Saw

 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. 

I seem to recall a time when the big, Halloween-released horror movie was a scary and frightening trip. “Saw” is an interesting film to watch, but an enormous let down for those people in the mood for a quality scare and an even bigger let down for those who are in the mood for a quality Halloween flick. “Saw” is a decent movie, if you were expecting a crime movie, but it doesn’t make that jump into being a ‘horror’ movie. This movie definitely got the art of being creepy down right, but apparently cut class the day they were talking about fantastic displays of fright or gore in the horror genre.

“Saw” opens in a dingy, abandoned bathroom, where Adam (Leigh Whannell, who also wrote the script) and Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) are chained to pipes on opposite ends of the room. Neither one can remember how they got there, how long they have been unconscious, or explain the dead body in the center of the room lying in a pool of blood. The only clues they have are from two micro cassettes, a tape player, and various goodies that have been hidden in the room.

Fortunately, Dr. Gordon has an idea as to who may have kidnapped the two: a psychopath known as the “Jigsaw Killer”. This is your typical kind of serial killer: trying to teach people lessons by putting them in life or death situations and setting up very elaborate situations for both his victims and the police. What the two do know is that if Dr. Gordon doesn’t kill Adam by 6:00, Dr. Gordon’s family is going to die.

James Wan (in his directorial debut) does a reasonable job of piecing the whole movie together, which already has a couple of significant of hurdles. One, it’s a horror movie, which instantly means that the movie should be scary and two, because it’s a horror movie, the script has rather sizable plot holes and more than a few contrivances. Getting the movie to work right isn’t helped by Cary Elwes presence in a main role: he manages to float by pretty well during the normal flow of the plot, but when it comes time for him to be excited or angry, his whole character becomes extremely British and very stiff. Plus, the whole movie is supposed to be a ‘Who Dunnit?’, which means you’ll probably find yourself gasping at the sheer idiocy on the part of both the good guys and the serial killer (but mostly just the good guys).

Despite these beefs, “Saw” manages to be reasonably palatable. The methods the Jigsaw killer comes up with are rather imaginative and creative, despite having an obvious tinge of “Fear Factor” to them. The filming and cinematography clearly indicates that the filmmakers know how to build the environment and tension as well as make the film look and feel professional (even though they use flash editing just to dramatize ‘boring’ segments. Additionally, I doubt anyone outside of the writing staff could see this twist-ending coming.

I suppose you can’t expect every horror movie to hit, but sometimes you see the trailer for one that could finally cut the mustard for being scary. This Halloween movie takes fewer notes from “The Birds” and “Poltergeist” and more from “Seven” and “The Usual Suspects”. These movies are excellent in more ways than one, but they just aren’t scary.

Shortform v Longform Part III

For those of us living out in the Wild West that is longform, we still cling to our shortform roots. You could think of shortform as city living in this example. It’s strongly codified and regulated, there’s electricity, running water, warm beds, and police officers to make sure that everything’s okay. Scene running on too long? Edit it into improv jail and start a new one. But outside the city limits, it’s a whole different story. Out here, anything can happen. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, but at the very least, it’s something different every time. Longform sheds old ideas of having to stop between scenes to reset or having gimmicky rules for the promise of something new. But we do like order, and west is mighty wild, indeed. The rules in longform are not short-sighted: they are about over-arching structure, weaving together complex and disparate ideas and themes into a way that makes the trip a little easier. You could think of longform as campfires, seedy saloons, tents, and the “Law West of the Pecos”.

Just like there is no “right” shortform game, there is no “right” longform. Sure there are common ones, let’s take the Harold for an example. The Harold in this case is a well-worn wagon master: experienced, good with a gun, better on a horse, and calm in the face of wild Indians. The Harold is a pretty codified form in its own right. Probably the most structured of all the forms, but then again, if this is your first trip out in the wild, you probably want the comfort of a guide that has traveled this way many times before. The iO runs a number of teams which are all collectively referred to simply as Harold teams. Does this mean that they are only allowed to use the Harold? Of course not. That would be against the way of the west. Do they do other forms? Generally not. Jason Chin told our class one day that when one of his teams proves they’re ready to move on to another form, he starts working with them on that. You can cross the west with ol’ Harold as many times as you want, but you can’t start riding alongside JTS Brown or Close Quarters until you’re ready.

But eventually, you get tired of riding with these other fellers. You’ve crossed the gap hundreds of times, and now you’re ready to make your own form. Most forms start by as variations on existing forms (“Harold used to cross this river, and then Deconstruction avoided this canyon”), but eventually you understand improv enough to completely through caution to the wind and design a path of your own choosing. But after all, this is improv, and we won’t be happy until we have completely improvised everything, stem to stern.

In 1973’s “Enter the Dragon”, the master asks Bruce Lee (do you like how we switch seamlessly from cowboys to martial artists?) “What is the highest technique you hope to achieve?” Bruce Lee replies simply: “To have no technique.” This is big stuff. The groups I looked up to, 3033, Deep Schwa, the Reckoning, all specialize in improv that is unbound by even figuring out anything ahead of time. Impronauts, perhaps, beyond even the rapidly shrinking west, exploring the outer reaches of creativity, where every thing is happening, right now. The problem is, beyond the initial rules from way back in the city, there’s not a lot that anyone can teach you. That is true frontier land out there boys, out into the land where there be dragons. But remember even the most savage territories still have people living in them, it’s just up to you to decide when you’re ready to step out of the city and start exploring.

I Hate Improv Class Part II

So improv class has been going well, I’ve now survived week three without completely screwing something up, and now that I’ve gotten to know some of the people a little better, the tension has definitely eased. I should add that I kept my head down and didn’t mention that I had already taken improv class until week two, and then only when the teacher specifically asked “Has anyone taken any improv classes before?” Better still, only three people, including the teacher, knew what that meant.

But, I’ve spent more time thinking about how much I hate improv class. Last August, I went to meeting in D.C. with some people that I’ve done improv with for a while, some of whom I met only shortly after I started. Our group has been trying to get in the habit of meeting once a year, mostly for fellowship, but also to exchange notes and what we’ve learned, or been experimenting with. When I arrived (late, the weather in Chicago kept me grounded for an additional hour or so), I was treated as an old friend, even though some of these people I’ve never met before and the rest I’ve only met two, maybe three times. Yet, when it came time for the late night “jam” session, I sat in the audience, drinking a beer. Why? If you read my last article, this should come as no surprise: fear. I was the only member who had taken a “real” Chicago improv class (at the time, I had completed the program, and was in the last leg of my 5B shows). Bad improv here would be even worse; for some reason I now felt I was representing all of Chicago to these people.

I realized what I hate about these jam sessions, and workshops, and everything else. Even though improv is a team sport (a point hammered home by my teacher in the first week of my new improv classes), it is still at its heart, a performance art, and hence an activity where we are judged for our skill. Every improviser is compared to every other improviser. In Chicago, every team is judged against the near impossible standard of “T.J. and Dave”. Back in Mississippi, my college group went to a weekend gathering of a bunch of college troupes and we compared ourselves to the best of those. In improv classes, we compare ourselves to the best in the class. Bill Arnett wrote in his blog that there are three phases to an improviser’s development, the second of which is where we do medicore improv because we are trying to emulate improvisers we consider to be good. In Chicago, it’s even worse than other places; I remember during some of the closing weeks of our 5B shows, everybody got very ancy and tense. Why? Because at the last show, the ominously named Harold Commission sends representatives to the shows to evaluate performers and decide who gets to be on Harold teams. Bear in mind, no one even gets paid to do Harold shows!

Now, I know that improv is a team sport. But, I would argue that one of the most stressful parts of improv is that because it is so team sport-y, the heat is on even more to contribute and be a team player. No one wants to be the guy who the group doesn’t invite back because he can’t hold his own. Team sport or not, the fact is we are always still trying to prove ourselves to our fellow improvisers. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with trying to continuously improve our art, but there is danger to be had in trying so hard so that people will think we’re good. It may not always be easy when we’re doing an audition with seven people we’ve never met, but if we’re not having fun, then what the hell is the point of it all?

So from now on, this will be my mantra, and I encourage you to use it too:

“Fuck it, let’s have some fun.”

Hero

 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. 

If I were to use one word to describe Hero, that one word would be: ballet. That’s really it in a nutshell: beautiful, well performed, poetic and just not very thrilling.

Hero (or Ying xiong, as it is known in its native China) takes place over 2,200 years ago in the land of pre-unified China, where the king of Qin is attempting to conquer the six kingdoms of China in order to become the land’s first Emperor. Standing in the king’s way are the three assassins who have tried for years to kill him and free the land from oppression: Flying Snow, Broken Sword, and Sky (respectively, Maggie Cheung, Tommy Leung Chiu Wai, and Donnie Yen). Fortunately for the king, word has just reached him that one of his own prefects, known only as Nameless, has successfully killed these three assassins, and now the king wishes to know: how? Enter Nameless (Jet Li, playing the same statuesque, stoic part he plays in every movie. At least he plays the part well.), carrying the weapons of the fallen warriors, prepared to retell his exploits to the king. But all is not what it seems: through the course of the retelling, things don’t seem to sit right in this warrior’s story. Gradually more layers of truth are revealed until we discover that Nameless is actually there to finish the job the other assassins could not.

This movie is so much fun to look at, its no wonder that other elements of the film seem to fall apart at times. For example, the telling and retelling of the different story possibilities of exactly what Nameless did happen with so little evidence of time and place change that if director Zhang Yimou did not have a strong visual style, you would probably be dumbfounded as to exactly what you were watching and when it all took place. Fortunately, the director uses some beautiful and vibrant colors in each story element to help the mind delineate and clarify the parts of the story (green/red/blue/white/etc.) Following in the same cinematic style as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero also features some beautifully crafted and executed fight sequences, where the warriors hurl themselves like projectiles, sprint across the surface of lakes and fight about each other like dancers in some lethal tango. Of course, most of the fight sequences are of little to no consequence for the story, but when did that ever stop anyone?

But a movie cannot be built on beautiful cinematography alone, as Hero undoubtedly proves. While the individual fight scenes are thrilling and exciting, the film fails to transfer the thrills from the individual stories to the overall movie, and Hero suffers as a result. Additionally, the film just barely manages to have even a modicum of substance, which only shows up in the last fifteen minutes, making it appear as though the “theme” was tossed in at the last minute (Not surprisingly, the American version has lost ten minutes to the Chinese version, presumably to put the fight sequences closer together). The only worthwhile theme actually shows up indirectly, when we discover that on top of being a master swordsman, Broken Sword is also a master calligrapher: the marriage of violence and art. Violence may be a wicked thing, but it can also be work of art in itself.

Hero is without a doubt the most beautiful and fun to look at film I have seen in ages. It’s just a shame the director couldn’t put the same energy into the story direction as he did into the visual style.

Silver and Gold

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One of the basics I was always taught when choosing people you want to improvise with is to choose people “you wouldn't mind being stuck in an elevator with”. This is to say that because improv is such a personal art form, and also one that is so reliant on your teammates for success, that the mixture of different people is the show – it's what drives the engine. By that logic, the key to a good improv group is to have a mix of people that can enjoy playing with each other – however, I've noticed that just having a good group of people means nothing if you can't get them into the elevator, and is not the only indicator of a “successful group”. What's equally as important to having good group chemistry is having complementary levels of ambition (which, come to think of it, is a facet of the elevator theory).

This is a tricky artform that we do, and its mutability, ease of doing, low cost, and even worse, it's capacity to be just picked up and dropped just as easily makes it very easy to treat it with a certain degree of flippancy, especially for the 90% or so of improvisers that do it as a hobby. The life things that can eventually derail a group altogether are at work everyday; it's just that most of the time, they don't mount up to the point where they mess with your schedule. You have to work late, miss a week so you can go to a family reunion, meet a new boy/girl that you want to spend every moment with – all these things happen all the time. The mastery of improv is a long, grinding process, one that is less a product of talent and more of temperament, which is why having a group of people you can enjoy slogging through it with is important.

The big lesson I teach now to everyone is that “the most important person on stage is the other person”, but this concept doesn't (or shouldn't, at least) start and stop when you are on stage – it should extend to off stage as well. Jimmy Carrane wrote in his book (and has covered additionally in podcasts) that overextending yourself to a bunch of projects is a less powerful use of your time than committing to one or two projects. This is something that has taken me a while to fully appreciate, since one of my goals is to do improv every night for a week. I've realized in the last year though the added value of having people you can rely on. We all have a finite amount of improv scenes in us – we should endeavour to make the few we have the very best.

But what makes the difference, is your commitment to your team mates. No one can decide for you how much you want to play with your team – only you can. Every time one of these life “things” happens, you decide how much you want to keep doing it. You're having a lousy day; do you go to practice anyway, or just stay home, watching T.V. instead? Finding people who want something valuable and are dedicated and are fun to play with is all the more rarer, but that is the special sauce that makes great groups. The ones that stand out to people are ones with long records of constant support. Not every fun improviser will be a good fit dedication wise – some just want to do a practice a week and perform occasionally, and that 's OK. But if you're someone who wants to go further than that, it's important to find the people that match your eagerness. Being in a group with people who are far more ambitious than you will only lead to resentment, and being with people are less interested will always leave you feeling dragged down.

Short term shows or groups probably don't have to worry about this sort of thing, and neither do more casual players. But more invested individuals (which probably includes you, if you're reading this) and definitely those that are interested in creating long term artistic adventures must at least consider the appetite facet (which again, it should be emphasized that this is only a part of the elevator theory) when looking at the people that are fun to play with. Don't just find someone you wouldn't mind being stuck in an elevator with – find people who would agree to join you in a stuck elevator.

Opinions and Facts

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One of the founding principles of improvisational theater (improv) is the idea of “yes and”. It's such a basic building block for everything an improviser does, and you can find its DNA in practically every higher level concept and idea, sort of the binary machine code all improv is programmed under. It indicates both a positive, supportive good nature that improvisers have towards each other as well as a much more technical agreement – as elements are established in a scene (e.g. people, places, things) they become gospel. To disagree with these elements has the effect of confusing observers and performers alike and halting a scene. The “yes” symbolizes and acknowledgement of facts and the “and” indicates an adding to or heightening of established elements. (“I am a doctor.” “Yes, and you are the finest heart surgeon in the world” - or - “Yes, and the drunkest, most incompetent anesthesiologist in the world.”)

In scenes, responding to offers (i.e. facts) in a mechanical way will allow scenes to proceed, but also has the effect of making scenes feel fairly stilted or robotic, which is why a better response is “I know, and” which stands in for the agreement of “yes and” while allowing for responses that can have more nuance, or at least more humanity. So an improv scene is constantly built around agreement, which must mean that actors can never say the word “no”, right? This was a misconception of improvisers for quite awhile, but the Arnett Axiom says that anything we say in real life we can say in an improv scene, and most scenes would be rather strange (and brief) if players agreed to be shot when prompted: “May I kill you?” (unless the character has a death wish, which is the exception rather than the rule). Instead, agreement must be thought of as being based around facts. “We are on the moon” - and now we are. To cast doubt on these facts unravels the world we're in.

This is important, because facts cannot be disputed, but opinions can. Two actors who are playing doctors in a hospital are facts. That one is the best and the other worst are also facts. That one loves the other is an opinion. (Opinions being any fact that is not shared by all individuals.) People are often not descripted in a vacuum, they exist relative to other descriptors. The best heart surgeon in the world at an All-Star Heart Surgeon Convention is fairly unimpressive. That same surgeon at a convention of witch doctors is in a different predicament. Both facts and opinions have to be respected as valid, and treated with the same reverence – one doctor who loves another doctor has a factual component and an opinion component: the other doctor can disagree with that assessment. Often facts can contribute to opinions and vice versa and give us great comedy as a result. Take for example one of my favorite Woody Allen jokes (from “Annie Hall”):

There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions."

Having opinions provides the stopgap that is not accounted for in “yes, and”, which can make for detail rich ideas; but also makes for scenes that can meander aimlessly or be talked about in a listless, apathetic monotone. Opinion indicates emotional investment and tension as a result. That Duncan is King of Scotland is fact – that Macbeth should kill him and how far he is willing to go are matters of opinion, and that drives the “Scottish Play”. These make for great conflict (which is often present in narrative, but I would argue about it's absolute necessity) since facts cannot be disputed. But with both facts and opinions, we provide improv with the clarity and specificity needed in good writing, and also the humanity and expression found in good acting. Or that's my opinion, at least.

The One Where They Build a House

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The classic approach to describing how an improv scene is built is to refer to it as like chess (although sometimes tennis is used) which likely (as Bill Arnett points out) because as improvisers, we like to think of ourselves as being very clever. A chess analogy nicely makes improvisers feel like our craft is lofty, regal, and very smart. The problem (which Arnett also pointed out) is that it implies that there is a degree of strategy and planning involved in performing an improvised scene – just as the grand master sees his opponents six moves out, apparently a grand improviser is able to plan his moves out, which goes directly against the basic principle of improvisation. (Though it should be conceded that there are, have, and likely always will be, performers who do plan (or at least try to plan) scenes out ahead of time. Equally it should be noted that the shorthand, invisible, and sometimes telepathic group mind that some performers have with each other does flirt the line with “planning”.)

Bill's alternative was to describe a scene as a game of “Battleship”, where the two players take turns sinking each others fleets – an analogy that does correctly capture the principle that scenes are not planned and are built by scene partners taking turns in the process. Where this analogy falls short (with all due respect to Bill) is that every game of Battleship is played exactly the same. Sure the winners, length of game play, and individual tactics may vary, but the game has the same mechanics and end point. No game of Battleship has ever been played differently – but improv scenes are played differently all the time. How improv scenes conduct themselves and how they end is different for every scene that has ever been and ever will be played.

The metaphor I propose is that building an improv scene is like building a house (not a big stretch to be sure, and it does not adequately, or at least explicitly, provide the back-forth shared responsibility like “Battleship”). Every house is different – even if only in location; but there are larger manor houses, mansions, two-story ranch homes, huts, shacks, duplexes, single story dwellings, with attached garages and not, with multiple bedrooms or bathrooms, attics, basements, and any number of variations inside. This, I feel, better describes the idea that scenes serve different functions, and achieve those functions in different ways. Some scenes are slow-burn scenes that sustain for 30 minutes with no edits; much more theatrical and character-rooted. Other scenes are simple, one-line button scenes that last for 30 seconds, like a round thatch hut. But because scenes can vary so much in how they play and what they're supposed to do for an audience (e.g. laugh, cry, grumble) it is important to remember to focus on what each individual scene provides. While we all might like to live in a penthouse suite in Central Park West, some people have to live in a lean-to in Outer Mongolia.

As I was thinking about this analogy, I was struck by the idea of a keystone – which in a figuratively architectural sense is a central supporting element of a larger structure. The keystone is the first idea that sets the entire scene in motion – the one that tells us what this scene is going to be about (a “key” piece of information). In Johnstone terms, it is the tilt that occurs after the platform has been established; in other scenework approaches, it's often the game move, or at the very least a gift (movement, action, or line) that, when acknowledged and used, causes the scene to actuate. Keystones are useful because they are what can prevent a transaction scene from being just a transaction scene – they only require attention and a willingness to use. Here's an example from a recent Seersucker show:

Man and Woman enter Man's apartment.

MAN

Well, this is my place. Feel free to look around, I know how you women like to touch things.

MAN's MOM

(Entering)

Oh don't mind me, I'm just going to touch some things.

(Starts touching everything)

What followed was a scene about a family dynamic that was heavily rooted in physical contact of everything and everyone, which could only be achieved because the keystone (the line about touching things) was used. (This scene can only really last so long since it is so based on a simple game move – I would say given the commonality of this kind of scene that it was a two-bedroom house in the suburbs.) This isn't to say that this was the only keystone that could occur in a scene; had that one not been used, another one probably would've popped up in the next line. (Keystones, which are synonymous with game moves and tilts, likewise occur usually in the first five lines of a scene.) Does a scene have to have a keystone? No, just as buildings don't have to have one to stand up (keystones are more common in vault and arch structures). A simple round walled hut was the popular home during the Medieval period because it is simple to build – place a post in the ground, attach a rope to the post, and then walk around the pole at the end of the rope marking off the outer wall. Scenes without a big single keystone will likely have some smaller ones sprinkled throughout, and will probably be a slower burning scene that will need more effort to build in a way that won't cause collapse. The keystone though (and how we use it) tells us what kind of house we're building.

None of this contradicts, nor negates, the need to continue to add information to a scene (building walls, doors, stairs, closets) or the need to listen and respond to your partner and build the house together (don't put a second kitchen in a single bedroom abode). It's just another way of thinking about the process of building a scene, so we can all live inside of it together.