Classic Movie Renaissance Part 1 (Courtesy AFI)

The past several months, in an effort to to familiarize myself with classic cinema and keep me from AMC too much, I've been going through the "AFI 100 Years, 100 Movies" list. A friend of mine gave me the idea, and it's a really good one.

I'm less likely to procrastinate if I have a list. I can mark stuff off as I do them. So I've been able to go through so many classic movies that I somehow managed to put off so far in life.

I've seen about half of everything on it so far. Blade Runner, Easy Rider, and Platoon are the few films I didn't care for, although I understand their significance.

And damn, I couldn't sit still to absorb Mike Nichols' Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I love Albee plays, but here I found nothing but capable screen performances. It's not that I don't like watching marital discord. One of my favorite movies of all time is American Beauty. That, however, needed different access points for somebody who may not can pick up on undertones of what's going on in a marriage. American Beauty had the business with the daughter, the boyfriend, the neighbor, etc. to expand the theme, so the picture didn't depend purely on us analyzing the passive aggressiveness of the married couple.

BLACK-AND-WHITE SURPRISES

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans was an interesting choice to put on the list. A silent German expressionist film with surprisingly heavy drama for a movie made in the 20s.

Katherine Hepburn's character in Bringing Up Baby never crossed the line into annoyance but stayed firmly enduring and upbeat in the different comedic way she reacted and saw things.

Swing Time with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers was a blast. Youtube "fred astaire swing time" and watch the first three clips. His Bojangles number, which took three days to shoot, was amazing. And he and Rogers shot the long Never Gonna Dance routine 47 TIMES before he was satisfied.

A Night at the Opera and Duck Soup introduced me to the Marx brothers, and the silent one, Harpo, is my favorite. Perhaps because I immediately related him to Teller. I don't know where the Marx brothers rank in the hierarchy of comedic slapstick performers, like Lucille Ball or Charlie Chaplin. But I quietly enjoyed their situation bits and unexpected twists on dialogue and response.

My introduction to Henry Fonda was 12 Angry Men. His unnamed character came off as a father figure, a laser-sharp intellectual. It's a movie that should be required viewing in schools. A blueprint to consensus-building and understand what "beyond all reasonable doubt" means in our courts. I was moved by a timeless theme that is even more important at a time when a country is so divided. How do we all get in a room and talk? 12 Angry Men demonstrates it is, and should be possible. Even if it takes all day in a hot, humid courthouse room with no AC.

SWORDS AND SANDALS

Ben-Hur was number 100 on the list. Spartacus was number 81. I'd switch them. That Stanley Kubrick directed Spartacus was something I didn't know. I was surprised that Spartacus didn't have any trademark Kubrick touches of creativity. Its scope and music and performances were fine for an epic, and that's just what it was. Nothing that differentiated this director did something different from another. Clockwork Orange and The Shining show up with images, sounds, ideas and music that implant in the psyche so much. Perhaps Kubrick, at the beginning of his career, was at the mercy of the studios.

What isn't on the list is The Ten Commandments, or anything by Cecil B. DeMille, and it's strange considering I was under the assumption growing up Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea was one of the most iconic moments in the history of cinema.

SEE THE APARTMENT

The Apartment was outstanding. In my opinion, Jack Lemmon gave one of the greatest performances in one of the greatest screenplays every written. It was dicey material for 1960. I didn't know anything about it except probably a residential building was involved, and I'm glad I didn't. Billy Wilder's claim to fame is for Some Like It Hot, but it's this one you really need to see.

WILD WILD WEST

Unforgiven remains my favorite Western of all time, although I've got Shane, The Searchers, and High Noon coming up. Eastwood's immortal line "Deserve's got nothing to do with it" exemplifies how good and evil operate in this world, especially in a place as untamed and wild as the American west in the 1800s.

I thought The Wild Bunch and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were fun and light. Nothing really stayed with me though. I think the same of them, since both feature anarchic, crude men we're rooting for running wild in the west. Neither rises to the human levels Unforgiven does. Or the remake of 3:10 to Yuma does, for that matter.

RACIAL OBSERVATIONS

In the Heat of the Night was a movie that laid on racism a little too thick. But it was a very good movie, mainly due to the performances of Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger. It's about holding your own, strength-wise, and believes all men are smart and capable of handing any situation according to their experience and intellect. It's hard to believe such a racist area of the country could exist, even in the 60s, but I wasn't there.

Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing is easier to watch, because the racism going on is not so blatant. In fact, it's harder to see where it starts, if there's even any at all. It's about anger and hate building up seemingly out of nowhere. It's like everybody's going around thinking "what does he or she really think about me?" Nobody wants to be a loser. It's my favorite by Spike Lee, having so much to observe that he wrote the script in less than two weeks.

***

There's some great movies we all know, and there's nothing much left to say about them. I just saw Titanic several years ago on the big screen for the first time. Toy Story is my childhood. Silence of the Lambs still isn't just a horror movie, if it ever was. Kids deserve to be introduced to Indy in Raiders of the Lost Ark. And Saving Private Ryan is my favorite war movie.

What better way to pass the time this spring 'til Hollywood gets its act together?

Untitled

Waiting. He laid bare 

and mornings kept up kisses

'til he wanted to yell "No more!"

Too bad it didn't come

when he was big and wore big shoes.

So many of his portraits

amass right before dawn,

for now.

I Love Her

*WARNING: THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE HER*

 I usually decide in 30 minutes what a movie's about.

Then there's usually a scene midway through that helps me decide if I like it.

But sometimes there's a scene that shows up, usually toward the end, that solidifies for me how great and personal it is. The moment of truth. In the movie Her, that scene came at the end.

A brief synopsis of Her, if you haven't seen it. Theodore is a mild-mannered, lonely introvert who works at a futuristic greeting card company in Los Angeles. He has a few friends, but for the most part, his life is seemingly bland and borderline joyless, although he has this 3D gaming system where he can argue with his 3D alien avatar buddy.

Theodore purchases a new, cutting edge OS, or artificial intelligent operating system, who calls itself Samantha, making it a her. They connect and become friends, with Samantha's intelligence growing with each conversation. She is his best friend, helping him deal with life issues like divorce, love lost, and dating again.

Eventually, Theodore and Samantha fall in love with each other. The movie ingeniously explores a number of scenarios if such a bizarre thing occurred. The director, Spike Jonze, loves going down rabbit holes and roll around in the weirdness, coming up with all the inventions a bizarre situation can afford him. (Being John Malkovich).

I saw the movie twice, with two different people, back in December, and it's such an original piece of work that it's still on the mind months later, even after awards season.

It's because of Her's moment of truth. For me, the last scene when Samantha has to leave Theodore to go to the place where all the smart, learned OS's have to go. I think it's a perfectly written break-up scene. It's sad but somehow avoids focus from the gentle let-down and affirms why they went through everything in the first place.

This is the part where I connected with the movie. And the part you can stop reading if you don't wanna glimpse of my personal musings. Break-ups suck. Really suck. The person you've confided so much in has to go away, and doesn't it always have to be that way? Samantha has to leave - "moving on" in person speak.

The break-up scene in Her is no different as far as heartbreak and the pain of loss go. But it justifies why relationships are worth it in the first place. Samantha loves Theodore, but she has to go, and she hoped Theodore could get to that point where he can come find her. That they can be together in that world and nothing would pull them apart.  Theodore says he loves her. Samantha says she does to and also replies, "And now we know how."

And now we know how. Wow! Could you imagine somebody saying that to you at the end of the relationship? During most break-ups, neither side gives the other any credit. There's no admission that they've grown mentally and spiritually as people. There's just "we don't work out because of such and such."

From my experience, two scenarios have always played out during breaking up. 1) The person just stops contact altogether, or 2) there's a long spiel on everything that's wrong with me and why it didn't work. Number one happened mostly in the early days.

I'm not saying people should break-up with somebody like what's in this movie. I'm proposing that people recognize they do, in fact, know how to deal with life and love better after that experience! No, it didn't work out, but give each other credit and respect. Don't put them in a place where they feel there's so much wrong with them. Even though they can eventually figure out that's just one person in the whole universe's perspective.

Samantha offered subtle encouragement to Theodore as she left. No, he's never gonna find her in whatever place she was going. He knew that. They won't end up together. But she certainly left him in a good, strong place. A better place than his divorce led him.

It was refreshing that Her made me feel that everything in my past was worth it. It said to me: Yes Nick, you know how after this. You only take the things you believe you need work on from those relationships. You don't change yourself because of one person. Because everybody's different, and everybody loves somebody for those exact qualities you already have. Take from past relationships what you need. Give a new one everything you got. Because now you know how.

Action and Followthrough

The more time I spend in California, the less of an idealist and the more of a realist I become. About many things, but I'll focus on craft in this.

I've enjoyed a commercial class I've been taking for the past 3 months because the coach offers "hands-on" methods, or real productivity measures, that keep me moving forward. Stand like this. Answer the phone this way. Do mailings like this. Etc.

The problem with a lot of acting classes is they're too philosophical. There's no physical labor, just mental note-taking. Hearing a lesson like "you need to fall in love and then have your heart broken to experience the full spectrum of human emotion" is not bad, but it's easy to write that in notebook , rather than have realistic aims of bringing that to the stage or screen. We're past that point now.

Taking class, I glance at my peers and they're taking pages of notes. Pages. I snuck a look at the girl beside me last night. She was writing things like "don't forget to smile!" and "be believable!" and "make sure you're prepared before you audition!"

Ah, I'm dogging on her. If she needs to take notes on such things, that's her right. Even though I happen to know she's been taking this particular class for a year. It's action and followthrough that makes people successful, not writing in notebooks and saying the right stuff.

I have 75-80% working knowledge on how to market and sell myself out here. I know because I have some limited success. But there's still some things I haven't figured out yet. It's that other 20% I'm seeking help with. What do I not know? It's up to me to cut through the BS, or what doesn't benefit me anymore, and find the Aha! stuff.

Improv classes are the same. There's no better way to learn than to actually get up on stage and work. You gotta hop onstage and embarrass yourself quickly. I was in an improv scene four weeks ago in front of a lot of people at IO West and lost my way. Everybody walked away from me, and I had to crawl my way off. I still felt good about it afterward, because I was up there.

We could sit and talk about improv until the wee hours of the morning. "Explore the problem, don't fix it!" "Establish relationship quickly!" "Let activity heighten emotion!" That's great stuff... to hear. If I'm having trouble with those things in practice, I prefer to scribble on a little note in my pocket, so I don't forgot, rather than in a big official binder of acting stuff that's gonna intimidate and discourage me from opening it up.

Obviously, I work in the entertainment world, so I use these examples. But apply what I'm saying to your work. If you are studying or working at something in your life, find the information that gets you productive and moving. You are a smart person. Don't sit at your idealistic desk and have the facts all day. We don't need scene study criticism. We don't need to take notes to remember to smile.

It is time to get up and do. And when you've gotten up and done your best, it's totally cool to sit down with a drink and have that philosophical conversation. Because you produced the sweat and tears.

Learn what realistically will help you and take action and followthrough!

Note: This very piece is idealistic, but it serves the realistic aim of getting my brain awake this morning, helping me stay sharp and thinking.

No Dissing the Disney

I've been sick (again) this week, so I've broke out a lot of animated Disney movies to lift my spirits.

I went through the stellar Disney Renaissance (Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Lion King, maybe Pocahontas) and looked at some older stuff like Sleeping Beauty, Jungle Book, The Rescuers, etc. Not to mention the sing-a-long presentation of Frozen, which hopefully just kicked off another Renaissance.

I've met so many friends who are attracted to all things Disney. Many who are older than me. When I'm around them and it's "Disney this, Disney that", I've wondered "wow, you act like you live in fantasy land. Why don't you go see something adult, like Wolf of Wall Street or something?"

It's funny, I work a long day. Drive my car. Go to classes. Manage errands and business. Then, I come home to my room and turn on Beauty and the Beast and watch Lumière and Mrs. Potts sing "Be Our Guest" to Belle. If I wore that sign on my head on a weekday, how many people would take me seriously?

It's been said your room is where you lock out your worries and fears. That's also where you play Disney movies! There's something therapeutic about putting on something youthful - brightly gift-wrapped and served up with a hearty portion of magic with a satisfaction-guaranteed ending. The worlds of dancing candlesticks and clocks don't call for me to wrap my brain around anything. As well, they remind me of childhood when all these colorful movies and fun characters were introduced to me.

The point of this note is simple. Disney works, as a controlled detox to adult life.

I understand why there are so many Mouseketeers and annual passes to Disneyland. Not just escapism, but a reminder - we weren't brought up the way the world tries to make us.

It's serious, un-Disney stuff in the big city, not always the lap of luxury. Maybe not all the time, but for now, I can get by with a little help from friends like...  Lumière and Mrs. Potts.