Sideways

Back in 2004, I used to write movie reviews for the USM student newspaper, the "Student Printz". Because I occasionally feel lazy, and it seems a shame that all of five people ever read these, I've decided to repost them here, in the original versions that I emailed to my editor, Noel, all those years ago.

Finally, we have an achievement of the year for filmmaking – a clever turn on the familiar buddy road film. But this general plot line is where “Sideways” pulls away from its more popular cousins, like “Taxi” or “Tommy Boy” and sides more with “Lost in Translation”. “Sideways” is warm and fuzzy one minute, then depressing and provocative the next. Of course, a movie this good isn’t playing in Hattiesburg, but should you go home for the holidays and find it playing nearby – definitely check it out.

“Sideways” is a about Miles (Paul Giamatti), a very depressed author and wine connoisseur. Miles used to be happy of course, but his earlier divorce destroyed him realizing that he has long past his peak and is gradually sliding towards death. At the complete other end of the spectrum, is Miles’ old college friend, Jack (Thomas Haden Church) a washed-up actor and womanizer, just a week away from his marriage. For his last week of bachelordom, Miles is taking his friend Jack on a trip through California wine country. Miles wants a good glass of wine and golf, and Jack wants a lot of wine and a couple of flings before he’s tied down. Their travels bring them across Stephanie (Sandra Oh) and Maya (Virginia Madsen), a wine-pourer and waitress, respectively. While Jack and Stephanie become sexually entangled, Miles attempts to woo Maya. Of course, Stephanie and Maya eventually find out about Jack’s wedding, and Jack and Miles have to return home to their lives.

“Sideways” is in a lot of ways similar to director Alexander Payne’s other work like “Election”: the plot may not be breakneck, but its obvious that there’s a whole lot going on, and by the time the movie is over, you can’t help but being entertained. Miles is very similar to Mathew Broderick’s character in “Election”, a teacher, yearning for something much more but only being shadowed by other people’s success. But don’t think that the movie is only wilted flowers; in fact it is very humorous which only helps to make the film feel more real. Giamatti and Church’s acting is spectacular, and the dialogue and secondary characters only add to the body of the film. And to top it off, the cinematography is fantastic, as it appears that the color scheme was taken from a random pick box of wines: lots of warm and friendly hues, which combined with the Jack character, only makes you pity Miles just that much more.

I would like to say that’s there is nobody out there who wouldn’t like this movie, but then I think about those poor fools locked in that “unfeasible fortress of unknown disability” and I realize that there is more than a few people who wouldn’t like this movie; probably not enough explosions and gunfights to keep you preoccupied. But this movie really is fantastic, and the disillusioned philosophy majors out there would probably really enjoy it. I think the greatest strength of the movie though, is the ending: instead of spending ten minutes wrapping it up, the credits roll pre-denouement, leaving you thirsty for more.

Cause and Affect 3: Oh Geez...

My uncle flew re-fueler planes in Vietnam; just close enough to the action to hear it, but far enough to not really participate in it. The Air Force uses a so called "guard channel" that radio traffic about enemy planes is relayed over. The fighter pilots are a hard bunch - they have the speed and the firepower, so they are in the melee all the time, but again, they are battle-hardened, so they are uniquely unfazed about things that would make most other pilots take pause, at least. Routinely listening to traffic, you could hear various pilots relaying clipped, urgent messages back and forth to each other as they came in contact with bogeys, reacting in ways that seem fairly normal to the rest of us. But among this excited (possibly worried) chatter, the fighter pilots would stick out with simple, terse lines like: "Bogey, 10 O'clock, low. Got him." One particular story is during a refueling flight, my uncle's plane linked up with a fighter element, and the various pilots would go through, reading off their remaining fuel, until it gets to the last plane, who replies in a high-pitched squeal, "I'm almost out of fuel!"

I started watching "Curb Your Enthusiasm" recently, and I was thinking about it in terms of the idea of reaction-based scenework (see my two previous posts, Cause and Affect 1 & 2 in the archives), and Larry David would not, by any means, be considered a "badass". He is only interacting in a very "real" universe: there are no zombies, storm troopers, or supervillains; only the regular kind of everyday people even you could encounter on a regular basis. And in this world, he cannot fulfill the basic criteria for being a badass: 1) having the capability to affect change and 2) being willing to do whatever is necessary to make it happen. Larry David repeatedly shows that he lacks completely the capability to affect change (sure, he can make small gains, but he is so nebbish, tactless, and misanthropic that he routinely fails in relating to others) and is generally more than willing to allow perceived slights against him to go un-remedied and often un-addressed.

So then, why is this character able to maintain a story around himself? The answer is that Larry David is an anti-badass (The complete opposite of a badass. Goodbutt? Nicetush? Greatfanny?) Here's the way it works: Larry doesn't actually cause much change around him, but what he does do is changed by much of what goes on around him. Small stimuli from others around him, cause him to change greatly. He gets very bent out of shape, deeply affected, and dramatically changed in mental and emotional ways by every single one of those stimuli. Remember how we can tell if someone is a badass (or make someone a badass) by creating change to their affects? Batman starts fighting 20 thugs, and we know whether or not he is a badass by whether or not he beats them, and how easily. If he doesn't break a sweat, he is more badass, if he barely crawls away, he seems like less of a badass. If he is defeated, he's not a badass any longer. In effect:

[BF] = [HE] - [EOH]

Where:

BF = Badass Factor (how badass a character seems)

HE = Hero effect (what and magnitude of changes precipitated by hero

EOH = Effect on Hero (what changes the Other precipitates on hero)

Now, in Larry David's case, he effects so little change and is so greatly affected by everyone around him that his BF is effectively negative, which makes everyone else a badass. Remember that there has to be a response to stimuli in order to register change - you can't force the Other to change for you, but you can choose to be changed by stimuli, and because Larry is so changed everytime - greatly frustrated, embarrased, anxious, and angered by everything that goes on around him, that he makes everyone else badass.

Greatbehind?

Field Guide to the North American Improv Scene

My father and his two brothers grew up in east Texas, and from what I can tell, the vast majority of their formative education appears to have been built around naturalism. It's not nearly enough for them to be outdoorsmen – they want to be able to identify literally everything in the natural world. Typical conversations with them go something like this:

Me: Oh, that's a cool [tree, bird, animal, fish].

My Dad or either Uncle: That's called a [name of tree, bird, animal, fish, as appropriate].

Me: Cool.

They seem to have a near encyclopedic knowledge of the various flora and fauna (which may be more a product of growing up on a farm, pre-internet, than anything) but these facts allow them to draw parallels about the world, to understand it beyond merely wandering through it. By that same token, I'm the one my father calls when he wants to know “what else [actor/actress's name] has been in”. This kind of fundamental information becomes critical in truly understanding our worlds, so here is a review of the four basic scenes (I would like to specifically thank iO West's Brian O'Connell who taught me this list).

Straight/Absurd: The most commonly encountered scene. Person A is wacky and strange; he has strange points of view, is irrational and expresses those elements. Person B is a normal guy – he's us, the audience – reacting to the craziness. This basic scene is one of the most commonly exploited for laughs; provided you set up the A causes B frustration (a hammer/anvil situation) then you've got comedy. “Ghostbusters” is a classic example, where depending on the scene, different people play the part of straight or absurd (which is a key element of this dynamic: it's all relative). Peter and Egon sell Ray's family home, and they're absurd and he's straight. They visit the new headquarters and critique it as Ray slides down the pole; now he's absurd and they're straight. Janine asks Egon what his hobbies are and he replies “I collect spores, mold, and fungus”, and you get the idea.

Character: This is the second most common, and is in essence just an extension of the previous scene type. In this one, two characters have similar (often identical) viewpoints. In this one, the points of view often have to be far more exceptional, because now the burden of the “straight man” has passed to the actual audience, who has to recognize the ridiculousness. It's important to note that in a character scene, A and B need not have peculiar characterizations, it's more about how they think. Also, if a third player enters and presents a different viewpoint, you're back to a Straight/Absurd.

Alternate Reality: In this very rarely encountered scene, the players are normal, but the world has gone absurd. Whatever universe these characters inhabit, it has different rules than our own. iO West's Lusty Horde revels in this kind of scenework, where ice bases, dragons, mole men, and other classic B movie fare are considered normal. The fun comes in watching how life works in this other realm. By this same token, Improvised Shakespeare and Improvised Musical pieces could also be considered this scene type, since each of those shows present worlds with different rules than our own.

Roommate: You don't actually have to be roommates in this scene, but this dynamic is one that is set in our own reality, and has normal characters. A and B will often have very similar statuses, and this scene can also have elements of any of the other scene types, but the emphasis is on highlighting reality – absurdism is kept to a minimum. Shootin' the Shit with EJ is great example, but so is Shotgun!, Dinner for Six, and Hold 'em.

Those are your four basic scene types; they can intermingle and hybridize, but you'll find that when you're in a scene, if you can identify the particular species, you can figure out how to make it thrive.