How Film School Has Murdered My Hatred of Bad Movies

Since I started attending film school, it is impossible for me to hate a film. I still dislike films because the story sucks and have no desire to watch the film again, but I can't completely hate them anymore.

After participating in the film making process and seeing how much time it takes to do every little thing, I can't hate bad films anymore. While in the past I have had a deep seeded loathing for films such as Team America or Hellraiser, if I were to have seen them for the first time now I would have a greater apreciation for them. (But, seriously, I still never want to see them again.)

Every shot takes time. A god aweful amount of time to be exact. For each different shot in a film, the lights have to be rearranged and the camera moved. Plus you have to make sure your actors do things as close to the same way as possible each time. (And they do it a lot people.) It truely is an insane process.

When you have a bare bones crew of say three or four people, including cast, it's difficult to organize everyone in the way you need. But the larger the crew gets the harder it is to control. Extras are goofing off, crew members will get distracted, people just straight up disapear. It's insanity.

We did an in class shoot of a dialog scene yesterday. It was hellacious. At any given moment only a handful of people would be doing anything helpful. To make matters worse, we tried switching crew duties at intervals throughout the shoot. The only people I can think of that had the same job for the entire shoot was me, the DP, and the lead actors. Everyone else kept changing roles. We had actors who were so nervous they couldn't remember lines. Then we'd take a break to transfer footage. People would switch roles. Script supervisors would become directors. Directors would become boom opperators and sound recordists. Sound recordists would become assistant directors. Assistant directors would become extras. Extras would dissapear. Actors would disapear. Extras would make loud noises requiring us to do another take. We'd have people talking in the hall we filmed in. Actors would fall asleep somewhere and no one could find them. I'm talking complete insanity. It's like war zone where only a handful of people are aware their asses could get blown up at any moment.

While organizing five people is hard enough, organizing more could quite possibly lead to the mass murder of your entire crew. Even the shittiest movies have a some respect in my eyes. Maybe not as stories, but visually I apreciate them. (As long as they actually bothered to try and make it decent.)

A Letter To My Neighbor

Dear Madame Mariachi Lady,

10:00pm constitutes twilight hours. That means that your music should not be heard by every surrounding flat. They invented the button(s)/nob(s) that are labled "volume" so your neighbors don't have to hear your music (if that's what it can be called).

They also invented something called headphones that allow you to listen to your music as loud as you want without involving the neighbors. You are not at a rock concert (or a concert for whatever type of music you play).

Some people enjoy sleep or at least the ability to watch a movie without fighting over the volume. (That's reserved for when someone's vaccuming.)

If you still insist on playing loud music could you throw in some variety. Mariachi is getting a bit monotanous and everyone else blasts rap. There are other genres to explore, so please do so.

                      Please and Thank You,
                             Your Neighbor

If You're Gonna Write About It...

If you're going to write about something you have to at least know what the heck it is. If you don't know what you're talking about all you're going to do is piss people off.

In my short script analysis class, we read scripts then give the author feed back. We recently read one about a woman who's goal it was to sleep with a man from every state in the country. If done properly you could actually have an interesting story.

Sort of a female Barney from How I Met Your Mother

Problem was it wasn't done properly. The lead character was a dumbass. She says several times throughout the script that she is doing so in order to write a book about it or to get on television. She's sort of like a slightly more charismatic (and less orange) version of Snooki.

Somewhere in between these two pictures.

If she wants to get on television sex is the way to go. The part that's annoying is that the chick is trying to pass it off as some big political statement about how women should be able to act like douchey men. It's very clear that the chick doesn't know shit about what she's talking about. She sort of ends up looking and sounding like this.

But you know about Feminism

The scripts author kept trying to say that she was supposed to be a bookworm studious type. There was a lot of biting of tongues from the woman in the class. One of the guys in the class said that he didn't sense that the script was trying to be feminist. Well that's because it  wasn't. I think it was actually one of the more sexist stories I've ever read.

Sort of like if the creator of this poster

wrote this movie.

Oh No! More Election Talk!

Today signals my first presidential election as a voter. It's pretty cool being able to vote. It's even cooler to realize that the swarm of people who have been bombarding my apartment door asking about who I'm voting for will no longer be waking me up or making me late. And I will no longer have my mailbox packed full of political ads. (Just regular old other ads.)

No matter who you voted for you've got to be glad that we will now be seeing commercials for beef jerkey and burgers again rather than just "Romney/Obama is the devil" ads. If that alone isn't a reason to be thankful what is? Although now we get a wonderful amount of time where everyone bitches about the elected.

Facebook alone counts for many of the stupid comments. I have already seen posts that say, "You happy Obama won? I will defriend you." (Defriending the ultimate punishment for being a liberal. Aparently.) And "I guess all the Obama supporters will partying all night seeing as they don't have a job to go to in the morning." (Both of those were posted by the same guy.) One last gem: "I hate stupid people. If you voted for Obama you must need his hand outs. Well maybe yiu should get off ur lazy ass and get a job. Grrrrr x-(" (It's becoming increasingly difficult to remember why I'm friends with this person in the first place. Also alls those typos are from the actual post.)

By all means, respect their political opinions, but if they're not going to respect yours then screw them. Life's to short to argue with idiots (especially online).

During the whole campain process everyone had something along the lines of "I'm moving to Canada if (insert canidates name here) wins." Of course very few people actually meen it. As I have been informed many times by my parents (usually when I mention moving to Canada) "They have more gun control there." Well that rules out most of my home town moving away. (Drat!) A simple fact of all election results very few people, if any, are moving to Canada and America will NOT be detroyed. (We survived Nixon didn't we?)

As of right now, I'm just glad I'm no longer living at home. Last time Obama was elected, my dad bought chickens and cows. I'm not quite sure what he'll buy this time. (Pigs? Geese? Goats? Ducks? Sheep?)

The Wizard of Oz: The Book

SPOILER ALERT!!!

Not a lot of people have actually read the book. It's a good book, but a far sight more disturbing than the movie. Throughout the entire course of the book there are 128 deaths. That's an unequaled death toll for any other novel I've read. All of the deaths are caused by Dorothy and her friends. Not a single other character in the book kills anyone.

There are many differences between the book and the movie.

1. The shoes are silver in the book. MGM made them ruby in order to show off their new color technology.

2. The Good Witch of the North and Glinda aren't the same person. At the beginning the Good Witch of the North is an old lady. She gives Dorothy the shoes without really knowing what they do and she gives Dorothy a protective kiss on the forehead that keeps her from being killed by flying monkeys. Glinda's the good witch of the south. She doesn't do anything, but tell Dorothy that she has shoes that can take her home.

3. The Wicked Witch of the West isn't the sister of the Wicked Witch of the East (or if she is they aren't very close). In fact, she could care less that the other wicked witch is dead. The only thing that slightly interests her is when she has the chance to get the shoes from Dorothy.

4. The Emerald City is a cheep trick. The Emeral City is in fact just a city. The Wizard made it emerald by telling everyone that they would go blind from the sight of it if they didn't wear special glasses. These glasses are green tinted and just make everything look green.

5. Oz wasn't just a dream. In fact Dorothy return was later after Aunt Em and Uncle Henry had built another farm house.

6. The Wizard actually gives them what they want without the heartfelt speach. He fills the Scarecrows head with pins, needles, and bran. That is the new brain. He gives the Tinman a silk heart filled with sawdust. He gives the Lion a liquid to drink and says it's courage.

7. Dorothy gets to control the flying monkeys. (Who doesn't want to do that?) There's a magic cap with an enchantment (specifically made to make you look like and idiot if you perform it) that summons the monkeys.

That's enough of the differences I could go on, but those are the main ones.

Now to discuss the death toll. With 128 creatures killed by Dorothy and Company it's bit insane. They basically go on a murdering rampage only it's written off as insignificant which is scary since all creatures in the book are fully concious and equals to the others.

The Tinman
The Tinman kills the most. He is responsible for the deaths of 85 creatures. That's more than half. He kills 40 wolves, 40 bees, 2 kalidahs, 1 wildcat, 1 concious tree, and 1 beatle. The beatle was accidently stepped on and all the others were attacking them except the wildcat. I can see the reason for everyone of these deaths except the wildcat. The book explains how the Tinman does his best to look out for every creature because he doesn't have a heart. The a wildcat runs by chasing a field mouse and he decides it's wrong for the cat the hunt the mouse. So what does he do? He chops the head off the wildcat.

The Scarecrow
The Scarecrow kills 40 creatures all of which are crows. The Wicked Witch send them after Dorothy and Friends so he twists off all their heads.

Dorothy
Dorothy kills two witches. One inadvertantly with a house. The other she throws a bucket of water on when the Witch makes her angry. You'd think that someone as allergic to water as that would make sure not to leave a bucket of water laying around.

The Lion
The Lion kills one giant spider who was terrorizing a forest of animals.

While most of the killings can be justified, there is an insane amount of them. No other children's story has that many deaths. Heck most horror movies don't. The only book I can think of with more is the bible.

The Wizard of Oz The Movie (and a brief mention of the play)

Just about anyone alive has seen the classic 1939 Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland. (If you haven't pretty much this entire blog will be a spoiler.) It's a well loved family classic. Of course, as such, the rumours of non family friendly things going on in the film must be spread.

These of course are things like "in the background of one of the scenes with Dorothy, The Tinman, and The Scarecrow, you can see one of the munchkins hanging himself." I have seen the scene in question and it is very clearly an oversized bird doing bird things. No suicides, hangings, or even the mauling of cast members. On the surface (and even the backgrounds) it is truly a family friendly film. Until you start to think about it.

There are some very screwed up things about that film. Let's start at the beginning. Well at least the beginning of the Technicolor. When Dorothy first arrives in Oz she discovers she's inadvertantly dropped a house on someone. She starts to think about how horrible that is, but before you know it a sparkling witch in a bubble shows up and tells her it's no big. Then a bunch of Munchkins show up and dance and sing about how happy they are this house fell on this lady. While in this movie it's not so terrifying, when my high school did the play with little children singing this song it was honestly very disturbing.

We never actually hear what this lady did that was so evil, but have it on what we assume is good authority (a glowing lady in a bubble) that she was in fact wicked. As soon as Dorothy is reassured that it was okay for her to drop her house on someone, that someone's sister shows up. As one would imagine, she's quite pissed. (Honestly, have someone drop a house on your sister and see how chipper you are.) This green lady threatens Dorothy because she DROPPED A HOUSE ON HER SISTER and we're still convinced the witch is the bad guy. (Probably because she threatened the dog. Threaten a person it's all good. Bring the dog into it, bitch, you better run.) To add insult to injury bubble lady insists on giving Dorothy the shoes of the person she dropped the house on. Not her next of kin. she does this right in front of the next of kin as well.

Dorothy then gets sent off down a path with directions as vague as, "Follow the yellow brick road. It will lead you straight to the Emerald City." Glinda of course doesn't mention the fact that there's a fork in the road. (Honestly, Glinda's a bit sadistic.) At this fork in the road Dorothy meets a brainless scarecrow who she sets free. They then after a musical number involving math and geography skip off down the path (assuming that they chose the right direction).

A little ways down the path Dorothy gets hungry. (Aparently, she ate up the giant lollipops that the Lollipop Guild gave her.) She plucks an apple of a tree. The tree then gets pissed and asks her how she'd like it if someone plucked something off of her. Once again Dorothy starts to apologize when the Scarecrow steps in and says, "I'll get you your apples, Dorothy." The Scarecrow then taunts the trees until they throw their apples at him. The tree had every right to be pissed in my opinion. Like it said wouldn't you be. No one in the movie gives Dorothy a chance to feel sorry about her misdeeds. Everyone just cheers her on.

They then oil a well rusted Tinman who in a matter of moments is able to dance and skip off along the road with them. They go off into the forest where they reform a bully of a lion into a nice fellow. He joins their crew in order to get courage (the one thing bullies lack).

They make it to Emerald City where they get all cleaned and dressed up. Then our friend the Wicked Witch of the West shows up and does some terrifying sky writing. Everyone in Emerald City freaks out and Dorothy and her pals are allowed to see the Wizard. The Wizard, who appears to be a giant floating head, tells them he'll give them what they want if they bring back the Wicked Witch's broomstick.

Now wait just a moment. The "Wicked" Witch has only threatened Dorothy up to this point. While that's not a nice thing to do, it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do to the person who intentionally or unintentionally killed your sister. Especcially if that person hasn't even appologized. The Wizard is telling a young girl to go and still an assumedly powerful witch's broomstick. (Glinda's not the only one who's sadistic.)

The Tinman, Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion, and Dorothy all head off to the Wicked Witch's Forest. This is the only time the Wicked Witch attacks anyone. Anyone who lives in Colorado knows about the make my day law. (I don't feel like explaining it so if you don't know what I'm talking about look it up.) She has a group of people heading for her house with the intention of stealing basically the equivalent of her car. (Granted, a broomstick's a lot cooler.) I'd sick my legion of flying monkey's on them too.

The Wicked Witch kidnaps Dorothy. She wants her sister's shoes. That's really the only thing the Witch asks for. It's when Dorothy (at the advice of Glinda) refuses to give them to her that things get nasty. Once again the Witch threatens her life. She uses a giant a hour glass and says she'll be dead when it runs out. There is in fact no proof that this is actually the case. (I'm thinking with a decent prosecution, Dorothy and her companions might just end up in jail.)

Tinman, Scarecrow, and Lion show up and rescue her. The Witch gets angry and launches a couple fire balls at then. She hits the Scarecrow and Dorothy dumps a bucket of water on the Scarecrow and the Witch who promptly melts. Dorothy once again starts to appologize for her actions when the Winkies all start celebrating that the Witch is dead. (Presumably they did a reprise of Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead, but Dorothy and friends left before they had to listen to it.)

Dorothy and Company return to the Wizard and show him the Witch's broom. He laughs (in all his big headed glory), "pulled the old bucket of water trick did you?" (It should be noted that all quotes are highly paraphrased.) If he knew water would make her melt, you'd think he could of told them that before sending them to their possible doom.

Toto our fury little friend then pulls a curtain and reveals that the Wizard is a fake. (Or at least the giant head is.) While, they're angry at first, the Wizard talks his way out of it. He gives them random objects (which presumably are rejects from his latest garage sale) and heartfelt feel good speaches. All is forgiven. He even says he'll take Dorothy home in his happy little hot air balloon.

The people of Emerald City (who don't seem all that surprised to discover that their Wizard is a short tubby little man) are all set to send the Wizard off. Dorothy says goodbye to friends. It's all warmhearts and the fuzzy yet sad feeling of goodbye, until the balloon acidentally gets launched without Dorothy. Dorothy starts to cry and so does the audience (admit the first time you saw it you cried. Granted you were probably five). Then Glinda floats in on her magic bubble all chipper and happy asking, "why are you so sad?"

She then explainns to Dorothy that she's wearing magical shoes that can take her home at any moment. She acts as though this is common knowledge then gives some bs speach about how Dorothy had to really want to go home before she could use them. I'm pretty sure Dorothy really wanted to go home when she found out a she dropped a house on someone. And I'm almost possitive she really really wanted to go home after the first death threat. Glinda could have told Dorothy about these magical little shoes. Dorothy could've gone home when she really wanted to when Dorothy decided she really wanted to.

Then it's all of course described as a dream that was brought on by a hunk of wood that could easily get a degree in psychology.

In the play that my high school put on a couple years back, there are two mildly disturbing things. One was just watching little children sing happily about someone's death. Another was at the very end instead of just having the Witches in Dorothy's dream killed off she awakens and is told that the mean lady at the beginning of the play had a telephone pole dropped on her and she's now dead. This wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't said with such nonchalance. They may not of liked her, but I doubt anyone would talk about how they're glad she's dead.

I still love the story, but it's got issues. (Actually, I might like it more because it does.)

A Note On Impatience

I am a horribly impatient person. Waiting drives me absolutely insane. I can think of nothing more torturous (not counting actual torture) than waiting. Honestly, it's just painful. I hate sitting still if there's not something for my mind to focus on. Waiting is the worst. Even if I have a book, yoyo, or pen to amuse my self with the waiting sits at the back of my mind and nags.

My mind is realling with thoughts. Not necesarily paranoid thoughts about what happened to the person I'm waiting for, but more along the lines of, "hurry up, damn it!" Or "since they're probably not showing up anytime soon I'll count ceiling tiles." I have a different thought roughly every second while I'm waiting.

Waiting for something to happen soon is the worst. I'm talking about being picked up, having visitors, etc. Then there's waiting for a plan like going to a concert, hanging out with friends you haven't seen in awhile, etc. After that there's waiting for stuff in the mail. That one's just annoying. It's not really that bothersome, but just nagging enough to cause an itch in the back of my thoughts.

Apparently, I look completely calm and collected to everyone else. While in my mind I'm going completely insane, to everyone else I look like I'm just chilling. As if I'm like, "whatever, if my dad forgets me it's no big deal."

A friend of mine cited an example. When we were hanging out at the high school last year for the Beginning Drama Plays. We ordered a pizza from Domino's.

First, the jackass delivery guy didn't actually enter the building so we didn't know he was there and he left. Then we called Domino's wondering about our pizza and were informed this. So we reordered our pizza, told them to go inside this time, and waited out front anyways just for safe measure. We waited and no one showed up, so we called again. They informed us that they thought it was a prank, so we ordered again. Finally an hour and a half after our original order the delivery guy showed up with our pizza. Domino's gave a free box of cinammon bread in an attempt to make up for it, but I wasn't a very generous tipper. (This story is one of two the main reason I haven't eaten from Domino's since. The second main reason is that I'm allergic to tomatos and when people order pizza they forget this fact.) By all logical reason I should have been flipping the heck out.

When I am hungry I tend to get hyperactive and twitchy. (Sort of a weird biological thing where instead of it saying, "I'm gonna shut down now." It says, "Dude, I'm hungry! Let's go kill something! I think I saw a rabbit over there!" (Not neccesarily that dramatic.) Basically I become the equivalent of a less cute nonleash trained puppy. On this occassion involving Domino's, I should have looked just as insane as I felt. According to my friend though I still remained calm.

There are a few reason's as to why I probably didn't look like I was two steps away from having a seizure and neither had anything to do with my normally calm appearance.
1. While we were waiting inside I was watching another friend of mine draw boobs in my yearbook and a vagina with teeth in another friend's yearbook (honestly high school can get weird when people are bored). I was thoroughly entertained by this. When this ended, we called Domino's.
2. While waiting outside there was god aweful amounts of sand left over from the senior prank so I got to play with that. When I got bored we called Domino's
3. The person I liked came out to hang out with us (and likely bum pizza). I spent the rest of the time flirting with them and having a dandelion war with them, so I wasn't really that worried about pizza anymore.
4. By the pizza actually showed up I was covered dandelion seeds, in a good mood, and so far past the point of being hungry that I was no longer Twitchy Gonzales (the less well known relative of Speedy).