The Interpreter

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.

Sometimes the distances that actors and actresses travel in terms of characters is monumental. Take “The Interpreter’s” primary stars: Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn. It was less than a decade ago that Kidman was following George Clooney around trying to disarm nuclear weapons in “The Peacemaker”, and not that long ago that Penn’s Spicoli was ordering pizzas to Mr. Hand’s class in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”. “The Interpreter” shares this kind of idea: it’s a classic feeling film, very personal, small cast with a Hitchcock-like plot of a geopolitical who dunnit. But in modern times, this classic kind of movie is much more of a supercharged tale of revenge and political suspense.

“The Interpreter” opens up with Silvia Broome (Nicole Kidman), a United Nations interpreter, going to the U.N. general assembly sound room late at night to retrieve some personal items when she hears a conversation regarding an assassination on President Zuwanie, the genocidal leader of the small African nation of Matobo. The Secret Service dispatches Tobin Keller and Dot Woods (Sean Penn and Catherine Keener) two agents with Foreign Dignitary Protection. As they investigate the possibility of assassination, they turn up an enormous amount of dirt on Broome, who used to be a revolutionary in Matobo following the death of her parents. Keller may not believe her at first and has more mounting suspicions, but there are definitely dark hands at work leading to mysterious masked men and ruthless assassinations of President Zuwanie’s only remaining opponents.

The melting pot of New York City and the global unity of the United Nations building act only as a stage for dual plot of both personal and global struggles for forgiveness and revenge. Both Broome and Keller have semi-dark histories of loved ones lost to tragedy, which focus both of their current efforts to try and save people. These interpersonal struggles act to mirror the bigger plot as to whether or not Zuwanie should be assassinated to better the people of the nation he has oppressed.

A movie with a plot about political turmoil would have been traditionally treated as a sufficient film, but apparently someone felt that additional, deeper subplots were necessary to drive the concept. Though the presence of these subplots never brings the film to a “halt”, they do serve to drag the plot down to a “yield”. This isn’t helped at all by a possible romantic interest between Keller and Broome. What really drives this movie is the international turmoil, as it is far more interesting than morbid lists Broome’s brother kept of dead Matobans or Penn’s constant look of pensive severity. This film is greatly benefited by strong supporting cast, including Keener and Jesper Christensen as a Dutch ex-mercenary and security officer to Zuwanie.

“The Interpreter” sums up to being a pretty good movie – not necessarily “fun”, but definitely interesting and exciting. The theme of pacifism is an interesting complement to a film that highlights some of America’s biggest contemporary fears as well as some neat action sequences. You can always count on a movie like “The Interpreter” to make you feel good: the good guys win, the bad guys lose, and hopefully the world is made a better place. At least until next week.

Character Arrested Development

I still occasionally get emails from my old college improv troupe, and I'm always excited to read ones where they're discussing improv theory; I love it primarily for nostalgia, but also because I like reading how the philosophies of people I trained and performed with have evolved. For a lot of college troupes in the hinterlands, each group is its own little microcosm of improv exploration, and as a result, they're generally limited to things they learn through books on the subject.
 

My favorite pops up like clockwork once a semester: the "character development" email. It goes like this: "we had a rough show, we need to work on fundamentals, so next week we're going to go over character development." But why do we pick character development over things like scenework, being "in-the-moment", or a bajillion other skills? It's the improv scapegoat. Had a bad show? It was probably bad character development. Why? Because I have no idea what it means, so I probably don't have it. It's a term that falls into the same category of "process development", "synergy", and "paradigm shift" of abstract things that sound great on paper, but have no real definition. I don't even remember how the term entered into our vernacular; I've never read it in a book or heard any teacher use that exact term anytime since. It was always just there.

For years, I broke the term down to define it. "What is character development?" someone might ask me on an improv game show. "Why, it's the development of a character arc throughout the course of the scene!" I would answer proudly. While it's true that that kind of character development (which is probably more likely to be called emotional development, scene development, or some other such acting term I'm too ignorant to know) is important, that's not what's meant by character development. The problem with trying to do it that way is we get a bunch of scenes where person A is trying to change person B in three minutes! 

Our character development practice became, every semester, two hours of scenes about breakup, love, or death. They were boring and uninteresting, and we would immediately go back to doing other things the next week.
What we all meant (but were unable to articulate, and, even worse, unable to teach) was creating rich, unique characters. Characters that were more than just a funny voice or a strange bodily affliction. What we wanted was to create characters that the audience would be interested in long enough to want to see a character arc.  (Something compounding the problem: improv shows like "Whose Line" rarely, if ever have richly defined characters.  Their scenes tend to, unfortunately, be just a funny voice or strange bodily affliction.)

So if we're not trying to negotiate a character change, what is character development actually supposed to be? The now-me, on the same gameshow, would answer "creating a character on the fly that can survive on his/her own in the universe we've created". What you need to take away is this: a character needs at minimum, two things to survive. One, a point of view, and two, a want. The other stuff (occupation, mannerisms, etc.) is good, but you've got to leave that to be discovered. And most importantly, just relax in the scene and remember that this is the universe that your character inhabits and to try to react as that character would.

A Philosophy of Teaching

It was in "Truth in Comedy" that Close, et al, told everyone that an improviser was actually a number of different roles rolled into one: actor, director, writer, editor, sound man, special effects, props, and scenery (and realistically caterer and producer as well).  It's really no wonder this craft is so difficult to master, and that so many of us become permanently enthralled with it - to improvise is not just make a few laughs, it is to do a near overwhelming amount simultaneously.  But it is not only very difficult to master, it's sometimes very difficult for beginners to do successfully at even a minimal level.

Most improv is taught in a very top-down method.  Typically, throw people into things with a little explanation, and then tweak things as needed to get performers into a desired state.  In fact, I'd wager that every teacher I've had has taken this approach.  It's just easier, since there are so many things that have to be juggled at once, to let the human naturally fill in the gaps of the performance than to force a player to have to think about everything all at once.  I think of this as a holistic approach; even though a smart instructor will know to break down certain skills or simplify scenework to narrow a student's focus, it's still necessary for a pupil to be developing a number of skills concurrently.  I believe the result here is why I am constantly teaching (and learning) active listening as a basic skill.

This is quite different from other arts/crafts/skills; I remember learning to drive and first learning street signs, right-of-way, and blind spots before being allowed behind the wheel of a two-ton steel death machine.  Artists learn composition and point-of-view before painting the Sistine Chapel, woodworkers learn how to cut straight lines before building a house, and you learn to read by first learning sounds - you don't jump from "c-a-t" to "Anna Karenina".  When I was first learning to play an instrument, you start with a few notes, then you play "Mary had a Little Lamb", then scales, then time signatures, then space chords, and eventually you work your way up full orchestral pieces.  I think of this as a reductionist approach - where the focus is on building individual skills before putting them all together.

The reductionist approach is easier for learning complex skills, so why don't we approach teaching improv in that manner?  Quite simply actually: "Mary had a Little Lamb" is fucking boring.  And even more importantly, the basic principles of improv, like "no planning", translate into the uninitiated as "you don't need to practice this, you just get up and do it!"  The seemingly low entry requirements are a welcome encouragement for neophyte players, but also make it difficult to focus the naive to work only on skills for the first few lessons.  Or, is it maybe better to throw new players completely into it right away?  Screw basics, just give them the piano and the sheet music for "Flight of the Bumblebee", and let them figure it out on the fly.  Watching an experienced player rip through something difficult effortlessly might make you think you could, but new performers have to learn the scales first.

Personal Statement

When I applied for grad school, I had to write a personal statement, so naturally I chose to write about superheroes. To this day I believe that this essay is the primary reason I was accepted.

Batman and Superman. To many, they are the two most well known comic book heroes in the world. But to me, the represent the dichotomy of humanity: what we would like to do, and what we can do. While it would be great to be able to crush coal into diamonds in our bare hands or fly across the planet in the blink of an eye like Superman, mere mortals are not capable of such feats. Instead, we must be like Batman, and do everything we can to do some good in this world. To me, I’ve always seen science through the eyes of Batman: still dreaming, but dreaming about what good we can do now, with what we already know. This is why when the majority of my classmates went the way of research, I went the way of analytical work.

I have always been interested in science; even in high school, I was one of the few students who were actually interested in pursing any form of science beyond graduation. I took every science course offered and was always at the top of my classes. I was respected among my teachers as being a very capable lab student. When it came time to attend college, I chose chemistry over other sciences because I felt that chemistry offered a many more opportunities for direct use of its principles in every corner of the world and in everything that we do. Also, my father had been a chemistry student and I always appreciated his analytical abilities and felt like that was a trait that I wanted to learn.

In college, I worked hard to learn the basic scientific principles I would need later, and I always became a student that my fellow classmates relied on to be a leader in the lab groups. My hard work made me eligible for the senior honor’s program at the university, and my research in unnatural amino acid synthesis gave me the opportunity to become familiar with a number of analytical methods well beyond the scope and duration that the regular class laboratories allowed.

Since graduation, I have been employed at an environmental testing company in the organic analytical department. I have been solely responsible for the volatiles analyses we conduct, and as a result I have learned an enormous amount about the maintenance and operation of the gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer as well as about the ability to analyze problems and figure out their solutions.

I believe a master’s degree in forensic science will give me the knowledge I will need to be an effective and positive addition to this growing field. It is my dream to continue to use my knowledge of chemistry and my analytical disposition in new and exciting ways, and I feel that forensic science is the best way for me to do that. Most importantly, I don’t feel that I have learned enough yet to be as effective as I could be and continued education will undoubtedly be the best course to take. As for specifically selecting the University of Illinois at Chicago, UIC consistently came up at the top of lists when I searched for forensic science programs as well as being recommended by the criminal justice faculty at my undergraduate university. And while a number of universities may offer forensic science master’s degrees, UIC has the added benefit of a big city experience. I have resided in Mississippi for nearly my entire life, and while I have definitely enjoyed my experiences, I would love the chance to live in different part of the country and in a different kind of environment.

I selected forensic science because I enjoy its practical applications as well as the tremendous good it can do in using our knowledge of science to protect everyone. As I gradually developed as a scientist, I came to understand what I enjoyed the most about chemistry: using a set of clues to solve a problem. Everyone enjoys a good mystery and I enjoy solving them.

Pieces of the Whole

I overheard one of the local improv teachers here give the following advice to a student: “shortform is for the audience, longform is for the improvisers”, which is a very distressing argument for a teacher to make and is, while very ignorant, one that comes up time and time again as an occasionally legitimate argument against longform improvisations: longform is a artistic device where nothing happens.

The AV Club published a very interesting article that explored the modern style of storytelling in some of the more “acclaimed” programming (e.g. Breaking Bad, Luck, The Sopranos). The way seasons, and in some cases, entire shows are divined now to reward sustained and completist viewing of seasons – the emphasis has shifted the emphasis to how an episode fits into the greater picture of the show. This is very similar to the way we think longform should work: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A great longform piece is enriched by the order and placement of the pieces therein, elevating it in meaning and purpose. But this means that we may sacrifice making those parts worthwhile in name of focusing on the “bigger message”. This precocious, and dare I say pretentious approach to creating is what threatens to drag any unit of art down.

Shortform's strength is also it's greatest weakness: a slavish amount of attention heaped on a single game, that comes at the expense of fitting it into the fabric of the larger piece. Shortform is as guilty of being shortsighted as longform is of being farsighted in this respect. We spend an inordinate amount of attention in a Harold trying to say “the something” that we can potentially hobble the entire production. This slavish devotion to perfection in the piece is an admirable and lofty goal, but the focus must always be on the present. The great improv questions of 1) if this is true, what else is true, and 2) if this is true, why is it true suddenly become more about the entire act of improvising, rather than just tools to play good scenes. (Del even said that the end is in the beginning.)

An over-attention to detail, one that is meticulous, even compulsive and obsessive, can derail attempts to be experimentative and explorative, stagnating innovation. The entire piece should be reflective, not the scenes. The scenes should be concrete, and something should happen in each and every one of them. These concrete blocks build on each other to create something meaningful – hollow, empty bricks build nothing of significance.

So how did we get here? Well, I have to agree with the AV Club's conclusion that “creating a lengthy, layered narrative is really fucking hard.” People like that teacher up there have no doubt seen some improv group that got in their own way of having fun in the moment and got caught up in being profound, which groups will do as they learn to master the craft. You see those kinds of shows in an audience mostly full of improvisers, because improvisers are far more forgiving of an ambitious move that completely fails than a typical non-improviser audience would be. But you don't get to the point of being able to tell deeper stories by refusing to take the risk.

A Writer's World

In An Evening with Kevin Smith, Smith said something along the lines of “the writer creates his ideal world when he writes.” For him then, he said that apparently in his ideal world, people have endless conversations about pop culture and relationships. By that same token, in Tarantino’s world, violent criminals wax philosophic and then maim each other, and in Scorsese’s criminals try desperately to keep a clear conscience in the face of doing bad things for family. Pretty cool actually. The writer allows us a brief peek into not how he sees the world, but how he wishes the world could be.

I’ve read and heard a number of times, from countless sources, that the improviser is more than just an actor in a play. The improviser is the actor, director, editor, stuntman, costume designer, set designer, and writer all in one, doing every conceivable action simultaneously. Well, if we’re technically writing our play, in the moment, then by extension of the previous corollary, then we are also showing the audience our ideal world (albeit a mutually agreed upon and group derived ideal world). This is one of the things that propels improv from just jokey stuff into a much more meaningful experience. Or as Jason Chin once said, “You have to have an opinion about what you’re talking about.” It’s not enough to merely explore mousetraps (very basic scenes; I mean, how many scenes can we have about mousetraps?) we need to explore what mousetraps are symbolic of (I don’t know, stifled domestic life?) but also to have an opinion about it. The audience doesn’t necessarily have to agree with it, but that’s okay, because stuff that you’re opinionated and passionate about makes for great improv.

Now, what I’ve said is no big revelation. I haven’t exposed any great mysteries about improv, or art, or life (not the least of which because I don’t presuppose to have any). But here’s what is important; the first rule of writing is “write what you know”, so the improv corollary is “improvise what you know”. It’s not really a big surprise that most improv pieces revolve around relationships and superheroes; look who is improvising them. When I was playing with my college group, we invented and modified a number of games to make them more superhero-esque. Why? Because were a bunch of comic book nerds. That’s what interested us. My San Diego group, the Ugly Truth, struggled for a little bit when we tried to experiment with more slow, dramatic improvised scene work. Obviously, things weren’t going well because we weren’t improvising what we liked. Show me an improv group that is struggling with a new form or technique, and I’ll guarantee that they’re doing something they don’t enjoy.

Without a doubt, I’m a big advocate of fun first when it comes to improv. A group that is enjoying what they’re doing will be immensely more watchable than a team that is doing something meaningful and hating every minute of it. Or rather, we’re not all Scorsese or Tarantino, some of us are just Smith. Find, as a group, what you enjoy, are passionate about, and interested in, and the rest will follow suit.

Elves = Virgins

Few character races are as indelible as the elf (save for maybe the dwarf). The elf has a wide reaching empire through the realm of fantasy stories; a tall humanoid with pointy ears, a forest dweller, slightly magical with heightened senses, and a master with the bow and arrow. But for all their useful additions to any group of adventurers, one question has always bothered me: are elves virgins?

So first off, we need to establish a few important facts about elves, the most important of which is their extreme age. Lord of the Rings (LotR) mythology says that elves, while they can be killed, are still technically immortal. Even non LotR canon that does not explicitly indicate immortality tends to making elves nigh-immortal, living for mulitples of centuries (i.e. still a very long time). And, like a number of other immortal races, elves remain roughly ageless (in human standards), keeping their same youthful looks, energy, and stamina, both physically and mentally. Therefore, we can make the assumption that elves may remain sexually vital, in at least reproductive terms for the vast duration of their either very long, or potentially endless lives. This is a very important point, because most other immortal or near immortal races are indicated to be incapable of reproduction; vampires (most universes, at least) and even the Highlander-universe immortals are all explicitly stated to be incapable of spawning children either among themselves or with normal humans. Now, if we assume that a single elf then is capable of living millenia (or forever), is capable of producing progeny, and is capable of producing said progeny for a comparatively long time, then we run into a very serious problem with the elven population over time.

In a normal species, reproduction is limited by the time it takes to come to sexual maturity (puberty) and then on the back end by gradual march towards death. Among humans, the lion's share of the bell curve for reproduction is focused between 16 and 51 (the average age of the last period for a woman and the onset of menopause). This is taking an average life expectancy of the modern human being 67 years of age. But part of what keeps our population stable is the ratio between death and birth rates. Too high on the death side, and the population declines in size, but go the other way, and the population grows. However, in the case of elves, when you have a death rate that is effectively zero (excepting any major wars), even a single birth causes the population to grow. If allowed to reproduce ad libitum, the elf population would grow exponentially, because a single elf mother could mother hundreds of elflings during her life, if she reproduced once per year. Allowed to deal with itself, the elf population could easily blossom and take over the world in a few hundred years, because they reproduce so readily with no deaths to offset the population growth. (Just look at what happened when rabbits were introduced in Australia – a small warren of 12 European rabbits were released in 1859, and within 10 years 2 million could be shot or trapped annually without making any change in population size.)

Now the Elves, given their longer lifespans and their reported wise natures, would no doubt have realized the potential their race has to completely dominate any planet they are on. Four elf mates can double themselves every two years, and they can do that forever. Given that elves don't want to drown out every other species (effectively killing their own species in the end due to overcrowding), elves would have undoubtedly made certain stipulations about mating (probably a maximum of one or two children per couple, like that Christopher Lambert movie Fortress) this is because the elven culture is always portrayed as wise and self-aware. But given that even small increases can almost permanently change the demographics (given that a new addition will never actually leave), what is more likely is that Elven leaders would hold a very tight hold over reproduction. For one, given that any new elves will have to become permanent members of the gene pool, the Elven high council would undoubtedly approve any mating to ensure that only the highest quality of new elf was being produced. In fact, look at the scene again from Helm's Deep when the elf army shows up to back up the Fellowship and humans, and tell me that those hundreds of elite and identical looking soldiers are not the result of controlled breeding and eugenics. Additionally, since LotR elves at the very least never die unless there is war, reproduction would likely only be approved after some elves died, or when the leadership decided it was time to increase the size of the population. (On the plus side, the massive casualties at Helm's Deep meant that there was a lot of state-dictated elf boning going on.)

So, back to the original thesis; given that Elves who are following the society-approved mandates cannot reproduce without state approval, and even then only if they meet certain genetic criteria for reproduction, and taking into account the dearth of available birth control methods (excluding Orc-skin condoms and pulling out), any attempt to copulate among elves, is a risky business, especially if it ends up in conception. (Think about how pissed Hugo Weaving was at Liv Tyler for falling in love with Viggo Mortensen in Fellowship. He's not mad because she's going outside of the race – he's mad because she is diluting a carefully constructed über-elf genetic makeup as well as potentially producing offspring that could potentially live forever, and offset the entire population balance of Middle-Earth.) Given the potential penalties for screwing with that, the only sensible solution for a wise elf is to avoid sex altogether, meaning that Legolas, and potentially nearly every elf seen in any fantasy story is likely still a virgin.