Walter and the Dude - Right and Left

This blog is in conjunction with the LAMB's June Movie of the Month (working title.)

Almost everybody loves The Big Lebowski. It’s a small, cult movie with large critical acclaim, is infinitely quotable and a huge devoted following. It has spawned books, its own festival (Lebowski Fest) and even a religion (Dudeism). While much has been written about the film’s notable influences from existentialism, political ethos and film noir, there are simpler themes that generally tend to be overlooked.

My favorite character is Walter Sobchak. He’s the kind of guy who makes me proud to be a veteran. If John McCain would choose Walter as his VP, I would switch parties.

I like to watch the movie as a buddy comedy. Walter is along for all of the big action pieces and furthermore, in the only two instances where the Dude takes action himself, it’s Walter who drives him to it (literally, the second time). Whatever troubles the Dude gets himself into, Walter is there to help bail him out. Walter and the Dude are two sides of a coin, the left and the right. Do you ever notice how in most scenes, even when driving to the drop, the Dude is on the left and Walter is on the right? For all the Zen-Buddha, hippie beliefs that the Dude embraces, Walter is the polar opposite.

Conservative, religious and right wing, Walter could be called a zealot if he were a television pundit. He strongly believes in his ‘basic freedoms’ including free speech, the right to bear arms and freedom of religion. His conservative views are clearly on display whether dealing with Larry Sellers, Jesus or Smokey. Walter believes in the rules about everything from bowling to kidnapping and enforces them anyway he can. He’s not seeking validation when he asks, “Am I wrong?” but trying to make sense of a world that has disregard for the rules everyone has agreed on. Whether it’s race relations with Asian Americans, sex offenders or inept nihilists, his heart is in the right place, but his method is slightly mad. Even Walter’s best laid plans go astray, as he really didn’t have an exit strategy for the money drop/hostage exchange. But, most of the time, he is right. Mr. Lebowski’s spinal notwithstanding, let us not forget dude, the nihilists ARE amateurs, that is NOT her toe and NOBODY is going to cut the Dude’s dick off.

So, if Walter is the right and the Dude is the left, how do these two get along? How are a former hippie and a former vet best friends with each other? Walter is constantly talking about foreign policy and Vietnam and the Dude does not shy away from discussions about pacifism, Walter’s issues with his ex-wife or continually calling him out on his actions. It is because they’re men or because they are both cognizant of their roles in the relationship? I like to think that both of them accept each other for who they are, like in a marriage and recognize that they provide the counter balance to each other. Near the end, before the Stranger appears the first time, Walter tells the Dude, he’s being ‘very un-Dude.’ Walter is aware of how the Dude is supposed to act and what he brings to the table in their friendship. Like so many people with strong opinions, Walter might have a shaky view of himself. So, if the Dude is not being who he should be, then what does that make Walter? As the scene plays, he does not stay around to find out.

People look at the Dude and want to be him, want to emulate him and wish they could live as carefree. I think we should all try to be a little more like the Dude AND Walter. Their bipartisan spirit I something that we can all aspire to especially in an upcoming election year. Walter and the Dude are the alpha and the omega and the rest of us are just Donny, along for the ride with open ears and a shut mouth.

The Big Lebowski is available on DVD from Focus Features.

The Rise of Vigilantism in Film

Originally posted September 19th, 2007. Reprinted with permission.

In the past three weeks, I’ve seen quite a few movies in which the heroes were vigilantes/outlaws. Of course, I am referring not only to Death Sentence and The Brave One, but also with a closer look at 3:10 to Yuma and Shoot ‘Em Up and I’ll go so far as even including Harry Potter and The Bourne Ultimatum (more on them later.)

Most critics would cite the 70’s as the last time such movies were popular like Taxi Driver, Dirty Harry and Death Wish and tell you that the country was in sociopolitical crisis, economics, energy, government and point out the similarities between their generation and OUR generation. I myself am a veteran, but I feel more like a Korean vet than Vietnam, since I was in Afghanistan, not Iraq (you know, the one we had a reason for going into.). I say, that the recent film trend reflects not only a distrust of government and the system, but an even greater sense of moral uncertainty about the best course of action. People of my generation find ourselves powerless again, but without a chance to take it back like the hippies before us, who sold out when the Eighties came along.

But I am getting away from my point. Our films today do not bother to tell us to trust the police or the authorities, only to trust ourselves. In Death Sentence, Kevin Bacon’s son is murdered and rather than have the killer do a short prison bid, Bacon lies under oath in order to put the kid back on the streets where he can administer justice. When the kid’s gang begins to pursue Bacon and end up invading his home, the police are powerless to stop them. Or Bacon. Rather, everyone ends up shooting everyone else, until only one man is left and then, with almost nothing. And that’s the reality of it. People found it hard to believe Bacon going from an insurance man to a killing machine, but I found it very believable to watch him go from a man with everything to one with absolutely nothing to lose. Check out this movie, please. It’s really good and drives home to old Pryor proverb, “When it happens to white people, it’s an epidemic!” Also, it is interesting to note that James Wan passed on doing another Saw movie to direct this instead. Is it because he realizes this is true horror?

Shoot ‘Em Up puts a very humorous twist on the same motif, making Clive Owen a lone hero against an army of assassins. He never gives an explanation for why he does it, killing bad guys to protect a defenseless newborn, but simply states, “What was I supposed to do?” It is mentioned that he was in the military service, making him more akin to Travis Bickle than Kevin Bacon. Also, the villains all end up being connected with politics, thus giving us further reason to distrust the system and the officials we have elected to lead and more importantly, serve us as citizens. Mr. Smith’s constant anger is a source for comedy, but also really says a lot about a man than has given up on life until it begins to have some purpose with the introduction of baby Oliver. So, the laughs in the movie serve to mellow the harsh reality of another disillusioned veteran who finds his purpose and center in violence, but tempers the madness with his own brand of justice.

But, like I said before, the films seem to portray a moral ambiguity deeper than Bacon’s character or the stoic Mr. Smith convey. In The Brave One, Jodie Foster and her boyfriend are brutally attacked with nary a racial epithet in the air. When she recovers, she carries a pistol to feel safe. And indeed she does, blasting anyone who looks at her wrong and in New York, that’s a lot of people. But she is more outright vigilante than Bacon, in that she kills to protect herself or others and not until the end of the film, does she pursue her own revenge. Also, in this film, like Death Sentence, there is a cop played by a black actor. (I guess this means cops can suck equally, regardless of race.) Foster sharply draws a divide between the ‘good’ cop and the rest of them. For during her interview, as she is asked to remember back to the attack, one cop tries to sympathize with “We know how hard it can be.” “Can you?” she asks and in his eyes, you know that he does not. As they try to reiterate that they are the good guys, she lets them know that it doesn’t feel that way. But, Detective Mercer, played damned well by Terrence Howard, is determined to catch the killer and indeed, Foster wants to be caught, she wants to be stopped. She gives herself every chance to be given up to justice and yet, it seems, she must be doing to right thing for people keep looking the other way to help her. Should we all take the law into our own hands? Her emotional distress would have us think otherwise. From being the young girl in need of saving in the 70’s to kicking ass and taking names thirty years later, Foster does seem to show us that neither is easy, for there is no simple solution in a dangerous world.

If revenge motivates Foster to justice, then in 3:10 to Yuma, it must be survival that keys Christian Bale. He takes the dangerous assignment of transporting Russell Crowe to a prison train in a desperate attempt to earn money for his family. He tries to rationalize his decision by telling himself that it is the right thing to do, bringing a criminal to justice. But, by the end of the film, Bale (another wounded veteran left behind by his government) is left to fend for himself after being abandoned by the marshals (government and law enforcement) and the railroad man (corporate America). As he comes to realize the truth of the other men’s lies, he finds it in himself and the job becomes his duty, justified by the large cash payout he insists for his family. In a western where the good guys are cowards and the bad guys are charming, we find ourselves asking, who do we root for? Maybe the answer is that we need only care about ourselves. Is a little selfishness so bad? Have ideas like isolation and ‘Contention’ become so negative that to simply take care of ourselves and our own family is not enough? Apparently we need to influence every member of society to conform to our way of thinking and acting; in order to homogenize this country and rob it’s of the truly American value of diversity.

If you think that this state of fear, heightened sense of (a lack of) security and general paranoia is not directly related to the breakdown of the government system, you need only look at a movie like The Bourne Ultimatum. In it, Jason Bourne wants nothing more than to live a quiet life abroad, far removed from the nightmare of his former government service. But, as he is dragged back in by a government agency that cannot even cooperate with itself, Bourne has no choice but to turn killer on his would-be killers. Forced into a corner and defending his life, he fights back, bringing the administration to its knees. But, let there be no doubt, throughout all three movies Bourne has had deep personal regret and conflict about his actions. Not even conscious of what or why he is behaving abnormally, he struggles to gain some balance in his life, but only finds if after killing for it. It’s the American way right?

Or can it be a global sensation? For in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the Ministry of Magic has a complete collapse, physical and literal by the film’s end, in which nobody is safe and nobody is to be trusted. Harry is truly on his own in the film, heavily relying in his friends, (his family) when it comes to it. I have maintained that the movie accurately reflects a British society sadly evolving ever closer to resembling “the colonies”. But, I think that the answer does come in the film. When Harry has nobody to turn to, no higher authority to trust in, when he accepts that he is truly alone and willing to stand alone for what is right, he finds that he has more help than he could have ever thought.

And that dear reader is what I want you to take away from this piece and these films. You can look at the top headlines to find our country, our world in a shocking state. From the Jena 6 to Hollywood celebrities and UF students to OJ Simpson, one need not look far to find social injustices, judicial prejudices and economic inequality. And when you think there is nothing you can do about, no difference that one person can make, if you stand up for yourself like ol’ Harry, you might just find that there are people who are willing to stand next to you.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. It took me several days and very few minutes to actually write this, but I felt it was an important topic and had to get the message out there.

People Are Strange... When You're A Stranger

I’m not usually one for horror movies. I was never into them when I was a kid and my affinity for them has never grown. However, I was interested in seeing The Strangers because it looked like something really horrible; violent, vicious killings for no reason. I joked with a friend that I would rather be in the Saw movie than The Strangers because if all I had to do to escape was cut off my foot, then take the left one, please, it’s my bad foot anyway. But the random, senseless violence that plagues this country is far more terrifying to me than any ‘torture porn’ that’s been so chic lately. As a student of cinema, I’m reminded of the late Seventies when horror films such as Last House on the Left and Texas Chainsaw Massacre changed the tone of the genre from the monster/sci-fi movies of the Fifties and popular British vampire movies of the Sixties. While it seemed a sort of change was happening again in the past few years, I think a film like The Strangers taps into that similar vein. There is nothing supernatural or over the top, but a ‘based on true events’ story made in a classical horror fashion that ensures the film is well executed in its intentions.

The film stars Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman as a couple that spends a night at his family’s summer home and is terrified, tortured and killed by a trio of locals. There is not much else in the way of plot description, but the filmed is carefully paced and well edited to maximize the shock moments and exploit the suspense and audience’s fear. I don’t think many things are more toe-clenching and nail-biting than watching a loved one killed in front of you. Liv Tyler gets most of the heavy work and she is really good at being scared, screaming running and all that required stuff. But, by casting her, the movie is playing on the audience’s sympathies immediately since Liv is quite the ‘sweetheart’ and nobody wants to see Arwen the Elf killed off! Speedman is good his role as well, especially the first part of the movie, dealing with his feelings for Liv and later, when he is unable to adequately protect her. The movie does a great job of trying to paint him as an everyman, “we’re not going to be scared” and then showing him succumbing to his own fears and inadequacies, just like many of us would sure do. The movie was engaging throughout and there were moments of pure tension for me and I was all the more impressed that it was director Bryan Bertino’s first film.

I believe that certain types of movies attract certain type of audiences. And I knew this movie was different when the audience seemed to stop laughing and become truly anxious about the characters. Some of the overriding themes were lost on such an audience, like the senselessness of the violence (they wanted a reason) and the fate of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances (“Why didn’t he just shoot them?”). Speaking for myself, the film did succeed in tapping into a primal fear of the unknown, reinforcing stereotypes about rural residents and keeping me inside my urban dwellings for another six weeks of winter, at least. For seeing most horror movies that fail to horrify, The Strangers was terribly terrifying and terrific.

The Strangers directed by Bryan Bertino and starring Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman is playing in theatres everywhere.

The End of the Most Prestigious Debate

This blog was chosen as a LAMB Chop for the week of May 31 - June 6.

I used to have the greatest job in the world. I worked at a store called DVD Planet and for mere slave wages I got to mock customers with inferior film knowledge than my own, get rare and out of print DVD before they went out on the floor and debate/discuss movies all shift long with my friends. You can find heaven on Earth, in Huntington Beach or Rancho Cucamonga. The best part, of course, were the arguments over films and none of them raged harder or longer than that of The Prestige.

When The Prestige premiered, everybody at work saw in within a week. Later, when it went to the dollar theatre, I am pretty sure everyone saw it again. And thus began our great argument over the movie; did Borden have a twin or a clone? We went back and forth for weeks on the subject and when we finally let it die down and agreed to disagree, the DVD was released. We watched it in the store on a loop and the whole discussion came back with a vengeance.

Before I go on, a brief summary for those who are unfamiliar with the film, and yes, there will be spoilers. The film focuses on two magicians, Robert Angier and Alfred Borden, played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale, respectively. They begin as young apprentices, working together and quickly develop a rivalry that escalates beyond either of their expectations. It is a character study more than a movie about magic, but director Christopher Nolan makes a truly fascinating film, requiring more than one view. Without giving too much away (and I advise anyone who has not seen the movie to stop reading here) in regards to the plot, there ends up being multiple incarnations of more than one character, which led directly to the debate in our store.

I maintained the position that Fallon was a clone of Borden, achieved through a similar method to that of Angier’s. I read the novel by Christopher Priest, in which it is implied that Borden had a twin, but I believed that Nolan took creative license and changed certain story elements. I backed up my side with points about the dual nature of Borden/Fallon, the very Jungian qualities of the character, Sarah telling Borden that she ‘knew what he really was’ and the fact that Borden reveals Tesla as the secret to his trick. And the thing that really sold me on the idea was the scene after Borden watches Angier’s “New Transported Man” and yells at Fallon, “Why can’t you out think him?!” To me, that was so clearly him challenging himself to be better than Angier, I couldn’t honestly read it another way.

My friends would argue back that in fact, Tesla is NOT really Borden’s secret. But, I would say that Tesla admits as much that he built the machine once before for another magician. They would talk and talk, but I couldn't care less. All the points they came up with fell on deaf ears and I would never give in an inch to them. But today, as I caught the last ten minutes on cable, it finally hit me. They were right.

Borden never had a clone.

When Lord Caldlow comes to visit Borden/Fallon in jail, Borden is truly astonished to see him. Christian Bale plays the scene perfectly and looking at his face, it hit me like a ton of bricks. He has no flipping idea how he did it. He doesn’t know about the true nature of Tesla’s machine or the clones. And I realize now why for so long I chose to believe otherwise. It’s because Christopher Nolan is a great magician. He kept me looking and thinking and guessing even though the answer was right in front of me. I was looking for the secret, but I couldn’t find it, because I wanted to be fooled. And like Angier/Caldlow says at the end of the film, if you can fool them for just a second then you got to see something really special. It only took me two times to see the movie to realize it was all about movies, but it took me nearly two years before I realized the true prestige.

Thanks for reading and I want to give special thanks to my friends at DVD Planet who helped make this blog happen, in alphabetical order, Alex, Graham, Logan and Phil.

The Prestige directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale is available on DVD from Warner Home Video.

When 'Coming Attractions' Aren't So Attractive

Originally posted September 23, 2007. Reprinted with permission.

I am starting to have a problem with movie trailers. And that's too bad because I and many of my friends think that the previews are sometimes the best part of going to the movies. (I'm looking at you, Ace.) And even the pre-show show with trivia and puzzles can be an entertaining diversion while waiting for your movie to start.

Sadly, you cannot find much of that good stuff anymore. Whether it's First Look or the 20, they tend to blow and feel so much like commercials, trying to sell us a crappy product instead of enticing us to look at something new. Let me describe every stupid pre-show I've seen in the past year and a half. Ahem. "TNT showed you how they do drama. NBC took you inside their new procedural show that will be on TNT this summer. Universal gave you an all access behind the scenes pass to their summer franchise movie starring one talented actor, two talent less teenagers and a supporting cast comprised of NBC's acclaimed drama series. And you got to experience the first single of the soundtrack for Universal's summer blockbuster from a one hit pop artist soon to have nude photos on TMZ. Didn't catch all of it? No problem, we're going to run this shit wall to wall for four months in front of every movie you see regardless of the target demographic! Catch it!"

Gratefully, you can time it out to miss the shit and still get a decent seat for your movie and do like my friends and I (the Fresh Enuf 4 a Woman Crew) and just make sarcastic comments, catcalls, inappropriate bodily noises and ruin it for everyone else. This includes running and screaming from a theatre like someone just shouted 'fire.' But, I'm talking about the real trailers that give me a problem. And the one I'm really pissed off at right now is We Own The Night. Now, I'm not upset that this seems like the same movie James Grey did with Joaquin and Marky Mark before called The Yards. (That one had Sonny, not Tom.) And I'm not mad that they hit you with some Blondie and coke at the beginning, just to let you know that we're in the Eighties. I've slightly disappointed that they try to make it look like a companion film for The Departed, but more so that they hook up Eva Mendes with another white guy. (Still trying to figure out how I feel about her and Denzel [And furthermore, of all the Mexicans in Once Upon A Time In Mexico, she hooks up with Johnny Depp?!]) No, what really pisses me off is that they give away the whole movie.

Wahlberg is the good brother, Phoenix is into drugs (deja vu), they try to work together, bring down the bad guys, bad guys try to kill Eva, do kill Bobby Duvall and everyone learns the meaning of teamwork in the end. Haven't even seen the movie and now I don't need to. Why couldn't the trailer make it seem like they might MOT work together, but battle it out like Cain and Abel so I can be surprised when it comes? For eleven fucking dollars, I need a big surprise or some serious boobage. And with Eva, hell, I'll take some ass crack, I'm not picky! Do I need to see the exact same trailer in front of EVERY movie I go to? Anyone thinking that studios are NOT in bed with distributors need only look at the same shitty previews they see for bad movies, with big stars and terrible grosses.

Hell, they even to do to movies they HOPE are going to do well. Did you see the trailer for The Kingdom? I did, a fucking year ago, and like me, everyone got real excited for it, so they pushed it back to be closer to Oscar season. Cool, but why oh why did the new trailers have to tell me that Michael Bluth gets kidnapped? The number one reason I wanted to see the flick (Piven being a close second) and now, he's not going to be in it for half the flick? Don't tell me he's going to be the Jack Sparrow of this shit, man, let me get into the movie, watch it, get emotionally involved, then you can rip my heart out when they rip him out of a truck! Goddamit, why do I have to get so angry about all of this?

You know what a good trailer is? American Gangster. Do they tell you the twist? No and neither will I! The trailer says hey, here's one of the best actors of our time playing a cold killer, another bad ass playing a bad ass cop and directed by a guy who made a little movie you may have heard of called Blade Runner. Oh, you're only 19 and don't watch anything made before 1995? How about Gladiator? That's a fucking trailer for a movie that looks bad ass, sets you up for it and promises to be at least slightly better than Virtuosity. One simple trailer and then run it every so often to keep it in your head, not to bash it in there. Oh yea and by the way, "They tried to kill, MY WIFE!"

Speaking of one trailer, my other bitch today is about the movies that I'm not entirely sure what they're about because I see two different trailers for it. They took this unfortunate tactic with a great film called American Dreamz, in which the original trailer laid out the plot of a terrorist trying to sneak onto a reality show to blow up the President, hilarity ensues. But, the trailers closer to the movies release date hid that storyline and showed you a movie with Hugh Grant insulting people in a dry, polite British manner and hey, Mandy Moore used to sing, remember? Either way, I still saw it.

American Dreamz relegated to DVD.

But how about a movie that's not so clever, like, oh, I don't know, Good Luck Chuck. The first trailer I saw had Dane Cook discovering that women slept with him, then met the man of their dreams, hence the nickname, Good Luck Chuck. An interesting concept, especially when he meets Jessica Alba (She who demonstrates the difference between being attractive and being sexy.) and cannot sleep with her, for fear of losing her. Now, the trailers show a Jessica Alba movie, featuring Dane Cook in which she is clumsy, cute and gosh, how is he ever going to be with her without prat-falling all over the set? Well, Good luck, Chuck. I got a better name for this new movie; I call it Get Fucked, Chuck. I was wondering when these two would get together to make a crazy rom-com, where she accidentally gets stripped to her panties (not really Jessica and not really her panties.) and Dane is so awkward in a sexual situation with her. Movies like this make me want to slit my wrists, down the alley, not across the street, none of the cry for help bullshit.

Please help me people. Let the trailers do their job. You see a cool trailer, go see the movie. You see a just alright trailer, just say 'Alright' and move onto the next movie.