One of the nice parts about my job is that, on the internet, niche wins. I’m always more comfortable on the outer edges of things, looking at and trying to present things out of the mainstream. And online, if you hit the right nerve, that interest can be productive enough, traffic-wise, to be indulged on a pretty consistent basis.
It would sound strange to call The Avengers, the box office record-shattering film that crossed $1 billion worldwide this weekend and owns the biggest opening theatrical bow in US history, an off-beat curiosity, but as with so many other things in popular American culture, it is comprised of not just a well-exploited surface, but a rich and deep core of history.
I was, in my adolescent years, a major comic book fan; Spider-Man was my favorite hero (a weak, wise-cracking nerd turned superhero was quite aspirational), but I loved the entire Marvel Comics universe. With The Avengers approaching, I decided to delve back into the comics, and found myself just as enthralled by the heightened reality of that world. I also began deep diving into the world of Joss Whedon — I’d always been a fan, but I became obsessed with learning as much as I could about his super fans, those who congregate on the internet and dissect every line of dialogue from Buffy, Angel, Firefly and his other projects.
My two-foot leap back into that geek world proved rewarding, both from a creative point of view — I truly do have a home there — and professionally (and I use that term lightly).
First came my big feature on Joss Whedon fans. I spoke to Nathan Fillion, Drew Goddard, a number of TV experts and eventually Joss himself for the story, and was so glad that the members of the Whedonverse truly enjoyed and shared the story. I was terrified of getting something wrong or coming off condescending, so that they approved of the work was a major relief (and, I’ll take it as an accomplishment).
Then, I contacted a disaster assessment firm to estimate the fiscal cost of the damage done to New York City in the climactic third act of The Avengers. It was a fun story (which you can read here), and I have to give crazy thanks to Kinetic Analysts for being so gung-ho and into the project, which I figured would be somewhat popular. I didn’t quite picture how popular it would be.
It was honestly one of the most buzzed about stories of the week (outside of, you know, Obama’s gay marriage endorsement and Mitt Romney giving that kid a bigot buzz cut). It was picked up by a ton of great news sites and blogs, as well as CNN, The Guardian and Le Monde (Le Fucking Monde!). Bloomberg News even had a segment about it on television.
As someone who aggregates news quite often, it was interesting to see it happen from the other side of the news desk, so to speak. I imagine editors handing out the assignment and writers working quickly to write it up, grabbing a few facts and adding some color to fill in the rest. The internet really does work on a 24/7, rapid-fire basis, and it’s amazing to see something spread and then explode.
I’m still terrible at writing and updating this blog, and I still blame it on writing all day as a profession, but now the strings of words that I conjure up professionally have a new home: The Hollywood Reporter.
Yes, I’ve moved on from my job at The Huffington Post after fifteen great months. I learned invaluable lessons about writing, reporting, the internet and show business while at HuffPost, and I couldn’t imagine a better launching pad for any young writer on the web — especially one such as myself who always feared a total failure to launch. You can still read my long and hopefully chronologically-improving feature stories at my archive.
I’ll be doing a lot of the same things at THR as I did at HuffPost, but under the guidance of some of the most experienced, connected and knowledgable writers, reporters and editors in the entertainment game. I’m excited to cover junkets and events, as always, and also get a closer look at how the industry functions (and, its dysfunction) and continue my personal exploration of its larger place in society.
And no, I’m not going Hollywood; after spending a week out in LA training and meeting the staff, I’ll be working out of the publication’s tiny NYC office, which is ironically just two floors up from where my friends at HuffPost are.
In other news, as my last major piece of journalism at HuffPost, I wrote a long story on Act of Valor, that Navy SEALs movie, commissioned by the Navy itself, that won the box office a few weeks back. I explored the film’s origins and intent, as well as the military’s long, not so fantastic history of manipulating films (though, eager to save and make a buck, studios and producers are often happy to be twisted).
The story got some big attention, both positive and batshit insane. Andrew Breitbart’s Big Hollywood posted about it just a week before his death, earning me lots of hate mail and some great accusations, like assertions that I must have rooted for the Nazis in the Battle of the Bulge, which took place 41 years before my birth to Jewish parents.
But the producers of NPR’s All Things Considered liked it enough to have me on the show as a guest to discuss the film and the military’s role in Hollywood, and while I was caught off guard and had little time to prepare, I hopefully acquitted myself well on the show. Listen here, and if you don’t like it, just lie to me about that if we happen to meet.
In any case, I’m hard at work at THR trying to put together my first features for that fantastic publication. Right now I’m researching and writing a story on the amazing cult of Joss Whedon, who created Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Dr. Horrible and is now directing The Avengers. I’ve long been a Firefly and Dr. Horrible fan, and have been marathoning Buffy to prepare to interview Whedon early next month. Not a bad bit of research.
In April I’ll also be covering the Tribeca Film Festival quite exhaustively. I loved it this year, and at THR I’ll have a chance to put together even more in depth, exclusive stories. Stay tuned for a piece with James Franco; he’s debuting Francophenia, an experimental film about him filming General Hospital (you think he just did that for fun?) and I’m hoping to get trippy with some coverage.
I think that’s it for now. Mostly because I have to go write for THR.
I wrote this a few days ago about Jeremy Lin, the media coverage chasing and exalting and exploiting his story, and where we’ve seen this before (and personal anecdote included).
Earlier this morning, ESPN.com ran a headline about Knicks sensation Jeremy Lin, the 23-year-old, out-of-nowhere point guard who has lit up the league and lifted a disappointing team to national prominence once again. He’s got legitimate NBA size and build, and real game, too, with the ability to drive hard to the basket, make impressive passes and nail last second three pointers. He’s been the key to the Knicks’ sudden seven game winning streak, and ball-crazy New York — along with the sensation-crazy internet — has been going nuts for Lin, including finding every conceivable pun for a last name that stretches across his jersey alone in a league of Andersons, Jameses and Millers.
Jeremy Lin is Asian — a Taiwanese-American from Palo Alto, California who went to Harvard — and after a turnover-laden game that marked his first loss as a Knicks starter, ESPN.com splashed the words “A Chink in the Armor” underneath a photo of him mishandling the basketball. The internet — the same internet that has turned a God-loving novice into a search term that out-Googles Jesus — is outraged. And, of course, the headline was egregious, offensive and downright racist. But to act as if this gross mistake wasn’t coming, to fake shock that anyone could even think of his race, is nearly as bad.
As a sports-crazed kid growing up around New York City in the early part of the previous decade, I had posters and carefully-scissored Post and Daily News back pages chronicling the brief and glorious run of the National League Champion Mets lining my bedroom walls. I had Mike Piazza, the super star, Edgardo Alfonzo, the quiet rock, and Robin Ventura, the charismatic face of the team, staring at me from all directions, as if to say, we couldn’t have done it without you, Jordan.
My real sports idols, however, were Gary Cohen and Howie Rose, the play-by-play broadcasters who wove those tales of hardball glory over WFAN, which I’d listen to with the TV on mute and was the number one pre-set on all the various radios that I kept stashed under my pillow for all those extra-inning games on school nights. As scrawny Jewish kid, I knew from an early age that my best chance to make it in pro sports wasn’t on the field, but in the media.
This is my fun new blog that I hope to fill with references to things I like and also some things I don’t like, sometimes.
As I exacerbated my early on-set arthritis to get all the names of all the Oscar nominees down in a news entry in my customary brainless way, I couldn’t help but get angry. Normally, I take everything I report on with a grain of salt, but something didn’t sit right with me.
My favorite movies of 2011 were “50/50,” “Drive,” “Shame,” and “Young Adult.” Sure, that probably and perhaps embarrassingly indicates what a 20-something I am, but hey, those were great movies. They speak to my generation in a smart, edgy and ultimately empathetic way, avoiding treacle wile delivering messages that aren’t always easy to hear. The definition of an Oscar-worthy film, I’d think. Yet between them, the three films earned exactly zero Oscar nominations.
Why is that? What do films like “War Horse” and “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” say about the human condition that “50/50,” “Drive,” “Shame,” and “Young Adult” do not? And why were their stars ignored, in favor of people like Max von Sydow, who played an elderly mute in the Stephen Daldry weeper?
All I could surmise is that those questionably nominated films weren’t better than my favorite films; they just hit closer to home for the older, whiter, male-er and more affluent Oscar voters. Which is why I wrote this essay, excerpted here and available in full on HuffPost.
Sparkling films aimed at Millennials and 30-somethings were left completely off the list. No love for Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s courageous performance as a young man dealing with the physical, social and philosophical ramifications of a sudden cancer diagnosis. Seth Rogen, one of his generation’s biggest stars, co-starred in the film, 50/50, as did Anna Kendrick and Bryce Dallas Howard; they all put in stellar performances for a brave script based on the experiences of writer Will Reiser, who was shut out of Best Original Screenplay.
The Diablo Cody-written dark comedy about a struggling, alcoholic writer who heads to her hometown to chase old high school dreams, Young Adult, was also left out. Charlize Theron got a golden Globe nomination for her work, but was ignored by the Academy, as was her fantastic co-star Patton Oswalt Was it because she cursed and drank? Bridesmaids got a Best Original Screenplay nom, a supporting actress nod for Melissa McCarthy, but no Best Picture love. Yes, it was about a serious topic, but was Extremely Loud really a better movie?
The year’s two breakout actors were also left out. Wildly talented and a human Internet meme, Ryan Gosling received two Golden Globe nominations, and while his part in Crazy, Stupid, Love. of course didn’t warrant an Oscar nod, turns in The Ides of March and Drive were certainly contenders. He received a Globe nod for the former, and wildly enthusiastic reviews for the latter. Playing an enigmatic, soft-spoken but hard-living stunt driver, he stunned with a mix of violence and smoldering charm that made the neo-noir Drive one of the year’s most-loved films.
The other big breakout actor, Michael Fassbender, was in four movies this year, including Shame, in which he went full frontal nude in a turn as an emotionally distant sex addict. It was a difficult role that earned him a Globe nomination and plenty of buzz — including a shout out from Clooney while theDescendants star was accepting his trophy — and it was a shock when he was left out of the field. Was it too risque for the Academy, who went with Gary Oldman and Demián Bichir instead? Oldman, of course, has long deserved an Oscar nomination, but the awards shouldn’t — and this is wishful thinking — be lifetime achievement recognitions that settle scores for past snubs.
So, it turns out I’m very bad at updating my own website. I’ll chalk it up to being a selfless worker with thoughts only on humbly serving my employer (and will in no way acknowledge the contribution of my own laziness to this absence).
Anyway, I got to interview Karl Pilkington, Ricky Gervais’ best friend/punching bag, about the new season of ‘An Idiot Abroad.’ He’s basically the nicest guy to whom I’ve ever had the pleasure of speaking. He also provided me with some very unique insight. Here’s an unedited portion of the transcript; the edited Q&A can be found, of course, at HuffPost.
You don’t seem to be that impressed by nature.
You see, I am. It’s just that sometimes, I just question it. I love nature, it’s probably my most favorite thing. I don’t watch much telly, the telly hardly goes on, but the things I do watch are sort of nature programs, and something about the oceans and the amount of weird fish that’s in there. But all I’m doing is questioning it sometimes, because people make a lot of fuss over animals. And it’s just all this stuff, things going extinct or whatever. I just sort of say, what does it matter? We’ll all die out eventually. Humans will be gone. And all I’m saying is, when people worry about polar bears disappearing or whatever, it’s like well that’s life, things will come and go, well we’ll find new species…
The dodo went, it died out, nothing’s changed, we’ve just carried on. But we’ve gotten to the point that we want to save everything. The population is going up, we save every animal — things are meant to die out. If dinosaurs were wandering about now, we’d be saving them. If something dies out, it dies for a reason. The wooly mammoth, we’re not responsible for that, yet people are saying it’s our fault that all these things are dying out. No, everything has a life span. I’m just saying, I love all the animal stuff, but I’m also aware that things aren’t meant to last forever. But honestly, if there was a job opportunity coming up, in terms of what I’d want to do a program on, nature is the thing I’d love to do, it’s just that I’m not qualified enough.
So you’d want to do a naturalist program?
I wanted to do something ages ago, we did it on the radio show. It’s called “Do We Need Them?” What I’d do is I’d go through all the species that exist and just say, right, i we take that off the planet? What effect would it have? It’s just like bees. People say if bees die out, the world would end apparently. Now, I don’t know if that’s true, if that’s some bee enthusiast who managed to write a good document and people believe this. I read the other day that bees have started to work in airports, they teach them to sniff out bombs. Yeah, they’ve taught them, instead of having sniffer dogs all the time, they’ve got bees working in airports. I havent’ seen it physically happen, but they can sniff out a bomb. I don’t know if that’s true, but everything’s evolving. Things are changing. Animals are dying out, but some are also changing. You’ve got dogs doing more jobs than they ever had in their lives now. When you’ve got bees doing jobs, who’d have thought that would have happen?
So maybe in the program, I’d look at, I’d go are bees needed to keep the planet going? If so, why are they doing that job? What’s that animal doing, what’s the panda doing? Everyone’s panicking about the panda dying out, but what’s a panda doing? Every time I see a panda, it’s on its ass doing nothing. It’s not like it’s having kids. Well leave him! What would happen without the panda? That’s all I’m saying. It’s just looking at nature, it is amazing, but what’s it all doing? Do we need everything that’s on here? And I’m not saying the human race is any better than the animal kingdom. I keep getting leaflets through the door, flamingos are getting caught up in carrier bug sor something, turtles are choking. It’s always animals that need help!
Would the world be okay without flamingoes and turtles?
Flamingoes, my life wouldn’t change, we don’t have flamingoes in London, to me it’s like they’re extinct, I never see one. And when I do see one, they seem to be standing there with one leg in the air, they’re not moving much, they’re like an ornament. I’m sure they have some job, but what would happen if we took them out of the system? That’s all I’m saying. I don’t think it’ll get commissioned, I don’t think I’ll get the program, but it’s just an idea.
Last May, I said I was returning to this space to write an essay a day. Well, I’ve been writing a lot, but only for the place that pays me to do so (aside from half-baked screenplay scribbles, of course). That may make me a sell-out, but I prefer to think of it as taking advantage of an opportunity.
I don’t mean for this to sound like a humblebrag, but my earnestness is one of my lesser-appreciated traits, so there’s every chance that I’m about to fail in my attempts to convince of my honesty. In any case, I can happily report that I have been spending lots of time watching movies and somehow getting access to some of Hollywood’s top stars, writers and directors. I really do marvel at my ability to bamboozle the world into allowing me to do these things, as my current state — writing at 1 am by a lamp lamp light, eating chocolate pretzels — would not translate into a portrait of journalistic or artistic merit.
Nonetheless and regardless how it’s happened, I’ve done some fun feature stories. I want to write more here because I can say things a bit more unfiltered (though I have a steady stream of merkin, fart and testicle eating stories at my current outlet) and because as a writer, what do I have other than a terrible need to fill the crater where, like the land displaced by a flaming asteroid, self-worth once stood?
A few of my most recent features are below. More to come, I hope.
Sir Ben Kingsley: The first knight I’ve ever interviewed. He was surprisingly candid about the state of Hollywood.
Michael C. Hall: I’ve loved “Dexter” for years, and we talked about how it should end. I’m 95% sure he’s not a serial killer in real life.
Jason Reitman & Diablo Cody: For their film “Young Adult,” which is one of my top 5 favorite this year. Brave and uncompromising. And hilarious.
The cast of “War Horse”: Got stood up by the equine actors, but otherwise, a fine bunch of Brits.
Albert Brooks: I didn’t realize he was calling me. It shocked the shit out of me and I sounded like an idiot. Once I semi-recovered, we talked about “Drive” and Hollywood, especially awards season.
Trent Reznor: Surprisingly, he didn’t give any hint that he was the dude whose band inspired a lot of kids who wanted to beat me up in middle school.
I was in the middle of writing some long-winded piece about why I’ve been gone from this space for so long, but largely, I don’t think anyone cares, and anyway, what it boils down to is that I got a job and write a lot elsewhere.
I will say, though, that I have a new goal of writing an essay per day, which I will start tomorrow (of course). So that’s what’s kickstarting this site up again, and so really that’s all that needs to be said, in the interest of both brevity and not being a long-winded, self-indulgent asshole beyond whatever level of that dubious distinction is already conferred upon me by having a website under my own name.
Until I get that first new essay up, I thought I’d link to this piece, which is, in my opinion (and really I’m the only one thinking about it), the most important article I’ve written in the past five months. I had the opportunity to interview Lee Hirsch, director of the new documentary, “The Bully Project,” and our long conversation about his film (which I’ve seen twice) and experiences was both heartbreaking and inspiring (and I say this as largely a nihilist).
As a blizzard batters nowhere Iowa, a nowhere boy sits underground, remembering. While his classmates take the day free from school to live in the moment, to be careless kids building igloos and riding sleds, this boy escapes to the past, watching home video of himself as a happy toddler, swaying to the music his mother plays on the radio.
Alex Hopkins’ daily struggle against bullying, clockwork punishment far harsher than the whipping winds of midwestern winter snow, is one of the heart-wrenching stories of isolation and childhoods destroyed featured in filmmaker Lee Hirsch’s new documentary, “The Bully Project.” A look into the lives — or, even more sadly, the taken lives — of victims of extreme bullying, the film, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was quickly picked up by The Weinstein Company, works to personalize the issue of bullying, so often condemned in limp lip-service platitudes, with micro looks that speak to universal suffering.
Back in New Jersey for the evening, I was talking to my 15-year old brother - he was watching immortal clips from Chappelle’s Show, which was way before his time - when I mentioned the comedy that widened my eyes and inspired me to pursue this horrible path: the Saturday Night Live cast of the late 80s to mid-90s.
I’m not sure why it shocked me, or even more so upset me, but Reece - born in 1995 - had no idea what I was talking about. He had never seen Wayne’s World (the most formative movie of my youth), he had “I think kinda” heard of Chris Farley (what?!) but had never seen Tommy Boy, only knew of Adam Sandler’s more recent and regrettable work, and knew David Spade from Joe Dirt.
Yikes.
These were the men that informed my burgeoning sense of humor in the late-90s; I would buy stacks of the “Best of” season recaps on VHS (!!!) and watch them over and over again, delighting in the Chris Farley Show, the Super Fans, Wayne’s World, Church Lady, Matt Foley (and his van down by the river), Hans and Franz, the Hyper Hypo and so many more.
He didn’t know shit about them. Anchorman, released in 2003, was reaching back in comedy to him.
Phil Hartman died before Reece was two years old. I watched him weekly on News Radio. Lord.
Aside from making me feel generations apart and depressingly old, I sat Reece down for the first of many old comedy lessons. My dad used to do this to me, force-feeding me Monty Python and John Belushi (of course, I wasn’t complaining), and now it was my turn to educate a comedy naif.
Beyond a fun reminiscence of all the great comedy that absolutely shaped my brain, there’s actually a kernel of an important lesson to be taken from this. I think the gaps between generations - and the problems they tend to cause, politically and socially - happen because opposing groups assume that the other understands their values and knows where they’re coming from.
Sure, this is just comedy, but it’s representative of something more. Dana Carvey played Ross Perot in some amazing sketches, but Reece had absolutely no idea who Perot was. He didn’t get the gag behind the Patrick Swayze-Chris Farley Chippendales sketch - it recalls Swayze’s Dirty Dancing “Time of my life” - because the movie came out six years before he was born and is a cultural relic.
At first, it blew my mind, because I was so well versed in these things, and we’re still ostensibly of the same generation (stretching brotherhood boundaries at nine years apart). But it makes sense, and I’m sure there are cultural things that he knows about that are flying right by me (and which I’d of course call stupid).
I spent tonight teaching Reece about all these great things that I loved, but most of his friends won’t get that, and will go on, leaving what are becoming fossils in their wake. We’re all talking past each other, assuming that our experiences are THE experiences, the most important and should-be standards for others. I guess that’s why progress is always such a struggle - we’re all worshipping different acts and screaming that other people just don’t get it.
We should all stay up late into the night and laugh, I think.
A stark portrait of a forgotten people, painted in rust on a crumbling canvas, Nebraska — Bruce Springsteen’s seminal acoustic album — told the stories of a left-behind working class, scratching and clawing in a cold, darkening world. As I listened to its quiet, twang and gravel tracks on the subway today, I looked around and realized that, while the album was recorded nearly 30 years ago, it was a lament for modern times as well.
In his second, and deeper, foray into the minds and cries of the struggling heart of America, Springsteen lays bare the struggles of we might call — in arrogance and pride and denial — Middle America. He sings of the pain and desperation of economic hardship, the wayward paths it opens up and the bleak uncertainty it inspires. While our TVs are bigger, our computers more powerful and our billboards glossier, in many ways, it’s three decades later and nothing has changed.
Take, first, the disillusioned song “Atlantic City”, a song of south Jersey sisyphus.
Well I got a job and tried to put my money away But I got debts that no honest man can pay
Like our mortgage and savings crisis today. But it gets worse. Hope fades:
Now I been lookin’ for a job but it’s hard to find Down here it’s just winners and losers and don’t get caught on the wrong side of that line Well I’m tired of comin’ out on the losin’ end
Winners and losers. A distinct line. Even more so than in 1981, there is a great chasm in our country, the one percent in their Wall Street ivory towers and the rest whose modest homes and fortunes are so often slipping into that ever-widening fiscal and cultural gap. Though terribly misguided — and entirely counter to their interests — the Tea Party is a reaction to this inequity, this seemingly permanent feeling of losing.
It’s a perfect segue to Springsteen’s next song, “Mansion on the Hill”. An actual physical embodiment of the separation between the gilded few and the striving most, the narrator grows up dreaming of a place he can never reach.
There’s place out on the edge of town sir Risin’ above the factories and the fields Now ever since I was a child I can remember that mansion on the hill
In the day you can see the children playing On the road that leads to those gates of hardened steel Steel gates that completely surround sir the mansion on the hill
As victims of the recession — not to mention predatory loans and foreclosure-happy banks — lose their homes, we look up to that hill, gated and exclusive, its lights glimmering down on darkening horizons.
There is little hope, it seems, in waiting for old jobs and dreams to return; the economy is changing, experiencing “creative destruction”, a dangerous jargon to those caught in the gears of the bulldozing machine. Nowhere is this more true than our manufacturing sector. Says “Johnny 99”:
Well they closed down the auto plant in Mahwah late that month Ralph went out lookin’ for a job but he couldn’t find none He came home too drunk from mixin’ Tanqueray and wine He got a gun shot a night clerk now they call ‘m Johnny 99
Now, in no situation is violence permissible, but the rates of crime is so tied to those of unemployment. If Springsteen saw dying factories in ‘81, he’d behold a vast graveyard now — unless he was witnessing their rebirth on the backs of cheaper labor.
There are more harrowing examples to be found in each track, but the point is already clear: we may now be listening to the record on iPods, but the core issues within the songs have seen little progress. Thirty years later, more factories are shuttering, more jobs are disappearing, more dreams are fading.
I often wonder how we can, as a nation, so comfortably advance through the generations as more and more of our neighbors get left in the dust. Springsteen wasn’t the first to point out these problems, of course, but his words still ring out as gasping cries for help all these years later.
