Why It Took Nearly Two Decades for Hollywood to Succeed with Superheroes

Thanks to Kevin Smith, the legend of a Nic Cage-starring, Tim Burton-directed Superman movie is always at the edges of contemporary Hollywood history. The project, developed in Burton's heyday in the 90s, came very close to being made but eventually fell through.

Smith was not the only screenwriter who worked on the project. Dan Gilroy, whose Nightcrawler just opened, worked on it, too. Here's his synopsis of the project:

So poor little [Superman], when he winds up on earth, he has no freaking idea where he came from. His biggest fear is that he's an alien. Our Superman was in therapy at the beginning of the film. He's in a relationship with Lois Lane and he can't commit. Or he was maybe in couple's therapy. But he can't commit because he doesn't know who he is or what is going on with him. He's hoping that he has some physiological condition that gives him these powers but that he's still human. It becomes very apparent, though, early in the script, when Lex Luthor uncovers the remnants of the spacecraft, he suddenly realizes – "Oh my god, I'm an alien." It was all about the psychological trauma of it.

This is why Hollywood just couldn't make superheroes work for so many years:  the industry's arrogance. Who would want to watch that Superman movie?

Even though there had been hundreds of stories and story arcs for Superman over the years, and time had proven some to be much better than others, Gilroy, Burton and producer Jon Peters thought, Nah, we'll just make some stuff up.

Spotified in the Cosmos

Dan Brooks tells us that "Streaming Music Has Left Me Adrift:"

To care about obscure bands was to reject the perceived conformity of popular culture, to demand a more nuanced reading of the human experience than Amy Grant’s “Baby Baby” and therefore to assert a certain kind of life. That assertion was central to my identity as a young adult, and I found that people who shared it were more likely to agree with me on seemingly unrelated issues.

For those looking for an insight into the "autonomous self" Walker Percy discusses in Lost in the Cosmos, look no further. Brooks waxes rhapsodic about his taste in music--a little--and how that taste made him feel special--a lot.

Percy discusses how autonomous people--probably the majority of people in America--find their definitions through their choices, be they consumer or lifestyle or otherwise. Thus, a die-hard conservative participates in a Chik-Fil-A day and a hipster grows out his beard.

Brooks spells it out, while discussing the change that streaming music has brought to the music industry:

Consuming music, an act central to my being for as long as I can remember, has changed forever. Who knows how that will change me?

This is probably the most spiritually hollow, narcissistic perspective to take on the subject.

Maybe this is a better one:

My history as a cult movie buff sounds like it was contemporaneous with Brooks'. My friends and I spent a lot of time combing mom and pop video stores for rare movies, often traveling out of town, as well as ordering bootlegs from the back of Psychotronic and other zines.

One of those films was Last House on the Left, Wes Craven's first film. For a long time, it had a reputation as being one of the nastiest films of the 70s. It's still occasionally remembered for its trailer's tagline, "Keep repeating to yourself, 'It's only a movie, it's only a movie.'"

Because its director went on to become one of the most successful horror directors of all time, it is not especially obscure. But, in the early 90s, before Scream and during a real low in Craven's profile, it wasn't easy to find. When I did discover it, I was excited because I had heard about it for years.

A dozen years later but before the Hollywood remake, a much younger woman asked me, "Have you ever heard of Last House on the Left?"

I told her that I had. "I just bought it," she said.

"You bought it? Where?"

"At Target."

At Target? I couldn't believe it. Something that had been only words on a page to me for so long, something I had to keep in mind just in case I might find it, something that I'd only stumbled upon when I did find it--that something was being sold out of a bin at big-box stores across the nation.

Had something been taken from me? Not really. I still had my whole personal history with the film, from the trailer highlighted on late-night television to all the information about it that collected in my mind before seeing it to the moment I found it in the video store, with its crappy VHS box and terrible print.

I still had the experience. All my friend had was the movie, which really isn't very good and looks very dated to younger viewers, if they can get past the amateurishness.

This is what's lost in the digital age, not some aging Gen-Xer's self-image. From an individual's standpoint, the joy of discovery needs to spring from a search. We can call up Last House on the Left anytime we want to--but playing it is no different than playing Hart of Dixie on Netflix. The only experience left around digital media is the surprise of really loving the work or really hating it.

Also, think of how Crispin Glover personally tours with his film What is It? and won't release it for home viewing. Digital media strips the work of its context. Last Year in Marienbad is just a boring foreign movie that can be switched off the moment one is tired of it, while when it was released, critics believed that true cineastes had to come to terms with it. Today, it's as accessible as Turner and Hooch.

I like having so much more at my fingertips. I miss the age of discovery but I don't fool myself about how much energy I wasted in its pursuit. For every Last House on the Left I thought was...okay, there were five that bored me to tears. For every one that I truly loved, twenty that I struggled to watch, hoping in vain for one standout moment.

Then again, I didn't end the movies by finding someone to brag to, either.

P.T. Anderson: Professional Bunter

Blowhard at Uncouth Reflections asks, "Is there a more overrated mainstream director than P.T. Anderson?"

Anderson is definitely a strange case. Like all of moviedom, I was excited when Boogie Nights came out. I remember that the theater was packed on opening night, an indication that my college town's hipoisie were tuned in.

Here's what I felt when it was over:  dissatisfied and feeling like I had no grounding to be dissatisfied. Somehow it would have been improper to express my disappointment. Maybe I had been wrong to expect it to be funnier and more compelling. I definitely felt that the great film that could have been made from the 70s porn milieu wasn't on the screen.

Then Magnolia came out and I hated it. It was much too self-serious and I couldn't help but see it as a depressing Bollywood movie. In Indian films, it seems that every single character gets a scene in which they cry. There was even a musical number in it!

It was all too showy and luxuriated in misery. One of the critics I used to like, and whose name has been lost to me, said, "As much as I like Magnolia, I could never like it as much as Anderson does."

I was in the minority, though. Magnolia was praised almost unanimously. I didn't like it but I had to agree that it avoided being a bad movie.

But that made me eager to see what was next. I was sure that Anderson was going to finally make the misstep he had been flirting with. He was going to overreach and his next big, bloated film was going to look as ridiculous to everyone as it did to me.

But Punch Drunk Love wasn't that movie. It was as if he had hedged every bet. The film was small and ostensibly a love story. By presenting Adam Sandler in a dramatic role, he had ensured the financial return of a sideshow--people were going to check it out as an oddity at the very least.

It was then I figured that, whatever was wrong with Anderson's films, he was good at playing the critical game. He never attempted so much that he failed but his films seemed like artistic statements.

I puzzled over There Will Be Blood for a few days after seeing it. I couldn't figure out what the hell it was supposed to be about. It wasn't good storytelling and it didn't seem to be experimental storytelling. There seemed to be no reason why he presented the scenes he did.

I chalk the praise up to the Faulkner effect. By forcing the audience to figure out the film, they grow more attached to it. One is satisfied and proud when one completes a jigsaw puzzle even though what it's supposed to be--a picture--is lumpy and distorted.

That's where my interest in Anderson ended. He had gotten away with whatever he was doing for too long. The audiences come into his films expecting to see an Important P.T. Anderson film and, as long as he continues to be obtuse and indulgent to his actors, that's what they'll see.

Quick Review: Maleficent

A few weeks back, I wrote about the shift in perspective our culture has taken; that is, that our narrative point-of-view is with the outcasts and the "others." The Atlantic article I cited flew to absurd heights when the writer lamented The Terminator's lack of sympathy for Skynet, the computer determined to wipe out all humans.

Maleficent--Disney's reworking of Sleeping Beauty--has the same attitude; the first three minutes makes a clear distinction between the wonderful, magical kingdom of the "Moors" (not moor-like in the least, or is there a hint of pre-Reconquista nostalgia?) and that of the horrible, all-male world of the humans. Make no mistake, they are called "humans," rather than by the name of their kingdom or whatever, and, like all humans, they wish to conquer the Moors for no good reason. The usual human bloodlust, I guess.

Adding to the outsider sympathy, Maleficent herself, when in her powerful glory, looks awfully Luciferian with her horns and enormous wings topped with claws. I suppose they had to square the circle to make a villain into a hero, but it left me saying, "Look, I don't want to become an Illuminati conspiracy theorist but you're making it really hard not to."

Aside from the asinine perspective, it really is a bad movie. It's one of those Hollywood products that was obviously chopped down to the bare minimum; things happen with no explanation, no doubt left on the cutting room floor.

Even the bad reviews praise Angelina Jolie's performance but I just don't see it.  All she did was stand around, sometimes with a small smile, sometimes with with a frown, and talk in that irritating British accent she used in Tomb Raider. She barely interacts with any other characters and it looks like she could have filmed her scenes in three days. In my opinion, she's one of the most overrated actresses around and her beauty has dried into freakishness--the Lady Gaga-style faux cheekbones don't help.

It's all too stupid to talk about. Every change to the Sleeping Beauty story is made arbitrarily just to be different or anti-human. The effects are ugly and unimpressive. The climax is the most hackneyed action-movie trope:  Maleficent is in a position to kill the evil king but she releases him. She turns her back and, like all humans, he attacks her from behind. She defends herself and he falls off the tower.

My girlfriend, who is no critic and loves the story of Sleeping Beauty, kept saying, "Why?" and concluded, "Who is this movie for?"

John Waters' Hairspray

Noel Murray of The Dissolve reviews John Waters' Hairspray via its new home video release:

While it’s corny by design, Hairspray also aims to get at something truthful, about the various kinds of prejudice weighing down the city circa 1963, and how youthful optimism and music made a difference, if only in the lives of those kids craving some kind of diverse, progressive community.

If I'm not mistaken, Murray is close to my age (near 40), so I expect the normal Gen-X level of irony, all the more so when discussing Waters.

This interpretation is colored with the Millennial think-happy-thoughts vision that made the recent musical reboot far removed from the original.

Waters shares with Morrissey a perspective of being empathetic without being sympathetic. They understand their characters' desires and actions but don't necessarily agree with them, all the while generally liking them. I'm having a hard time thinking of straight artists that did the same but the point-of-view doesn't seem inherently gay, even though it's a major element of camp.

It seems to me that Hairspray is a continuation of this attitude. Pink Flamingos was about the triumphs of an insane-but-principled woman aspiring to be the Filthiest Person Alive; Hairspray is about the triumphs of a silly little fat girl in the mid-60s.

In the film, Tracy usurps the snobby rival who is the most popular girl in Baltimore. She snags the city's most eligible young bachelor. She earns the respect of her parents. She becomes a style-setter and she changes the world for the better. And she does it by dancing and being her wonderful self.

Waters likes Tracy and, like a fairy godmother, waves a wand to make all her dreams come true. But he hints at his feelings for how valuable her goals are. Tracy's rise as Baltimore's princess for the masses is shown by making her the spokesmodel for a ladies big-and-fat store. When she introduces Baltimore to her new dance, she's wearing a dress patterned with cockroaches. When she visits the record store where black teens dance, everyone is grinding against one another in an overtly sexual manner. What Tracy thinks are the greatest things in the world are at best pointless and usually grubby.

That's what makes Waters' work so much fun to watch. He's saying, "Isn't this girl cute? She's so sweet and doesn't even care that she's fat. Oh, look, she's got a boyfriend now--he's gorgeous! Look how happy she is!"

Contrast Waters' attitude with that of Todd Solondz. In Welcome to the Dollhouse, he focuses on a girl only a bit younger than Tracy. Maybe Solondz doesn't actively dislike Dawn but he definitely has no illusions as to who she is. His story shows bluntly what happens to girls like that. He doesn't make her dreams come true--in fact, he dashes them, as when her hated sister was kidnapped, only to be treated like a princess during and after the abduction. Solondz takes a loser and shows just how badly she loses. Waters takes a loser and makes her queen for a day.

The Music Documentary Returns to the Mean

Jason Heller at The AV Club examines the music documentary through the lens of Searching for Sugarman:

[T]he documentary’s subject: Detroit native Sixto Rodriguez, better known as simply Rodriguez, a singer-songwriter who recorded two obscure albums in the early ’70s before effectively disappearing from the music scene.
---
[T]he gist of Searching For Sugar Man is how the forgotten Rodriguez experienced a huge revival—unbeknown to Rodriguez himself—in, of all places, South Africa.

Heller's argument is against the trend of music documentaries over-lionizing their subjects. In this case, the talking heads describe Rodriguez as being on par with Dylan.

The next Dylan: It’s a whopping claim that’s been made so many times about so many singer-songwriters, it’s become a cliché.

One would hope that by we as a culture would be tired of searching for a novelty that changes everything. For one, it's not realistic. For another, it causes a lot of ballyhoo that inevitably disappoints.

Take this year's most-hyped rediscovery, featured in A Band Called Death:

But the narrative that resulted from the film was that Death invented punk, which is as overreaching a claim as saying Rodriguez was second only to Dylan. Proto-punk, as it became retroactively known, was embodied by many bands that formed slightly before, or at roughly the same time, as The Ramones in the early ’70s. That fact doesn’t make Death less interesting—it makes the band more so, part of a proto-punk continuum rather than lone outliers. 

I got wind of the band a couple of years ago. I now assume that this was a bit of underground advance publicity, leaking a digital copy of their album to the grey-market mp3 blogs. I wasn't especially impressed. Heller sums it up nicely; if you like that sort of thing, Death is the sort of thing you'd like.

The larger issue is that the media documentary in general is in decline after a great run. It's mainly because of this tendency to present their subjects as the greatest whatever you've never heard of. The reason these subjects are obscure is because--can you figure it out?--they deserve to be obscure.

That's not to say that they're bad but that they don't fit into mainstream tastes. The greats of music are fascinating because their progressions could be said to dictate changes in the mainstream. Dylan going electric or The Beatles becoming a studio band, for example. But this kind of narrative isn't appropriate for an also-ran whose work wasn't appreciated when it came out.

Heller highlights an older documentary that got it right, the Klaus Nomi doc The Nomi Song. I found it enjoyable because it places Nomi in his context as a part of the New York New Wave scene that broke out, however briefly.

New Wave was driven less by philosophy, like hippie or punk culture, and more by the thought, "Hey, we're a new generation. We should be doing something different!" Nomi was a male soprano and had a fey and alien look and presence that was heightened by his foreignness. He was presented in manner that emphasized his strangeness and had some success on the pop charts.

The Nomi Song does it right. There's no reason to pretend that Nomi changed music forever or that he's a neglected genius. He had unique body of work and sprung from a unique movement. The best music documentaries give us an understanding of the artist, his goals, influences and life. This lifts them out of footnote status and gives potential new fans a way to think about them.

One of my favorite artists is Scott Walker but I wouldn't have pursued his work if I hadn't seen Scott Walker: 30 Century Man. He's the perfect subject for a rediscovery-style music documentary because his work and career went through so many changes that it's difficult to find an entry point for newcomers. In the same respect, Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him?) is good as well.

The problem with this kind of hyperbolic filmmaking, ironically, is that it overshadows the best qualities that obscure artists truly possess. While these artists sometimes live tragic lives, their obscurity isn’t a tragedy in and of itself. They’re usually obscure for a reason: They didn’t make music that was palatable to people at the time, or they weren’t able to devote the relentless energy it takes to become famous, or they simply did what millions of musicians do every day: create music for the love of it. By elevating them to the dubious status of noble losers, this new wave of documentaries perpetuates an empty myth that doesn’t do them justice.

Harold Ramis RIP

I've always been a fan of the utility players, the guys who do a lot of the hard work and always stand outside of the spotlight. People like Rupert Holmes, Brian Doyle-Murray and Harold Ramis.

Film buffs often have a hard time understanding that movies have to conjure their own particular magic. Everything can be right on paper, from casting to the script, but doesn't come alive on screen. At the same time, everything can be wrong and the movie is great nonetheless. To have one great or beloved or influential film is a miracle, no matter how talented the auteurs.

Ramis had five:  National Lampoon's Vacation, Caddyshack, Groundhog Day, with Animal House and Ghostbusters (the latter two he co-wrote but did not direct). And some special mentions for screenwriting work on Meatballs and Stripes. This is in addition to the work he did as an integral off-screen part of early SCTV.

What's interesting about his work, though, is that you can't say that he had a particular style. Or rather, his style was so laid-back, like the characters he played, you just remembered the jokes.

Groundhog Day will probably be remembered as the top Ramis work, not just because it pulls off the difficult balance of being very funny and telling a convincing emotional story, but also because it seems like it would have been technically difficult to pull off in the same way Memento or Inception was--it required keeping good notes. His other films probably have the burden of being too successful--so influential that their originality is unrecognizable among all the imitators.

It's maybe not the best thing to think about upon news of his death, but he's a filmmaker who lost his touch rapidly after the heights of Groundhog Day.

There must be some inside-showbiz story why Ramis followed that big hit with Stuart Saves His Family. Al Franken's Stuart Smalley character on SNL was mid-tier at best. Perhaps Ramis was already attached when Groundhog was a success.

His more appropriate follow-up was Multiplicity, which was another go at the technically-difficult, philosophical-thought-experiment niche. I remember it being too excited about its special effects and too reliant on Michael Keaton's crazy man schtick, which had run its course by that time.

Luckily for him, he had another big hit with Analyze This. This was unlucky for DeNiro fans, as it rewarded the star's descent into obvious self-parody. It was also unlucky for me, as I was very happy not having seen Billy Crystal's smirk during the previous years.

Ramis' trajectory through Hollywood is puzzling. Why didn't have a more comfortable position after Groundhog Day? It was a big hit, staying in theaters for months. After his role in some of the most profitable comedies of all time, why was he taking for-hire jobs like Stuart and Bedazzled?

Maybe because, when he did something that interested him, it was The Ice Harvest, which flopped terribly.

But the real shame is that his film career, which began with the launch of the Vacation franchise, ended with the Jack Black-Michael Cera vehicle Year One, which was garbage. Advertised as a romp about two Stone Age tribesman experiencing early civilization, it was instead the two flavors-of-the-month bugging their eyes at Old Testament spoofs. It was completely off; for one, the premise was from Mel Brooks' heyday. For another, Black and Cera work well within their own alt-comedy milieu but you can't just drop them into a studio picture to liven it up.

But let's not end on a down note. When you chart the world of modern comedy, starting back in the improv groups of the late 60s and into the game-changing successes stemming from National Lampoon and SNL, Harold Ramis is right there, every step of the way. His legacy is enormous.