The Pleasant Surprises

First of all, I'd like to apologize for the tardiness of this post--it's been two weeks.  I could say that I haven't written because of some bout with depressive existential dread, but, while that's probably partly true (and would probably make a better story), it's mostly just simple procrastination.  As the days grew, I had more things to report and the blog only intimidated me more, so I simply haven't written until now...

 

A day-and-a-half after the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I was going to see "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" at the movies.  I would be going to a different movie theater and follow it up with "The Simpsons Movie."  The AMC in the Century City mall only required one bus to get to and had a program called A.M. Cinema, in which you could go to a movie on the weekend before noon and it would only be six dollars.  That's almost as cheap as the four dollar matinees I went to growing up.

 

The trailer I liked the most was one I'd been anticipating for some time now.  I knew it the second I saw the telephone booth at the end of a large grey room.  The camera dollied towards it while the announcer explained the constant gulf between control and chaos.  Of course, he was referring to CONTROL and KAOS.  Steve Carell rose into the booth and attempted to leave it.  Wonderfully milking his trouble with the door, I knew he was just right for this role.  This was the trailer for "Get Smart," the cinematic remake of one of my favorite TV shows when I was a kid.  Then the movie started.

 

I think what the Harry Potter films do quite well is capture turn-of-the-millennium Britain, so says this anglophile American.  It is maybe no better evident than in the first few minutes of this film which open on a shell-shocked Harry sitting on a suburban swing with kids in very contemporary clothing taunting him.  He had just faced Voldemort and lost a friend to him in a dangerous competition.  His cousin led the group of bullies bringing Harry to the brink of fury.  At this point, unable to take anymore, he holds his wand up to his cousin and clouds start to swirl on what was a hazy Surrey afternoon.

 

Death Eaters, invisible to Muggles (those without powers), threaten Harry's cousin, so he saves his life, but gets blamed by his aunt and uncle, not to mention sent to the Ministry of Magic that he would be expelled for using magic in the presence of said Muggles.

 

What results is no longer the Roald Dahl tinged Scooby Doo adventures of the previous four films, but the exposure of conspiracies and secret armies and school-wide lock-down in the guise of a dictator desperately masquerading as a wholesome value-centric woman of the people.

 

Though I appreciate that about the film, I found myself slightly disappointed.  I wasn't sure why until I saw the end of the film.  I believe that what this film is, more than anything, is a setup for a final showdown (I know there are two more stories left).  I do welcome the increasing serialization of the series, but even the most serialized series should let each chapter stand on its own as a piece of work.  This one felt like a transitionary film.

 

I went into "The Simpsons Movie" expecting that this would be the superior of the two.  I think that was my problem.  I was already giddy to see this film, having only watched the TV show sporadically since about 2000, I still knew all the jokes from the trailers and even some that weren't in the trailers.  Every review I read was at least pretty positive, even the negative ones.

 

I don't think that was the only thing that hurt this film for me.  There were some clues in the trailers.  The biggest one to me was a rather telling sequence:

 

Homer (crawling up to Bart's foot, desperate, almost giddy and wavering):  Did I save Springfield?

 

Bart (arms folded):  Actually you doomed us all.

 

To me, that sentence is far more obvious and trite than anything I'd ever seen on "The Simpsons" before, even at its worst.  It sounded like a dumbed-down version of the show I knew, so that it could play to a wider audience.  I'm probably assigning too much importance to that line, but it seems as good and example as any to describe the symptomatic of the problems with the film.

 

Also, the trailers that preceded it were primarily children's movies.  American studios still don't understand animation.  It's kind of ridiculous at this point.  The film is mostly about the family, but it's a movie for everyone, not just kids.

 

The story in this film was primarily about the Simpson family.  I think for their first film it should have been.  As a result, it reads like their episodes that aired before we got to know a lot of Springfield residents; it reads like something just prior to their heyday.  Even the subplots within the family are pretty underdeveloped, primarily Bart and Lisa's.  I don't have much regrets about Bart's subplot about the effect his relationship with Homer had in his life not being developed because it seemed to be an afterthought to serve the plot.  But Lisa's subplot about environmentalism and her new crush seemed to beg for more development.

 

The performances were outstanding as usual.  In fact, Julie Kavner's voice work as Marge was so emotionally resonant that I could hear her almost break her Marge voice in one monologue.  She sounds enough like Marge anyway that it wouldn't have been worth using a different take to make the voice sound more like Marge.

 

While it was great to see The Simpsons on such a large canvas I hope that the next film is something more like their classic episode "22 Short Films About Springfield," in which the city is deconstructed through several interlocking vignettes.

 

The next day I finished my copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  I liked it more as I read it.  I seemed like it was driving to a point, if a bit subtly.  This piece worked as a satire on society at that time.

 

After work, I went to my improv class with an intimidating surprise.  We had a substitute.  Not only did we have a substitute, but it was one I'd had before.  It was one that our previous class didn't like, myself included.  He had the reputation of being a harsh, but not in an educational way.  It was more like he didn't want to be there to teach and he amused himself by sarcastically yelling at students with a cracked smile on his face.

 

I was one of his more memorable targets.

 

This time around we continued the previous week's work on genre exercises and I didn't quite have as much fun as the previous week.  Then we worked on second-beat scenes for Harolds and I felt a little better about those.  Then we had our break.

 

When I got back, I decided to do the second of the two Harolds and did quite well.  I confidently initiated games, I made bolder choices and asked questions and participated as much as usual.  At the end of class, I thanked our substitute, and remembering me from last time, he remarked, "You're starting to get it.  That's good.  That's good to watch."

 

Despite this pleasant surprise, for the next few days I was in a depressed funk.  It didn't help that my job is one that interrupts my progress even as it earns me the most money I've made per hour since my night shift factory job in between my freshman and sophomore years at Emerson.  I felt less motivated than I usually did.

 

I stopped doing stand-up because it seemed like it was giving me bad habits as a performer and making me feel worse about myself.  While I love stand-up, it is inherently a solitary medium, one that breeds angst-ridden film noir types.  I also left it because the rest of the way up the ladder would be to tour the road, a lifestyle I never envisioned for myself.

 

I like theatre folks but I'm not entirely sure I relate to them as well as I do stand-up comics.

 

But of course these are gross generalizations.

 

It was now ironic that I was more alone than when I was doing stand-up.  It was probably primarily because I spent less time "hanging out" and more time just going to IO West for classes and the internship.  Nevertheless, I wondered whether I should go back to stand-up solely for the company of like-minds or if I should just try harder to network within this new community I've found.  I could also try making friends outside of the world of immediate peers.  The first and third options seemed like potential wastes of time, but maybe I would profit from those endeavors after all.  For the past couple of months books were my friends.

 

As if to answer my thoughts, I got invited to a barbecue at my boss' house.  Everyone was invited.  But I'm rarely good at parties.  I used to crack on stage that my dance of choice was the "Wallflower Boogie" in which I would mime refusing offers to dance.  I usually would stand uncomfortably with a soda in my hand around a small group of people I recognized waiting for a point in the conversation to contribute.

 

The other problem with this party was that it was all the way in Silver Lake.

 

On my way to work on another day that week a flier attacked my shoe and I picked up the crumpled piece of purple computer paper.  On it were the time and address of a neighborhood community party.  It was on the same day as the barbecue.

 

Friday I went to IO West and just had some of the most fun I've had running the lights there I've ever had.  The shows were solid and it was just a fun time.  So much so, that unlike the previous week, I felt up to hanging out a while.  I realized how fun it was to be at IO sometimes

 

The next day I had decisions to make.  In a pretty good mood, I had to decide which of those parties I wanted to go to and when--a pretty good problem to have.  One plan I had was to go to the community party first and then stop by the boss' on the way to IO West.  I was going to IO West to see my teacher perform.  I had two more shows I was required to see this session, so I thought I might as well check out my teacher.  

 

Through a combination of lazy Saturdayness and bad directions I missed the neighborhood party.  On the way I saw an antique shop.  They sold some DVDs.  I considered purchasing "To Kill a Mockingbird" and the much more recent film "The Baxter," directed by Michael Showalter of comedy troupes The State and Stella.

 

When I finally got to the party, everyone was packing up, but I noticed the signs intended to raise awareness of our neighborhood.  Apparently Country Club Park has quite a history of housing musicians.  Lou Rawls had a home here late in his career.  One time my building manager told me that F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife used to own our building, so that's a neat piece of trivia giving the place some bohemian cachet.

 

I didn't make it to my boss' party.

 

Back at IO West, I went to see The Lampshades, a character-driven show that, while not strictly scripted, is by no means improv.  My teacher, and his partner Kate Flannery of "The Office," play lounge lizards stuck somewhere between the Vegas of the Rat Pack and the discos of the 70s.  He attempts to stand up drunkenly holding a whiskey glass, and dangling a cigarette out of his lower lip, dressed like John Waters (complete with the fake pencil-thin moustache), while she wears an extremely tight red jumpsuit and, for the first few songs anyway, a small jacket.

 

The songs they perform are usually combinations of two or more songs seamlessly tied together like plot threads in a Harold.  The effect is something not unlike a Simon and Garfunkel duet, but probably a closer analogy would be Weird Al's Beverly Hillbillies ballad when crossed with Money for Nothing.

 

There would be character pieces just as seamlessly integrated into the act and crowd-work.  There was, in fact, an improvised number at the end based on the careers of two random audience members.  In this case, by bizarre coincidence, they were both rehab counselors who worked in Santa Monica.

 

It was fun to watch because it reminded me of the stand-up I used to watch, especially some of the more well-crafted characters I saw in Boston created by people like the Walsh Brothers and Robby Roadsteamer.

 

That night I went to Borders to buy a DVD.  For some reason I was in the mood to watch "Star Trek: Generations."  The film has a bad reputation as being relatively confusing and, more notoriously, being the film that killed Kirk, but I wanted to listen to the commentary track by Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga.  These two writers used to collaborate a lot on Star Trek: The Next Generation but ended their collaborative partnership in 1999.  I suspected I'd be eavesdropping on something akin to the Lennon/McCartney meeting of 1976 at the Dakota.

 

Listening to the commentary, it sounded like they had a fun time watching the movie they wrote.

 

On Monday, I told my teacher that I saw his show and he seemed genuinely touched.  I don't know why that surprised me, but it did.  It turned out that history would be repeating itself as he would be absent the next week and the very same substitute would be filling in next week.  History would be repeating itself for another reason as this exact same thing happened on the last class of the last session.  Would having evaluations a week early hurt my chances of passing as I thought it might have the previous session?

 

The answer to that would be "No."  We all got notes before doing our Harolds.  Since he hadn't seen us since he gave us our midterm evaluations, the notes were very much the same, so I tried extra hard to be affected by my partner's lines and to emote much more.  I felt like a pool hustler for flipping the switch on my more theatrical performance.  It seemed so easy this time.

 

After class I asked him if I was suitably affected and he said I was.

 

The rest of the week I felt sort of the same as I had the previous week.  Friday was alright.  I would pry open my latest book, a Star Trek novel written in 1987 called Final Frontier.  It was a story in which the Enterprise embarks on its first voyage.  It interested me because it could provide me one possible backstory to be used in the new film out next year.  I loved the chapters between the humans, but I found the chapter I read so far about the Romulans read like theatre.  It was written that way because Diane Carey wanted to make them sound Shakespearean and alien, it might make a better story that way, but it was a bit dry to me.  But it was good to have something to read on the bus.

 

When I got to the theatre one of the teams didn't show and on the last show I nearly dozed off.  I cracked later, "It could have been The Beatles opening for George Carlin and I don't think I would have made it."  But I was fine enough to get the bus home and get some sleep.

 

On Monday I went to class and had our substitute again.  This time, I felt that I was performing much more consistently throughout and felt confident.  Not only that, I felt like my classmates had as well.  My teacher that night felt the same way, "I'm watching you Eric."  I noted to myself the irony that when this substitute says these things to me he points in my direction but walks away looking like he was about to kick a pebble.  I believed him though.  I think I knew what he meant.  People know more about each other than they think they do.

 

As I left class, I grew excited about the next eight weeks and hopeful for the future.

 

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