november 2, 2007
the first bad movie
An excerpt from a work in progress

Over the last several months I've been researching and writing a book, tentatively entitled Why Hollywood Sucks. I suppose the "why" should be obvious, but the recent success of Saw IV and Across the Universe certainly begs the question. Why Hollywood Sucks is a composition of 95 theses, which upon publication I intend to affix to the doors of the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard.

Below please find one such thesis: Thesis #2, The First Bad Movie, in which we learn that Hollywood's suckitude has deep roots.

-kwm

Movies Discussed:
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Universal 1916
The Wizard of Oz, Chadwick Pictures 1925
Electrocuting an Elephant, Edison, 1903

Movies didn’t simply become bad somwhere along the line, nor did badness creep in by osmosis or apathy or the infiltration of Satan into Hollywood (see Thesis # 39: Satan). Bad movies have been made since Hollywood was a lemon ranch. The moment that a camera became the eyes of greedy, artless, unpleasant people, suction was heard coming out of odeons and music halls across the globe.

But which was the very first bad movie? This is a delicate matter. To criticize film from the silent era is rather taboo, like trying to pick “Worst Saint” or “Stupidest Infant.” The silent era was a seminal one, you see, in which a host of now-conventional cinematic techniques were used for the very first time, equipment was huge and ungainly, and filmmakers were forced to wear safari jackets and jodhpurs. Being seminal, as in first days of the polka or disco, tremendous experimentation happened, so films that we would currently call “kind of dumb” or “not very good” are forgiven as “seminal.” Many critics and scholars treat every silent film with a fawning reverence, while a great number of the uninitiated will find a screening of several silent epics a good opportunity to catch up on sleep.

For example, the 1916 film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was in its time a technical marvel, employing such prototypic techniques as intercut parallel story lines, underwater photography, a full-size prop submarine, and marvelous advances in false beard technology. But with its truncated bricolage of two distinct Jules Verne stories, the film scholar might argue that this movie is exemplary of the kind of cultural hegemony that developed, intentionally, ideologically and subtextually, causing the formative years of narrative film form to be mitigated by commercially-driven narrative interpellation, in which silent film planted the seeds of its own demise.

On the other hand, the casual contemporary viewer would be free to interpret the film as big, slow and dumb, much like 2005’s Poseidon only without the babes, and would be encouraged to strike the above scholar repeatedly with a copy of David Bordwell’s dense and compact text “On the History of Film Style.”

But there are many excellent silent movies, and I encourage you to rent as many as you are willing. The comedies are a good place to start, especially those that are funny, so look to the films of Hal Roach and Lo McCarey for a good variety, and seek out the slapstick of Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Charley Chase, Laurel and Hardy, to get you going. But avoid French or German silent comedies, particularly those with clowns in them; they are not at all funny.

*

The comedies of Larry Semon have often been considered, particularly by me, to be the worst of their time. Larry was a spectacularly ugly little man, with a pointy, horizontally-oriented face that seems made for comedy. Practiced in the gangly contortions of a burlesque pie-thrower, Larry lacked even a molecule of the subtlety of physical humor that his contemporaries had by the metric ton. Having no talent for sight gags, Larry resorted to mugging, endless, excessive, straight-at-the-camera mugging. Wearing a derby and clown-white makeup, Larry would wiggle his ears, grimace, look around a lot and pop his eyes open in surprise, delight, alarm, hunger, didn’t matter, he popped his eyes open like a thyroid patient six times a minute. Throughout all his cavorting, devilry, cut-ups, shenanigans and hideous, rubber-faced mugging, the only character that surfaced was Larry. He was a one-trick pony, the ‘twenties equivalent of Jim Carrey, and every bit as one-dimensional and annoying. Accordingly, Larry was hugely successful, making over a hundred films and becoming one of the most popular silent stars of the early twenties. So why isn’t he remembered? Because he simply was not funny. People often confuse “stupid” or “spastic” or even “violent” with “funny,” which is how we’ve ended up with the likes of Mr. Carrey, Adam Sandler, his flying monkey Rob Schneider, Robin Williams and, initially, Larry Semon.

So to the list of contenders I add Larry’s self-directed 1925 adaptation of The Wizard of Oz, which did to Baum's fable what Jim Carrey did to How the Grinch Stole Grinch – damn near ruined it. It's a mishmash of narrative elements that do away with the original story and serve to glorify the overreaching talents of Larry Semon. There’s a large assortment of characters invented or re-invented by Semon, not the least of which is an overtly sexual twenty-something Dorothy, tarted up like Betty Boop. We have a watermelon-chomping Steppin Fetchit-style character named Snowball, played by Spencer Bell, who was given the screen name “G. Howe Black.”

Snowball.

Beyond the cravenly mocking, frequently appalling humor at the expense of gender and race, Oz has a look and feel that would probably frighten kids todaymore than the Saw series; and naturally it has trainload after trainload of Larry mugging. But despite Oz’s near-perfect and seemingly endless loathsomeness, I believe Larry ought best be remembered for introducing the world to his one-time foil, Oliver Hardy, arguably the funniest straight man in the funniest double act in history. Which means, ultimately and within a larger context, Oz doesn’t make the cut.

*

Searching for the first truly bad American film is a challenge, as surprisingly there is not a great amount of commercial interest in releasing something that nobody wants to see, televisions's Cavemen being the exception that proves the rule. However, two courses of film study in college, decades of movie-watching and over three whole hours of research on the internet have revealed to me what I believe to be, officially, The First Bad Movie: Electrocuting an Elephant (1903). There's a quite crappy transfer of the film on YouTube.

One need look no farther than the soulless, doll-like eyes of Thomas Edison (see Thesis #1: Thomas Edison) to find wretched, stomach-churning fare for the whole family to enjoy. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Edison was as usual scheming, cheating and crushing smaller competitors with glee. The Wizard of Menlo Park had successfully muscled out all competitors in the production of electricity by Direct Current (DC), a crude, some would say pointless and altogether stupid technology, the type babies might dream up in their baby dreams. Then, in an effort to destroy pioneer Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse with his ever-growing electric power empire, Edison had begun a public smear campaign against their far superior technology, alternating current (AC). Edison publicly ranted throughout the country, sometimes visibly foaming at the mouth, insisting that his DC was sent to us by God and his Saints and Angels, most notably Saint Albertus Magnus, patron of Electricity. AC, on the other hand, bore the Mark of the Beast and its use in any major application would bring about the Apocalypse. To prove it, Edison began a cross-country tour and massacre, electrocuting dogs, cats, livestock and at least one orangutan using AC, which we know today as Satan’s Deadly Power.

Fortune struck, so to speak, when Coney Island’s Luna Park found themselves with a rogue elephant named Topsy, who for some unknown reason, perhaps a combination of confinement, mutilation and regular beatings, had flattened three men, including a trainer who had allegedly fed her a lit cigarette.

Execution loomed for Topsy. Hanging was too good for her, or so in essence said the ASPCA. Excitedly, Edison leaped at another opportunity to destroy life in the interest of commerce, and proposed that the three-ton animal be given an AC charge of six thousand volts. The city agreed, and Edison arranged to film the event.

This would be a moment of triumph for Edison, to capture horrid death on film for all to see. In 1901, Edison had produced a dramatic restaging of the execution of Czolgosz, President William McKinley’s anarchist assassin. Using the era’s compulsory ham actors, stagy scenarios and crude special effects, the film was a tepid realization of an actual death. Edison needed death, he drank it like wine, lusted after it like the undead, hence his nickname around the shop in West Orange, Nosferatu. So when the opportunity arose not only to promote his safe electricity and his growing motion picture monopoly, but also to chronicle actual death, he was ready.

On a gray January day in 1903, Topsy was clad in copper shoes and fitted with electrodes, then marched out in front of a crowd of fifteen hundred ghoulish New Yorkers eager to see the creature die. Edison’s famed filmmaker Edwin S. Porter, he of The Sneeze and The Great Train Robbery, rolled film. The switch was thrown.

The film is available to any who want to see something very, very sad. In its brisk eighty-six seconds, a chipper Topsy is trotted into position by attendants. We cut to a bemused Topsy nosing the ground. She cocks her head, like a curious puppy, then suddenly stiffens. Smoke and a bit of flame rise from her feet. She convulses, then collapses, toppling like a redwood. Moments later, she twitches, perhaps reflexively, then is still.

The end.

In watching the tiny film, the viewer can actually feel bits of his soul being sucked out, as if by a sort of spiritual liposuction; repeated viewings have been known to make the viewer spontaneously descend into Limbo for all eternity. Limited viewing is suggested.

A memorial for Topsy has been installed at the Coney Island Museum in 2003. Admission is 99 cents.

actors who try to sing
Who Will Win the Nimoy Prize?

It’s a trend that really started when Leonard Nimoy went into the studio and laid down what should be known as the “groaning on the toilet sessions.” William Shatner is famously and ironically cheered for his halting monologues; but Leonard, serious, striking, the only one to come out of Star Trek with a modicum of dignity, relentlessly cut five albums of folk-pop and top-forty covers.

The result is astonishing, an absolute must for any serious collector of things that suck. Listening to Leonard sing “If I Had a Hammer” is exactly what it feels like to be drunk. Parents should play it for their kids, who will get giddy and disoriented, then experience a dull ache in the temporal lobe, maybe a bit of nausea and a stomach-gripping pang of regret. I’m telling you, folks, play any Nimoy song for your teenagers before they go out on a Saturday night; Nimoy is the Anti-Drug.It started a spate of actors taking to the microphone: Lorne Greene, Richard Harris, Peter Fonda, Evel Kneivel. In the eighties, John Travolta, Don Johnson and one of those drug-addled Coreys carried the banner. Bruce Willis got airplay and Eddie Murphy famously complained that his girl likes to “potty all the time, potty all the time, potty all the time.”

But Nimoy’s the standard by which we can judge nearly every other actor who’s tried to sing without actually knowing how. Here are five contemporary actors who have put it on the line for us, out of love. Oh and because they can, without having to be good.

ROBERT DOWNEY JR. The Futurist

Robert Downey, troubled, tortured soul, so angrily misbegotten of the cold world at large on the surface, as fragile as a Precious Moments figurine on the inside, opens a vein and spills his bittersweet, oft-tested blood onto the microphone to offer his muse lovingly to us, the unwitting dopes who browse the discount racks at Cheapo Records, It’s his debut album, and apparently his last, as he’s been reported to say that he worked his ass off on it and didn’t get paid what he’s used to getting. That’s the kind of soul I want my music to reflect!

On several songs, Mr. Downey seems to have overdosed on a lethal cocktail of Springsteen and Sting pills, metamorphosing into a frantic Sting-steen, or on some cuts a Spring-sting. Then there’s his cover of Charlie Chaplin’s beautifully sad Smile, once heartbreakingly rendered in Chaplin’s sound-era silent masterpiece Modern Times; here the tender tune is grabbed by the throat, punched in the nuts, thrown on the floor and sat upon by Mr. Downey. It sounds as if he was convulsively possessed by Adam Duritz of Counting Crows; at times you can almost hear the foam dripping from his mouth onto flailing hair extensions. There he is on the album cover, gaping at us Kilroy-style with a spiky Brian Grazer haircut, wielding a delicate Sharpie (a new one with a real sharp point), seeming so tired, Bruce Willis tired, after having sketched what looks like a picture of Jughead on some staff paper. He is, apparently, The Futurist.

STEVEN SEAGAL: Mojo Priest and Songs from the Crystal Cave

I’m reasonably confident to contend that there’s not another six-foot-four reincarnated Tibetan Buddhist Lama who has kicked as much onscreen ass as Steven Seagal. Take a listen to Steven’s band Thunderbox , now embarking on a world tour to promote their new album Mojo Priest. Note the subtlety of lyric and voice in the ballad “Talk to My Ass.” Or if you prefer your Steven in a more thoughtful mood, try his solo album Songs from the Crystal Cave. Amazon.com suggests you pair your purchase of the folk-colored new age acoustic dreamscape with the DVD of Steven’s movie Today you Die. I suggest you try the experiment of putting Today You Die on your DVD system and simultaneously playing Songs from the Crystal Cave on your Stereo. The effect will cause you to see God, and you will gaze in wide-eyed awe when you realize that God has a beady-eyed, ham-shaped face and a black ponytail, and looks as if he’d like to kick your ass.

RUSSELL CROWE: Other Ways of Speaking (with Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts) and My Hand My Heart (Special Edition) (with The Ordinary Fear of God)

Russell and Thirty Odd Foot of Grunt (TOFOG) regularly rock packed Houses of Blues, jammed with squealing women, rushing the stage hoping to be sprayed with the Paco Rabanne-scented sweat showering down from Russell’s hair like watermelon juice at a Gallagher show. When he slows it down with the more acoustic stylings of The Ordinary Fear of God (also TOFOG, and that’s so cool, idn' it?), there are hints of Roger Whittaker, if one were to grab Roger by the ankles and dip him in a fermenting vat of malted barley mash.

Let's start with The Ordinary Fear of God. As I write I’m listening to the album My Hand My Heart and to be fair, I’ll simply note first impressions:
…hmm, catching airy suggestions of classic Gordon Lightfoot channeled through the voice of that guy from the Crash Test Dummies, that marshmallow baritone, but leavened by that Roger Whittaker in boiling barley-mash effect…. Ah, an acoustic number, crisply produced, a Russell original: “Of all the things I lost last year / I miss my mind the most.” It’s the song version of the famous tee shirt, nice… another lyric pops up, “my life’s a suitcase / that’s never been closed.” Apparently Russell is vulnerable here, an eternally open roll-aboard spilling out the shirts of regret, the shaving kit of memory, the underpants of lost love… Allright, another song, another lyric: “are you ready to take / the weight of a man?” Wow. I’m not ready to take the weight of this particular man.

Better pop on the other disc, the rockin’ Crowe with Thirty Odd Foot… big old jangly rhythm, toms and twelve-string; good.; bar-band good, but good… The lyric? “big wide world / why don’t you swallow my gift.” Okay, now I’m getting uncomfortable, the way I used to feel when I’d come back to my dorm and find my roommate and his girlfriend grinding and shouting like porn stars…

Ultimately I have to say that Russell isn’t so bad, because if I don’t he’ll pelt me with cell phones and drip sweat into my mouth until I do.

LINDSAY LOHAN: A Little More Personal (Raw)

Who the hell am I to judge? A random sampling of my iPod includes Ry Cooder, Johnny Cash, The Stranglers, Tabla Beat Science, The Iguanas, Chin’s Calypso Sextet, Norman Blake, Lila Downs and Crazy Penis.* There isn’t a single droney, cigarettey kabbahlistic pop slut in the mix; my idea of teen music, when I was a teen, involved glassy English art-rock, some combination of Crosby, Stills, Nash and/or Young, and Frank Zappa. I should recuse myself, but after listening to Lindsay, I can’t help myself.

Lindsay’s music is absolutely perfect. It’s impenetrable, a pop music fortress of stone. It’s music you don’t have to think about to enjoy; hell, you barely have to be conscious. That’s why it’s the theme song to a hundred million pizza parties where girls just want to smoke and chill and think about boys and compare lip liners.

Lindsay’s vocal presentations give me the impression that she had kidnapped Avril Lavigne, killed her, skinned her and now wears her hide like a jumpsuit, so although she has some of the look and feel of an Avril Lavigne, upon closer inspection you might be filled with the urge to vomit, run to your car, get as far as you can from the area and call 911.

I believe the melodies roll off a robot-welding heavy machinery line in Flint Michigan, but I may be wrong; it could be Dayton. Either way it’s impossible to get in; the music surrounds Lindsay’s thin, grunty voice with three solid feet of pop hooks.

I tried an experiment: I put on one of her big hits, “Confessions of a Broken Heart (Daughter to Father)”, a sort of updated, fully digified version of “Papa Don’t Preach.” I borrowed my brother-in-law’s rifle, a hefty .50 caliber muzzleloader he uses to take down elk. It’s a beauty. I aimed it at my iPod while Lohan reached the first chorus and fired. I’d loaded it up with a tipped boattail sabot round, pure copper with a wicked velocity and six expanding petals that should have ripped the iPod to shreds, but the round was deflected by the density of the rhythm section and instead tore a hole in my living room wall.

CRISPIN GLOVER: The Big Problem Does Not Equal the Solution. The Solution = Let It Be

Crispin Glover, who most recently plays the monster Grendel in Robert Zemeckis’ telling of Beowulf, most recognized as Michael J. Fox’s dad in Back to the Future but deeply burned into my psyche for his portrayal of the title character in the remake of Willard. He’s an actor of mercurial intensity, an artist steeped in gothic-laden avant-garde, an experimenter who’s tested the patience of directors and audiences alike, but he is never, ever dull. Offscreen he may be a fine gentle fellow; I have no idea, nor do I care, as I concentrate on his onscreen and public persona, which indicate that he may be crazier than a shit-fight in a monkey house. This CD, released in 1989, contains readings from two of Crispin’s several books, Rat Catching and Oak Mot, set to music produced by Barnes and Barnes, who brought us the ditty “Fish Heads.” Remember? It played heavy rotation on Dr. Demento’s show: “fish heads, fish heads, eat them up, yum.”

Crispin’s thematic album uses as its melodic landscape a grinding synthesized variant of circus music, and contains the original compositions “Clowny Clown Clown” and “Auto-manipulator”, a rhythm machine-backed rap about masturbating into a sink.

Don’t worry, there are delightful covers as well! There’s a perverse, leering revision of Stephen Foster’s “Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze”, and a falsetto chorus rendering of “Never Say Never to Always,” penned by Charles Manson. That Charles Manson. But the gem of the album should be, if it isn’t already, a mainstay of any college party mix for decades, a screamed version of “these Boots Are Made For Walkin’”, which will drive any image of soapy Jessica Simpson in a bikini right out of your mind.

Sometimes my job is easy. Cripsin handily takes the Nimoy Prize.

The Big Problem... was supposed to be followed by another entitled The Big Love Album. It remains unreleased. Glover fans all over the country await, petting rats, sharpening medieval weapons, quietly weeping and masturbating into sinks.

* That’s right, Crazy Penis. Great dance band, some jazz, some house, no disco. You’ve been hearing Penis without knowing it, every time you see that stupid ad for Southern Comfort in which they’ve been trying to force us to call it “SoCo,” as if people will, and order it with lime, as if it would taste better that way – I tried it for the sake of writing about it and “SoCo” still tastes like Cepacol and linseed oil. Anyway, the music is Crazy Penis – I don’t make these things up for my own amusement.

from the archives

August 3, 2006
blu-ray vs hd dvd
Nobody Wins.

Sony, the self-styled "one and only," will introduce its high-definition Blu-ray digital video format on May 23rd to us, here in the US of A, a nattering, Neanderthal, heretofore unwittingly blu-ray-starved populace, rooting around as we are in the dim glow of conventional DVD-based home theaters, wondering how in the name of all that is holy we ever made it this far as a civilization without fifty gigabytes of dual-layer capacity and 3:2 pulldown compensation.

Not to be outdone, Toshiba will introduce their own gift from the gods, called HD DVD, in March, with its own equally impressive set of technical specifications and, of course, 3:2 pulldown. These two technologies, each with their own army of media giants behind them, are about to engage in a struggle to become the one that replaces the now-ubiquitous and perfectly adequate DVD format.

DVDs as we know them deliver to most of us a better quality of sound and image than we ever dreamed would make it into our homes. It has caused the makers of movies to radically shift the way they present their product, from title acquisition all the way to release and advertising. It has simultaneously allowed a meteoric market for home movie makers, who now can present the lavish imagery and nuanced editing of Brady's 1st Poopies on the Toi-Toi in High Definition with Dolby AC-3 sound.

But no, DVDs are no longer good enough. Over the next few years we'll watch these formats duke it out, and eventually we'll have to trash what we have and invest in the winner.

Why are they doing this? That's a damned silly question. Better to ask: what the hell is 3:2 pulldown? I've been working in television for twenty-five years, I have no idea.

It doesn't matter. We must put away childish things and act like adults. Eventually we'll have no choice but to adapt, as those beloved copies of The Battle of Algiers or Girls Gone Wild Spring Break 3 start to stall and seize on our antiquated conventional DVD players, and only places like Goodwill or Savers will offer this quaint twentieth-century technology, while our children's children, who eventually will replace us, forget us and despise us for electing whomever we elected, face the shining sunrise of the future and reflect its brilliance.

That was a damned silly answer. Sony and Toshiba are doing this because they can. Like a dog's inclination to lick its crotch, it's the natural inclination of competitors in a market economy to make their own products obsolete. If one of them pulls it off, they will be the proud owners of the next generation's technological protocol. They shall be the keepers of the mint of the coin of the realm and their competitor eventually will acknowledge defeat and pay tribute at the court of the victor. If it sounds feudal, it is; the market economy is in essence a feudal and predatory system. It doesn't matter a whit that we like what we have. Eventually reasons will creep into our own vocabulary like microbes, replacing rationality with rationalization. Our culture's furtive fear of being left behind will overwhelm us, and we'll cave, all but the most stalwart of us; if we want to participate in the popular culture, we'll cave. We always have.

That was pretty grim, wadn't it? Time for some fun.

Here's the press release from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, announcing the launch of Blu-ray and including a title list of the first batch of films to be released in the new format. This list includes a couple of compulsory titles (Robocop, Terminator) and at least one that'll look gorgeous in the home high-def form and is accordingly enticing: House of Flying Daggers. Although it's not listed in the releases, the Sony Blu-ray web site teasingly depicts a bloody well-armed Josh Hartnett from the stunning Black Hawk Down. All these films are best remembered for imagery and sound, appealing to action film lovers and cinema aficionados alike; and once again it's shown that the apex of motion picture art and science was achieved some years ago by Robocop.

Come on, I'm kidding.

But here's one of the things I love about this massive amorphous industry I work in: because these spiffy Blu-ray titles were listed in the press release alphabetically, with numbered titles first, 50 First Dates tops the list of Blu-ray titles. That's right, 50 First Dates, that buttery softball of a romance twixt Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, a movie whose best role was played by a vomiting walrus. A very popular film, but really the last thing you'd think of when you contemplate paying a thousand dollars for a new Blu-ray DVD player.

I'm imagining the well-meaning and well-paid dope who assembled the press release from a closet-sized cubical in Culver City - we'll call her Aimée (pronounced a-MAY), only because every third studio toady I ever met is named Aimée, although the accent wanders between the first "e" and the second, and varies from aigu to grave. So Aimée has to put out this press release, see, in time for the winter tech shows all over the world, and the all-important ShoWest convention in Las Vegas in two weeks, where most movie distributors buy not only their next year's worth of titles but also see more hookers in a week than Bangkok does in a year. But back on task now: Aimée like needs the list of titles that will debut on Blu-ray, like now. So she like calls two floors up and three departments over to get the list from another Aimeè, who copied it off a database, ordered numerically then alphabetically, like all good databases are unless instructed otherwise. Aimée #1 (first "e" accent aigu) shoots off the press release to her boss Lawrence (three out of seven studio publicity VP's are named Lawrence) who nods at the release while pulling a glob of quail egg from lunch off his left top molars. Off goes the release, to Aimèés around the globe at various news outlets, who forward it to assignment editors generally named Gary who hand it off to writers named variously Stew or Phil who essentially rewrite whatever's in the press release, adding a few needless articles and modifiers. Mitch, who posts the story, needs a picture so he nabs a still from the first movie on the list.

The result: Sony's bid to forever change the way we watch movies at home is represented in press outlets all over the world by a picture of Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore petting a vomit-stained walrus.

It makes me happy when a massive, untenable monster like a media corporation quietly shits the bed in this way. It's the same sort of satisfaction other people get from seeing pictures of Britney Spears with a beer gut or Dick Cheney shooting a friend in the noggin. It means that behind the seemingly unstoppable forces of society and the unavoidable noise of the culture lurk humans--us--making mistakes.

To paraphrase a great movie,The Wizard of Oz, one film which ought to be presented in high defenition, we're good people; we're just very bad wizards.