Tag: movies

The Familiar Fiber

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“The Exorcist is the scariest movie of all time,” Gary said. 

“Really?” I said. “I didn’t think it was that scary.”

“WHAT?!”

“It just didn’t reach me on that level,” I told him. “It was a really good movie. The acting, the plot believability, all that, but when it evolved to the scary scenes, I just wasn’t frightened. I expected it to scare the beans out of me, because everyone said it would, and maybe that was it. Maybe I sat there waiting for it to scare me in a way I’ve never been scared before.” 

Horror and comedy, more than any other genres, are about time and place, state of mind, and expectation. Expectations can ruin the best of the best, and if it were possible for me to watch The Exorcist without expectation, it might have terrified me. The same holds true with all genres to some extent, but expectation seems to affect comedy and horror more. 

If the author of a story, be it movie or book, is able to bring us in slowly, progressively, and strategically, they might bring us to that place, but it’s touch-and-go. Everyone from the writers to the director, to the editor, and everyone else involved might think they have a hit, but no one knows how an audience will react. 

Some audience members stubbornly resist. “This isn’t real,” they say with their arms folded, “and I’m not buying it.” Of course, it’s not real, but it’s your job as an audience member, if you want to have any fun, is to suspend your disbelief for just a moment to get in to the movie. I did not stubbornly resist The Exorcist. I wanted it to scare me. I tried to invest everything I had into that movie, but it just didn’t reach me on that level.

The more common description of a movie reaching us on another level is “striking a nerve”. We could also twist the term ‘striking a nerve’ to describe how a movie gets under our skin, though some reserve that term for something annoying. The point is that quality horror flicks dig past the superficial, goosebump layer of the epidermis into the nerve, and tap into the axons, the cord-like groups of fibers in the center of a nerve, that we call the familiar fibers. If we want to move the illustration further, we could say that the great horror movies reach into the neuromuscular junction, but you get the point. If we’ve always had a deep seated fear of clowns, for instance, Stephen King’s It gave us one of the most horrific experiences we’ve ever had reading the book or watching the movie. Those with a lifelong fear of dogs found Cujo one of the scariest book/movies for the same reasons. For reasons that weren’t clear to me at the time, no movie tapped into my familiar fibers better than The Blair Witch Project. 

“That’s the dumbest movie I’ve ever seen,” my friend said, soon after seeing it, “and your movie recommendations will forever be tainted by the fact that you suggested that I waste my time and money on that stupid, stupid movie.”

I recommended The Blair Witch Project to everyone I knew, and they all, pretty much, had the same reaction. I found their reactions inexplicable, because they shared my taste in movies, and we were always on the lookout for the next great horror. I thought I found it in The Blair Witch Project. I thought it was a masterpiece, and while I figured they probably wouldn’t love it as much as I did, I didn’t expect them to question my taste in movies forever after. After wrestling with this, I eventually came to the conclusion that time and place are everything for some movies. (Expectations, as I wrote, is another huge movie killer, and I may have done this with The Blair Witch Project, as others did for me with The Exorcist.)

The time and place element obviously made a huge impact on my opinion of the The Blair Witch Project. I was in a theater, on opening night, at the midnight hour, with a bunch of teenagers who wouldn’t shut up. When they’re chitter-chatter, and the giggles (those blasted gigglers!) lasted 20 minutes into the flick, I thought I wasted good money. I didn’t think the giggles would ever end. They did. 20 minutes into the movie, The Blair Witch Project achieved what I considered impossible at the time: it silenced over 100 teenagers. The transformation from claustrophobic noise to claustrophobic silence ended up giving that silence a little extra weight. The sudden, creepy silence heightened my senses, and managed to narrow my perspective to tunnel vision so well that I was almost spiritually immersed in the movie. 

I could smell the burning wood from the campfire. I wouldn’t say that I was ever afraid of camping, or the darkness in the trees surrounding us, but the environment always creeped me out a little. The environment, and the compulsion to speak in whispers, is probably what makes ghost stories told by campfire so creepy. My goosebumps were always out before they started their campfire stories, and they didn’t have to do much to finish the job. The makers of Blair Witch tapped into a level of familiarity for me so well that I could smell the burning wood in the middle of the movie theater. I was there with the characters of the movie, in all ways but one. 

Then, the screaming started. I don’t know if the young girls in the theater, seated over my shoulder, took classes to help them reach the registers they did, or if their talent was granted by God, but I had my hand on my heart on more than one occasion. Those teenagers couldn’t have done a much better job if they orchestrated a plan to scare the hell out of me.

Based on that experience alone, I now tell anyone interested in watching a horror movie to try to duplicate my experience. “Even if you have to pay for the admission of a bunch of screaming, teenage girls. It might run into hundreds of dollars, but if you enjoy horror as much as I do, you might just have a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Follow the steps I did, have them annoy you in the beginning, then tell them to wrap you in silence so weighted that if someone drops a straw on the ground, everyone will turn around to see what the hell just happened. Then, in those key moments, have these young, teenage girls scream as loud as they can in your ear, in a manner that rattles you to bone.” 

Another element that separated me from my arm-folding brethren when it came to The Blair Witch Project was that I walked into that theater wanting to believe it. “But supernatural witches aren’t real,” Gary said to explain why he thought the movie was such an epic waste of his time and money. 

“Hey, if you’re having problems sleeping at night, because you think witches, vampires, or werewolves are knocking at your door, I’ll tell you they’re not real,” I told Gary. “If we’re about to watch a movie about them though, I’m going to pretend that they’re real for however long that movie lasts. It’s not the moviemaker’s job to convince you that they’re real. It’s your job to pretend, so that you can have a little fun in life. When I watch a movie, I grant the artist access to my innards. It’s a frame of mind I grant the actors and the director, and it’s their job to avoid screwing it up.” 

Not only was I there, smelling the campfire, but prior to entering the theater that night, I saw the movie’s faux documentary on Syfy, and I was a frequent guest on the The Blair Witch Project webpage. It was my first experience with web marketing, and that might have added a chunk to the believability for me. I can’t remember any of the details of the website, save one. One little nugget grabbed me. It was a note that suggested someone found five cannisters of film in the woods of Burkittsville, Maryland that the characters created, and the movie makers edited it down to 90 minutes. The Blair Witch Project was also my introduction to the cinematic technique some call “found footage,” “lost footage,” or “shaky cam.”   

As a result of all of the above, I now move my listing of The Blair Witch Project as the greatest horror movie ever made to one of the best experiences, I’ve ever had watching a film. It was a time and place experience that that no film maker will ever be able to replicate for me, for whatever the opposite of baggage is, as in he brought some baggage with him into that situation, I had that, and it wasn’t just an open mind. I was supercharged for this movie, because I wanted to be scared. I wanted this movie to be true, minus the murder of course, but that desire, combined with all of the above, is what made The Blair Witch Project one of my favorite movie experiences of all time. 

I’ve yet to watch The Blair Witch Project a second time, in a more traditional setting, because knowledge and facts have a stubborn way of ruining emotional experiences, and I don’t want to ruin one of the best experiences I’ve ever had watching a movie. 

The big debate at the time was whether or not The Blair Witch Project actually happened. Most of us appreciated it as a clever marketing campaign, but others believed that it was an actual event and the actors involved actually died in the film. If you said you enjoyed The Blair Witch Project back then, you were lumped in with “the believers”. I believed The Blair Witch Project for the 81 minutes it played on the screen, just like I believed in ghosts during Poltergeist, that cars could come to life in Christine, and that aliens were abducting people in Fire in the Sky. None of these movies made a dent in my overall belief system, but I thought all of them (save Christine) were great movies. When the furor over believers vs. nonbelievers died down, 86% on of the over 250,000 fans rated The Blair Witch Project positively on Rotten Tomatoes and 81% of critics did. I don’t post these numbers to say I was right, and the naysayers were wrong. I do think it validates my argument that once we gain some distance from silly arguments, we can see a good movie for what it is. 

The citizen critic can now post reviews on everything from the best horrors and comedies to the best and worst plumbers on various websites. We can recommend others watch, don’t watch; read, don’t read; and don’t even bother calling this fence specialist. There’s nothing on the line for the citizen critic, as they don’t benefit from a positive review, and they see no ramifications from a negative one. Some of us suspect that professional critics benefit from positive reviews in ways that lead us to believe the citizen critic is more honest. We’re probably wrong in most cases, but we tend to trust citizen reviews more than professional ones for this reason. The citizen critic is not afraid to let the internet know what they really think. The problem with their reviews though, is that tastes and experiences are so relative and subjective. If someone says the subject of the movie “is not real, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool,” they’re going to give it one star. One person’s The Blair Witch Project is another person’s THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT!!! Comedy is as subjective as horror, and both are relative to the person, and they’re subjective and relative to our experiences in life. One citizen critic might find the humor in Peter Seller’s humor in The Pink Panther dated, but we might find their current favorite comedy too juvenile. They might find Pulp Fiction so personally offensive that they wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, and The Godfather, Citizen Kane, and Gone with the Wind might be overrated, time pieces that haven’t aged well. The point is, we can now find negative reviews for every movie, album, and electrician, and if we read them, and heed their warning, we might never watch classic films, read classic literature, or listen to some of the greatest albums ever made. As an artist who tries to tap into those familiar neuromuscular junctions, I now empathize with anyone who tries to create art. As such, I try to keep my reviews, objective, impersonal, and constructive. 

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Demystify This!

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Everything you believe in is some trumped up idea developed to foster your illusions. Don’t believe me, I’ll prove it. Give me something you believe in. Anything. Big or small. What defines you? What drives your passion? What makes you tick? Great, now back up and give me some room, because the shrapnel flies when I start in on dispassionate observations. 

Led Zeppelin was one of the greatest band of all time right? Yeah, they’re frauds, and I was onto them at a very young age. I knew there was no way one guy could come up with all that brilliant music. I know, the other guys came up with some of the music, but most of the credits for writing the compositions go to Jimmy Page. I knew, even at a very young age, that there was no way one man could come up with that much brilliance. I was a dumb kid at the time, so I thought he sold his soul to the devil. I was eventually vindicated when we all found out how much material he stole. They say he only stole some songs and some riffs. I read a report that suggested that of the first four albums, he/they stole ten songs by some measure, debatably, arguably, and whatever qualifiers we need to use to avoid incriminating lawsuits. I say we don’t know the full extent of his/their theft. I say they’re damned thieves who probably stole more than we’ll ever know. Look it up, there are lawsuits all over the place for infringements, unauthorized borrowing, and outright theft. I was so excited when I read that. It was vindication. All you silly idiots who believed that they were geniuses were wrong. Look at you! Are your crying? I enjoy the taste of tears. I don’t know if disappointment makes them extra salty, or if I just enjoy the taste of victory. Do you mind if I lick them off your face?  

Who’s your favorite actor? You know what, don’t answer that. We tell our people our favorite actor with pride. We talk about the best movie from their catalog, and we say that it was their movie. Have you ever seen the list of credits listed in your average movie? There are at least hundreds of names? How many people were responsible for that movie? What percentage of that movie’s success was due to the actor you love? They’re vehicles for the lines, the action, and the drama, but how much time do they sit in vehicles before they’re called upon to do a scene? They don’t call it the-hurry-up-and-wait industry for nothing.

The production crew hates calling the lead actor to the set, so they spend most of their day readying the scene for them. They hire stand-ins to get the shot right, and they work with the screenwriter to make sure the lines won’t cause the actor to have a hissy fit. The actor steps from their trailer, says the lines a couple times, and they all move on. Most actors hate walking onto an ill-prepared set. They don’t want to stand around to make sure the lighting is right, and the scene is perfect, so the production crew stresses each other out to make sure everything is perfect for the entrance of the actor. The actor finally enters and delivers the line, as if it’s on the fly. It’s not my intention to suggest that convincing a group of people that you’re another person is easy, or that I could do it. I’m talking about the audiences reaction to it. I’m talking about how we immerse ourselves in movies to such a degree that we believe they said the line they read. We do that. We all do it. We say, “You know it’s like Jack Nicholson says …” He said it, sure, but he read it. He memorized the line, but he didn’t think it up. A screenwriter thought up that line. Now, Nicholson probably said it with more flair and charisma than the screenwriter could’ve, but how many takes does the production crew have to sit through before he got the line just right? They’re frauds perpetuating a myth that we love.

My favorite recording artist was “hardly there” in the production of my favorite album. “What?” It was largely a creation in the minds of a producer, the guitarist, an expert mixer, and a number of other credited players who helped my favorite artist produce the product I’ve loved for decades. I learned an important lesson the day I read that: Ignorance is bliss. If we want to continue to love an artist, particularly an actor or a musician, we shouldn’t read websites or watch documentaries that dive deep into our favorite artistic creations from them. 

How about Stephen King? Do you read him? Yeah, he stole the idea for one of his most popular books Misery from an Erik Keene’s dead aunt? Our initial inclination is that Erik Keene was a delusional whack job looking for a way to harass King and his family, and while that might be true with Keene, how many struggling writers submit rejected ideas to publishers only to have the core idea of that rejected manuscript show up in that publisher’s favorite author’s library? How many authors simply run out of ideas? How many writer’s blocks have ended with a stolen manuscript? How many big time authors were so frustrated by their writer’s block that they threatened to retire? How many desperate publishers, bent on keeping a big name, help them come up with ideas? Where did they get those ideas? Have they ever sorted through the slush pile of rejected compositions and come up with an idea for your favorite author. I’m saying this happens all the time, I’m not, but has it ever happened? Does it happen more often than we know?  

How about Walter Payton? If you love football, you know he’s declared one of the greatest running backs in NFL history. Have you ever seen the guys from the 70’s and 80’s trying to chase him down and tackle him? They’re so little. With the size, strength, and speed of the NFL today, Walter Payton would probably be a third-down, situational back, nothing more. You might think that’s idiotic, but this is what we do when we attempt to tear down everything you believe in. We take your favorite bands, your favorite authors, and your favorite athletes, and we tear them apart. Nugget by nugget, brick by brick. This is our way of saying we don’t believe in you anymore, and we’ve broken free of any shackles we once had by believing in you. We have nothing to rebel against anymore, all of our parents are dead, so rebelling against you and everything you believe in gives us gas to dispel that feeling of individuality we never strove for in our teens in the manner most kids did.

There’s poetry in baseball, and baseball is poetry, punctuated by plays like “The Catch”. Willie Mays made “The Catch”. It was poetic right? Wrong. I’ve watched that catch so many times over the years, trying to figure out the big deal. I know it happened in the World Series and all that, but people say it was one of the greatest catches of all time. Have you seen that catch? I thought it was barehanded for whatever reason. It wasn’t. It was just a catch, and a catch we probably see a couple of times a year in major league baseball. Hell, I think I did it once in softball. It wasn’t a special catch by any means. 

You might not care about Willie Mays, but do you care about the Nebraska Cornhuskers? Yeah, they’re frauds too. You probably still celebrate the years they won three national championships in four years, but I say the only reason they won them is that they had such an easy schedule. Admit it, they were frauds. Everything you believe in is fraudulent.  

Demystify the past? What are you talking about demystify the past? I’m talking truth here brotha. I have no skin in this game. I want to know the truth? Why don’t you? You and the collective ‘we’ have trumped up these otherwise marginal people and accomplishments, and it sends a tingle up my leg when I’m able to pop a hole in your delusions. You’re all so ridiculous. You believe in things, and it makes you happy. Your passions breed a sense of fulfillment, even when what you know they’re false. That’s why I feel the need to correct the record. I don’t allow myself to believe in false things. Why do you? You can try to turn this back on me, but what are you going to squash? I don’t believe in anything. I have no passions, so good luck. It makes me feel smarter to know more than you and all of your silly idiot friends who believe in things and develop passions.  

The past wasn’t as great as you romantic types thought. It’s a narrative for the romantics. You’re not a romantic? Look at all the silly people you believe in. Why do we believe in people? Why do we trump up their rather routine accomplishments, because they’re about us. We’ve found a way to live vicariously through their accomplishments to idealize who we wish we could be. We treat diminishment of their accomplishments as a personal insult. 

What’s the flip side of the coin? You think that by diminishing others’ accomplishments, I hope to relieve myself of any disappointments I have in my life? All right, I’ll admit that my life didn’t turn out the way I thought it would but who’s has? I have some accomplishments in life, but they pale in comparison to these false gods you worship. They’re silly people. You’re silly, and we’re all quite boring, so we assign poetic majesty to the little things and these little people did who supposedly did big things, so we have something to believe in. 

I see what you’re doing though. You’re trying to find a super-secret part of me to analyze. You’re trying to find my motivation, so you can dismiss my findings. Go for it. Smarter people than you have tried. They were wrong, and you’ll be wrong. This is not about me. It’s about you. I’m a blank slate, an empty vessel, like the actors you adore. Have you ever heard the theory that the more devoid of a core personality an actor is, the better they are at filling that void with a fictional personality? That’s me. I have no motivation, except to prove you, and your fellow romantics, wrong. I find that so satisfying that it quenches a need. I don’t get passionate about silly things. Why do you? Why do you believe in anything? I seek to question that which you believe in, until it leads to an ultimate deconstruction, and I hope to help you ultimately reach a higher sphere of consciousness where nothing is real. It’s about you. It’s not about me. I have no skin in this game. I’m a dispassionate observer who believes that you romantics who seek poetry and majesty in the past are just plain silly. In the battle between mind and heart, most of us know that our passions will not withstand scrutiny. I dismantle these beliefs, because I think intelligence dispels belief.