I’ve been watching a lot of film noir from the forties and fifties over at Noir City, the noir film festival going on this month at The Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, and I’ve noticed something that’s been bothering me.

There are a lot of happy endings.

Sure, people die. There’s betrayal, shattered dreams, physical and psychological torture. But come on, you don’t have that you don’t have film noir. But with few exceptions the protagonists not only survive, they fall in love and live happily ever after.

Seriously, what the fuck?

Take the film THE HUNTED (**spoilers ahead, but that’s okay because chances are you’ll never see this movie**) with Preston Foster and Belita, who’s got to have one of the weirdest careers in film noir history. It’s about a cop who sent his lover up the river for robbery four years before and she might not have done it. Now she’s out on parole after vowing (cue dramatic chord) vengeance.

There’s a creepy factor, Foster was 48 when he made this movie and Belita’s character is 20, which means his character was banging her when she was sixteen, so that’s nicely disturbing. But that one scene where everything is supposed to climax in a hail of bullets and they kill each other before discovering she’s been cleared of the robbery and a subsequent murder?

Doesn’t happen. He gets shot in the shoulder. Shrugs it off. Her Electra complex is in full swing so she forgives him for railroading her into Tehachapi for four years. They jet off to Paris.

This is film noir cock block at its worst. Instead of walloping you with the haymaker you’re waiting for it taps you on the cheek in a pissy little slapfight. An otherwise interesting little film gets ruined because it pussies out at the last minute.

And that’s the writer lesson for today. Don’t pull your punches.

Everybody’s got a line they don’t want to cross. Ideas they’re not comfortable with. And those lines tend to extend into the things they like to read. I’m not saying it’s a one to one. Most of us, well, most of you, don’t really want to murder people.

But we’re just fine watching it on teevee. At least until we run into one of our lines.

There’s this thing in publishing I keep hearing about how if you hurt animals or children in your book you’ll alienate readers and get hate mail. Everything else is fair game.

Go ahead, eat the dismembered corpse of your antagonist. Lop off his head and ram it onto a stick. Just don’t shoot the baby.

You know what? Fuck that. Shoot the baby.

Your readers’ boundaries are there to be used. Violence, sex, torture, whatever. Those lines they don’t want you to cross, beat on them with a baseball bat. They’re chinks in their emotional armor. They’re exploitable. And whether you like the idea or not, as a writer you’re a dirty, lying manipulator.

Case in point, the novel BOULEVARD by Stephen Jay Schwartz. It’s about an LAPD vice cop who’s a sex addict. So, you know, it’s got sex. Lots of sex. Oooooh. Sex. Sex sex sex.

And it makes your skin crawl.

Schwartz has got sex scenes in this book that make you want to bathe in turpentine. It’s awkward, uncomfortable, explicit. There’s nothing erotic in it. It’s like watching an alcoholic go on a weekend bender.

He doesn’t pull his punches and instead of titillating, it’s tragic. And when it clicks just how fucked up this guy’s life is Schwartz owns you.

Now there is one thing about this I will say you can’t, must not, never, ever, ever do. Really.

DO NOT FUCKING WASTE IT.

It’s like that Bugs Bunny / Daffy Duck cartoon where they’re competing for the best vaudeville act and Daffy wins by blowing himself up. The audience cheers and Bugs tells him they love the act. His response?

“I know, I know, but I can only do it once.”

You got one shot at this. Do not fuck it up. The only thing worse than pulling your punches is swinging and missing.

You see it all the time. A killing that’s just there because the writer is trying to be edgy. There’s no emotional impact. It’s not there for the story, it’s there so the writer can jump up and down and go, “Look at me! I’m one of the cool kids! Watch me swing my dick around! It does tricks!”

That right there is what we mean by gratuitous. Don’t be gratuitous.

Unless you’re showing nudity. Then be as gratuitous as you like.

I mean, come on, that shit sells.

More on that in a moment.

I had a gift card for a local movie theater, and I was sitting around reading reviews of the movie, and I thought, well, fuck it. I know the wife doesn’t want to see it. I know I have two hours. And I know that if it’s good, I’ll want to have seen it in a theater, and if it’s bad, well, I didn’t pay shit for the ticket.

Two caveats:

First, if you saw and enjoyed Sucker Punch, don’t let me poo poo on your parade. Let your freaky geeky flag fly and shout your love to the world. Please don’t take anything I say as an insult.

Second, here there be spoilers. Light spoilers, very light, but spoilers just the same.

So, here we are.

The first five, ten minutes of the film are some of the most visually arresting five minutes I’ve seen in a movie in a long time, and they pack an emotional, erm, sucker punch. It’s hyper-stylized and very sad, and I don’t say it as an insult when I say it has the kind of kinetic power of some of David Fincher’s music videos (Janie’s Got A Gun, f’rex).

Unfortunately, the movie fails to really live up to the narrative oomph felt in the first act. The movie is about… 20 minutes of actual story, and a not-terrible story at that, crammed into a two-hour movie.

So, what fills the other two hours?

Masturbatory tech demos.

Zach Snyder is a fucking whup-ass director. The man makes visuals his squealing piggy. His work, as they say, has a real pretty mouth. The action scenes are cogent, too. They’re clear. I know what’s happening. They are elegantly choreographed and the effects will kick your teeth in.

The issue is, the action sequences mean nothing in terms of the narrative. No, really. They’re pit-stops. Outright fantasies. The film has in effect three layers of “reality,” ala Inception — first layer is the real world asylum, second layer is the fantasy brothel that stands in for the asylum, and the third layer are the various rabbit holes of action. (It’s the best I can put it, sorry.) The first layer is one we see very, very little of. The second is the setpiece of the movie so it is more or less our “baseline.” The third layer…

Well, that’s where we get into troubled water. All the awesome shit you see in the commercial takes place in this third layer. Hyper-psycho action sequences painted in the ejaculations of geeks everywhere. But what happens in these layers has no bearing on the first or second layer. None. It’s just… hot teen girls kicking ass for ten minutes. Doesn’t matter if they get hurt (they don’t). Doesn’t make a lick of difference if they achieve their goal (and we’re given no reason to believe they cannot achieve their goals because they are a stone’s throw from immortal). There’s not even a real strong metaphorical connection.

The action sequences, of which there are several, are without context, without meaning, and entirely without stakes. We learn nothing about the characters. We gain nothing in the story.

This makes these the most boring action sequences you have perhaps ever seen.

No, really. I found my mind wandering to grocery lists. Not kidding. Every once in a while I’d perk back up and nod toward some cool move — “Oh, that was neat” — before checking back out again.

What exists beyond these action sequences is where the movie lives, and it’s not a bad movie. It is, at times, kind of awesome. Plus: Carla Gugino and Jena Malone! Mmm.

But again, we’re talking 20, maybe 30 minutes of a two-hour flick.

Ultimately, that makes this a hot mess and something of a big disappointment, but since I was expecting it to be kind of awful, it actually came out somewhere in the “mmm, okay?” department.

Even still, I don’t like to outright pan a film if I can’t learn lessons from it. As a storyteller, you can learn as much from problem stories as you can from the best stories. Sometimes more.

So, three quick things I took away:

First: the school of cool has to stop. Just because something is awesome does not excuse its existence in the story. This movie offers a thousand darlings that should’ve been killed. It’s like Snyder had some sort of epileptic fit where he swallowed his tongue and had a fantasy involving every fanboy trope known to man: steampunk clockwork nazi zombies mecha samurai katana handgun gatling gun dragons orcs sailor moon tiny skirts hot girls robots sci-fi fantasy horror zeppelins hookers jon hamm. At first appraisal, that sounds super-cool. In reality, it is a dude painting with an uncontrolled hand.

Second: we need to know the stakes. Stakes are incredibly important in storytelling. The audience needs to know, If X happens, Y will not. Or, if X doesn’t happen, Y will fuck some shit up. We have to see potential consequence. We require want, need, fear, and the actions born of that. The action sequences that make up the bulk of the movie have no stakes. None. And that makes them very dull, indeed.

Third: context matters. In novel writing, you hear advice that says to start with a bang, like a movie. That’s hard to pull off, and here’s why: for an action scene to work, it has to be more than just action. It has to have context. We have to know our characters. We have to have, like above, stakes. We need some thread, some throughline, to carry us through and give the action meaning.

Is it a bad movie? No, probably not. Snyder can really direct and, when he has material to direct, it’s incredible. Here, though, there’s just not a lot of there there, as the saying goes. It’s a bit too hollow, a bit too shallow, which ultimately starts to drain it of its fun. So much so it just gets tireless.

Though, again, your mileage may vary.

Did you hear the news? There’s a new flu bug going around.

It’s probably nothing to worry about.

Or is it?

People aren’t feeling well. Coughing, sneezing, stuffy noses, low-grade fevers.

They want to sleep. During the day, at least.

At night, the sickness changes form.

Those in its thrall might be seen sleep-walking. Or sleep-eating. Some hoard objects. Others wander the streets unaware. And this is only the beginning.

Rumor: Is it true that the flu only affects adults? What is it that makes an adult, anyway?

Park City is the nexus of the outbreak, but it’s happening everywhere.

And it’s only the second day.

You have 120 hours to become part of the story.

Tweet with the hashtag #pandemic11. Whether from your own account or another of your creation.

Follow the stories of our characters — characters like Anna, like Billy, like Bree. Or like the others. Look for the Twitter accounts with the yellow backgrounds and black numbers.

Tell your tale. Whether it’s one tweet or 100, maybe what you tell the world can save it from the spreading sickness. Or maybe it’ll be a record left behind by the next generation.

If they’re still alive. And if they’re still sane.

What do you see? Are you sick? Are your parents sick? Follow the story. Then tell your own.

Don’t forget to check the Hope Is Missing YouTube channel.

Or the Facebook page (check out the faces of the 50).

And if you’re on the ground at Park City: head to Mission Control at Sundance: New Frontier to see how you can make a difference. Maybe you even want to request a scare…

Middle of the week — aka, um, now — I say, “Hey, check out this short film.”

Sundance has been very kind to our little film and given it lots of great attention. Not only is it a big part of this year’s Sundance 2011 app, but now it’s online at the Sundance screening room.

I’ve embedded it here for ease (might I recommend full-screen?) but I encourage you to check out the screening room for other gems of cinematic goodness.

Funny story — when I went to… I think it was the second day of filming? The first thing I encountered was the scene with “Mom” on the bed. A bed pink with fluids. Her head swaddled in stained sheets. And Bree (Alexia Rasmussen) sitting by the bed, a revolver in her lap.

Awesome. Crazy to see stuff you helped write come to life. Grim, fluid-stained life.

Anyway. Check out the film. I know I’m proud of it, and I think Lance did a bang-up job of bringing our storyworld — or, at least, a glimpse of it — to life. Make no mistake: he’s a visionary.

Of course, it doesn’t stop here. We’ve got the feature film moving toward fruition, and during Sundance will be the Pandemic storyworld experience. What’s that, you ask?

Well. Just wait. You’ll see. Expect something pretty crazy-go-nuts.

But it doesn’t stop there. Sinister plans circulate. They fester like a sickness, they do.

Keep your eyes peeled.

www.hopeismissing.com

If you’ve come here looking for my review of TRON: LEGACY, it’s this:

I liked it but did not love it. I’d also add that it’d be great if Hollywood spent as much money on plot and story as they do on effects and worldbuilding.

That last little bit is the takeaway for writers and storytellers.

See, TRON works as a visually-engaging generic action-adventure plugged into a revamp of the TRON world from the 1980s film. It’s not a bad film. It’s certainly entertaining. It works in 3D and 2D. The characters are… well, I wouldn’t say they’re particularly complex, but they have motivations and their wants and fears are clear enough.

The issue is how the plot tells the story.

The plot — by which I mean a sequence of events — is barely strung together with any kind of logic. It has so many plotholes, I fear they might rise up and eat the rest of this blog post.

So, here are three lessons to take from this film.

(Some very light, almost non-existent spoilers lurk therein.)

One: Worldbuilding Is A Kind Of Masturbation

I love genre stories. I love the power of  transmedia. I love high concept shit.

But where all these things seem to fall down too often is in worldbuilding. Look, I understand: worldbuilding is awesome. It’s fun! It’s creating something out of nothing. You are the Word of God, manifesting light out of darkness, order out of chaos. The problem is, this takes a lot of effort and energy. And it seems like when you’re done, you’ve spent all your creative seed.

Worldbuilding is just a means to an end. It is not the end.

If all you have is a robust world but no robust story to go in it (or, rather, to take the audience through it), then all you’re offering them is the equivalent of an amusement park ride. It remains a shallow experience.

Work on the story first. Let the plot reveal the story or those aspects of the story you want to tell. Let worldbuilding come second. This is, I suspect, why so much of transmedia feels like marketing or feels hollow — because the creators got lost in the masturbatory exercise of world-building.

We want storytelling, not worldbuilding.

Two: Passive Characters Make Story Jesus Turn Compassion Into Napalm

In LEGACY, the main character appears to be an active character who “does shit.” In the 1st act he proves himself something of a corporate agitator. Which is great. A nice angle, and it shows he’s a busy boy.

But then he gets vacuumed into Tron-Land and now he’s just a pinball ricocheting between neon setpieces.

Beware characters who are dragged along from place to place. Beware characters who do not exert their will upon the world whether for good or ill. Even the very ending of LEGACY shows our character without any grasp of his own destiny. What happens is not his own doing; he is passed around the story like a hooker at a bachelor party, used and abused for the needs of the narrative.

Active characters, not passive automatons.

Three: Shit’s Gotta Make Sense, Son

If we are to assume that the plot represents the skeleton (on which hangs the flesh of the story), then it should make as much metaphorical sense to suggest the bones in a skeleton are connected. We all know that, right? Christ, there’s a song about it: hand-bone’s connected to the arm-bone, arm-bone’s connected to the shoulder-bone, blah blah blah. Bones fit together. They move together. It’s how a skeleton works.

It’s also how a plot works, and yet nobody in their right mind can seem to figure that the fuck out. See that thing that happens on Page 37 of your script? It has to make sense with what happens on pages 36, and 38, and even 48, and even 87, and even 122. It all has to hang together.

It all has to make sense.

TRON makes not nearly enough sense. So much is handwaved to ensure that things move along, confirming that the plot here is not a skeleton but rather a pile of unconnected femurs and jawbones. It’s something you’d be likely to find in a serial killer’s basement, not a science lab.

This creates plotholes. It demands raised eyebrows. It urinates on the head of logic.

Ask yourself, “Is this happening because I want it to happen, or is it happening because it should happen?” Are you cramming a circle peg in a square hole? Stop that. Stop that right now.

Just because something is cool doesn’t mean it makes sense. Justify your plot points.

Build a goddamn skeleton.

Man, Inception.

I can’t stop noodling it.

Now, to be clear, HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.

Like, for real.

Really real.

Like, we’re gonna spoil the whole goddamn ending of the movie.

I’m not kidding.

3…

2…

1…

You had your chance.

I had reservations about the ending to Inception. The ending, as you know if you watched the movie, loosely appears to show a world where Cobb’s plan was successful (after much agita and complication), and where he is once more allowed back into the country and back home and finally allowed to be with his children. We think, okay, is this a happy ending, or is it something else? And then Cobb puts his totem — the spinning top — down on the table and it spins and spins and spins and and we hear “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey playing and then, and then, and then –

Credits.

And maybe I’m mixing this up with the Sopranos a little. Shut up. It’s an apt comparison.

The reservations for me orbit the notion of storyteller ambiguity. That level of ambiguity is interesting because it gets people talking, but as a storyteller I don’t have a lot of respect for it. You’re telling me a story, so tell it. Don’t wuss out. Put your balls on the table. A story’s ending is everything, and by failing to commit to an ending — and further by failing to commit in a big way, given that the ending of Inception allows for the dramatic pendulum swing that crosses realities and perceptions — a storyteller is more or less giving a half-hearted shrug. Is the glass half-full or half-empty? You decide, he says, and then takes a nap and fouls his pants.

Inception’s ending isn’t merely a question of little details that could go either way. That’s a functional ambiguity. But here we’re left with a huge dichotomy — “It’s a dream” or “It’s reality” — and it ends up being spectacularly jarring. For me, at least. It feels like a cheat. And shows a lack of confidence.

Except, something nagged at me.

Nolan isn’t a storyteller lacking confidence.

Plus, you look back at the Sopranos finale, even though that was wildly ambiguous, Chase still had an ending in mind.

And so it occurred to me: Nolan must have an ending in mind, too. Somewhere in that ending is the answer — a declaration of intent. Films are a visual medium so I thought, okay, look back over the visuals and what do we see? The top is for most people the easiest and most forthright clue, and herein I think Nolan learned something from The Prestige –

The spinning top is an artifact of misdirection.

We’re going to focus so much on the top that it’s hard to see everything else.

Like a magician, Nolan wants you to focus on this while he performs his trick.

Look past the misdirection…

And then, duh, boom, splurch, there it is –

The kids.

Look past the top and you see the kids, and if you see the kids you see that they’re the same age they’ve been in every dream he was having. They’re the same age from his memory. They’re wearing the same clothes. They’re part of the dream: where before the dream-kids would not turn their heads to see, now their heads have turned. They see their father. His life continues. He may now grow old, and without regret.

He’s still in the dream. He’s still in Limbo.

Maybe he always was. Or maybe he just didn’t come out of it when he met Saito.

I don’t yet know. That’s the fascinating thing. Finding one answer doesn’t put all the other answers in line. Each answer asks two more questions. That’s great — this infinite lemniscate ever turning, ever looping back, is like the Escher print that are the dreams within the film (or the film itself), a weirdly recursive story that has thematic ties to The Prestige and Memento. And once more, I think Nolan is a confident storyteller, and I think contained within this film are answers. It’s a puzzle, and it challenges us to solve it.

I’d originally thought too that the “it’s a dream” ending (i.e. top doesn’t fall) means it’s also what you would consider to be the “negative” ending — but I don’t know that to be the case. We still have a sense of reconciliation: he has put his wife to rest, he can now see the faces of his children, he is moving beyond regret, and (if you believe that the rest of the film is “real”) he helps negotiate Fischer’s troubled past and offers him a feeling of reconciliation (though that inception is a deception).

I’m more and more fascinated by this.

I need to see it again, I think.

I’m also left to wonder what is the deal with that phrase that’s oft-repeated through the film: grow old with no regrets. And Ariadne in Greek myth is not a maze builder, is she? But a maze solver? She helps Theseus through the Cretan maze, right? To defeat the Minotaur? Is she even real? Is she part of Cobb? A segmented piece — he can no longer make mazes, but a part of him still can? Or is she real, a person hired by the grandfather to perform “inception” on Cobb? Is this film a con on him rather than on Fischer?

Holy crap, my head hurts.

But anyway: the ending.

You ask me, it’s a dream. I don’t know how deep or how long, but it’s a dream. The clues are there. Ignore the misdirection of the top. Look to the children for your proof. How to explain it otherwise?

I’ve had a number of requests — in person, over email, over Twitter — where people want to hear my thoughts on the Post-Avatar Depression Syndrome (PADS, this week’s second unfortunate instance of that word, “pad”). Why do people want that? Can’t say. I suspect it’s because I am the Overlord of Pop Culture. I sit on a throne made from the discarded packaging of Star Wars figures which in turn sits on a dais made of skinned cartoon characters. Sometimes I pull the pelt of Yogi Bear tight around me in these winter months. I can still smell the picnic condiments in his fur — er, excuse me, “pic-a-nic” condiments. I can still smell the air at Jellystone Park. Ahh, Yogi Bear. He was smarter than the average bear.

He was not, however, faster than the average 7mm bullet.

So it goes.

Where was I?

Right, right. Overlord of Pop Culture.

I’ve been declared as such by me, and since I’m the Overlord of Pop Culture, I can declare myself that. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s a snake biting its own tail. It’s a hula hoop whirling around the lush hips of a 1960s bikini model. Or something.

So. Post-Avatar Depression Syndrome, or whatever you want to call it. You want my thoughts? I’ll give you my thoughts.

I think it’s bullshit.

Sorry. I do. I don’t think it ever existed. It may exist now, as a by-product of Internet hysteria, but I think the start of it was some made-up shit put on the Internet by… well, who knows? Troll-types, probably, since they artfully can craft false, extreme narrative around anything they deem worthy of their poison-tipped spears. Or maybe the Internet gained sentience back in 2007 and now it’s just taking its sweet time and fucking with us. I believe that. Silly Internet. He’s so crazy!

People who want Avatar porn? Yeah. That, I get. You let a guy spend enough time with a toaster, in a few hours he’ll hit the Internet looking for appliance porn. But he’s unlikely to become depressed over what is apparently the surprise of the toaster not being a human being with whom he can interact. He just wants to fuck the toaster. Same way that people want to imagine themselves grunting and thrusting atop sexy blue goat people in trees.

We’ve all been there.

That being said, maybe it is a real thing.

Maybe it became a real thing once people were told it existed. Retroactive sadness. Made real by the false suggestion of preexisting sadness in others.

Fine. Okay. Approaching this subject as if it’s real, I’m here to help you with some tips on How to Overcome Post-Avatar Depression Syndrome.

Ready? Let’s do this.

One: Write The Sequel

They advocated this at the site Avatar Forums where I believe this phenomenon originated in the first place. So, sure. I can go ahead and offer the same advice. You want to revisit the world, then writing the sequel is an artistic way of imagining yourself a part of that world. Writing is an excellent therapeutic process; it’s like the venting of toxins, the release of an infection. Purge thyself and frame your existence as part of the magical sexy blue goat-world that is Pandora. (If you’d like, feel free to base it off another movie about native culture. Legends of the Fall is looking for mockery, I hear. Or maybe Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto!)

Then, when you’re done with the novel, print it out.

Hold in your hands the heft and weight of your return trip to Pandora.

Then — then?

Bludgeon yourself to death with it. Imagine it’s a phone book, and you’re a perp.

Wham, wham, wham. Like an overripe Jack-o-Lantern.

Really get into it. Like you have to bring down a water buffalo with a hardcover copy of Stephen King’s The Stand.

Two: Live Like Neytiri

What, that first one didn’t work?

Coward.

Moving on.

Some have advocated “living like” the sexy blue goat people. Get in touch with nature, one guy says. “Don’t eat a hamburger,” he adds (because… the sexy blue goat people are Vegans?). That’s not enough, you ask me. You want to embrace this culture, you want to really live in their world, hey, you gotta really drink it all in.

Wear a loincloth. Or, just go naked. Your call.

Get yourself a bow and arrow. Maybe a spear.

Find a horse. I’d advocate finding a pterodactyl, but — get ready for another wave of crushing depression — they’re all dead. I mean, except the one I’ve reanimated from DNA found in a droplet of amber. But he’s mine! All mine! I call him Mister Leatherstink. You can’t tear our love apart.

Paint yourself blue.

Tip your weapon in some kind of poison. Don’t have poison handy? Just tip it in like, motor oil or paint thinner or something. It’ll feel real enough.

Now, get atop the horse, and ride down Main Street. (Oh, don’t forget to establish your “telepathic connection” with the animal first, which involves putting a sensitive part of your anatomy into, onto, or around a sensitive part of the horse’s anatomy. That’s how you talk to it. That’s nature-in-balance.)

Howl and scream!

Ki-yaaa!

Ride! Ride like the wind!

Shoot your arrows into the infidels! Fire them into tires! Into baby carriages! Into police officers! When your arrow finds the neck of the police officer, whirl your body off the horse, crouch down over the police officer, and whisper thanks to the mighty world of Gaia for letting you take this offering as your own — and then slit his throat as you pray.

I mean, sure, you’re probably going to die in a hail of gunfire.

But then you can perish just like a lot of the sexy blue goat people at the end of the film!

It’s perfect.

Three: Seek Truth In Obsession

This one’ll be fun, because it allows you to become an unwashed shut-in. Obsession is a great boat anchor to just drag you down, down, down, where you can stew and pickle in your own madness. Create fan-art. Seek out sequel rumors. Spend hours speaking to other depressed Avatards and forming a coalition of sadness. Masturbate glumly. Stare for twenty minutes at a tube of blue toothpaste, because it reminds you of the sexy goat people. Shatter your own legs so you can live like Jake Sully. Buy posters online, get them home, run them through the shredder, and smoke them for a shamanic high — a hallucinogenic trip through Pandora’s jungles. Make love to an extra-terrestrial (what? No ETs around? Paint your pets blue!). Climb atop your stairway banister (or clamber atop your double-wide trailer) and leap boldly and courageously from your vantage point just like Neytiri — except, instead of letting the leafy fronds of lush jungle greenery break your fall, let the hard and unforgiving earth break your fall! And also, your neck!

Four: Holy Crap, Just Take A Fistful Of Pills Already

Sometimes, we just have to let Darwinism do its work, y’know? As big-brained humans, we’ve too-often circumvented the whole survival-of-the-fittest thing, and we coddle and protect those who really couldn’t survive on their own. (This is perhaps the greatest irony of the Post-Avatar Depression — these people apparently want to live on Pandora, which is a planet whose ecology and aboriginal people would kill them, eat them, and shit them out as fertilizer to feed the rest of the planet denizens.)

The only way you’re getting to Pandora is if you shake hands with the reaper, friend. Maybe Heaven looks like a murderous jungle with sexy blue goat people running around. Hey, you could probably get that from a careful re-read and re-interpretation of the Bible.

Okay, I’m not actually advocating anybody kill themselves. Relax. Relax. I’m first saying that I don’t think this is a real thing, and if it is a real thing, then blah blah blah, see your mental health professional, I am not a licensed mindologist, blah blah blah.

The only thing I’ll say is, if you’re really looking for meaning and direction out of the film and you want to “live in that world,” hey, fine. Realize that we still have a world around us that isn’t yet a hissing, gassy corpse, and you should do your part to try to make it suck less. How you do that is up to you (eat right, combat pollution, go live on a mountain range somewhere with a collection of guns hidden beneath your floorboards), but go and do it. And stop being sad over a silly movie where sexy blue goat people would be more than happy to kill your ass and eat your heart for secret power.

*smells the air*

Did something die in here?

Why did someone leave a double-headed dildo in the sink? It’s…covered in… marzipan and cake batter? *licks it* Yes, yes. Marzipan and cake batter. That’s definitely it.

Is that…

Is that blood on the curtains?

Goddamn. You leave this place behind for a week, and a handful of deviant hooligans just run a train on it. It looks like Snuff Film In Wonderland around here. A gently listing hamster wheel in the corner (sans hamster, a mystery I do not care to answer), a pair of ventriloquist dummies peering out from behind the heating vents, and the distant discordant noise of calliope music. And that smell. It’ll never come out.

Well. The maid is not going to be pleased. She’ll get an extra big tip this week, if you know what I mean.

Get it? Get what I mean? See what I did there?

Oh, stop it. It means I’m going to give her five extra dollars. Pull your dripping chin out of the gutter. Foul-minded mutant.

What I’m trying to say is, holy shit, I’m back from Wild Mormonia, fresh from the Liberal Elite Outpost that is The Park City Snowpocalypse of the Sundance Film Festival 2010. Presumably you already saw my after-report on the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, but if you didn’t, it’s right over there. When the Lab had completed, we were birthed cruelly into the world and thrust headlong — squalling and trying to use the umbilicus like a rope to pull ourselves back into the warm and comfortable womb — into the madness that is the Sundance Film Festival 2010.

So, let’s talk about that. Painting With Shotguns-style. Boom.

Snowblind And Slushfooted

Park City puts about the best face on winter that you can imagine. It snowed a whole helluva lot while out there (anywhere from a couple inches to a foot over each 24-hour period), and since it basically doesn’t melt, that means it just builds up and up and up. Fresh powder atop old snow never lets the place feel too dirty, though the sidewalks and streets eventually coalesce into a gooey, gray-snot slush bog that will eat your feet if you’re not careful. (Seriously, the slush puddles are like some devious D&D trap for confused Los Angelinos; they are mysteriously the same color as the asphalt, so you think you’re about to step on roadway terra firma and really you go calf-deep into a frozen slurry of filthy wintermuck.)

Winter there has a certain charm: gently falling snow, a faint wind, lots of light (like the eerily snaking ski slopes illuminated at night, leading directly into town).

So, yes — it puts the best face on winter.

But let’s be honest. To me that’s like saying, “It puts the best face on Charlie Manson.” You can dress that dude up in a suit and put some concealer over that Swastika on his forehead, but in the end he’s still Charlie Manson. He’s still going to shit in the punchbowl.

I am not a fan of winter.

The snow is pretty, but you stand in it for an hour, and that stops mattering. You almost lose your footing (nearly shattering your ass-bone on the icy, slush-slick sidewalks) and winter’s beauty and grace quickly tally up to a grand illusion. The traffic snarls, not just because there’s a whole lot of it but also because all of it has to wind its way through snowy, gooey streets. You saunter beneath icicles that, were they to fall, they could pierce the skull of a Kodiak bear and pin him to the concrete.

I can’t help but wonder what a Sundance would look like when it wasn’t hip-deep in winter.

So, yes. Sundance. Winter. They’re probably inextricably bound at this point, so what use is there in complaining? It’s pretty. Shut up.

Horde And Throng

Way I see it, you get two types of people at the Festival.

One: people who love films.

Two: people who love film culture (read: celebrities, parties, etc).

In the great Ven diagram, there surely exists a reasonable group of people who swim in the commingled waters of both ponds, but in general, I figure it’s good for you to know which you are and plan accordingly.

Me, I was present for opening weekend and the two days preceding it. It gets busy. In the daytime, I’d say the “film lovers” outnumber the “culture hounds.” Lots of packed buses and screenings and wait lines for tickets. When night falls, the streets get fucking busy. The Beautiful People emerge. The culture hounds take to the streets. Parties, music, snow, taxis, limos, madness. Not really my thing, though it might’ve been more my thing had I been there with more people. I did know people there, but getting in touch with them was…

Well –

The Mighty Oak Has Fallen

My unabashed tech-love for the iPhone was crushed beneath the bootheel of Sundance. The iPhone service out yonder can eat a dick. I don’t know on whose shoulders the blame must fall, but I’ll just let the shotgun spray of rage take down both AT&T and Apple, thanks.

Seriously, it blew. I guess it’s because everybody and their goddamn Labradoodle has an iPhone out there, but you’d think someone would plan accordingly to have a solid network running. You could literally look at the phone and watch service yoink up and down as if on a yo-yo string. 3G! Five bars! Zero bars! E! Twenty bars! No service! Battery low! Wireless! Existential dread! I’d try to get in touch with people, and… bzzt, good luck with that shit. Text messages would be cast out into the ether, as useful and as recognizable as one mote of snow among millions. I’d leave the town proper to go back to my hotel and — bing! Three voicemails! Three missed calls! New text messages! It was as if the pony-riding mail carrier came hurrying up just as the sun was setting –

“Hey, here’s a message for you. The man with the donkey wants to meet you at 3PM by the Old Jail.”

“But it’s 9PM now.”

“Oooh. Sorry, pardner.”

Once in a while I’d see a pair of AT&T reps — two giggling girls in bright orange shirts — wandering the streets, and I wondered, how long would it be before someone cracked an icicle off a doorframe and jammed it in one of their ears? “Can you hear me now?” the killer would cry, knowing full well that he was cackling a Verizon catchphrase because, really, “There’s an app for that!” doesn’t really make much sense in the context of icicle-caused brain death, does it?

At the Filmmaker’s Lodge during the day (pictured), you could get reliable wi-fi, and at any given time you’d find dozens of iPhone refugees, huddled around the signal the way one might hunker near a campfire.

The industry loves the iPhone.

Which means the industry killed the iPhone service.

Speaking Of The Industry

A large proportion of the people at Sundance are in the industry. This makes sense when you look at it — when you add it all up, you get like, 150+ films there, and if each of those brings 10-100 people along for the ride, that right there is a not insignificant portion of the 40,000 people who show up.

Great thing about it is, it’s a very friendly and welcoming industry. Everybody is happy to talk to you. They want to know what films you’ve seen, what you liked, didn’t like, and so on. Actually, the first question someone usually asks is: “Do you have a film here?”

When I’d respond with, “No, but I’m just coming off the Screenwriters Lab, blah blah blah,” it amazed me how many people were aware of the Lab and its significance. Very exciting stuff, and I continue to feel crazy privileged.

Oh, I did see some, erm, “celebrities?” Short list: Kevin Sorbo, Josh Radnor, Mario Lopez — you know, the big fish. The true Hollywood players.

It’s funny, though, how often you hear, “So-and-So is a dick!”

“Michael Moore is a dick!”

“Dax Shephard is a dick!”

“Tommy Lee Jones is a dick!”

On the one hand, I get it. Last thing you really want is to be swamped by people who probably don’t give that much of a shit about you — they just give a shit that you’re Somebody. Alternately, you paint with too broad a brush, and suddenly you’re alienating real, actual fans by brushing them off and trying to get to your restaurant on time. When I saw Josh Radnor, he stopped every three feet to take a picture or sign something, smiling and gracious the whole time. I’m not some rabid Josh Radnor fan (ignore the posters on my wall, shut up OMG SQUEE he’s so kewt), but I have new respect for the guy because he knows where his cred comes from. His cred comes from the fans, because without them, who is he?

Actually, I’ll say that at Sundance, one of the best things is the shit you overhear. The buses are great for this. It’s a cross-pollination of insightful film commentary and dipshits dissecting film with incisive criticism like, “That movie was fuckin’ stupid.”

Thanks, Ebert, for that thought-provoking review.

Oh, Right, The Films

I was planning on seeing 10+ films, and I think I saw… what, five? Disappointing, I know. Thing is, I was only there for a handful of days and was trying to cram way too much into that timeframe.

In order of Least Awesome to Most Awesome –

Howl: I’m impressed that they really went for it with this movie, I really am. Franco as Ginsburg comes alive; his performance is astonishing, and him simply reading the poem aloud through the film makes me fall back in love with a poem that, honestly, I had dismissed in my disdain for poetry. But the project fails to come together. It started as a documentary, and then added in actors to portray the characters, but only in the context of documented artifacts (recordings and transcripts), and then further went on to add… animation? The court case portrayed adds an interesting and complex layer, but it’s all steak and no sizzle. The narrative portion would’ve felt stronger had it actually been a narrative portion rather than an acted rehash of documentary materials (I’d rather have just seen Ginsburg himself). The animated portions, which easily comprise 30% of the film, are almost entirely CGI (which is jarring and arbitrary; why not hand-drawn?) and seems only cursorily married to the poem itself. As I say: it fails to come together. The animation in particular is troubling. It has no place there, and it feels like nobody really committed to it.

Lourdes: This is a nice little film, but I’m just going to have to bow out and say, “It’s good, but just not for me.” It’s quiet, slow, thoughtful — which translates to me having a hard time keeping my eyes open for the first half of the film, which drags. Set in and around the miracle-factory of Lourdes, it aims to have a subtle run-through of satire, but it’s so subtle you really have to comb the material to find it. Satire for me works when it’s not-so-subtle. The characters are nice, but the film only picks up (and even then, at a slow walk) in the second half, when the miracles start happening. It’s a nice film. It is. But it isn’t a horse I can ride.

Four Lions: This film’s a stone’s throw from outright excellence. Imagine, if you will, a sincere, humanist, satirical take on terrorism. Suicide bombers in particular. As Chris Morris, the director, said during the film’s Q&A (paraphrased), “Take four average blokes and have them plan something and they’ll probably fuck it up.” That idea applies here to four wannabe Jihadists in London who want to martyr themselves and get to Heaven. They’re dipshits. Everyone around them is a dipshit. It’s equal turns hilarious and sad and strange, and those tonal shifts are brave, if a little hard to navigate. (Also hard to navigate: muddy accents. Some possibly great lines were lost on me — and I think the audience in general — simply because I couldn’t understand them.) It’s a really interesting film, though the one thing that actually prevents it from being truly brilliant is the fact that the characters are ultimately hollow. We never get insight into who they really are or why these Londoners are so attracted to the idea of martyring themselves before Allah, which is a shame.

Animal Kingdom: This fucker is a gut-punch. I think of it now and I get this feeling of incredible dread. Australian crime film, totally bad-ass, really grim stuff — and not grim in the way that something like Reservoir Dogs was. This is a deeper layer, a septic infection that really pulls at you. These characters are fully-formed and not at all caricatures, which makes their behaviors and fates all the more troubling. It’s like a roller coaster ride where the track takes you only downward, downward, downward — never up. You don’t know what specific misery awaits for these characters, but you know it’s coming. Your balls draw up. Your sphincter tightens so hard it might snap like a broken rubber band. This is hard stuff. It’s also really brilliant. David Michôd is to be commended for this.

Boy: And yet, nothing I saw really pleased me as much as Boy, the new film from Taika Waititi (aka Taiki Cohen, who I assume is half-Jewish, half-Maori, easily the weirdest genetic broth in the history of mankind). Go watch the trailer. It won’t do it justice, but it’s a good start. The film is sweet, funny, and often a little bit fucked up. The kid who plays the titular character (“Boy”), James Rolleston, was hired on a Friday and started shooting on the following Monday, and was not an actor, but he nails it. Waititi’s last film, Eagle Vs. Shark, really failed to manifest, and I think ended up being more a mish-mash of tired Napoleon Dynamite notions. This film, however, fires on all cylinders. I suspect it’s intensely personal for the director, much as he seems to claim it’s not (during the Q&A he said it wasn’t autobiographical, but then went on to say that it’s set where he grew up, that the father character was just like his character, and that the protagonist lives a life much like Waititi’s own), and all this comes out. It’s a world where magical realism doesn’t quite exist, but instead lives in its shadow. Great stuff. I look forward to seeing this again. For the record, Waititi plays the father, and he’s great in that role. Oh, and Taika came through the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. How cool is that? An exciting legacy.

I did attend the Slamdance Filmmaker’s Summit, which was great. Even if Soderburgh didn’t show.

What Now?

So, I’m back. What now?

Well, I go back to blogging. I have to clean up the blood and cake icing from those miscreants what took over me space over the last 10 days.

I got line edits back from Super Agent Stacia Decker, so that’s my first priority is to bang them out and get this novel up and running.

Obviously we’ve a head of steam on the script — I’ve got to finish transcribing my notes and making sense of all of it, but all told, I have an alarming and almost eerie sense of clarity regarding the script and it’s troubles. Eager to jump on that, too, and knock out a draft over the course of February, then maybe a second draft soon after. We may try to have the right script up and running to submit to the Director’s Lab in June, if we determine it to be a good fit, time-wise.

If I go back to the Sundance festival in the next year(s), I’ll be sure to plan better and not come off a five day introspective think-tank stint beforehand, because holy shit, that’s jarring.

So, that’s that. I’ll be around.

What’d I miss, peeps?

Theory: we know that a property has entered the pop culture consciousness when pornography is made in its image.

Examples: Pulp Friction, Forrest Hump, Saving Ryan’s Privates, Shaving Ryan’s Privates, and so on.

You don’t find this to be the case with films that fail to connect with audiences. The Hurt Locker is a critical darling, but failed to make money with audiences (a big fat super shame), so we’re unlikely to see The Squirt Locker, or The Spurt Stocker or The Skirt Focker. Further, we’re unlikely to see The Last Whorehouse On The Left, Race to Bitch Mountain, Angels & Semens, The Men Who Bang Goats, or The Jonas Brothers: The 3D “Girlfriend” Experience.

(Actually, you might see that last one eventually.)

Of course, I say this, and I wonder if the art of “pop culture into porn” is actually fading. I don’t know that the “porn movie” is even much of an, erm, “artform” anymore. Now it’s five-minute super-close vignettes of genitals smashing woefully into other genitals, as indistinguishable from a closeup of a kielbasa being shoved again and again into the hole of a glazed donut. Now it’s bizarre-o fetishes. Now it’s slashfic.

I wonder, though, if Avatar might just be the film that will bridge the Old World of Porn with the New World of Unbridled Deviancy.

Saw the film again yesterday with the wife.

Got a fetish? Lord Cameron hath provided. For he is King of the Paraphilia.

First — blue cat-slash-goat people run around half-naked. They’re topless. You catch all their curves. Right there you’ve got that anthropomorphic furry-esque hook — “I want to bang savage blue animal people” — which is probably the easiest and most obvious fetish connection in the film. And Cameron knew it. He had a design goal: “Make the blue chick fuckable.” I’m not kidding. He’s practically creating a furry revolution. Before now, you look at a furry — some lad or lady in an overstuffed giraffe costume — and it’s mostly just a little confounding. But here Cameron has sought to make the furry way (the Do of Furry?) accessible to anybody and everybody.

Then you have whispers of outright bestiality. Grace jokes when Sully’s avatar plays with his little tentacle tail, telling him he’ll “go blind” if he keeps playing with it, which makes it pretty clear: “Hey, look! He’s masturbating!” So, when later we see him jam his head-hair-tail-tentacle-cock into the leathery reptilian vagina-stalks of the horse-things or the pterodactyl-ik’ran-things, you get an uncomfy feeling about what’s really going on. It’d be like if “training your dog” meant connecting with it by sticking one part of your anatomy into some part of the pooch. (“I’m going to teach my dog to fetch my slippers! Let me put my penis in his ear so we can have a telepathic connection!”)

And that leads me to: tentacle porn. Those head-hair-tail-tentacles have weird little tentacular (not a word) filaments. And they stick them into other tentacles. Tentacles penetrate other tentacles. It’s like the zenith — the apogee — of tentacle porn.

Film’s got bondage elements, too. (Funny how bondage is actually a pretty light fetish these days — couples of the whitest-of-bread have probably tried fuzzy handcuffs, right?) Jake and Grace bound up, waiting to be sacrificed to the coming military horde? Or a stuck fetish with Jake locked away in a coffin-like machine while he psychically links up with his Big Blue Meanie buddy?

Erotic asphyxiation? A number of characters lose their breath and gasp orgasmically in the Pandoran atmosphere. Dendrophilia, or being aroused by trees? The film is practically tree porn, and once more they link up to the trees using their head-hair-tail-tentacles. Klismaphilia? The scene where Sully receives a glowing tree-sap enema from a pack of howling reptile hyenas and — oh, wait. That doesn’t actually happen.

I know what you’re saying. “Chuck, you’re really stretching. You’re stretching like an inflation fetish, your body a sexual balloon blowing up with mad lust.”

And you’re right.

I am stretching.

I don’t know that Cameron intended any of this.

But that doesn’t matter.

Because it’s too late.

Film’s out there. Sully’s already banging a blue alien chick who might be some kind of crazy giant cat-goat hybrid. What’s done is done.

And I’m telling you right now — Avatar bridges that gap between pop culture and porn, and as a result, Avatar porn will destroy us all. It is a meme that will overtake us. We’re done with Nigerian Princes and cats that are unable to spell properly or form cogent sentences about cheeseburgers. We’re done with dudes on skateboards plowing their junk into railings, we’re done with dick pills, we’re done with all the Internet trends.

Soon, all will be Avatar porn.

You know how I know?

Because it’s happening already. The hunger is out there. The need. The desire.

I monitor the search terms on this site, as you well know.

And I am floored by the things people search for on the Internet.

My toying with “Pauley Perrette” and “Abby Sciuto” has earned me a troubling surge in blog hits. I was joking when I said it would get me hits, because I had one or two here and there, but now I get hundreds daily. And recent competition has come in from people looking for Dragon Age pornography, of all things. People want to bang the shit out of Morrigan. They don’t want to romance her. They want to tie her up and do awful things to her unreal body. And it goes beyond Morrigan — just yesterday, I got the search term, “How to fuck a goat in Dragon Age: Origins.” Seriously. Someone looked for that. Someone not only thinks you can do that in a video game, but they want to do that in a video game.

Ahh, so where’s Avatar come in, you say?

Guess what’s nipping at the heels of these other search terms?

“Neytiri porn.” “Avatar porn.” “Avatar bestiality.” “Naked pictures of Naytiri (sic).”

Of course, me linking to those things is only going to get me more blog hits. Useless blog hits, of course — I’m not proud. These aren’t people coming here looking for writing advice. They’re not coming her for the Avatar porn but staying for the witty banter. I’m sure I leave hundreds of clickers horribly disappointed day in and day out.

What I’m doing is warning you –

Avatar porn is coming.

A strong, fetid tide of it.

It will wash upon us — a septic wave.

Be ready for it.

Tape up your windows.

Tie down the furniture.

Have an evacuation plan.

And for God’s sake — hide your goats.

Avatar

Seems to be a movie provoking some serious debate, and while that’s not necessarily the mark of a good movie, it is the mark of an interesting pop culture experience, and me? I hunger for interesting pop culture experiences.

This one in particular yields a number of interesting questions. Is the movie a mountain of smoldering dog vomit? Is it a technological “game-changer?” Is it a racist white male fantasy? Does it force upon you the bestial desire to make love to mystical jungle goats?

[EDIT: And also, how can you enjoy the movie without feeling like an imperial sympathizer?]

All interesting questions. Further, questions I’m unlikely to address here, today. (In part because the sore throat is now paired with a head full of infected treacle, a slow yogurt of disease filling my sinuses.)

No, what I want to talk about is the one that Entertainment Weekly brought up:

Does story matter?

The article notes the contention between two camps: one that says Avatar has a rot-suck bucket-fucker of a story, and thus it cannot be a good film; the other that says Avatar has awesome 3D crazy shit going on, and so it is a good film (or, alternately, who cares if it has a good story because 3D blah blah awesome boom blue goat blah).

Ironically, the article conjures up Titanic as a positive example of Cameron’s storytelling, yet I’d argue that there the story is ultimately pretty soggy, too. Titanic, like Forrest Gump, was for me more clever spectacle and twee sentimentalism than really engaging, compelling story.

The question here today is: for film, at least, is story king?

How much does it matter in the cosmic hierarchy of Important Shit About Movies?

I’ll admit, my initial gut reaction screams and thrashes around and hoots and gibbers, hollering, “Story is king! Long live the story!” And then my gut reaction runs off and punches old ladies down staircases, because that’s how just it rolls.

Further, I also wonder if the “anti-Avatar” sentiment is getting a little ahead of itself in terms of criticizing the story. Now, this will come as a back-handed compliment (and is little different from saying, “I’d rather eat a hunk of moldy bread than a fistful of shit-covered ball bearings”), but is the story that bad? I don’t mean in terms of racism or whatever — remember, that’s a different blog post — but I mean in terms of laying out the tale, is it really that awful? Big budget blockbusters these days have stories that don’t make a lick of fucking sense. Transformers? Star Trek? Terminator: Salvation? I mean, Christ, much as I love Attack of the Clones, it’s plot literally makes no sense. None.

Avatar, for all its simplicity, makes sense. It may have plot conveniences, but no plot holes. I certainly wouldn’t call it elegant or deep storytelling, but it offers… narrative utility, let’s say.

Still, that’s really not answering the question at hand. I’m not here to gauge the quality of Avatar’s story — instead, I want to examine how important story is to film.

On the one hand, I’d love for it to be everything. As a storyteller, it’s kind of my bag.

On the other hand, are we perhaps buttoning the medium up too tight? Films offer a lot of things that, say, a novel cannot. Performances, direction, effects, sound. By suggesting that story is everything, we run the risk of making these other things matter too little — and further, it becomes a way to describe to people what they Should and Should Not enjoy. It’s a firm metric, yes — but potentially also a draconian one.

Put differently, should I not appreciate a Three Stooges or Abbot and Costello movie because the story is dumb?

If I watch a musical like Moulin Rouge, must my enjoyment of the experience be hampered by the somewhat ludicrous narrative?

With Fellini or Kurosawa, the films are often more about the image and the feel than the actual story itself — so, are they inferior to films that dedicate more time and energy to telling complicated, interesting stories?

And no, for the record, I’m not comparing Cameron’s Avatar to Fellini’s 8 1/2, but I am asking the question — can a film be something more than a vehicle for a story? Is it a negative when a film offers the equivalent to a theatrical show or an amusement park ride? Is that, as the kids are wont to say, badwrongfun?

Obviously, I’d love for every film to tell a good story. I think we are in danger of dismissing story as purely unnecessary, when it still may be the thing that elevates a good movie to a great film. Even still, is it always a fair metric? Do you go to watch a comedy and then demand that the story be more important than, say, the jokes? If an episode of Flight of the Conchords makes you laugh but otherwise has a ridiculous and almost non-existent story, does it fail as an experience? (I know. That’s TV, we’re talking about film. Shaddup shuttin’ up, rabbit. Same question applies.)

Is that metric too harsh?

I don’t have an answer. I do know that with a movie like Avatar, having a clear and simple story helped carry what is plainly the stars of the show: the world, the effects, the direction, the excitement. The experience wasn’t spoiled by its lackluster story, and in fact I found myself not caring at all during what was a surprisingly easy-to-watch three hour film. I also know that if the film had a more complex and engaging story, it would’ve gone from merely “good” to “great” in a heartbeat.

So, no answer from me.

But just down yonder, you’ll find a comment window.

Use it, if you’ve something to add.

Don’t make me call out the hounds.

The hounds. The baying hounds.