I'm just a killer for your love
After doing my music-assisted stroll down Memory Lane, I thought I'd see if I could do the same with movies. My thinking went something like this: "As pivotal as movies have been to my life, surely there are certain memories linked to specific titles. That might be an interesting thing for people to read about." So I thought about it just long enough to recall that my first hard-core movie theater make-out session was during Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. That thought was humiliating enough for me to realize that I should just leave well enough alone.
Set-building was fine and dandy. It clocked in at a little over four hours, which isn't too bad, but it certainly would have gone much faster if I'd had the slightest idea what we were doing at the beginning. It took some time to get my plan of action figured out, but once that happened it was relatively smooth sailing. Highlight of the day: Mandi's gangsta do-rag. She's so urban it hurts. Coming in a close second was my oh so politically correct statement, "I don't see movies about retarded people." Sorry: mentally challenged. Or better still: differently abled.
An explanation, so you don't throw things at me the next time I'm around: Movies about people with disabilities seem cheap to me for a couple reasons. For one, having non-handicapped people play handicapped roles (and here I'm talking about something like Juliette Lewis in The Other Sister) is belittling to the people with handicaps. You can do it with as much dignity and good intentions as possible, but to me it just seems like you're drawing attention to, and in some cases making fun of, these disabilities. Having taught plenty of students with a variety of handicaps, it makes me squirm to see a multi-millionaire playing up all the worst stereotypes we think of when we hear the word "retarded." My other reason is that it's an easy way of getting the audience on the character's side. Of course everyone wants Sean Penn to get his daughter back in I Am Sam. No one besides me is heartless enough to think that having him be mentally challenged is just a cheap way of gaining automatic and immediate sympathy for the character. It's like having a neo-Nazi for a villain. We hate him automatically because he's a neo-Nazi, not because he seems like a real person worth hating. Handicapped characters in movies are assumed to be naturally lovable, and therefore no one involved with the movie (screenwriter, director, actor, whomever) has to try too hard to actually make them lovable in any way that resembles reality. Wouldn't it be far more dramatic in I Am Sam to have Sean Penn's character be a real S.O.B. who loves his daughter and has to fight to overcome his own worst intentions and the hatred people feel for him because of them? The only exception to this I can think of is Daniel Day-Lewis' performance in My Left Foot. It's sensitive, heartfelt, and completely respectful of the real person he's portraying. It's the textbook example of how these roles (and movies) should be done.
Water Canyon seems to be either feast or famine these days. It's either crowded with a bunch of dopey kids like a few weeks ago, or it's just this side of dead like tonight. I had a drink, listened to Kevin play (his new song is tres bien), read some more of Skinny Legs and All, and called it a night. Which is what I'm going to do right now so I can iron and work on the winter play's program. If my life were any more exciting it would be a crime.
Oh, and did you hear about the loser who named his son Version 2.0? That's right; instead of tacking on Jr. at the end of the kid's name, it's 2.0. I kid you not. It seems to me that people like this shouldn't be having children in the first place ...
Set-building was fine and dandy. It clocked in at a little over four hours, which isn't too bad, but it certainly would have gone much faster if I'd had the slightest idea what we were doing at the beginning. It took some time to get my plan of action figured out, but once that happened it was relatively smooth sailing. Highlight of the day: Mandi's gangsta do-rag. She's so urban it hurts. Coming in a close second was my oh so politically correct statement, "I don't see movies about retarded people." Sorry: mentally challenged. Or better still: differently abled.
An explanation, so you don't throw things at me the next time I'm around: Movies about people with disabilities seem cheap to me for a couple reasons. For one, having non-handicapped people play handicapped roles (and here I'm talking about something like Juliette Lewis in The Other Sister) is belittling to the people with handicaps. You can do it with as much dignity and good intentions as possible, but to me it just seems like you're drawing attention to, and in some cases making fun of, these disabilities. Having taught plenty of students with a variety of handicaps, it makes me squirm to see a multi-millionaire playing up all the worst stereotypes we think of when we hear the word "retarded." My other reason is that it's an easy way of getting the audience on the character's side. Of course everyone wants Sean Penn to get his daughter back in I Am Sam. No one besides me is heartless enough to think that having him be mentally challenged is just a cheap way of gaining automatic and immediate sympathy for the character. It's like having a neo-Nazi for a villain. We hate him automatically because he's a neo-Nazi, not because he seems like a real person worth hating. Handicapped characters in movies are assumed to be naturally lovable, and therefore no one involved with the movie (screenwriter, director, actor, whomever) has to try too hard to actually make them lovable in any way that resembles reality. Wouldn't it be far more dramatic in I Am Sam to have Sean Penn's character be a real S.O.B. who loves his daughter and has to fight to overcome his own worst intentions and the hatred people feel for him because of them? The only exception to this I can think of is Daniel Day-Lewis' performance in My Left Foot. It's sensitive, heartfelt, and completely respectful of the real person he's portraying. It's the textbook example of how these roles (and movies) should be done.
Water Canyon seems to be either feast or famine these days. It's either crowded with a bunch of dopey kids like a few weeks ago, or it's just this side of dead like tonight. I had a drink, listened to Kevin play (his new song is tres bien), read some more of Skinny Legs and All, and called it a night. Which is what I'm going to do right now so I can iron and work on the winter play's program. If my life were any more exciting it would be a crime.
Oh, and did you hear about the loser who named his son Version 2.0? That's right; instead of tacking on Jr. at the end of the kid's name, it's 2.0. I kid you not. It seems to me that people like this shouldn't be having children in the first place ...