The Failure Paradox

I saw "Tron" for the first time.  I was there to see "Star Trek II," but decided to check this out too, it was included with the ticket.  My impression of the movie, from what little I knew, was that it was revolutionary in concept and effects, but that it lacked substance in character development or plot.  My impression proved correct.  The film had a first act that intercut between the real world and the virtual world that made the movie famous.  The plot was simple enough.  One man, of a group of three had to retrieve proof that he wrote a computer game that the villain claimed as his own.  He accidentally gets transported into the virtual world and has a bunch of adventures.  At this point the second act begins.  The return to the real world is probably less than five minutes making for a nearly non-existent third act.

 

After the film was a panel in which the filmmakers discussed how anyone over the age of ten thought the movie was too far out at the time, and that the world wasn't ready for it.

 

By contrast Nicholas Meyer introduced his film by calling his film "retro," more akin to classic operas than anything as new-fangled as a movie that, to me, seemed relatively cold and clinical.  I think he may have been overstating it, but it did demonstrate the literate nature of Meyer's film, and I was excited to see the film on the big screen.  I bought the DVD the previous night to do some research so I would hopefully ask something that would be relatively intelligent and he hadn't been asked too often.  One thing I like was that at the beginning of the commentary track he mentioned that on passports and official documents he doesn't write "director" or "novelist" or "screenwriter," but "storyteller," not caring too much about the medium.  But I decided against saying that because I thought it sounded trite and condescending.

 

Even though I'd just seen the film in my apartment, I noticed things I never had in the many times I'd watched the movie over the past fifteen years, primarily jokes.  When you're watching a movie with a packed, enthusiastic audience you hear laughs at things you might have missed, little reaction shots, inflections in the delivery, things like that.  The one that stuck out for me was when Spock warned Kirk to be careful on an away mission, "Jim, be careful."  McCoy being within earshot interjected, "We will!"

 

Meyer spoke on stage after the film with a couple of people who set up the festival, including the director of "Free Enterprise" a comedy starring Eric McCormack and William Shatner about Star Trek fandom.  Towards the end of the panel, they opened it up to the audience.  During the film I noticed an irony in the gifts Spock and McCoy gave to Kirk: Spock gave Kirk The Tale of Two Cities, a novel, no doubt, intended to provoke an emotion in Kirk.  McCoy, his doctor, gave him a pair of reading glasses, a logical complement to Spock's gift.

 

But I didn't get to make that observation until I stood in the short line waiting to get my DVD box signed.  The kid in front of me asked if the name "Saavik" was Russian, to which Meyer replied, "I don't know where it came from other than our own minds, but if it was 'Slavic', then I could see that.  We make up names and add an apostrophe here and there to make it more alien, things like that.  Sometimes people ask 'Why didn't Khan take off the other glove.  We don't always have a reason other than it just felt right at the time."

 

I made my observation to him about the gifts and I think he might have misinterpreted what I meant, "Well if that's what you observed that's your prerogative," he said, probably to mean that part of art is the individual interpretation of the observer.  I then mentioned how I admired the references to literary canon in his Star Trek films, and that I wished I read more of it, that I should take a class or something, "You don't need to take a class," I mentioned that I probably did need to force myself to do so.  He asked why and I said I didn't manage my time well.  I realized I was sticking my foot firmly in my mouth when he asked me if I read every day.  Neglecting to mention the non-fiction books I'd been into lately, I blurted out that I read the Internet and magazines.  I don't know what I was thinking, I don't even really read magazines that much.

 

I decided not to say much more, even though I had another question lined up on if he thought Ronald D. Moore handled Kirk's death well in "Star Trek: Generations."  I happen to think he did, as he's said in Internet forums that the point was that heroes and legends don't always get the glorious deaths you see in the movies.

 

So, what I thought would cheer me up made me feel worse and what I thought I'd skip I decided to go to.

 

On Wednesday I went to the last class of this Level 3, the next one I'd start the next week.  It was going to be taught by a substitute teacher, my Level 1 teacher, a class I felt I struggled in.  I was of two minds about going, I thought I might still demonstrate what she, and I, thought were my weak points, or I might demonstrate how I've progressed as a student, even if I didn't pass this session.

 

I realized there's nothing like failure, and the week it took to digest that failure, to make you realize what little you had to lose.  It was freeing in the way I improvised.  I was bolder than usual with my choices, without being too big in scenes, and I supported others in our exercises.  The other thing I liked was that, unlike the way the class went with our regular teacher went, we did a lot more exercises, rather than just improvising in a back line for two hours.

 

After class, my teacher came up to me and told me how much I'd improved since she last saw me improvise.  "Tell that to my teacher I said," telling her that I would be repeating my level.  She didn't look surprised, but I think it was less because of me and more because of the nature of the program at IO.

 

"In our teacher's books Level 3 is the thickest," she nodded.

 

I debated with myself whether to stay for "King Ten" and ultimately decided to.  I'm glad I did, as it was a great show as usual, even without some of the usual players, among them my teacher.

 

Friday was not a usual week as far as my internship was concerned, it was part of "Latin Laugh Fest," so they took over the theatre for the weekend.  The schedule was unusual in that there were only four hour-long shows between the Andy Dick Theater and the mainstage, so there was a lot of downtime.  In addition to that, I wasn't doing the lights, but acting primarily as a floater, basically an usher, for the Andy Dick Theater.

 

It was cool though because I saw an ad posted for an audition, I chatted with the director for the ten o'clock one man show, and got asked to do the lights for a couple of the shows the next night.

 

The next day was the monthly internship meeting.  After that, I hung out with a couple of intern friends at a pizza place down the street.  It was my treat, and one of them drove me to Ross, to pick up some clothes.  It's a discount clothing store, but I actually found some decent deals, I really needed some pants and shirts.

 

That night the shows were staggered again.  I was to do the one man show, but before that I was doing the lights on the mainstage for the first time in months.  It was a female stand-up showcase and I was told to play a track from Santana's "Supernatural" for each comic.  There was one comic that had her own sound cues though, so I took notes for that too.  I decided that tracks 4, 8, and 9 were not suitable for intros from the Santana album, but if I did it again, I'd also skip track 10.  I had my choice of house music, so I grabbed the first thing I saw, Smash Mouth's "Astrolounge."  So, I guess I was kicking it like it was 1999, the year I graduated high school.

 

The one man show in the Andy Dick Theater was alright.  The lighting cues were unusual in that the performer would tell me to lower the house lights--from on-stage.  The performer seemed kind of nervous, and it seemed like the type of show with a build-in excuse for his nervousness, he was doing it as a pitch to PBS for a TV show.  At first it came off exactly like that, an attempt to hide his actual nervousness in a type of performed nervousness.  But when he started playing characters, he seemed to get more comfortable.  I think what also helped was that there was a significantly larger audience for his show than the previous night, where two of his friends attended.

 

Everything was all right--for him and me.

 

Thank you, I'm Eric Cheung.  I'm on MySpace and Live Journal.