Always a Bridesmaid Never a Chick Flick or Why Genre Matters

First off you should go see Bridesmaids immediately.  I went last night and laughed my ass off despite the guy in front of me checking his phone every three seconds and Nostradamus behind me trying to guess every line and plot twist in a not very complicated movie.
While I am humbly suggesting you go to the movie Salon's Rebecca Traister demands you see it as a part of your social responsibility in this article http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/feature/2011/05/12/bridesmaids_social_campaign.  Apparently Traister believes the Kristen Wiig written comedy is a new paragon of feminism and if the movie does well it means women will have more chances to write and star in quality movies.  I assume she bases this on the phenomenon following Wedding Crashers in which more R-rated comedies were green-lit based on its success.  More recently The Hangover proved adult-oriented comedies were more than just a passing fad and studios started taking chances on movies like Bridesmaids.  What Traister doesn't take into account is that more often than not successful movies do not spawn more great movies in their genre, but rather dozens of pale imitators rushed into production by greedy and talentless studio execs.  I have no doubt cinemas will be inundated with chick-flicks over the next couple of years as studios try to recreate the success of Bridesmaids.  This will not, however, be to the benefit of female stars, writers, and directors because they will be forced to work for studio execs who have a misguided understanding of what Bridesmaids is.  Bridesmaids proves that women can a) be funny and b) can offer more to the cinematic world than simply pandering to their own gender.  All of this gets ignored when people like Traister label Bridesmaids as a chick flick or The Hangover for women.
Chick flicks fall under a larger genre I call demographic movies or demo films.  These movies are designed to sell to a specific audience, for instance black films are designed to sell to black audiences, kids films are designed for kids, etc.  Most genres are defined by the audience's reasonable expectations of the film's elements.  So westerns are expected to have horses, guns, etc or romantic comedies are expected to have a meet-cute and some sort of struggle to keep the main couple apart.  These genres evolved naturally over time rather than a calculated attempt to form them.  So when a filmmaker sets out to make a western they are informed by the films of the past that created the genre.  The demo film is unique in that it is the audience that informs the genre not the other way around.  So when a filmmaker sets out to make a chick flick they are trying to market the film and make the film at the same time.  This is problematic in the same way that George Lucas's post Star Wars merchandising orgasm ruined his subsequent films.
The chick flick sets out to be a film from a particular point of view, a woman.  Many chick flicks go about this by portraying women as spectacularly awesome, which is fine because they are.  The problem, however, is that the easiest way to portray someone as awesome is to compare them against that which is not awesome.  Since the chick flick portends that all women are awesome then the obvious and easy choice is to show this by painting all men as evil penis wielding oppressing douches.  Look at the stable of chick flicks over the last twenty years:  Fried Green Tomatoes - one inattentive and one abusive husband,

Thelma and Louise - ignorant mustachioed and oppressive Chistopher Macdonald, a rapist, Brad Pitt's hustler, and a host of other terrible terrible men,

It's important to note that both of these films were directed by men so it may just be that these films may be how men think women think of men.  I also want to note that these two films are excellent and should be enjoyed by both sexes, but you can understand, based on the trailers, why a guy wouldn't want to sit through two hours of hearing about how much of an asshole he is.  And this isn't limited to the chick flick.  Most demo films go the route of pumping up the intended demographic by crapping on another one. such as in guy films  where women are portrayed as fun-hating shrews.  Sometimes the film will be good in spite of this calculated pandering such as in the above films.  Sometimes the film will have nothing else to offer and will therefore suck e.g. the guy film Tomcats, which is disgusting.  Nine times out of ten, however, the demo empowerment angle serves to alienate the other demographics.  Which is why guys don't like chick flicks.
Around turn of the century (I love using that phrase to describe ten years ago) the chick flick moved away from female empowerment and into female wish fulfillment.  The best example of this is Sex and the City in which strong female leads have debilitating shoe fetishes.  These movies do more to stereotype women than anything The Man Show ever offered.  I offer 2009's Bride Wars as an example.

Not exactly a positive portrayal of women, huh?  But these types of movies continue to be made along with terrible romantic comedies that offer the same thing; a studio execs idea of a woman's point of view.
So while the chick flick used to be unappealing to men because it featured negative male stereotypes it is now unappealing because it reinforces negative female stereotypes (Not to say that men avoid chick flicks because of a political stand, but rather these stereotypes are uninteresting to men).  The demo movie is so inherently alienating that filmmakers can make different versions of the same movie, but for different demos and no one bats an eye.  Some times they don't even change the title or wait five years.
Death at a Funeral 2007

Death at a Funeral 2010

So why is Bridesmaids different.  The simple answer is that it isn't chick flick.  Kriten Wiig has said repeatedly that she just wrote a comedy and never had any intent for it to have any sort of political message.  She wrote a movie and it naturally had a woman's perspective because she is, you know, a woman.  Because she approached the movie with the story in mind rather than the audience she ended up writing a movie that was appealing across genders.  Most male writers don't set out to write a guy film (those that do end up with movies like Tomcats, which is disgusting) they just write a movie.  The protagonist is a chick flick must be woman in order for it to be a chick flick.  In non-demo films you can swap in any one for the title character and it ends up being basically the same film.  Let's play the pronoun game.  Here is the plot description of Bridesmaids sans gender specific pronouns:
The main character's shitty life threatens to get even shittier when their best friend gets engaged to someone in a higher social class.  The main character might lose the friend to a new friend who seems to be everything the main character is not.
Doesn't necessarily have to be a woman does it?
Here's another one:
The main character gets engaged and realizes they don't have many friends in their own gender to fill out the bridal party so they have to search for a best friend to be the best man/maid of honor on relatively short notice.
This was I Love You, Man and the lead could have gone either way with out much change (except maybe for the title)
So Kristen Wiig wrote a good movie by any standard and it was a hit.  When people like Traiste try to turn it into a feminist issue they hurt their own cause.  Men don't feel the burden to write for their gender which means their first concern is whether the film is good.  When people like Traiste try to force the political burden on female writers they handcuff them into writing a demo film.  This is, of course, unfair.
Traise should be less concerned in saving the chick flick and more concerned with promoting good female writers, actors, and directors regardless of the genre they write in.  Kristen Wiig is about to blow-up big time and it would be a shame if she gets pigeon-holed into the chick flick thing.  She doesn't need to be a cause.  She just need to be Kriten Wiig.

Manuscript As A House.

My wife and I bought a house that is over a hundred years old. Of course, it needs a lot of work which is one of the reasons we bought it.  Restoring the house is a lot of fun as well as a lot of work.  My Dad came out to Wisconsin this week to help me with some of the bigger projects.  The basic structure of the house is sound, but there are a lot of cosmetic problems that need to be dealt with.  This is very much like editing the first draft of a manuscript which is where I am with The Hemingway Thief right now. Obviously the metaphor of my manuscript as my house has been rolling around in my mind this week (not to be confused with that Kevin Kline movie in which the young Darth Vader plays a whiny goth male prostitute).
One of the projects was to reverse the way our basement door swings.  The door is located in the tight passageway between my kitchen and the front hall.  Last month I was passing by my wife in this passage and lost my balance.  The door had not been shut all the way and when I reached out to steady myself it opened up and I almost tumbled into the gaping maw of the basement stairway.  Luckily my wife was there to grab my arm before I broke my neck.  When I imagined what might have happened if it had been this coming Autumn, when I would most likely have a baby in my arms, I decided it would be best to have the door swing in than out.  Dad and I got to work on it immediately.
We had the hinges reversed and carved out the doorjamb when our very handy friend came over to offer some advice.  He took off all of the woodwork (which was cracked, dirty, and faded) and we spent the next two days stripping the wood, staining it, and glueing the broken pieces.  By the end the door and frame looked brand new and professionally installed.  My father commented, "I would have been fine with just hanging the door, but this looks great."
So, what does that have to do with The Hemingway Thief? Right now I have a pretty good story about three guys searching for Hemingway's lost suitcase in the Sierra Madres.  The characters are funny and the action works.  If I were to go back over it for spelling and grammar mistakes it would be just fine, Just like hanging the door without fixing the surrounding wood would have been good enough.  And while I would be perfectly happy passing the unfinished door each day or showing the story to friends and family neither would be fit for popular consumption.  I still need to strip away the dirt and seemlessly glue the pieces together.  While this will certainly take me longer it is the difference between getting the job done and getting the job done professionally.  If you'll remember my post about treating writing as your profession you'll know which side I come down on.
Still, there are times when good enough is good enough.  Sometimes the imperfections are the best parts. Our handy friend pointed out that the coloring of the wood was called its patina and the best patina's are in old wood that had taken some abuse.  "It gives it character," he said.
The same is true for art.  We all know the damage George Lucas did when he went back to perfect his "flawed" Star Wars trilogy.  The little parts he didn't get quite right the first time had turned out to be what fans loved best about it.  Then there is the famous story of the shark in Jaws.  Spielberg had originally intended to show the shark in the opening sequence and multiple times afterward.  He had to improvise when the mechanical shark kept breaking down.  The result was waiting until the last twenty minutes of the movie to show the villain.  The result was a terrifying and exhilarating moment that has become a classic scene.

So, editing is not the search for perfection, but rather the search for what the Japanese call Wabi Sabi or, to paraphrase, the perfection in imperfection.  It is also important to remember when revising that no matter what you do no one, including yourself will be satisfied.  Check out the comment section in this yahoo answers post in which a guy pretended that the first page of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest was his book and asked for feedback. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100628222722AAdLf0q

Thank you, Charlie Sheen or Why CBS Must Be Destroyed Part II: Comedy

Charlie Sheen is on a mission to destroy trolls and anyone who is not winning. At first glance this may seem like an entertaining diversion with little effect on our lives, but it is, in reality, one of the great struggles of our time. If he is successful Charlie Eightball might just bring down one of the most oppressive and insidious forces in the current cultural zeitgeist, CBS.
In the first part of this article I went over a very brief history of the relationship between movies and television. It's a relationship that drives the creativity of both media and when either medium is doing well financially creativity suffers for it. Right now television is coming off of a twenty year run of creative boundary pushing and experimentation that brought us Seinfeld, The Office (British and American), Pushing Daisies, Dead Like Me, The Wire, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Lost, 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, Terriers, The Sopranos, The Simpsons, The Shield, The West Wing, Sports Night, Justified, Rescue Me, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Chappelle's Show, Mr. Show With Bob and David, The Daily Show, The Drew Carey Show, Archer, The Ricky Gervais Show, An Idiot Abroad, Weeds, Community and more.  CBS has acted as if none of these shows ever existed.  It's as if the network is stuck in state of arrested development (Oh! Arrested Development! There's another one).
In comedy the advent of the single camera format and the removal of the laugh track has been a huge leap forward in the way comedians can present their visions.  For most of its history the sitcom has been shot in the multiple camera format. You have a set with three walls (the fourth wall being your TV screen) and there are three or four cameras set up left, right, and center. The two side cameras shoot reaction shots and close ups of the characters while the center camera is used for establishing shots or bits of wild physical comedy. This system is incredibly static and constricting. Go back and watch some of your favorite sitcoms (or any show on CBS right now) and you'll see that it acts like a stage show ignoring the myriad of possibilites that film and camera work can offer.

One of the first shows to change the format was M*A*S*H. It would have been difficult for the show to portray the gritty pathos of war without giving the camera free reign to explore the character's faces and the larger world they inhabited. Interestingly this show, one of the most popular of all time, was on CBS as were many other excellent pre-nineties shows. This doesn't exonerate the network, but condemns it all the more, like the once great actor who starts phoning it in after the big paychecks start rolling (I'm looking at you, Bobby DeNiro).  Not to mention that the network insisted that the show use a laugh track which is both lame and insulting.  We do not need to be told when to laugh, but what can we expect from the network that brought us Big Brother.  You have to feel sorry for actors trying to stay in character while they wait for the laughter to die down.
The single camera format, which shoots in a fashion like filming a movie, became popular around the turn of the century (I like saying that).  Seinfeld began to intersperse single camera shoots around the usual multiple camera shots in the Jerry's apartment.  Cheers also dabbled with single camera in the later seasons when the ventured out of the bar more often. Seinfeld, however, was the show fully realized its comedic potential and gave us some of the shows greatest moments as the camera was free to move and make more interesting and dynamic shots.

Aaron Sorkin's wonderful, but short lived comedy Sports Night attempted to shoot entirely in single camera and sans laugh track. It failed because TV watchers are inherently adverse to anything different and had a hard time figuring out what it was. At the same time HBO's The Larry Sanders Show had been doing quite well using the same format. Of course, those of us who didn't have HBO had no idea of the nirvana that was going on between those squiggly lines. It's no surprise that Seinfeld alums Larry David and Larry Charles created a single camera show that blurred the line between fiction and reality. David followed in the Larry Sanders model of having celebrities play themselves, but took in one step further by showing them living their lives warts and all.

In order to make the single camera format palatable to the masses Ricky Gervais was clever enough to dress it up in the mockumentary format for his brilliant British version of The Office.  It was also successful in the states on NBC's Must See TV Thursday night and now the entire night is made up of single camera shows and all of them (except for the very racist Outsourced) have created fully realized rich three dimensional worlds. Single camera formatting has allowed show runners to move beyond the simple set-up/punchline idiom and move on to complex situations and character moments.
All of CBS's sitcoms, however, are still shot in the multiple camera format. Take a look at this promo from NBC's Community and imagine what it would look like if it were shot on a three walled static set.

In comparison watch this dynamic clip from Two and A Half Men

Oh that's hilarious!
The problem is that even though CBS has decided not to move past the set-up/punchline idiom, the multiple camera format, and the laugh track it is still the number one watched network.  This is mostly because it is the preferred network of old people, but also because most people are like my father who, in his words, "doesn't like to think when watching TV." These people turn on the tube and expect it to wash over them as they check out for the evening. These are the same people who see trailers for movies like Grown-ups and think "Thank God, now I won't have to watch Inception on Netflix. That movie makes my brain hurt." These are the majority of TV watchers because we have been told forever that people with selective tastes do not watch television and so these people go elsewhere for entertainment. So what is left is the people who want to curl up with a nice cup of same ole same ole. CBS is more than happy to provide that.
But why should we care? Because there are only so many shows that can be on the air at one time and the competition for ratings is fierce. CBS is lowering the bar and pandering to the lowest common denominator while other networks are trying to create shows with some sort of artistic integrity. Television is a business and so when good shows can not compete with the dreck on CBS then the other networks will compete by cutting the good shows and putting on more dreck. The visually stunning and narratively complex show Pushing Daisies was replaced by the nut-shot laden Wipeout because Daisies couldn't compete with the eighteenth iteration of CSI. I'm not going to go into the visual assault that is the CSI series, but I will say that CBS has allowed the same man who gave Michael Bay a career, Jerry Bruckheimer, to get his hooks into television. That is enough to make me hate them forever.
The point is that CBS is dumbing down the television world.  Television is an incredible medium that is capable of doing so much more than movies.  You can develop characters and worlds over a number of years rather than just two hours.  CBS chooses not to do this.  They opt for boring, safe, and crappy.  The play clock was added to football so that a team can't go up a score and then run out the clock without running a play.  There is no metaphorical play clock in television programming so while the rest of the networks are trying to score touchdowns CBS is sitting in the huddle with an eye on the clock waiting for the ratings to come in.
Those of us who enjoy thoughtful interesting television have watched in horror as our favorite shows are cancelled and replaced with CSI clones and terrible reality television. CBS has been assaulting the cultural landscape and turning it into a bland two dimensional shitgeist.
And that is just an inkling of why we must support Charlie Sheen and his cocaine fueled jihad against the network that paid him millions of dollars to spout one-liners in a show that is essentially the hell-spawn of an unholy three-way between The Odd Couple, My Two Dads, and the white version of the sarcastic maid from The Jeffersons.  We must help him because anything that might cause people to flip the channel to a different, better show is a good thing.  The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Even if he is a incoherent porn freak, he's a incoherent porn freak on a mission to save our pop culture souls...and to find more cocaine.

Thank you, Charlie Sheen or Why CBS Must Be Destroyed Part I: A Brief History

Lost in the deluge of tiger blood and the wailing wake of his F-18 ordinance is Charlie Sheen's real mission. It can be hard to miss because of all the side trips for porn stars and cocaine, but his primary mission is one we should all get behind. He is trying to destroy CBS.
Many of you may think CBS is harmless; harmless like an escaped Cobra! (Actually Bronx zoo officials say that it is unlikely the escaped cobra will attack humans and they are certain it is still in the reptile house). CBS, meanwhile, is a monolithic ratings machine hell bent on turning the TV landscape into a beige hackneyed nightmare. If left unchecked CBS will turn TV into the very idiot box so many snooty intellectuals have said it is. Which is a shame because we may be in the greatest era of television since its inception. Never before has television offered such a great outlet for creative minds. The film industry is broken and many writers, actors, and directors are looking to the Tube to get their visions out to the people. Flip through the channels and you'll find Mad Men, The Walking Dead, 30 Rock, Community, Justified, Breaking Bad, and many more shows that rival anything on the silver screen. Television, which is the truest American artform, has finally broken free of its adolescent roots. The only thing standing in the way is CBS and the people who watch it.
What does this have to do with Charlie Sheen?  What does it have to do with anything?  First, a history lesson.
In the 1960's television became so popular that it almost destroyed the movie business. The studios decided to fight back with technicolor, 3D, and other dopey spectacles (sound familiar). This worked briefly, but when the economic malaise of the seventies hit people weren't willing to shell out money to see a movie when they could just flip a switch in their homes. It didn't help that television technology would continue to evolve (remote control, vcr, surround sound, HDTV, 3D tv) at a much faster rate than movie theaters (although thank God for stadium seating, amirite?) So in the early and mid-seventies the studios did the unthinkable and let filmakers make their own films how they wanted to make them. The idea was that people would go to the theater to get what they couldn't get on television, namely sex, violence, pathos, adult conversations, artistry, etc. That is to say it became financially necessary for movies to not just be entertaining, but actually good. It was the era of the so-called film school brats that included Martin Scorcese, Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, and others. It was the golden age of American cinema.
It was not meant to last. In a twist right out of Greek tragedy two of these film brats would innocently bring about the downfall of the entire movement. Steven Spielberg started the trend by creating the first summer blockbuster, Jaws (1975). Two years later his buddy George Lucas would prove it could happen more than once with Star Wars (1977). These two remarkable films set the gold standard for crowd pleasing movies with an emphasis on the craft of filmmaking. Unfortunately studios realized that the formula for the summer blockbuster could be achieved without any concern for aesthetics or even storytelling. This focus on bringing crowds in rather than what they were being brought to see would eventually lead to the cinematic abortions of Michael Bay, Jerry Bruckheimer and, again, George Lucas. Mark Harris (no relation) wrote a great piece about how this effected the movie business in last month's GQ. Check it out after your done here.  http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201102/the-day-the-movies-died-mark-harris
While all of this was going on in Hollywood the people in television were happy to churn out middling dreck with the occasional masterpiece, Lonesome Dove (1989), or push towards the unusual with shows like Cheers or Moonlighting. But for the most part they put out crowd pleasing schmaltz and zippy one liner factories because there wasn't any competition at the box office. There was no impetus to be anything other than a dim moving light in a darkened living room. A decade of studios using the Star Wars model changed that. Young people weren't staying home to watch tv anymore. They were going to the mall or to the movies. The problem was compounded in the nineties when an increasingly ironic youth culture known as Generation X found the lameness on the boob tube to be downright offensive. It was no longer okay to rely on old tv tropes like two people trapped in an attic or a slovenly bachelor suddenly having to take care of a baby. Interestingly Generation X loved to watch re-runs of old seventies tv shows, but they hated new shows that were just like them.
Viewers were becoming savvier and more demanding. Quentin Tarantino and his ilk came along to give them another reason to go to the movies, and again offered the adult themes that could not be found on television. Slowly over the next decade tv execs would greenlight increasingly innovative projects such as a show about nothing and a show about a mafioso in therapy. What happened in the film industry in the seventies began to happen in television in the late 90's and early '00's. It became profitable to be good. At the same time Hollywood stopped making R-rated movies except in the horror genre. Mature themes and subject matter were now more likely to be found on the Home Box Office than the real one. Networks began to embrace these changes especially after the show Lost showed that creativity could bring huge commercial windfalls. Every network began to experiment with new formats and explore new ways of using the medium. Every network except one. Wanna guess which one?

Tune in for Thank You, Charlie Sheen Part II where I reveal CBS's dastardly plan to destroy us all!!!!!!

You Call Yourself A Writer?

This past weekend my wife and I attended a spectacular wedding in Chicago.  I got to hang with my Chicago crowd, but I also got to meet a slew of new people.  Before we got there my wife asked me if I was "a teacher or a writer tonight?"
You see I used to be a high school history teacher before I quit to become a novelist and stay-at-home-dad-to-be.  So when someone asks me what I do for a living this causes some strife.  I like to tell people I'm a writer.  The inevitable next question is "What have you written?" followed by "When is it coming out?" to "Huh, ok, good luck.  I think my wife is calling me."  Sometimes to avoid the whole thing I just tell people I'm an out of work teacher.  It's just easier.
The blessing and curse of the writing profession is that you don't need any credentials.  So while you can wake up one day and call yourself a writer that doesn't necessarily make you one.  Someone with a medical license is called doctor whether they practice or not, but people at parties want some sort of proof from someone claiming to be an author.  So at what point can you legitimately call yourself a writer?  I tried to work this out with a flow chart, but it ended up being a pedantic rube goldberg device to nowhere.  Then I tried to write a list of you-know-you're-a-writer-when jokes, but they were more depressing than funny.
But there is a moment, concrete and utterly markable, that you become a professional writer.  The moment that sets you apart from the hobbyists and ditherers.  It's called submission and the term is apt.  It is the moment you drop to your knees at the altar of publishing and offer up your sacrifice for favor or disapproval.  If you have ever written and sent a query letter, proposal, or portfolio then you are a writer regardless of the consequence.  You've put yourself and your baby out there.  That takes guts.  It means stepping over the threshold and picking up the gauntlet.  So all you submitters out there, the next time someone asks what you do, I don't care what your day job is, you tell 'em you're an inkslinger.  When they ask you what the hell that is you say, "It means I'm a writer, bitch!"
You might not want to say it exactly that way at a wedding.  At least not to the bride.

The Content Monkey

I'm opening this blog with a picture of my dog, Fletch, because everyone likes him more than me.  I don't begrudge him this.  He's got the 'it' factor.
This blog will mostly be a record of my authorian quest (see what I did there) to publish my novel The Hemingway Thief.  It is the story of a writer and a low-rent thief who go looking for Ernest Hemingway's lost suitcase in the Sierra Madres.  How did it get there all the way from Paris? You'll have to read the book (so add getting it published to your birthday wish list).  I will say that it is much more plausible than the idea of a pregant woman traveling alone through the first century Roman Empire from Jerusalem to the south of France.  I'm looking at you, Dan Brown.

But my quest, as epic as it may be, will not be enough to feed the Content Monkey and so I will also be writing about my three obsessions; books, movies, and Notre Dame Football.  My wife is also pregnant with our first child (we've nicknamed it Little Whoosh-whoosh because of the sound of its heartbeat, awwwwww).  So you can expect a little bit of that craziness as well.  And of course more pictures of Fletch.