Powdered Wigs vs. Sofia Coppola

When I’m done watching a movie, I’ll either “get it” or not. I’ll either understand the infinite complexities of it’s craftsmanship (maybe after a couple days to think about it) or I’ll just hate it. Generally, I don’t hate bad movies. By bad movie I mean a movie who’s original intention was not all that honorable to begin with (lots of explosions and violence, shaky plots, terrible actors and/or directors). Some might call them Popcorn films, or blockbusters etc. etc. If I have a seething hatred for a movie it is almost always a good movie, and by good movie I mean a movie whose original intentions were quite honorable (lots of weepiness, plenty of pandering, critically acclaimed directors and/or actors and/or writers and/or cinematographers and/or ad nauseum.) The general consensus when it comes to good movies is that you are supposed to like them, they are made by geniuses and a genius never fails. What would make me hate such a good movie so much that 9 times out of 10 I can’t get to the halfway point of the film? The answer: Powdered Wigs.

There’s something about period pieces that have always irked the ever lovin’ shit out of me. The idea that someone would pay money to see John Malkovich affect a funny accent and prance around in obnoxious clothing and fanciful wigs is just so foreign to me. I’m not saying that it’s John Malkovich’s fault (that’s something I’m going to reserve for a completely separate article) or even the fault of the directors or writers, or heck the powdered wigs. My problem is that when I see Helena Bonham Carter on screen wearing a massive dress adorned with pearls and jewels and gold and whatever the hell else they adorned dresses with back then, I just have no way to relate to it.

So when I go see a movie that is painted with all the shitty colors of a movie that I’m going to hate, and I don’t hate it after I see it, I have to analyze why I thought I wouldn’t like it in the first place. Marie Antoinette features all the warning signs of a period drama: Fancy Wigs, Pretentious Accents, Overly Decorated Homes, Powdered Skin, Lots of Clothes and Dresses, Aristocracy on the downfall, Pompous Characters, and Romance of the trashy novel variety (i.e. a queen in love with a man below her rank or class.)

I don’t wear Fancy Wigs and my home, though overly decorated features no gold trim or massive oil paintings. I do not powder my face or wear make-up. I have plenty of clothes by mostly just jeans and t-shirts. I’m not rich and the only concept I have of being rich is from watching that Richie Rich movie with Macaulay Culkin. Also, I’m a middle class white kid from the suburbs of Chicago, pretty much any girl I would want is in my class (Note: I already do have a pretty awesome girl.)

So Marie Antoinette had a lot going against it but I walked away thoroughly enjoying, nay, loving the movie. Why? I could identify with it. As soon as Kirsten Dunst stepped onto to screen I had that connection down pat (I think she’s a really good actress that hasn’t been given enough opportunities to demonstrate that fact), then she started talking and it wasn’t in a mildly European sounding accent (In movies not set in English speaking countries, people almost always speak English, and by giving their characters an accent from whatever region they are supposed to be representing, they must be from that region, right?).

Kirsten Dunst, throughout the movie, was this cute little girl whom I could relate to because she speaks like my friends and I speak. It was the subtle affectations of Kirsten Dunst’s every-girl voice that hooked me in. It wasn’t anything that I even actively realized was occurring until the movie was almost over. She didn’t over-pronounce or artistocratically drawl once during the entire film, she was just Kirsten Dunst.

Secondly, the music, oh my god the music. I heard a lot of people got their panties in a bunch that Sofia Coppola didn’t use period music in this film. This is probably a shitty comparison but A Knight’s Tale used classic rock during some of it’s battle sequences and I thought that was genius. I’ve heard the thunderous timpanis and gleefully exuberant horns before and even when they’re used well it’s generally still music created for the purpose of eliciting some reaction from the viewer. The theme from Jaws is one of those, it was done perfectly, but it was still something that no one had ever heard until they saw the movie.

I’ve always been a big fan of movie soundtracks, particularly soundtracks that feature music that I’m familiar with (the keyword being “familiar”). Wes Anderson has done this really well, and Quentin Tarantino should probably be given some sort of crown illustrating the fact that he’s really good at putting together a soundtrack. Anyways, when I’m watching a movie and a song that I’m familiar with or better yet, a song that I like, starts shooting through the speakers I am immediately familiar with what is happening on screen.

Music has that power, it sets the mood of the film, sometimes in a greater sense than the photography, costumes or writing can. Because, like I mentioned above, the cinematography, the costumes and writing were all created for the sole purpose of being in the movie you are currently watching. How does one connect with a movie other than directly relating some part of it to another part of their lives? I’m willing to bet that if you LOVE movies you probably LOVE music to. So when New Order starts playing during a sequence in Marie Antoinette, I know what is happening. It takes me from sitting in front of my computer listening to Substance via MP3 to running through a costume ball alongside Marie Antoinette and then Prince Louis. If I can emotionally connect to a movie then it doesn’t matter what else happens, I’m absorbed in it.

So maybe saying that I hate Dangerous Liaisons or Girl With a Pearl Earring is a little obnoxious, I guess I just have to admit something about myself that not many people are willing to admit: I just don’t understand them. So my hatred is misplaced, I understand that. I guess I don’t hate them, but I still don’t like them. I don’t like them in the same way that I don’t like calculus or long division. I’ll choose Marie Antoinette and arithmetic any day.

I don’t think the point of Marie Antoinette was to make it more accessible, just more identifiable. If the story were meant to be more accessible, it would have been directed by some Music Video Throwback and featured a much more contemporary (read: much more AWFUL) soundtrack. I think Sofia Coppola was very careful in not selecting more current music (though she does whip out the Strokes and there is a cameo by Phoenix) or going overboard with the very “now” dialogue. She does it in a way that I imagine she’s been thinking about doing it since she was young Marie Antoinette’s age. Its very playful, almost like the actors are her dolls and the movie her dollhouse. When a little girl pretends to be a princess, she doesn’t speak in the voice of a cultured dauphine, she speaks like a little a girl.

"It's a bad day to be a zombie!"

I'm writing this fresh after seeing a trailer for Day of the Dead, scheduled for release in April 2007. To be honest, I was expecting a bad movie based on the casting choices, which were known beforehand. All the important parts are filled by young, pretty, "Dawson's Creek" types (and if Nick Cannon doesn't sound like a porn star's name, I'll eat a bucket of scorpions). Most - all - successful zombie movies have starred relatively ordinary-looking people, because that's who audiences relate to. And if you don't want your audience to relate to your characters, then go ahead and hire plastic twentysomethings for all the main roles - but you won't have a zombie movie, you'll have an episode of "Buffy."

Then I watched the trailer. I can now state with confidence that Day 2007 won't be bad at all.

It will be pure shit.

What we're looking at appears to be a prequel to Dawn 2004, judging by the zombies (they look and sound and move exactly like Zack Snyder's undead) and the premise (evil corporation/government/military creates virus which infects entire town). This, in itself, doesn't bother me (although, shouldn't the title be Night instead of Day then?). In fact, I think it'd be an interesting concept - if done well. It doesn't look like we're getting that next April.

First of all, if the quality of the trailer is any indication, then this film is being produced by people who have clearly have no business advertising any kind of fiction. The trailer editors apparently come from the "give away every possible twist" school of film advertising (and the twists weren't all that brilliant to begin with). We find out one of our "Dawson's Creek" survivors is infected, but no one knows whom. Then, we find out which one, as he furtively stares at the bite mark on his arm. Congratulations, trailer guys - you've successfully deflated an already cliched suspense-building technique. We find out that the disease was produced by your standard evil scientific research, like that was going to be some kind of revelation. The basic message of the trailer seems to be, "this movie is so predictable that you'll know what's going to happen fifteen minutes in, so I'm going to save you that fifteen minutes right now."

If that didn't insult my intelligence enough, there's the coitus factor. Toward the beginning of the trailer, before the Bad Stuff starts happening, there's a girl saying, "I want us to be special," or some such typical prelude-to-fucking bullshit. This shifts to a quarter-second of her and her boyfriend doin' the nasty. It's subtle as a hammer, as if the producers themselves were nudging us in the ribs with their elbows and saying, "Hey guuuuuys...BOOBIES!!!" If random gratuitous sex is one of the selling points of your film, you need to go back to zombie school.

At least Ving Rhames is in the film, playing Badass Black Sergeant. I liked him in Dawn 2004 as Badass Black Cop. But even he seems to be bored with his lines.

This isn't "remake bitterness." The original Dawn of the Dead was a zombie masterpiece, but I still enjoyed its 2004 remake (which, incidentally, had a much better trailer--none of this giving-away-everything and what-have-you). The original Day of the Dead is one of my favorite zombie movies of all time, but it doesn't color my opinion of this film. The fact that I could wipe my ass with celluloid and produce a better zombie film, however - that's definitely a factor.

Hard Candy

I really enjoy it when I go see a movie that I know little to nothing about and come away with some sort of intense reaction. Often times I’ll have a pre-decided judgment about a film and I’ll walk away either disappointed or pleasantly surprised. I had thought that The Phantom Menace was going to be the movie to end all movies, little did I know while caught up in the fanboy hysteria, that the movie was actually pretty terrible. I was disenchanted by the Star Wars franchise and even more so after Attack of The Clones. So when a movie that I am neither for nor against makes me feel something, anything, I have to give it props.

When I added Hard Candy to my Netflix queue all I knew was that it was about an older man who meets a younger woman through the internet. All said, that’s pretty much all you need to know about the movie. Other than that premise, I can’t really say what compelled me to see the movie. I think that when it came out to theatres back in April I had read a review that said it was pretty good. It probably has more to do with the fact that I think the older man/younger woman situation is immensely intriguing. I guess I’m too young to understand the predilection for the creepy old man crowd to be falling head over heels for young teenage girls. Or maybe I’m just jealous that an older woman never swept me off my feet during my teen years.

I grew up during the beginning stages of the instant messaging boom. Everybody who was anybody had an instant messaging program, I was a member of at least three (AIM/AOL, Yahoo!, and ICQ). I would sit on AOL for hours and talk to complete strangers. Though the traditional definition of stranger is a little blurry online. You’re talking and relating to this person that you’ve never met, but are they still a stranger even though you’ve never had any real live contact? Anyways, I’m completely familiar with the addiction that young people have with chatting online and the fact that I understand that makes Hard Candy all the more creepy.

At first Jeff (Patrick Wilson) doesn’t seem like a creepy guy when he meets Haley (Ellen Page) at a coffee shop. Sure he looks significantly older than Haley (who’s only 14), but he just seems so nice. It isn’t until we get to the playfully coy banter between the two that this isn’t just some whim that Jeff acted upon and we realize that he is indeed attracted to this young girl, and the young girl to him.
The events of the rest of the movie make this opening scene seem so much more innocent than it actually is. Jeff has many opportunities to stop what he is doing and walk away but none of them are taken. Instead, he keeps sinking himself further into Haley’s charm. He buys her a t-shirt (which she gladly tries on for him), but only after attempting to buy her sweet things from the barista. By the time she agrees to model for Jeff (who is a professional photographer), he is hooked and any opportunity he had to end this is completely gone.

One of the most significant things about this movie is that at first, you’re going to take Haley’s side. She’s young, cute and innocent. Obviously, Jeff is manipulating her because he’s old, she’s young and young people are never ever guilty. As events progress during the film, you’ll switch to Jeff’s side, especially after she drugs him and ties him to a chair. But the movie doesn’t let you take one side for too long before revealing something about one of their two main characters that either repulses you, or attracts you. Neither of these characters are heroes, but neither of them are villains either. In that duality, the movie reveals itself to be more about the people contained with in the plot than the actual plot itself.

So when I say that I knew pretty much nothing about this movie when I went into, I’m not lying. I really didn’t know what was going on with the movie until the end to tell you the truth. Because every time I thought I knew what was happening, and every time I thought I knew where a character was going to go, they either didn’t go there, or went there but went even further. It’s like if I really, really thought that John Kerry was going to be president, I would have been surprised that he didn’t get voted into office, but I also would have been surprised had been voted into office and then been voted President of The World.

As soon as Haley goes home with Jeff you realize that maybe this isn’t just some little thing that Jeff decided to do. Maybe it was his intention all along to get her to come home with him. So you immediately know that Jeff is a little shady at this point, but later on his original intentions for letting her come over come into question and those questions are horrifying. I don’t want to reveal too much about what exactly happens and what exactly is revealed about our characters during the course of the film, but I will say that at one point, you’ll have a new found appreciation for the comedy of Brian Posehn. If you’ve seen the film, and you know the bit I’m talking about then you’re probably ready to vomit right now just from thinking about it.

Patrick Wilson is pretty amazing in this film. He pulls off the suave player/tortured victim dichotomy with ease. Ellen Page on the other hand, while not bad in any way, I’m not sure how good she was. I don’t know if she just can’t act and was just pulling out every clichéd Movie Torturer vibe she could grab (sarcastic wit, devilish eyes, smarter-than-thou attitude) or if that was the point of her character. I’m going to assume that the fact that she and her character are both young, the only way they know how to be the bad guy is not from life experience but by imitating the films and television show’s they’ve watched. Someone so young certainly hasn’t had enough to time to be that fucked up, and there’s a certain percentage of it that has to be an act, despite Haley’s insistence that she is an honor student. Don’t get me wrong, Haley is absolutely terrifying at times, but she’s almost too terrifying.

I haven’t even gotten to how beautiful the film is. I recently made the brilliant decision to get an HD-TV and I already had a progressive scan DVD player. Oh my lord was that a wise decision. David Slade, the director, knows how to tell the camera what do and what to look at (especially the aforementioned Brian Posehn reference) but it’s Jo Willems’ cinematography that tells the cameras how to see it.

There’s plenty of red during the films most violent scenes (as well as light glares and shaky cameras) but during an early scene with our two main characters standing and relating to each-other in an entirely pink room, the camera moves slowly and gracefully and is really the only point in the movie that we can feel Jeff and Haley connect on a deep, profound level. Haley observes some of Jeff’s photography and points out one in particular that she thinks is beautiful, this also happens to be a picture of the only model that Jeff ever fell in love with. Jeff is restrained but angered that she removes the picture from the wall to look at it closer, but he politely takes it from her and puts it back. In that action we can see that Jeff is more complex than his suave jet-setting photographer image and for an instant Haley sees that, just before she tears it all down.

When the credits began to roll and sat a let the movie marinate for a while, I was floored. Floored because I still don’t think I know what was going on. I mean, I saw what was going on and I knew what happened with in the film but what happened outside of the events of the film was a lot more grey. I didn’t fully grasp what Haley’s motivation was. Vengeance seemed to be the only answer I could find and the only answer that the movie itself provided. But after all was said and done I think that was the point. You never really got to know Haley, while you got to know Jeff a lot more than you would ever want to. In that, Haley maintained her innocence despite her increasingly violent actions, while Jeff ended up with the short end of the stick and despite the movies end you still don’t know who the actual victim was.

It's Got Electrolytes!

I think I may have just seen the best movie of the year. As a Dork I’m partial to proclamations of that sort, but seriously, Idiocracy was amazing. I’ve just never seen something so funny and so good. This definitely isn’t good/funny in the same way that something like Annie Hall is good/funny, it’s good/funny (more funny/good) in a way I haven’t seen since the Golden Age of The Simpsons. I was reminded of Bill Hicks’ joke about redneck aliens, to paraphrase, “We traveled billions of light-years, we just wanna sit back and whittle some.” It’s obvious that the primary function of this film is to make you laugh, but much like the comedy of Bill Hicks you get this sense that there’s something else going on.

Everyone always has this grand vision of the future being full of hyper-intelligent meta-humans. Everything is silver and glowing and things float all over the place. Like Hicks’ comment above, Idiocracy asks you re-imagine the fundamental concepts of Science Fiction, where Hicks asks you to imagine Aliens as being closer to Rednecks, Judge asks you to imagine the stupidest possible future. There’s no flying cars or endless sea of towering, glimmering skyscrapers, but there is a Costco the size of Rhode Island and the president is a former champion wrestler (a sly Jesse Ventura reference I suppose, but executed much better when the president addresses “The House of Representin’” preceded by theme music and pyrotechnics.)

The whole plot is kind of secondary to what the movie is actually about. We’re launched into this future when Joe (Luke Wilson) and Rita (Maya Rudolph) get frozen as part of a super-secret Government human hibernation program. They’re only supposed to be in there for a year, but due to circumstances out of their control, they are left there for 500 years. The traditional moving-forward-in-time montage is given a kick in the pants when we see a Fuddruckers get built, torn down and replaced by a series of similarly named restaurants until we finally get to “Buttfuckers” right around the time Joe wakes up (There’s a brilliant scene of Joe dumbfoundedly staring at a “Buttfuckers” while some kids birthday party is going on inside).

Like I said, the whole how-we-got-there doesn’t matter. This movie could’ve easily become a mockumentary, it’s already got insightful narration. I do like that they picked Luke Wilson, he’s really good at playing it straight when everyone else around him are being goofballs. Joe’s not all that offended by the world of the future, just a little frustrated because he can’t explain himself. No one will listen to him, primarily because he “talks like a fag.” (i.e. using big words.) When he tries to tell people that they have to uses water to grow crops and not Brawndo, a Gatorade-like drink that completely replaced water except in the place of toilets, he has to convince them that he can talk to plants and that the plants told him they want water. (“But Brawndo has everything a plant needs, it’s got electrolytes!”) I also loved Dax Shepherd who plays Joe’s lawyer, Frito (most of the characters are named after products). I really had no idea that Dax Shepherd could act, but then again, judging by his past roles, this one may have been perfect for him.

The humor in the movie is pretty dumb, like almost Tommy Boy-style, but that’s where the movie reveals itself to be a lot more that it’s outward appearance. Sure there are plenty of fart jokes and dudes getting kicked in the balls (“Ow, My Balls!” is a popular TV show in the future) but the fact that these are so common place is what makes the humor in the movie so smart. It’s not that people go out of their way to see crude humor and overt sexuality; life in 2505 is crude humor and overt sexuality: you can go to Starbucks for a handjob and read “U.S. News & Naked Ladies”. Vending machines swear at you and going to the hospital has become more like going McDonalds. Everything is blended so insouciantly into the fabric of society that it’s almost unrecognizable as trying to be funny. In doing so a world is created that is fairly believable (though one could obviously nitpick the shit out of this movie).

This is not only where the true genius of Idiocracy actually lies, but I suspect it is the same reason why Fox pulled it from wide distribution. I can imagine that half the audience that Fox would market this to would laugh along with the movie and not at it, like it should be. Am I saying that most of the people that would probably go see this movie are no better than the people this movie makes fun of? Yeah, I’m saying that. The movie begins with a look at a high-I.Q.-ed couple thinking about having kids. Then it cuts to a hillbilly who can’t remember which girl he got pregnant. It cuts between these people, going from the smart people still trying to find the time to have kids, to the hillbilly with 8 kids, whose kids are now having kids. I can imagine one of the hillbilly’s children’s children going to see this movie and coming home still laughing at the farts, but not understanding why the farts were there in the first place. I’m not saying that every comedy has to have farts that are existential. It’s just that this film does.

When I think about the world that this movie creates and proceeds to make fun of, I get kind of depressed. It’s not hard to think that the ultra-dumbed down society that this movie creates could eventually be a reality. Is Mike Judge attempting to make a case for eugenics? No I don’t think so. Though halting a few people’s reproductive capabilities wouldn’t be bad idea, I think he’s trying to say something else. There was an Onion article just after 9/11 with a headline saying something along the lines of “Americans Long To Care About Stupid Shit Again”. In today’s world of complete lies being shilled as justification for war, the advocation of torture by our own President and our elections becoming a complete mockery, it’s getting really hard not to give a shit anymore.

I’m not going to claim to be in the running for White House correspondent’s job, but even I give a shit now. Up until 9/11, the majority of Americans had no idea that there were people out there that actually hated us. Idiocracy isn’t trying to preach at you, it’s just reminding you that giving a shit isn’t “gay” and that eating Doritos and watching MTV all day might not be the best thing to be doing with your life. The movie isn’t telling everyone to go join Green Peace or help PETA convince another celebrity to get naked, it’s just saying that being aware of the world you live in isn’t a bad idea.

In that sense I think the execution of Idiocracy was much better than that of Office Space, but I think they share similar concepts. Both are about taking charge of you’re life and your destiny and taking responsibility for your actions. But Idiocracy has a much grander scope, it isn’t as singular as Office Space. If Idiocracy gets a wide release or hopefully a DVD release at least, I can see it going beyond the cult status of Office Space. I don’t want to speak too loftily of this movie, but I really liked it, and I think that there are thousands of people out there who will think the same thing I am.

There’s a really good line that’s kind of used as the theme of the movie, that I think has some importance today, “You either lead, follow, or get out of the way.” Joe chooses to get out of the way at the beginning of the film, and being of Hollywood, it of course has the requisite happy ending where Joe finally decides to lead. I’m not saying that we should all run for president or governor, but I definitely think the least of what we can do as Uh-mericans is to give a shit about ourselves, our nation, and everyone else.

Turds On A Movie

My immediate reaction upon exiting the movie theatre after seeing Snakes On A Plane was: “That was the most obnoxious movie I’ve ever seen.” I mean obnoxious in a good way. I liked the honesty of its camp. It created a new genre: Proto-Schlock, or self-aware awfulness. I was endeared to this idea, and I appreciated the movie for not trying to be good but instead reveling in its own inherent badness.Then on my way home I tried to switch lanes, and the dude two car-lengths behind me decided he didn’t want me to, and he sped past while I was halfway into the other lane. Whenever a situation like this comes up I use Ol’ Trusty to sort it out. I flipped him the bird. Not content with being just a plain asshole, he decided to make a run for the Major Asshole award by then slowing down and swerving into my lane, to teach me a lesson or something.

Maybe I shouldn’t have given him the finger, or maybe he shouldn’t have been an asshole. Regardless, I was now in a bad mood. When in a bad mood one tries to think about things that will pull him out of that mood, but instead he usually gets pushed deeper into his misery. It’s kind of like when a dude is trying to make his boner go away by thinking about baseball, but in his head the dudes on the field turn into ladies, and then they turn into naked ladies. So I thought, “I’ll get myself out of this mood by thinking about Snakes On A Plane.” Bad fucking idea.

The first image that popped into my head was of some dickhead blogger creaming in his Levi’s while watching something that he wanted to happen in Snakes On A Plane actually happen on the screen. Months ago this guy posted some bullshit about Snakes On A Plane that the producers read. They, sensing the hype that this movie had already created (when they hadn’t yet spent a dime on marketing), decided that they should field suggestions for the movie from the internet. So what this blogger wrote caught the eye of the producer. The producer called the writer, the director, and the actingest motherfucker in Hollywood, Sam Jackson, and decided that they had to put what this dude wrote in the movie. So they spent a couple million dollars for the writer to write the new scene, the director to direct the new scene, the actors to act in the new scene, and of course for the special effects guys to do their thing yet again.

Mind you, the movie had already been shot; it was fundamentally in the can. So the producer thought that it would be a good idea to change this piece of shit into an R-Rated piece of shit. They shot new scenes and put them into the movie. Then they had this movie containing new scenes SUGGESTED by the “fans” (Can a movie have fans even though it hasn’t proven itself to be fan-worthy; i.e., no one’s seen it?).

Look at this from the perspective of the filmmakers. The writer wrote this script, either from his idea or from someone else’s. It doesn’t matter. He wrote the script. He wrote the movie that was ALREADY made. It doesn’t matter if it was bad to begin with; it’s his job to write what he gets paid to write. Same with the director: the quality of the material is inconsequential. So he heard that they wanted him to write new things based on what some dickhead on the internet wanted. It’s like when a chef slaves over a steak only to hear that the person who ordered it wants ketchup with it. Ketchup? Don’t you like what I made for you? Sure, it might not be the best steak ever, but fucking ketchup? Why the fuck did you order it in the first place if you’re just going to smear ketchup on it? The writers and filmmakers are the chef, and the dickhead bloggers are the ketchup. It’s the writer’s steak that the producer ordered. If he didn’t like what he ordered, why the fuck did he order it in the first place?

Being a blogger myself, I realize the irony in me making fun of bloggers, especially after having written something in which I all but solicit the producers of the next Batman film to do what I say. But here’s where I’m different: I stated that I do not actually expect anyone to pay attention to me. I was just ranting. In the case of Snakes On A Plane, someone said something ridiculous about the movie, which was then read by someone else who sent it to someone else, etc., etc.

All this attention caught the eye of the producer. The producer then figured, “Let’s shoot some new scenes based on what these inter-tards are saying about our piece of shit movie!” So the internet community is getting a boner. “Lady Hollywood is paying attention to us!” Now people will start coming up with the most insane things they can think of and start posting them in whatever public forum they can find. The producers will read these new insane things and decide to put them in movies. It’s like a cannibalization of attention. The attention is causing more attention, which in turn is causing even more attention.

The closest thing I can compare this with is Adult Swim. When Adult Swim started on Cartoon Network it was really fun and goofy, and it was something great to watch while you got drunk with your friends. Then Adult Swim started putting things people wrote on their message boards on television and since then anything anyone has said on the boards has been posted with the hope of it being featured on television one day. So everything posted on them is obnoxious and obvious. But Adult Swim keeps putting quotes on television, so now people have to outdo each other. Poster A posts something clever. Then Poster B posts something cleverer than Poster A. Then Poster C comes up with something cleverer than Posters A and B combined. It keeps going on and on like this until you pay $8.50 to see a poorly shot Sam Jackson say, “That’s it! I’ve had enough of these mother-fucking snakes on this mother-fucking plane!”

I guess I might be treading the same water as the Chuck Klosterman article from Esquire that Jim Emerson and I both wrote about. But something neither of them covered is this: How is what happened with Snakes On A Plane any different than censoring a movie? Doesn’t changing a completed movie in order to make it more violent make changing a completed movie in order to make it less violent okay? We’ve all heard about companies that take DVD releases of certain movies and get rid of the “naughty bits” and then re-release these so-called “cleaned-up” versions of movies. Well, what if there was a company the put more naughty bits in (a couple more streaks of blood or a couple more swear words)? Would we be up in arms then? Would we have so derided George Lucas for “special-editioning” Star Wars if we had suggested it?

It makes me sad to say it, but Snakes On A Plane was made by professionals, by people who make films for a living. I’m all for audience participation; in fact, audience participation has elicited some of the most exciting developments in the entertainment industry. Sony has been fond of having fan-created poster contests. The movie Slither just had a contest in which you could edit your own trailer. Outside of movies, The Four Horsemen, a group of toy sculptors, solicited fans for toy ideas. Fans then voted on the best idea for a toy line. They then voted on which characters from the toy line to develop. They then voted on the sculpts for the characters and ultimately voted on which character would be produced. To an extent, audience participation can and will continue to work. But people, please leave the brushes in the hands of the artists. We’re the audience for a reason: we sit back and watch what someone else has created. If you’re not content to sit back and watch, then make your own movie, and we’ll see how much you like it when someone blogs a couple new lines for you.

I guess the final point I can make about this movie is that it all comes down to a case of overestimating the buying power of those heavily involved in the culture of blogging. Bloggers are a small fraction of vocal and passionate people, which are a fraction of passionate people in general, which are a fraction of people in general. When you get down to it, the massive group of people who had created the hysteria surrounding this film weren’t all that massive after all. Hollywood thought that bloggers represented the whole, they thought what bloggers wanted was what everyone wanted. So they changed a bunch of stuff around to suit to what they thought everyone wanted. If the opening weekend number of Snakes On A Plane have taught us anything, is that it’s not about how popular the opinion actually is, it’s about how vocal the holders of that opinion are.

I’d honestly be more afraid of what Snakes On A Plane represents had it been more successful, but as it stands it was just a shitty movie that’s been talked about a lot more than any shitty movie ever has.

So did I like the movie? Yeah I did, because it sucked, and I like shitty movies. I’d probably watch it again too, but I wouldn’t pay money for it again. Mostly because Snakes On A Plane is the first intentionally manufactured sign of the coming Movie Apocalypse. I’m glad to have seen the product of the entire filmmaking process becoming irrelevant. The new way to make film will involve many more people and will crank out many more pieces of shit. It’s like Hollywood is a turd factory that’s finally discovered how to make smellier turds. No one wants a smellier turd, and I can only pray to God that Snakes On A Plane is not an indication of things to come.