Elvis and the Non-Existent Cultural Appropriation Debate

 

There is no way that Baz Luhrmann could make Elvis and not get criticism for issues relating to race. If he includes B.B. King and Little Richard in his film, he will get accused of only paying lip-service to them. He’ll be accused of making a white savior film (a poorly employed catch-all for films that critics don’t like). If Luhrmann makes a film that shows Elvis grovelling to his Black friends for being famous while they’re not, well that wouldn’t be historically accurate, but who cares about that? Certainly not Paul Thompson of The Ringer who felt the King’s mourning of MLK Jr was “clumsy” despite it being taken from a verbatim quote. In other words, a movie about Elvis Presley somehow does a service to its figure by not having him be anti-racist enough.

Bill Maher, a talk show host who is always bold in calling out the absurdity of wokeness, recently had a popular clip clip:
New Rule: The What Were You Thinking Generation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugLbotr1RuQ

In it, he says, “You can’t blame people for being woke 30 years before being woke was a thing”

We are living in unprecedented times of idiocy (make no mistake: the right is destroying the country politically) where a certain idiotic class of mostly white activists are not doing the left any favors by attempting to declare a new cultural purity war against anyone who stands against homophobia, racism, or sexism.

The dogmatic “you’re either a knight in shining armor fighting against racism or you’re part of the problem” philosophy ignores the fact that for many people, racism is not the number one problem in America and they couldn’t
care less whether some out-of-touch activists think that they are not helping racism enough (at least, I don’t to the degree my career won’t get in the way).

Today, the Audubon Society of Seattle sought to remove the name of its founder because, god forbid, he held slaves. If the Audubon Society suddenly decides after several decades otherwise that it no longer wants to profit off the preservation efforts of James Audubon, they should dissolve the foundation at once rather than use the infrastructure created under his name.*

Elvis was born into poverty. The basest of woke activists who see people only through color and ignore the class of white people born into poverty (another reason why so many voters are turning to Republicans despite how godawful they are). Like everyone else born into the poverty, he was simply trying to get out of his miserable conditions and uplift his family and was inspired by the Black music that he heard that he bought to the masses.

The idea that this was some sort of crime of “cultural appropriation” only matters if you think that cultural appropriation is a bad thing. Before identity politics came to be such a prominent school of thought, the idea of cultural appropriation in and of itself as causing harm to the Black community would have you laughed out of the room with most academics and justifiably so.

“The accusation of “cultural appropriation” is overwhelmingly being used as an objection to syncretism — the mixing of different thoughts, religions, cultures and ethnicities that often ends up creating entirely new ones. In other words: the most natural process in a melting-pot country like ours,” writes Bari Weiss

This is what happened to Elvis who grew up in a Black community and was inspired by a Black preacher and his congregants when he was drawing his musical style. This shouldn’t be surprising. I’ve known Caucasian people who grew up in ghetto areas or went to school with lots of Black people and were acculturated from an early age to use African-American vernacular in the exact same manner that Black people use it.

If Elvis was guilty of cultural appropriation, it’s an irrelevant hypothetical. As far as I know, no one was going around during this era accusing Elvis of cultural appropriating because the concept didn’t exist. Therefore, if Elvis would have responded with some PR-drafted apology for not being woke enough is something we can’t know.

Most of the anger at Elvis was about him profiting from his music while others didn’t. When Public Enemy called him a racist in Fight the Power, it’s not like they’re acting off any evidence.

In fact, Elvis gave many interviews crediting his inspirations:
“A lot of people seem to think I started this business. But rock ’n’ roll was here a long time before I came along. Nobody can sing that kind of music like coloured people. Let’s face it: I can’t sing like Fats Domino can. I know that.”

Musicians like Little Richard and James Brown credited him with opening doors for them and that much appears true. According to Newsweek, by November 1963, Billboard could no longer differentiate between white and black consumption and suspended its separate black singles chart.

There’s also the simple fact that he stuck to his Black-influenced style even when there was pressure to do so otherwise.

That’s the sensible view.

The non-sensible view is the “you’re either anti-racist or you’re racist with a capital R” philosophy. This is the view that suggests that Elvis was supposed to go beyond the standards of his own era to live his life in service of African-American liberation.

This is where we get the kind of posturizing reviews that RogerEbert.com is often guilty of.

Robert Daniels writes:
“But all too often the film slips into a great white hope syndrome, whereby Presley is the sincere white hero unearthing the exotic and sensual Black artists of his era. B.B. King, Big Momma Thornton, and Little Richard (real-life supporters of Presley) exist solely as either bulletin board cheerleaders or alluring beings from a far-off land. While these Black artists are championed — an awareness by Luhrmann of their importance and the long and winding history of Black art moving through white spaces — they barely speak or retain any depth, even while a paternalistic Presley advances their cause.”

Mr. Daniels, do you understand the concept of screentime and narrative? That it’s a film about Elvis and in service of his story. That’s how secondary and tertiary characters work.

“The approach neither illuminates nor dignifies these figures. Instead, Luhrmann tries to smooth over the complicated feelings many Black folks of varied generations have toward the purported King. In that smoothing, Presley loses enough danger, enough fascinating complications to render the whole enterprise predictable. Because it’s not enough to merely have awareness, a filmmaker also has a responsibility to question whether they’re the right person to tell a story. Luhrmann isn’t. And that’s a failing that will be difficult for many viewers to ignore.”

You mean the song by Public Enemy that has no basis in fact?

And what’s this part about how Luhrmann should be taking himself out of the running because it’s a story about race (it really isn’t)? Elvis is not the exclusive domain of anti-racism tutorials.

Baz Luhrmann is allowed to make anything he wants, and if a film critic is honestly pushing for the restriction of what a film maker can or can’t do, that’s antithetical to art itself. If Robert Daniels wants to make a film about Elvis and racism, he is quite welcome to make some companion piece to 12 Years a Slave, Lovecraft Country, The Probem with Apu, Fences, Hidden Figures, The Free State of Jones, Race, Birth of a Nation, 13th, I Am Now Your Negro, Small Axe, Mudbound, Last Black Man in San Francisco, Black Klansman, If Beale Street Could Talk, Passing, Respect, or Seberg. However, he might want to realize that films which conflate entertainment with anti-racism preaching (and I will note, I like a good number of those films).

I will leave this essay with this quote:

“I would argue those who scream loudest about cultural appropriation are themselves after power. As soon as you raise issues about your own race and culture, you pretty much shut people up, because most people don’t want to be accused of being racist, elitist or not being ‘woke’, in the parlance of social justice warriors (SJWs),” writes Alex Lo.

*I’m aware that the Audubon Society has no relation to the rest of my essay. I just didn’t want to write a whole new essay about it.

Six Observations About the USA Show Monk (2002-2009)

Credit: IMDB

Running on USA Network for seven seasons, Monk was a TV show with a slight whiff of serialization about a San Francisco police detective (Tony Shalhoub) with massive OCD who had a mental breakdown upon the death of his wife, and got kicked off the force. Throughout the duration of the series, Adrian Monk is exiled from the force so he’s got that chip on his shoulder. On the other hand, he gets to solve pretty much every murder in Bay Area as a “consultant” so the show really has its cake and eats it too.

The show won eight Emmys (three for Tony Shalhoub) but was generally considered more niche viewing than prestige TV. It was the de facto flagship for the USA network which replicated the outsider savant formula with Psyche, Burn Notice and Necessary Roughness.

I watched several episodes over the past week and here are some notes:

1.. Monk’s detective abilities are similar to the way that Batman puts the Gotham police department out of business. It’s also worth pointing out that with all the murders going around town, it almost feels like San Francisco is up there as one of the murderiest cities in the US, even if it’s exponentially larger than Cabot Cove. And not only that but Monk is often personally connected to the murder like whether it’s his childhood crush’s ex-husband, his dentist, the newscaster assigned to report on his story, or his captain’s girlfriend. And that’s not counting all the murder scenes he happens to wander into. It’s like Batman’s penchant for wandering onto muggings in Gotham city.

However, instead of mindless thugs, the criminals Monk encounters are white collar dudes with highly Rube-Goldberg-like ways of killing their immediate family members or collecting insurance payouts. One episode even had an man attempt to escape alimony by robbing a house and defacing a painting so that his ex-wife would have a meet cute with her art appraiser former high school boyfriend. Wouldn’t it have been easier to just call him up and tip him off that his former girlfriend is single and ready to mingle?

2. Monk is defined by his rigidity but my pet theory is that he’s likeable because many episodes shows that he’s capable of changing his habits on a dime. Static characters are rarely protagonists because who wants to build a show around a comic character (typically defined by their deficiencies) who doesn’t change at all. Who wants to be around such a person in real life? But Monk does actually do a fill 180 on his intrinsic nature quite often. In one episode, he goes to a bachelor party in Las Vegas and you expect that we’re going to see someone who’s no fun, but he develops a brief gambling addiction. In another episode, Monk abandons his lifelong pursuit of justice to try being a full-time butler. Monk’s a loner who won’t stop brooding about his long-dead wife, but in one episode he comes close to asking out his childhood crush on a date and believes that he could find romantic happiness. In another episode, Monk agonizes about getting a best friend (Andy Richter). In the famous Sara Silverman episode, Monk not only lets down his defenses for a woman who actively stalks him, he briefly hires her as his assistant. And that’s just in the dozen or so episodes I’ve seen.

3. I hate to say this but Monk’s asexuality and his relationship to Trudy are never really well-defined. His attachment to Trudy strikes me as some crutch for his asexuality and asocial tendencies which initially made me wonder if Trudy was some sort of beard, before I watched flashback scenes that show that Trump and Trudy were really an item.  

In an episode centering around Monk’s class reunion, it’s revealed how much of a sad sack Monk is, when he converses with an old classmate (played by Family Matters’ Reginald van Johnson) about their late wives. The classmate says “well, you move on” and Monk replies “no, you don’t, you never really do” and when the classmate shows subtle expressions of “what a weirdo” we’re meant to empathize with Monk as a man who’s not understood by his peers. However, I think this came off tonally as it wasn’t intended to. I can empathize with Monk and his OCD but his clinging to an image of his dead wife is worth a proverbial weird look or, better yet, a “get it together, man.” I certainly don’t think every person on Earth needs to have a romantic life, but to hide behind your dead wife for years is not being honest with yourself about what you want.

There are also elements of Monk’s sexuality that are generally left dangling with no explanation; folded over into a mangled ambiguous neurosis. In one episode, he’s disappointed with his childhood idol (Elizabeth Berkley) for having an active sex life. He also has an aversion to naked people. Tell me this puritan streak isn’t a lot to unpack

4. My understanding is that Monk is modeled after Sherlock Holmes, but I liken him to a tortured noir detective. The way Monk follows his hunches at the exclusion of all other variables often look like vendettas similar to a character like Philip Marlowe in the Big Sleep or The Long Goodbye. Edward G. Robinson’s character in Double Indemnnity, another famous noir hero, speaks of being able to use his sense of smell to get his man every time. This is awfully similar to Monk’s physical idiosyncracies (i.e. how he uses his hands to frame the scene). Additionally, Monk’s bitterness—downplayed as much as possible so that this show can still be considered a comedy for Emmy purposes—and his close proximity to personal tragedy (not just his wife but his father, brother, and exile from the force) are all interwoven into his character.

5. I haven’t re-watched the episodes with Sharona since the show’s first run, but I love everything about what Natalie Teeger (Taylor Howard) provides for the show. It’s one of those relationships where you never get tired of how these two interact. As previously mentioned, Monk runs the risk of looking like an unhinged man with tunnel vision when he follows his hunch, so it’s quite useful that Natalie is standing beside him. It’s also really sweet that Natalie often locks arms with him. It doesn’t have romantic connotations and it doesn’t look like a nurse helping an old man, but it’s a really nice show of support and comfort between the two. It’s also one of those beauty-and-the-geek things on a meta-level, because let’s face it: Natalie’s cute. Who wouldn’t want to be walking arm-in-arm with Taylor Howard through the streets of San Francisco.

6. The show might be formulaic on first glance, but many of the episodes are kind of must-watch based on the plots alone. A lot of it is based on fish-out-of-water set-ups. For a man is phobic and idiosyncratic as Monk, he’s pretty much a fish always out of the water, so when I see an episode description like “Mr. Monk goes to a nude beach” or “Mr. Monk goes to Vegas”, or “Mr. Monk goes to live on a farm”, I’m pretty sold instantly on how far out of his comfort zone Mr. Monk will be pushed.

And while the show isn’t particularly serialized, there are episodes like Monk’s reconciliation with his brother (John Turturro won an Emmy for this guest turn), father, or childhood crush that are pretty strong on pathos too.

What I'm Watching May Update: Being Erica, Flight Attendant, Winning Time, Pentaverate, Adventure Beast

 

 

Adventure Beast (Netflix)-Bradley Trevor Greive (AKA BTG) is a field zoologist who is so enthusiastic about animals, that he regularly gets mauled and nearly eaten by them on an episodic basis and does so with effective zeal. In other words, he's a pretty zany character and the actor has an easy time selling the part. After all, the character is heavily based on the actor who is an ex-Australian military paratrooper and naturalist who has appeared on Animal Planet series such as Fear Island: Fortress of the Bears and Nature's Strangest Mysteries: Solved.

BTG is joined by two extremes as his side kicks: Overly timid field assistant Dietrich and exuberant niece Bonnie. Both push the extremes of their characters for great comedic effect.

Each episode is set in a different ecosystem with solid plotting and has a semi-educational nature, as BTG spews animal trivia like he has tourette's syndrome. On the whole, it's mostly a lot of fun. HIGHLY RECOMMEND

 

Pentaverate (Hulu)-Mike Myers plays separate members of a secret cabal of five highly influential people who secretly control the world or some junk. Myers also plays a washed-up reporter investigating this titular cabal as his last big scoop. Pretty much the only non-Myers characters are Keegan Michael Key (and later Ken Jeong) as the audience surrogate who is inducted into the Pentaverate mid-series and they’re both pretty refreshing additions because we can only watch Myers ham it up so much.

Through four episodes, I’m thankful there aren’t as many characters as gross as Austin Powers’ Fat Bastard or midget humor (AKA Mini-Me) as Mike Myers has been known to go overly blue before.

The thing is I want to like Myers: His versatility on Saturday Night Live and his commitment to a comic concept is pretty admirable, and in some ways he’s pioneered comedy. However, even if he’s safely veering away from gross, the series still runs out of steam. For the deep dives that Myers does into certain topics like Eastern mysticism (The Love Guru) or, in this case, conspiracy theories, there’s a tremendous laziness in the world-building aspects of the show. Instead, it feels like an excuse to do impressions. 

Winning Time (HBO)-Possibly my favorite show of the year. This docudrama about the beginning of the Magic Johnson era is apparently completely detached from the historic story. At the same time, maybe it's better in this age of hyper scrutiny to just throw an honest attempt at documented history out the window and rely more on the "based on a true story" moniker at the start of each episode? The advantage is that it allows producer Adam McKay to tell the most exciting story his imagination can muster and it's pretty damn exciting.

HIGHLY RECOMMEND

 

Being Erica (Soapnet, available on Hulu)-A woman goes back in time on an episodic basis to readjust her life so that she can’t be a failure. Let’s first clear this up: Is she really a failure? She’s 32 and unmarried and didn’t use her high-powered degree but is pretty independent anyways. Can we stop with the single-shaming?

The show is a mix of Hallmark Channel female-centered wholesomeness (with Erin Kapluk ably filling in the plucky female protagonist) and the kind of thinky what-if scenarios that populate good low-stakes science fiction.

One last thing to note:  Plot congruity might not be this show’s strong suit as the butterfly effect is treated extremely casually here. The kind of scrutiny that fans have deployed on Marty McFly’s time-travelling would just not work here. 

Flight Attendant, S1 (HBO)-Loved this black comedy about an impulsive flight attendant who's one-night stand leads to Breaking-Bad-levels of terror as the FBI, crime lords, and an enigmatic assassin are after her. The show’s efforts to evoke horror through quick-take psychological flashbacks (a bit like Homeland’s opening credits) fall a little short, but most of the show manages a lot of moving parts well. Shows where characters are trapped in humongous illicit messes of their own making are plentiful on TV and this is narrowly unique, well-paced, and enjoyable enough to stick out of that pack.

TV Recommendation: Peacock's Killing It

Two broke Floridians, Craig (Craig Robinson) and Jillian (Claudia O’Doherty), team up for a contest to kill an invasive species of snakes. As the season goes on, the plot places its two protagonists within a web of the type of opportunist Floridian characters that originally showed up in Carl Hiassen or Dave Barry novels, and have now become meme-worthy.

Initially, the show seems like a pedestrian odd couple comedy with a standard hook, albeit one a bit squicky (fortunately, the serpentine death blows are mostly off screen). However, there’s a lot to appreciate with this show as the stakes increase.

Like “Superstore” or “Raising Hope”, the show aims to tell a story of the lower class, and does a superb job of translating the disparity between the haves and have-nots to solid comedy. Jillian, for instance, is an uber driver, task rabbit, snake killer, web cam star (she caters to perverts who want to watch her eat exotic foods), and rents out her cab for billboards while also helping control the snake population. In the premiere episode’s go-big-or-go-home comic set piece, Jillian tries to fulfill her Ubering and snake murdering duties at the same time while Craig is her passenger.

We also come to meet Brock (Scott MacArthur), who’s snake hunting is a side hustle to his main dream of getting YouTube famous in a Jackass sort of way.

The basis of crazy Florida stories is people getting creative in how they try to eke out a living, but perhaps there’s a deeper factor at play: These characters are painted into a corner and maybe that inequality is also the Florida way. A cursory look at the landscape when I’m in South Florida (half my family lives there) and my knowledge of the state’s tax structure, indicates a pretty individualistic society where capitalism reigns supreme.

Perhaps, the greatest strength of the series is how well the stars’ screen personas fit the story. Craig Robinson has always had a deadpan weariness that has been best exemplified in Judd Apatow comedies and “The Office” but takes it to the next level here. Despite being a little of a slacker, Daryl was someone to root for because the series splattered moments of the character’s thoughtfulness. This Craig Robinson is someone who you desperately want to give a hug.

The cleverest thing about Jillian is that she’s initially presented as so incompetent at life that she’d be classified by TV Tropes as The Load: A character that doesn’t provide any useful assets to their partners in crime like Carl Showalter in Fargo, Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars, Willie in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Buttercup in the Princess Bride, or Zaphod in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. She’s entirely unfocused on the task at hand and generally has terrible instincts. However, she comes to be a sympathetic character and even a useful person without ever appearing to fundamentally transform. A lot of it has to do with how O’Doherty simply shows us different sides of the same character.  

Lost Article: Tori Pence

This is a "lost article": Something I wrote under the impression that it would be published, but something went wrong. The goal in journalism is to cover your bases with everyone involved but sometimes you can't anticipate everything. Except, of course, if it's the editor causing your article to go unpublished without compensation, ditch that editor ASAP. In this case, the subject of the article, Tori Pence, no longer is a Virginia resident, which makes her ineligible for Virginia Magazine. 

Buena Vista native Tori Pence is defined as much by her restlessness as she is by her accomplishments. In addition to her role as a cast member and writer on the Utah-based sketch show Studio C , Pence sings, does cover art, knows how to remodel a home, and is a skilled enough puppeteer that she was cast on Studio C’s sister show Nine Years to Neptune.

“I like the idea of being a renaissance person, the ability to build skills is half the journey. So once you learn one thing, it’s easier to learn another. A couple of my [siblings] are opera singers. We are an artsy family,” said Pence.

Since its debut in 2012 Studio C  has been a hit both for its parent network, BYU TV, and Youtube where the show has amassed 2.58 million subscribers. In addition, the show has garnered appearances for its cast members on Late Night with Conan O’Brien; a spin-off group earned a semi-final berth on the NBC humor competition “Bring the Funny”; and been able to bring on Saturday Night Live cast members Kenan Thompson and Will Forte as special guest stars.

Tori, 30, was cast in the show’s eighth season upon her graduation in 2016. She was recruited from the BYU’s sketch comedy troupe Divine Comedy which is where the original Studio C cast members met.

“I never wanted it to be my career, I thought it was going to be a thing that I do for fun. We would do four shows a month for a bunch of college kids who were tired and we needed a pick me up,” she said.

Instead, she had aspirations to be a librarian. She worked three jobs to pay her college tuition and she fell in love with one of them: She was a storyteller at the Provo City Library and used puppets in her performances.

Many of the cast members of Studio C’s current cast bought special talents—one of them has a background in stand-up, one is a ukulele player and song writer—and Tori Pence has been able to work puppets into some of her sketches. After temporarily departing the show after the 13^th season in 2021, Tori was asked to audition for the BYU TV show Nine Years to Neptune where she voiced the characters of Sascha and Pauline in a ten-episode run.

“We searched far and wide for talented puppeteers with improv capabilities. The first time we saw Tori’s audition we sensed we had a winner, and we were right. She was endlessly cheerful and had us all cracking up," said Nine Years co-creator Tyler McKellar.

Tori’s parents, Phil and Ellen, are life-long Virginians who jointly write novels under the pseudonym P.E. Pence. Tori is the sixth of eight children that her parents refer to as Pencelings. Tori's older sister, Rebecca, won the Miss Virginia pageant in 2015 as a way of sharing her religious beliefs. The family made part of their income restoring and flipping houses which meant that Tori moved around a lot as a child from Varina to Richmond to the small-town of Buena Vista.

“You don’t understand, I think Virginia is the greatest state. We moved a lot when I was a kid. I don’t have any connection to a house, I have a connection to the state,” said Pence.

Pence also credits her upbringing in the small town of Buena Vista for helping her develop her versatility. Not only did she act in all the school’s plays, she had to direct them by necessity since the school didn’t have a drama department. 

"Tori loves Virginia and if it weren't for her work, she would be living there still. She has said on more than one occasion how it's the most beautiful state in the country," said mother Elaine Pence.  "She has a group of friends still today that grew up together in B(uena) V(ista). They call themselves the Freakets and they get together as much as possible to celebrate milestones, birthdays and run marathons."

Pence’s state pride also includes being proud of being part of the Virginia LDS Church, which boats a population of 95,000 (the 2^nd highest population east of the Mississippi).

“It really just is a culture culture thing. LDS folks from outside of Utah grow up with people outside of the faith, so they’re more comfortable with non-LDS experience,” said Tori Pence.  

As for Tori’s future, she is re-joining the Studio C cast after a two-season hiatus and has plans to open a soda shop in Provo.

“I tend to do whatever pops up [in my head] next. I’m trying to be a little better at directing myself. My original intention was to become a librarian and Studio C tried to derail that,” she said.

Behind the Scenes of Six More of My Stories

 

The World-Class Bor Brothers: Podium Magazine (2021)

https://www.outsideonline.com/health/running/culture-running/people/the-brothers-bor-a-fast-family-finds-their-place/

One of my earliest beats as a writer was covering my cross-country team for my college so I developed a rare love of watching people run in circles and keeping up with the ins and outs of that sport. That extends to quite a bit of Olympics writing which is centered around track and field in the second week.

A friend of mine at ESPN suggested I pitch some articles and one got in about the controversial WCAP which offers foreign nationals (mostly Kenyans) expedited citizenship for military service and some say that the military service isn’t on par with the average soldier. At the 2016 Rio Trials, 4 of the 18 coveted distance running slots on the men’s Olympic team went to Kenyans.

When I published this article, one of those Olympians, Hillary Bor, found me on Facebook and expressed frustration that I had diminished his military service and didn’t tell the full story. Upon some reflection, I felt there was some xenophobia in my article: I wanted to see Americans do well including the ones that had been running under the American flag longer.

I offered to write a correction of some sort and Mr. Bor just said something along the lines of “whatever.” During the next Olympic cycle in 2021, I had published one Olympics-related piece for Podium Magazine and decided to pitch something about Hillary and his brother Emmanuel who had just given the 5K indoor American record a scare.

If someone messages you on Facebook, they’re still permanently there among your contacts, so I messaged Hillary about my desire to write my wrong, and he barely cared at that point and didn’t have much time to do an interview, but I was persistent with him about working with his schedule and his brother was pretty eagerly on board, so I eventually got it down.

The end result was something I’m quite proud of and I believe helped restore justice in telling the story of these two incredible siblings.

Filmmaker Anne Welles: Falls Church News Press (2018)

https://www.fcnp.com/2018/10/18/comedy-horror-film-mason-alum-debuts-just-time-halloween/

When I first imagined writing about film as a journalist out of college, I was not even aware of all the work that film makers were doing on an independent level. I’ve since learned the importance of shining a light on people working at all scales of film making rather than treating films as a hagiography of a select few blockbuster names. There’s also this image that movies can only be done in the abstract magical realm of California whereas people can get their starts anywhere.

One of these film makers, Anne Welles had a great trajectory to her dreams: She was a stay-at-home mom going through a separation at the age of 32 when she decided to try an acting class and soon booked an agent. Within a few years she was directing short films and by the time I interviewed her, she had a film “An Accidental Zombie Named Ted” on Amazon Prime.

I’m especially proud of the opening line:
“Filmmaker Anne Welles traces the moment she fell out of love with show business to a botched middle school audition. She thanks the film “Jerry Maguire” for restoring her faith in what is now her life’s work.”

Photo Essay on the Set of How Do You Know: Examiner.com (2009)

I generally cite October of 2010 as the start of my professional journalism career, so we’ll chalk this up to amateur stuff. One of my first gigs was as an Examiner for the Film Industry in DC. It was, more or less, a content farm so I could write whatever I wanted about film but getting enough people to read it so that I’d make any money was another story.

Still, it put me in the practice of writing regularly and occasionally, I did something that felt like real journalism. Even though this gig wasn’t very much of a real thing, I was still on the media list for the D.C. Film Office and I got an e-mail alert to the shooting of the James L. Brooks film “How Do You Know.” The film starred Paul Rudd, Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon, and Jack Nicholson in what would be his last role. Very little was needed in terms of clearance to get on the set since they were basically shooting on the street, so as long as I kept a healthy distance, no one really cared.

It was a highly eye-opening experience as to what life on set was for extras and I even remember sneaking a couple glances at Witherspoon and Rudd from across the street. I’m generally embarrassed of everything I wrote when I started writing but I think the photo captions still hold up. The quality of the photos were another story.

Occupy DC Offers Hands-On Learning: Teaching Tolerance (2012)

https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/occupy-dc-offers-handson-learning

Remember the Occupy Movement of a decade ago? It sounds bizarre that a bunch of 20-something underemployed and unemployed bums started camping out on public property in an effort to supposedly change the world or something or other. But stranger things have happened since then.

This is a good example of a story that happens if you go out a lot and keep your eyes open. I went to the Occupy Movement out of random curiosity and was surprised to learn that a teacher at an extremely unconventional high school was taking students along to Occupy as part of an extra-curricular. Whereas a non-reporter would say “well, good luck with that liability, weirdo teacher”, the reporter part of my brain reacted with “jumping jehoshaphat, have I got a scoop here!” But where would I write it up?  This was 2011 and I had little journalistic experience. Another person walking around with a note pad said he was writing for the Truth Pursuit and I asked him for his editor’s contact.

The Truth Pursuit liked my idea and greenlit a piece. This doesn’t happen very often but they gave me a kill fee (a payment for a good faith effort) and someone else picked up my story: The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Magazine Teaching for Tolerance. This was pretty funny because I later wrote for The Federalist and American Conservative and the audiences of each of those publications considers the others illegitimate spewers of hate speech.

Miss Arlington USA, Grace Ashti, Works to Overcome Speech Disability: ArlNow (2019)

https://www.arlnow.com/2019/02/28/miss-arlington-usa-2019-works-to-fight-bullying-overcome-her-speech-disability/

Like the previous story, this was a story I stumbled upon. In this case, this was through a shared Uber ride. My fellow passenger was talkative and I’m naturally talkative with strangers and she was saying she was a beauty pageant contestant, and I thought “hmmm, that could be a story idea.” Once again, I wasn’t “networking.” I don’t go out of my way to find stories but I’m naturally curious, talkative with strangers, and do have a need to mix up my daily schedule and activities. And I always make it a point to carry around business cards.

Grace Ashi was not an immediate hit with the editors I was in contact with at the time, but I banked the story for a later day. When ArlNow was hiring freelancers, I had already worked for them twice so I used this as one of my pitches and voila! Grace is a real estate agent and a fashion blogger so her incentive to be publicized is high and that always helps get an interview moving, but she was also a cooperative subject, and now she’s even a patreon. Check her out

Side note: Uber, can we please bring UberShare?

Death of Rabbi Laszlo Berkowitz, Founding Rabbi of Temple Rodef Shalom: Falls Church News Press (2021)

I went to preschool at Temple Rodef Shalom and vaguely remember that the Rabbi was a Holocaust survivor but I haven’t been inside the synagogue since I was 5 or 6. That’s what made it interesting to hear about the Jewish life I might have led if my parents had opted to continue my Jewish education at Temple Rodef Shalom rather than another synagogue.

One interesting facet of this story was the strange reaction I got from one of my sources: She had a back-and-forth with me where she had nothing to contribute and directed me to people who would have known him better. Memo to sources: If I’m contacting you for a story, be assured that you are clearly important to the story. If you don’t want to contribute that’s fine, but there’s no need to question your importance. I collect the information than sort out what’s important at the end of the day.


https://www.fcnp.com/2021/02/21/laszlo-berkowits-1st-rabbi-temple-rodef-shalom-left-indelible-legacy/

Deep Water Review: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf Meets an SNL Sketch

 

This film presents an askew world that can be so jarring, it comes back to being unintentionally humorous before settling into a tense plot. If I didn’t know it came from two masterminds of the psychological thriller genre who knew what they were doing — the source material by novelist Patricia Highsmith (Strangers on a Train, Talented Mr Ripley) and Adrian Lyne as director (Fatal Attraction)---I would describe this as an extremely bizarre cross between the 2009 Saturday Night Live sketch “I Have Sex with Your Wife” and the 1966 classic Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf in which an older couple (George and Martha, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton) unleash a 90-minute burst of raw, sociopathic marital dysfunction on an unassuming young couple they’ve invited to dinner.

The key players are Vic (Ben Affleck), a lower-middle-aged entrepreneur who’s now a member of the idle rich after retiring off a technological invention. His wife, Melinda, (Ana de Armas) is a gorgeous firecracker with a voracious sexual appetite who seems to get off on having affairs right under her husband’s nose.

It’s initially kind of vague whether seeing her wife gallivant with other men in such close proximity is something he welcomes as a kink or just tolerates it, but yikes! These two need therapy before things get all murdery and out of hand.

Or maybe, things have already gotten that far? Vic even admits it out loud to one of Melinda’s lovers.

On the surface, little about this film makes sense. Why do all three of Melinda’s on-screen lovers seem so blase about violating Vic and Melinda’s marriage after coming face-to-face with Vic? They all consistently seem to feel little guilt and have little concern for their own safety at this transgression. What is up with Vic and snails? If it’s an open secret that Vic killed someone in what appears to be a tight-knit neighborhood, why isn’t he a social pariah?

This is up there with Darren Aronofsky and David Lynch in terms of mind-f***ery, but here’s the thing:

There’s a great internal consistency to this world that demands admiration. These two might be less memorable than George and Martha from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, but that’s partially because George and Martha were the king and queen of mood whiplash.

Instead, Melinda is always a suburban temptress and Vic is always a mysterious cauldron of dark impulses.

If you feel like this film doesn’t feel right, it’s not supposed to. It’s a skewed universe where these people are too insane to exist but they do resemble certain aspects of an unhealthy marriage pushed to extremes. And to the degree that anything still doesn’t match up, it’s certainly discussion-provoking.

Every 2021 Film I Saw: Quick Takes

1.            Blue Bayou-Filmed, directed, and starring South Korean Justin Chon, the story of a Korean immigrant born and raised in Louisiana facing deportation is difficult with glimmering vestiges of human triumph. I was floored by the sentiment.

2.            House of Gucci-Very Shakespearean in all its delicious tragedy and back-stabbing. These people were larger than life and the story takes on that grandeur.  

3.            West Side Story-The degree of difficulty to adapt a classic and make it your own is high, so many great decisions went to make a fuller and richer story and put character developments in historic context 

4.            Last Night in Soho-I admire that a director who has always had comedy in each of his pictures was able to do something entirely without it. It was a great mystery, time capsule and comic of age story and I was overwhelmed with the kinetic frenzy. My one minor complaint is I didn’t love the horror elements.

5.            Licorice Pizza-There was an extremely icky age difference but I enjoyed so much of the nostalgic drench and vignette-like nature of the story.

6.            Nightmare Alley-This visually beautiful tragic tale of a drifter is very rewarding on second viewing

7.            Concrete Cowboy-Idris Elba played the hard black dad like Denzel Washington in Fences but convincingly added the layer of empathy and caring for his child and that vulnerability in their relationship really got to me. I didn’t understand what this horse stable was doing in the middle of Philadelphia but I also got that it was important to them

8.            Last Duel-Slightly slower than ideal in terms of authenticity but the trade-off is authenticity.

9.            Power of the Dog-An incredibly strong attention to detail, great performances, and, in my opinion, a thematic thrust worthy of a Best Picture win.

10.          Free Guy-Yes, it's fun, but a lot of world building and the kind of detailed storyline that could transfer over to a robust sci-fi film

11.          Jungle Cruise-More just fun, but I found the central relationships moving enough, and I'm a sucker for Amazon stories

12.          Courier-It had a first half that was markedly different than the second (kind of like the Dev Patel film Lion) that was tonally a bit jarring, but it was a spy film that moved at the speed of life.

13.          Mayday-Very eerie and quiet film that sneaks up on you about a violated teenager who's taken away to a fantasy land where she can be in the protection of woman but she's also lulling men to their deaths

14.          Don’t Look Up-Yes, it was depressing, but it was sharp

15.          Queen Bees-Another entry into the "Old People Team Up to Make a Movie" genre with Jane Curtin, Ellen Burstyn, Loretta DeVine, Ann Margaret, Christopher Lloyd, and James Caan. Very sweet and tuned into the twilight years

16.          Moxie-A high school melodrama directed by Amy Poehler (maybe a companion piece to Mean Girls?) that's sharp and funny at times. Navigates the current climate well without casting feminism or men as villains.

17.          Woman in the Window-A Hitchcockonian mystery that oozed suspense and mystery

18.          Val-The only documentary I watched this year about Val Kilmer. A very self-conscious look at fame and coming to terms with his physical demise

19.          Ride the Eagle-An impressive small-scale production about a guy (Jake Johnson) coping with the death of a mother (Susan Sarandon) he barely knew

20.          Eyes of Tammy Faye-A nicely focused biopic which picked the right parts of Tammy's life to focus on and had a good villain in Vincent D'Onofrio's Jerry Fallwell. There was a tremendous amount to appreciate in Tammy Faye's arc as evidenced by Jessica's Oscar BUT I would've liked a litle more development to Andrew Garfield's character

21.          Coda-It was sweet and it did show us a world we hadn't seen before, but I felt the music part itself was full of plot holes and the piano teacher to the rescue at the audition is an old trope. Still I'm happy it won in an odd way: The Oscars are extremely predictable with the glut of precursors so a bizarre upset is welcome.

22.          Passing-Well-shot and acted and I’d even buy the score on CD. The conversations were really interesting as well but at times they felt a little theatrical as if they were playing for a small art-house audience.

23.        Ice Road-I love the guts of whoever pitched this film: “Speed but twice as slow and they’ll be going on ice.” Amber Midthunder could be a star down the road.

24.       Space Jam 2-I love the Looney Tunes though they feel a little off in the looniness department and, even in the first Space Jam, Bugs, Duffy and Lola had bigger roles which set them up to fuel more of the comedy (Michael Jordan/LeBron James is the straight man). Still, the film was fun, the plot felt updated in clever ways (taking a page from the e-sports world and lampooning entertainment’s overemphasis on IPs), and I enjoyed the greater focus on the son-father relationship that the original Space Jam should have also been about.

25.          Beckett-It's a contextless action film like the Bourne series where we're just shown a guy doing lots of amazing fighting but we don't know the why of anything. Tonally, the film held but barely.

26.          Worth-The film was executed well, but it was kind of dull. At the same time, it's not that easy to make a film about an accountant making risk assessment calculations.

27.          Cruella-Beautiful to look at and Emma Stone's iteration of the character was a fun underdog to root for. Paul Walter Hauser and Joel Frye also make excellent sidekicks. Still it went on way too long and there’s a such thing as too many twists.

27.          Pig-It's nice to see Nicholas Cage celebrated for his acting, but the film is a bit self-serious. It’s just food seasoning, guys: No need to start a fight club over it or build an organized crime empire around it.

28.       Legend  of Shang-Tsi and the Ten Rings-I could predict almost every plot development five minutes in advance, and what I couldn’t predict, I didn’t care about.  I was also bothered that the film expected me to know who Trevor whatever-his-name-is, F--- Off Marvel, I don’t care about crossovers. And shouldn’t side kicks have some use? (I’m looking at you Seth Rogen as Green Hornet, who punched out maybe 2 people in comparison to Kato single-handedly fighting dozens of goons at once).  But, that sky scraper fight scene was next level.

29.         Flag Day-This was a film…..that I watched…..sorry, I barely remember watching this..

31.          Being the Ricardos-Aaron Sorkin had been on a really good streak—Molly’s Game, Trial of the Chicago 7—but this is like “Studio 60” backwards in terms of egotistical awfulness. Yes, the actors handle the smug material well, but the material is all about praising the ego of the creator at the expense of others (the producers, writers and co-stars are secondary to Lucy’s brilliance) and had little to do with Lucy who was funny.

32.          French Dispatch-The only Wes Anderson film I wouldn’t recommend. There is such a thing as too bloated of an ensemble and too much attention to detail.

33.          Electric Life of Louis P Wain-Too cutesy-wutesy and by the numbers.

34.          Lost Daughter-Slow and dreary. It might have all the right moves to offer but it didn’t hook me.

35.        Mitchells vs Machines-Don’t know if I remember this too much either. That’s not a good sign.

36.          Tomorrow War-Sooo much uncanny valley and ugly creatures on the screen and this is probably one of the few times when there’s no debate that a time travel film makes no sense. Normally that genre can hand-wave a lot of plot holes.

37.          Barb and Star Go to Mar El Vista-I know it had its fans, but I found this overly low-brow and couldn’t find a single scene that screams “Brilliant!.” Maybe Barb and Star being fired from their jobs comes close but that’s in the beginning of the movie and front loads with lots of expectations.  You realize that these two made Bridesmaids? It’s mostly standard mix-em-ups and a comedy of doors.

 This felt like when Mike Meyers or M. Night Shyamalan refuse to listen to studio notes about a bad idea.

38.          Thunder Force-Because it stars Melissa McCarthy, one might assume it’s a send-up to superhero tropes but the film plays the superhero story pretty straight despite the film still having the outlines of a comedy. It’s a pretty awkward clash. At least Jason Bateman seemed to know he was in a comic film.

39.          Breaking News in Yuma County-A dark comedy that feels as if someone read cliff notes on the Coen Brothers films (people fabricate dumb schemes, people get blackmailed, people are violently hurt, etc) and tried to make a film solely off that. It probably doesn’t help that the scheme is not just dumb but uninteresting. Allyson Janney pretends to know details about your husband’s death because she likes being on the news and the fame it brings her, but do people really like being a talking head on the news?

40.          Kate-Like Beckett, it’s a contextless action film (we’re not meant to know much about the hero) but, it’s also a contextless shoot-em-up and it’s too high in the ratio of violence to context for me to not see it as gratuitous.  

41.          Stowaway-Boring attempt at sci-fi and it’s lifeboat ethics weren’t anything I agreed with.