A Bad Night At The Movies

It was 1998, and my girlfriend had just broken up with me. I was 23, attending Idaho State University, and living in my brother's basement until I could find a cheap apartment. In other words, life was bad. I spent my days half-paying attention to my professors and my evenings feeling sorry for myself because my ex-girlfriend was already engaged to some other guy. It was a sad existence.

 Just a few blocks from my brother's house was a second-run movie theater called the Reel. You know the type of place I'm talking about - a slightly run-down theater in an older part of town that shows movies that came to big theaters six months before. The big summer blockbusters turn up at the Reel around September. You pay two or three bucks for a ticket, two bucks for popcorn and a soda, and you get to watch a movie in the theater that you could probably buy on DVD.

During that first year in Pocatello, I practically lived at the Reel.

Every chance I got, I'd scrape together five bucks and head to the theater. Armed with a cardboard box of popcorn and a waxy, sweating cup of Pepsi, I sat in the janky bucket seats and let the movies make me happy for a couple of hours. When I look at a list of movies released in 1997 and 1998, I'm surprised at how many of them I watched or re-watched at the Reel. Titanic, Gattaca, The Fifth Element, Liar Liar, Men In Black, Air Force One, The Saint, In and Out, My Best Friend's Wedding, and plenty of others. (What strikes me about this list is how many of these movies are now on cable every weekend. It's like that period of my life has entered reruns or something.)

Anyway, my brother still mocks me over the night I went to see Spiceworld. If you don't know what that is, good for you. It came out in early 1998 and was the big screen debut of The Spice Girls, a cruddy, manufactured pop band from England. They were kind of the female One Direction of their day. Someone let them be a movie - a wacky, zany, terrible movie that isn't worth the film stock they shot it on. But I went. It was February in Idaho and I went, fully aware of the fact that it was probably going to be terrible.

To this day, my brother asks, "Why would you pay money, any money at all, to see something that you knew was going to be awful?" At the time, I think I just wanted out of the house and a movie was better than nothing. Looking back now, I realize the answer to why I went has a lot to do with why I love movies in general: for me, a bad night at the movies is better than a good day at work.

I love the act of going to the movies. From really early on, going to the theater was a treat. If Dad was willing to spring for movie tickets, it was a big deal. I loved waiting in line for tickets, the sound of the popcorn machine, examining the posters for all the coming attractions, waiting for the lights to dim, the previews, everything. For me, it is a transportive experience. It's like a mood-enhancing drug that doesn't cost much and doesn't leave a hangover. Going to the theater makes me happy, even if the movie isn't much good.

Movies can take you out of the smallness and banality of your own life. They can shift your focus off your own story and onto another. They can show you great and terrible things. They can lift you when you feel as flat as the gum on the floor of the Reel. They can thrill, provoke, soothe, and teach. While I don't believe it is necessarily their goal or point, movies can occasionally make you want to be a better person. That's powerful stuff.

All that and giant vats of popcorn and diet Pepsi? Sounds like a good way to spend the evening to me.

RIP - Christopher Lee and Rick Baker's Career

There’s sad news in the movie world this week. First, veteran actor Christopher Lee passed away last week. Younger movie goers might recognize him as Count Dooku in the Star Wars prequels, as Sauroman the White in the Lord of the Rings films, or maybe as Willy Wonka’s terrifying dentist father in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Despite these relatively recent screen credits, Lee worked steadily as an actor beginning in 1947. He started off as a bit player, but went on to play iconic characters like Sherlock Holmes, Rasputin, and, of course, Count Dracula. 

Lee found his niche in the 60s and 70s playing various ghouls, villains, and monsters in Hammer Films. Hammer Pictures was a British production company that specialized in cheaply-made Gothic horror films that were heavy on fake blood and scantily clad ladies and light on believable special effects and well-written dialogue. One look at Lee’s filmography from that period gives you a sense of the kinds of movies he made – Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, The Vengance of Fu Manchu, The House That Dripped Blood – you get the idea. 

Despite these schlocky entries on his resume, Lee was a class act and a really interesting person besides. He played in a heavy metal rock band, was an expert swordsman, and long before starring in the films, was a Tolkein fan who re-read the Lord of the Rings series every year. Lee was still working on film projects when he passed away last week at the age of 93. Of course, it’s sad to see talented performers take their final bow, but for someone like Christopher Lee who worked so long and did so much, his rest is well deserved. 

 

The other piece of sad Hollywood news this week is about a much more premature departure. Master makeup artist and monster maker Rick Baker is closing up shop. If his name sounds familiar, it’s probably because you’ve heard it on the Oscars – like seven times. Baker is responsible for the makeup special effects that led to ultra realistic gorilla suits in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan and Gorillas in the Mist, the terrifying werewolves in An American Werewolf in London and The Howling, and the ridiculous menagerie of aliens in the Men in Black trilogy. He’s responsible for Harry and the Hendersons, The Nutty Professor, Hellboy, King Kong, and Maleficent. He’s the guy responsible for Michael Jackson’s transformation from werewolf to zombie in the “Thriller” video for crying out loud. And now he’s retiring and shuttering his 60 thousand square foot facility. 

He’s not leaving movie making because he’s old or bored, but because CGI – computer generated imagery – is taking all the work he normally did. It’s cheaper to have a new design school graduate design a monster on computer than to have a seven time Oscar winner build one with foam and latex. Pixels are cheaper than paint, and Baker’s art is largely becoming a thing of the past. Recently auctioned off some of his more notable creations including Jim Carrey’s Grinch costume, Vincent D’Onfrio’s Edgar suit from Men in Black, and Benecio Del Toro’s animatronic head from The Wolfman. It’s a great opportunity for collectors, but a sad sign for filmmaking. 

Cheaper isn’t always better, and while CGI can create miraculous images, there’s a loss of tactility and craftsmanship that movies shouldn’t lose. We go to the movies partly for a visceral, you-are-there experience and GCI is so smooth and so perfect, it’s often more like watching a cartoon than a live action film. It lacks that real world punch that comes from well-designed practical special effects and makeup. If Rick Baker sees fit to retire, he’s certainly entitled. He has nothing left to prove, but movie makers and movie goers will be poorer for his absence. As new filmmakers come up, I hope they find a way to use CGi to augment rather than replace important artists like Rick Baker.

This review originally appeared on Q90.1 Delta College Quality Public Radio. Go to www.deltabroadcasting.org for more information. 

San Andreas

 

It’s summertime which means two things – one, it means family vacations to visit iconic American sites like Mount Rushmore, the Empire State Building, and the White House. Two, it means popcorn blockbuster movies in which many of those aforementioned iconic sites get blown to bits by aliens, invading communist forces, or in the case of the solidly cliché but surprisingly fun San Andreas, earthquakes. As long as there have been special effects, movie makers have used them to show skyscrapers, capitol buildings, bridges, dams, and just about any other symbol of civilization you can think of getting demolished in spectacular ways.

 As you might guess, San Andreas takes aim at California and surrounding states. The famous fault line, which is probably the only one any average person knows by name, begins to act up and we get to see Hoover Dam break open like a water balloon, the Hollywood sign tumble like it was made of playing cards, and the Golden Gate bridge get taken out by a tsunami-driven freighter ship. I applaud the special effects team of San Andreas because they created visceral, believable work. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the writers when it comes to plot or character.

Dwayne Johnson plays Ray Gaines, an ex-military helicopter pilot, who now works for Los Angeles search and rescue. We meet him as he flies his team to save a young woman whose car has tumbled into a canyon and is mere centimeters from certain death. Flying along on this incredibly delicate and high risk mission are a tv reporter and her cameraman. She’s wearing high heels and I don’t think either of them are even wearing a seatbelt. So first of all, we know this is a movie that’s going to ignore things like common sense and reality. But when the reporter questions Ray if he really has been part of over 600 successful rescues, Dwayne Johnson turns around in full movie-star mode, aviators perched on his face, brilliant smile emanating, and the California sun flaring in the window behind him and he humbly says, “Just doing my job, ma’am.”

It was at that moment I realized I could just sit back and relax. This movie was going to ask nothing of me at all except a very healthy dose of the suspension of disbelief. Beyond that, all I had to do was enjoy giant buildings collapsing, ridiculously shaped actors running through flames and smoke, and the Rock commandeering every kind of transportation possible to get from Los Angeles to San Francisco so he and his estranged wife can rescue their beautiful, resourceful daughter. Seriously, Ray Gains flies a chopper and a plane, hotwires a truck, and steals a boat. About the only conveyances he doesn’t use are a zeppelin and the Rice-a-roni trolley. And that’s probably just because the trolley is buried in burning rubble and then swamped by a tsunami like everything else in the city.

 What’s interesting about disaster movies, even fun, dumb ones like San Andreas, is that they are a device for dealing with our cultural dread about forces beyond our control, and they often surface at times of political, economic, or international unrest. We know there are things out there that cause catastrophe with no warning. Certain shots of the film recall 911, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing. Disaster movies are a way for us to experience horrible things but still be able to return to our home at the end of the night.  They are also stories we tell ourselves about how we would deal with calamity. At the end of the film, a giant American flag unfurls on the remains of the Golden Gate bridge and Ray Gaines tells us it’s time to rebuild. Stories like San Andreas tell us that even if terrible things happen, we’re still going to be okay. And we will At least until next summer.

This review originally appeared on Q90.1, Delta College quality public radio. Visit www.deltabroadcasting.org for more information.