry with an Elaine rising.

The similarities between David and his co-creations becomes both the premise and the challenge of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Jason Alexander appears in the debut episode as himself ("a great actor") discussing how audiences still see him as George. "They think I'm the schmuck, the idiot, the jackass!" Alexander smiles, ignoring his mentor's crushed expression. Larry David is hurt, of course, because if the fictional character of George is seen as the schmuck then the real George - Larry himself - must be seen the same way.

The joke is delivered fast, mumbled so quick that you could miss it. Like Seinfield, it's up to you to keep up with the rhythms of neglect, bitterness and insensitivity. David is a writer first and performer second. His best Seinfeld teleplays were simple expressions of complex characters trapped by their own psyche - tragedies, in fact, were they not so funny - and he has an ear for phrases that inspire the giggles. In tonight's episode when his on-screen wife Cheryl Hines dismisses a twittering noise as "a house sound" you're smiling before he picks up on it. "A 'house sound'?" David says with his eyes sparkling. "What's 'a house sound'?" By the time he's finished repeating it over and over, the term is immediately consigned to the lexicon alongside "spongeworthy," "bubble boy" and "close talker."

Curb is produced by HBO, the subscriber network behind The Sopranos and Sex and the City, and the emerging creative force in mainstream television. Tonight's episode kicks off the second season: a third is underway in the States. David is philosophical about its success. "When you're not concerned with succeeding, you can work with complete freedom," he says.

Filmed as a cheap reality show and ad-libbed by its celebrity guests, the show pokes fun at fame and the cruel reality of its passing. The fact that Seinfield has finished and its magic has been dismantled might seem like a good reason to avoid its stars and its co-creator but this depressing grimness is part of the series' bite. Even the show's title - "Curb your enthusiasm, folks!" - is an old stand-up dig at an audience that isn't clapping. Larry knows you're not expecting to enjoy his new show, but this is why you may.

-- NZ Herald, 2002

LA Stories

Miles Millar is a British screenwriter working in Hollywood. A poster for Kurosawa's Ran hangs on his office wall. David is a Hollywood agent. A poster for Batman hangs on his.

David says he sold the script for Batman. I'd be interested to know which one since the screenplay went through 10 drafts in as many years before being mostly ad-libbed on a sound stage, but I don't doubt his word. As the Italian saying goes: success has many fathers, but failure is always a bastard.

Writing is a group activity in Hollywood. Everyone does it - or rather would if they weren't so busy doing other things like producing or acting. I think Joan Didion said this - or perhaps it was John Gregory Dunne. Anyway, I'm saying it now in this review – and getting paid for it. See? That's how "writing as a group activity" works.

To receive their credit and a six-figure cheque for Lethal Weapon 4, Miles and his writing partner Al had to arbitrate with the Writer's Guild and pitch over the phone to Mel Gibson. In the premiere press line, the documentary crew ask Mel if he remembers Miles. Mel's handsome forehead jumps. He doesn't remember, and dollars tick behind his eyes as he calculates the time wasted answering the question. Lethal Weapon 4 had more writers than he has children.

Writer Simon Kelton and fellow expatriates play cricket in the Hollywood hills and go hunting, complete with horses and red coats and beagles happily bouncing through the scrub. They aren't hunting an actual fox, Simon smirks -- thus missing the deeper irony that, therefore, they aren't actually hunting.

Simon's is one of four 'LA Stories' in this documentary, and knowing how they end makes it no less enjoyable. Anyone with a working set of eyes will see it coming.

Tina Jenkins' script is about a man who turns into a cat. A newcomer to Venice Beach, she has mastered the language but not the lingo. She says "lorry" and "green-lit" instead of "truck" and "green-lighted". She borrowed £10,000 to come to LA. Guess how well she does.

"Nobody knows who writers are," Miles says gamely. It must be difficult coming up with what he originally describes as "a fresh idea" when your career path is already written for you.

The grim reality is that working Hollywood is as predictable as its product. If you like shouting down the phone, you could be a producer. If you like sitting on the other end of the line, then writing may be the way to go.

There is money in it. Hollywood makes less than 200 scripts into films each year but many thousand more are optioned so someone's getting paid.

Even fewer films are being made about Scottish hairdressers but one, The Big Tease is going into production as LA Stories begins. Co-writers Sacha Gervasi and Craig Ferguson say the film was green-lighted (sic) because of the success of The Full Monty. But don't worry - if it bombs, the credit will be all theirs.

-- NZ Herald, 2001

The Mutual Respect Boat

Star Trek Voyager is the fourth installment in the Star Trek legacy and deserves more success than it has enjoyed. The series boasts the franchise's most romantic theme and its sharpest ship. Trek's traditionally male audience is treated to three original female leads and the crew is journeying through a lush and uncharted region of the galaxy.

Logically, Voyager should be compelling and different but for all the good choices the series' writers have made, they consistently avoid the dynamic. They prefer stories to plot, narrative to intrigue. The characters are fine variations on a theme rather than bold contrasts. Janeway is isolated, B'Elanna Torres is angry and Seven of Nine is very isolated and very angry. Tuvok is detached while the Doctor is detached, fussy, isolated and sometimes angry as well. Paris and Kim are the disenfranchised frat boys Wesley Crusher probably grew up to be. Chakotay is the sex symbol female fans would wish on Janeway but again the writers hold back, directing him instead to meditate.

The crew all talk too much. No stone is left unscanned for traces of nucleogenic particles. We could do with more action and a little more amore, even if the days when a Captain could drop-kick the bad aliens and kiss the pretty ones are well past.

Maybe the writers are confounded by the Trek mythology and the nit-picking fan sites. Maybe their work is being spoiled by TV's many cooks who change the flowers in Janeway's cabin and make teenage passengers appear and disappear from week to week.

Season six of Voyager is making a better start. In the second half of 'Equinox' Janeway finally popped a hatch and tried to hunt down and kill another Federation ship. She had no real reason to do it but at least she was doing something.

This week Seven bumps into some old friends in a grim Borg flashback. The suspenseful story includes a decent reason for Naomi Wildman even if the moral is dispensed with too quickly.

And B'Elanna confronts her Klingon self in the 'Barge of the Dead', a good idea that opens and closes on the right note. The following week the Doctor takes command of the ship for an extremely funny second run at 'The Corbomite Manoeuvre'.

And visually the series is a delight. The crew quarters look better than the apartments on Coruscant. There are probably paper wrappers around the toilet seats and mini-bars loaded with Saurian brandy.

Gene Roddenberry wrote the first draft of Star Trek in 1963 using a manual typewriter and the high-minded premise that humanity would evolve into a better species in order to reach the stars. Voyager is true to that vision. Instead of a bang or a whimper the Trek universe is ending with a luxury, mood-lit cruise.

-- NZ Herald, 2001

1980s: a photo-essay

It was a late afternoon in August and they were strolling towards me along K Road and I recognised them instantly. We'd been clubbing at A Certain Bar and seen Danse Macabre in Parnell and the Screaming Blam Matic review at Mainstreet and sunk martinis at Le Bom. Except that my memories were more than twenty years old and the group of kids filling the sidewalk would have barely been born. They only looked like they were there at the time, with their RayBans and fluoro and small feet and big hair. They were perfect reproductions: they'd just dialled the look up. Mine was a disconsolate double-take. The 1980s were over. The 1980s were back.

So did we not look stupid then? Because the fashions look brilliant now and the rehashed blippy pop sound has saved the dance floor now that rap has wrapped and the oonst has run out. Miami Vice has been remade and Brideshead Revisited has been revisited. The music industry is once again threatened by copying technology (having survived, er, cassette recording). Global warming is poised to destroy the world that the nuclear arms race did not. And now, perfectly, the stock market has once again gone up like the Hindenburg. This isn't a revival of the 1980s: this is a re-enactment.

The 1980s was an era of extremes in that things were either taken too seriously or not seriously enough. Historians point to the era's tumult (Springbok tour, Queen Street riot, political correctness) but my memories are nothing but frivolous (dance mixes, nightclubs, cocktails the size of a lamp). The 1980s were up and funny because ignoring reality was the point.

There was a lot of it to be ignored here. Week nights were boring. Villas were old. City living was for eccentrics. You couldn't buy a drink on a Sunday. But for a moment the aesthetic of wealth was easily faked. Our Pacific locale was chic. Decor that cost a fortune to staple up in Trader Vic's was a bob a penny at Cook Street market. Duran Duran blew millions filming the videos for Rio actually in Rio. Sucked in: we could just hire the Spirit of Auckland. We were close to the sea and credit cards didn't need to be paid back.

I can see why kids are mad for the 1980s. They see it as a time of style, colour, brightness and energy. They are wrong, of course. We had to wait for music to be freighted in while they can download the very same tracks with a click. We queued to flick through month-old copies of the NME in Whitcoulls while they can Google articles for free. Anyone who says victory is sweeter for being harder won never had to secure a postal money order in Sterling to pay for a Rough Trade single. That's all really good music, by the way: the heavy, squarish stuff gathering dust under the bed.

A question, then, for the generation born after Return of the Jedi: will you ever experience such nostalgia? Floating on social networks, with your digital images and your social sites maintaining every moment on artificial life support, your youth has the potential to remain constantly accessible. How will you miss it if it never goes away?

My 1980s have been fading with the media I'd stored it on: Xerox photocopies and mix cassettes. The only moments that were truly preserved were the photographs, which I planned to get around to some day but never did. It was only after my brush with my not-friends shambling along the sidewalk that I realised now might be the time.

Digging out the old negatives and scanning them, I counted three formats (126, 110, 35mm) and four stages of nostalgia:
1. Thinking you were cool.
2. Realising you weren't.
3. Realising you were, kind of, but not for any of the reasons you imagined.
4. Realising it's gone.

I'm currently locked in the fourth quarter. I should be making fun of such easily mocked images but the memories they provoke are paradoxically distant and comforting and more than a little melancholy. I didn't even think I was old but I guess by definition I must be. Damn.

Much later after these images were taken the buildings we lived and partied in would be knocked down and we would peer through the gaps and see, finally, how small and crappy things really were. But that was later. Now, strolling past in the opposite direction, the 1980s look pretty good.

(Sunday magazine, 2008)

The size of thoughts

Ang Lee's Hulk is all about size: the size of atoms and cells; DNA and man; man and his dreams; man and the monster. The director telegraphs this by chopping between shots of mossy rock and entire deserts, literally finding the earth in a grain of sand. Oliver Stone pulled a similar trick in Nixon (1995) by cutting between footage of multiplying cancer cells and bombs dropping on Vietnam, but the visual analogy unbalanced the film: by making his point about life, death and a generation's political and military creep (sic) in two shots, Stone wrapped things up too early.

Arriving as it has within months of the Gulf War, the green monster raging unchallenged in the desert risks being similarly reduced. Hulk really does signpost it, smashing out of a huge American "Victory" flag. But the connection between the rampaging monster and the monster of war is no more specific than that between the radioactive Godzilla and the themes of post-war industrialised Japan. Hulk is a good old monster movie, even if deconstructionists might be distracted the unstoppable man-child who swells and hardens when provoked by men but shrinks to a limp heap when confronted by the woman he loves... in San Francisco. The alabaster Jennifer Connolly tames the jade Eric Bana a couple of times, reinforcing a beauty and the beast theme. The movie borrows images from King Kong (when he is hunted down). The mutant dogs – which should be fierce – hark back to the sad test lab Labradors of The Fly II. The hell hounds are a result of animal experiments by Banner's father (Nick Nolte). In films, cruelty to animals usually signals a lack of empathy that will trip a director up somewhere down the line (e.g. Guy Ritchie). Audiences around the world were non-plussed by the sight of dead humans in Starship Troopers (1997) but booed a dog's death. There are a lot of (variable) reasons for this but it mostly has something to do with a sense of fair play and not whaling on the dumb innocent which - whoops - Hulk is mostly about.

Such fundamental inhumanities prevent Hulk ever really leaving the ground. (Although he skips good, the squadron of animators assigned to the running sequences win the day.) It's the paradox of monster movies that no matter who or what they destroy, audiences want the big (read: little) guy to prevail. I suspect the man in suit Godzilla (1954) works because it looks fake: the audience knows Godzilla isn't really getting hurt. Man in suit Godzilla also has a nice smile - just like the T-rex in Jurassic Park (1993) - which shows that he is enjoying himself. It will be interesting to see how Peter Jackson handles it in King Kong. In the original (and subsequent remakes) the ape is adbucted, exploited, hunted down and killed. It's a miserable fate for any animal, and the love of a tiny woman is no consolation. The tiny woman in Hulk is Jennifer Connelly, A Scientist. While Eric Bana is pumped up digitally, Jennifer has morphed by simply not eating. 

Bana's comedy chops show when he's playing the nerd: he always seems to be on the point of making a joke. And there are some other actors in the movie who play characters who chase the Hulk and some guy who oversteps the mark and gets killed and so on. The usual suspects.

The movie ends with the now-standard Marvel / DC showdown between two large computer-generated animations. "They're absorbing ambient energy!" Jennifer gasps, introducing a fascinating concept too late in the movie. What were she and her colleagues scientists of, exactly? They seem to be studying everything on their iMacs: frogs! gamma rays! stuff! -- the world-in-the-grain-of-sand thing again. The original Hulk comics kept it simple: mild guy / bombarded with gamma rays / becomes monster. The stories were about Newtonian cause and effect, and it's no coincidence therefore that the best parts of the film are those when the Hulk hits things and they break. He's digital, as are most of the things he fights: the visceral made real by computer technicians. It's the ultimate revenge of the nerd.

(Muse Lounge, 2003)

The Not Girl

Daniel Clowes has observed that female teenagers are licensed to be emotional in a way that other people aren't. He made this point extremely well in an interview which my friend Ian found in a remaindered magazine, kept, and forwarded to me by surface mail. In turn I read it, noted the passage, tore the interview out and filed it for future reference. I have no idea where it is now. But trust me: he said it, and he was on the money.

The teenage leads in Ghost World are the main reason the eight-issue spin-off eclipsed its parent, Like A Velvet Glove Cast in Iron. Although the lives of Enid Coleslaw (an anagram of "Daniel Clowes") and Becky Doppelmeyer are emotional and scattered they were always rendered as calm by the artist's nerveless line and shadow, glumly heroic as they stared slightly to the side of the reader's eyeline. Clowes' drawing style captures details with the sleepy clarity of someone only just waking up to the world he has always known. He's hypnotised by suburbia: bored but unable to take his eyes off it.

The movie version of Ghost World (2001) is pretty fine although it's more gentle, obviously. Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson) form the passive links between the many characters. In the same way that their eventual friend Seymour (Steve Buscemi) hoards kitsch memorabilia, the girls and others collect relationships for interest rather than their true value. Even Enid's father (Bob Balaban) asks his girlfriend to move in because she's around the house most of the time anyway.

The movie is far from godless: huge neon signs and franchise outlets surround the girls in almost every shot, the power of their commercial presence mocking pretensions such as books, music and art. Blues Hammer, an all white college blues band, sing idiotic songs about picking cotton; Roberta, Enid's summer school art teacher, promotes the vocabulary of early 20th century art to help her students, who go on to say nothing with it.

Clowes said Hollywood studios considered the project arty but it's an easily understood tale of the suburbs and thwarted romanticism - not unlike Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused. Clowes has a working process I really understand. Here he is talking about it:

Usually, after I finish an issue, I sit and do nothing for about a week. I usually plan to take a month off, and then after about five days, I can't stand it any more and I have to get back to work. I have nothing to do and I'm just sitting there all day. I usually have a notebook of ideas that I collect. As I'm working on one issue, I'm sort of thinking about ideas for the next. So I sit down with this giant notebook of ideas, and I cross out all the really stupid ones that seemed brilliant at 4 in the morning 3 months ago and now don't make any sense. Then I take all the decent ones and I try and see if there's any thematic unity to all of them. I tend to write two or three stories at once, and then often I'll realize that two of them are very similar and I can put them together and combine them into something. There's generally some sort of magical process by which they all come together at some point. Then I try to sketch out the entire thing in skeleton in some sort of vague plot line. Then I sit down and draw it page by page and do the writing as I go along. I usually write about two pages in advance - actual dialogue and things like that. I try to keep it relatively spontaneous, without too much advance thought.

You can read more of the interview here.

(Muse Lounge, Apr 09, 2003)