Quite possibly the worst movie ever...
Late yesterday afternoon, I attended a test screening in Los Angeles for a movie that will hopefully never see the light of day. Even a straight-to-video release is too good for this tripe. In agreeing to watching this film, I forfeited my right to mention it by name. Our handlers told us before they started the screening, it was a criminal offence to videotape or audio record what we were about to see. Oh, how right they were. As the guy in the row ahead of mine said as he walked out twenty minutes into it, "I’ve farted more creative stuff than this."
My girlfriend and I were fortunate enough to be part of the 20-person discussion group after the movie, where we got a chance to explain in greater detail why it sucked. And it was fortunate, truly, because we needed to put our two cents in and experience that catharsis after watching such trash. When they’re trying to pull together a screening audience, they usually look to fill those seats with a cross-section of society, playing blackout bingo with all possible income brackets, ages, and ethnicities. Such was the case last night, and to a man, everybody thought it sucked. Even the punked-out coffee barista with enough tongue and lip piercings to affect the clarity of his speech was let down, and that’s a guy who gets a kick out of having parts of his face impaled.
In a sense, it’s a shame that I can’t mention the title; it was the coolest part of the movie. There’d be no point in my naming the actors, since they’re nobody you’ve ever heard of—and if their success in Hollywood is to be in any way determined by the success of this movie, you never will. The director, for whom remaining nameless is an undeserved luxury, also saw fit to write the script, provide the music (if incessantly traipsing over the same five or six keys on the synthesizer can be considered providing the music), and co-produce. M. Night Shyamalan can get away with directing and producing his own script. A good movie needs to give its audience an original concept or characters you can care about, and Shyamalan provides both. The director of last night’s train wreck cheated us on both fronts.
Three utterly unlikable amateur bank robbers and an annoying mother-daughter duo end up in a spooky house in the middle of nowhere. The obligatory silent killer steals his first victim’s do-rag—a fashion accouterment worn for no other reason than to be stolen by the killer, it would seem—and wears it over his face for the rest of the movie. The director had enough shame to eschew a hockey mask for his villain, apparently, but not enough not to rip off Jason in nearly every other respect. The killer moves silently and never speaks, but all that stealth is undone by the fact that the soundtrack damn near pulverized my eardrums every time he suddenly appeared. At one point, I was fully expecting him to pop out of the front door and blast his prey clear off the porch with his pure sonic might.
What else? The annoying single mother spends a good portion of the film tied up with duct tape. When she’s not writhing and moaning orgasmically (trying to escape her bonds or, barring that, enjoy her time in captivity, I suppose), she’s inexplicably asleep. Or magically appearing behind shut closet doors. It’s worth mentioning that the killer, while possessing no qualms about gutting other intruders like a newly-caught fish, seems to have a problem with murdering anybody trussed up with duct tape. Maybe he’s just too distracted by her moaning and writhing to off her.
This movie just made me mad. This is the sort of tripe that gets made when a person is too paranoid or power-hungry to relinquish any of the creative say-so, and then steadfastly ignores any sort of advice they’re given. The director probably sat in his screenwriting class, refusing to integrate or even consider any of the constructive criticism that undoubtedly rained down from all sides. The plot and dialogue were banal and derivative, and the sooner the characters had bled out, the better. There wasn’t an absolute vacuum of talent; the cinematography was very nice. I assume the director of photography owed the director a sizable favor. If not, I’d say that the reverse is certainly true now. Also, the back-story was touched upon for about three minutes right near the end, and from what little we got, it had definite potential. Had the director looked anywhere else for input but his bathroom mirror, maybe that part of the script could have been developed and served as its backbone. As it was, it just went to show that even a broken clock is right twice a day.
I feel better for having gotten all of this off my chest. If the director has the gall to try and release the film theatrically, I’ll repost this journal entry as a warning to anybody who might have otherwise gone and seen it.
Posted by patrick at 02:09 PM | Comments (1)
April 29, 2003
Monday's word count...
I wrassled with my keyboard for a while tonight, and managed to squeeze out 1,178 words for the evening. That brings my total to 12,332.
[Cue the theme song from "The Jeffersons"]
Posted by patrick at 01:16 AM | Comments (0)
April 28, 2003
Grad school, baby!
You may sleep easy, citizens of Tokyo. The coming catastrophe has been averted.
Although I’m still waiting on the official paperwork, UCR notified me late last week that I’ve been accepted into their MFA program in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts. Starting next August or September, I’ll be back on the other side of the desk, combining the two loves of mine which so often have fought for supremacy. What’s more, UCR is offering me a College Fellowship Award, which definitely brightens my financial outlook for the next two years. The only thing better than continuing one’s education is continuing one’s education for free.
Graduate school will be quite an experience, especially after having taught for a few years. I’m sure I’ll appreciate the experience in a way I wouldn’t have had I gone straight through from undergrad to graduate degree, and I can’t imagine but that I’ll look at college professors through different eyes, having lived in their world—albeit at the high school level—for a while.
In other news, that 4,103 words of which I was so proud in my last journal entry ended up being the only writing done over Spring Break. My goal for tonight is to crank out at least 897 and make it an even 5,000. The Brea tour weekend of "Foreplay and More" went well, although, in having the requisite technology to stage my one-act the way it was written, I discovered that I actually preferred it with the changes I made to accommodate the North Hollywood performance space. Live and learn.
Posted by patrick at 09:33 PM | Comments (0)
April 23, 2003
Actually did some writing, for a change...
Just a quick journal entry, before I head out to Los Angeles and Santa Barbara to rehearse for our tour weekend of "Foreplay and More," for which I'll be stepping into one of the roles in my one-act, "English Made Simple".
A few journal entries ago, I had said that I wanted to hold myself to some degree of accountability with regards to my written output. I'm happy to report (as if anybody cares) that I cranked out 4,103 words over the last two days. I probably won't get a chance to do much writing today, if any, but if I sit down again tomorrow and produce anything at all, I'll still be possessed of a pretty healthy four-day average.
Also, if you read my journal entry regarding grad school, you'll know what I mean when I report that the fate of Tokyo now rests with but one MFA program's decision; Fate intervened with Boston University, as with the others.
Posted by patrick at 11:35 AM | Comments (0)
April 21, 2003
Lose my number!
Every now and then, the individual’s concerns are placed ahead of those of large businesses. Such is the case with the new national Do Not Call registry, which will let telemarketers know now and forevermore who’s not interested in receiving their spiel. I’m glad to report that this law has some teeth to it: beginning this October, telemarketers will face fines of up to $11,000 per violation for calling phone numbers included on the list.
Californians can sign onto the national Do Not Call registry and kiss those telemarketers goodbye by filling out some information here. Any out-of-staters can click here for information, although I don’t think all states are taking names and numbers yet.
Please note that charities and companies that had a preexisting relationship with a person will still be allowed to call them. Of course, if you’re a mean enough person to sic the Federal Trade Commission on the Salvation Army, Easter Seals folks, or Jerry’s Kids, you deserve to have your dinner constantly interrupted.
Posted by patrick at 07:14 PM | Comments (0)
April 16, 2003
Am I that scary?
Unbeknownst to me, I inspire fear and dread in the hearts of creative writing graduate programs across the country.
Of the six to which I applied, I’ve received rejection letters from four thus far. That’s the way the cookie crumbles when you apply to some of the best programs in the nation. Notice, though, with what polite phraseology they break the news to me. To read the excerpts below (with italics added for emphasis), you’d think that they’d all tried mightily to put my name on the acceptance list, only to be foiled by gravity or some other inescapable facet of physics. The letter from Iowa is the only one in which humans are credited with the decision not to accept me, and even then, the author is careful to lay blame elsewhere.
"The members of the Fiction committee have given your manuscript careful consideration, but I’m sorry to report that they have not approved your manuscript." - University of Iowa
"I am sorry to have to tell you that we will be unable to accept you into our graduate program in creative writing for next year." - Hollins University
"We are sorry to inform you that after considering your application, we have not been able to admit you to the M.A. program in The Writing Seminars 2003/2004." - Johns Hopkins University
"We are sorry to inform you that it has not been possible to recommend your admission for the fall of 2003." - UC Irvine
They’re all so consolatory. When the chickens come home to roost, they want to make sure I know that they were pro-Seitz.
If this whole graduate school thing doesn’t pan out, I think I’ll just climb the Empire State Building and swat at planes, or level Tokyo.
Posted by patrick at 11:35 PM | Comments (0)
April 13, 2003
Sunblock, "Riverworld," and Fairely expensive boots...
I spent a goodly portion of Saturday and today at the Koroneburg European Renaissance Festival, performing "The Olde Testament Condensed" with Marlowe’s Shadowe. Speaking of which, we’ll be debuting "The True Adventures of Marco Polo" next Saturday, but that’s neither here nor there.
Seeing as how I’ll be there for six of the next seven weekends, and as how my feet are schlepping around no dainty cargo, I decided to bite the bullet and purchase some good Faire boots. They didn’t actually set me back any, since they were a belated birthday gift from my mother; there wasn’t anything I was really hankering for when my birthday rolled around last month, so she gave me an open-ended rain-check on my gift. Still, spending money—anybody’s money—on clothing is foreign enough to me to make it difficult. I could festoon the world with 50-cent neckties and loud, pre-owned button-down shirts for what I shelled out for the boots. I have no reason to complain, though. The boots were a gift, and my girlfriend saved me some cash by making my hat and doublet out of fabric we picked up a few weeks back. Not only are they original, but they have sentimental value.
Also, as long as I have the luxury to stop conversational traffic in my journal and pay homage to whatever tickles my fancy, let me just take a moment to sing the praises of Banana Boat Baby Magic Sunblock, SPF 50. Yeah, it comes in a pink bottle. Yeah, with an SPF of 50, it’s intended for newborn albino vampires. The fact still remains that, some 15 hours of exposure later, there’s not a burn to be found. By comparison, if I had gone that 15 hours without any sort of sunblock, I’d now be the consistency of jerk chicken.
In other news, I’m two books into Philip José Farmer’s "Riverworld" series and loving it. The basic premise is that every person who ever lived and died on Earth has been resurrected, naked and young, along the banks of a massive river on a non-Earth planet. Only compounding the confusion is the fact that the newly resurrected keep resurrecting every time they die. Not only does this series tweak my interest in the same way as did the Duncan Idaho gholas from "Dune" and the protagonist of Black Isle’s "Torment" (which, if it didn’t, at least should have started life as a novel), but it allows the writer the very enviable ability of conscripting some of history’s most interesting people to serve as characters.
Let me end this by mentioning that while I might paint my seniors with a pretty broad brush, don’t mistake "broad" with "all-encompassing". Some of them are giving 100 Years of Solitude a fair shake and doing the reading, having actually purchased the required book as requested. Of course, I say this on the eve of the truncated week leading into Spring Break. The situation might merit reviewing in four days, when we’re all chattering back and forth at each other via a simple system of hoots and clicks and lining our nests with pages from the now-expendable World Literature textbook.
Posted by patrick at 09:04 PM | Comments (4)
April 10, 2003
A Writer's Curse...
Since the beginning of November, I’ve written just over 11,000 words of fictional prose. Considering that Stephen King proscribes a daily regimen of 1,000 words a day for aspiring writers in his book On Writing, my sum is pretty paltry. Granted, I did direct “Hamlet” and “English Made Simple” over the last five months, which certainly gobbled up a good portion of my free time during November and March. But what about the other months? Writer’s block. Too much self-editing. Too little inspiration.
My good friend Jon Bastian once related the story of a person who had bought Ernest Hemingway’s old home. While remodeling the place, they found a wall on which he had inscribed his daily writing progress, much like a parent might mark off their children’s height on a doorframe. One of the entries read something to effect of “April 4th, 800 words—DAMMIT, DAMMIT, DAMMIT!”
It’s comforting to know that I’m not the only one whose brain and fingers sometimes don’t heed the muses with quite as much attention as they should. I think I’m going to start posting my daily word count in the journal. If nothing else, it will force me to go public (relatively speaking, with my readership of a few hundred of the world’s six billion inhabitants) with my procrastination.
I eked out a paltry 559 words today. Not the most auspicious start, but it’s better than 558 words—or no words whatsoever, for that matter. When I finish the current section of my current story, perhaps I’ll post it.
Posted by patrick at 02:29 AM | Comments (3)
April 09, 2003
Theater Essay Bloopers!
Here are some more essay bloopers, culled from my seniors' recent theater experience essay. Some level of knowledge of the specific shows might make for more enjoyable reading of these, but you don't need to know theatrical minutiae to appreciate them. I've listed less of them than last time, as these were gathered during the thick of 3rd quarter grading, when spare time was a very precious commodity. Click on the "more" link for the extended list.
For anybody concerned about the welfare of those whose bloopers are listed, fear not. After having shared these bloopers anonymously in my classes, I told my students that they could approach me outside of class and let me know if they didn't want their specific blooper posted. For the record, nobody took me up on my offer.
What's 200 years among friends?: Not like Shakespeare in the1800s.
Quite literally, feel-good theater: The play was exceptionally well.
A bit cruel, but okay...: The characters are reveled through Beth brain damage.
But was he a guy?: It was about a guy named chuck and he was a guy.
Eve the termite?: And so she causes the downfall of mankind by eating the tree of knowledge.
Don't tell Skeletor: I would of like it if he man never told her that is was all a scam.
From an essay about a six-character show: Each character is given or has a certain style to express him/her self. So neither character is exactly alike.
Next on Fox, "When Words Attack"...: Except to Mark but he didn’t want what they gave him because he ordered something because he thought he was going to get the opposite. But he didn’t get the opposite of what he ordered because he thought he was going to get that.
I was a bit upset with Harry’s leaving Flora for no good, reason, stupid communist.
The travelling salesmen are making their way to the city of River City, where the main plot of the play takes place. A particular salesmen by the name of Professor Harold Hill comes to River town Iowa, in search for a boys and girls marching band. He surprises and excites the people of river town by his whit and his knowledge of being able to make the children of river town that have no idea how to play instruments, all of a sudden through his system called “the Think System”, he says that he will bale to have the children playing in the band in just a short time of practice.
Flashbacks are used to dramatize what has already happened but in this play there wasn’t any flashbacks so it didn’t help. They made it more confusing than what the play really was.
I enjoyed the music because of the talent and dedication the musicians but into all of the music.
In “Foreplay, or the Art of the Fugue” the setting was at a miniature golf cores.
Whether it would be from disruptions from the play writer or interruptions from the stage crew.
She had a speech problem so she sought to seek a teacher of the universal language.
He tells Mr. Applegate that he must go visit his wife, in fear of loosing his deal with Joe; the devil introduces Joe to Lola, a beautiful seductress woman.
This play had a character that promises his wife, almost everyday, that they’re going to get married.
There were more saloons, brothels, butt slapping, and unmarried love then was considered the norm.
Thus, condemning the innocent and love becoming distant.
The protagonist of “Play On” is jerry, who is the director of the play that the characters put on.
He also told them he going to form a boy band, even though he did not know a thing about instruments.
The play shows that no matter what class you are in, either the middle, lower or even the higher.
In the beginning he was just pretending to be a music man to make some easy money, but in the end it turned out he really formed a band even though they did not play that well they were still a band.
I went to see the Musical Man on Saturday, March 15th at California Baptist University.
The musical was presented by John W. North.
This means that this play gave up the true essence and realty on how to date as well as what to expect in the mind of whom you are dating.
These five quick one acts were independent upon each other but used each other to build upon the excitement and humor that climaxed at the end.
This act was one of the most funniest acts out of all of them.
One night Mary hears crying and goes to find what it is rom.
The miners would speak both english and spanish throughout the play.
Your mind says geek the minuet he walks out on stage.
While I understood most of them, I could kind of relate to all of them.
I don’t really like going to plays because they appeal to me as being along and boring qith just awful singing anf cheesy acting.
Posted by patrick at 02:07 AM | Comments (9)
"100 Years of Solitude" in eight weeks. You do the math...
This journal entry is relevant only to my World Literature seniors, upon whom has fallen the task of reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude this quarter. If you're curious as to what page you should have read through for a specific day, click the "More" link for the day-by-day reading list.
Thursday, April 10th - pg. 8
Friday, April 11th - pg. 16
Monday, April 14th - pg. 40
Tuesday, April 15th - pg. 48
Wednesday, April 16th - pg. 56
Thursday, April 17th - pg. 64
Friday, April 18th - pg. 72
Monday, April 21st - pg. 96
Tuesday, April 22nd - pg. 104
Wednesday, April 23rd - pg. 112
Thursday, April 24th - pg. 120
Friday, April 25th - pg. 128
Monday, April 28th - pg. 152
Tuesday, April 29th - pg. 160
Wednesday, April 20th - pg. 168
Thursday, May 1st - pg. 176
Friday, May 2nd - pg. 184
Monday, May 5th - pg. 208
Tuesday, May 6th - pg. 216
Wednesday, May 7th - pg. 224
Thursday, May 8th - pg. 232
Friday, May 9th - pg. 240
Monday, May 12th - pg. 264
Tuesday, May 13th - pg. 272
Wednesday, May 14th - pg. 280
Thursday, May 15th - pg. 288
Friday, May 16th - pg. 296
Monday, May 19th - pg. 320
Tuesday, May 20th - pg. 328
Wednesday, May 21st - pg. 336
Thursday, May 22nd - pg. 344
Friday, May 23rd - pg. 352
Monday, May 26th - pg. 376
Tuesday, May 27th - pg. 384
Wednesday, May 28th - pg. 392
Thursday, May 29th - pg. 400
Friday, May 30th - pg. 408
Monday, June 2nd - pg. 432
Tuesday, June 3rd - pg. 440
Wednesday, June 4th - pg. 448
Posted by patrick at 01:45 AM | Comments (3)