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.