Monday, January 5th, 2009
As a product of the 80’s, I can be convinced to see just about any movie that involves aged wrestling legends. And the trailer for Darren Aronofsky’s latest offering, “The Wrestler”, seemed to present a film engineered to sucker me into loving it. I’m an easy target for sentimental films, about old warriors that refuse to fade. But the trailer seemed to be the only place that any clarity regarding the film’s concept had taken root.
The film depicts the life of Randy “The Ram” Robinson, an old war horse of a wrestler who continues to ply his trade in the minor wrestling circuits of the greater New Jersey area. Despite being worn down by age and a lifetime of physical abuse, Randy still carries the fading torch of his once great wrestling days. The film travels through Randy’s routines, and the life that he’s carved out for himself.
Struggling to maintain his body, and struggling to maintain his relationships, Randy is a man drowning in the waters of time. He maintains a tentative and stunted relationship with his favorite stripper, played by Marissa Tomei, and quietly laments his failed relationship with his daughter. After a particularly brutal match, Randy collapses in the locker room, the result of a serious heart attack. A double by-pass later, he’s back on the streets, with nothing to hold his crumbling world together.
The film is a plodding chore, with few moments of verve or emotional climax. I always felt like something was about to be revealed, and then nothing was. The various relationships reach their conclusions for no apparent reason, and with no truth employed. The movie seemed to be about a man whose love of the sport, and the thrill it provides, was greater than the love for his child, and the only woman who reached out for him, but nothing came in to reveal that to us.
There was scene after agonizing scene, that showed the audience how mundane Randy’s life became after the heart attack, after the wrestling was taken from him, but there was never any climax to his sorrow; no meaningful catalyst to show why, in spite of the danger, he returns to the ring. The continued estrangment with his daughter? Where did that even come from? We aren’t given enough time in their relationship to feel anything when she scorns his attempts to reconnect with her. Tomei’s character, and her gruff professionalism? Who cares? They tantalized us with her own story of growing old, in a profession that seeks only the nubile and young, but they never engaged the two characters on that emotional front. And finally Randy… they skirted around his longing for the ring, for the roar of the crowd, but where was the agony of knowing he could never again fly from the top ropes? Where were the tears for THAT lost love? Instead, it’s a split second decision, given birth from a disingenuous moment of reflection, resulting from careless handling of cheese products. What the hell? And in the end, the film leaves us with no sense of completion, no catharsis.
It seems like Aronofsky didn’t really know what the story was about, except in the general terms of an old man, who can’t keep up to the rigors of his chosen calling. The film oscillates between a high concept of the ancient warrior robbed of his one asset, and the concrete boredom of cutting room floor, documentary footage. The performances, and all other technical considerations are well done, but there was no concrete purpose, and the film essentially served no master. It was sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Monday, December 29th, 2008
Do you love hoodies? I do. I love them a lot. Maybe even in a physical way, although I’ve never made love to a hoodie that you know of.
But the day is young.
Since, sooner or later, Axe and I have to start coming up with merch to unleash for our characters and films, my dark, hood lust has come into sharper relief, and I shift a watery, squinted eye at all clothing merchandise I come across online now. Spying on the competition isn’t wrong, just good business. Some are pretty half assed, but a very select number are gold; precious moonbeams held together with magic.
Couple this with a love of reading comics, and you’ll understand my new object of desire: The Penny Arcade CTS hoodie. I wouldn’t say that I want it so much that I’d step over my own mother to get one, but that bitch better not have fallen down when I see it; things could happen. It’s possible that my hefty belly is another factor in my love of the hooded shirt for sweating, because it does a semi-acceptable job at hiding my bulk. But really, I just feel like a badass in them. Like some kind of Urban Ninja, who can disappear in a cloud of smoke, and a hail of profane sayings.
It’s worth noting that if I could get Jon Rosenberg’s Wishes T-Shirt in hooded form, I’d probably just slit my throat then and there. What’s the point of continuing to live, when you know that the Zenith of human experience has just taken place? The rest of it is just a waste of your god damn time.
Sunday, December 28th, 2008
You know when I started the blog, it was with the hope that any of the writing I do, that didn’t expressly fit into some site or project, could be posted here. But god damn…I’m far too busy to actually work on anything other than the 2nd Culture projects.
Axe and I met the other night, to talk about making the Axe and Crom show again. We’d thought up the show a while ago as a vehicle to generate interest in our movie, but we hadn’t been able to get enough people behind the project at the time. Now we’re just going to pay anybody we need to make it happen, because we’re awesome. I’ll be throwing up updates, but our site will come back in January, so you can just check there. Cuz I don’t really update this stupid blog.
Because I suck.
Monday, December 1st, 2008
So what’s the skinny on the declaration that I was going to make?
It’s simple. Over the last two years that Axe and I have been working on Panda Girls, a lot of shit has flown around. Various step scene documents, teasers, concept documents, list of shit, structures, timelines….everything. Every god damn thing we could possibly conjure to try and come to grips with this terrible monster. And I wouldn’t go so far as to say we were stalling…I might think it…
We’re trying to come out of the gate, with the first IP that 2nd Culture makes, a winner. That might be utterly delusional, and if everyone in the industry is right, then yes…totally and utterly. But fuck it. I know I’m sick of people putting in their 8 hours and walking away from the set; producing pieces of shit that didn’t feel like any effort at all was put in, other than the mechanical kind.
We want Panda Girls to mean something, and to be executed well. Perhaps when history looks at us, we will be marked as fools, for venturing into something that has no clean beginings, only smooth endings. Well our name is a declaration as well, and perhaps it’s time that we strive to be great out the gate, on the track, and across the finish line. I’m not saying that we will be…
I just know we’re going to try.
“There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged him would die. Their controls would freeze up, their planes would buffet wildly, and they would disintegrate. The demon lived at Mach 1 on the meter, seven hundred and fifty miles an hour, where the air could no longer move out of the way. He lived behind a barrier through which they said no man could ever pass. They called it the sound barrier.”
- The Right Stuff
Friday, November 28th, 2008
Okay Crom, you say, you’ve finished the NaNoWriMo novel, you’re victorious, when are you going to stop touching yourself, and start another project?
Well, I’m touching myself right now, as I write this, so you’ve lost that battle already, but the next project? Is THE project, Panda Girls.
This shit has gone on long enough. Axe and I have struggled to write a movie that is worthy of our own desires, and god damn it is HARD. Our mandate, and strongest desire, is to make a movie that will be fucking awesome. Which you are probably shrugging at right now and thinking: Duh?
I don’t think anybody starts out with a script in hand, tinkering with the camera, and thinking “Wow…I can’t wait to unleash this complete piece of shit on the world”. But it does happen. I’ve seen a lot of movies in recent years that made me hold my head in my hands, and wonder what the fuck was happening in the Hollywood board rooms.
Simultaneously I’ve seen some great shows crop up, and a few good films; the vibe on the street is that quality story IS possible. But you have to commit, and that’s why Axe and I worked so hard. But we’ve come to a crossroad; we need to stop thinking about how good our story is, and start wading into the deep shit. The spirit of the Nano is still in me, and so I have a sly declaration to make…but I’ll wait till I’ve talked to Axe, before I make it.
Mwahahahaha!
Thursday, November 27th, 2008
So my NaNoWriMo submission is complete.
I clocked in at 50,066 words, although because they count the chapter headings as well, I’m probably closer to the 50,040, but that’s just nitpicking.
This was a fun month, and a month of torture. I religiously followed the daily word count, and sometimes it was all I could do to not punch my own face. But, as the story unfolded, and as ideas came to me about where to take it, it became less and less of an agonizing affair. I looked forward to taking the story to the different places I imagined when I was soaking in the tub, or cutting up vegetables. After awhile my brain took over the job, and I didn’t have to force it all the time.
The flip side of that, is that the book really sucks. A lot. The story is a little bland, and the emotional narrative is all over the place, but that’s fine. The whole exercise of the NaNo is to bang out a story as fast as you can; worrying over plot points, or character development, or any of that shit is just going to eat up time. I sacrificed quality for speed, and in a first draft, that seems to be the winning ticket.
Axe and I have been writing our movie for a long time, and not much actual writing has happened lately. We’re at a place that requires some very specific details to be worked out, and that makes us stop and think. When you stop to think, you aren’t writing anymore, and that’s bit our asses a few times. Axe has come up with some ideas to complete the story, and the plan going into December is to just write the shit out of it. Stop worrying about trying to get it right on the first draft; it’s never going to happen, and like us, you’ll only torture yourself.
That’s what I learned from this year’s National Novel Writing Month. Just push that terrible piece of cliched garbage out right away, and once you have, you can look at it and realize all the cliche you used, all the tired story lines, and you can now move forward knowing what it ISN’T, and figure out what it IS.
Write without mercy.
Crom
p.s. The name of the novel? “How to BBQ your Girlfriend”
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008
It’s just past the middle of the month, and I’m slightly ahead on the National Novel Writing Month project. I started out with only a vague idea, and it has thrashed around and become something else during this process. it isn’t what I wanted to have on the other end of the tunnel, but I’m not disappointed. I didn’t know what I wanted, I just put my foot on the gas, and gave ‘er.
Now, 30,000 words through the book, I’ve come to find other meaning in the events I wrote, and the places I have to go to close the loop of the story. I was talking with Axe about it the other day, and he had some great ideas that the book could evolve into on the next draft; ideas that outline my controlling idea clearer, and conceptional smarter.
So that’s the take away from this event for me so far, and I’m sure there will be more when it’s all said and done. This has been torture, but it’s also been a lot of fun, and it’s made me feel something. I can do this with consistency, I can write for a deadline.
It isn’t as high quality as I want it to be on my first passes, but that comes with time. I still have a road to follow though, and a lot of work to complete before I can raise my hands in victory. So I’ll quit writing blather in this little window, and go blather in another, far more important window.
Enjoy every sandwich.
Saturday, November 1st, 2008
The National Novel Writing Month has begun, and this time I’m taking no prisoners.
Last year I had started off well, but right in the middle of the month I shit the bed. I didn’t give myself enough time, and I hadn’t committed to the story, which left me high and dry with two weeks remaining to complete the story. I had taken time off for the last week, but it made little sense to try and rush to finish it in a week of being locked in my home. I wanted to have a novel done, but the whole point of the exercise had been to cultivate consistency in my work; to commit to a schedule and keep it. Frantically trying to complete it last minute felt like junior high, when I tried to do my homework on the bus ride to school.
This year I’ve actually plotted some point prior to starting, which isn’t quite as good as building a full structure, but at the same time I don’t expect to get to the end of the month with a manuscript I intend to mail out to people; I just want a first draft that I can work from. I want to cultivate consistency.
I want to write.
Monday, October 20th, 2008
It would be unfair to say that after watching “The Rocker”, I needed a long pull from an oxygen tank in order to re-start my brain.
It would be unfair, but it would also be very near the truth.
I grew up in a time when our heroes were beyond extraordinary. They were over-muscled titans, wielding automatic weapons, driving a humvee with their feet, and egregiously killing hordes of off-sale army fatigued bad guys. They were stronger than any mortal could possibly be; capable of crushing red hot briquettes of charcoal in their bare fist, gun down entire platoons of soldiers with a single box of bullets, and battle entire Armada’s in a single Star Fighter. Our heroes were empowered to the point of being Gods.
And now there seems to be a backlash. Our heroes are clad in goofy clothing, armed with an endless list of portmanteau’d phrases, derivative of an empty culture, lacquered with folkish guitar musings. And I accepted it.
I watched Napoleon dance, and smiled benignly, because I believed it to be a reaction; the ridiculous heights we pushed our heroes to in the age of Titans had fallen, and now we were pushing the other direction. It was only natural.
But we have a problem. We’ve gone too far, again.
Just as the notion of Rambo, savagely murdering half the russian army by his lonesome, the line of believability in the Loser kingdom is starting to move towards dangerously ridiculous levels.
have you seen a Will Ferrell movie lately? They’re not that good. They’ve had some moments, but the failures tend to outweigh the successes at this point. And when I watched the Rocker, I was confronted with a terrible vision: Someone was trying to be Jack Black, who was not Jack Black.
And the seas boiled, and dead rose from their graves…
We need to get back to a place where our stories are not remarkable because they lack remarkability, or because the heroes is a social outcast to such a degree that they could NOT exist in the real world. There are people who reach these heights: they’re cat people. They live in homes filled entirely with garbage.
I do not want to watch that. I’m actually a little terrified that I even KNOW about it.
Watching someone who has similarily terrifying, social neuroses is something we ALL gravitate to, in order to rationalize our seperate insanities, and come to a place where we can feel connected to the whole of humanity. It says “hey, I’m a freak too, we’re all freaks”, and then we don’t feel disconnected.
But right now, in this moment of time, the zeigeist…we aspire to be losers.
Mediocrity is the new success.
That’s terrifying.
Monday, October 6th, 2008
The concept of Sarah Palin coming to office has pushed every other consideration in my life, into one corner of my brain apartment.
This I swear: If McCain gets voted into the White House, I will buy some guns the next day, and move into the woods.
Because the world will be FUCKED.
I might as well get ready for the impending apocalypse, and head out of civilization on the bounce. Pickup some supplies from Canadian Tire and run.
RUN.
Go to K-country and hole up in a cave, and await the impending fall of Western society. When every other person is stumbling around, trying to find food and shelter, I’ll have my cave pimped out with well-water, and bear skins.
This is what its come to.