Category Archives: Cinematics

Cinematics

A Terrifying Glimpse of the Future

Over the weekend, I was somehow forced to sit through the last hour of Spy Kids 3D. I’ve never seen any of the Spy Kids films before, but it’s my understanding they’re about kids who are spies.

Spy Kids 3D is easily the worst movie I’ve ever seen, with a large asterisk. I’m not saying it’s the worst because of its content per se. In pure story/direction terms, I’ve seen much worse. Spy Kids 3D is the worst because it provided a horrifying window into our cinematic future.

The entire time Spy Kids 3D flashed before my eyes, I kept wondering to myself, What in god’s name am I watching? I didn’t hate it, I simply didn’t understand it. It felt like watching somebody else play a video game. It’s a movie starring real actors which still feels resoundingly fake. Nothing but the faces look remotely real, as if everyone is shoving their heads through holes in carnival cutouts. Needless to say, the dialogue leaves much to be desired, and the story is little more than a whisper. Things moved very fast and I had no idea why. Scenes would end and the next would begin with barely a connection between them.

One thing Spy Kids 3D has in its favor, particularly towards the end, is that the celebrity cameos get so ridiculous and unnecessary, it’s almost admirable. One famous person suddenly appearing, then then another piled right on top, and another and another, like a Dagwood Sandwich of Stupid. And at least the celebs give a bit of an effort; especially Sylvester Stallone, who chews up scenery with gusto.

But in one terrifying moment, it occurred to me that maybe the burden was not on this movie to be more coherent, but on me to adjust my mind to it. Because I realized that my daughter had no issues watching Spy Kids 3D. It’s sometimes difficult to tell how much a four-year-old actually enjoys something, since a kid that young will consume virtually anything you put in front of them. But she will tune something out if it doesn’t appeal to her, and this definitely appealed to her. I was openly laughing at certain things that I found ridiculous, and she would shoot me scowls, silently saying, C’mon, dad. (Yes, she does this to me already. I have a long road ahead.)

Because the world she is inheriting, this is a world in which fare like Spy Kids 3D is the baseline for kids’ entertainment. Consider this: Spy Kids 3D came out in 2003, which is eight years ago. Three-D movies were unheard of back then. The success of Spy Kids 3D (almost $200 million grossed worldwide) was a huge reason why Hollywood began to throw its weight behind 3D. And yeah, 3D as a format may be on its way out again, but that only means something just as dumb and expensive is on its way.

Now, consider the Transformers franchise, which relies heavily on exploiting people’s sense of nostalgia. The Transformers movies are essentially no different than Spy Kids 3D. Mindless, disconnected scenes. Characters who barely matter. No connection to anything real. An intensely cynical view of its audience.

My daughter has no concept of commercials. Just think about that. Most kids’ channels don’t have ads these days. Maybe you think that’s a good thing, and essentially it is. But it has also made her used to a world where she gets everything she wants, uninterrupted, all the time. The idea of waiting and patience is alien to the world aimed her. So is the idea of watching anything she wouldn’t want to watch, because thanks to On Demand viewing and Netflix Instant, she knows that she can see whatever she wants to see whenever she wants to see it. Hooray?

So I almost feel like Spy Kids 3D has been placed here by the Terminator robots as a warning of what awaits us in the years to come.

Or it could just be a really shitty movie. I think I’ll keep telling myself that.

Cinematics, This Wacky World!

My Brief Career as a Professional Ghoul

Elizabeth Taylor has died, which I don’t have any particular comment on. I mean, I’m certainly not glad she’s dead; I just can’t add anything to the discussion of her lengthy career. But when she died, as many people pointed out, her New York Times obituary was written by theater/film critic Mel Gussow–who himself died almost six years ago.

This jarred two memories loose from my head. The first is that I edited a book by Mr. Gussow years ago (this one, if you’re curious) and had no idea he died, let alone died so long ago. The second is that I myself was once tasked with preemptive obituary writing.

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Cinematics, Pointless Nostalgia

A Thousand Clowns and Shep-Colored Glasses

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thousandclowns.jpgIn a recent edition of The Sound of Young America, Jesse Thorn interviewed Barry Gordon, who starred in A Thousand Clowns in its Broadway and Hollywood incarnations (1962 and 1965, respectively) as a young man. The play ran for years in New York, and the film was a big hit that won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Martin Balsam. (It was also nominated for Best Picture, among other categories.)

Nowadays, it’s a fairly obscure film, not in print in any home video format. Its general availability has hovered between “not” and “barely” for the last 30 years or so. Every now and then, you can catch  A Thousand Clowns on Turner Classic Movies, although if you blink you might miss it.

Listening to the interview with Gordon reminded me not only of how much I love this movie, but of how I first heard of this film: My longtime obsession with Jean Shepherd, who himself was obsessed with A Thousand Clowns, though in a not-quite-healthy way.

Some quick background for those in need of it (those who don’t, feel free to skip ahead a paragraph or two) Jean Shepherd is best known for writing and narrating A Christmas Story, but my love of him has more to with his radio show, which aired on WOR in New York from 1955 to 1977. It’s hard to encapsulate exactly what he did on the radio; something in the Venn intersection of improvised monologue, storytelling, and sardonic commentary on the day’s events. It was done completely off the top of his head, with no notes, outlines, or anything. It is better experienced than described, so I’d encourage the curious to check out some of my Shep-related posts, or The Brass Figlagee, a podcast that makes available hundreds of his old shows.

When he came to New York in the mid-1950s, Shepherd had an overnight show that garnered a huge following among jazz artists, writers, and other Night People (a phrase he claimed to have coined, and just may have). By his definition, a Night Person was someone who probably had a day job to get up for in the morning but preferred to stay up into the wee hours, just brooding, because they were “bugged” about some inexplicable something. His monologues were a stab at trying to get at that something.

At that time, among his many pals in the nocturnal, creative set was the future author of A Thousand Clowns, Herb Gardner. They appeared together in a neo-vadevillian revue, Look, Charlie: A Short History of the Pratfall (which also featured another erstwhile Shepherd BFF and fellow Chicagoan, Shel Silverstein). The exact content of the show has been lost to the mists of time, but peep this page from its program, in which both Shepherd and Gardner are listed with their respective credits. (Also, note the illustrations by Silverstein.)

Shepherd used to promote Gardner’s “Nebbishes” cartoons on his WOR show, embellishing the spots (as he often did to those who dared advertise on the program) with his trademark rambling. Shepherd did not have many guests on his show–he preferred to work solo–but Gardner was one of the few, and he came on the program to promote Nebbishes in person. Gardner in turn wrote the liner notes to Shep’s second LP, Will Failure Spoil Jean Shepherd?

Shortly thereafter, the two men had a falling out, and the reason was almost certainly A Thousand Clowns.

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