“Avengers…assemble!”

1. Robin Williams sees Amanda Plummer across a crowded train station and the entire scene becomes a hallucinatory ballroom dance. (The Fisher King)
2. Charlie Chaplin attaches dinner rolls to the ends of two forks and then makes them dance. (The Gold Rush)
3. Our heroes draw their guns and head out into the ambush. The final shot of the film is a freeze-frame on their approach, and a viewer is uncertain whether or not they live or die. (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid)
4. Lloyd Dobbler holds a boombox over his head and blares “In Your Eyes” as he stands in the driveway, hoping to get the attention of the love of his life. (Say Anything)
5. Indiana Jones pulls a gun and shoots his adversary rather than waste time with a drawn-out battle by sword. (Raiders of the Lost Ark)

That was my list. My list of “Top 5 Single Moments in Any Movie Ever.” All iconic. All easily recognizable. All perfect representations of why I love those particular films in the first place. A lot of thought went into that list. It wasn’t an easy list to create.

But . . . on the afternoon of Saturday, April 27, 2019, I discovered another “moment”. And now I have to decide which of the five moments I just mentioned no longer holds a place on the list. Because this newly-discovered moment trumps everything else that I’ve already added. This moment, I gotta tell you, is a moment that I have been waiting to see for pretty much my entire life.

This is the point where I feel obligated to provide two warnings: a) I will be, from this sentence forward, discussing and spoiling plot points from The Avengers: Endgame. If you have not seen the movie yet, you may want to STOP READING NOW! b) I’m about to come across as the geekiest geeky geek that ever did geeky geek. I would apologize for that if there was anything that I could possibly do to help it. But my statement above– you know, the one about “waiting to see this moment for pretty much my entire life”?– is not hyperbolic in any way. It is, quite literally, the truth.

I have been an avid reader and collector of comic books for almost my entire life. It started right around kindergarten with The Fantastic Four, a comic that was also read and enjoyed by my grandfather, a man I greatly admired. He had stacks of these comic books in a cardboard box next to a chair on a back porch that no one ever seemed to use. Then, it was The Amazing Spider-Man, a comic book mainstream enough that it was available at local libraries. And then . . . I was introduced to Captain America. A dear friend of mine had an obsession with Captain America comics because his father, who had served in the military, and his grandfather, who had seen combat in the Korean War, were both fans of the character. As opposed to my grandfather, who had a stack of about fifty assorted issues of Fantastic Four, my friend’s father and grandfather were collectors. They had almost every issue. They had been collecting them for years. For decades, even. They were in ratty condition from years of mishandling and abuse, but they had them. I must have read every single issue fifty times.

Jump ahead to middle school. I’m purchasing my own comics with my own allowance, so funds are tight. I can only afford to regularly buy maybe two titles a month. I get Fantastic Four and Daredevil. Another friend gets Amazing Spider-Man and The Punisher. A third friend gets The Avengers and X-Men. A fourth gets Captain America and The Incredible Hulk. You get the idea. We shared the comics amongst the group, I allowed them to read my comics in exchange for their comics, etcetera etcetera. We were able to keep up on story elements and new character introductions without having to purchase the comics ourselves. To wit: I wasn’t buying Captain America any longer, but I was still obsessed and still following the character religiously.

Jump ahead to adulthood. I still collect comics. Correction: I collect one comic. But technology being what it is, with advancements being what they are, I can still read all of the comics I used to read. The only difference is that I do it digitally on my laptop or smartphone. I currently have a digital collection that contains more comics than I can ever read in my lifetime. Don’t judge me.

At any rate . . . the point, right? I’m getting to it. All of this seemingly-endless backstory just to make clear that I love Captain America. And have since I was wee. It is not too far of a stretch to say that I learned to read in the first place with Captain America comics. It is a fiction character for which I harbor a love that is very, very real.

The afternoon of Saturday, April 27, 2019, I head to the theater to see Endgame. I post something on Facebook about how the movie starts in ten minutes. I make some snarky remark about needing a ride home if they kill Captain America because I will be too inconsolable to drive. I have my ginger ale, my popcorn. The trailers are beginning. A few minutes in, it occurs to me that I may have not turned off the ringer on my phone. I double check to make sure and see that I  have just received a text from Karen that says “message me when you get out!” Knowing that she had seen the movie the night before, I immediately know, deep in my heart, that Steve Rogers is going to die in this movie. Karen just wants to be the first say “I’m sorry for your loss”, knowing what this character means to me. Right?

Wrong.

As it turns out, Captain America does not die in this movie.

As opposed to Black Widow, who dies after a fight with Hawkeye over which one gets the right to sacrifice themselves. Or Tony Stark, who was the beginning of this franchise and has become its emotional core. But those two deaths didn’t make me cry. I was already crying by the time Tony Stark bites the dust, and I had been for about a half hour.

What made me start crying? Two words. Uttered by Captain America. “Avengers . . . assemble!” I started bawling. And that wasn’t even the part I had waited my whole life to see. That part was a few minutes earlier.

Thor is battling Thanos. Thor reaches out for Mjolnir, his trusted hammer. Mjolnir begins to stir and rise. Mjolnir sails across the screen . . . over Thor’s head . . . and lands IN CAPTAIN AMERICA’S HAND! I’ll repeat that: CAPTAIN AMERICA WIELDS THE HAMMER OF THOR! I don’t know what happens next because I lost my god damn mind. I did hear Thor shout: “I knew it!” I thought to myself: “I knew it, too!” And then I was just a melted puddle of nerdy goo, fourteen years old again, and I pretty much stayed that way until the end of the movie.

Captain America has wielded the hammer many times in the comic throughout the years. The very notion that it was a possibility was teased in The Avengers: Age of Ultron. In that movie, the entire team are getting their drink on at a party. Thor’s hammer, or, rather, the attempt to lift it, becomes a party game of sorts. Captain America moves it, but only slightly. He doesn’t lift it. Just sort of nudges it back and forth. Thor reacts to this. Captain America lets go. It’s never mentioned again until Endgame. You know, in that scene where CAPTAIN AMERICA WIELDS THE HAMMER.

And he doesn’t just wield the hammer, either. He goes into battle with it. He twirls it like we’ve seen Thor do. He bangs it against his vibranium shield and creates lightning. He proves that he is worthy. He is the center of the single greatest moment in any movie that I have ever seen. A moment that, as we have already established, I have waited my entire life to see.

So . . . sorry. One of the five moments on the list I already made has to go.

I maybe ought to take a moment here to apologize to Karen. She never knew that I did it, but I really did assume that Steve Rogers was about to become a great super soldier in the sky because of her five-minutes-into-the-movie text. I have since discovered that what really happened in this situation is that Karen knows my own love for Captain America and had seen the movie the night before. She knew what moment was going to stick with me. She knew– had foretold the night before, in fact– that I was going to come completely and irrevocably fanboy unhinged. She was probably, truth told, grateful that I was seeing the movie on the second day so that she wouldn’t have to keep it secret for very long.

Captain America does not die in Endgame. He’s never been more alive.

 

 

“Either they don’t know, don’t show, or don’t care about what’s going on in the hood”

This month, we reflect on another artist gone too soon. Stories left untold, unseen, unheard, unimagined. Unfelt. He was only 51 years old, so imagine how much Art an artist the caliber of John Singleton had still to contribute. It hurts to think of what he still had to share with us. On this day, we can at least reflect on the work he has left behind.

In 1991, Singleton’s drama Boyz n the Hood was introduced to America in his own voice, from his own experiences in South Central LA. He was a kid when he shared the idea for the screenplay on his USC film-writing program application, was arguably still a kid when he wrote and directed it. At the age of only 23, he saw his own story come to life on the screen to both critical and audience acclaim.

It’s no exaggeration that black filmmakers still weren’t getting their due (or opportunities) in the early 90s when Boyz n the Hood was released. Spike Lee’s impactful Do the Right Thing had only been released a few years earlier, in 1989, to critical acclaim. When John Singleton was nominated for an Oscar for Best Director for his work on Boyz n the Hood, he was the first African American to ever be nominated for the award. In 63 years of Best Director nominations, he was the first (and the youngest).

63 years.

What John Singleton did was remarkable. Boyz n the Hood was his story to tell, and one to which many audiences could not relate. But instead of maintaining that separation, he connected. Through connection, he provided us with the gift of empathy, of understanding. His film’s successes motivated studios to think about diversity, inspired a generation of filmmakers, and promoted changes that are really only being fully realized now. Change has been so slow in coming that Singleton himself did not even get to fully take advantage of his well-earned success. Still, the legacy of work he left us, from Boyz n the Hood to Poetic Justice to Rosewood and many others, is a legacy worthy of celebration and respect.

In memory of John Singleton, we shared our personal thoughts on Boyz n the Hood below. Please join us in remembering.

Boyz n the Hood, 1991

In memory of John Singleton, 1968-2019

Aaron: I’ll be honest and shamefully admit that I did not see this movie when it first came out because it just didn’t appear to be anything that I could relate to in any way whatsoever. But, in college, I took a course called “Character-Centered Screenplays” and this was one of the first films they showed us. I was pretty well blown away by this movie, and was sort of upset at myself for being so close-minded to different experiences before that I had never given this film a proper chance. This movie really was something special. Over the Christmas break, I went to visit my sister and her boyfriend (who is African-American) and watched this film for the second time as they had not seen it yet (Incidentally, we also watched Do the Right Thing, another gem I discovered in that class). The conversation that ensued afterwards with my sister and my (now) brother-in-law was one of the first real conversations about race I had ever had. The shared experience of this movie– a film he could sympathize with, while I could only empathize– opened a door for me and him to talk openly about the differences in our race. He answered questions for me that I had not quite ever had the nerve to ask. He explained, patiently and compassionately, the differences between active and passive racism, and gave me a better understanding of how often I was an accidental perpetrator of the latter. He and I became very close that evening, understood each other a lot better. I’m not sure we could have had that as early in their relationship as we did without Boyz n the Hood.

Karen: I didn’t see the movie until VHS, probably in 1992. I remember its impact on me so much that the memory of watching it is fused to exact details of my surroundings: my friend’s living room carpet texture and color, bay window, angle of light, TV hutch, hallway leading out of the room. I only knew South Central LA from rap, and even then, I didn’t really know. How could I? I grew up in a sheltered childhood in a Mayberry-esque small town in Illinois. There’s no way I could ever relate. But therein lies the beauty of a film like Boyz n the Hood. Films which masterfully connect their audience to the subject matter allow for some level of understanding. And that is what I felt. On some level, understanding. Empathy. Anger. Sadness. Changed in some small way, and I carry that with me.

Greg: This one hit me, and hit me hard. Seeing it, I mean. We’ll get to the creator’s passing in a minute. As y’all know, I (we) grew up in a town that was closed off to what went on in the world on the other side of those corn fields. In fact, there wasn’t much world to speak of outside our school, our coffee shop, our Main Street, our boulevard, our football games, our Rock’n’Roll McDonald’s, our local grocery store, our two VHS video stores, our hardware store, our radio station, our soybean processing plant, our parents, our chores, homework, and our ignorance. When I saw this movie, I thought to myself, “No way. This isn’t true.” Then I started paying more attention to the news in my adolescence to realize that yes, in fact, it was. “Home is where everyone feels safest,” I believed. Until I realized how lucky I was. I never fully realized how closed my eyes were to “the rest of the world” until I really started getting into movies during my adolescence, and realizing that many of them were trying to prove a point or convey an important message. I’m not now, nor was I then, ever naive enough to believe that what I saw in the movies and on TV is (was) true, but I feel like I’ve definitely been curious enough to try and learn more about what I see and hear in the media and on TV and on the big screen to do my own homework and figure out the syntax between the lines of what I am and have always been fed when I flip that knob on the box to ON. Boyz n the Hood hit me hard, fast, and forever. In the early 90’s, I didn’t have to look too far in the news to decide that this movie was not an exaggeration or a dramatization as much as it was a depiction of a day in the life of people far way from the safety of the cornfields, grocery stores, schools, and brick roads of Central Illinois. The film made me angry and sad at once. But, more importantly, it alerted me to a world, a world full of problems, that existed outside the sanctity of my own little village. And when John passed the other day, I was instantly transported to a time when my ignorance (innocence) was in full force, only to replaced by a much more important, and mature, awareness. Movies like Singleton’s are the ones I cherish the most. Not for their bleak morbidity. But for their eye-popping honesty and sledgehammer-to-the-face wake up call they offer audiences willing to step outside the confines of their own safe havens.

“We come in peace! We come in peace!”

Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. Batman. Beetlejuice. Batman Returns.

All movies that I love. All movies that I have a fond nostalgia for. All movies that I can pretty much tell you where I was and who I was with when I saw them for the first time.  All movies directed by Tim Burton.

I really love Tim Burton. And, as a child, I doubt that I was cognizant enough of such matters to connect that all of these movies that I loved and was religiously rewatching were made by the same director. I connected those dots later, probably sometime after seeing and falling irrevocably in love with The Nightmare Before Christmas (which Burton did not direct, but created and produced). But I was in high school then and actually cared by that point about what movies were made by certain directors and what movies by directors whose work I enjoyed I was still yet to see.

In 1994, Tim Burton made a film called Ed Wood that was nothing at all like anything else he had ever done before. It had the director’s trademark whimsy, sure, but it was lacking in the director’s trademark vision. Even as amusing as it is, this is a film that the director obviously intended for a viewer to take seriously. Filmed entirely in black and white, Ed Wood was a bio-pic of a real person, a film director who, more than likely, was of considerable inspiration to Tim Burton. Ed Wood, the real one, was an independent filmmaker in the 1950’s whose work is marked for all time as evidence that the filmmaker didn’t have a lick of talent for the art of filmmaking. His most famous film, an almost-unwatchable 78 minutes of D-grade schlock called Plan 9 From Outer Space, tops many internet lists as possibly being the worst film ever made. Anyone with this movie on their list has a position easy to defend.

But hold on . . . this article is not about Plan 9 From Outer Space. It’s not even about Ed Wood. It’s about the movie Tim Burton released after doing Ed Wood. It’s called Mars Attacks! and it’s awful. One has to wonder why Tim Burton would follow up (probably) his best movie with a ridiculous dumpster fire of a movie that, forty years prior, would only have been made by . . . Ed Wood.

Released in 1996, Mars Attacks! is a not-very-funny comedy about an invasion of Earth by hyper-intelligent beings from Mars. When the Martians arrive on Earth, they confuse a dove, released at the meet-and-greet by a hippie, as a sign of Earth’s hostility and all hell breaks loose. The President of France is assassinated by alien invaders. Congress is destroyed . Millions of people are decimated. People are kidnapped by vicious aliens, dismembered, and left to survive as disembodied sentient heads in jars. Jack Nicholson plays two roles (including the most ineffectual world leader possibly ever depicted on film). Vegas lounge singer Tom Jones is instrumental in the future of humanity. Slim Whitman’s song “Indian Love Call” is used as a weapon of mass destruction. It’s all pretty terrible.

And I loved every second of it.

 

 

Let’s back up a second . . . I have to explain that I had an interest in this movie beyond my love for the director. Mars Attacks! is based on a set of trading cards. That’s right. Trading cards. From a company called Topps, which most people would recognize as a company that makes and distributes baseball cards. The original cards were very innovative for their use of using individual cards to tell a single story, with each card serving as one panel of an ongoing comic book. Collect all the cards and you’ve collected the entire story. 

The original cards told a ground-breaking science-fiction saga about Martians discovering that Mars is about to explode due to internal pressure in the planet’s core. They invade Earth in attempt to colonize and move their civilization. The cards were petty graphic, depicting futuristic battle scenes, recognizable Earth landmarks being decimated, and bizarre methods of human torture and slaughter. The original cards were drawn by artists Wally Wood and Norman Saunders.

Let’s back up again . . . I’ve been a comic book collector for most of my life. My favorite comic book among all of the ones I’ve read and enjoyed over the years is a Marvel comic called Daredevil. I’m sure you’re familiar with Daredevil, if not from the recent stellar Netflix series, from the less-than-good 2003 movie starring Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner. Marvel first started printing Daredevil in 1964. When it started, Daredevil looked like this:

The comic struggled in sales for the first several months and was near cancellation until issue 7 when Daredevil started to look like this:

New design, new character concept, and the book began to sell again. The artist responsible for this character design, and perhaps the revitalization of a comic book that has now existed for fifty-five years, was very popular at the time. That artist was none other than . . . Wally Wood.

Okay. We’re essentially caught up. I’m a fan of Wally Wood (who is also well-known for his work in Mad Magazine). I’m a fan of the trading cards. I’m a fan of Tim Burton. This movie was high up on my list of movies I needed to see in 1996.

I saw it on opening night, and left the movie theater pondering why I was contemplating going back to see a movie that I didn’t find very funny and kinda bored me. I thought to myself that maybe I just didn’t get it. But what’s there to get? The movie is broadly-acted. The special effects (with a few exceptions) are not very good. An excellent all-star cast (including Pierce Brosnan, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Natalie Portman, Michael J. Fox, Martin Short, and Danny Devito) is pretty much wasted with little screen time or nothing of note to do. The plot is incomprehensible. The violence is cartoonish and senseless. The laughs are juvenile and not very funny. There didn’t seem to be much here to get. This is clearly not a very good movie. Why oh why, do I want to go see this piece of trash again?

It took me quite a few years and, yes, repeated viewings to realize that I answered the question I started this entry with simply by asking the question. Why would Tim Burton follow up a brilliant, introspective, thought-provoking, Oscar-winning film (Ed Wood won two Academy Awards– one for make-up and one for Martin Landau, Best Supporting Actor for his career-defining depiction of frustrated Plan 9 From Outer Space star, Bela Lugosi) with mindless trash that looks like it might have been made by Ed Wood himself? Because Mars Attacks! looks like it might have been made by Ed Wood himself.

Mars Attacks! isn’t supposed to be any good. It was never intended to be any good. It was intended to be schlock late-night drive-in movie garbage. It was intended, in short, to be an homage to the director that inspired Tim Burton enough to make the well-received film that pretty much put him on the map in the first place. Burton was popular before Ed Wood, to be sure. But he wasn’t horribly credible. Not really taken seriously. Not really seen as a director that should be taken seriously. Certainly not an Oscar winner. Ed Wood gave movie snobs that would never deign to recommend Beetlejuice (if they ever even watched it in the first place) a reason to take notice of his work, of his visionary approach to storytelling. It gave them reason to excitedly wonder what this weird, gothic little man might be up to next. The joke’s on them because what he was up to next was Mars Attacks!

If you accept Mars Attacks! as an homage to Ed Wood, then it really works. It’s not even an homage so much as it is an imitation. For this reason, it might just be the most brilliant film in the entire Tim Burton canon.

I really do have a soft spot for Tim Burton. He’s only made one movie that I haven’t watched repeatedly (2001’s Planet of the Apes was a pointless and idiotic remake of a movie that I hold very dear to my heart). And I agree that not all of his movies are good (not a tremendous fan of either Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Alice in Wonderland either– but I blame Depp for that more than I do Burton). Mars Attacks!, as I’ve stated, is also not very good. But it’s heart is in the right place.

Ed Wood would have loved it. And I think that’s the point.

 

“No matter what, Edward will always be special.”

Last month, we mined upcoming releases for inspiration in choosing our Movie of the Month. We decided to do the same in April.

Greg is especially handy in this regard. He manages a movie theater for a living and can probably rattle off release dates without using Google to cheat. He had three movies coming out in April that forced us to consider our selection this month. The obvious one is The Avengers: Endgame but we used a Marvel Cinematic Universe film for ideas last month. Pet Sematary is also coming out, but Aaron thinks it looks awful and Karen doesn’t run to see horror films. It appears that only 2 out of 3 Nerds will be seeing this one!

Ultimately, the release we chose will have opened by the time you read this, but we were inspired all the same.

A live-action remake of Walt Disney’s 1941 classic has come to theaters! And it’s directed by Tim Burton.

For April, Greg and Aaron are going to take some time to talk about their favorite films in the Tim Burton filmography. And to start things off, we picked as our Movie of the Month a movie somewhat regarded as one of his best.

Three Nerds’ selection, April 2019: Edward Scissorhands
Who Directed It: Tim Burton
Who Wrote It: Caroline Thompson
Who’s In It: Johnny Depp, Winona Ryder, Dianne Wiest, Anthony Michael Hall, and Vincent Price
What does everyone else say about it: Rotten Tomatoes score: 90% (critics), 91% (audience), IMDB user rating: 7.9 (out of 10)
Where you can see it: DVD/Blu-Ray and numerous streaming services (Fandango Now, Redbox, Google Play, Vudu, Amazon Prime). This one is actually part of the collection on Hulu!

The Nerds Weigh In
Aaron: I’ll just throw it out there in the beginning– I am unapologetically a huge fan of Tim Burton. I have a soft spot for his creative vision and can find something to like about even the movies that are considered “not-so-good”. With that said, my first viewing of Edward Scissorhands was back when the movie first came out. I was in high school. And I was left a little cold by it. I think my adoration for Tim Burton set the bar a tad too high, and I left this film fairly disappointed. However, in college, I frequented a movie club that used to spend entire weekends showing the collected library of well-known directors. The administrators of this particular club were pretty excited about the recent Oscar wins for Ed Wood. To celebrate, they showed, back-to-back, all four feature films that Burton had so-far directed as well as a handful of his better-known short films. It was here that I saw Edward Scissorhands for the second time. With an audience reacting to the movie’s considerable whimsy, I saw the movie in a whole new light. I also discovered that I could relate to the main character’s feelings of isolation. Subsequent viewings have turned a movie that I was so-so about into one of my favorite Tim Burton films. I generally watch this movie once or twice a year. (P.S. I am about to lose my mind over a Burton-directed remake of Dumbo.)

Greg: Saw this one at the drive-in, of the Harvest Moon variety. I was old enough to understand and chuckle at the oddity of it, but too young to appreciate the importance of it. Years later, after repeat viewings, the idea of Edward being a freak was slowly replaced, in my mind, with the notion that Edward was simply Edward. He was made that way. And because Edward was Edward, Edward was special. And, after more viewings, the movie helped me realize that we all are special in our own ways. Whether others see us as such or not. And then, even after more viewings than that, after years of watching once or twice a year, as Aaron does, a new revelation occurred to me. A new dream, actually. A dream consisting of a group of people in a basement bar, not unlike the one in which Alan Arkin introduces Edward Scissorhands to whiskey. Each person in the bar is undeniably distinguishable from the next, but all are accepting of the peccadillos of the others, not judging those next to them. Instead of pointing to me (I mean Edward) and saying, “that dude is all kinds of goofy,” they say, “That’s Edward, and that’s who he is.” And everyone in that shag carpeted basement raises a glass before moving the conversation along to something else.

Lil Bit O Trivia – Edward Scissorhands

1. Can you imagine anyone else playing Edward Scissorhands? Neither can we. But it turns out that both Jim Carrey and Robert Downey, Jr. were in the running to play the role. Tom Hanks apparently came pretty close as well. Gary Oldman was offered the part, but eventually turned it down. As was Tom Cruise, who turned it down because he thought the ending was too dark and bad for his image at the time. John Cusack expressed interest. William Hurt. In addition to those big names . . . and this is a rumor that we have found on multiple internet sites, but are unable to confirm . . . pop singer Michael Jackson was apparently interested in the role. It is rumored that he pestered Tim Burton with repeated phone calls that were never returned.

2. As big a fan of horror films and gothic entertainment that Tim Burton seems to be, it comes as no surprise that he is a fan of iconic horror-film actor Vincent Price. In fact, Vincent Price’s role in this film was tailor-made and written specifically for him. Unfortunately, Vincent Price was very ill during filming and his performance had to be cut considerably to accommodate his struggles with emphysema and Parkinson’s disease. Mr. Price passed away three years after the release of this film. Edward Scissorhands was his final screen performance.

3. This role was not an easy one for Johnny Depp. All accounts of the process of filming this movie claim that Depp went above and beyond the call of duty to perfect it. It is reported that he lost 25 pounds to prepare, but probably lost more than that throughout the process. The movie was filmed in Florida. It was hot. But Depp refused cooling agents in the skin-tight leather outfit. This caused him to pass out occasionally. Once, he threw up. Actually, he threw up twice while filming: Depp actually consumed all of the different foods and appetizers that the neighbors shove in his mouth during the barbeque sequence. His make-up for the role took almost two hours daily to apply. Why did Depp put in this much work to the detriment of his own health? Because producers were concerned that Depp’s pretty-boy 21 Jump Street image would hurt the film’s believability.

4. The wondrous menagerie of bushes that Edward Scissorhand’s masterfully creates while trimming the shrubbery in the film were actually meticulously-built wire frames. The frames were covered with real and artificial plants and flowers intricately woven around the sculptures. If you really like those sculptures, you can visit them. Some of them are on permanent display at Tavern on the Green, an upscale restaurant in New York City.

5. This image is a rendering of the actual fossil of an extinct primitive arthropod discovered in 2013 by paleontologist David Legg in Kootenay National Park in Canada. In Legg’s own words: “When I first saw the pair of isolated claws in the fossil records of this species I could not help but think of Edward Scissorhands.” The fossil was named kootenichela deppi in an obvious reference to the actor. Again, quoting Legg: ” . . . I am also a bit of a Depp fan and so what better way to honour the man than to immortalise him as an ancient creature that once roamed the sea?”

Well, that’s probably enough for this month, friends. Be sure to check back in throughout the month for more discussion about the filmography of Tim Burton. Aaron will start us off next week with the defense of a film in the library that is not one of Burton’s most popular. Can you guess which one it is?

 

Life Is A Highway

The search to find strong women in film can, for most, come to an abrupt yet refreshing end when the opening credits to Thelma and Louise first appear on the screen. This Ridley Scott ode to women, women’s lib, inner strength, and camaraderie, set against the backdrop of the ever-popular road trip genre, embodies the very definition of strong women in film.

First, there’s Thelma, who is a submissive housewife, burdened by an overbearing, absent husband, and who is afraid to stand up for herself in any, way, shape, or form; she cowers at the very thought of leaving the house for the weekend by herself. Second, there is Louise, who is hardened by life’s misfortunes, jaded to the world, shut off to outside influence, watching her life move past her from the hazy, smoky diner in which she finds herself waiting tables every day.

Louise, through some convincing, manages to pull Thelma from her non-peaceful home for a weekend of camping and fishing in the mountains. On the way, the two stop for some drinks and dancing, and find themselves in a dangerous situation that results in a high-speed exit for the two ladies who were just out for a good time. They ditch their plans for camping in the mountains to instead make for Mexico in an attempt to avoid being seen by any police.

And it is at this point at which their journey truly begins. Not a geographical journey, per se, but a spiritual one; an awakening, if you will.

Thelma and Louise, while on the road to salvation, find in each other an inner strength to cope with the world that neither knew the other had. Thelma, who only days before agreeing to go on the camping trip in the first place, begins to see all the world has to offer for her outside the confines of a dreary, drab house controlled by a chauvinistic pig of a human being. And Louise sees in Thelma the cloudy memories Louise has of the joys of living life to its fullest, and she starts to rise from her rock bottom, opening herself up again to the world to which she so many years ago shut herself out.

As the two women carry on, through more trials and tribulations than they can count, they learn something else about themselves: they don’t need to take any shit from anybody. By the film’s climax, they’ve decided collectively that anything coming in between them and their liberation, particularly anything that even remotely resembles facets of their former, caged, unfulfilling lives, well . . . it ain’t gonna stand in their way for very long.

And so, Thelma and her road trip with her best bud, Louise, compose on the big screen what many women the world over had been waiting to see: an anthem for strong, independent, willful women everywhere and anywhere who don’t yet know the strength waiting inside of them, just itching to get out and make a mark in the world. And this anthem reminds those women that sometimes that little push they are waiting for to get started actually comes from within. Or, from a pal who forces them to go on a vacation.

“Cheer up. The world’s gonna end in ten minutes anyway.”

When we decided to spend the month focusing our attentions on “women who kick ass”, I knew immediately what movie I wanted to write about. It’s a personal favorite of mine, and has been since I first saw it in 1995. But as discussion continued, I thought of more heroines that deserved attention (Leeloo in The Fifth Element, Lola in Run, Lola, Run, Sarah Connor in Terminator 2: Judgement Day). I was beginning to talk myself out of writing about one of my favorite movies. But I rewatched the movie, and while I find it problematic as a recommendation (I’ll get to that in a moment), I discovered a snippet of trivia that made it the pitch-perfect choice as a movie that features a kick-ass female protagonist.

The movie is directed by Kathryn Bigelow. You would know her for her memorable action films (including 1991’s Point Break). She did an impressive independent vampire film in 1987 called Near Dark. But in 2008, she did a movie called The Hurt Locker and won an Oscar for Best Direction for her efforts. This Oscar win was a milestone in that it made Kathryn Bigelow the first woman to ever win this particular award. Actually, she is the only woman in the history of the Academy Awards (almost 90 years!) to take home a statuette for Best Director.

How’s that for women who kick ass?

Strange Days was released in 1995.  I had never seen anything like it.

I still haven’t.

(Consider this your warning that this article will contain SPOILERS!)

The film takes place on the final day of 1999 as Los Angeles prepares for the possibility that “the millennium bug” or “Y2K” is going to ignite the end of the world by the end of the night. The hot drug on the streets is “Playback”, a cyber-drug that allows the user to get high on another person’s experiences with a retro-fitted CD Discman, a machine called a Super-conducting Quantum Interference Device (or SQUID). The SQUID allows a wearer to record experiences through their own eyes. The tapes of those experiences can be played back by another user. Do you want to have sex with a beautiful blonde? Do you want to feel the adrenalin rush of robbing a bank? Do you want to know what it feels like to die? If you want it, you can probably find it on “Playback.”

The movie stars Ralph Fiennes as Lenny Nero. Lenny used to be a Los Angeles police officer. Now, he’s a street hustler, dealing in “Playback” tapes. I don’t think Ralph Fiennes has ever played a character as pathetic as Lenny Nero. Unkempt and sweaty, Lenny is addicted to his own product, specifically to tapes from his personal collection, recordings of his time with Faith (played by Juliette Lewis), an up-and-coming rock singer that has left him, a direct result of Nero’s increasing paranoia.

The film is co-written by James Cameron, so I don’t think I have to tell you that the film continually winds back in on itself as the plot gets progressively more and more complicated. And it does get complicated. What starts out as Lenny receiving a secret “playback” clip that shows a woman being raped and murdered turns into Lenny receiving a “playback” clip that shows Los Angeles police executing a well-known African-American hip hop artist and revolutionary. This, naturally, turns into Lenny needing constant protection as he is hunted down by the two offending officers (played by Vincent D’Onofrio and William Fichtner).

Protection for Lenny comes in the form of Mace. She’s a limo driver, and Lenny’s best friend and bodyguard. Played by Angela Bassett, she is, for me, the heart and soul of this film.

We don’t get a lot of back story on Mace, but we see in flashbacks that her ex-husband was a loser and that Lenny was the police officer that read stories to her child while the other officers arrested him. She is protective of Lenny and very obviously loves him.

Bassett’s performance is very nuanced. Is Mace protecting  Lenny because she has to, or because she needs to? Is protecting Lenny her job, or her mission?  Consider this exchange:

LENNY: Have you ever been in love with someone who didn’t return that love?
MACE: Yeah, Lenny, I have.
LENNY: It didn’t stop you from loving them, right? Or being able to understand them or forgive them?
MACE: I guess.

I think there’s a little bit of both. Suffice it to say that, by the end of this film, Mace will have saved Lenny in every way imaginable. She fights bad guys for him. She almost drowns for him. She reminds him that friendship is “more than one person constantly doing favors for another.” She helps him love himself.

This entire movie is worth the watch for Angela Bassett alone.

With that said, since I am recommending that this film get a second look so highly, I feel obligated to mention that the film is problematic in more than one regard. For one thing, the film is incredibly dated. Since we all know that the world didn’t end on December 3, 1999, the movie loses some of its impact. But that isn’t nearly as problematic as the film’s treatment of women. Despite a female director, despite how effectively drawn and nuanced the character of Mace is, the rest of the film has a pretty uncomfortable outlook on women. There are two other (admittedly, strong) female characters in this film. The first, Iris, is brutally murdered and raped before the film is halfway finished, and the second, Faith (played by Juliette Lewis) spends a good portion of the film nude. It should be said, though, that Juliette Lewis’s performance in this film is very strong. And there are two sequences of Faith in concert, where all the vocals and musicianship are recreated by Lewis herself. If I have a crush on Juliette Lewis (and I do), it’s because of this performance in this film. 

The film itself is also very frenetic, though. It’s almost a sadistic onslaught to your senses. The music is loud. The violence is brutal. The shots are edited in quick succession. And the long point-of-view sequences that depict “playback” are jumpy and may require dramamine. In direct defense of the latter, though, the camera equipment used to film these sequences was invented for use in this film and required more than a year’s worth of work before filming could even begin. That’s one more thing about this film that has been criminally overlooked.

Strange Days is nothing if it isn’t flawed. But there is a great irony in a movie that deals so effectively with memory being so difficult to forget. If you’ve seen this movie, let’s discuss it. If you haven’t, I promise you’ll want to discuss it if you do.

 

“This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off.”

Today is March 7, 2019. This means that we here at Three Nerds and A Movie only have to wait one more day before we can head to the theater and see Captain Marvel (unless we’re Karen, who got her tickets for tonight months ago).

We’re all pretty excited about this one. And not only because it’s the next installment in the ongoing Marvel Cinematic Universe (a franchise that we’re all three pretty fond of). But because it isn’t very often that we get to see quality action-packed films that have a female as the lead protagonist.

Is it a coincidence that Captain Marvel is being released on International Women’s Day? We don’t think so.

To celebrate the release of Captain Marvel, not only are the three of us going to be putting a spotlight on our favorite movies that feature a woman who kicks ass, but we’ve selected a Movie of the Month that also features a strong female protagonist. It’s a science-fiction film. It’s a terrifying horror film. It’s the genesis of a pretty major film franchise all on its own.

It’s also one of the greatest movies ever made.

Three Nerds’ selection, March 2019: Alien
Who Directed It: Ridley Scott
Who Wrote It: Dan O’Bannon
Who’s In It: Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, John Hurt, Harry Dean Stanton, Ian Holm, and Yaphet Kotto
What does everyone else say about it: Rotten Tomatoes score: 97% (critics), 94% (audience), IMDB user rating: 8.5 (out of 10)
Where you can see it: DVD/Blu-Ray and four streaming services (Fandango Now, Google Play, Vudu, and Prime Video).

The Nerds Weigh In
Aaron: In seventh grade, some friends and I became obsessed with Aliens, James Cameron’s 1986 sequel to Alien. We had a VHS of the film dubbed off of HBO that got passed around and watched repeatedly. By myself, I might have watched the movie thirty times, and that doesn’t include the partial viewings or the times it was viewed with other people. My circle of friends really, really, really loved this movie, but were, admittedly, somewhat oblivious to the fact that it was a sequel. I finally saw the original in high school (mostly because I had become enamored of the work of Ridley Scott). It gave me nightmares. I’m not kidding. Alien scared the everloving hell out of me. Now, two decades later, there are things about Cameron’s sequel that I much prefer to the original. I think the special effects are better. I think the characters are more endearing. I think the seeds planted for the over-arching franchise plot are incredibly intriguing. But none of the subsequent films have frightened me. For that reason, the original gets the edge.

Karen: I didn’t watch Alien until I was older – later in high school, I think. At this point, my kinship with sci-fi was firmly rooted and I was voraciously reading and watching as much as I could. But I was never really jazzed about watching Alien. There was a cardboard cutout at the local video store for years (the upstairs part) and I always walked past it with mutual feelings of both indifference and unease. When I finally got around to watching it, I thought I knew what was coming. Like with most things to which humans assign expectations, I was wrong. I anticipated action and gore, which it obviously has in spades. But that really isn’t the point of Alien. Like all good sci-fi, it presents the viewer with insight about current reality through imagined fantasy, and it does it impactfully. I didn’t fully comprehend that on the scope that I do now, but I got a sense of it then and look back on it now with admiration and sincere respect for Scott’s masterpiece.

Greg: Alien was played on HBO and was rented on VHS in our house once or twice when I was a kid; maybe not so much when I was a small, shorter-than-I-am-now boy, but certainly when its sequel, Aliens, was introduced to audiences somewhere around the time when I was not the tallest person in my classroom, but somewhere, in height, between the otherwise tallest kid and the teachers. When Aliens came out, I do remember the film being the rave. And, since those I knew doing the raving were my older siblings who, at the time Aliens‘ predecessor, Alien, was released, were either too young to have seen the first in this series, or were unaware that a first in this series existed. Anyway, ’twas the mid-80’s when Alien was making its rounds around my family, and every time I tried to force my way into the room to join the crowd, I was always greeted with the “you’re too young to watch this” response. So, I did what any determined “too-young” movie lover would have done: I watched it anyway. Let me say simply this: “grown-ups know better.” At first, I was bored out of my mind. To a kid waiting for something exciting to happen, nothing does. And then it does . . . and then it does some more . . . and then you can’t un-see what you’ve seen . . . and then the swirling yellow alarm lights, and the fog, and then the alien-that-doesn’t-really-look-like-a-guy-in-a-suit-but-kinda-looks-like-a-guy-in-a-suit haunts dreams for a long time to come. Anyway, as I eventually grew into my teen years, I appreciated the film for its nuanced genre-mashing send up of a helluva great story. And those first minutes when nothing happens and I was bored out of my mind? Heck, I ending up loving those moments the best because they taught me the value of suspense before I ever learned to appreciate the word “Hitchcock.” And then, as I grew even older, I came to respect Sigourney Weaver not just as a dog-possessed, Pete-Venkman-loving/hating, Marshmallow-Man-soaked, gate-keeping resident of Central Park West, but also as a bad ass, alien-killing, controlling, dominant force of nature to be reckoned with. In Alien she is, at all times, even when she is scared, strong, confident, domineering, a pain in the ass, un-flinching, and indefatigable hero of all heroes. I was excited that this is our theme movie of the month. I am looking forward to a few weeks from now when I get to talk about not one, but two strong women movie characters who, when ya’ get down to it, take us all for a ride down a spiritual highway of growth and strength. And were it not for the strong woman in Alien (and the film’s director, who consequently also directed the film serving as my entry for this month) we would not have had, well, my entry for the month. Personal question: do you guys, when you reach the end of my posts say to yourself, “Jesus, that was a long post,” the same way I do when I proof it real quick after writing it?

Lil Bit O Trivia – Alien
1. The script for Alien  went through many revisions before it became the script that would eventually be shot. In the original script the characters names were all different and Ash did not exist. The script had a clause included stating that all characters were unisex and that it did not matter if they were cast as male or female. Over the years, there have been many rumors circulating about elements of the script that were written and never filmed, including a sex scene between Ripley and Dallas, a lesbian relationship between Lambert and Ripley, and a much darker ending. Reportedly, Ridley Scott had conceived of an ending where the Alien stows itself on an escape shuttle, eventually bites off Ripley’s head, and then mimics her voice to make a final log entry for her superiors.

2. Ridley Scott originally wanted to use animatronics to portray the Alien, but special effects at the time were not sophisticated enough for what Scott had in mind. This was a dilemma that could have potentially killed the film, but the casting director stumbled upon a Nigerian graphic designer named Bolaji Badejo in a pub. Badejo stood over seven feet tall and was incredibly thin. Believing that Badejo had the potential to make the Alien look more insect-like than humanoid, Ridley Scott consented to his casting. Never having acted before, Badejo was provided with Tai Chi classes and mime training to slow down his movements.  But he was also forbidden by Scott to fraternize with his co-stars, as Scott wanted them to be naturally terrified of him. Badejo spent fourteen very lonely weeks on the set of Alien. In a costume that was so cumbersome that a specially-constructed hoist had to be used since the tail of the Alien suit prevented him from sitting in a chair. Alien is the only film Badejo ever appeared in.

3. According to Sir John Hurt in a DVD commentary, he was considered to play Kane from the very beginning, but was forced to decline as he was already committed to a movie that was being filmed in South Africa. Jon Finch was given the role of Kane instead. Two separate incidents occurred, though, that eventually got Hurt the role. First: the government of South Africa banned Hurt from entering the country as they mistook him for an actor named John Heard, who was a very vocal opponent of apartheid. By this point, Finch was forced to drop out of Alien because he became seriously ill from diabetes on the first day of shooting. Ridley Scott immediately contacted Hurt, pitched him the script over a weekend, and Sir John Hurt arrived on set the following Monday morning.

4.  Dan O’Bannon’s idea for the screenplay was inspired by work on two previous projects. He had worked as a writer and special effects supervisor on Dark Star, a 1974 science-fiction comedy directed by John Carpenter. Dan O’Bannon decided halfway through filming that his initial premise worked better as a horror film so he began work on a script entitled Star Beast. Dark Star was a major failure commercially, but it had been seen by Chilean-French director Alejandro Jodorowsky, who had recently acquired the rights to Frank Herbert’s classic science-fiction novel Dune. Jodorowsky hired O’Bannon to help him with the book’s adaptation, causing Dan O’Bannon to sell all of his belongings so that he could move to France. While working on this ill-fated film, Dan O’Bannon met and worked with a series of influential artists, including H. R. Giger, the artist who designed the look of the Alien. When Dune eventually halted production due to lack of funding, Dan O’Bannon took the creative team to work on Star Beast, which was now titled Alien, using many of the designs that had already been created for Dune.

5. Over time, Alien would become one of the biggest franchises in science-fiction, spawning three sequels, two prequels, several comic book series, more than a dozen original novels, a digital web series, toys, and numerous games (video, roleplaying, and tabletop). The Alien franchise has also crossed over to the Predator franchise. This crossover has spawned comic books, video games, two films, and several original novels. Ridley Scott, in a recent interview, confirmed that not only do both franchises exist in the same created universe, but that his own classic Blade Runner (1982) also exists in that shared universe. Yeah, that doesn’t make any sense to us, either.

Well, that’s enough for this month, friends. Be sure to check back next week. Aaron wants to tell you about a science-fiction film that definitely deserves more love.

On “Ghostbusters”, or “You, bastard kid! Get the hell away from my god damn car!”

I saw Ghostbusters for the first time during the summer of 1984. The film had just been released in theatres, and my brother and I were treated to this film as an apology of sorts for a misunderstanding from a stranger.

We had just moved to Champaign. My parents were separated, but not yet divorced. In the fall, I would be starting third grade. My brother would begin afternoon Kindergarten. My sister would be starting high school. My mother was working a ton of hours between day shifts as a nurse at The Champaign County Children’s Home, a home for developmentally-disabled children and night shifts as a waitress at Lincoln Lodge, a restaurant that I later worked at while doing summer stock theatre.

We were renting a house in a residential neighborhood on Columbia Avenue in west Champaign. It was a nice neighborhood. There was very little traffic. And there were a lot of other children in the area, ideal for two kids such as Kipton and I, who hated being confined in the house for too long. There was a set of train tracks that passed behind our house, and many hours were wasted searching for pennies that we had left to be flattened. Kipton, in particular, had a fondness for trains.

Our neighbors to the immediate west were an elderly couple named Ted and Evelyn Jude. There weren’t dotteringly old, though, probably in their sixties. A very nice couple, the type of people who brought lemonade out to the kids who were running through their yard. They had a dog, an annoyingly yippy dog named Spaniel. Ted owned a 1965 Chevy Malibu that to this day I would swear is the coolest car I’ve ever ridden in.

That summer was a scary summer for me: it was a transition between one town where we knew everybody and another town where we knew no one. I was anxious about school starting (where I came from, being the “new kid” had a stigma attached to it). There was a lot of yelling and screaming around the house since Mom and Dad were severing the last cords of their marriage, since Dad wasn’t around anymore to interfere in the almost-constant arguing between my sister and mother, and since no one was around to keep me from bullying my younger brother. Kipton was six and didn’t quite understand what all this “divorce nonsense” was all about, this confusion only being compounded by Dad moving back in occasionally and making us all pretend that he and Mom were still married whenever my extremely-religious grandparents came to visit. I spent a lot of time away from the house, to say the least.

Ted and Evelyn had a daughter whose name I can’t recall. She was married and lived in Rhode Island and had three sons all around my age. That summer, they were visiting for four weeks and so Evelyn’s house became an escape. At my house, there was deception and noise. At Evelyn’s house, there were other kids and frivolity. I spent a lot of time there over those three weeks. But I didn’t at first…

I can’t remember the names of the boys (Christopher is ringing a bell for the oldest one), but on the day they arrived from Rhode Island, Kipton and I were in the front yard, using sticks and rocks to build shelters for our Star Wars action figures. Well, my action figures. Kipton wasn’t allowed to touch them unless I was there to supervise. Anyway, we were building shelters, planning a big battle between factions (my men and his) that in our heads had special effects that rivaled everything we had ever seen on TV. These three kids came over and introduced themselves, asked if they could play, too. We accepted them wholeheartedly and they joined in the game. But the game changed: now it was our action figures defending the house from gigantic evil robots that could turn into vehicles.

Yes, these kids had Transformers. Lots of them. Transformers were the big thing that summer, and Kipton and I both thought they were pretty cool. Our family, however, could not afford them. We watched the cartoon religiously and even owned some Go-Bots, but those were a cheap knock-off and broke easily. These kids, to our eyes, were the coolest. Kids. Ever!

The battle we enacted in my front yard was monolithic. It lasted hours. It was great fun. But then the three kids (what were their names? Jesus. . .) had to go visit other family across town so they packed their Transformers into the car and headed away. Self-inflicted boredom settled in. Nothing Kipton or I could think of to do could possibly compete with the fun we had just had. I think we threw sticks at birds, I don’t recall.

An hour or so later, the neighbor kids returned. As soon as they were out of the car, they were bounding into our yard for more adventures. I’m not sure how we got to the next stage of our game: It was decided that we were going to stretch fishing line from an upstairs window down to a tree near the curb in our yard. We were then going to connect the Transformers to the fishing line and then drop them down the line. In theory, the Transformers should glide down the fishing line to the tree, where he had crafted a little Ewok village with blocks and cardboard. It would appear, to our rather cinematic imaginations, that the Transformer had flown in from the heavens and destroyed the village. This would be so cool!

I tore the house apart trying to find the reserves of fishing line or twine while Kipton helped the neighbor’s build the village. By the time I found it, I was beginning to realize that the Transformers were probably way too heavy to be supported by the fishing line, but that didn’t faze me. We could, after all, do a few test runs closer to the ground. We could experiment with different Transformers until we found one that was just the right weight to glide without breaking the string. I brought the fishing line outside (aloft, shrieking, “Got it!”) just as Evelyn’s daughter was calling her children in for dinner.

Ah, man! Plan foiled!

“Don’t worry,” the kid (Chris? Matt? Charlie?) said. “We’ll be back after dinner.”

“I’ll go ahead and get the line set up from the window. It’ll be ready to go when you get back,” I said.

“Excellent!” one of the other boys said.

Before the kids were gone completely, I asked if I could see some of the Transformers so that we could test the strength of the line. The oldest one said, “Sure. Go right ahead. They’re in the car.”

With Kipton’s help, I fastened one end of the fishing line to the upstairs window. I then stretched the line across the yard down to the tree. I was a Cub Scout, so I knew plenty about knots. I was able to wrap the other end of the line around the tree, pulling it all taut enough that the line wasn’t bowed at all. It was a straight diagonal line from window to curb. You could pluck it like a guitar. If it had been dark and you had been running across the yard, not knowing the line was there, it damn well might have decapitated you had you run into it. I was proud of myself. These neighbor kids were certainly going to think that I was the bee’s knees.

Now, all I needed was a few Transformers to test a few things out.

I walked over to the Jude driveway. Through the window of the car, I could see five or six Transformers sunning themselves on the upholstery. I opened the door. I reached into the car. I grabbed a few of the toys, being extra careful to not choose one that was clearly going to be too heavy. I got out of the car, toys in hand. I was reaching for the door, ready to close it, when, from inside the house, one of the most horrifyingly angry voices I have ever heard, screamed, “You, bastard kid! Get the hell away from my god damn car!”

I dropped those toys and took off. I don’t believe I had ever run so fast. I’m sure I haven’t run that fast since. I question if I was actually running so much as flying. I might have even just closed my eyes and psychically willed myself far, far away from that car because it was only a matter of seconds before I was in the house, hiding. I didn’t come outside for the rest of the night.

The neighbor kids, of course, told their father what had happened. I wasn’t trying to rob the car. I was only getting the toys out because they had told me that I could. Their father felt pretty bad about this (as he should have, frankly, he scared me to death) and he wanted to do something to make up for it. He came over and spoke to my mother and asked her permission to take us to a movie. His family was planning to go see Ghostbusters that afternoon and he wanted to take us along, to make up for it. My mother, thinking that all of this was pretty funny, agreed.

Kipton and I were ecstatic. With my mother, we went to movies all the time, but we always went to The Urbana Cinema, where they showed second run films for a dollar. We never got to see new movies. On the day they opened. And we were certainly never allowed to get over-priced popcorn and candy. This was going to be fun.

We took advantage of being out of the house without our mother and sat in the theatre where we had always wanted to but had never been allowed, right in the front row. The actors and special effects in this film were larger than life. And we were the first ones in the auditorium to capture the images as they rolled off the screen. By the time they had made their way back to the projectionist’s cabinet, to the people sitting in the back row, they had already been viewed by us. They were no longer new. They were second-hand, already experienced by two overly-excited kids who had never sat with their necks craned uncomfortably in the front row before.

Incidentally, we moved a few rows back later, because the dog paws coming out of the chair and attacking Sigourney Weaver scared my little brother half out of his mind. As soon as that scene began, he moved, much as I did yesterday when I ran away from the car, to another row like he had been ejected and propelled. I went to join him, to take care of him, unable to admit that I was a little frightened myself.

I think I’ve seen Ghostbusters two hundred times. It’s still just as fresh and funny as it was the first time every time I see it. It truly is one of my favorite comedies. It’s an eighties film that doesn’t feel like an eighties film. It has stood the test of time. But I cannot watch it without thinking about those Transformers. I think about how scared I was, how unfair it was that the whole world would now think I was a thief. And I think about the glee that accompanies being allowed to see a movie “alone” for the very first time.

By the way, the Transformer sliding down the fishing line? It didn’t work.

“What if there is no tomorrow? There wasn’t one today.”

Sometimes it’s really easy to pick our theme for a given month. October? Halloween. December? Christmas. So Valentine’s Day for February, right?

Wrong.

President’s Day?

Aren’t the Oscars in February?

Yes.

But so is Groundhog Day, and as soon as Karen suggested this as our movie of the month, all three of us got a little excited. We’re all in agreement: this dark 1993 comedy is justifiably regarded as one of the greatest comedies of all time.

Plus, it has romance in it. And Stephen Tobolowsky is in it. He once played a doctor on The West Wing, a television show about The President. Bill Murray was nominated for an Academy Award in 2004.

We’re covering all the bases with this one.

Three Nerds’ selection, February 2019: Groundhog Day
Who Directed It: Harold Ramis
Who Wrote It: Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis
Who’s In It: Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell, Chris Elliott, and Stephen Tobolowsky
What does everyone else say about it: Rotten Tomatoes score: 96% (critics), 88% (audience), IMDB user rating: 8.0 (out of 10)
Where you can see it: DVD/Blu-Ray and four streaming services (Fandango Now, Google Play, Vudu, and Prime Video).

The Nerds Weigh In
Aaron: I have always really loved Bill Murray. From watching reruns of Saturday Night Live on Nick at Nite as a child to repeated viewings of Ghostbusters to how effectively he has reinvented himself as a dramatic actor over the years (SEE: Lost in Translation, or Broken Flowers). There has always just been something about him that has appealed to me. He’s very funny without ever really being over the top. He’s droll. And sarcastic. And he got robbed of that Oscar in 2004. (I did, too, because I had placed my money on him in an Oscar pool).

Greg: The first time I saw Groundhog Day, I have to admit, it wasn’t my favorite. I’d seen Bill Murray try and use dynamite to kill a gopher, I’d seen him catch ghosts with his then buddy Harold Ramis. . . twice. . . and I’d seen him cope, with hilarity and sincerity, with three ghosts of Christmas, each of which were tasked with making him a better person. Groundhog Day seemed a bit of a departure for Bill Murray for me. Which is a strange thing for me to say about a Bill Murray movie because, when you think about it, every Bill Murray movie is basically a major departure (for him) from the last! But I guess the issue I had, upon that first viewing of Groundhog Day, was that I was not quite catching the philosophy behind the film. Another odd thing to say, because the movie drips with philosophy. . . but I just didn’t see it. I wasn’t looking far enough past the Bill Murray repartee to which we had all become accustomed. The various elements of the flick just didn’t add up, I’m sorry.

BUT. . . then HBO picked it up, and then VHS became an available medium for this head-scratcher, and I saw it again. . . and again . . . and again. Happily for me, I learned and understood the lessons of the movie a bit more quickly than did Phil. I once read somewhere that Phil’s spiritual journey of re-living the same day over and over lasted more than two decades for him. For me, it really only lasted the “window” as we call it between the theatrical and the home video experience of this modern day classic.

Karen: I’m with Greg on this one. The first time I saw Groundhog Day, I didn’t particularly love it. I seem to remember finding it grating. And also charming. And maybe a little uncomfortable.

But you get something different out of a film at different times in your life with different perspectives to lean on. As a somewhat adult-ish person, I get it now. Groundhog Day is a dark comedy, and the thing about dark comedies is that you don’t really understand the humor unless you have some experience with the subject. When Groundhog Day came out in 1993, I was still really jazzed by dark comedies like Heathers and Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead. I dug them because 1. they were good, and 2. I could relate, having been an angsty teenager. With Groundhog Day, I couldn’t yet appreciate the finely tuned spectacle of this Harold Ramis keeper, Bill Murray navigating the often painful second adolescence that comes from trying to be the best version of you as an adult. Now, I feel mirth. Over and over and over again.

Lil Bit O Trivia – Groundhog Day
1. Apparently, while filming this classic comedy, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis disagreed about what sort of film they were making. A lot. Screenwriter Danny Rubin reported in 2004 that Murray wanted Groundhog Day to be more philosophical than it was, while Harold Ramis firmly wanted the film to be a comedy. Earlier than that, though, while promoting the movie in 1993, Murray reflected that it was actually the other way around: Murray wanted a comedy, while Ramis wanted the film to focus more on the romance between Murray and MacDowell. Couple the differing visions with Ramis’ claim that Bill Murray was going through a divorce at the time and often “really irrationally mean and unavailable”, making this film destroyed a long-standing friendship. Bill Murray stopped speaking to Harold Ramis entirely for twenty years, only to finally bury the hatchet on Ramis’ death bed in 2014.

2. The large Groundhog Day Celebration that is the main centerpiece of this film is an actual annual event, held in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania every February 2 since (roughly) 1887. The site of the festivities is a wooded area outside of town called, just as in the movie, Gobbler’s Knob (though the film depicts this site as being in the bustling town square). This annual celebration draws nearly 10,000 people every year. Harold Ramis, Bill Murray, and Stephen Tobolowsky (the actor who plays Ned) have all served as Groundhog Day Grand Marshals for the celebration.

3. The town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania did not have a town center that looked good on camera, according to Harold Ramis, so they opted instead to film the movie in Woodstock, Illinois. The small town had been used for location shots in the 1987 film Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, which brought the town to the attention of Bob Hudgins, the location manager for Harold Ramis’ previous films. In the town of Woodstock, there is currently a plaque that commemorates the curb where Bill Murray’s character repeatedly steps in the puddle as well as many other tourist attractions for fans of the movie.

4. In 2003, this movie was the opening night film in the Museum of Modern Art’s “The Hidden God: Film and Faith” series. Other films in the series included Luis Bunuel’s Nazarin (1959), Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 (1963), Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light (1963), and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev (1966). A December 7, 2003 article in The New York Times (entitled “Groundhog Almighty”) discusses in-depth both the incongruity of Groundhog Day being included among such “serious” films and the opinions of different religious clergy and adherents (including rabbis, Jesuit priests, Buddhists, and Wiccans) about how this movie is applicable to (or, in some cases, actually about) their respective religions.

5. Before casting Bill Murray in the role of Phil, Harold Ramis had considered John Travolta, Chevy Chase, and Steve Martin for the role, but all were deemed “too nice”. Ironically, the “nicest guy in Hollywood” Tom Hanks was offered the role but turned it down because he was too busy with other projects. Michael Keaton was also offered the role, but turned it down because he found the script confusing. Michael Keaton has since admitted that he regrets declining this film, but would eventually work with both Harold Ramis and Andie MacDowell in Multiplicity (1996).

We think that will do it for this week, friends. Make sure to check back next week for more new content!

 

 

I’m Not Afraid – I Have No Fear

Most of the movies I have seen in my lifetime – not at, but most – have been movies I intended to see. I made a conscious effort to go to the theatre, Blockbuster, HBO, use my DVR, tape off of network TV and fast forward through commercials, get up early, or stay up late.

But there is that handful of flicks upon which my eyes would never’ve fallen had it not been for random fortune (or misfortune, in some cases). One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, for instance, is a movie I had never heard of until one steamy summer night as a teenager, on my way out to play baseball a-la The Sandlot with some kids from my neighborhood, my eyes fell upon the screen where a long medical car of some sort was driving in the wee hours of the morning, the music was literally a saw, and the credits said, “Jack Nicholson.” Needless to say, my friends survive without me striking out for the 100^th time that night.

This was an example of stumbling upon a well-known flick and falling in love. But this month, we are talking about obscure movies, and I have to say that there have been a handful of instances, usually late night, that I have stumbled upon some stuff, quite unintentionally, that engrosses and (often) entertains.

And once in awhile, the movie is so good (to me), and yet, when I mention it to others, nobody has ever even heard of it.

I must’ve been a freshman in high school, and I was working on a spring term paper. My first-ever term paper, in fact. Now, I must tell you that in high school I was a homework animal. I didn’t screw around when it came time to get the work done. I didn’t require discipline or following up, either by parent or by teacher . . . it was just my duty, the way I saw it, ya’ know? Sure, I worked on homework during school during times when I maybe should’ve been paying more attention in class, all in an effort to avoid carrying home books, but I was pretty studious, all in all.

So, for my term paper, I’m sitting on my bed organizing these things called, um, “note cards,” or something. I wish for the sake of this otherwise thrilling story I could recall the topic of this term paper, but sadly I do not. Anyway, I’ve got books open, there are rows of note cards lined up and down atop the bedspread, and I’m actually enjoying this project.

And then, the sound of the silver HBO call letters flying over the buildings and out into space, declaring that a feature presentation was about to begin, whooshed throughout my bedroom while that familiar song echoed in the background, and I looked up from my work to see which movie-I’d-seen-1000-times this one was going to be.

The opening scene, nay, the opening SHOT of the 1991 movie Fearless, starring Jeff Bridges, Rosie Perez, Isabella Rossellini, John Turturro, and Tom Hulce depicts a mildly disoriented Jeff Bridges leading people away from a precarious and smoky scene. Moments later, we are in a cornfield where we see severely injured people, dying in fact, and rescue workers running in slow motion, tending to one victim after the next. And seconds after this, the camera angle switches to a helicopter’s perspective, and we learn that these people are in the immediate aftermath of a plane crash. The low, droning, ominous cinematic score flows very eerily over the visuals, people are crying, screaming, and dying, parts of the plane are exploding in fireballs all around the survivors, and the look on Jeff Bridges’s face is one of, for lack of a better word or phrase, confused euphoria. This is all in the first threethree mi of the movie.

For the next two hours, this dedicated-to-homework and always-ahead-of-the-curve student sat among piles of note cards and open books and didn’t take a single note or read a single word.

The very next sequence of scenes finds our main character, played by Bridges, trying to understand whether or not he actually survived the crash. In fact, much of the rest of the film is about Bridges trying to cope with the PTSD of being one of only a handful of passengers who, referred to by many other survivors as the Good Samaritan for his deed of leading survivors out of the wreckage, walked away from such a tragic event.

Through unsuccessful therapy, marital disaster, a coupling with another struggling survivor, and multiple run-ins with a greedy settlement attorney, Bridges slides down a cascading spiral of what he perceives as indestructibility, but what others know as self destruction.

I learned, years later while in college, that this film was used by psychology professors to teach depression, PTSD, and the “high,” as referred to in the film, that Bridges receives as he tries to defy death again and again in the wake of surviving the crash. I realized that this movie is not a movie about a plane crash, it is about a guy reaching out to be saved from a death that he doesn’t fully understand.

Directed by Peter Weir (Dead Poet’s Society, The Truman Show), Fearless is an ode to the human psyche, and to the many wondrous ideas and philosophies we can derive from it. But it is also a bitter case study that illustrates just how fragile the psyche can be, and how we all must look out for each other in moments of tragedy and loss.

I won’t soon forget Fearless. Heck, it resonated so clearly with me that I recalled where I was and what I was doing when I saw it first on HBO twenty-nine years ago.