Tag: movies

Never Meet Your Heroes

RilalyLeave a comment

“Never meet your heroes,” they say. “They’ll only disappoint you.”  

“OK, but what do you want them to do for you?”

This is the question I ask those who have had “disappointing experiences” meeting a noteworthy figure. Working at a hotel front desk, I met several stars, celebrities, and other notable figures. I don’t know if I ever worshipped at the feet of America’s definition of royalty, but I eventually met so many of them that I didn’t treat them much different than anyone else. They didn’t treat me any better than anyone else, but they didn’t treat me worse either. They treated me with as much as respect as they would anyone else, but, and this is the huge BUT of this article, I didn’t expect anything else.  

I’ve watched you interact with them in the hotel lobby, however, and I saw how disappointed you were when you walked away. It took me a while to realize that it’s not the individuals we admire who disappoint us, it’s the interaction. We wanted our experience to somehow, and in some way, be as meaningful to them as it was to us. 

Most of the notable figures I’ve met aren’t great, awful, charismatic, boring, nice, unkind, dismissive or engaging. Most notable figures are common people who just happened to have something fortunate happen to them along the way. I’m not saying they didn’t earn their notable status, or that they weren’t talented or skilled in their arena, but almost all of them were nothing more than a face in the crowd of skilled and talented people striving for advancement at one point in their career. Most of the actors we admire happened to fit a character better than everyone else in that particular casting room, and they were in the right place at the right time that helped them secure that role that defined them. We developed a relationship with that character, and when we met the actor who played that character, we expected them to consummate our relationship to that character in a way that left us satisfied. I’ve seen that on your faces, and I’ve seen the way your shoulders dropped weightlessly after they politely shook your hand and said, “Hello, nice to meet you.” You expected them to do something more than be nice and polite to you. You wanted them to acknowledge how important you are to them, because they wouldn’t be where they are without people like you, and you were so disappointed that they were just politely kind to you.

I also think that when we run into them in a hotel lobby, we’re kind of disappointed to meet Robin Williams. We wanted to meet Mork from Ork. Robin Williams, as it turned out, was a little quiet and withdrawn. Was he polite and nice, sure, but I expected him to be a little crazy like he was when he was a guest on The Tonight Show.   

“I never know what to say to them,” a notable young figure confessed when we finally made it into the elevator to escape the hotel lobby.

This notable young actor was kind to those who were gob smacked by his sudden appearance in a hotel lobby. He said, “Hello!” to them, he shook hands, and he even took photos with them. A good time was had by all, but the young celebrity ended the encounter somewhat prematurely by telling them he had to go. We went up to his hotel room, and he had nothing to do there, no one to call, and nowhere to go. He just wanted to keep his appearance in the lobby brief, so he didn’t do or say anything to disappoint his adoring fans. I was stunned to hear him admit they made him nervous. My takeaway was that he didn’t want to do or say anything to shatter their belief that there was something special about him. 

“There’s no way they can live up to your expectations, and they know that.”

The young actor knew something it would take me a while to gather. The impressions we have of Hollywood stars is often based on their highlight reels, and everything they do in person can only diminish those idealized images we have of them. If he stayed in that lobby too long, he might accidentally slip into someone like himself when we prefer him to stay in character. 

“You made one of my favorite comedies of all time,” one of the fans said when we were all still in lobby. The actor thanked him for the compliment, and he smiled when the man went into detail, far too much detail, regarding the nature of his compliment. The actor was as kind and gracious as he could be. The actor would never tell this fan how little he had to do with that production. The actor was the face we saw, knew, and attached to the production, but all we have to do is watch the credits to see how many names are involved in the production. His was the most notable name, and one of the primary reasons we purchased a ticket, but he was just one of numerous names involved in its production. He would never tell a fan how little his involvement was in the day-to-day activities of bringing that movie to the fan.

Our favorite actors had our favorite lines written for him, a director asked for several takes from which to choose, and the editors and other players mastered the final cut, but we only know the star. When we insinuate that our favorite star from our favorite production is hilarious, how do they live up to our expectations in one take in a hotel lobby? How do they create a worthwhile experience for us? We won’t think of it that way, of course, and we’ll tell our friends, family, Yahoo readers, and Redditors that we don’t find him “as funny in person, as he is in the movies.” We don’t intentionally compare them to their highlight reels, but it’s how we know them, and it’s tough to shake those images.

We would all love to be famous but imagine reaching a point in that stratosphere where we end up disappointing everyone we meet. Imagine being Michael Jordan, the most notable sports figure in the world for a time. To avoid disappointing fans or damaging his legacy, Michael Jordan decided the smartest thing for him to do was hide in the hotel rooms of cities he visited. When his friends, teammates, and family went out on the town, enjoying everything those cities had to offer, the greatest, richest athlete of his generation hid in hotel rooms.  

Michael Jordan might be a very charming person who knows how to use his dynamic personality to reach most people, but if we met him at a Walmart, Michael Jordan couldn’t possibly live up to the expectations we have of Michael Jordan.

Kelsey Grammer was an hysterical and charming presence in our homes for decades, but if we ran into him at a convenience store, purchasing potato chips, we’d find out he’s not Frasier. He’s probably a nice, polite man, but boring! He’s probably going to be incapable of living up to the montage of our favorite moments on Frasier, unless he agreed to do our run-in numerous times, so we could select our favorite version of the encounter.

Of all the notable figures I met, I met a few who raised my eyebrows. I knew they were checking into our hotel beforehand, and I rehearsed our interaction a couple of times, they didn’t, and I knew they wouldn’t, because why would they? 

“He’s likely going to be more interested in what women think.”

When I met one of my favorite musicians, I must admit I was a little gobsmacked. I told him how much I enjoyed his music, and he put a hand out for me to shake and said, “Thanks. How you doing? Nice to meet you.”

While shaking his hand, I was prepared to detail for him how much I enjoyed his music. He was never in Billboard magazine, and his music was relatively obscure, so I wanted him to know how much he affected one fan’s life. I flirted with the notion that, due to the idea that he was relatively obscure, he needed to hear what I had to say. 

As I began my little rehearsed appreciation speech, I noticed he was already looking over at my co-worker, a beautiful twenty-something woman. Other than being an artistic genius, I realized this guy was a guy, and guys are far more interested in what women think. Even forty-to-fifty-year-old married men care more about what women think than some fella. Other than knowing that I was dying to meet this man, my co-worker had never heard of this man, and the two of us established that fact before he stepped up to the front desk. He quickly picked up on her unfamiliarity, and he didn’t care. He just wanted to chat with her, and he had no desire to talk to me, one of his biggest fans. He flirted with her in a polite, instinctive manner, and she dealt with it well. She was quite accustomed to anonymous men paying attention to her, regardless their age. His flirtation wasn’t cringey. He just dropped a few clever lines on her to get a laugh out of her, and after she laughed politely, he moved on, hotel key in hand. He had no real interest in her, but he had absolutely no interest in talking to me or finding out that I was a huge fan. He was a little dismissive, but he was polite, and that’s what I expected.   

Before going out on message boards to detail for the world how rude this guy was, I put myself in his shoes. If the roles were reversed, I wouldn’t want to waste my A-Game material on some fella I just met either. Men, all men, want to make an impression on women, especially when those women are young and beautiful. Some readers might stubbornly insist that the guy was creepy, but this characteristic of males starts somewhere around junior high, and it never leaves us, no matter how old we are. No matter how much notoriety a man achieves, their barometer is still set on what women think of them. The woman may do nothing more than chuckle, smile, or say, “Isn’t that interesting,” but it’s still better than what some anonymous man, working an entry level job might think. 

“How can they possibly top the impression we already have of them?”

Movies are shot to make actors appear tall, of average height, or in a way to prevent us from being distracted by his height. They have makeup personnel to prevent us from seeing how bad her skin is. They have hair stylists to prevent them from having a bad hair day. They have dental personnel on retainer (no pun intended) to prevent us from seeing their yellow tooth in the movie. Those teams gather to help the actor form an idealized image on screen. Once those teams complete the idealized image, the presentation teams take over. If the star doesn’t appear charming enough, happy enough, or strong enough in a scene, the director reshoots it until they do. Then the editors watch the final product, and if necessary, they might call the actor back to reshoot a particular scene that wasn’t perfect. If any of those characteristics are impossible to achieve on a day of shooting, they don’t shoot that day. So, when we meet them in a hotel lobby, on an otherwise boring Thursday, expect them to be different than what we expected, because most of us are, and our lasting impression of them will probably be unfair, because that’s who we are.

Bob Dylan Refused to Meet Elvis Presley 

Bob Dylan learned firsthand how meeting his heroes could prove disappointing. After Robert Allen Zimmerman became Bob Dylan, he entered into the inner sanctum of top-tier entertainers, and most of the individuals in that inner circle likely disappointed Dylan. As evidence of this when the greatest entertainer of his generation, Elvis Presley extended an invite to Dylan to meet the king, Dylan turned it down.

It sounds odd, I know, considering who Bob Dylan was, is, and what he became, but Elvis inspired Dylan early on. If that was the case, why would Dylan turn a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet the man down? There are reasons listed in the article, but my guess is that they all culminated in the idea of Elvis, and the image of Elvis, proving so instrumental in Bob Dylan’s early career. Dylan probably strove to live up to what he considered the Elvis ideal. Why would Dylan want to risk damaging that by actually meeting the man in real life? Dylan was never as famous as Elvis, of course, but my guess is Dylan didn’t want Elvis to disappoint him in the manner so many others had. Not Elvis. Imagine meeting that man, that guy, that hero of yours who, in his own way, caused you to be better at whatever it is you do. What could that man possibly do, or say, to encourage you onward, and why would you actually want to meet that man if he couldn’t possibly do anything but disappoint you. 

“Heroes? You’re talking about heroes? I’m not some seven-year-old sitting in front of a TV in my pajamas watching Superman cartoons. I’m a grown man. I don’t have heroes.” We age out of hero-worship, but there is always a super-secret part of us that remembers our childhood heroes fondly. They help us rekindle happened to be a very special time in our lives, and there’s no way they can live up to such lofty and unfair expectations. So, the next time you have the unexpected chance to meet one of your heroes, remember to set your lasers to “reasonable expectations”, or follow Bob Dylan’s path and just walk away to keep your unrealistic myths alive. They won’t be hurt by it, trust me, and they might actually be relieved, because they won’t have to live up to yet another person’s unrealistic expectations of them. 

Figurative Schemes of Thought

RilalyLeave a comment

“Teachers teach to the dumbest kids in class,” a former student said to try to explain why we all found school so boring. It felt like truth when I read that, unvarnished, “the stuff they don’t want you to know” truth, because it explained so much. Some of my teachers were so slow and boring. I used to be a quick thinker, which shouldn’t be confused with a quality thinker. My brain operated in hyper-drive, both literally and figuratively, and I often had trouble slowing it down long enough to soak in details. Details drove me nuts, they still do, and when you ask me to slow it down to make sure I get all the details, I shut down. When storytellers focus too much of their presentation on detail, I want to yell, “Just go to it! Get to the point!” When I read what this former student wrote, I wanted to believe it because I thought it explained why my teachers talked so slow, repeated themselves so often, and why they focused so much on inane and insipid details. That truth, it turns out, has no basis in fact. It’s much closer to a myth that we all want to believe.

When I read that truth, I should’ve reminded myself of the line I gave my conspiracy theory friend, “Just because it’s the most negative and cynical idea you can find, and it sounds like something the status quo doesn’t want you to know, doesn’t mean it’s true.”

My guess is that if we polled 1,000 teachers, 950 of them would say that that snarky assessment is false at best or an excuse poor students develop to explain why they did so poorly. They would probably add that while a quality teacher would never abandon a struggling student, it doesn’t mean they would slow the lesson plan down so much that they fail to cover the material they are required to cover in a semester. Schools provide teachers so many different avenues to explore with struggling students that there would be no need to slow the lesson plan down. That makes sense and all that, but the idea that the teachers I had were so boring, because they were trying to slow it down for Wally just explains so much to me. After sorting through various teachers I’ve had, I dismissed this idea as not only unprovable but inconsequential.

The more I tossed the idea of this assessment around, the more I thought every subject, every lesson plan, and every presentation is one quality teacher away from being interesting. I experienced that when a teacher made Economics so interesting to me that I entered college an Economics major, until I took some classes with poor teachers, and I realized how boring the subject was. I even had a teacher who could make Shakespeare fascinating, another who made World History exciting, and I have to imagine there’s an individual out there who could make Anthropology interesting, hard to believe, but I have to imagine that it’s possible. 

Most of my teachers weren’t the type of people we would follow into a fire to save people. They slogged through the material as much as we did. We shared the idea that they probably chose the wrong profession with them. We knew this because we had those charismatic types who could make a lecture about the Sumerians interesting.

For most of the teachers I had there was obviously no prerequisite placed on the ability to craft a quality presentation to attract an audience. There is, however, for  politicians, podcasters, and other entertainers. They have to craft a presentation that appeals to a wide-ranging audience. The same holds true for an advertising agency that hope to sell their presentation to a corporation.

“If you want to know anything about a culture,” someone once said. “Watch its commercials.” There might not be an institution that pays more attention to the cultural mores of society than the average advertising agency. They spend millions studying the culture through sociological and psychological research, and they market test all of their commercials before airing them to understand us better. They pay for this, because they know if they’re going to be able to convince a corporation to give them money, they need to prove that they know us better than we know ourselves. The one obvious fact they know is funny sells, but funny has all sorts of constraints around it, so they pack their commercials with the most common, least offensive jokes they can find to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I appreciate all the time and money they devote to crafting the perfect pitch for a product, but when one of these insults to my intelligence runs through my home I realize there is hatred in my heart, and if the Catholic Church is right about the progressions involved in Judgment Day, I could face obstacles. 

“It says here that you do had hatred in your heart,” St. Peter might say with the pearly gates in his backdrop.

“That is absolutely not true,” I would protest.

“It says you hate beets, the Dallas Cowboys, and commercials.”

“Commercials?” I would say. “How can a hatred of commercials affect my standing in the afterlife?”

“Hatred in the heart is hatred in the heart,” he might say while thumbing through my life.

“I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t seem fair,” I would protest. “Commercials are a non-entity. I didn’t hate the players involved in making commercials. I know they have a job to do and all that, but I just found them such an insult to my intelligence and my sense of creativity, and the repetitive nature of them drove me mad, but you’re telling me that I face eternal damnation because I hated commercials?”

“What? No, you’re probably looking at three-to-five in purgatory for the general sense of hatred in your heart, but you’ll probably get out in eighteen months with good behavior.”

MacPhail’s MacGuffin

If entertainers and statesmen fashion their presentation to try to appeal to the lowest common denominator, and commercials employ dumb guy jokes, how do movie makers and TV show producers craft their projects for greater appeal? 

Have you ever watched a movie with an excessively complex plot? We’re not dumb, and we’ve probably watched a million movies, but some screenwriters and directors fall in love with complexities that involve weaving tangled webs of intricacies with various twists and turns. I might be a lot dumber than I think, but I prefer to think that I never cared about a character, or a plot, so much that I’m going to follow them through the laborious labyrinths that “brilliant” screenwriter create.

A screenwriter named Angus MacPhail (apparently a real person and not a pseudonym) developed a device for dumb people like me who don’t care as much about complex plots as much as “brilliant” writers think. He called it: The MacGuffin. MacPhail and Alfred Hitchcock teamed up on several MacGuffin projects. The very basic definition of the MacGuffin concept is that it doesn’t really matter to an audience what the characters of a story are after as long as the chase is compelling.

The most interesting element of this MacGuffin concept is how true it is, even to a movie buff like me. After watching several MacGuffin movies, I realized that I could watch such a movie, thoroughly enjoy that movie, and love it so much that I memorize certain chunks of dialog from that movie without ever thinking about what the movie was really all about. I’ve read some Reddit discussions about what the characters in the movie Pulp Fiction were after. I loved that movie, and I consider it one of the most memorable movies ever made, but when they broke the movie down, I realized that I didn’t devote a thought to what the characters were actually after in that movie. Pulp Fiction is a movie that many movie freaks consider one of the best examples of a MacGuffin, because it never explains what the characters are actually after. When the Redditors explained their theories, I found them fascinating, and I realized that not only were their theories better than mine, I never even developed a theory, and I LOVED that movie so much that I saw it numerous times, something I rarely do.

The next question I ask those who employ the MacGuffin device is, is it an attempt to dumb the movie down for the dumbest kids in the class? The answer to that question might involve the overly complex and condescending, “Yes and no.” Yes, in the sense that we dumb guys can’t or won’t follow all of the complexities, and no, in the sense that the MacGuffin device helped moviemakers in their negotiations with producers. 

The primary reason moviemakers “dumb-down” their beloved productions is to appease investors. The primary investors are called executive producers, because they often either fund the movie themselves, or they play a major role in securing funds for that movie. Some producers are so involved in the process of making movies that they offer notes: “This particular concept requires too much explanation, and that other idea needs more explanation.” Moviemakers mostly hate these notes, but they know that if they are going to make a multimillion-dollar production, they need to follow their producers’ notes. Hitchcock and MacPhail believed that using the MacGuffin device satisfied both parties by offering no explanations at all. They believed that if the chase was good enough, the audience wouldn’t care what the characters were actually chasing. We have to imagine that they experienced pushback, as the producers surely dropped a note that read, “We need some explanation, or the audience will feel lost.” Hitchcock and MacPhail were right.

“I’m From the Future. How is ya’?”

One note producers drop probably drop on moviemakers during productions that involve speculative themes is how to introduce foreign concepts in a more seamless fashion that appeals to all moviegoers without confusing them or belaboring the point with too much exposition. “How do I follow your notes without ruining my production?” is probably the reply most moviemakers send back.

The 1927, German film called Metropolis provided an example that movie makers now use to resolve the tricky dilemma of introducing characters from the future. The moviemakers could’ve simply had one of the actors say, “Maria is a robot from the future.” They could’ve also had the year of Maria’s introduction on screen, or on set somewhere (and they may have at some point.) The producers and moviemakers ended up creating a figurative scheme of thought by suggesting that everything in the future will be silver-metallic. Robots, like Maria, will be silver-metallic in the future, and the rest of us will follow suit by wearing silver-metallic clothing. Metropolis was so influential, in this regard, that for the next fifty-some odd years, movie makers forced actors, playing characters from the future, to wear silver-metallic costumes to symbolically represent their tense. Did any of them think we’d all be wearing silver-metallic clothing in the future, no, but they did this to conform to the figurative scheme of thought Metropolis developed. 

Why did they choose silver-metallic? I think we can all agree that silver-metallic just looks futuristic. Either that, or this image might be so ingrained that that’s just the way we see it now, but my guess even if Metropolis was never made, some futuristic, speculative movie would’ve come up with the idea. The colors silver-metallic and the color white, are those we most closely associate with space and time travel, and most people in the present and past rarely wear/wore silver-metallic clothing. 

My guess is, more than anything else, the silver metallic clothing solved the movie maker’s tricky dilemma of how to introduce a man from the future? Again, they could’ve simply had the character say, “Hi, I’m Arnie, and I’m from the future. How is ya’?” And that line might work in a quirky Wes Anderson movie, but it would prove awkward and stilted in others. How many of us introduce ourselves by saying, “I’m Arnie, and I’m from the present.” Even if we traveled back to the past, we would still regard our tense as the present tense, as in we’re presently in the past. Thus, the movie making world decided the best way to inform the audience that their character was a man from the future was to present him in an outfit no one from the present would wear. Once this symbolic representation was established by Maria, we either began thinking everyone in the future will wear silver metallic clothing, or the movie makers engrained the image in our head through repetition. 

This symbolic image is so ingrained now that if we went into a supermarket with a silver-metallic outfit on, people might begin hounding us for Lotto numbers, sports predictions, prognostications on world affairs, or stock tips. If silver-metallic suits are becoming more common, we probably wouldn’t immediately assume that their silver-metallic clothing means they’re from the future, but what if they spoke in an emotionless monotone? 

Speculative movies have long speculated that human emotions will no longer drive us in the future, on our next evolutionary plane, a concept most notably explored by Star Trek. They imply that we will no longer be as sad, angry, or happy in the future, and their implicit suggestion is that that will be a result of taking us all off the money standard. 

Taking humans off the money standard is, at the very least, an interesting thought experiment. Some suggest that if we did away with the cultural, social, and worldwide reliance on money, it could diminish sadness, feelings of hopelessness, anger, jealousy, and it could eliminate most of the crimes those emotions inspire. That’s possible, but it’s also possible that we might not aspire to be better today than we were yesterday without some kind of reward. The pursuit of money is widely regarded as a soul-less venture, and we’ve all heard the line money is the root of all evil. Yet, depending on how we earn it, money is also the best reward we’ve developed for hard work. If money is the root of all evil, it’s also at the root of some feelings of purpose, a sense of fulfillment, and it can promote feelings of definition and identity. Money has tangible qualities, of course, but so many of its complex intangibles make us who we are today, and the unforeseen consequences of doing away with money could be an article unto its own.

The Aliens are Turning

Movie characters from the future no longer wear silver, metallic outfits, as we’re all past that silliness now, but we still have numerous figurative schemes of thought in our movies that we fail to see them, because they’re so ingrained.  

‘Who is the alien?’ we ask while in the audience of one of those aliens from another planet movies. “I don’t know. We’ll have to wait until one of them turns their head,” they say. ‘What?’ “Just watch.” Most movie aliens either have a different musculature structure, or they haven’t learned the mechanics behind a full shoulder/torso turn well enough to mimic a full human turn properly. In the 1978 version of The Body Snatchers, a movie I believe set the symbolic representation, the aliens only turn their head, and they fail to incorporate the shoulders and torso in that turn. The turn is also so slow that it appears eerily mechanical and menacing. Their stiff, unnatural motions, dictate their inhuman nature to us. “He’s the alien!” we all scream. The sudden switch in music helps, but only to accompany the visual. 

If we’re trying to locate movie aliens in other social situation, we should note that if these movies are correct, the evolution of most aliens from another planet also failed to provide them casual conversation sounds, as they tend to communicate in a lexicon of roars, high-pitched squeals, or creepy, slither sounds that humans find unnerving. If movies are correct, aliens from another planet do not have mundane interactions. If we were to witness one of them in a transaction at a Walmart franchise, from their home planet, it would probably involve a series of various roars and slithering sounds that we would find so unpleasant we wouldn’t shop at that location. 

Monsters Only Eat Non-Believers

If we find ourselves a character in a monster movie, we should also know that believing the raving lunatic in our production could save our lives, as movie monsters, humanoid and otherwise, have a particular, dietary preference for non-believers. If we survive that first round, we should then avoid thinking that they’re mindless, bloodthirsty beasts, yet we cannot doubt their ferocity either. Failure to do any of the above will lead the monster to zero in on us to prove us wrong. “Why does a monster of blind bloodlust care if we doubt its existence?” we might ask. ‘They just do,’ the raving lunatic will inform us with dramatic repetition. ‘They do just do.’

When we first witness the monster, we see it in its more natural setting. In the second scene, we hear the roar, and just about every roar suspiciously mimics the ferocious roar of the lion. They roar in a projectile manner with their spines bent in an S-shape formation, and they do it in a manner that shows us nearly all of their teeth. We might even notice that their saliva is thick and gelatinous. Even some individual species of sharks have evolved a lion’s roar, and we don’t question that, because we know that that means they’re just that ferocious. 

Another sync-up we have with modern moviemakers is our fascination with motive. Why does a killer kill? Why does a monster kill? Nonbelievers suggest that it/he just has a blind bloodlust. Believers know better. They know that it’s too simplistic to believe that anyone, or anything, has a primal lust for killing. They know it’s complicated, and figuring out its primary motive is the best method to finding a way to eventually pacify it. 

In early movies, monsters had no motive, they were built on blind, bloodlust and destruction, but modern moviemakers know that their monsters/aliens don’t necessarily need a motive, but we do, and it’s usually political. Modern audiences require complex motives that call for scientific research. It’s just too simplistic for us to believe that a beast would harm or kill another being, because the idea that any beast acting in an instinctive manner when encountering something foreign is reductive. It’s also reductive and simplistic to explore the idea that a foreign entity might act in a reflexively defensive manner, or that they might view humans as a source of food. These speculations suggest that foreign entities are relatively primal, and as we all know, suspect, or fear, foreign entities have an intelligence that we cannot comprehend.

Even some slasher flicks, with human monsters, now feed into our need to know what motivates someone, or something, to kill us. “If they were just nicer to it, perhaps it wouldn’t feel the need to kill them all,” we now whisper in theaters. “They just need to understand it better.” Thus, scientists and reporters are often the sole survivors of the monsters, because the monsters appreciate their desire to understand them better. 

Indicators of an Infernal Influence

Most of us don’t pay attention to these figurative indicators, but thanks to the image provided by The Exorcist, we now know that one of the ramifications of undergoing a possession is that it will damage our daughter’s complexion. In its place will be the ruddy complexion of the meth head, that is accompanied by a creepy green hue. It also won’t matter if we instructed her to use conditioner that day, because her hair will go instantly scraggly and oily when the demon infiltrates. Possession movies teach us that demons know how to manipulate our vocal cords in such a way that it doesn’t matter if we’re a young woman during a possession, all victims of a possession will assume a deep, rich demonic voice. What is a demonic voice, we don’t know, but if our child is possessed and her new, demonic voice reminds everyone of Bob, the electronics department employee at Best Buy, we’re probably going to have a tough time convincing anyone to help us exorcise that demon from her system. That’s because everyone knows that demons come out growling and speaking some antiquated language in a hissing whisper that is punctuated by a lion’s roar.

“I know she sounds like Bob from Best Buy, but I’m telling you that my daughter is possessed by a demon named Gerty, which I know makes no sense either, because Satan usually gives his minions more creative, multi-syllabic names, but this is an actual possession Larry. We either need to run or find a Bible written in a language other than English, like Latin or Aramaic.” 

There comes a point in everyone’s existence when they’ve read too many books, listened to too much music, and watched too many movies. When we reach that point, it becomes difficult to avoid spotting the indicators that moviemakers use to abide by our figurative schemes of thought. They can insert a wide variety of creative inserts to their production, but there are certain touchstones that the audience needs to follow along without confusion. When we witness the agreed upon touchstones, we know exactly what they mean, and we know that the producer forced the moviemakers to incorporate agreed upon symbolic representations to get the audience from point A to point D. 

Most of these touchstones are so ingrained and expected now that we don’t even see them for what they are. If you’ve ever watched a movie with a child who hasn’t watched the hundreds of thousands of movies you have, you’ve probably heard, “How did you know that guy was from the future?” If you recognized that it was all about the silver-metallic suit, you probably opened up a can of worms that you couldn’t answer until you began thinking about these figurative schemes of thought that you didn’t even know you absorbed until they asked you about them. Once these touchstones enter our mind’s eye, it’s difficult to separate them from the mostly fallacious theme that teachers teach to the dumbest kids in the class. 

“We need to rewrite this scene, so the dumbest kids in the class can get it,” the producer’s note says, and the creative types probably argue with their proposals, saying we want to introduce a new way to introduce a man from the future, an alien, a monster’s mindset, or a product of a demonic possession. “Too much exposition,” the producer might reply, or “the characterization is too complicated, just give them meth face, have them make a head-only turn, or put them in a silver-metallic suit. Even the dumbest kids in the class will get that.” The moviemaker might fight back with righteous indignation regarding their creative interpretation, but they know most ideas won’t get off the ground without the producer’s check.

“Fortune favors the brave and the bold,” is a phrase we’ve learned through the years, and we all want to be the renegade, the maverick who bucks the trends set by others. We don’t want to follow the rules, we want to be the exception to the rule, but if we’re going to attract a wide audience, we learn that no one appreciates the exception until they become successful. We also learn that the irreplaceable become the replaceable when they refuse to follow the rules.

It was the Best of Times … In Entertainment

RilalyLeave a comment

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.” –Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities 

It’s the human condition to believe we live in the best of times and the worst. Psychologists have terms for various strains of bias that inform our opinions, and Dickens’ famous line encompasses them all. I’m biased, you’re biased, and the whole damned system is biased, but this particular article focuses most on what could be called a generational bias, or nostalgia bias. Our generational bias leads us to believe that everything was funnier, more intellectual, and more stimulating than anything before or since. While I admit that the bias is strong in me, I challenge anyone to defeat the opinions in this article. 

“I am biased.” There, I wrote it, and I’ll write it again to satisfy anyone who challenges the biased nature of this article. The one thing I’ve found is that we can write this over and over again, but there will always be someone who stands up and says, “Yeah, but aren’t you biased?” and they say it with one of those grins that suggest they caught you. 

“Ok, you caught me,” I confess, “but I wrote a whole paragraph about it at the beginning, I added it in the middle, and I concluded with it. Check the minutes of your transcript of our little conversation in this intangible bistro.” So, rather than try to qualify every single nugget of what I’m about to write, go ahead and place a parenthetical (back to top) at the end of each statement if that’s what you need to do to assure yourself that I admit to having a mean case of generational bias, which might be nostalgia bias, considering that the time frame stretches from 1975 to 2001.

If you’re going to challenge my recency bias, however, I ask you to name an era of entertainment that matches the total output from the 1975 to 2001. We’re talking top-notch, quantity and quality, from the era of your argument to mine. Everyone has their opinion, of course, and some say that some of the artists listed in those productions were overhyped by the marketing teams spending huge dollars to see to it that their artist made it to the A-List. This happened frequently during this twenty-six-year chunk of time, as the individual eras therein were chock full of money to be spent in all avenues of entertainment, but with the advantage of hindsight, we can weed through the A-List to ferret out the true artists from the pretenders. Even after doing this, the A-List from this twenty-six-year era is still daunting. 

We can all go through this twenty-six-year era and parse out which was better than the other, but taken together as a whole, I believe the total number of good-to-great movies, the sheer breadth of music, and comedy from the era between 1975 and 2001, will not only go down as the greatest era of entertainment in the United States, but most future eras won’t even try to compete. They’ll just go retro, and try to buy the back-catalogs of the artists from the era, from whomever owns it “now”, to pursue ways to use it and re-use it, market it, and merchandise it in the future. Some might include the 1960’s in some of those entertainment venues, and others will include the 2000 to 2010 era, but after watching, reading, and listening to just about everything from those eras, everything in the 60s now seems to prelude this thirty-year peak, in retrospect, and just about everything that followed seemed to be trailing off.

There are exceptions to the rule, of course, as there are always going to be exceptions to every rule. There will always be a couple great movies in any given year, a few great albums here and there, and future comedians who deliver exceptional material in the future. If you lived through this era though, you knew to expect that an exceptional artist would deliver something exceptional in any given month. It was also “an event” when an actor, director, musician or band, and this author came out with something new. Tuesday used to be “the day” when new albums came out, Friday was “the day” when new movies came out, and I when one of my favorite artists was coming out with something new, I knew months in advance. I realize I’m old now, and no longer on the cutting edge, but does anyone look forward to such things anymore? The new music is downloaded on your music subscription service on Friday now, and your new movies are downloaded into your streaming service. There’s still theaters, in the present tense of this article, but most people are willing to wait, the on average 30 days for it to appear on a streaming service. Do modern artist still have “event” status with their new releases? 

While reading this, I’m sure you thought of some exceptions to the 1975 to 2001 timeframe, The Beatles, The Godfather I and II to name but a few of the exceptions you probably considered. The point of this article is not to quibble over the merits of some critical greats that happened before or after but the general whole. 

My biases came into play in the 90s, because that was the first era when I had real disposable income of my own, and I almost went broke numerous times, trying to rent every movie that had ever been made, listen to every album of music ever created, and I stayed up late to listen to every comedian the late-night talk shows invited on. The reader might consider it a bold statement to say I know everything vital and important to come from this thirty-year peak, or they might consider it a little sad that I devoted so much of my free time and disposable income to this pursuit, but few who know me would challenge my reference base of the mostly inconsequential information from the field of entertainment that occurred during this era. 

I don’t view this cast knowledge of movies, music and books a brag, because other than winning some Trivial Pursuit games and winning some trivia games in bars, I haven’t profited from my mastery of useless knowledge in any way. It’s useless, inconsequential information that doesn’t serve a purpose. Yet, from 1975-2001, I was entertained. The movies, music and books filled my free time. 

Another area to which I devoted too much free time and disposable income was in the area of others writing about the music, movies and books from this era. Some devoted too many calories to framing artistic creations in political orientation. These sophisticated sophists declared some chunks of time “the dark ages,” if that artistic creation occurred during an era in which the office of the president was of a political orientation different from theirs. It was so over the top at times, that it was almost funny. As one who lived through it, and now looks back with a wistful eye at the glorious times these decades were, that’s a big ball of nonsense. It’s a feeble attempt to rewrite history through a politically biased lens, and I write that asking the reader to consider that when one goes down the list of parties in that powerful seat, over the course of this thirty-year chunk of time, it’s mostly even.    

Unless you consider The Cold War with Russia an actual war, the 70s were the first era that was largely free of war. The Vietnam War ended in 1975, and that was preceded by the Korean War, and WWII. Except for a few skirmishes here and there, the era between 1975 and 09/11/2001 was largely free of war. Except for a few moments here and there, America experienced such a great era of stability and prosperity for thirty years that we had too much free time on our hands. In order to keep ourselves intrigued, we invented scandals, controversies, and we spent most of our free time worrying about what could happen if things weren’t this great. The best thing politicians could think of, to keep us mired in fear was, “Things are great, now, sure, but they could be worse, and if elect that other guy, they will.” Our movies needed to invent possible tragedies and catastrophes just to remind us that tragedies and catastrophes could happen. Now that we’re through that era how many of us wish we could go back and realize how many calories we wasted worrying about stupid stuff that never happened. How much would you give to go back in time right now and tell yourself to avoid worrying about that, “because that won’t happen, because it didn’t happen, and it probably never will.” It worked back then, of course, as we all worried about it, and the politicians and the groups all benefitted from the fear, because we all agreed that it was such a scary prospect that we agreed to devote billions of dollars to try to stop something that would never happen. As much as we hate to admit it now, in a historical perspective, we lived and still live, in the best of times. 

There were so many factions and fractions in movies, music, TV, and books for the average consumer to consider, and yet we all agreed on most topics. A walk through the A-List contributors in the early 70s, in music and the movies, is so daunting that I won’t even try to list them. The list in the 80s and 90s not only continued this legacy, but these eras may have topped the 70s by sheer volume. Before we move on, think about that A-List for just a second. How many different, varied, and talented artists littered that A-List compendium. We usually try to shorten that list a little, just for sake of conversation, but the A-List of that era is so long that we feel a need to limit entrants just so we can have a decent conversation on that topic without putting people to sleep when we try to avoid missing someone. Think about all of the great directors, and how many movies they released during this twenty-year chunk of time. Think about all of the various musicians, and all of their various templates. We could devote this entire article to the Billboard Top 100, the Top of the Pops, or any of the other publications and venues that tried to top one another with the A-list artists they featured. Now, think of the magazines, both mass market and the niche ones, that tried to cover the A-Lists of music, the movies, books, and entertainment in general.

As one who wasn’t exclusively enamored by A-list celebrities, and rock stars, I often found myself enjoying the entertainment put out by those others might call the B-List artists, C-Lists, and D-lists, but I only did so, because I exhausted myself trying to watch, listen to, and read everything at the top of those lists in the first half of the era. At some point, also, the influenced began to appear to parody the influencers. I almost went broke numerous times trying to keep up, stay hip, and know every reference point, joke, and conversation topic people were having. Some call these conversations “water cooler” conversations, the coffee shop, or the break area. Whatever the case was, I was one of those who had to know everything, and there were so many movies, so much music, and so many great books and comedians to know about, for someone who had to know, that no past era compares when it comes to pure output and I dare say no future era will even try to compete. If you love music, movies, books, and comedy it was the greatest era in human existence to be alive.  

My nephews, some thirty years my junior, insist that the 80s were greatest musical era ever created, and they don’t even bother trying to defend “their” era. They have no allegiance to it in anyway. They state that the 80s were the greatest era of music as if it’s not only a fact, but such an obvious fact that it’s not even worth discussing. They don’t list one particular artist as the game-changing artist, as many of us will, but they do try to compile a list of influential artists that I considered quite daunting, and they insist no other era can compete. Even though I had nothing to do with creating the music in this era in anyway, I took some pride looking back and hearing an outsider consider this era I lived through the greatest era ever. Due probably to my age, more than anything else, I’m more of a 90s guy, and being a 90s guy, I always considered the 80s a silly era of music, until my nephews put their spin on it. I also write all of this with the asterisk pointed to the notion that proponents of any era between the 60s and the 00s have valid arguments for “their” era.

My rhetorical question, sent out to the ether, is will future inhabitants in the United States be having arguments over the specific eras of this thirty-year chunk of time for the next 60 to 70 years? Will there be a “rock revival” in 2050 that puts the 80s music to shame? Will there be a return-to-roots revival in the movie industry that puts the quality and quantity of the movies from the 70s in the dustbin? 

Some argue that with the proliferation of streaming services and the various outlets on the internet, Americans will never collectively agree on great artistic outputs ever again. They argue that there’s just so much to choose from that it inhibits the idea of a Michael Jackson, a Star Wars, or even a more recent release like the book The Da Vinci Code from ever rocking our world in quite the same manner. These arguments discount the genius effect, of course, as every era has their own geniuses. The question I have, and it seeks to be as objective as possible for someone obviously imbued with a whole bunch of biases, is will those future geniuses ever be able to take future generations to the point that they can finally put 1970 to 1999 to rest, or will 2070 America still be arguing the relative merits of Michael Jackson vs. Madonna; Spielberg vs. Lucas vs. Coppola; Seinfeld vs. Leno; and Chevy Chase vs. Steve Martin vs. Bill Murray?   

One of the primary reasons there might never be an era that tops this era is the topic no common fan wants to talk about but they are know: money. There was so much money to be made in movies and music that the executives and their boardrooms didn’t mind pouring money into projects, because they knew they’d make it back eventually. They had money makers and artistic projects, and they devoted huge chunks of money and resources to both, because at the end of the year, they knew they would always be in the black. 

How many guys with nothing but a guitar strapped to their back receive the kind of funding and support they may have made twenty years ago? How many “good looking waiters who can act” is a movie studio going to bank on if a majority of the money they see is from the comparatively flat streaming services? The amount of money that man may have made for himself and those who supported his rise, just isn’t there anymore, not like it was between 1975 and 2001.

My unusual hunger to know everything about everything was born watching Johnny Carson and David Letterman. I paid hard money and devoted way too much time trying “to get” every reference they included in their jokes, so I tried to watch every movie ever made, listen to every song, and read every book. And I didn’t just want to get the references to movies, songs and books from my generation, I wanted to get the jokes and references to their generation and the generation before that. This was nearly impossible, of course, but I did try. When I couldn’t understand their jokes in the moment, I faked it, but I was so embarrassed I didn’t get that particular joke that I researched it, so I would get it next time. It was that important to me. I don’t know if the younger generation is intimidated by the qualitative and quantitative output of that era, but they don’t care about this near as much as I did. 

They basically ignore most of my reference jokes, and when I ask them if they get it, they say no. “You don’t get it, because you haven’t seen one of the greatest movies ever made,” I say. (I’ve said this about various books and music too.) Again, if someone of a prior generation said this to me, I probably would’ve experienced such a powerful FOMO that I might have watched it, read it, or listened to it that night. If I drop such a reference on them, they immediately dismiss it as “Old man,” stuff. 

“It’s probably an old man humor,” they say, if I tell them a show or movie is must see. It’s funny when they insult me in this manner, don’t get me wrong, but it amazes me that there’s no curiosity on their part to “to get” my well known references from the best of … lists. When I’ve survived the insult of my vicarious ownership of such productions and insisted that they watch that essential show or movie to up their reference base, they’ve watched some of them and returned with: “It’s old man humor.”

If the younger people who surround me are endemic of their generation, this article is the equivalent of screaming into a well. Yet, I maintain that the sheer output from so many different, varied artists, from so many different corners of the country, that occurred in these thirty years, will probably never be matched in my humble opinion, an opinion obviously derived from generational, or nostalgic, bias.