Spring Eddy and Extraneous Romance: A Case Study

I saw Spring Eddy today, and what could have been an amazing movie was marred by random romance. The first part of the movie was great. Our dim witted protagonist Eddy gets himself into one wacky fix after another- complete with mobsters, rednecks and people inexplictably wearing cowboy hats.The plot is simple but understandable - Eddy needs money fast and also needs to  get out of town fast. However, when he gets put in the slammer and his ex fiance has to get him- the movie hits a huge snag.

They introduce a guy who cleans out septic tanks for a living, his stalking of his ex, and his stalking of Jennie, Eddy's ex fiance. They meet cute during a car crash, blah blah blah. Of course, there's also an additional subplot including the hit man after Eddy and some random Western wear lady. The main plot: this idiot needs to avoid getting killed for crossing the mob has great narrative tension. When we see him interact with a scantly clad hitchhiker - we think "Man, this won't be good", and wonder what happens next. When he tries to stick up a bank (on free gun day) - the result is important to whether he gets away or not

However, whether some septic tank salesman gets laid or not is not. When a movie starts off with life or death stakes, taking time out to worry about whether two random folks will knock boots really is jarring. I see this in YA a lot, actually. Sure, the evil government/aliens/vampires are out to kill a girl, but which guy should she choose? The fact that these are just side characters makes the padding even more apparent. Jennie has a part to play in that we're waiting to see if she can get Eddy out of jail. Her new boothang is irrelvant.

The hitman/random chick is less jarring since it's set up as a (flimsy) excuse to get the writer out of the corner he has written himself into. I wish he'd trust the audience- I could see several ways to get Edie out of there without a paper thin romance. 

A movie isn't like a novel where one can convey the love lives of every minor character in detail. A movie is a short story. Every moment must pull its own weight. When we add romance just because it's expected- the movie becomes heavy and bloated.

My Eyes Just Rolled So Fucking Hard

This is a stupid article. Selections are in bold.

My response to his question was that given the cynicism in which much of indie film traffics, the movie is revolutionary in that it's about love and gratitude, and that it's hopeful not bleak. ("Crowd-pleasing" is a curious designation, if you think about it -- shouldn't every movie be "crowd-pleasing?" Who are movies for, after all?) No matter how dark things may get in a story, I feel it's the responsibility of the storyteller to leave the audience with at least a shred of hope.

Uh..a hopeful movie is 'revolutionary'? No, that's pretty common. Everything from Children of Heaven to Kiki's Delivery Service to Daughters of the Dust to Being The Diablo have grace and hope and gratitude in them. Maybe he's just in a particularly bleak scene, but you don't even have to look very hard to see cheery films that aren't playing at every multiplex. And it's not the storyteller's responsibility to have anyone feel hope. It's the storyteller's responsibility to tell the story the best that they are able- whether it's a happy story or a sad one or somewhere in between.

The dark and fearful stuff is no less 'true' than its opposite, it just announces itself in a louder, more insistent manner. Joy speaks in more of a whisper and you sometimes have to lean in a bit to hear it. But it's always there for those who can get quiet enough to hear it. I'm not a pollyanna -- I get that the world is rife with horrors. But I also know the world is rife with everything else. There's this great Carlos Castaneda quote: "We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same." I really believe that. Negativity is so reflexive in our society that it takes great vigilance to train yourself anew. But to me it feels worth it.

I really hate it when folks assume that the way it is for them is the way it is for everyone. For me, happiness is a heavy lift. I have to work hard, constantly trying to eat right, exercise right, sleep right, think right. It's a full time job to be 'happy'. And negativity is NOT rife in our society. See this video. Really. You have to work hard to AVOID mandatory cheer.



I've decided that if I'm going to spend years writing, prepping, casting, shooting, editing, sound mixing, color correcting, and publicizing a movie, I'm going to want it to be the kind of movie I would love, where people grow up and get out of their own ways and open up to something bigger than their own egoic needs. Not because this is a truer version of reality, but because it's the reality I wish to grow, the kind of world in which I would most like to live. When so much else is calling attention to the dark and dysfunctional, I just don't feel it's my job to contribute. Too many people are already on the case.

I agree about making the sort of movie you'd want to watch, but on the other hand, to make things less dark and dysfunctional, sometimes you got to know those things are there. So often we pull ourselves into a bubble- don't watch the news, it's got bad news on it, don't be around people who are sad; they are 'toxic', and we end up not knowing what's going on, and then we can't act to make things better if we don't know that things are happening.

And in a story, whether film or other media, sometimes you have to go there- to the bleakness, to the darkness, even if only a minute. I want a fully realized world in your fiction- the brighter the light, the darker the shadow. If I see only light, and no shadow, I start to wonder what I'm not seeing, and I'm out of your story.

Also, happy endings are much happier to me, and satisfy me more if it seems like I can empathize with the characters invovled- and really, I can't emphasize with shiny happy people. I really just feel distant from characters like that. Occasionally, it feels like our characters have gotten a feelingsotomy and never feel sad for more than five seconds. This bothers me if say, their father, who raised them, and they were close to, dies, and they have one scene of sadness and then are happy and fine the rest of the story. This always strikes me as false and throws me out of the story.

I also need the happy ending to be 'earned' by the characters. So The Dark Lord of Baby Stabbing was defeated? I'll like it more if our characters sacrificed something- maybe love or their right leg or the life of their heroic sidekick to defeat him. I also like it when characters who have had their whole life's purpose being defeating the Dark Lord of Baby Stabbing grapple with what that means for them.

I wouldn't like it at all if our hero just won easily, maybe with his Ring of Deux Ex Author, and lost nothing, and everyone is happy. Both of those endings count as 'happy endings', but one seems emotionally real and satisfies me, and the other makes me want to ask for my money back. So it's more than just THOSE NEGATIVE MEANIES HATE HAPPY ENDINGS, and I'm a BOLD REVOLUTIONARY FOR WRITING A MOVIE THAT IS POSITIVE.

No, get off of it. You're not striking a blow for happiness and flowers and whatever, if you make a fricking movie. Especially if it sucks. You're making a movie. Burst your self importance bubble,please.

There are many things that don't need a movie

and Fruits Basket is one of them! Why doesn't Fruits Basket need a movie? Well, the first reason is that very few things really need a movie. The part of Fruits Basket I loved required time. It took time to develop relationships, it took time for us to understand the Sohma family dynamics- until volume 13 or so, we didn't know Akito's role or why her word was absolute, for example. What movies don't have is time.

Another reason is that Fruits Basket has loads of characters. There are 14 cursed people- all 12 of the original Chinese zodiac, Kyo, the cat, and Akito, the god. The interactions between these loads of characters is why Fruits Basket is popular. It's not because of people bumping into girls and turning into animals! Nor is it because of Hollywood style romance. We see friendship grow first, and then, tenderness, and then, love. The emotional weight of that such as it is can't really be expressed in a love montage.

There are other issues, such as the fact that the Sohma compound is very well...Japanese. I can imagine Shigure's house in America, and maybe the school, but not the compound. I of course wonder why every movie has to be set in America or fantasyland. There are so many great stories in America- women's stories, black people's stories, Arab people's stories, Latin@ stories, Native American stories- that aren't being told in film. Why go to some other country and butcher their comic book by Americanizing them when we have so many great ideas here?










More people reacting in pure horror

I don't get it

I have now learned that sports gamers pay $60 every year for what is basically the same game over and over. I have fond memories of the old NBA Jam, but I wouldn't want to buy a game that is exactly the same.

I also don't get ebooks. I don't want to curl up to a machine in bed, and I don't want things to disappear on the whim of some company.

I do get why physical movie rental stores are closing although I don't think theaters will go away. Now I prefer watching movies at home- although I would rather watch on my tv than a computer- but many people will actually sell out $15 to watch a movie on a big screen. Those crazy people probably are more attracted to the experience of going out and eating overpriced foodstuffs than the newness of the movie.