Anna Popplewell (left), William Moseley and Georgie Henley are siblings who become rulers of a mystical land in ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe’
The Chronicles of Narnia starts off well enough. The four engaging Pevensie children, Peter, Susan, Edmund and the irrepressible young Lucy, huddle in their living room while Hitler’s bombers strafe London. As the explosions near, their panicked mum herds them into the cellar. Next thing they know, they’re boarding a train for the safety of the English countryside. As their mother tearfully sends them off in the crush of the station, their anguish is palpable. Unfortunately, it is just about the most moving scene in the film. Because it is human.
So, too, is the interplay between the siblings as they try to keep a stiff upper lip while making themselves at home in the huge country estate of the mysterious Professor Kirke (Jim Broadbent in a role better suited to Christopher Lloyd.) While these scenes are slow, there is definite life to them, and the sets are rich, varied, and intriguing. And so we are hopeful when Lucy, having found the perfect place to secret herself during a game of hide and seek, discovers that the wardrobe she’s climbed into is actually the door to a snow covered forest. Our sense of wonder grows as she meets a friendly faun (a.k.a., satyr) who introduces himself as Mr. Tumnus. Vividly played by James McAvoy, we feel a thrilling pinprick of magic, and are both delighted, and a little fearful, when Lucy happily agrees to go to his house for tea. His home turns out to be a hobbit like cave in the side of a rock hill with an arched door, and as she enters the look in his eyes tells us that all is not as benign as it seems. While we know that she can’t actually be in the kind of danger this intimates, it is still riveting.
However, Mr. Tumnus is soon ushering Lucy back to the wardrobe and her “world”, putting himself in grave peril, and we know that the story everyone has come to see is about to begin. The trouble is, from the moment a few scenes later when Lucy and her siblings set foot onto snowy Narnian ground, the film begins to flatten. The story is so thin and underdeveloped that it feels surprisingly linear, as if we were following a very narrow path, with little knowledge of what lies on either side of it. The bleak winter landscape, which remains surprisingly monochromatic when spring finally blooms, adds to the monotony.
Throughout we are only given the barest, most black and white details of what the kids have walked into. Aslan, a lion who apparently has been gone for the past hundred years, is the rightful the king of Narnia. From the moment he left, or was vanquished, or whatever happened, the evil White Witch (marvelously played by Tilda Swinton, who seems to have forgotten to take the hanger out of her dress) has been in change, and it’s been winter ever since. But, for some reason, there’s been no Christmas. Wait, Christmas? If Narnia is a mythical community devoid of humans, or as they so quaintly put it, “sons of Adam and daughters of Eve”, how the heck did they get a hold of Christmas? Okay, we all know the answer to that.
The problem is that the Christian allegory laced into Narnia, while it will no doubt fly over the heads of the tots in the audience, has made mincemeat of the story. Sure, it has all the de rigueur elements of a fantasy epic — selflessness triumphs after great sacrifice (with a genuine resurrection, no less), bravery is rewarded, and good conquers evil. Regrettably, we don’t get enough of the specific story to really care. After Aslan’s mid-film homily, which isn’t helped by Liam Neeson’s mournful seriousness, there is no real attempt to make sense of what the ultimate battle is actually about. From the minute it begins, it’s as if all of Narnia has become a backdrop against which the Pevensie kids can work out their family loyalties.
Unfortunately, the slow pacing gives one time to actually ponder many of the film’s more curious aspects. The most benign being the way the cute talking beavers seem to have cribbed their dialog from a sitcom -– the female beaver is concerned with her looks, the male, with her cooking.
And there is something odd about the Pevensie brood. If they were puppies, you’d be sure Edmund had a different dad. The other three have wide blue eyes, and light hair. Edmund’s eyes are brown and his hair, nearly black. It’s quite jarring. My first thought was, what, they ran out of blue-eyed moppets? But when Edmund turns out to be the betrayer, it’s jarring again, in a decidedly darker way.
But there is something darker still going on here. While Aslan’s army is full of large wholesome looking beasts, (their faces are for the most part human, their bodies graceful, their skin glows), the White Witch’s army is uniformly hideous. Ugly, deformed, twisted, small and slimy. In other words, sub-human. Thus, no one ever has to give a second thought to killing them. They deserve it. This simple minded demonizing of the enemy for the sake of “entertainment” leaves a legacy that the audience carries with it into the sunlight. Witness just about any war. And when it comes to Christian warfare, one doesn’t need allegory, although it’s probably more palatable than remembering the Crusades.
In the end, when we watch from behind as the children stroll triumphantly through the castle that is now their own, we can’t help wishing that it was Luke, Leia and Han Solo who are about to take the stage. It sure looks like the same scene.
And that leads to another nagging question: If these four siblings are now the kings and queens of Narnia, a country in which they are the only humans, where will the princes and princesses come from? Don’t answer. I want the sequel to surprise me.
Tom Butler explains EVP, the science behind the supernatural thriller, ‘White Noise’ starring Michael Keaton.
In January, the supernatural thriller White Noise not only thankfully ended Michael Keaton’s maddeningly long absence from the screen, it also introduced the very real concept of EVP — otherwise known as Electronic Voice Phenomena.
To launch the DVD, which includes several special features in which experts not only explain the phenomena, but give instructions for recording the afterlife at home, Universal brought Tom and Lisa Butler, the directors of the American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena to the famously haunted Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel to demystify EVP for a gathering of curious, if skeptical, press.
Tom and Lisa Butler are an unassuming couple. When they said that before they got into EVP they were upper level corporate managers living in Kansas it came as no surprise. As opposed to the name of their book, There is No Death and There Are No Dead, which if nothing else gives entirely new meaning to the term “undead.”
Lisa took the floor first, and explained the fundamentals of EVP. In a nutshell: EVP postulates that the “dead” communicate via quickly spoken, very faint, two second, three or four word “messages” that can be left on any recording device, the cheaper the better. However, she said, you can’t hear the messages when they’re being left, but only later, when you play the tape back and run it through a computer program that renders it intelligible. She played several such messages, always after first repeating it several times, while projecting it on an overhead slide. Intelligible, I guess, is in the ear of the listener — and I couldn’t help thinking that “Get back, Dear” sounded an awful lot like “You’re fat, bear.” That is, if I had to say it sounded like anything at all. Other than, well, modulated static. It was also a little puzzling why so many of the messages were of the “get out, now!” variety, when the listener wouldn’t be able to hear them until they got home, anyway. This isn’t to say that some of them weren’t spoken in what sounded like a real voice. However, Lisa’s heartfelt rhetorical question, “How can someone be dead and their voice sounds the same?” stated as proof that, as she says, “the personality doesn’t die, but lives forever,” had the resounding ring of wishful thinking.
Not that you can blame her, there is little that is more terrifying than the looming thought of that long goodnight. It’s hard to believe that even the most hardcore skeptic, if presented with absolute proof of life after death, wouldn’t be in some small way relieved. It is a universal human desire, and no doubt had a hand in begetting the bulk of the world’s religions. But religion is fueled by faith, proof is something altogether different.
Unfortunately, when Tom then took the stage and played the raw transmissions they’d collected, all I could think of were those times when you forget to turn off the video camera off, and end up with ten minutes of jittery shots of the ground, random bits of conversation, and the sometimes whispery, sometimes raspy swish-swish of your legs rubbing together as you walk. It is this that, unfortunately, before it is slowed and enhanced, much of EVP’s raw data sounds like. Which isn’t to say that there might not be a ghost in the machine. Or a glitch. Or your imagination. In fact, as Tom pointed out, one of the tenants of EVP is that you don’t hear it solely with your ears, but also with your “inner sensing”. I was trying hard to be objective, but for the life of me, all I could think was, how convenient.
A pretty young hotel employee, who was clearly not used to public speaking, but which made her all the more endearing, then told stories about her experiences with the Hotel’s resident ghosts, including hearing a female voice singing a Forties style song coming from an empty room, having a previously locked door suddenly jerk open by itself, and receiving a phone call from a mysterious male voice that originated from a cabana room without so much as a phone line in it, asking her if she was wearing tights.
And with that, we broke into two groups and were taken up to one of the hotel’s most well known haunted rooms, the once elegant two-story Gable Lombard Suite. The suite itself was a disappointment. The downstairs walls were dark brown, and everything in it looked ersatz, scuffed and shabby, any authenticity it may have had being long since sacrificed to lowest-bidder remodeling. The only evidence of its original grandeur was the panoramic view.
Then an interesting thing happened. Tom turned on his small hand held recorder, and after invoking whatever ghosts might be in the room and giving them a moment of silence in which to imprint their voices on the tape, he asked if anyone had someone they’d like to communicate with. After a brief pause, one man asked to talk to his mother, Eunice, who had recently died. It was surprisingly moving. Next, a woman asked to talk to her Aunt Mary Ann, and as we were getting ready to go upstairs, a determined but shaken young woman approached Tom, asking if she could say something to her friend, Brad, who’d committed suicide a year and a half ago. It was abundantly clear that this moment meant something to each of them. Even though if Eunice, Mary Ann or Brad did say something into the tape recorder, they would not know it.
We then filed upstairs into the huge bedroom, with it’s two story vaulted ceiling of carved, painted beams, the only original touch left in the entire suit, a stark contrast to the pealing brown wallpaper, and the white air vents coated in soot. There, Lisa took over, and after asking everyone to envision the room full of white light, tried to coax Clark Gable into “taking this wonderful opportunity to give one last interview.” He didn’t. I know, because she then looked at her recorder and said, “That’s funny, I have to admit, there’s nothing, no vibration. Yesterday, there was.” Okay. I have to confess right now, it might have been my fault. I was not envisioning white light. I was trying too hard not to laugh. Along with several other staff members, I couldn’t help noticing. But a moment later, as Lisa stood there, earnestly holding out the tape recorder, trying to record the silence, a voice bled through one of the staff’s headphones. “One more minute” it said. Everyone jumped. Belief is a funny thing, even when you’re in the midst of denying it.
So let me be clear: I am not denying the existence of phenomena that can’t be explained. Rather, it is the very specific explanation that the proponents of EVP harness to these particular phenomena that is difficult to believe. As we filed into the elevator to go back to the room where the presentation was being given, I found myself reflecting on the irony that while for the living EVP is a comforting theory, for the dead, it sounds a bit constraining. Hanging around in rooms and closets, giving three word often irrelevant, unintelligible “messages” to strangers does not sound like a particularly appealing ever after. It is as if it hasn’t occurred to EVP advocates that some time soon they, too, will be on the giving end of these messages, a thought that might make even the most stalwart believer think twice.
Which brings us back to White Noise, and the evening’s most surprising twist of all: the movie’s version of EVP ultimately comes across as far more compelling, credible and thought out than that of the experts.
Whereas, according to Lisa Butler, the worst thing you have to worry about with EVP are “pesky” ghosts who leave salty three word messages on your tape recorder, the moviemakers realized that genuine evil is never going to be satisfied with making schoolmarms blush. What’s the point of being undead if you can’t shake things up? The ghosts in White Noise do just that, with increasingly dire consequences. And what good is evil without, well, good? Here, good takes the form of blonde angel Anna (Chandra West), the beautiful young wife of Jonathan (Michael Keaton) who is tragically killed early on. Anna’s spirit, wanting to thwart the evil ghosts from doing to others what they did to her, reaches out to Jonathan via EVP. Being on the other side, she knows what they’re planning, and is able to crudely telegraph this to Jonathan in the hope that he’ll be able decipher it in time to stop them. Given what we know about human nature, this scenario is far more believable than the rather toothless EVP version of the afterlife, and certainly vastly more entertaining.
Then again, who’s to say that the Butlers are wrong? Or that you can’t channel your beloved Aunt Matilda from the comfort and safety of your Lazy-boy? So after you watch White Noise, why not click onto the special features, and give it a try. Or better yet, turn it off and watch the static for a while. Maybe White Noise got it right. And remember, it could be worse. It could be The Ring.
You’ve just finished the best screenplay you’ve ever written. Congratulations. The easy part is over. Now you’re ready to move on to the real challenge, getting someone in power to actually read the damn thing!
In other words, in the if-it’s-not-one-thing-it’s-another category, after having successfully scaled Pike’s Peak, you now find yourself staring up at Mount Everest. Take a deep cleansing breath, and get ready to master yet another deceptively difficult form of writing: the query letter.
You know the old saw: If only I had more time I could have written less? It’s why a good query letter takes longer to write than the screenplay it’s pitching. Or at least, it sure feels that way. What’s more, query letters have a format that is just about as rigid — four paragraphs, half a page, lots of white space. And that’s a good thing. It allows yours to shine. Why? Because since even properly formatted queries can come across as mind-numbingly similar, a letter that leaps off the page instantly leaves the others in the dust. Which is why it’s essential to keep in mind that although when you’re writing your query, it’s just one letter, and so by definition it stands alone, chances are the agent or development executive (or more likely, their assistant) reading it has just pulled it from what feels like a never ending stack of submissions, and her mind is already muddy. That’s why your letter needs to be like a spoonful of sorbet — you want to cleanse her palate. You want her to open your letter and smile, because just looking at it, before she reads word one, is a welcome relief, and you have her attention, and momentarily, her gratitude.
Yes, but how, exactly, do you do that? The answer is, attitude.
There’s a story about Marilyn Monroe. She was walking through a hotel lobby with Truman Capote, who was surprised that no one gave her a second glance. With a grin she asked, “You want to see me do ‘Marilyn’?” And without breaking stride she switched gears, instantly projecting the drop dead confidence of the woman who owns the room. Even though she was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, suddenly every head turned in her direction.
Sure, she may have been teeming with insecurity inside, but on the outside, all you saw was the utter self-assurance of someone who is well aware of their power, and who knows that the best way to wield it is to stand back and let it do its job for you.
Exactly like a good query letter. Regardless how insecure you might feel, its tone is of blithe self-confidence. And completely devoid of self-confidence’s evil twin, arrogance, which always comes across as insecurity on steroids.
The truth is, almost all writers are insecure, regardless of their level of success. Ironically, it’s often the ones who aren’t insecure that really should be. Here’s something that helped me big time: When I lived in New York I asked a therapist who lived in my building and had a wide ranging practice, if there was any one trait she saw in all her patients across the board, regardless of age, race, gender, education or socio-economic standing. Without missing a beat she said, “Everyone feels like they’re faking it.” Sort of levels the playing field, doesn’t it?
With that in mind, here are several ways to come across as confident (whether you feel confident or not):
Be succinct. Be concise. Assume you’re a good writer. You don’t have to convince anyone of that. All you have to do is get them to read your script.
Don’t apologize for anything. Ever. And don’t qualify your statements. “I think” and “I believe” weaken whatever point you’re making. Consider the difference between, “I think this is a compelling story,” and “This is a compelling story.” The former reads as if you’re not quite sure, the latter, as if it’s a fact.
As important is passion. There is little that is more intoxicating than someone who is passionate about a project that they have complete confidence in. Passion and confidence are power.
Luckily, the appearance of confidence IS confidence. In a way the query letter is a fabulous “cover” for the shy. No one has to know that you spent three weeks sweating over a four-paragraph half-page letter. Or that your eyes bled over each and every word. Or that you can’t believe that anyone would take you seriously, no matter what your letter says. What’s reassuring and rather astonishing is that in the end the letter will read as if are so sure of yourself that you tossed it off in five minutes on your way out to walk the dog.
Okay, now, you have four lines max to entice an exhausted agent or development executive, in the form of their assistant, to read your script. How do you do that?
First, there’s the logline: The trouble is, you have to know what your script is about in order to summarize it in an effective logline. This sounds like a no brainer. It’s not. Why is it so hard? Because you know every single detail of your script inside and out. How can you possibly leave out even the most minor turn and still have it make sense? The irony is, the more you explain, the muddier it gets. And here’s something else: It isn’t as if your logline has to invoke the entire script. All it has to do is whet the appetite. To tantalize. To suggest. It has to prick the curiosity of the person you’re querying by raising the central story question that he or she wants answered. And of course, the only way to do that is to actually read your script.
You also have to know what genre your script is in. Sounds like another no brainer. But that’s genre, singular. A description like: it’s a romantic/action-adventure/sci-fi/western tells you next to nothing about the script, but all you need to know about the writer. As with the logline, sure, there are facts that you are positive are absolutely essential in order to get across exactly what the movie is about. But this isn’t a term paper. It’s a sales tool. So pick the genre that seems to be the primary one, put your pencil down, and exit quietly.
Now, on to the nuts and bolts of the query letter itself:
Always write to a specific person. While there are several sources of lists of agents and development executives, it’s essential to call and make sure that the person still works there, and that you have the correct spelling of their name, along with their specific title. And while you’re on the phone, take the time to schmooze with the receptionist or assistant. Not only are these people often agents and executives in training, but they may very well be the person who will actually read your letter and decide if it’s worth their boss’s time. They work grueling hours, are often underpaid and their efforts are largely unsung. They appreciate your kindness, deference and respect. Ask their name and write it down, so you can ask for them the next time you call. In a high stakes business where success depends on what will capture the public’s attention, but without any way to predict just what that will be, personal relationships are everything. Who knows which script will be the next big thing? The only sure thing is that people like to work with people who they like. The executive’s assistant is a great place to start!
It is essential that your first sentence have a hook that instantly sets you, and your script, apart. How’s that for pressure? Just keep repeating, less is more, less is more. In a way it’s liberating. Imagine that someone was pitching your story to you. What would most capture your imagination? What you’re looking for is a way to intimate why this story absolutely needs to be told, and as important, why your script is the one to tell it. And because every word in your query does double, triple, sometimes quadruple duty, you’re also trying to convey your passion for the project. Think of it as the subtext of the entire letter.
In your second paragraph, you have three or four lines to pitch your script. Don’t forget to mention your main characters by name, their goal, the obstacles, and how they plan to over come them. That’s it. Except, of course, that you have to do it in a way that will pique the imagination. And whatever you do, keep the ending to yourself. They have to read the script to find that out!
Next comes a paragraph about you and your credentials. If you’ve won any relevant awards, been produced or published, or if a script you wrote won or placed in a contest, be sure to mention it, along with your educational background, but again, only if it relates. If you don’t have much to say in this category, don’t be tempted to fill in the blank space with chatter. It will come across as desperation. Being honest about your insecurity in this case is not refreshing, it’s a red flag.
Finally, you want to invite them to read your script. That’s it. For this, you will want to enclose a SASE — self-addressed stamped envelope — for their reply. Although as we all know, it’s rejections that come via snail mail. So, you want to be sure to include your phone number in the letter — for good news, they call.
Here are a few things that you want to avoid at all costs:
Typos. Bad grammar. Cute fonts. No illustrations, no fancy paper. This is a professional letter, it’s not personal. You don’t want to do anything that gives off the whiff of being a neophyte, even if you are one. In fact, since they’ve most likely never heard of you, and you have no credits to your name, they’ll figure out that you are, in fact, a neophyte, but at the same time they’ll think of you as a quick study, because there is nothing in the tone or format of your letter to give you away.
Don’t mention specific actors who you think would be prefect for the movie. Not only does this come across as amateurish, but since chances are these particular actors will not be available, you don’t want it to read as if without them, the script is worthless.
Don’t be cutesy. Ever. No matter what. Gimmicks almost always work against you, and while they might make the recipient laugh, it is rarely in the way you intend. Also, you always run the risk of having it backfire, by making the agent or executive start to wonder if you’re resorting to gimmicks because you don’t have enough confidence in the script itself.
Don’t make false claims. This applies both to specific lies — such as that you were recommended by someone who, a simple phone call will disclose, has never heard of you — and to general aggrandizement — “This is the best script ever written” — which you will have just guaranteed they’ll never take the time to find out, because they instantly tossed your query and moved on to the next.
Don’t tell them it’s your first screenplay ever. If you’ve written several, you might want to mention that — it shows that you’ve spent time learning your craft. But best not to mention that this is your eleventh script, or they’ll start wondering why the first ten didn’t sell.
If you’re looking for an agent, unless you’ve been offered a deal, don’t mention that some studio is interested in looking at your script. One of the ironies of Hollywood is that while very little actually gets optioned, no one wants to come right out say no, either. You’re far more likely to hear that they’d love to look at your script, but you need representation first. That way, they haven’t offended you just in case you really are the next Quentin Tarantino, but since the odds of anyone getting an agent are slim, it’s primarily an effective way to say no without actually having to say it.
Why is all this so important? Look at it this way, if you were an agent or development executive, and you read a half-page four-paragraph letter rife with typos, maundering digressions, grammatical errors, written in a tone alternating between pleading and braggadocio, what hope would you have that its author could write a compelling 120 page screenplay? I’d say the odds are about the same as that they’ll ever find WMD circa 2002 in Iraq.
John Cho and Kal Penn get high in ‘Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle’
On the surface Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle is a typical stoner film. On Friday night two twenty-something guys smoke themselves into a wicked case of the munchies, and decide that the only solution is to scarf down as many burgers and fries as it takes to appease their hunger. The catch? The burgers have to be from White Castle, a fast food chain famous for teeny tiny burgers called sliders. Luckily there’s one not far from their New Jersey apartment. Or, there used to be . . .
And so their quest begins. It unfolds during an intermittent dark and stormy night, during which they joust with a gang of skinhead extreme skateboarders, a rampaging raccoon, a racist cop, Kumar’s disapproving father, Harold’s bullying co-workers, a backwoods boil-covered bible-thumping psycho mechanic who invites them to sleep with his gorgeous young wife, an anal narc, a set of beautiful English party girls seized with an unfortunate case of food poisoning, an escaped cheetah and Doogie Howser.
Like The Simpsons, if you want to watch it on nothing but the surface level, you won’t be disappointed. It’s laugh out loud funny. But watch out, because the beauty of pop culture at its most (often unintentionally) innovative is that it can slip in real thoughts and real ideas, while you’re busy cracking up at the two babes playing a rousing game of “battle shits”.
This is a gross out comedy with a twist. This odd couple is smart. No Jeff Spicoli’s here. Forget Wayne and Garth. On the road, Harold and Kumar owe more to Hope and Crosby than Bill and Ted. But wait, there’s more. Harold and Kumar, regardless the rapidly escalating, gloriously over the top situations they find themselves in, are real people. And even more unorthodox, they are friends. Not generic testosterone driven buds, pals or bros. They aren’t even afraid that, if they see each other naked, or sit close together on the couch, it “Means Something”.
The film isn’t homoerotic. It’s something way slyer and far more deceptively subversive: it isn’t homophobic. It is peppered with situations and lines that, stereotypically, call for Harold or Kumar to react in the same way men in movies react when they have to change a baby’s diaper. With a loud ewww, and the desire to get away as fast as possible. Here instead they are secure enough in their sexuality — even if they aren’t getting any — that not only aren’t they threatened, they don’t see the idea of being gay as horrific. It’s a choice, it’s just not their choice. When a white supremacist-in-training calls Harold a “catcher,” he frowns, turns to Kumar and says, “Why do I have to be the catcher?” What he’s asking is, “Do I seem like a wimp?”, completely sidestepping what, in almost any other movie, would be fighting words. There is something stealthily revolutionary, and genuinely endearing, in this.
Kal Penn (right) and John Cho star in ‘Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle’
John Cho is utterly believable as Harold, an uptight Korean-American investment banker who mistakenly thinks that the way to gain acceptance in American culture is to follow all the rules without complaint. His face continually registers his internal battle between disapproval and longing. Even at the end, when he finally cuts loose in a stolen truck, he won’t put petal to the metal to out run the cops until Kumar buckles up.
Kumar, on the other hand, could care less. It isn’t that he’s opposed to rules per se, just the ones that make no sense — and there are so many. Like having to wait for the green light to cross a deserted country road at two a.m. Kal Penn gives Kumar a comfortable air of self-confidence that is completely devoid of arrogance, allowing him to explain the most far-fetched scenarios with such total sincerity that you almost believe him. It doesn’t hurt that Penn has the charisma of a star, and that together he and Cho have far more chemistry than many of the pairings in recent romantic comedies — JLo and Ralph Fiennes come to mind, not to mention Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore.
The supporting players take delight in small roles, each of which defines its moment and thus becomes stand alone. Fred Ward as a medical school dean is hilariously outraged by Kumar’s refreshingly blunt admission that even though he has perfect MCAT scores he has no desire to be a doctor. Anthony Anderson is disturbingly earnest as a Burger Shack employee who may make you think twice when biting into your next oozing fast food burger. Bobby Lee does a quick turn as a button down geek who shocks Harold and Kumar when he comes unbuttoned in a scene that underscores the film’s theme — stereotyping isn’t something that we only do to others, we do it to ourselves. And as Bobby Lee’s character, Kenneth Park proves, most of the time, we are wrong. Finally, as Neil Patrick Harris, Neil Patrick Harris is sublime. Doogie has a sense of humor. Who knew?
The DVD also includes a conversation between Bobby Lee, Kal Penn and John Cho that’s entertaining although not enlightening. Far more interesting is the short, “The Art of the Fart,” which illustrates that bathroom humor is not nearly as easy as it seems. Given breakthroughs in manufactured sound — and who hasn’t seen old footage of coconut shells being clapped together to create the sound of thundering hooves? — you’d think that it would be a cinch to whip up a good fart via a synthesizer. Apparently not. In this case, it took a burly sound engineer dressed in granny-style drag infiltrating a public restroom in Arizona, trying, not always successfully, to secretly snake a boom mike beneath the walls of a stall while it’s in use.
But by far the most interesting extras on the DVD are two commentaries, one with director Danny Leiner, as well as Cho and Penn; and the other by the screenwriters, John Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg. The two writers describe what they were going for in each scene, how it was written, what they were thinking as it was filmed and a million little intriguing details that make you feel as if you were there. However, watching them back-to-back is at times a bit of a Rashomon experience, especially when each attributes the creation of a particular line to a different person. It’s definitely worth the price of admission.
Admittedly John Carpenter’s 1976 Assault on Precinct 13 is not a perfect movie. This “low budget” film was one of the lowest. As Carpenter himself says, if it was shot today it would be on mini-DV.
It’s easy to imagine him in his garage, hunkered down over a laptop, editing it via Final Cut Pro. (He edited the original under the name, John T. Chance, John Wayne’s character in Rio Bravo, the Howard Hawks’ film that inspired it). It’s choppy in places. The acting is occasionally uneven. The sparse dialogue walks a thin line between quiet brilliance and stilted, every now and then stumbling into camp. But, unlike its successor, the 1976 version is more than the sum of its parts.
Considerably more.
‘Assault on Precinct 13’ 1976 poster
The original Assault on Precinct 13 is a bravura piece of filmmaking. Despite its flaws, it gets under your skin; urges you to the edge of your seat; and captivates you in a way that only a film this direct, uncluttered, and immediate can. The gap between the original and the remake is illustrative of what’s happened to moviemaking in the 30-plus years since Carpenter’s film was released.
Assault ’76 kicks off beneath the clear blue summer sky of Southern California, in an arid flatland full of bleached, boarded up stucco apartment buildings. The roads are empty. It is very still. It tells, in essence, the simple story of several people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is, literally, in the reductive sound bite parlance of the industry, Rio Bravo meets The Night of The Living Dead.
The story is anchored by Ethan Bishop, deftly played by Austin Stoker, a black police lieutenant who, on his first night back on the job, is assigned to baby-sit a crumbling ghetto precinct that will officially close at dawn. We never do find out why it’s his first night back, what happened to him, or why he’s exasperated that people seem to be aware of it. When he arrives at the nearly deserted precinct he’s told by Leigh, a sultry, hardboiled secretary beautifully underplayed by Laurie Zimmer, that nearly everything has been sent to the new station. The phones should have been diverted already.
Elsewhere, prisoner Napoleon Wilson is being transported to death row. When one of the two other cons on the bus becomes ill, the warden orders the driver to take them to the nearest police precinct so he can call a doctor. As played by Darwin Josten, Wilson comes across as a man slightly bewildered by his fate, but with no intention of whining about it. Although we never learn more about his crime than what’s implied by the warden’s unanswered question — “why’d you kill those men?” — we have the feeling that there was more to it than cold-blooded murder.
Meanwhile, four members of the Street Thunder gang cruise the wide, empty streets. They’ve been itching for blood since dawn when six of their members were gunned down by the cops. They violently kill an ice cream truck driver, as well as a young girl who had been buying a cone. The girl’s father, Lawson, gets a gun that was stashed in the ice cream truck and in a fit of rage kills one of the gang members. Realizing that he’s just signed his own death warrant, the father turns and runs straight into Precinct 13. He stumbles to the desk, mumbles that his daughter was shot, and collapses.
And so it begins. The phone goes dead, the electricity is cut. Surrounded by abandoned houses, there’s no one to hear the muffled shots, especially since the gang is using silencers. It isn’t long before all the extra characters are dead except for Bishop, Wilson, Leigh, the catatonic Lawson, and Wells, a black inmate who knows his number is up, but still can’t quite believe his lifelong run of bad luck is about to play out. As Wells, Tony Burton gives the film its most natural performance.
Bishop lets Wilson and Wells out of their cells, arms them, and together the four struggle to hold the attackers off. A task they soon realize they can’t win, not with their rapidly dwindling ammunition.
It is a sparse film. The dialogue is spare. The sets gritty, grim, nearly barren. What ignites it is the arbitrariness of the assault, played against the lean, finely honed characters who emerge as archetypal as they unite to face down the horror. There is nothing sentimental here. It’s a hard-eyed look at how life can go from benignly routine to incomprehensibly terrifying at the drop of a pin. How at the end of the day, all we really have to combat the onslaught is our integrity, regardless of how compromised, blurred, tattered or ultimately inadequate. No one has to explain this to us. We feel it.
‘Assault on Precinct 13’ 2005 with Ethan Hawke and Lawrence Fishburne
Where the original allowed us to study the characters in order to get to know them, and only then sprang into action, this version is so afraid we’ll miss something that instead of showing us, it tells us. Everything. In great detail. It doesn’t trust us to “get it”, so like the boor who always seems to sit right behind you in the movie theatre loudly explaining everything to his date (and usually getting it wrong), so does the film. I’d wager that there’s as much dialogue in the first ten minutes of the remake as there was in the entire original. And none of it nearly as engaging. It’s cute, full of shtick, and littered with pumped up stereotypes.
For instance, rather than Austin Stoker’s achingly human portrayal of Ethan Bishop, Ethan Hawke’s Jake Roenick is a different kind of “hero” altogether. He is crippled by a massive case of self-indulgence. Okay, let me explain. Where Carpenter’s film opened with a few graphic scenes meant to let us know just how ugly it’s going to get, this version opens with a few graphic scenes meant to let us know just how troubled Jake is.
You see, Jake spent five years undercover, until eight months ago when a drug bust went bad, and through no fault of his own, his two partners were killed. He blames himself. Even though, as his dolled up beautiful shrink (they’re all gorgeous, right?), points out, he had nothing to do with it.
Not good enough for Jake, who clings to his undeserved guilt with greedy childish abandon. He drinks, pops pills and hides behind a desk job. You want to slap him and say, stop whining. Let go and move on. But like Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard, who simply can’t forgive himself for not being there when Hinckley shot Reagan because he’d thoughtlessly taken the day off to go to his mother’s funeral, Jake is haunted.
What happened to flawed heroes with real ghosts? In Die Hard, Reginald VelJohnson is legitimately troubled by the fact that he accidentally shot a kid. But when he faces his demons and saves Bruce Willis, the audience cheers. Here, Jake’s earnest speeches about doing everything he can to keep the people entrusted to his care alive sounds like the answer to a moral math problem. There’s nothing the least bit inspiring about it.
And then there’s the new incarnation of Leigh. All subtlety is gone, transformed into the obvious Iris, and portrayed with such mock pouty gusto by Drea de Matteo that we wonder if maybe Adrianna went into witness relocation after all, and the whole being blown away by Syl scenario was another of Pam Ewing’s dreams.
‘Assault on Precinct 13’ 2005 poster
Coming from the bigger is better school of filmmaking, Assault ’05 ramps up just about every element. It’s no longer an ordinary day, it’s New Year’s Eve. And it’s snowing. It’s a blizzard, in fact. We’re no longer in the barren flatlands of Los Angeles, now, were on the edge of a forest in urban Detroit (don’t ask). And Bishop? No random murderer he, nope, he’s gangster extraordinaire. A cop killer who is a suave, slick Romeo who sits in his cell calmly doing a crossword puzzle, sure his lawyers will have him out by dawn.
His fellow prisoners? Ah, what’s the point of colorful supporting players if each one doesn’t have a cute quirk to define them? Ja Rule as Smiley always refers to himself in the third person; Aisha Hinds is a gang banger who swears she never broke a law in her life before admitting she’s aces at hotwiring cars; and finally as Beck there’s John Legizamo, who seems to think he’s in the midst of a solo show, something about a hyper disaffected junkie with ADD coming off a bender. He riffs a mile a minute, often to himself, as if he’s waiting for us to realize that he’s really the star. It’s a shockingly selfish performance. After Legizamo, the otherwise talented Maria Bello flounders most as Hawke’s gorgeous psychiatrist who, it turns out, is far more screwed up than he. Every one of her lines sounds like she’s reading it off a cue card in her head. There is a self-consciousness to her performance that suggests even she is having a hard time believing the words coming out of her mouth.
But the most far reaching change between the original and the remake is that instead the situation being triggered by events that have nothing whatsoever to do with those trapped inside, this siege has everything to do with them. It’s goal: kill Marion Bishop and anyone he may have talked to. It is not waged by suicidal gang members, something that I think would have far more resonance today than it did in 1976. Instead, although far more deadly, these are high level assailants with every imaginable weapon at their disposal, but they lack the one component that made the original so terrifying: these men don’t want to die.
Granted, they had to be a little more sophisticated than the 1976 versions, given the invention of cellphones, pagers and cable modems that now have to be neutralized. But where zombies are incapable of giving up, bad cops can always turn state’s evidence and cop a plea. This completely dissipates the utter slam bang relentlessness that drove the story forward, and gave resonance to the courage of those trapped inside.
But wait, it gets worse. You’d think that given all the exposition, the tortured set up, the psychobabble, the scenes where the prisoners and the cops actually bond and find common ground, that the plot would at least make sense.
Wrong.
The biggest problem with this remake is the overall concept lacks the logic the original carefully constructed. The battle simply rages for hours as if there was no outside world to get suspicious. No one accidentally happens into the vicinity. No one wonders where all the cops and fire power have disappeared to. There’s a blizzard, and it is New Year’s Eve, so you would assume that there has to be some trouble somewhere in all of Detroit that would require their services.
I guess not.
And so, with no ticking clock other than, well, the actual passage of time, the energy begins to wane. The biggest let down comes when, after much hand wringing as to whether the AV-5’s will arrive in time to, we imagine, to obliterate the precinct, several helicopters come into view and a few guys parachute onto the roof. But wait, isn’t it a two story building? Couldn’t they have found a ladder or something? I mean, they had all night. Maybe an open Home Depot? Ah, never mind.
And finally a word about franchises. John Carpenter gave us one of the most enduring. In fact, he’s currently at work on Halloween 9. But ask him if he envisioned Assault on Precinct 13 as a franchise and I’m betting he’d just stare at you, trying to figure out a nice way to ask if you’re nuts.
In its 1976 incarnation, it is a complete thought. A perfect story. In the current version? Let me put it this way, imagine what you’d think of Clarice Starling if, at the end of Silence of the Lambs, having just watched Hannibal Lecter dash around a corner, she tells her fellow FBI agents that she hasn’t seen anyone suspicious around. Because, you see, it’s now personal. She wants to be the one to track him down, regardless of how many people he dines on in the meantime. What kind of a hero is that you ask? A very self-indulgent one, I think.
