The Curator of Schlock #280: Maybe I’ll Come Home in the Spring

05 Friday Jul 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Television, The Curator of Schlock

The Curator of Schlock #280 by Jeff Shuster

Maybe I’ll Come Home in the Spring

Sally Field and David Carradine don’t mix.

Tired of Summer Blockbusters? I know I am. I’m tired of movies that value pyrotechnics over pathos, slapstick over wit, and Rodan over Rodin. Not on this blog!

I want movies that teach me a lesson, that get me asking the tough questions about life, death, and everything in-between. Back in the 1970s, we had filmmakers who challenged audiences and the status quo. They did it on a weekly basis on little network called ABC.

This July, the Museum of Schlock is showcasing the ABC Movie of the Week!

Tonight’s movie is 1971’s Maybe I’ll Come Home in the Spring from director Joseph Sargent. Sallie Field stars as Dennie Miller, the prodigal daughter of the Miller family, who left her life of suburban heaven to travel around with a disgusting pack of hippies led by a disgusting man named Flack, portrayed by David Carradine.

Spring1

Dennie calls her parents, tells her how she’s doing fine. All she has to do is ask people for change and they give her nickels, dimes, and quarters. I guess that was worth more back then. Dennie also practices that free love that’s so popular with the young people these days. And she pops pills and smokes the wacky tobacco. And Dennie eats food out of garbage cans. And then Dennie runs away from Flack when he’s on the methedrine again.

Maybe I'll Come Home 3

Dennie makes her way back to her parent’s idyllic suburban house. Jackie Cooper plays Ed Miller, her dad, and Eleanor Parker plays Claire Miller, her mom. Oh, and Dennie has a younger sister named Susie as played by Lane Bradbury. Hmmmmm. Lane Bradbury was born in 1938. This would have made her 33 years-old at the time of Maybe I’ll Come Home in the Spring. And she’s playing a teenager in this movie. That’s weird.

Maybe I'll Come Home 4

Anyway, Dennie’s parents are thrilled to have her home. Her mom even makes them French toast. Her dad almost calls off from work, but there’s that important meeting he simply must attend. Her mother has errands to run, and her sister has to go to school. Dennie is left in the house to remember fond memories, like the time her parents decided to get separate beds to sleep in.

Spring2

Meanwhile, Flak has flipped out after finding out Dennie went back home. He steals a pest control truck in broad daylight. One of the exterminators exclaims how he doesn’t understand the world anymore. The California Highway Patrol chases after him, but lose him. He parks the pest control truck in front of a diner, orders three big breakfasts, and refuses to pay his meals in a restaurant that has bugs, or such was his claim while pointing to the pest control truck out front. He then steals an ice cream truck, first giving out ice cream to the neighborhood kids before the ice cream man chases after him to no avail. Flack snacks on some ice cream bars as he speeds off to the Miller residence.

Maybe I'll Come Home

Uhhhh. What else? Ed cooks some steaks on the grill. Susie is on drugs. The Millers throw a party with disgusting looking hors d’oeuvres. There’s some loud charades. Susie shows up to the party high as a kite. The Millers don’t seem to notice. The next day, Flack shows up trying to coax Dennie to come with him to Canada. Dennie hesitates and Flack says all she cares about is swimming pools and vacuum cleaners. And what is so wrong with vacuum cleaners and swimming pools, Mr. Flack? During all the commotion, Susie sneaks out and runs away. Maybe she’ll be home in the spring? The last scene of the movie shows Dennie vacuuming. That’s brilliant. You’re either the vacuum or you’re the trash. Dennie chose to be the vacuum.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

What’s Right About That Fan Petition to Rewrite Season 8 of Game of Thrones

19 Sunday May 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in A Word from the King, Fantasy, Television

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What’s Right About That Fan Petition to Rewrite Season 8 of GoT

by John King

Probably like you, I’ve seen a lot of online posts that begin, “I haven’t seen Game of Thrones, but—” or “I stopped watching GoT, but—.” I am not going to summarize the show for those unfamiliar with it.

There is a fan petition for HBO to completely remake season 8 of Game of Thrones, and by the time this appears, more than a millions signatures will be on it.

Numerous of my social media friends have mocked the existence of such a petition. Fans are entitled snowflakes. Well, sure. They are fans. They are fanatical. They care a lot.

Fans do get out of hand, such as the nitwits who decided to Rick and Morty the shit out of a McDonald’s Rick and Morty publicity stunt. Those are idiots who don’t understand the show they are fans of.

The creator of the petition, however, is not shrieking from a McDonald’s countertop. This is the whole message of the petition:

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have proven themselves to be woefully incompetent writers when they have no source material (i.e. the books) to fall back on.

This series deserves a final season that makes sense.

Subvert my expectations and make it happen, HBO!

The phrase “woefully incompetent writers” can mean many things. I want to be more precise about why I think Game of Thrones has fallen apart in episodes 4 and 5 of Season 8: the contract with the viewer has been violated.

Each story begins with a premise that becomes a promise about what the story will be about.

If the Harry Potter series concluded with Malfoy or Dudley becoming the messianic wizard instead of Harry, the viewer has a right to feel like the writer did not live up to the story that was promised.

An arrogantly foolish slop-artist might say, “it is important for me as an artist to subvert your expectations.” What such writers (and I am looking at you Rian Johnson) overlook is that the subverted expectations should reveal interesting truths and still be relevant to the story that was promised rather than some rando shit.

Let’s grant that Daenerys Targaryen’s genocidal turn in the next-to-last episode of GoT can be accounted for. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss subverted our expectations, and maybe one wanted a morally loftier ending for the series, but plenty of foreshadowing was in place. Daenerys was harsh. Visually and emotionally, the scene when she decides to decimate the surrendered city didn’t seem to make sense, but in terms of the long arc of her story, maybe it could have if presented better.

The problem is that nearly all the surviving characters have become unrecognizable and nonsensical.

After the battle of Winterfell, Jon Snow—who doesn’t want the throne, who is a reluctant leader because he doesn’t believe in the commonplace attitudes of those in authority—gives a ceremonial funeral speech that is a boring boilerplate military speech of exactly the kind Hemingway mocked in A Farewell to Arms. John Snow has become what he hates without there being any motivation to do so. The set piece of the funeral needed a military oration. The queen who Jon Snow has bent the knee to has a subservient, non-speaking role in the funeral because she might have expressed real emotion and something surprising perhaps.

Before the battle of Winterfell, Tyrion Lannister, a master strategist, somehow doesn’t anticipate the strategic shortcoming of hiding in a crypt from an opponent who can raise and enlist the dead for his army. That didn’t appear on his decision tree. Peter Dinklage marveled at that bit of non-characterization.

Brienne of Tarth behaves like the most noble knight in the series, even though she was not officially a knight until episode 2 of season 8. She is tough and stoic, and does not have a lover because of her devotion to her duty, and her sense that if she adopts a publicly feminine role that her persona as a fighter would be even more challenged than it already is in this patriarchal trash-heap of a world.

Benioff and Weiss have her blubbering like a hysterical maiden when Jamie leaves her to go die with his sister. She becomes Sansa Stark in the early going of season 1 of GoT because women be crying, am I right?

Brienne-crying

Or maybe they just recorded Gwendolyn Christie after she read the script for that episode.

Jamie goes to die with his sister because she is his soulmate. Okay, maybe he reverts to his weird incest-y self.

Tyrion and Jamie hug and weep—they weep—before Jamie enters King’s Landing for the last time.

Arya Stark, a spooky mystical assassin who didn’t have a childhood due to the horrific world of Game of Thrones, gives up the revenge she planned since season 2, gives up on her mission a hundred yards from the destination because of a sentimental speech given by the Hound—the Hound!—who is himself on a revenge mission that he hasn’t thought much about for the entire series. Benioff and Weiss make Arya—the woman who slayed the Night King—the perfect innocent child running and crying from her life during the annihilation of King’s Landing because they needed an innocent POV character to show undergoing the trauma of war before she rides off on a symbolic white horse.

The nihilistic Hound experiences PTSD in battles, but he needed a more heroic arc tacked on apparently, and Arya needed to be redeemed in her innocence, even though her ability to outgrow her innocence was my favorite part of the series. She reverted to being a scared child. Making the Hound behave like the scared child would have subverted my expectations, but also been appropriate for his character.

The contract with the reader or viewer means that one cannot introduce a story as important and then say, “fuck it,” whatever, I can’t be bothered. We continue watching to find out what happens next. What happens next doesn’t have to be happy, but does need to matter.

In The Manchurian Candidate, there is a sleeper spy who is brainwashed, but will leap into his programmed action when triggered by the Russians.

Benioff and Weiss have treated most of the surviving characters of Game of Thrones like they were sleeper spies all along who, when triggered, would become like robots. Complex characters who deconstructed fantasy tropes disappeared into those exhausted tropes. They have become mostly meaningless puppets for the spectacles Benioff and Weiss have imagined.

Some men just want to watch the world burn.

Game of Thrones Fire

The million plus fans who signed the petition to redo season 8 of Game of Thrones are right to claim that a contract has been breached with “The Last of the Starks” and “The Bells.” A tacit contract with the viewer—these are who the characters were, and their stories will be other than random—is not really enforceable, but hopefully sends another cautionary message to creators to tell better stories.

Currently, Benioff and Weiss seem to be the writers for the next Star Wars film trilogy after The Rise of Skywalker. I hope that Lucasfilm will learn from its recent misstep of tossing out a contract with the viewer (what Kevin Smith called little fuck-you moments from Rian Johnson to J. J. Abrams’s story, and jeez there were a lot of them). A storyteller needs to love the characters in the story enough to remember who they are, and to see them and their potential, and not just the clichés that can wallpaper over something resembling a human being. Characters are more than icons to move carelessly about as their writers set these imaginative worlds on fire.

Telling a story can be difficult, but some people need to try harder. If for no other reason than the cast and crew are working so damned hard.

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John King (Episode, well, all of them) holds a PhD in English from Purdue University, and an MFA from New York University. He has reviewed performances for Shakespeare Bulletin.

Pensive Prowler #10: Honing in on Audrey Horne

21 Monday Aug 2017

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in David Lynch, Pensive Prowler, Television

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Pensive Prowler #10 by Dmetri Kakmi

Honing in on Audrey Horne

Twin Peaks was a revolution — a revolution that spawned an icon: Audrey Horne.

Audrey Horne

Viewers who experienced Twin Peaks when it first appeared were touched for life. It was like a sickness or a revelation. They never saw the world through the same eyes again. Many couldn’t move on from the oneiric power, the dread and the uncanny weirdness. They lived the rest of their lives in Twin Peaks, population 1,201, where the streets were populated by incongruous teens and skew-wiff adults who behaved as if they walked out of a daytime soap straight into a Luis Buñuel opus.

What took place in Twin Peaks encompassed life, the comedy, the romance and the tragedy of it all. Things were slightly askew, overripe, hyper-real, like a soap opera on too much coffee and cherry pie.

The space was ideal for characters who made a virtue of being unconventional, to put it mildly. They weren’t real people so much as archetypes or symbols of themselves. Yet we cared about them and invested emotional mileage in their woes.

The triumph among them, as I say, was a schoolgirl with a penchant for pleated skirts and saddle shoes. Her name was Audrey Horne, and she did not behave like any pupil we had seen before. She was more like a screen goddess — Rita Hayworth or Ava Gardner — fetishised within an inch of her life and gliding wistfully, hither and yon, like a nymph, through her father’s hotel as she sought an outlet for the youthful longing that burned a hole in her heart.

And, just like that, Audrey Horne became an icon, inseparable from Twin Peaks. With the Elizabeth Taylor hair and mole beside her left eye, Audrey Horne was a fox in vintage-inspired garb; and she tipped the scales when she dispensed with conventional job interviews and proved her worthiness for the oldest profession by tying a knot in a cherry stem with her tongue.

The pre-internet world went berserk. It was all anyone talked about for days, even as we tried to emulate her astounding and decidedly salacious feat. Who’d have thought working in a brothel could be so glamorous?

In the second season, as ratings slipped and the world found out who killed Laura Palmer, Audrey Horne handcuffed herself to a bank vault and blew up. It was a nasty, undeserved end. The collective outrage caused a ripple in the stratosphere.

We had to wait twenty-five years to find out what happened next.

Audrey Horne enters the scene exactly thirty-six minutes and four seconds into episode twelve of the return. I am not a patient man. This put all my reserves to the test.

The cut from one scene to the next is abrupt. Nothing led us to expect Audrey Horne in this episode. Other than a slight mention in the previous episode, there had been no mention of her.

When she appears, she is a good deal older — fifty-two to be precise. Gone is the fresh-face girl with the supple skin and liquid eyes. Instead, we are presented with an adult who carries a hint of the younger Audrey Horne in her bearing. She is a palimpsest, altered by time so that you can detect a suggestion of the younger Audrey in the eyes and beneath the skin of the older woman.

She stands in profile in a medium-long shot, wearing a black dress. A crimson coat is draped over an arm. The dark hair is in keeping with that of a sensible mature woman who makes an effort. The eyebrows, however, are as eloquent as quills.

The scene lasts eighteen minutes and fifty-six seconds. It’s a mini-play set in a study, complete with crackling fire and a desk crammed with paperwork. There’s a stilted quality to the acting, as if the words spoken, the gestures performed, the reaction shots, and the room the actors occupy is divorced from even the shifting reality context of Twin Peaks. The weird thing is Audrey Horne doesn’t move from her allotted spot. It’s as if she’s nailed to the floor or perhaps, in an echo of Boxing Helena, her legs have been removed to prevent escape.

When it was over, I thought, that’s it? That’s how you reintroduce an iconic character after an absence of a quarter century? A ridiculous domestic in which ugly words are exchanged and we’re expected to believe Audrey Horne is married to a bald midget? She even calls him a milquetoast. (Who uses the word ‘milquetoast’ nowadays?) It was like a dropped scene from Albee’s Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

I pulled myself together and called Audrey Horne on FaceTime; we’ve kept in touch over the years. Her face popped up on the screen almost immediately.

‘What did you think?’ I said, cutting to the chase. I knew she’d be watching.

She arched an eyebrow. ‘Someone should tell Lynch I’d never say milquetoast.’

Bingo!

‘And I’m not married. If I were I’d do better than that. Although having a short man for a husband has certain advantages.’ She flounced her hair and wiggled the famous eyebrows.

I was glad her sense of humour was sharp as ever.

‘Why portray you as an embittered housewife who is having an affair? It’s so…’

‘Commonplace,’ she finished. ‘And what about that house? It’s a tomb. I’m so embarrassed. People will think that’s how I live.’

‘Everyone knows you keep suites at the Great Northern.’

Audrey has been in charge of the newly refurbished Great Northern Hotel and Horne’s department store since her father Benjamin Horne died a decade ago. His brother Jerry lives in the forest with a blind hermit. Audrey also bought The Roadhouse, or The Bang Bang Bar, as it’s now known, from the Renault brothers ages ago.

‘The problem,’ Audrey said, ‘is that David can’t handle women who have their own lives. Look at the female characters in the show. Agent Tammy Preston is a freak, an empty vessel in tight skirts and stilettos. And Lucy Brennan is … let’s face it … a moron.’

‘Is she really like that?’

‘Fraid so, honey. She and Andy deserve each other.’

‘Lynch is a misogynist,’ I said, getting on my high horse. ‘Look at that embarrassing scene with Gordon Cole and the French escort.’

‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ she said, her loyalty for the director coming through. ‘It’s too simple to say he’s a misogynist. What did that film critic say?’

‘Which film critic?’

‘Jack Bilson.’

‘Jake Wilson.’

‘Yes, him. He said, “Lynch is not afraid to tap into the place where misogyny comes from.” That’s more accurate.’

Wanting to change directions, I asked Audrey if she’s seen Shelley Johnson. It was a touchy topic.

Audrey shrugged on the screen and brought a cigarette to her mouth before saying, ‘She’s gone quiet on me.’

‘I keep hoping you two get back together again.’

Audrey and Shelley had a fling two years ago; it meant more to Audrey than it did to Shelley.

Audrey laughed. ‘You just want to see two lipstick femmes getting it on.’ Then she got serious. ‘She’s gone for good this time,’ she said, bringing the cigarette to her mouth again. ‘Shelley likes cock too much. Besides, she’s going out with that new guy… what’s his name?’

‘Red.’

The mouth twisted into a wicked little grin on the phone screen. ‘He’s cute. I would not kick him out of my bed.’

After we stopped laughing, I said, ‘I wonder why Lynch didn’t put all that in the new series. It’s more interesting than a frustrated housewife having an affair with someone called Billy.’

‘Truth is complicated,’ Audrey replied. ‘Tell it like it happened and it never seems true. Organise, simplify and it will seem truer than life.’

‘That’s what Lynch has done. Made you all seem truer than life.’

Audrey seemed tired all of a sudden; the strain showed around the eyes and mouth. ‘I’ve got to go. Someone’s coming over.’

‘One question.’

‘Shoot.’

‘How do you feel about Sherilyn Fenn, the actress who plays you?’

Audrey’s face immediately lit up. ‘She’s gorgeous. I never looked like her. Even in my younger days. But I tell you what, she’s starting to look a lot like me now.’

‘Can I write about this conversation?’

‘Go ahead. But no one will believe you.’

‘Goodnight, Audrey Horne. Glad you survived the explosion in the bank.’

dmetri-kakmi Dmetri Kakmi (Episode 158) is a writer and editor based in Melbourne, Australia. The memoir Mother Land was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in Australia; and is published in England and Turkey. His essays and short stories appear in anthologies and journals. You can find out more about him here.

Episode 233: A Craft Discussion About David Foster Wallace’s “E Unibus Plurim: Television and U.S. Fiction” with Vanessa Blakeslee!

19 Saturday Nov 2016

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in David Foster Wallace, Episode, Postmodernism, Television

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David Foster Wallace, E Unibus Plurim: Television and U.S. Fiction., The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Episode 233 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I talk with Vanessa Blakeslee about David Foster Wallace’s “E Unibus Plurim: Television and U.S. Fiction.”

Vanessa and John 2

TEXTS DISCUSSED

Journal of Contemporary Literature

Read David Foster Wallace’s 1993 essay “E Unibus Plurim: Television and U.S. Fiction” here.

Episode 233 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

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Episode #210: Ron Cooper!

11 Saturday Jun 2016

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, Film, Philosophy, Television

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Episode 210 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I interview fiction writer and philosopher Ron Cooper,

Ron Cooper

plus I chat with actor Jeremy Palko, who many of you might recognize as Andy from season 6 of The Walking Dead.

Jeremy Palko is the more handsome fellow on the right.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

Gospel Of The Twin

NOTES

Check out Jeremy Palko’s website here, and So Dark’s website here.

Here’s my video of the Frank Miller event from Megacon.

Johnny Depp’s head made a brief appearance on The Walking Dead.

Check out Jeff Shuster’s first review of one of Tom Selleck’s films.

_______

Episode 210 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

Like a Geek God #15: The Legend of Korra Season Two (A Post Mortem)

22 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Like a Geek God, Television

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The Legend of Korra

Like a Geek God #15 by Mark Pursell

The Legend of Korra Season Two: A Post Mortem

Sequels can be tricky. Many times, the attempt to preserve the spirit of the original object while also striking out in a new direction leads to one of two extemes: transcendance, or catastrophic failure. Aliens, The Godfather: Part II, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Road Warrior capitalized on their progenitors and catapulted their franchises to greater heights of artistic achievement.

On the other hand, we have…The Matrix Reloaded, Jaws 2, Basic Instinct 2, and any number of direct-to-video Disney follow-ups.

It’s hard to say why there’s rarely a middle ground for sequels. Maybe it’s due to the fact that—unless an intellectual property (IP) is conceived with sequels in mind—the existence of a sequel only comes about because the original IP has been commercially successful. This sometimes coincides with critical acclaim and sometimes doesn’t, and it’s hard to say which is the worse offender: a bad sequel to a bad movie that was, despite its badness, financially viable, or a bad sequel to a good or even great movie that squanders exciting storytelling opportunities and tarnishes the franchise/IP’s name.

Television has to deal with this, too. There’s hardly any data for television shows that attempt to be sequels. Spin-offs are more common, and though they can hardly be referred to as sequels in the most accurate sense, conventional television wisdom holds that a spin-off series is an equally-risky bet that rarely pans out well (here’s looking at you, Joey and Golden Palace and Joanie Loves Chachi and The Lone Gunmen). Fortunately, geek television culture is littered with spin-off success stories. Angel and Torchwood, though you may argue the finer points of their worth, extemporized from their source material (Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Doctor Who, respectively) with enough elan to distinguish themselves and establish their own fan bases.

So, the question of a sequel series to Nickolodeon’s hot-property Avatar: The Last Airbender wasn’t necessarily a foregone conclusion on the side of the negative. Actually, it seemed like both a good idea and a novel one. Airbender is one of the most cohesive and satisfying storytelling experiences in modern serialized television, though often overlooked because of its animated nature and its youthful target audience. Creators and lead writers Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko proved again and again during the series’ original run that they were worldbuilders, screenwriters, and showrunners of not only competence but complexity. Though Airbender as a series ended with that most rare of commodities—a satisfying finale—its universe was ripe for further exploration. When Nickoloden announced The Legend of Korra, a sequel series set seventy years after the events of Airbender and starring the next incarnation of the Avatar—a belligerent teenage girl named Korra—Airbender fans across the globe rejoiced.

With the Airbender IP in place and DiMartino and Konietzko once again taking the reins, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that Korra would live up to, possibly even surpass, the original series. Early press made much of the fact that the creators had asked for and been given a smaller number of episodes per season to write, allowing them to discard stand-alone episodes and subplots in favor of telling a serialized story arc with precision, focus, and momentum. A dream come true, especially for those of us (*raises hand*) who rant regularly and with passion about how the network standard of twenty-two episodes per season is an enemy to great art, whether it is comedy or epic fantasy.

And things started well enough last year when Korra’s first season aired. The discrete nations of the Airbender world, depicted in the original series as being in the infancy of an industrial revolution, coalesce in Korra to a Gotham analogue called Republic City where the different strata of the Airbender world gather in one place, with the result that—as in most melting-pot metropolises across our actual history—the clash of cultures has led both to advancement (Republic City is essentially a steampunk Shanghai, with zeppelins and metalbending police officers) and antagonism. When the show opens, the mix of elementally-powered benders and “normal”, non-bending people has led to a wave of anti-bending sentiment among Republic City’s ungifted and disenfranchised populace. This idea is embodied by first season villain Amon, leader of an anti-bending organization (the Equalists) and a revolutionary firebrand with, naturally, more than equality on his mind. It’s a relevant, contemporary tableau. Then you have Korra herself: she’s an admirably flawed character, tough and empathetic but headstrong and impatient. She makes an effective contrast to the first series’ Aang, whose airbender serenity, cheerfulness, and insight into human nature is offset by occasional arrogance, reluctance to “grow up”, and fear of his own destiny.

Unfortunately, the very storytelling element that Korra’s shorter season run was supposed to enhance—plotting—emerged as the show’s weakest aspect, against all expectation and logic.

A strong initial salvo of episodes degenerated into a tired love triangle (can we just put love triangles away for a few decades? Bella and her monsters, Katniss and her male damsels-in-distress…leave it alone, please). Then, bizarrely, the show seemed to change its mind about the identity of masked villain Amon, having seemed to set up “his” identity as supporting character Asami and then, in the eleventh hour, pawning the villain’s role off on a previously-unseen/unknown character in whom the audience had no interest or investment. Then the plot was all neatly wrapped up, even though the creators had already been guaranteed a second season (and later signed a deal for three more seasons). They then announced that they had decided to dispense with the overall serialized arc of Airbender and that each season of Korra would feature a discrete arc. Oooookay. Buh?

Whatever floundering marred the end of Korra’s first season continued (and how) with his year’s second season run. The overall conceit of the season was a focus on the spirit world (a running worldbuilding element in the Avatar universe) and the origins of the Avatar’s singular ability to manipulate, or “bend”, all four of the primal elements. However, the first six or seven episodes of Season Two frittered away screentime on a too-obviously-villainous waterbending leader and his engineering of a civil war among the Southern Water Tribe. By the time the season got around to its main point in the “Beginnings” two-parter, this writer’s disinterest had reached eye-rolling proportions. Did we learn nothing from The Phantom Menace? Bureacratic and political machinations can certainly be interesting, but you have to know your brand. I mean, it’s Star Wars, it’s Airbender, it’s high fantasy adventure. This isn’t fucking House of Cards. I suppose it might be different if the political intrigue was written well, but it wasn’t. It was mostly a hash of first-thought “revelations” and betrayals which could have been tossed out completely, being beside the point as they are. The back half of the season was somewhat stronger because the focus shifted to the spirit world and Korra’s relationship with it, ending with a *SPOILER* intriguing development that saw a reentry of the spirits into human society and Korra’s loss of ability to connect with the spirits of her Avatar predecessors. However, even these more exciting story elements suffered from the kind of logical inconsistencies and unforegrounded developments that rarely plagued Airbender. (It should be noted that DiMartino, who co-wrote every episode of Korra’s first season with Konietzko, wrote only a handful of episodes for Season Two; Konietzko wrote none at all).

Why the faltering quality? If I had to spitball, I’d say it has to do (and it usually does, when things like this happen) with the creators and showrunners. DiMartino and Konietzko wrote all twelve episodes of Season One by themselves; while I normally advocate for this kind of writing set up, to avoid a “too many cooks in the kitchen” lurch in quality and tone from episode to episode, they seem to have grown fatigued by the end of the Season One run, a supposition further supported by Konietzko’s lack of writing credits in S2 and DiMartino’s limited participation. For all of Korra’s interesting and complex ideas, and the fantastic, wide universe of Airbender to explore, these guys seem tired of their own show.

In the end, Korra is a rare exception to the general sequel rule. It isn’t devastatingly awful so far, but it doesn’t really live up to Airbender, much less expand on it successfully. It’s possible that, having flushed some unsteadiness from their pipes, DiMartino and Konietzko will find their feet with the in-development third season. Time will tell. At least Korra is better than the live-action Airbender movie (a cinematic abortion for which M. Night Shyamalan should be jailed). And if you’re an Airbender fan, like me, and Korra frustrates you by not capitalizing on its potential brilliance, revisit some of your favorite episodes and story arcs from the original series. After all: we’ll always have Aang.

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Mark Pursell (Episode 75) is a lifelong geek and lover of words. His publishing credits include Nimrod International Journal, The New Orleans Review, and The Florida Review, where he also served as poetry editor. His work can most recently be seen in the first volume of the 15 Views of Orlando anthology from Burrow Press. He currently teaches storytelling and narrative design for video games at Full Sail University in Winter Park, Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #19: The Santa Trap

13 Friday Dec 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Television, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #19 by Jeffrey Shuster

What is Stacy Keach doing in a made-for-TV Christmas movie?

In The Santa Trap, Shelly Long plays Molly Emerson, a wife and mother whose family have moved to the southwestern United States. I’m assuming that’s southern California. The movie starts out with scenes of golfers in Santa caps and cacti in Santa caps. The idea is that it’s really hot outside much to Molly’s chagrin. She dreams of the white Christmases back home. They had to move for her husband’s new promotion, which came with a fancy Christmas bonus of a frozen turkey.

I’m starting to notice a trend in these movies of fathers either being out of work or stuck crappy jobs around the holidays. Not that I can’t identify since I always ended getting stuck working on Christmas at my last job, the only bright spot of the day getting to listen to the yearly playing of Claude Thornhill’s “Snowfall” as I drove up to the newspaper to get the editions online for all the subscribers.

“Snowfall,” the most underrated Christmas song ever written.

Anyway, The Santa Trap features Stacy Keach playing a biker outlaw who gets thrown in jail by the town sheriff. Kind of an odd actor to have in this movie.

I remember Stacy Keach from American History X and the fact that he terrified me. What’s next? Brian Cox in a Frosty the Snowman special? I remember when Richard Roeper reviewed Disney’s The Country Bears, starring Christopher Walken. He remarked that having Christopher Walken in The Country Bears was like having a stripper show up at your kid’s birthday party. For that matter, what were Alec Baldwin and Peter Fonda doing in Thomas and the Magic Railroad?

Back to The Santa Trap. At the Emerson house, the older brother tells his younger sister that there is no Santa Claus. She refuses to accept this and rigs a fancy trap to trap Santa. It’s not unlike the kind of trap featured in that old board game Mousetrap where everyday items are used in a convoluted manner. I remember that game and the song. Knock the ball in the rub-a-dub tub, which hits the man into the pan…well you get idea. Anyway, her trap works and she catches the real Santa Claus who’s played by none other than Dick Van Patten. Yay!

Anyhoo, Mr. and Mrs. Emerson aren’t true believers so they call the cops and have Santa Claus hauled off to jail. They stick Santa Claus in the same cell as that outlaw biker and for those of you who have been waiting your whole lives for a jailhouse rumble between Dick Van Patten and Stacy Keach…you’ll be sorely disappointed. They end up switching outfits instead. The biker gets released posing as Santa Claus and all sorts of shenanigans ensue.

Did I mention that Adrienne Barbeau stars as a homeless sock maker? Or that the British actress who played the Flash’s girlfriend on that short lived Flash TV series in this? Or that the actor who played that irate customer who got Brad Hamilton (Judge Reinhold) fired in Fast Times at Ridgemont High plays one of the sheriff’s deputies?

Ten Things I Learned From The Santa Trap

Santa has a cell phone that has a “Jingle Bells” ring tone. This is in contradiction to the Santa Claus portrayed in The Night They Saved Christmas. In that film, Santa Claus hated “Jingle Bells.”
Cops like to eat donuts and typically get jelly smeared on their faces while eating them.
Elves use silly string and Super Soakers to subdue police officers.
People in the Southwestern United States have Christmas barbecues. (That actually doesn’t sound like a bad idea).
Santa still comes down the chimney and doesn’t use teleportation devices (another lie propagated by The Night They Saved Christmas).
The elves can pull up data on you with computers these days. Apparently, there’s a huge data center up at the North Pole, though I’m sure it’s just for checking on who’s been naughty and nice.
Dick Van Patten can pull off leather chaps.
CG reindeer aren’t all that charming.
Shelly Long is good in anything.
Dick Van Patten is not.

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Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47) is an MFA candidate and instructor at the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #18: I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

06 Friday Dec 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Television, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #18 by Jeffrey Shuster

I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

You know you’re not doing well when the Christmas movie you’re watching for your weekly blog makes the Christmas movie reviewed for last week, The Night They Saved Christmas, look like a minor masterpiece. But you have a duty to present your thoughts on schlocky movies for reading public so you resign yourself to watching some 2001 made-for-TV spectacle by the name of I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. You start reevaluating your life, wondering how you ended up in this position.

i_saw_mommy_kissing_santa_claus The first thing you notice as you’re watching I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus is that the titular song is never played during this motion picture. At all. You begin to wonder if the song’s title is actually copyrighted and are then forced to come to inevitable conclusion that it is not. Why would the producers pay the royalty fees when they could sucker in the average viewer with the title alone?

Next up is the story. It focuses around a kid by the name of Justin Tutela (played twin actors Dylan and Cole Sprouse.) You’ve never heard of these actors before and you decide to read up on them. You discover they starred in the television series The Secret Life of Zack and Cody, a very popular Disney Channel sitcom. You’ve never heard of it before and realize that you’ve just aged yourself among the twenty something set.

Back to the movie. A few weeks before Christmas, Justin’s father decides to dress up like Santa Claus and kisses Justin’s mother. At this point, Justin has a psychotic break and decides to wage his own personal war on Santa Claus so his parents won’t get a divorce. He figures if he’s as naughty as he can possibly be, Santa Claus won’t come to his house on Christmas Eve and whisk his mother away. Justin starts playing all sorts of pranks like pulling fire alarms at school, hiding a fart machine under a seat cushion at dinner, and wrapping up a fish to stick in a gift box at school.

Of course, that’s nothing compared to what he does to the town Rent-a-Santa. Justin figures he’s the real Santa Claus so he unleashes his full wrath upon him. First, he starts flinging snowballs at Rent-a-Santa. Then he starts icing walkways for the old guy to slip and fall down on. Later, when this Rent-a-Santa gets a job at the local shopping mall, Justin provokes the Rent-a-Santa by throwing a pie in his face. The Rent-a-Santa chases Justin, but can’t catch him. After crashing into a Christmas display, the Rent-a-Santa gets fired.

Justin’s dad dresses up as Santa again on Christmas Eve and ends up getting caught in a snare. They all realize whole Mommy kissing Santa Claus thing was just a huge misunderstanding. The real Santa Claus visits the house later that night and leaves Justin the space marine outfit he’s been wanting for Christmas. I guess Santa stops keeping track of who’s naughty after December 1^st. On Christmas Day, the homeless Rent-a-Santa shows up at their door begging for change. As soon as he sees Justin, he tries to run away, losing his grip on his crutches and falling flat on his face. You wonder why the producers thought it was funny laugh homeless Santa on Christmas day.

You can’t find any trailers or clips from the movie to share, but you do find a rendition of “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” from none other than Twisted Sister.

You begin to wonder why all Christmas songs aren’t sung by Twisted Sister.

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Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47) is an MFA candidate and instructor at the University of Central Florida.

In Boozo Veritas #5: Why I love Violence

02 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, In Boozo Veritas, Television

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Doctor Who, In Boozo Veritas, John Carpenter, Teege Braune

In Boozo Veritas #5 by Teege Braune

Why I Love Violence

If you haven’t read Mark Pursell’s Like a Geek God blog post “Dr. Who, An Unarmed Hero,” please do. The article is an homage to “the anti-gun pacifist alien espousing diplomacy and intellectualism” Dr. Who, an odd-duck amongst geek culture heroes and a respite from the average blood-thirsty warriors of fantasy, sci-fi, and comic books. While Mark never once becomes preachy or suggests that the sword, laser blaster, and machine gun wielding characters that populate the bulk of geek media should or will disappear, he rightfully hails an alternative to the never-ending barrage of carnage that movies, television, graphic novels, and video games throw at us. Why don’t we have more protagonists who, like the good doctor, value beauty, creativity, and peaceful solutions to conflicts, who detest aggression and violence of any kind?

Mark goes out of his way to mention that he doesn’t “personally believe that violent movies, games, and TV shows can be convincingly held accountable when an unstable person takes up arms against a crowded theater or an elementary school.” Nevertheless, it’s hard for any analytical person to see the sheer magnitude of human atrocities in our media, both fictional and non, and not recognize that both phenomenon are the products of a culture absolutely obsessed with violence. Jesus, who wouldn’t welcome a break from all that and embrace a peace-loving hero like Dr. Who?

That being said, I think part of the reason I found Mark’s article so moving was because it forced me to face an unresolved conflict within myself. Truth be told: I love violence. As long as it takes place safely within the context of fiction, I love love love violence. I don’t necessarily love that I love violence, but that fact doesn’t in any way make me love violence less. When given the option, I’ll always take Alien over Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Terminator over Robby the Robot, and yes, Neo over Dr. Who. I love violent movies whether they be shoot-em-up action flicks, spaghetti westerns, neo-noir, and above all else horror. Sometimes violence makes me cringe, sometimes it makes me laugh, and often, when it’s at its best, it does both. I find it exciting, thrilling, and I can’t for the life of me say why.

I need to point out that I also hate violence. I find nothing at all fun about reading news accounts of atrocities in this country and other war-torn parts of the world. These stories fill me with sorrow and disgust, and yet don’t prevent me from popping Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the DVD player when I get home from work. Certainly I’m not alone in this duality. The distinction between fiction and non in this context is everything. Nevertheless, sensitive as I can be, it is not a conflict that’s easy to reconcile. Anthropological explanations for the enduring popularity of horror and violent art in general usually point out that our brains reaction to fear is similar whether we are watching a character in peril or facing real, imminent danger, that witnessing a fictional person overcome or fall victim to physical harm in some way prepares us should we encounter similar circumstances. As accurate and psychologically sound an argument as this may, it fails to strike any kind of personal chord within me.

In his own 1981 essay “Why I Love Violence,” John Waters solves this dichotomy by simply abandoning it. As Waters explains his lifelong obsession with murder, death, and destruction, an obsession that led to the creation of some the most wonderfully twisted and sick movies in the history of cinema and the endearing title “Prince of Puke,” the reader becomes aware of a disturbing truth: though Waters is quick to mention, “I’ve never initiated physical violence in my life,” it becomes immediately clear that neither does he need violence to be fictional for it to delight him. Unlike myself, Waters lacks any ambivalence about his obsession. He openly admits to fantasies about real, fatal disasters, the 1960 Indianapolis 500 tragedy being a favorite, and is a connoisseur of true crime.

Waters never bothers to justify himself to his reader. In the end, you walk away from the essay knowing without a doubt that he loves violence, but no more able to say exactly why. That being said, what follows is admittedly only my own supposition, but I think Waters’ interest in violence may simply be an radical acceptance of an unchanging fact of life. Even an utopic society would face continual hurricanes, volcanoes, and other natural disaster decimating entire populations. Perhaps Waters’ approach to violence is a more honest way of viewing it than my own in the same way that my love of consuming fish would be ruined if I actually had to gut one myself. Furthermore, Waters’ has used his fascination with violence to make positive changes in the lives of others; the work he’s done in maximum security prisons, teaching creative writing to murderers and other violent criminals, is truly inspiring.

This doesn’t mean I think we should all be John Waters, as much as I love him. I also have undying respect for the peaceniks, pacifists, and Dr. Whos of the world. My own visceral response to real-life violence is guaranteed to keep me as far away from it as possible, and lately I have found that even fictional violence, when it becomes too realistic or mean-spirited, can really bother me. The exploitation films I used to love hold less appeal for me now, and there are moments when images from movies like Cannibal Holocaust, Blood Sucking Freaks, and Man Bites Dog haunt me, making wish I could un-see films I genuinely appreciate. Perhaps I am getting soft as I enter my mid-thirties. Maybe all of my favorite violent movies will lose their appeal the closer I get to middle-age. But I kind of doubt it.

Recently, inspired by Mark’s thought-provoking article, I decided to give Dr. Who another shot. I got bored within the first five minutes and put on John Carpenter’s The Thing for the umpteenth time. As the shape-shifting alien menace ripped apart MacReady’s unfortunate crew, I stopped worrying why I took such joy in their demise and simply enjoyed the ride, never forgetting how glad I was that it was only fiction.

I shall return next week with more drinking stories and musings on the sauce.

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Teege Braune (figured right) is a writer of literary fiction, horror, essays, and poetry. Recently he has discovered the joys of drinking responsibly. He may or may not be a werewolf.

Like a Geek God #3: Doctor Who, An Unarmed Hero

25 Sunday Aug 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Doctor Who, Like a Geek God, Science Fiction, Television

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Doctor Who, Like a Geek God, Mark Purcell, Television

Like a Geek God #3 by Mark Purcell

Doctor Who: An Unarmed Hero for a World That Won’t Put Down Its Guns

Illustration by Joshua Goldstein.

Whenever an incident of mass shooting violence strikes flint to the tinder of our national consciousness, many people—both the media and the laity—are quick to scapegoat pop culture as the primary contributing factor. As a result, a lot of our pop culture objects from the last twenty-five years, from Mortal Kombat to The Matrix to The Dark Knight, have become irrevocably entwined with our history of violence. And while I don’t personally believe that violent movies, games, and TV shows can be convincingly held accountable when an unstable person takes up arms against a crowded theater or an elementary school, it is impossible to ignore the fact that geek culture is, by and large, a culture that worships the warrior, and frequently a gun-toting one, at that. Sure, a few of our great geek heroes (Batman, for example) make a point of using non-lethal force, but they tend to be the exception. Even some heroes and heroines who may be intially averse to holding a gun, much less firing one, find themselves thumbing off the safety when push comes to shove. You can argue whether or not the prevalence of gun violence in pop culture objects—particularly geek pop culture—has anything to do with incidents of domestic shooting violence or not, but the prevalence itself is something that can be objectively stated to exist.

Is it any wonder, really, that geek pop culture gravitates towards the warrior archetype in many ways, be it with guns blazing or sword swinging? It is only a small percentage of the population who have any idea what war or battle are truly like. For the rest of us, the warrior archetype in our movies and TV shows and games and books give us a feeling of agency, using an imaginative link to satisfy our desire to stand tall against the forces of evil and cast them back into the shadows. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. And it is perhaps not our fault that our default view of the best, most direct method of combatting evil is, well, combat. It’s certainly the default view of a lot of pop culture objects, a lot of the population, and a lot of politicians. There is something atavistic about it, as if hearkening back to our prehistoric infancy as a race, using force to defend our food, our territories, and our families. This kind of martial existence is no longer a reality for most of us in the developed world and hasn’t been for a very long time, but the instinct remains, bolstered by the gun battles and kung fu throwdowns in our pop culture. Or maybe those things exist because of the instinct and not the other way around. Who knows?

When you consider all this together, it makes the question of Doctor Who—the eponymous hero from the famous and long-running British science-fiction TV serial, in which the Doctor and a chosen companion travel both time and space like a kind of two-person United Nations, facing down injustice and genocide wherever they find it—a bit perplexing. Because Doctor Who is, largely, a pacifist. He rarely takes physical action against an enemy, instead relying on diplomacy, negotiation, trickery, and his intelligence to find a way through or around whatever stands in his way. The only tool he employs is something called a “sonic screwdriver”, a nifty gadget that allows him to disable locks and fiddle with computers and machinery but which can’t be used directly as any kind of weapon. It is part of the Doctor’s philosophical standpoint and main argument against any race relying on the use of weapons that he manages to survive danger and accomplish his goals without ever pointing a gun at someone. There is a long-running thematic strand of the show’s mythology that deals with the Doctor’s conflicted attitude towards the human race: he favors humans above most other races, finding them fascinating and capable of great beauty and achievement, but he detests the willingness with which humans turn towards violence and weaponry.

Despite this lack of martial prowess—and, indeed, an outspoken anti-gun point-of-view that would make conservative firearm apologists froth with misguided Second Amendment fervor—Doctor Who has, in recent years, become a highly popular, highly visible pop culture figure in the United States. The show’s popularity isn’t difficult to explain—its Joss Whedon-esque mix of humor and heartbreak, its vivid characters, its labyrinthine mythology—but the Doctor himself as a popular figure with the American audience, an audience in a country that worships the gun and the military-industrial complex more zealously than God, is a curiosity. And, perhaps, a sign of something. If an anti-gun, pacifist alien espousing diplomacy and intellectualism as the chief tools in a hero’s utility belt can rise to prominence in the national pop culture consciousness, there’s a possibility that there’s a generational shift occurring in the way we view guns and violence. The warrior is a necessary archetype that’s never going to go away, but a pop culture landscape stocked with as many sage, peacemaking heroes as it is with fighters might, I think, be something worth aspiring to.

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Mark Pursell is a lifelong geek and lover of words. His publishing credits include Nimrod International Journal, The New Orleans Review, and The Florida Review, where he also served as poetry editor. His work can most recently be seen in the first volume of the 15 Views of Orlando anthology from Burrow Press. He currently teaches storytelling and narrative design for video games at Full Sail University in Winter Park, Florida.