shoop and what's wrong with The Dark Knight

Actually, the title's a bit of a tease, because what's wrong with The Dark Knight can be summed up pretty quickly--it was too long and too loud. Although I'll have a little more to say about The Dark Knight later, this is really about what's wrong with comic book movies in general. And, as was the case most of the time, my Dad had it right.

In this case, what Dad was right about was the 1989 Batman with Michael Keaton and some weird music by Prince. "There was no 'pow' or 'bang' or 'sock,'" Dad noted, and his complaint was perfect. You see, for our family, and for a lot of people my age or a little older I suspect, Batman meant the TV show with Adam West and Burt Ward as Batman and Robin, and a slew of celebrities as guest villains--most notably, Burgess Meredith as the Penguin, Cesar Romaro as the Joker, and Frank Gorshin as the Riddler. The heroes intoned heroic platitudes with the straightest of faces, while the villains were free to indulge in the sort of hamminess usually reserved for Christmas pantomimes. As for the "pow," "bang," and "sock," you could count on those when the caped crusaders fought the villains' henchmen--each punch accompanied by a gloriously colorful comic book graphic. The show taught the world what "camp" meant, and it lasted a couple of seasons--as long as such giddy foolishness could last, I think--and even more importantly, it was meant to last some 26 minutes of TV time each week.

Now in 1989, Tim Burton had a novel idea, and it was enough to make a trailer that was really impressive. If you're of a certain age, you probably remember Michael Keaton in the bat suit grabbing a villain and saying, "I'm Batman" with about 50 layers of bad-ass cool. (Years later, I realized that was more a triumph of sound recording and editing, but it still rocked.) Burton's novel idea: what if you took Batman absolutely seriously? Unfortunately, the answer is, you can't. You can see it in Burton's first Batman, the one with Jack Nicholson's Joker, and in his sequel with Danny DeVito's Penguin and, most memorably, Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman. And that's who you remember, the villains with their weird deformities, wacky colors, and what-the-hell attitude toward their own evil. Burton's first Batman was something of a mess, with Keaton trying to be on the cool end of "real," and Nicholson multiplying the TV show by 10--but it's "real" and "serious," so the Joker dies at the end. In the sequel, Batman pretty much made an appearance--the villains had completely taken over.

Joel Shumacher gets a lot of flack for what he did to the Batman franchise, but what he really did was recognize that the camp had to be embraced. But Shumacher's films weren't perfect, either. Yes, there were George Clooney's bat-nipples, a masterstroke of ushering Batman out of the camp closet, and there was Arnold Schwarzenegger's Mr. Freeze making his henchmen sing along with the Snow Miser's song from "The Year Without a Santa Claus," but Shumacher didn't recognize the danger of overkill, and, frankly, too much money. If you go back to the TV show, part of the essential charm was its no-budget effects (Batman and Robin scaling the side of a building, with its "of course it's fake" sensibility, became a signature scene). The camp becomes too heavy with honest-to-goodness special effects, which I think illustrates a general rule of camp entertainment--it can't travel first class.

To return to The Dark Knight for a moment, this problem of taking the story and characters seriously is directly related to its overlength. (I won't even talk about the movie's twisted politics wherein George W. Bush is Batman.) The movie should have ended when Harvey what's-his-name turns into Two-Face, when exactly half his face gets burned by acid and he makes all his decisions by flipping a coin. I'm going to repeat that, because it illustrates the point I'm trying to make--he turns into Two-Face, when exactly half his face gets burned by acid and he makes all his decisions by flipping a coin. In other words, he's a comic book villain in a comic book world--you can't take him seriously. And you certainly don't want to close out his story arc by adding another half-hour to a movie that's already been banging on too long. What should have happened was, Harvey becomes Two-Face, giggles maniacally while flipping a coin, and we tune in text time. Or we buy the next issue.

And that's the fundamental problem with comic book movies in general--they're movies and not comic books. They're also not pitch-perfect TV camp classics. If the medium is indeed the message, then the message comic books send simply don't jibe with the message of movies. There are, however, a few exceptions. The first two Spiderman movies were pretty good (didn't see the third)--largely because you have a hero who already provides a running commentary on the world of superheroes. Peter Parker is essentially a dorky kid navigating a fundamentally ridiculous set of circumstances, the ridiculousness of which he completely recognizes. (That's why he can say things like, "I will be Spiderman no more"--he knows that sometimes, he has to talk like a comic book.)

You know which comic book movie really got it right? Superman, from 1978. What critics complained about initially--its unevenness of tone from "mythic" to "big city comedy" to "camp" to sincere heroism and back again--was its key strength. That's what you get in a comic book from page to page, sometimes panel to panel. It took not a "visionary" director like Burton or Christopher Nolan, but a fairly literal director like Richard Donner to realize that all those elements are part of comic book heroism, so he put them all in there, one after the other. It helps if you have an impossibly comic book style actor to play your hero, too, plus an impossibly legendary star to play the hero's dad. Christopher Reeve never really topped being Superman (could anybody?), and if Marlon Brando's legendarily overpriced turn as Superman's pop gave us the silliest part of the movie, that fits the picture even better. If only Marlon had taken a sock at one of his detractors, and we could see a big "sock!" on the screen. I'd like to think that scene exists somewhere, in a more perfect world.

shoop and superior donuts

Superior Donuts is recent Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy Letts' new Broadway play, doomed to be something of a bust as it closes early next month. Critics have been fairly kind, but they all reference TV in their reviews--sitcoms (sometimes a specific sitcom--either Laverne and Shirley, in which Donuts star Michael McKean appeared for many years, or Chico and the Man, with which the play shares something of its setup) or after-school specials (those popular shows that usually came on at 4:00 in the afternoon on a weekday where the characters learned valuable life lessons about hunting, old people, or drugs, for example). And they're exactly right--I've never been witness to a play that so thoroughly evokes the staging, rhythm, goofy supporting characters, and resolutions of a TV situation comedy. Critics who like the play immediately take on a Seinfeldian "Not that there's anything wrong with that" approach to calling the play a sitcom, and I think the play, audience response, its lack of success on Broadway, and (I would imagine) its future healthy life in university and community theatre bear some discussion.

How sitcom-like is the play? The examples would make a long, long list. First, as I've mentioned, there's the set-up--a young African-American man named Franco hustles his way into an assistant position with the grumpy old Vietnam draft evader who runs the titular Chicago donut shop (Cue Jose Feliciano music: "Franco... don't be discouraged... the aging hippie dude, he ain't that hard to understand..."). Then there are the plot complications--the older man is scared to ask the goofy but lovable female cop who has a crush on him out, so Franco gives him some pointers regarding his beard and ponytail: "You know who looks good in pony tails? Girls. And ponies"--a good sitcom joke that Freddie Prinze, Jimmie Walker, or Bea Arthur could knock out of the park to the delight of a laugh track, and that's just what happens in the theatre. Plus there's the two shady hoodlums who are dogging Franco, who has not quite left behind his outside-the-law past, guys you wouldn't take seriously on an episode of Law and Order, but who would fit nicely in a very special episode of, say, Roseanne. The play even looks like a sitcom--I've been in the studio audience for filming a couple of sitcoms here and there, and the functional set, the snow outside the door with the parked car and the parking meter--it's all there, a complete sitcom set. There are at least two examples of the classic "entrance in a goofy costume" gag. Moreover, the sitcom atmosphere pervades the theatre audience as well. Not only do we hear the equivalent of a TV laugh track, but at the points where the heroes suffer (sometimes violent) setbacks, we also get the "Ohhhh" and the gasp-track. There's a moment toward the end where the annoying but lovable Russian neighbor buys the donut shop, which I think is there so Letts can let us know he's read The Cherry Orchard, but the play as a whole is a fascinating example of one form of media totally informing another--the play as sitcom.

In the end, is this necessarily bad or good? The first time I tried grad school, I had a playwriting instructor who actually scored with a fairly major play in the 1950s--Take a Giant Step. He stated, quite flatly, that audiences won't go to the theatre to see sitcoms--meaning that before TV, what we would now consider sitcom rhythms and situations were common elements of many popular Broadway comedies, but now ("now" in this case was the mid-1980s) audiences wouldn't make a special trip to the theatre to see what was pretty common on TV. And in a way, I think he's right--in this case, at least, Superior Donuts might make it to just about 100 performances. Nevertheless, the audience reaction that I witnessed speaks to a very real power that sitcom characters and situations have. We, as an audience, laugh, ohhh and awww, and gasp on cue. And it's not just because the sitcom is well-executed with Great Direction and Actors--in fact, there's a fight scene in Donuts that's downright poorly staged and executed. The power in the form of storytelling that we call "sitcom" is real and has its place, and we might want to re-think the idea that "sitcom" is an automatic putdown when describing a piece. But if sitcoms don't belong on Broadway, what does, exactly? That's a question too big for a blog.

shoop and a serious man

It's been a while since I've checked in with the Coen brothers. I'm glad A Serious Man turned out to be the occasion of my brief reconnection. At any rate, go see it if you haven't already--it's a challenge in the best sense of the word, a film that demands and rewards your complete engagement. For this shoop-i-sode, I'll just tackle a couple of questions that I've seen come up in various discussions...

1) How Jewish do you have to be to get it?
Having a Jewish upbringing helps somewhat--although it didn't help me get the Yiddish prelude; I needed the subtitles as much as non-Jews would. (As a side note, two of the expressions I actually knew in Yiddish weren't translated literally--"in mitten dritten," all of a sudden, and "bubbemeise," literally, "grandmother's tale" or "old wives' tale." It just shows how flat English translations of Yiddish tend to be--or, how expressive Yiddish is.) But Jews can probably catch on to the connection to Jewish law implied in the scene between the professor and the recalcitrant Asian student--the professor explains that the stories are illustrations that show how the math works, but the math is HOW physics works. Similarly, the Law, or Torah, for Jews is "illustrated" through the stories of the Talmud and the Midrash. The fact that the professor doesn't get the stories (he doesn't get Schrodinger's cat, but the failing student does) is an important detail. Also, I think you need to have been bar or bat mitzvahed to fully appreciated the stoned bar mitzvah scene. Nevertheless, I think non-Jews can follow the film as well (or as poorly) as anyone else.

2) Is the film anti-Semitic?
The Coens have been hit with the "self-hating Jews" charge before--Miller's Crossing and Barton Fink come to mind--and I can understand the feeling behind such accusations. Personally, I've been sensitive, and admittedly sometimes absurdly so, to perceived anti-Semitic characterizations in movies and TV. I don't think those who say the Coens are anti-Semitic (in this case in particular) are wrong, exactly, but I do think they're only focusing on part of the picture. Yes, they like to focus on grotesque Jewish faces, ears, and bodies, for example. But I think they're working from an insider's--a LOVING insider's--perspective. That's why the ones who call the Coens anti-Semitic aren't far off, just as there's always a fine line between love and hate. The Coens kid, ridicule, and, I think, ultimately respect their Jewish characters a great deal.

But, again, go see for yourself. Then discuss it with some friends.

shoop and what's wrong with The Princess Bride

Now there's a title that reveals somebody looking for a fight, huh? Well, first of all, I should make clear that I like The Princess Bride. It's enjoyable and pleasant. And sure, I even get a little misty when Inigo Montoya finally revenges the death of his father. But there was always something a little... off about this movie for me. I think it took two master critics, Pauline Kael and Leonard Maltin, to help me figure out what went wrong.

Kael, in a relatively short review (especially for her), notes that "you can almost see the marks that it's missing." And for me, that's just what it felt like, including scenes that a lot of people I know absolutely love (and, almost needless to say, can quote by heart). For one thing, there's a distinct disconnect between screenwriter William Goldman's witty badinage (and some of it is pretty snappy) and the actors saying them--big case in point, Andre the Giant. Andre seems a big, affable lug, and he's likable--but he not only has trouble saying his lines, it's pretty clear he doesn't always get his lines. When you give witty badinage to someone who can't deliver witty badinage, it just sounds....weird. But Andre is not the biggest problem. The biggest problem becomes clear in two very, very famous and very, very popular exchanges, both involving the villain Vizzini, played by Wallace Shawn.

Vizzini's catchphrase is "inconceivable!"--you can even get it on a T-shirt. And Inigo Montoya's famous response--"You keep using that word--I don't think it means what you think it means," gets appropriated on any number of inter-nerd exchanges. But here's the thing--there's nothing wrong with the way Vizzini uses the word "inconceivable." It means, among a few other variations, "unbelievable" or "impossible to imagine." So why does Inigo Montoya respond that way? And what's so funny about it? And there's where the fit hits the shan, as it were--the mark that gets missed. To make it clearer, now imagine Groucho Marx saying Montoya's line. Or for that matter, Chico Marx. Or Woody Allen, say from 1965-1979. Or Moe from the Three Stooges. Or Bullwinkle the Moose, for pete's sake. And you see the problem--you need a comedian to say that line. If Groucho had said it, it wouldn't matter if the line was correct or made sense--it would just matter that Groucho was driving another adversary crazy. Director Rob Reiner and screenwriter Goldman could not or would not create a world where the line could work. The way the fine actor Mandy Patinkin (and he really is good here) delivers the line, in the world of the movie that Reiner and Goldman created, it seems to be a reasonable observation that happens to be wrong. And you start thinking things like, "but inconceivable really does mean what Vizzini thinks it means." And that's not funny.

The same thing goes wrong with the equally famous Vizzini death scene. Shawn, as Vizzini, throws out a number of (now heavily-quoted) non-sequiturs that needed a comedian's delivery. "Never get into a land war with Asia"? Really? Why is Vizzini even saying that? But now imagine Boris Badanov, Fearless Leader, or Bullwinkle saying it. Now it's funny. To put the problem into sharper focus, let me paraphrase Leonard Maltin's observation about Billy Crystal and Carol Kane--they seem to have walked in from another movie, or something to that effect. And Maltin's right--the movie they walked in from is the movie The Princess Bride should have been. Because Crystal and Kane are, yes!--comedians. And their scene is funny. There are two more comedians in the movie, Christopher Guest and Peter Cook (Guest is the one who killed Montoya's father; Cook is the Impressive Clergyman), and they're funny, too. In fact, there's a fair amount of funny in the movie--but no comedians in the key roles, and no world where their comedy can reign unfettered. Imagine, for example, Allan Jones and Kitty Carlisle getting all the funny lines in "A Night at the Opera." And that's what's wrong with The Princess Bride.

I understand that AFI has rated the movie as one of the greatest LOVE STORIES of all time, too. Caucasian, please.

Next time, another movie you probably like a lot that I can partially spoil for you, unless I can't think of any more.

shoop and still nothing at stake: Darwin in Malibu

You probably know Inherit the Wind--terrific play and a terrific movie. Well, the Spencer Tracy-Fredric March movie was great--there was a made for TV remake with Jason Robards and Kirk Douglas that was kind of "Inherit the Wind Lite" (Inherit the Breeze?), plus a couple of others that I haven't seen. Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee based their courtroom drama on the historical Scopes "Monkey" trial, and the tide and plot turn on Henry Drummond (the Clarence Darrow figure) catching Matthew Harrison Brady (the William Jennings Bryan stand-in) on a literal Biblical point. It's a great scene where debating the possibility of evolution becomes an elaborate and highly satisfying "Gotcha!" moment--satisfying and dramatic, because not only a man's career, but in a sense, the future of science education in America is at stake.

The other great moment comes at the end, involving E.K. Hornbeck (that is, H.L. Mencken), the snarky reporter who has been Drummond's staunch supporter while laughing at the town and at Brady for being a bunch of ignorant rubes. Drummond kicks Hornbeck to the curb, and it's worth a cheer as Drummond chastises Hornbeck for his sneering cynicism regarding the town, Brady, and the schoolteacher on trial, Cates--"I tell you Brady had the same right as Cates--the right to be wrong!" Would that all snarks could be put down that hard and actually learn something from the experience.

Crispin Whittell wrote Darwin in Malibu, and although the cast of characters includes Darwin himself, his staunch real-life supporter Thomas Huxley, and equally staunch spiritual opponent Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, the story is almost identical to that of Inherit the Wind, from Darwin dissing Huxley to the final consideration that there might be room for evolution and faith. There's even a "gotcha" moment in a discussion between Huxley and Wilberforce, as Wilberforce has to concede that some sort of evolution must have occurred following the Great Flood. So why does this play roll over and die while Inherit the Wind triumphs? The key word in that sentence before last is "discussion"--that's why nothing's at stake, and why this story doesn't matter a bit. Whittell, I would guess, has read of a lot of Stoppard, and puts his historical figures incongruously in a Malibu beach house where they interact with a modern Malibu beach babe with a story (not all that interesting, unfortunately) of her own. But the ideas and the "gotcha" moments are neither electric nor satisfying in and of themselves. I was rooting for this play when I read it and when I later saw it in production, even while it was lying there like a lox both as literature and theatre--I appreciated the cleverness and the off-beat set-up. But if Act I is characters chatting amiably and Act II is characters chatting amiably, there's nothing in the air but fatal predictability--so much so that even when we get a last-minute would-be curveball, it merits no more than a mild "Oh."

For the next few entries, I'm going to look at movies that people like a lot, and talk about what's wrong with them--way to alienate your only followers, there, Shoop.

shoop and nothing at stake, part 1

For a birthday present, Mrs. Shoop and I took a friend to see the long-running musical Wicked. We had fun, but I was bothered by a few elements of the show, and it took me a while to figure out what was missing for me. I think I've got it now. It has to do with "the stakes."

As an occasional actor, I would hear "raise the stakes" from directors more than occasionally. I would always want to respond with a witty retort along the lines of "oh, yeah?", but I never got around to it. And much to my chagrin, I find myself using the phrase when I direct--we do, metaphorically, become our parents. The phrase means to invest more emotionally in the situation--there needs to be more at stake, otherwise you've got a conversation or a discussion when you need something huge and life-changing.

With musicals, the general wisdom is that characters sing when the stakes are so high, there's no other way to express their feelings. And that, I think, is primarily what's wrong with Wicked. There are plenty of high stakes in the story itself--it's the Wizard of Oz from the point of view of the "Wicked" Witch of the West, and she's in the center of an emotionally loaded story, except when anybody sings, and the stakes disappear. Which, for a musical, should be absolutely deadly.

The songs are by Stephen Schwartz, and the thing about Schwartz is that he's still the same goofy guy who found himself the composer of Godspell and Pippin all at once back in the 70s. The songs were never that great, but they were pleasant and occasionally clever, and they had some youthful enthusiasm. And he's still writing pleasant and occasionally clever songs, but the enthusiasm's gone, and it hasn't been replaced with anything deeper. Moreover, it would appear that the only reason the songs are in the show is that it's a musical--originally with two big musical stars whose names were above the title--and the songs pretty much have to be there. But do they really?

Listen to the Broadway cast recording closely if you haven't seen the show. There's the "I want" song, "The Wizard and I," where the wicked witch voices her deepest aspirations--she wants to work closely with the Wizard to make Oz better. (Interesting note: it's Elphaba, the wicked witch, who gets the "I want" song, so that should make it her story. The fact that Wicked is only partially her story is another one of the problems.) Fine, that song needs to be there. But a song where Glinda and Elphaba sing about "loathing" each other? Why, exactly? How about they say, "I hate you," and "I hate you more," and then move on to the next scene? Or "Popular"? Okay, yes, it gave Kristin Chenoweth a big comic number, and you have to give Krtistin Chenoweth the big comic number, and it also gave spunky future showgirls all over the world a song to learn, lip-synch to, and channel their inner Chenoweths. But no way does the situation--Glinda gives Elphaba tips to be popular--warrant a song. There are power ballads for Elphaba, at least two or three, and they all sound the same and could be taken care of with a few lines of dialogue. There's never enough at stake to get the characters singing. Occasionally the songs, and the performers, provide some entertainment, but it's entertainment that has nothing to do with story or character.

Wicked probably would have made a cool straight play. But it's a musical, and my goodness, what a mammoth cultural juggernaut it is. One more thing--the merchandising that the legions of tween girls have to score either before the show or during the intermission. You have two main choices--green attire that encourages "Defying Gravity," recalling Elphaba's big end-of-Act-One number celebrating empowerment and possibility (and yes, a 2-minute monologue would have been more effective here, too), or pink bottoms with the word "Popular" emblazoned on the ass. It's too square of me, I suppose, to worry about "mixed messages," but I do anyway. Maybe girls can defy gravity, but they still have to know about pop-U-lar.

Next time: nothing at stake, part 2--Darwin in Malibu.

shoop and william's doll

I suppose I missed my big opportunity to be topical and say something about Obama's Peace Prize. But really, all I have to say about it that I see the prize as a kind of Saving Private Ryan medal, with the Nobel Committee in the role of Tom Hanks, telling Obama to "earn it." Which is fine with me. Of course, if it's a slap in the face to our former president, I guess that's okay, too--he can handle it. But really, I'd much rather write about my friend William and his doll.

For those of you who didn't pick up on the reference right away, "William Wants a Doll" is a segment from "Free to Be You and Me," a children's special that made a huge impression on me and at least some of my peers. It first aired in 1974 or thereabouts, and it had cartoons, puppets, songs, a slew of guest stars, a distinctly 1970s "let's break down the traditional gender roles" sensibility, and a lot of Marlo Thomas. If you revisit the program after many years, or if you see it for the first time, you'll probably think, "Damn, that's a lot of Marlo Thomas. A LOT. I mean, wow, I kinda liked 'That Girl' and all, but damn, that's a lot of Marlo Thomas." At least, that's what I thought. Come to think of it, I think that's what I was thinking when I first saw it. Now, I know I should give her due credit--Thomas was the producer, and she's the one who made it happen. So if she wants to narrate all the cartoons, provide 90% of the voices, and appear in all the live-action and musical segments, she certainly has every right to do so. It just helps if you like Marlo Thomas. A lot.

The reason "William Wants a Doll" stands out for me is that I use that segment, courtesy of YouTube, on my students when we start reading essays on gender roles. I showed it a week or so ago in class, and one of the "real" professors pounded on my closed classroom door asking me to turn it down. Well, I can't blame Real Professor entirely--the chorus does get a bit insistent: "A doll, a doll, William wants a doll..." with Alan Alda and the kid backup singers milking the childish maliciousness for all its worth. (Marlo Thomas was the voice of William. Like I said, she's all over this thing.) At any rate, the song and cartoon tell the story of William, who wants a baby doll--not in the Karl Malden-Caroll Baker-Eli Wallach sense, but a doll to play "daddy" with (gee, that still sounds sexual, doesn't it?). The dad tries to "man" William up by giving him manly games like baseball and marbles and badminton (badminton?). And William, Alan Alda is quick to point out, is good at all these games--no nancy boy, our Bill. But he still wants a doll. Only grandma is groovy enough to catch on to what William really wants--a chance to practice being a father, which is why little boys should be encouraged to play with dolls.

So I asked the kids after they saw it what they thought. "Guess William wants a doll," said one of the brighter ones. I asked them what they'd think if their son wanted a doll. Some of the girls were okay with it--if it were a baby as opposed to a Barbie or one of the Bratz. Some of the girls were dead set against the idea--MAYBE the kid could play with his sisters' dolls if the dolls happened to be lying around, but no way were they buying their son a doll. No such division among the boys--their sons were not playing with any freakin' dolls--it would be cool action figures or nothing.

So was "Free to Be You and Me" a bust? In some ways, it was. Despite Rosey Grier's best efforts, most boys (and their parents) do not believe it's all right to cry, and we don't all buy into the idea that gender roles need to be shaken or stirred. What's left is some nostalgia and some genuine entertainment. Listen to the not-quite-muppet babies arguing--one of them sounds like Mel Brooks, and he's hilarious. (Yes, the other baby is Marlo Thomas.) And when Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge and friends (and Marlo) are singing "Circle of Friends?" You know they've all just gotten high. And Billy deWolfe, one of the last of the old-time radio/movie/TV sissies-who-can't-quite-come-out (and one of whose last performances this was--you'd probably recognize his voice as the evil magician in "Frosty the Snowman") telling the crying kid that a sissy is someone who's afraid to cry because other people will think he's a sissy? How marvelously subversive. And, although for some reason they cut this in the Nick at Nite rebroadcast, there's a great bit with Dustin Hoffman performing Herb Gardner's monologue "How I Crossed the Street for the First Time All By Myself." Priceless. And Marlo's not in that one.

In the last analysis, as an agent of social change, Free to Be You and Me perhaps inevitably fell short. And there's a shitload of Marlo Thomas. But it's fun. And once you've seen "William Wants a Doll," just try to get that chorus out of your head.

shoop and the bye bye birdie camp

Bye Bye Birdie is back in its first ever Broadway revival since becoming what the current website refers to as a "sleeper" hit back in 1960. That production originally ran about a year and a half (607 performances), back when a show that ran a year and a half could still be called a smash. The current revival features John Stamos, Gina Gershon, and Bill Irwin in the roles created by Dick Van Dyke, Chita Rivera, and Paul Lynde (back then, Rivera got first billing). The revival's director, Robert Longbottom, has a lot of Good Ideas, like most professional directors do, but he had this to say about Bill Irwin playing the dad role that Lynde had played on stage and later in the 1963 film version--something to the effect of, we're going to rescue this role from the one of the campiest performances of all time.

Rescue a role from Paul Lynde? Seriously? Longbottom's statement displays a sad lack of understanding of 1) camp, 2) Paul Lynde, and 3) the show he happens to be reviving. First off, camp has two connotations, both germane in this case--one, the kind of winking, we know how silly and corny this is, but we're going to pretend to play it straight kind of attitude that dates back to such shows as Dames at Sea onstage and Batman on TV. The other not unrelated meaning refers to a distinctly gay sensibility meant to send up or comment upon seemingly "straight" material. Both meanings, and devices, are very helpful in putting on Bye Bye Birdie in the PROFESSIONAL theatre world, as opposed to the world where most of us found ourselves in or working on a production--community theatre and high school. (For the record, both Mrs. Shoop and I were in productions of Bye Bye Birdie in our respective youths--she as Rose, the lead, and me as Harvey Johnson, forever trying to hook up with Charity Garfein during the Telephone Hour number.)

In high school productions in particular, you put in a lot of the kids, you throw in the teachers and maybe the principal, and everybody gets a good laugh at everybody else. In fact, the kids get the last laugh, as it should be--they get their side of the "parents don't get it" humor from the show, plus they get to make fun of the music their parents and teachers used to like (or perhaps now, grandparents used to like) by pretending to go crazy for it. In the professional theatre world, as a recent Sunday Times article astutely pointed out, Bye Bye Birdie is a tougher proposition. Its too-innocent and too-square look at the Elvis phenomenon (already about 3 years out of date when the show opened) needed that "camp" sensibility to put the show's not entirely compatible parts (rock and roll spoof plus old-fashioned romance) in perspective. Enter Paul Lynde.

Lynde was campy before we had a word for it, hilarious if you got that he was gay, and still hilarious if you didn't. There's a moment during the 1969 (I think) Tony Awards where Lynde tears through a rendition of "Kids," sneering through the obvious lyrics and pulling laughs where they just shouldn't exist--it's amazing to watch. Or just listen to him yell, "Ed, I love you!" at the end of "Hymn for a Sunday Morning" (a tribute to Ed Sullivan) on the Broadway cast recording--the show needed that, and benefitted from it tremendously. And here's the thing--the show STILL needs that sensibility, now more than ever. Why? Because along with its goofy, square innocence, Bye Bye Birdie inadvertently predicted a number of cultural milestones, from the Beatles (mass teen hysteria) through Hair (rock music in the Broadway musical), and on through American Idol (the power of TV to create a musical celebrity). But you can't sell the show as being that clever about the future, any more than it was ever that clever about its recent past. The show itself was never meant to be, in the words of one of its parody rock and roll songs, "Honestly Sincere." It was, and is, a genial cartoon. A new production can't recreate Paul Lynde's distinctive (and, it's worth noting, often used in cartoons) voice, but to run away from it is to misunderstand what the show had going for it in the first place.

What this director needs to do is listen to Lynde voice some of his great cartoon creations for a day or two--say, Mildew Wolf, Templeton the Rat, and the Hooded Claw--plus throw in some Uncle Arthur from "Bewitched." Then he might realize that this "campiest performance of all time" is and will always be the heart and soul of Bye Bye Birdie.

shoop and really tasteless holocaust humor

This one was going to be about The Hangover, but I find that I have comparatively little to say about it. Don't get me wrong--it's funny as hell, with a brilliantly built script and hysterical comic turns from just about everybody. And as for Zach Galifianakis, there are just three words necessary--not since Belushi. (I almost put a period after each word, but that's a pre-adolescent, sub-literate habit which does no one any good.) The thing is, I'm so late getting to this one, it's not news to anybody. At some point, I might point to this movie again as a paragon of comic screenplay construction, but for now I want to focus on something that almost amounts to a throwaway line, but which nonetheless had me laughing hysterically, and then wondering about what I was laughing at.

One of the guys in The Hangover, Stu the dentist, laments the fact that he gave his grandmother's "Holocaust" ring to a stripper. Alan, Galifianakis' character, responds, "I didn't know they gave rings at the Holocaust." Now one thing upon which most of us agree is that there's absolutely nothing funny about the Holocaust. The systematic and methodical murder of millions still, and will forever, stand as one of mankind's most horrific atrocities.

So it takes some balls to make fun of it, or find humor in it. Such jokes, when they work, elicit those big, shocked, appalled laughs--initial disgust followed by sheer delight that you just don't get with most "did you ever notice..." jokes. How much Holocaust humor do I enjoy? It's worth thinking about...

1) Mr. Floppy, on "Unhappily Ever After"--this was not, I should state up front, an underrated or overlooked show. It was pretty stupid, but at its best, entertainingly so--never more so than when Bobcat Goldthwait, as Mr. Floppy's voice (he was a toy bunny), would go off on some tangent, the producers' admission that whatever the plot was, wasn't that important. At some point, Jack, the only member of the family who can talk to the bunny, mentions something about learning French. The only phrase you need to know in French, Mr. Floppy explains, is "blah blah blah blah blah blah. That's French for, 'The Jews are in the cellar. Please do not disturb the wine.'" Just plain wrong on so many levels--and hysterically funny.

2) The Producers--yes, the stage musical was, and remains, very funny. But the 1967 movie--just 22 years after the end of World War II--was a horrible lapse in taste. And two recognizably Jewish men putting on a musical that promised to give us "the Hitler with a song in his heart?" It's still hard to believe Mel Brooks went there. But he did, and the laughs are still remarkably potent.

3) Life is Beautiful--this one got a lot of backlash after its initial acclaim. Somehow, we found a lot to be embarrassed about--this simple movie with its message that sheer love and playful humor can overcome humanity's greatest evil seemed insultingly naive to those who gave the film serious second thoughts. Well, fuck second thoughts--this is Roberto Benigni's masterpiece.

Not many examples here, understandably. In a world where such atrocities can happen, and in the same world where so many people can deny that it ever happened, this is bitter, pungent humor, as excellent as it is rare.

shoop and short plays

I just finished participating in a short play festival in Manhattan. I've written a few 10-minute plays here and there, and I've seen a good many. The festival was fun, and it gave me a chance to work with some great actors (and great people, period) whom I hadn't seen in a while. It started me thinking about short plays in general. Not the "one-act," so much, which we generally think of as running a little longer, but in particular the 10-minute play. I realized I don't know all that much about them.

There are at least a couple of major showcases--the 10-minute festival at Louisville, and the collections that Samuel French publishes each year after productions in New York. Lately, the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) has been publishing the plays from their play development workshops. It makes me wonder--are there any "classic" 10-minute plays? Any masterpieces? When we go see an evening of short-short plays, we expect unevenness. We expect a few that we like, which we praise with "cute" or "sweet" or "funny," along with some that rate as "okay," and some clunkers. So far as I know, we don't expect more than that. I wonder how great a 10-minute play can be.

I've noticed a few things. It's darn hard to pull off a serious 10-minute play. Things just have to happen too fast. If you played "Oedipus the King" in 10 minutes, it'd be funny. As for funny plays in 10-minutes, they often seem a lot like sketches. There's a difference, all right, but sometimes it can be blurry. Something else--some darn good actors get involved in these things. Actors' Equity actors, up-and-coming actors, some old, some fresh-faced, but all highly skilled. They want parts, and they want to act, and they'll go for the short play if they're not doing something else (often another short play). There must be something to the form that's appealing.

One of the first short-story collections I got through was one by John Cheever--he's not one of my all-time favorites, but I like "O Youth and Beauty," because it features a guy hurdling over furniture and meeting a pretty funny end, and "The Swimmer," where a guy swims a lot. My point is, in literature, there are acknowledged masters of the short form--the short story. Are there acknowledged masters of the 10-minute play? Would we read a collection?

At any rate, I'm going to look into this further. I might find out a few interesting things.

shoop and dead Howard da Silva

Faulkner tells us that "memory believes before knowing remembers." (If you're a Faulkner fan, you're welcome. Now get out of here.) At any rate, I was thinking of that when I got to revisit a cherished memory--or really, the memory of somebody's memory. It involves my best friend, and a fairly notable dead character actor named Howard da Silva.

da Silva (ne Silverblatt) knocked around a long time on stage, film, and TV. He was the original Jud Fry in "Oklahoma!" in 1943--there's a "betcha didn't know." Dr. Who fans (I hear there are a lot of those) might know his voice as a sometime narrator. But for me, he was Ben Franklin--he'd played the role in "1776" onstage and in the movie (though you don't hear him on the original Broadway recording due to illness). When I was in middle school, our class trip was to see a screening of "1776," and we all laughed whenever the characters said something we thought was dirty. So for a while, I thought Howard da Silva was just about the funniest guy in the world, with his little jokes about the difference between an ox and a bull and his casual use of the term "bastard." When I saw the film again much later, I still thought it was terrific, though I started to wish da Silva didn't titter at his own witticisms quite so much. Still, I thought it was a fairly valid acting choice (Franklin probably did crack himself up), and when I thought of Ben Franklin, I thought he had to look and sound like da Silva (and certainly not Pat Hingle, who I saw in a pretty good Broadway revival. Oh, Hingle was fine, all right, but no way was he Franklin).

So I had considerable interest when, in college, my best friend told me about a film he saw on a class trip--da Silva was Franklin again, this time in a 20-minute educational film created around the nation's bicentennial. Apparently, if you were of a certain age and your class trip led you to Philadelphia, you pretty much had to see it. And my best friend had this way of making the film seem hilarious--in a way that's pretty hard to render into print. But he imitated da Silva emoting about the death of his young child "Frankie" and then veering very suddenly into brisk enthusiasm--"I had a son...he was born and died... and then I set to work on my printing press!!"--accompanied by jolly harpsichord music. And I knew that one day, I'd find myself in Philadephia and that I would see this film for myself.

It took many, many years. I moved to Philadelphia in mid-life, and I wondered if they still showed the film, and if so, where--the Franklin Institute? The Constitution Center? But I stumbled upon it on a trip to Franklin Court, where his old house and post office are recreated around Market and 3rd. And there was an underground museum much in need of funding where they show three films in rotation--the Disney cartoon "Ben and Me," which I vaguely remember kind of predicted "Ratatouille," where Ben is a nitwit and the mouse has all the answers; "The Real Ben Franklin," a somewhat more recent (the 90s) film narrated by a serious-folksy David Hartman; and "Portrait of a Family," with yes, the one, the only, Howard da Silva.

And there he was, mucking around with the printing press (he didn't invent the printing press, of course, but he was a printer and publisher), and then later, reminiscing about his family..."I had a son... he was born and died..." But no, not quite the hilarious jarring shift my friend had remembered. He then mentions the next child, Sarah, or Sally, and then maybe he talks about his stove...I'm not sure. It's a bad enough film, with da Silva allowed to emote and mug into the camera to his heart's content, and it's pretty obvious that none of the other actors are really in the film with him, but it wasn't quite as a funny as my friend's memory--or my memory of my friend's memory.

Still, I'll probably see "1776" again the next chance I get. And I do carry from the educational film my own little memory--da Silva looking impishly into the camera and saying, "Enter a proposal with your eyes open, and go through marriage with your eyes shut. [giggle, pause] You know what that's from, don't you? [wrinkles nose at us] Poor Richard's Almanac!" And then, I think, he should have set to work on his printing press. Maybe that's how I'll tell it one day.

shoop and world's greatest dad

This time, I'm afraid the build-up is going to greatly exceed the payoff--I promised word on the great movie I saw using the special "on demand" function that occasionally shows indie films that are still in theaters. That would be too bad, because "World's Greatest Dad" is a darkly funny, very sharp satire, and you ought to take a look.



George S. Kaufman probably would have taken back "Satire is what closes on a Saturday night" if he knew how many people were going to quote it. More to the point, satire dies a little bit every time somebody doesn't get it, or every time someone tries to be "satirical" and fails miserably. And both those things happen often, because satire is the biggest asshole of the arts--it tells you to your face that you're an idiot, and dares you to laugh at yourself. That's why satirists often hide behind a mask of geniality--it's easy to smile with mild amusement when it's lovable, folksy Pogo Possum saying, "We have met the enemy, and he is us." In our time, occasionally Mike Judge (Beavis and Butt-Head, Office Space, Idiocracy) and those bad boys of South Park pull off some real satire, and now we can add Bobcat Goldthwait (now imagine Goldthwait saying that in his trademark strangled screech, which apparently he doesn't like doing anymore. Can't blame him--that had to hurt).



World's Greatest Dad features, among other elements, Robin Williams' best performance in, well, I'm not sure how long. His character is defeated and dejected--a disliked high school teacher and failed writer (that's almost redundant) scorned by his hilariously dim and profane son, patronized by his officious principal (props to Bobcat for casting old "Unhappily Ever After" co-star Geoff Pierson), and played by his much younger girlfriend. Williams inhabits the loser-figure fully, with no twinkling and no "inspired" riffs for the supporting characters to laugh at. His (very few) students stare at him blankly, and he's long given up any dreams he had of inspiring anybody. What turns Williams' fortunes around is the most horrible event a father can imagine--and the failed writer uses his skills to re-stage a incredibly stupid accident into cosmic tragedy. Suddenly, he has more students than he can handle, book deals, media attention, and the full sympathy and respect of musician Bruce Hornsby (it makes sense in context). It's dark, subversive, sometimes hilarious, and always very smart, even if you quibble with the perhaps too-redemptive ending.

Now I'll have to go back and check out "Shakes the Clown."

shoop and (500) days

I've seen two great movies lately--one in the theatre and one "on demand." At first I thought I'd tackle them both in one entry, but I think I'll divide them up. Because "(500) Days of Summer" got me thinking about romantic comedies in general, Zooey Daschenel in particular, and why this movie works so incredibly well.

You've probably noticed that without trying, you've seen a lot of trailers for a lot of "rom-coms." This despite the fact that by definition, this genre is really limited. The couple meets--yes, we can mix it up now with gay couples, but that doesn't make the situations any more fresh--they like each other, and there's an obstacle or two. And either they part ways (the occasional American indie and most European variations on the theme), or they stay (or get back) together--traditionally, what audiences tend to want. There's no way all of them can work, and many of them rightfully get ignored or shoot straight to DVD. So why are there so many in the course of a movie-going year?

The potential payoff is huge.

The rom-com is relatively cheap to produce, by Hollywood standards. So a $75-100 million take rocks everybody's world. And you never know when it's going to happen. Critics who have dismissed the last three "rom-coms" as "typical" all of a sudden write reviews that producers would write for themselves if they could, favorable word of mouth spreads, and bang! Big score for Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. Was "The Proposal" that fresh and that funny? Well, it was fun. But the huge take came from nowhere. And sometimes, you don't need the critics to win. Shortly after "The Proposal" came "The Ugly Truth," which critics universally hated, and with two stars you wouldn't think anyone would want to see together (I'm having trouble remembering their names). Not as big a score as "The Proposal," but a solid score nonetheless. So when "(500) Days of Summer" promised something a little different, one had a right to be skeptical.

Terrific movie. Nor am I saying this simply because I've been crushing on Zooey D. since "Failure to Launch" (NOT since "Mumford," I should add. Yes, I saw "Mumford," but it was one of those movies that seemed to disappear as I was watching it, and I had no idea I was seeing anyone or anything special. I might or might not give it another chance one of these days). And not just because Joseph Gordon-Levitt nails the Hall and Oates number--a delirious song-and-dance sequence that echoes and trumps the musical number in "Enchanted." And not even because the movie makes L.A. romantic in a way that, say, "L.A. Story" failed to do, largely because the of the relative coldness of the two leads, Steve Martin and that actress who used to be with Steve Martin. There's a slew of great ideas and shrewd writing in this film--it would justify its existence if it only proved that guys get together and obsess about girls the way girls do with guys (something my wife didn't know. Oh, yes, hon, we surely do). The kicker, though, is how the two leads relate to each other--they really seem to enjoy each other's company. Amazing concept. And if you think about rom-coms that work, there's the common denominator.

It also helps that "(500) Days of Summer" has one of the coolest last lines ever. Wait for it, and smile.

shoop and the dead telethon

The Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon was a major milestone for me as a kid. It not only put the final nail in summer's coffin, but it helped me to learn to be concerned for People With Problems. Growing up, you either pretty much had to watch it, since nothing else was on, or you had to do something else, like go outside or read a book.

Watching it this year was just sad. Ed McMahon's gone, and Jerry himself didn't make an appearance while I was watching--just a bunch of co-hosts with whom I'm not familiar. The contrast was that much more glaring when they showed clips from old telethons for the Las Vegas lead-ins. There was Jerry, doing that matchless goofball physical shtick with the Russian boys folk choir, or even trading weak jokes with Milton Berle. And you see what's missing: Old Show Biz. Between the public service announcements and the presentation of various checks from 7-11 management and Knights of Columbus officers, you had all of Jerry's friends and acquaintences from radio, TV, the Catskills, and Vegas, doing their stuff. There was Norm Crosby and his malapropisms, which always made Dad crack up. There were Sinatra and Sammy, and Charo doing her cootchie-cootchie thing. And major movie stars and up-and-coming performers wanted to be there, too. Sometimes you were actually watching it to see a favorite performer--that didn't always work out, because they might have been on past your bedtime, or worse, they might have been on during the local cut-aways (I'll always remember my disappointment as the show returned to Vegas just in time to see the Hudson Brothers making their exit.)

And now? Not even Disney or Nickelodeon stars show up. The anonymous hosts pass the introductions back and forth as they make no impression whatsoever. Jerry could be obnoxious and in-your-face, and he sang way too much for his (or the viewers') own good, but he certainly made an impression. I paid up as I usually do, but it's not the same.

Let's hear tympani, Ed.

shoop and the 80s, part 3

I saw a fair amount of movies during the 80s, but comparatively few have left anything behind. I seem to remember enjoying some at the time. I mean, I had the "Indiana Jones" theme running through my head for a while, but I didn't need to see it again, nor did I need the video, nor the subsequent DVDs or blue rays or whatever they're called. "E.T." mainly introduced me to Reese's Pieces. I dutifully completed the original "Star Wars" trilogy, and I thought it was fine, neither more nor less. I never got around to stuff like "Desperately Seeking Susan," which taught a lot of girls to be Madonna-like. (I'm not sure what it taught guys, except to ignore Rosanna Arquette.)

When I think of the 80s on film, I think of the late John Hughes, but even his oeuvre kind of runs together in a blur of Molly Ringwald, various sensitive, handsome guys, and a couple of memorable nerds. The main lesson I took away from "Pretty in Pink" was that the nerd best friend CANNOT BE THE BOYFRIEND, EVER. Granted, that wasn't entirely Hughes' fault--the test audiences told him where it was at, and it wasn't with our Molly having the last dance with Duckie, with or without David Bowie. (It doesn't work that way for girl nerds, because, as we all know, girl nerds are secretly gorgeous once they clean up and take their glasses off.)

Hmm, 80s films. There's "Diner," one of my all-time favorites (if you haven't seen it, stop reading immediately and go get a copy). What else? Eddie Murphy was the funniest guy in the world for a while, unless it was Danny DeVito. Robin Williams was great in the under-appreciated "The World According to Garp"--writer Steve Tesich actually improved upon John Irving's fine novel. "The Big Chill" taught me about the fun of ensemble acting and groovy soundtracks--I wasn't the intended audience, but I liked to pretend I was. Was that really it?

Ah, yes--one more. A hot redhead who had issues with her dad. She was also a cartoon mermaid. Nobody's perfect.

shoop and the 80s, part 2

What else stayed with me from the 80s? Well, there was a fair amount of music. A whole lot of "Thriller," for one thing. You either owned it, or you knew someone who did, and even if neither of those was the case, you pretty much heard the whole album on the radio. But there were a few individual songs from various artists that stood out as well--not necessarily because they were good, but one way or another, they left their mark.

Naked Eyes, "Always Something There to Remind Me": kind of boring, really, but it definitely takes me back to the Georgetown campus pub (called, appropriately enough, The Pub) and plenty of reasonably-priced beer.

Madonna, "Borderline": This one takes me back to being a lifeguard at the Yates Field House pool. Over the years, I guess I've liked Madonna less and less, but this one's kinda cute and bouncy, and it reminds me of pools.

Billy Joel, "Pressure": summed up the whole college experience for me.

Neil Diamond, "Heartlight": Remember Neil Diamond? Remember E.T.? If we weren't already embarrassed about loving E.T. so much, this song pretty much put it in perspective.

Pat Benetar, "Love is a Battlefield": The video had dialogue in it. And we were sore amazed.

The Bus Boys, "The Boys are Back in Town": Remember 48 Hours? Remember when Eddie Murphy was hysterically funny?

Tears for Fears, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World": springtime, senior year, when I was convinced my future was bright, interesting, and full of promise. Well, it was certainly full of something.

New Radicals, "You Get What You Give": Aha--not an 80s song, right? But the first few times I heard it, I not only was convinced it was an 80s song, but I could remember where I was at Georgetown when I first heard it. You gotta watch out for those faux 80s songs.

What else stayed with me? Maybe some movies. We'll look at those next time.

shoop and the 80s, part 1

I tried to block out most of the 80s. The 80s was college, and college wasn't much fun. The second half of the 80s was realizing that I wasn't ready for the outside world, despite college, and that wasn't much fun, either. But a few things stayed with me--you can't block out a whole decade. I guess I was thinking about the 80s with the passing of John Hughes, whose movies defined the 80s for a lot of people. I was also thinking about the 80s because I used a Barnes & Noble gift card to pick up a DVD of another Big 80s moment--the final episode of "MASH."

When it first aired, it was second semester, sophomore year at Georgetown. The residents of Arts Hall, and some residents' friends, had gathered in the basement to watch it on TV. I was late--I was rehearsing something or other, I think. By the time I came in, most of the Heavy Stuff had already happened, and I remember laughing too loudly at Colonel Potter saying love always gets you into trouble, because I had a crush on someone--I couldn't swear who it was, but I can narrow it down to two or three. And it ended, and that was it.

It's a long episode that doesn't get played in the regular syndicated rotation very often. I caught it once or twice, but I still wondered if I was missing something--a scene here, a moment there. So I bought it, it arrived, and I watched. And it's interesting--I offer a few stray observations.

The big story was Hawkeye--he's cracked up by the time the episode begins. And it's dramatic as all get-out, no question--must have been quite the shock 26 years ago. (The peasant woman didn't really kill her chicken.) And yes, Klinger stays in Korea--heavy duty irony. Father Mulcahy loses part of his hearing, but did we ever take him seriously, anyway? (At any rate, I never did.) The story that stayed with me was Winchester--the proper Bostonian, always just on the verge of caricature. He has to learn yet another lesson about pride and vanity--how many of those lessons did he have to learn over the years, anyway? And why didn't any of them stick? Nevertheless, the episode is hardest on this character--the storyline takes away his beloved classical music, a cruel reminder of the slaughtered innocent musicians he had come to befriend. Overall, I would call it worthwhile viewing if you're a MASH-watcher.

In the end, though, I'm only getting a xerox of the main event. The main event was 1983, and there was a community of fans laughing, tsk-tsking, and sobbing over old fictional friends. I suppose I can't recreate 1983 any more than I can block it out.

shoop and bruno

The best way to sum up Sasha Baron Cohen's latest, Bruno, is that it suffers from a bad case of wanting to be Borat. If you were a fan of the Ali G show that ran on HBO for a while in this country, you could see it coming. That's where a lot of us were introduced to Cohen's three major creations, Ali G, Borat, and Bruno. Of the three, Bruno was always the least hysterical, possibly because the persona was the most familiar. After all, Ali G was a clueless English rapper wannabe, and Borat was the "innocent" from Kazakhstan, which most of us couldn't find on a map. But Bruno was "fabulous"--Viennese accent aside, we'd seen him before.

The TV Bruno had his moments--particularly confronting a minister who specializes in converting gays (Cohen revisits this territory in the movie to diminishing effect) or saying outrageously gay things to people at gun fairs (in the movie, he does this on a hunting trip--again, to diminishing effect). But even at Bruno's best, his routines never rise above the raucous practical joke, relying on the sort of shock that above-average crank call shows achieve. It's (intermittently) funny, and there's always an element of "I can't believe he did that." And Cohen/Bruno gets props for never breaking character, even when he's getting chased or when people throw things at him. Nevertheless, while Borat, by gaining the confidence of his dupes and getting them to reveal their most shocking beliefs, propelled that movie into the realm of corrosive satire, Bruno, by contrast, merely goads his subjects into saying or doing something mean--the difference is significant. The final climactic set-piece is the biggest let-down--the crowd gets angry when the "wrestling match" becomes a hugely open gay display? You don't have to be a homophobe to be angry for being ripped off. Nor do you have to be Ron Paul to get pissed off that an interview turns out to be a set up for a would-be porn tape. So, all in all, a come-down and a disappointment for the talented Cohen.

Still, it's almost worth it to hear Bruno refer to Mel Gibson as "der fuhrer." Yes, Mel still has it coming.

shoop and whatever works

"Profound" is a dangerous word. If you commit to believing that something or someone is profound, then someone else can turn on you with, "You think THAT's profound? What an intellectual and philosophical lightweight YOU are, then." I do the same thing myself--for example, if someone refers to, say, The Dark Knight as profound, I'm instantly making mock inside my head, if not out loud. But yesterday, I saw a profound movie. The fact that it's also a frequently funny and enormously entertaining movie makes the experience that much more pleasurable. The movie? Woody Allen's latest, Whatever Works.

The movie's backstory is well-documented--Allen wrote the script back in the 70s for Zero Mostel, with whom he'd worked on the Martin Ritt film The Front. Mostel's death put the project on hold until Allen decided to make a movie in New York quickly to avoid a possible actors' strike. For lovers of the Woody of the 70s like me, this project seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime gift--Woody returning to the Sleeper-Love and Death-Annie Hall-Manhattan (and sure, throw in Interiors, too) pool for a refreshing and invigorating (and final?) dip. The greatness of Whatever Works is that it delivers on that huge promise and then some.

It's Allen's "Tempest" and "It's a Wonderful Life"--with Larry David serving admirably as Boris Yelnikoff, the cracked Prospero who has created his own misanthropic island of despair, telling us in the audience directly (only Boris knows that we're watching--that's his magic) that really, it's a horrible, terrible life, but it's up to you to "filch" whatever happiness and wonder you can--whatever works. The genius (or the profound element) of the film is that we get to see simultaneously the wisdom of Boris' worldview, as well as the undeniable fact that Boris has created a good deal of his own misery himself.

There are signs of the younger Woody's more jokey sensibilities--Evan Rachel Wood's Melody plays off the hoariest southern nitwit stereotypes (including the notion that southerners don't get sarcasm), and her parents, played by Patricia Clarkson and Ed Begley, Jr., are painted just as broadly. Nevertheless, thanks largely due to the great, empathic performances by Wood, Clarkson, and Begley, Allen creates a world where these caricatures live, breathe, and even undergo their crazy about-faces in a believable way. They all have to, after all, figure out what works.

Fittingly, Boris, as Allen's most bluntly humanity-hating creation, gets the last word, and something of a happy ending--modified, of course, by the fact that nothing is going to stay happy for long. The fade-out is also, in a perverse paradox, Allen's warmest ending since Hannah and Her Sisters, as Boris tosses aside his magic staff not with a majestic incantation but with a wry, fatalistic shrug.

Is it horrible of me to wish that Whatever Works could be Woody's last film? Nevertheless, even if he putters around for another 5 or 10 years, he can't erase this--yes, profound--achievement.

shoop praises full house

It is not, of course, cool to like "Full House," the ABC family-oriented sitcom that ran from the late 80s to the mid-90s. It's not even retro-cool, the way it's cool to like "The Brady Bunch." Certainly, "Full House" detractors have plenty of legitimate complaints--the inevitable synth strings when the situation became Emotional, Joey's really annoying voices, Bob Saget's blandness, John Stamos' hair jokes, and, of course, the spawning of the Mary Kate-Ashley industry.

And yet--I submit there are reasons this show still retains such popularity in reruns. And no, not for the "normal" reasons, i.e., audiences are stupid (I hold firm to the maxim that while there may be a considerable number of individual nitwits in an audience, the collective audience is always a genius), or that some people really like the Valuable Life Lessons the show offers. It's no coincidence, as far as I'm concerned, that kid actors on the shows that teach Valuable Life Lessons generally wind up being the most disturbed--and, sure enough, "Full House" boasts (at least) one bulimic and one methadone addict. There are elements that make the show worthy of a second or third look, and here they are...

1) The secrets of Danny Tanner: actors are always the most interesting when they're not revealing everything. What Bob Saget wasn't showing as affable neat-freak Danny Tanner was his bluer-than-blue standup side. This works best if you've seen Saget onstage, but try this--go see "The Aristocrats," the movie about standups telling the world's dirtiest joke. The whole movie's a hoot, but pay attention to Saget's contribution. Now go back and watch some "Full House," and imagine Danny Tanner about two seconds away from bursting into a string of vile profanity. Aren't his scenes 10 times more interesting?

2) John Stamos and meta-television: Stamos gave his character (Uncle Jesse, dude!) a distinctive vocal mannerism lifted directly from Archie Bunker, the bigot-hero of the landmark show "All in the Family." It's hard to render into print, but it runs roughly like this: a dismissive and irritated "hah?" at the end of a (usually exasperated) request, as in, "Just change the baby, hah?" Which made perfect sense--of course Stamos' character would have grown up watching "All in the Family," and that's just the sort of thing people do with characters they like and watch a lot. In a cleverer-than-you'd-expect revelation, we see Danny's late wife (Uncle Jesse's older sister) on a video, employing the same mannerism. Actors and writers on this show were really thinking about these people as, well, people.

3) Kimmy Gibler was hot. Okay, you have to wait till the final couple of seasons, but seriously.

4) The crushing tragi-comedy of middle child Stephanie: yes, you need the complete series arc to appreciate this. Check out the first couple seasons of Stephanie--cute, precocious, and armed with a killer catch phrase: "How rude!" As the youngest verbal member of the cast, Jodie Sweetin was free to steal scenes left and right. Now check out the middle years and the rise of Michelle. The show's diabolically brilliant move was to show us the same baby, then little girl, over real time, and the attachment level was enormous. (It's worth repeating--Mary Kate and Ashley became an Industry, and that's no exaggeration.) Michelle gets cuter and gains in attitude, while Stephanie goes through a major awkward period. And, again, the writers remain very clever--giving Stephanie more and more Danny (daddy)-like traits (particularly the nervous jabbering). Had the show lasted another year or two, the psychological depths could have been staggering.

5) Joey and the voices: okay, this element is the hardest one to defend. Examples of Joey's standup were never more than mildly amusing, and only about 1 in 15 of his cast of voices weren't downright annoying. Nevertheless, a few gems stand out: a) Joey's George Jetson--nails it, dude; b) Joey's "Wizard of Oz" bit, especially the Ray Bolger-inflected "A twistah! A twistah!" and c) a stray imitation, a propos of absolutely nothing, of Bill Murray's groundskeeper guy from "Caddyshack." I can't even remember the episode, but it kills.

"Full House"--doomed to derision and under-appreciation, except from those few million of us who appreciate it. And I didn't even mention the jaw-droppingly wacky telethon episode.

shoop and the atheists

Atheists, of course, have every right to be atheists. One of the most powerful moments of Obama's inauguration was his inclusion of non-believers--in the past, our leaders tended to list the various major religions when they wanted to evoke our national crazy quilt, so Obama's message was huge, timely, and absolutely right.

That said, atheists sure bitch a lot.

To be fair, I think American atheists do have one legitimate complaint--our money. If I decided that there was no God, and I still had to proclaim my trust in Him every time I earned or spent some cash, I'd be miffed, no question. And it's worth remembering that putting God on our money and sneaking God into our pledge of allegiance came out of the Cold War 1950s--it's by no means something we Americans have always done. So if atheists feel the need to protest those elements of our country and our society, full speed ahead.

Here's where atheists tend to go wrong. One, they tend to be really, really smug about their atheism. They have three basic arguments for believers: 1) I don't believe because I'm smart; you believe because you're an idiot; 2) I don't believe because I'm brave enough to face reality; you believe because you're scared; and 3) I don't believe because I'm sane; you believe because you're crazy. All three arguments pretty much kill dialogue before it starts.

The other area where militant atheist reasoning hops the track is that they blame a belief in God--anybody's belief in God--for the world's problems. (It's every bit as silly as believers blaming atheism for the world's problems.) Yes, former president Bush claimed that Jesus wanted us in Iraq--but that's not a belief in God issue, that's a being-obtuse-about-one's-belief issue. Same with pharmacists who won't fill certain prescriptions, same with the intelligent design folks, same with any "believer" who's being obnoxious and in-your-face. For all their intelligence and reason, militant atheists seem to miss that point, and pretty consistently. But that's what happens when you're a militant anything, really.

You miss points.

shoop and the 25 random things

Since you're totally sick of these from Facebook, I thought I'd import these from my Facebook page. Twenty-five things about me that will give you no insight whatsoever.

1. Now that I've lived more years than I'm probably going to live, I'm drawn more to long-form improv. I think it's the whole "getting out of my head" thing--horrible cliche, but I'm too intellectually lazy to describe it better.

2. Sometimes I don't realize I've accomplished something kind of cool until someone points it out to me. For example, I've turned my dissertation into a book, and it's due out tomorrow (I use my advance copies as coasters). And somebody told me, "That's really amazing!" And I thought, "Well, yeah, maybe it is..."

3. I believe you get signs and signals throughout your life, but unless you're really spiritually evolved or something like that, you don't connect the dots till later. For instance, when I was a kid, I remember this cartoon book where a kid is answering the phone and saying, "Dad can't come in to work; he's feigning illness today." So "feign" became one of my secret favorite words. When I first met my now wife, she used the word "feign" in a sentence, so I just kinda knew. Of course, it could have been a coincidence.

4. Sleep apnea sucks. I think a good night's sleep would be kinda neat.

5. People mock me for feeling more loyalty to the University of Pittsburgh (grad school) than to Georgetown (undergrad). It's just that at Pitt, I had the undergrad career I always wanted.

6. Most of my play ideas lately involve death and disease. Kinda gross.

7. I like Obama, but I'm keeping my middle name.

8. I'd like to do more research on George M. Cohan, plays that have to do with trials and justice, and plays that involve the I.W.W. (Industrial Workers of the World) in some way.

9. I like marriage. I got married kinda late (just before I turned 38), and I'll bet my parents thought I was gay.

10. I miss Dad (we lost him right around Labor Day, 2007).

11. I was an extra in "I'm Not Rappaport." I was not Rappaport. I think you might be able to see the top of my head, but I wouldn't swear to it.

12. Some years back, one of my plays was produced, and I got a call from someone introducing himself as the character in my play--"Hi, Mike, this is Simeon Pickett." I can't speak for all writers, but I think fictional characters calling me is kinda freaky.

13. Yes, I wrote a play with a character named "Simeon Pickett."

14. I also wrote a play a long time ago with a character named "August Rush." Years later, there was a movie called "August Rush." I guess dumb character names just kind of make the rounds, like other bad ideas.

15. Currently, I have a play that's a semi-finalist in the Hidden River Arts Playwriting Competition--it's called "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)." It's about neither Istanbul nor Constantinople.

16. Speaking of "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)," years ago I was watching one of those Doo-Wop specials that run on PBS stations during pledge drives, and I saw four older gentlemen (who turned out to be The Four Lads) singing "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)." And I thought, what are these old guys doing covering a They Might Be Giants song?

17. Sometimes, it just takes me a while to get it. This comes from being very literal. A friend of mine once said, "It's difficult to be subtle with you." And she was right.

18. If a familiar candy introduces a new flavor or new style, I have to try it. Like the M&Ms with strawberry, or the Snickers with almonds. Once I saw Snickers with "special yellow nougat." I had to have it immediately. Turns out yellow nougat is just yellow, but my curiosity was satisfied.

19. Biggest laugh I ever heard was when watching a rough cut of Beauty and the Beast at Lincoln Center. It was when Belle's father grabs Cogsworth's pendulum and starts messing with it, and Cogsworth huffily says something like, "Release that, if you don't mind." It still makes me laugh.

20. See, the pendulum was phallic in nature, so it was like Belle's father was grabbing... never mind.

21. The second biggest laugh I ever heard was while watching "Angels in America" in New York. One character, referring to Roy Cohn, asks, "Who's the biggest closeted queen in New York?" And his friend responds, "Koch?" But that's a New York joke.

22. Show I most wish I could have been in: "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown." Maybe I'll direct it someday.

23. I haven't watched "Inside the Actors Studio" in a long time, but I used to like it when they asked guests their favorite swear word. My favorite was Holly Hunter, because her favorite swear word was "c***sucker," except with that lisp of hers, it came out "c***shucker."

24. Kid actors don't impress me much. Maybe I'm not being fair, but I'm inclined to think that if a child under 12 or 13 or so gives a great performance, it's the director's doing.

25. Only part I've ever played that I'd like to play again: Matt in "Talley's Folly." Especially since that was college, and now I'm more like Matt's age.

There you have it. I'll try for more substance next time, but no promises.

shoop gives of himself

I spent about five days working with Acting Without Boundaries, who work out of the Haverford School in Haverford, PA. It's handicapped actors putting on an abridged musical--in this case, "The Sound of Music."

This post should be incredibly heartwarming, but there are two problems: I don't write "heartwarming" very well, and I don't, as a general rule, get into heartwarming situations. Mostly, I wanted to speak when spoken to, do what I was told, and try not to fuck things up too much.

(Note: I don't much like profanity in blogs, but I will occasionally use "fuck" as a verb. I think it's a waste as a modifier. For example: what a shame. What a fucking shame. See? Didn't add anything useful, did I?)

Actually, there was one heartwarming moment. One of the young actors, a blond girl in a wheelchair, took a look at the backdrop--a big, panoramic view of the hills that are alive with the sound of music--and said, "I would like to visit the Alps."

"I would, too," I said--yessing, but not yes-anding, as improv pros would point out.

"I would take you," she said to me.

"Thanks," I said. "That's sweet." And it was.

The thing that amazed me was everyone's attitude. The handicapped actors--mostly physically so, but some with discernible learning delays--all wanted to learn their lines letter-perfectly. They would repeat as many times as necessary until they had it. I've directed a few times, and I'd probably strike a deal with Beelzebub to get actors with that kind of attitude. As for the director--well, this man had the patience of at least a couple of saints, and you could throw in a few saint-nominees for good measure. He inspired, he cajoled, he coaxed--and, so far as I knew, never condescended and never lost his respect for the youngsters--never lost it, period. He was responsible for putting 15-20 handicapped actors through their blocking, their costumes, their mikes, and their paces. The play I directed that's going up now has 5 non-handicapped actors, and they were enough to make me pull out my increasingly salt-and-pepper hair. To put it mildly, it puts things in perspective.

I wasn't 100% successful in my quest to not fuck things up, however. I was assigned one costume change for the young lady playing Maria. "You're assisting me?" she asked, with the social accuracy of one skilled in spotting incompetence. Sure enough, during one of the performances, I managed to make taking off her sweater, cowl, and apron into an ordeal long enough to delay a major entrance. For the second performance, I did better, but I also had help. It would seem that the handicapped do not necessarily benefit from my presence.

Still, a good way to get out of your head is to go help people. Even clumsy efforts to help are surprisingly appreciated--that doesn't happen often in life.

shoop and the indispensibles

One of my myriad old bosses once told me that no one is indispensible. And he was probably right. What I'm examining today has to do with Hollywood--or as Bullwinkle used to pronounce it, "Holllly-wood." Movie stars--once upon a time, one of main reasons we went to a movie. Do we still go see stars? And who do we see? Who can't we imagine the movies without? Are there any indispensible stars left? Or is it all franchises, brand names, and niches? I have a few ideas about what stars are left.

Meryl Streep--like her or not, she's the only one we've got, and we go to see her to see what she'll do next. Now in her 60s, her unique combination of heavy-duty Method and heavy-duty Brecht is impossible to duplicate. It's a matter of the way she "disappears" into characters, yet you always are aware that Meryl Streep is doing the disappearing--the accent, the hair, the make-up or lack of it. It's the same sort of port-o-Brecht that Laurence Olivier used to carry around with him--you always knew it was Olivier, no matter what he did, and he damn well wanted you to know it. She's not only the only one who does it, I think she's the only one who would want to do it. And that's why we go see her.

Tom Hanks--yes, "Angels & Demons" is "underperforming" at a little over $130 million (nothing like inflated costs and expectations), but it's also killing overseas. And Hanks still has something in reserve, which he trots out occasionally on talk shows and stuff like The Colbert Report--a twisted sense of humor. Hanks could, and possibly will, reinvent himself with the right director.

Will Smith--he's not around this summer, but he's one of the few people around who can pretty much guarantee a big opening right now. He's equally comfortable in prestige films and middle-of-the-road comic stuff. And I think he's going to get more interesting as he gets older.

Julia Roberts WAS indispensible. Who else could you root for more consistently in the movies, whether she was a good-hearted hooker, good-hearted runaway bride, good-hearted muckraking attorney's aide, or a good-hearted woman trying to sabotage her best friend's wedding. That's what critics of Roberts never got that we fans did--we weren't rooting for her to undermine the wedding, we were rooting for her to wise up. And she does in the end. But she's having trouble negotiating early middle-age--she might have to disappear for 10 years, like Audrey Hepburn, and then come back in the remake of "Robin and Marian."

John Cusack could have been indispensible--he was unpredictable as a young actor. That combination of blankness and alertness meant that you never knew everything about him. Lately, though, you do know everything. Which is a little boring.

Anne Hathaway might make it to indispensible. She's following a similar path to Julia Roberts, but she's already showing signs of greater versatility (plus there's the singing). At any rate, it'll be interesting to watch her try.

I invite my imaginary readers to present their own candidates.

Next time: shoop gives of himself.

shoop and something lighter for twelfth night

I was lucky enough to catch the Public Theatre's production of Twelfth Night in Central Park last week. There are many reasons to recommend it--including Anne Hathaway's lovely turn as Viola. That's not a surprise, though--Hathaway's been doing terrific work for years, and she might just become one of Hollywood's few indispensable personalities (a subject for later). And besides, how can anyone with the same name as Shakespeare's wife not kill in Shakespeare? So, yes, she's great--she even gets away with a totally goofy, non-scripted "Yes!" when she tops Feste at some wordplay--but that wasn't the big surprise for me. The big surprise was that I laughed--heartily, lustily, and often, at Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek.

I've seen Twelfth Night a few times. I've even been in a production--as that classic supernumerary combo, the Sea Captain and the Priest. And, to be sure, I've had to read the play, and write about it, a few more times. And I have never, not once, laughed at Sir Toby and Sir Andrew. I've seen lots of talented people play them, I've read the footnotes so I get the jokes--but nothing. These guys just aren't funny. And Shakespeare devotes pages to their discussions about wacky dances, drinking, and venereal disease, while the story takes a rest. So why are they funny in this production?

It's deceptively simple--Daniel Sullivan, the director, uses what every director needs--more than a concept, more than a Unifying Idea, more than a lot of frou-frou to show how clever and deconstructive he or she is. He uses common sense. If these two clowns are talking about goofy dancing, then they should demonstrate it. Some directors are clever enough to get that much. But to demonstrate it properly, they need musicians and music. So Sullivan provides the music, and the foolish dancing becomes funny, natural, and inevitable. The other part of the equation is a little harder to pin down, because it involves the two actors--in this case, Hamish Linklater and Jay O. Sanders as Sir Andrew and Sir Toby, respectively. Linklater goes for something resembling "random deadpan"--lines like "I am a great lover of beef" come from, and arrive, from nowhere, and somehow Shakespeare becomes funny like those funny moments in Chekhov where characters will come up with something for no good reason, let the other characters think about it, and then let the line drift off into the ether. Sanders is the hale and hearty one, who finds the vulgar in the gentleman, and the gentlemanly in all that's base, gross, and vulgar. They're a great team, and they provide a great time.

It's nice to be reminded why one cherishes theatre. I was lucky enough to be reminded last week. I hope that sort of thing happens to you, too.

shoop and hard-earned love

This one's about cats. Specifically, our cat, Dostoyevsky. He wasn't ours to begin with; our friends had to move from Erie, PA to Waco, TX, and they were afraid their senior-age (then 13) cat couldn't stand the trip. Plus the cat wasn't getting along with their new daughter, so one of them had to go.

Understandably, Dostoy (or Dos, or as my sisters-in-law like to call him, Dos-Equis) didn't take to us immediately. He would claw and nip at us, and turn away, annoyed. Gradually, he was able to train us. And he's come to love us, on his own terms--cats and Charles Foster Kane have that quality in common.

Now, I like dogs, too. And we all know the differences between dogs and cats. There's a reason Old Yeller, Beethoven, and Marley (or Beethoven the 8th, or as I like to call him, That Darn Dog) aren't cats. But if a cat deigns to put up with you, and even show occasional affection, you know you've earned it. After all, Dostoy swats at my nephew and hisses at my niece, and generally treats visitors very shoddily. And sometimes, when we fall short of his desires, he'll still swat at us, too. But every now and then, he'll touch his head to my hand. That's it. No rubbing against me, no licking, and only very restrained purring. It's a little like when Dustin Hoffman touched Tom Cruise's head in Rainman--a huge gesture, and hard-earned. Dogs can be unconditional in their love, faithful, and everything Owen Wilson emotionlessly intones over the Marley and Me soundtrack, and that's just fine. But love from a cat? You have to earn it.

Next time--shoop and something lighter for twelfth night

shoop and the smug-com

I just saw "Away We Go" with the missus, and we had a pretty good time--actually, she had a better time than I did. My lovely wife was able to achieve total identification with the the two leading characters, a somewhat directionless 30-something couple who try to find a place to settle down to raise their soon-to-arrive child. I could not achieve total identification, because aside from some specific problems I had with the characters and the story, I could see early on that I would be watching a smug-com, and not one of the few really good ones.

A cursory peek at google tells me that I've invented this term, which is fine by me. By "smug-com," I mean a comedy that scores its points through one or two main characters who are much smarter, have more integrity, and are just plain cooler than everybody else in the movie. The arc of a smug-com puts the lead characters in situations where they confront any number of cartoon ninnies and nitwits, and then gives the characters time to reflect upon how stupid the nitwits are, and how cool they themselves are. (The term "quirky" usually pops up a lot in reviews of smug-coms.) To paraphrase a very apt description from the NY Times review of "Away We Go," smug-com heroes wouldn't like you. They'd look at you with thinly disguised disdain and disgust, and then make cool jokes about you when they left. Smug-coms can appeal to large numbers of people who see themselves as too cool for the room. While I find the overall smug-com premise a major drag, I think there are a few that work, and at least one that's a classic.

I'd date the first smug-com right around 1965, the year "A Thousand Clowns" was released. Jason Robards is Murray Burns, a happy, hyper-verbal non-conformist living as responsibility-free as the guardian of a young nephew can in New York City. Robards is the smart one; everyone he meets is a moron--or someone who needs his happy guidance. The movie sounds reprehensible when I describe it that way, but it works (this one is the classic). The first reason is Robards--great actor, showing some strain, perhaps, from shooting this movie during the day and performing Arthur Miller's "After the Fall" at night, but charming as hell recreating his Broadway role. The second reason is screenwriter (and playwright) Herb Gardner's terrific dialogue--Murray's rants are hilarious and profound. Finally, the key to what elevates a smug-com above its inherent smugness--the movie is brave enough to call Murray on his attitude. That's important--that doesn't mean silly strawman characters telling the smug hero he's wrong (that happens a lot in this movie, as well as in most smug-coms), but the MOVIE ITSELF calls his attitude into question--is he selfishly endangering the welfare of his nephew? The decision Murray makes leads to one of the great freeze-frame endings--funny and sad, fundamentally right, but with no little regret.

"Away We Go" ultimately fails because the two smug heroes are vindicated in their smugness without serious question. It comes close, once, when the heroine asks, "Are we fuck-ups?" If the movie had delivered an honest answer to that question--which is "yes"--it, too, could have achieved greatness--or at least, very good-ness. Other noteworthy smug-coms follow:

"Home for the Holidays"--this time, Holly Hunter and gay brother Robert Downey, Jr. (in my vote for his all-time worst, most out-of-control performance) are the only ones who know which end is up, as Hunter prepares to spend Thanksgiving with the family. This movie scores off clueless supporting characters with sometimes shocking cruelty. Right-wing in-laws sit down to dinner and start intoning, "Cash is king"--because that's what fiscally conservative people naturally do at Thanksgiving dinners. We get to laugh at the crazy, flatulent aunt, who cuts the cheese twice for the heroes' (and ours, presumably) amusement, and we get to laugh at the sad-sack maintenance guy who's had a crush on the heroine since forever. To be fair, the film almost redeems itself in the last five minutes, when we get to see everybody's idea of their greatest day ever--it's a sudden and cleansing burst of humanity, but it arrives a bit too late.

"The Family Stone"--a lot like "Home for the Holidays," but with that crucial difference--the movie calls the smug Stones on their behavior. They treat the Sarah Jessica Parker character with unspeakable cruelty, but we also get to see that the family is acting out of love (this is how smug people love each other). I think this one was largely underrated--it's worth a look.

"American Beauty"--When the pot-smoking (and dealing) next-door neighbor tells off his catering boss, Lester Burnham, the lead character, says with something approaching awe, "You're my new hero." When this movie ended, I had two new heroes, one real, and one fictional. The real hero was actor Kevin Spacey, who found a way to infuse both his "loser" character and the smug-com in general with fresh attitude--the character takes a perversely smug pride in how total a loser he's become. And the fictional hero--Lester Burnham, who undergoes a worm-turning transition that's funny and gratifying as he tells all of his tormentors (including his family) where to get off. The movie would have been great fun if it had stopped there, but Lester and the movie go one step further--they call his new-found freedom into question as well, with the idea that Lester's still missing out on something deeper and greater. Whether Lester figures it out just in time or a little too late depends on your perspective. Okay, I'm going to go ahead and call this one a classic, too (and yes, Sam Mendes directed both this movie and "Away We Go." Clearly, he works the smug side of the street).

As for the smug-coms in general, well, it's easy to shoot fish in barrels. Self-knowledge, and putting self-knowledge into action, is a lot tougher. The great smug-coms don't settle for the easy.

Next time: shoop and hard-earned love

shoop and the geek bullies

More about bullies--this time, geek bullies. (Note: in case it is not already obvious, I consider myself a geek.)

Pre-internet, the only way a geek could get to be a bully was through role-playing games. Because as history has taught us and continues to teach us, someone who's bullied goes in one of two directions. They either commit to the idea that bullying is wrong (roughly 5-7%), or they become bullies themselves the first chance they get (everybody else). And how do geeks (most frequently the victims of conventional, give-me-your-lunch-money-you-punk bullies) become bullies? Through fantasy, geeks can become dungeon masters, kings, wizards, kick-ass warriors. Which is the ultimate fantasy for many geeks--they get to abuse people. They gain fear and respect, friends, and admirers--they get to win.

The internet opened up many more avenues for geeks to become bullies--they start their own blogs, and then abuse people through geeky put-downs. It is perhaps not surprising, though somewhat depressing, that geek bullies tend to be even more thoughtless and abusive than the Bluto-bullies. This phenomenon is partly due to what makes most geeks in the first place--that place in the brain in charge of empathy doesn't work. If you were to ask a geek, "Do you realize how insulting and abusive that statement is?", the probable response would be something along the lines of, "How is that abusive? All I'm saying is...blah, blah, blah, *snort* *fart*."

(Doubtless it is thoughtless of me to add snorts and farts to hypothetical geek dialogue, but that's just how I imagine it.)

That's why *Role Models* is such a brilliant movie. It exactly nails the geek mentality in a positive way, and it astutely dissects what makes a geek bully. The main geek (the invaluable Christopher Mintz-Plasse, an even better movie geek than the immortal Eddie Deezen) uses role-play as an avenue for his imagination, a chance to give his nobler self an outlet--and as an escape from an all-too-ignoble world. Mintz-Plasse represents geekdom at its best. What makes *Role Models* so unique is that we get to see geeks at their worst as well, in the person of King Argotron (Ken Jeong, also giving a peerless performance). The "King" is the geek with power, and he's quick to abuse it--he's the quintessential geek bully. The spectrum of geekiness is rich and full in this movie, even playing with viewers' expectations--"villains" in the game turn out to be just fun-loving geeks, as the Paul Rudd character discovers when he leads his heroic raid against the king and his henchmen. Do yourself a favor and see it, if you haven't already.

Next time: shoop and the smug-com.