on bad movies and time
Jun. 22nd, 2003 10:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
saint_monkeyi did something to time
i was sleeping and rising normally, but somehow now it has turned into staying up an hour later every night, and getting up an hour later as well, about seven hours later. so now it is like 11 o'clock at night, and i feel like it is only 3 or so in the afternoon.
when i was in the military i did this, the only way to get time right again, is to pull a marathon stretch, stay up all night, and all the next day.... when it is time to go back to sleep, you are exhausted, and then you wake up at the normal time once more.
HBO has started showing Attack of the Clones and I fear they will never stop. It seemes to be on several times a day, every day. One thing in it's favor, the line "It would never work between us... You're a Jedi, I'm a Senator." gets funnier every time i hear it. I wouldn't watch it, but nothing else is on.
HBO also seems to have taken a break from running a "Police Academy" film at any given moment, to running one of the "Look Who's Talking" movies at any given moment. HBO should just give up and start an HBOPA channel for Dish subscribers. "All Police Academy, All The Time." That way, the people that are (clearly) writing obsessive letters to HBO demanding "MORE Police Academy! (I can never get enough of Bobcat Golthwait! Please start Showing "Hot to Trot" too!) " Will have a channel that they can watch all the time, and I can lock it off of my Channel Guide.
I think one of the saddest things about Hollywood, is that all these movies made as vehicles for the "Next Big Thing" among comedians, like "Hot to Trot" with Bobcat, the "Animal" with Rob Schneider and Colleen, from Survivor! Look just pathetic when they are endlessly re-ran in ten years on the HBO Comedy Network. You realize that each of these tings represents and investment of MILLIONS of dollars. Literally, more money that I will ever see in my lifetime went into making Martin Lawrence look like a giant fat woman, just so he could drag out every negative racial and sexist sterotype possible in "Big Mamma's House," and now i'm going to see it for the rest of my life, some perverse cinematic raspberry from Hollywood every saturday afternoon, like an obscene phone call on my TV.
It is really sad, because GOOD comedy is made with skill and intellegence. Charlie Chaplin never made a bad movie, and he positively refused to insult his audience... Each of his films in timeless, and just as funny today as it was nearly eighty years ago. Here HBO has a whole network devoted to comedy, and what do i NOT see? Films like "Mon Oncle" or "Duck Soup" I don't even see "Animal House" or "Caddyshack." (Although lord knows i grow tired of those films as well.) What DO I see? "Look Who's Talkin Too." "Porky's 2 , The Next Day." (this has to be one of the dumbest film titles ever. the only thing dumber is the film itself.) Vehicle films and niche films that are as witless as they are unfunny. I wonder why... Is it because most people don't know what is funny? Sometimes I think so, but then I see that truly funny films among the crap are embraced as classics and pushed around in a sort of film cult underground. I first came across the odd film "tapeheads" this way. We were looking for a funny film and a friend said, "Hey, it's weird, but it's got a few funny moments." (And it does, which is a sad commentary, where a film with a few funny moments is pushed around like a comedy secret. a little fix for the masses that want a moment of actual humor.)
I think it is because they aren't controvertial and they are formulaic. You know what you will get with each of them... they are no investment for the studio. it knows it can put X amount of dollars in, and get X times Y amount of dollars out. it'll just be a new face in the place of Norm MacDonald next time around. (perhaps Jimmy Fallon.) "Bartender! Another round of fart jokes with a side order of nipple and snot jokes please." "Sure thing! Would you like a sentimental sub-plot that involves saving grandma's bakery from real estate developers with that?" These little ditties are relatively cheap, and they don't need to have any real talent, either writing or starring in them. They work off of the momentary celebrity of some flash in the pan.... A moray on the last five minutes of the fabled fifteen mInutes of fame. I bet some guy has a template script in a desk drawer in a studio out in hollywood just waiting for the phone call... "hey, we just signed Margaret Cho, what do we have that is funny and ethnic that could be turned into Korean comedy.... Maybe that one that Martin Lawrence turned down...I don't know, just change the chitterlings factory to a kimche factory and you got a hit." They are just looking for something that can act as an immediate draw (Come see the wacky prop comedy stylings of Carrot Top in "Chairman of the Board!" ) for a vapid and cheerless audience of pencil pushers looking for escape. I've even heard that the studios intentionaly make BAD movies to run prior to the big summer blockbusters. Create a desert of film, get the audience good and starved, and then sell them Powerade with a guy in a black suit talking real slow before the next Matrix film... And then they have the nerve to say that DVD is pushing them out of the market, and that it is too expensive to make a film, because it costs so much on production. Well, It is your OWN fault, studios. If you made films with real thought in them, some with real content, then you wouldn't need to invest millions in blowing a CGI alien head off. Is it any wonder that true lovers of film are turning more and more to the independants? Rushmore became a hit because it was FUNNY damnit, and it was true and thought provoking, not because it had Bill Murray in it. And Anderson and Wilson never would have been able to make it had they not made Bottle Rocket, which was appealing because FINALLY, people found out that a couple of guys made a FUNNY film.
Maybe that is the key.... There would be real comedy if Hollywood could see it had a true audience that would pay for it. I don't know, maybe there ISN'T an audience....Perhaps the audience only wants light hearted conflictless comedy that challenges them very little. Real comedy takes WORK, it also takes a careful examination of human nature. Real comedy is informed with the pain of the real world. And it makes you laugh in spite of it. I wouldn't like to think that we as a whole, as a society, do not want to face life and laugh at it, instead we simply want to escape from it.... But I hear they are releasing Legally Blonde 2 on July 2nd, anyone want to go see it? Reese Witherspoon was soooo funny in the first one when she talked about "Orange and the New Pink...". Plus, on the Movie poster she looks just like Barbie.
i was sleeping and rising normally, but somehow now it has turned into staying up an hour later every night, and getting up an hour later as well, about seven hours later. so now it is like 11 o'clock at night, and i feel like it is only 3 or so in the afternoon.
when i was in the military i did this, the only way to get time right again, is to pull a marathon stretch, stay up all night, and all the next day.... when it is time to go back to sleep, you are exhausted, and then you wake up at the normal time once more.
HBO has started showing Attack of the Clones and I fear they will never stop. It seemes to be on several times a day, every day. One thing in it's favor, the line "It would never work between us... You're a Jedi, I'm a Senator." gets funnier every time i hear it. I wouldn't watch it, but nothing else is on.
HBO also seems to have taken a break from running a "Police Academy" film at any given moment, to running one of the "Look Who's Talking" movies at any given moment. HBO should just give up and start an HBOPA channel for Dish subscribers. "All Police Academy, All The Time." That way, the people that are (clearly) writing obsessive letters to HBO demanding "MORE Police Academy! (I can never get enough of Bobcat Golthwait! Please start Showing "Hot to Trot" too!) " Will have a channel that they can watch all the time, and I can lock it off of my Channel Guide.
I think one of the saddest things about Hollywood, is that all these movies made as vehicles for the "Next Big Thing" among comedians, like "Hot to Trot" with Bobcat, the "Animal" with Rob Schneider and Colleen, from Survivor! Look just pathetic when they are endlessly re-ran in ten years on the HBO Comedy Network. You realize that each of these tings represents and investment of MILLIONS of dollars. Literally, more money that I will ever see in my lifetime went into making Martin Lawrence look like a giant fat woman, just so he could drag out every negative racial and sexist sterotype possible in "Big Mamma's House," and now i'm going to see it for the rest of my life, some perverse cinematic raspberry from Hollywood every saturday afternoon, like an obscene phone call on my TV.
It is really sad, because GOOD comedy is made with skill and intellegence. Charlie Chaplin never made a bad movie, and he positively refused to insult his audience... Each of his films in timeless, and just as funny today as it was nearly eighty years ago. Here HBO has a whole network devoted to comedy, and what do i NOT see? Films like "Mon Oncle" or "Duck Soup" I don't even see "Animal House" or "Caddyshack." (Although lord knows i grow tired of those films as well.) What DO I see? "Look Who's Talkin Too." "Porky's 2 , The Next Day." (this has to be one of the dumbest film titles ever. the only thing dumber is the film itself.) Vehicle films and niche films that are as witless as they are unfunny. I wonder why... Is it because most people don't know what is funny? Sometimes I think so, but then I see that truly funny films among the crap are embraced as classics and pushed around in a sort of film cult underground. I first came across the odd film "tapeheads" this way. We were looking for a funny film and a friend said, "Hey, it's weird, but it's got a few funny moments." (And it does, which is a sad commentary, where a film with a few funny moments is pushed around like a comedy secret. a little fix for the masses that want a moment of actual humor.)
I think it is because they aren't controvertial and they are formulaic. You know what you will get with each of them... they are no investment for the studio. it knows it can put X amount of dollars in, and get X times Y amount of dollars out. it'll just be a new face in the place of Norm MacDonald next time around. (perhaps Jimmy Fallon.) "Bartender! Another round of fart jokes with a side order of nipple and snot jokes please." "Sure thing! Would you like a sentimental sub-plot that involves saving grandma's bakery from real estate developers with that?" These little ditties are relatively cheap, and they don't need to have any real talent, either writing or starring in them. They work off of the momentary celebrity of some flash in the pan.... A moray on the last five minutes of the fabled fifteen mInutes of fame. I bet some guy has a template script in a desk drawer in a studio out in hollywood just waiting for the phone call... "hey, we just signed Margaret Cho, what do we have that is funny and ethnic that could be turned into Korean comedy.... Maybe that one that Martin Lawrence turned down...I don't know, just change the chitterlings factory to a kimche factory and you got a hit." They are just looking for something that can act as an immediate draw (Come see the wacky prop comedy stylings of Carrot Top in "Chairman of the Board!" ) for a vapid and cheerless audience of pencil pushers looking for escape. I've even heard that the studios intentionaly make BAD movies to run prior to the big summer blockbusters. Create a desert of film, get the audience good and starved, and then sell them Powerade with a guy in a black suit talking real slow before the next Matrix film... And then they have the nerve to say that DVD is pushing them out of the market, and that it is too expensive to make a film, because it costs so much on production. Well, It is your OWN fault, studios. If you made films with real thought in them, some with real content, then you wouldn't need to invest millions in blowing a CGI alien head off. Is it any wonder that true lovers of film are turning more and more to the independants? Rushmore became a hit because it was FUNNY damnit, and it was true and thought provoking, not because it had Bill Murray in it. And Anderson and Wilson never would have been able to make it had they not made Bottle Rocket, which was appealing because FINALLY, people found out that a couple of guys made a FUNNY film.
Maybe that is the key.... There would be real comedy if Hollywood could see it had a true audience that would pay for it. I don't know, maybe there ISN'T an audience....Perhaps the audience only wants light hearted conflictless comedy that challenges them very little. Real comedy takes WORK, it also takes a careful examination of human nature. Real comedy is informed with the pain of the real world. And it makes you laugh in spite of it. I wouldn't like to think that we as a whole, as a society, do not want to face life and laugh at it, instead we simply want to escape from it.... But I hear they are releasing Legally Blonde 2 on July 2nd, anyone want to go see it? Reese Witherspoon was soooo funny in the first one when she talked about "Orange and the New Pink...". Plus, on the Movie poster she looks just like Barbie.
