Twin Peaks: The Return Ends

The ending of Twin Peaks: The Return was undeniably divisive, for the world and for me. Reading about it, I find myself in the strange position of disagreeing with people criticizing it and people praising it. It's not the “perfect ending,” it's not “radically innovative,” but nor is it a middle finger to the fans or a terrible conclusion.

#1. What Happened in the Finale

The finale is simultaneously by far my favorite episode of the series, and frustrating because I think it reveals how ultimately hollow everything that came before is. The show ended up being about not much of anything beyond its own existence.

But, that fact was conveyed in an episode that was amazing, and while narratively looping, felt stylistically different. This wasn't the same jumbled aesthetic we'd seen before, it was a bit more classical, and haunting.

The Sopranos was famously influenced by Twin Peaks, and here it felt like Lynch walking down the same path as The Sopranos' Kevin Finnerty dream episodes, or Mad Men's California episodes. It's a reality slightly askew, where identity shifts subtly and we're not quite sure what it all means, but it feels right.

From a mythology point of view, my read of what happened is this. Cooper came out of the Lodge knowing he had to be at a certain place at a certain time to defeat BOB. He fulfilled this, but he also knew that he was involved in a higher battle with JUDY, the force of evil, and planned to defeat “two birds with one stone” by taking her out and rescuing Laura.

He traveled back in time to do this, and succeeded, altering reality such that Laura never died. However, JUDY, who had possessed Sarah Palmer, didn't like this, and did some dark magic that prevented Cooper from saving Laura.

He decided he had to go further, and pass through some kind of risky dimension jump to go save her. He crossed through with Diane, and during a (conscious or not) sex magic ritual that echoes Lost Highway's dimension hopping sex in the desert, crosses to another realm.

My read on this, which may be slightly suited to giving an ending I find satisfying, is that in the moment before Agent Cooper was to take her, Laura built an alternate world in which she was a different person living in Odessa, Texas, and working as a waitress. Much like Deer Meadow functions like a cold, evil version of Twin Peaks in FWWM, Odessa's diner is filled with hooligans and danger, rather than the warm comfort of the Double R. It's a shadow world built out of what she knew in her old life.

Cooper finds her and brings her back to Twin Peaks, where she drives past the real Double R, which is dark and goes to her house, which owned by the Tremonds/Chalfonts, the same name of the people who owned a trailer in the trailer park with Teresa Banks in FWWM. They are connected to the Black Lodge in some way, and their presence indicates Laura's house as a site for something evil.

Throughout the entire sequence, Cooper seems different, acting in the halting manner of Bad Coop, but not evil in the way he is. He just seems like a different person. But, when he says “What year is this,” it would indicate that perhaps this is the first we're seeing of the true Cooper, one not masquerading as his old self after stopping being Dougie, or lost in the haze of Dougie. It struck me as odd that Cooper comes out of the Lodge without any damage, so perhaps you could read it as Cooper playing different parts required by the Fireman.

He stays as Dougie to help do good in Vegas, gets awakened when the time is right to go to Twin Peaks, then goes through the Lodge to help Laura. He never seems in control of his own actions, which is frustrating from a narrative point of view, but makes sense in this context as Cooper never actually being aware of what happened to him until the last shot. He asks what year it is because he's been in the Lodge so long, he doesn't know.

Meanwhile, Laura is waking up to the falseness of her reality. It's a holding world not unlike where Naomi Watts spends the first section of Mulholland Dr. While Naomi Watts and Bill Pullman in Lost Highway, built a more idealized escape from their own death, it seems like for Laura Palmer, the only escape is to totally disassociate from her old identity.

In the end, she can't. The harrowing scream of her mother returns, Laura herself screams, the house blinks out of existence, and presumably Laura returns to the path to her own death.

My optimistic read of this scenario is that this whole sequence happens during Fire Walk With Me, and after she sees what could be, she still chooses death, and after death Cooper is there to usher her into the White Lodge or emotional peace in the last shot of Fire Walk With Me.

In that sense, all of this is still leading up to that final image of Fire Walk With Me, and it just took a long while to get there. Cooper consciously never escapes the Black Lodge, and only awakens at the end before the world collapses around him and Laura.

I have two major issues with the conclusion, even though on the whole I liked it, at least my interpretation of it. The issues are...

#2. It Doesn't Match The Show We Just Saw

People are writing articles saying how the show was always about Laura, and this conclusion elegantly brings it back. But we just watched 18 hours of content, of which maybe one hour at most was about Laura. The last episode and a half doesn't really do much with the previous sixteen hours. And in fact, you could probably hop straight from Fire Walk With Me to the scene of Cooper in the Red room mid Episode 17 and watch through to the end and get the same experience/themes conveyed.

The bulk of The Return was concerned with characters flitting in and out of the story, seemingly at random. There were great scenes, there were boring scenes. There was wonderful atmosphere, and there was a distance from the emotions happening. The original show, and FWWM, are very heated, full of outsize emotion that is almost uncomfortable to watch.

The new show keeps the viewer at arm's distance. We don't know most of the characters, and particularly with the new ones, don't care much about them. What emotion there is comes from our understanding of the characters relative to the original series. Bobby being a police officer who cries when seeing Laura's picture is effective only because of our knowledge of the character's past.

So, to people who say that the show is radically innovative or a rebuke to people looking for nostalgia, I'd argue the show depends entirely on nostalgia to be palatable to a mainstream audience. Dougie's antics are powerful because of the gap between our memory of Cooper and who we see, or our residual affection for cherry pie and coffee. The show, while on the surface quite radical, leans heavily on memory and nostalgia to fuel what emotion there is.

But, the bulk of the content is new characters or the search for Cooper. Laura is alluded to in Episode 8, and mentioned from time to time, but if this was supposed to be all about Laura, why was the vast majority of the show about the Bad Coop/Good Coop struggle, which amounted to not much of anything, or about random characters popping in and out of the story?

#3. The Conclusion Undermines Laura's Humanity

Lynch famously said that he chose to make Fire Walk With Me because he wanted to see Laura Palmer alive. In the original series, Laura Palmer is a mirror who reflects the darkness and beauty of the town in which she died. We first meet all the characters through their relationships with Laura and she provides our entry point to the town. But, she is not a character, she's the object of investigation for Cooper and the others.

In Fire Walk With Me, she becomes a vivid, ferociously alive character, and we spend most of the film immersed deeply in her crumbling world. It's a film that is so emotionally raw, a lot of people find it hard to engage with. They have to distance themselves from her.

For me, doing work that distances the audiences from the characters, as The Return does most of the time, is the safest form of filmmaking. A scene like Laura telling James she's “gone, like a turkey in the corn,” is very bold and potentially laugh worthy. But, if it works, it's incredibly powerful. But, forsaking conventional character arcs and keeping the viewers at a distance from what's going on is an easy way to make a movie. There's no risk. It forces the audience to do the work of finding the connections, rather than making them feel it. It's head rather than heart filmmaking.

Now, obviously most Lynch has a lot of intellectual stuff to ponder, but what most of The Return lacked was the raw emotion that powers his best works. The emotion that was there was due to nostalgia, and the oblique storytelling served to make the entire thing an enigmatic mystery, but also a challenge to engage with.

You were always quite aware of being a viewer watching the show because we knew more than the characters. We knew that Dougie was Cooper, and we spent most of the show waiting for Coop to wake up, or Gordon Cole's group or the Twin Peaks' sheriff group to finally figure it out so the story could move forward. It wasn't a great mystery since the mystery was not what is going on, it was more, when are the characters going to learn what we already know?

Again, none of this would be a problem if the show was doing stuff on an emotional level. There were scenes that were incredibly powerful: even just James walking into the Road House as the Chromatics played in Episode 2 was phenomenal. Cooper as Dougie eating pie with the Mitchum Brothers was as great a scene as I've seen all year. But, it was based on nostalgia, and our longing to feel that old Twin Peaks feeling.

In that sense, perhaps the show's greatest achievement was in making us long for the old Twin Peaks even as we frustratingly realized we'd never get there. Audrey can dance like she used to, but then we find out she's in a coma or mental hospital or something and will never know. The past remains just out of reach, and even if Cooper can return, he'll go away just as soon. He will live years in the Black Lodge between shows, just like Audrey will wait somewhere in our minds while we long to see her on screen again.

This is an elegant and powerful thing from a thematic point of view, but it's not as satisfying emotionally as Lynch at his best. I don't love meta stuff because I think it's safe, and it feels like the safest statement you can make with the new Twin Peaks is to say you'll never have the old Twin Peaks again. With that as the parameter, the show can't fail.

But, this is all a long road to saying that I find it frustrating to return to Laura Palmer at the end because it's not about Laura Palmer, the character, it's about Laura Palmer the object. Her story is over, it was told. But, Cooper finds himself unable to let go, and in this case, you get the sense that Lynch does as well. He is pulled to revisit the past, to save Laura, so pulled that we literally go back into a movie that already told its story well.

In FWWM, we see Laura accept death because she knows that it's the only way to resist BOB. Her death is sad, but it's also a triumph over the force of evil. And it's her choice. Here, we see Cooper trying to save her, and succeeding, in the process creating a forked reality where she never dies.

This all gains greater significance thanks to our knowledge that Laura “is the one,” the golden ball anti-BOB who will battle the forces of evil. I don't love this interpretation because I think it takes away from her humanity. Perhaps the intention is that all our lives are really battles between forces of good and evil, and that Laura's individual struggle is just as powerful as a cosmic battle between good and evil.

But in practice, it winds up making you feel like she is less important as a person than as a celestial force, and I find that inconsistent with what I saw in Fire Walk With Me.

And in general, I didn't want to watch Twin Peaks to rehash the same conflict we already saw dramatized. I loved the idea of Good Coop vs. Bad Coop because there's so many potential layers and emotions there. Coop would have to reckon with the fact that a dark version of him raped Audrey and birthed a terrible son, or raped his best friend/ally Diane. That might be more rape than I want to see, but it would be fascinating to see the character we loved deal with that, particularly since the series finale sets up a scenario where his failings let Bad Coop into the world.

There's a lot to reckon with, but we never do. We never see Coop have to deal with any of this, in fact he's not much of a character at all, perhaps never appearing as himself until the final shot. When he's Dougie, he's braindead and seemingly haunted, but Good Coop seems as chipper and jolly as he ever was. He never has to reckon with the changed world he enters, and I think that's more exciting territory than revisiting Laura Palmer's death through a Mulholland Dr./Lost Highway/INLAND EMPIRE framework again.

If anything is frustrating to me about The Return, it's that so much of it feels like Lynch doing his greatest hits. It's the same unhinged id driven maniac (Richard Horne via Mr. Eddy, Frank Booth, Leo Johnson), the notion of shifting realities and identities in the last episode, or literally choosing to go back into a movie we already saw rather than engage with something new and uncertain. INLAND EMPIRE already made me feel like Lynch was saying the same thing one too many times, but this felt the same.

While Dougie was at times frustrating, by the end I was enjoying his antics because they felt fresh. Too much of the show was just hitting the same beats we've already seen from Lynch again and again and again. The hints at something new ultimately didn't really lead anywhere, and in the end we returned right were we began.

In the future, I might choose to ignore most of The Return's tangled journey and focus on this last episode and a half, which the more I think about it, the more I love. Whereas the rest of the series, the more I think about it, the more I find ultimately hollow.

In the end, I might be harsh on The Return, but only because I know how strong and powerful Lynch's work can be. For me, the emotion of a story is the most important thing, and I don't like being distanced. So, this wasn't necessarily the ideal show for me.

That said, it was still an incredible ride and so much fun to discuss and watch over the summer. I'd love to see more, even if I don't expect it to match the heights of Lynch's best work.

And in the end, I hope it's more the haunting great moments that stick with me than the often bumpy journey to get there.

All That Jazz

To me, watching a great film is like traveling into the mind of the person who made it. The look, the sound, the pacing and feel are a unique reflection of an individual worldview, and the thematic subject matter is like having a discussion with the creator, and understanding what they care about, what makes them mad and what makes them feel.

Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz is one of the most potent and direct examples of this, one of the most explicitly autobiographical films ever made, it uses every tool of cinema to immerse you in the strange, doomed world of choreographer/director “Joe Gideon,” and ends with Fosse committing cinematic suicide in spectacular fashion. 

There’s so many things about this film that I love, but the biggest is the use of “Fosse time” in the editing. Particularly in the first half of the film, we jump quickly between reality, fantasy, the past, the present and future in a way that instantly immerses us in the psyche of Gideon. 

Unusual scene construction is something that I particularly love in films. Last year’s 20th Century Women was a great example of a movie that never just settled in and gave you a straight dialogue scene, there were cutaways, flashbacks, and other things to enhance the emotional experience of the film.

By using these tools, you’re able to convey more information and implant the subtext of scenes in a way that makes them more emotionally resonant. One of the biggest challenges of a movie is trying to fit an entire world into two hours of running time, and the tools he uses make the film feel a lot bigger than just the story it’s telling.

While the first half of the film uses jumbled and cutting to tell its story, the final section of the film uses the language of musical theater to explore Gideon’s journey between life and death. 

This culminates in one of the most epic closing sequences of any film, the ‘Bye Bye Life’ finale, in which Gideon performs his swan song to an audience that includes everyone he’s ever known in his life in a surreal dreamscape.

I recently learned that the original ending of the film was going to include a performance of a scene from LA/NY, the musical they rehearse in the movie. I’m not sure how that would have worked, but there’s no way it would have been as powerful as what we ended up with. It may have just been shot in a black box theater at SUNY Purchase, but it feels like a blend of the cosmic realm and a Kiss concert, and it works great. 

If I were to do an editing pass on the film, the only thing I’d change is cutting down the sequence where Gideon wanders through the hospital after his surgery. It slows the momentum out of the ‘Hospital Hallucination’ sequence, and drags right when we want to get to the end. 

But, slowing things down does make the impact of this sequence hit harder. The cuts between two angles of Ben Vereen’s character right at the start of the Youtube video are jarring after the long sequence of Gideon wandering around, and signal that we’re in for something special. It’s an electrifying moment, and the sequence beyond that doesn’t disappoint. 

It works so well because it cuts past narrative and reality to become pure emotional representation. The war we’ve seen inside Gideon the whole movie comes to the fore and is represented in the most dynamic way possible. 

In a musical, the goal is to use the songs and dance to enhance our emotional experience of the narrative, and to actually tell the story through song, rather than take a break from the story to sing the song. This sequence is amazing, bizarre spectacle on its own terms, but it has so much emotional power thanks to the context. 

About halfway through the sequence (around 5:34 in the video), there’s another big musical switch, and Gideon runs around and hugs all the people in his life who are there in the audience. This is his passage to death and he’s coming to terms with all the relationships that he both loved and hated during the film. 

The film is so character centric, that its ending is a death for this person, and the meta knowledge of Fosse’s own life makes it so much more powerful. It’s a big moment against a crazy backdrop and makes use of all of Fosse’s talents as an artist.

The whole sequence wraps up with Gideon floating towards the character he’s been flirting with the whole movie, and once he meets Jessica Lange, we find out for certain that she’s the Angel of Death, and in one of the hardest cuts in any movie, we abruptly go from the swelling music and surreal world of the song to Gideon’s body in the morgue.

It’s one of my favorite cuts of all time because it’s so jarring and attention grabbing.

And, the film itself is one of my all time favorites. There’s very few filmmakers who have delved as hard into their own mind as Fosse does here. Anno in Evangelion comes to mind, and there’s a lot in common with the cutting, and surreal finales of both works. 

It can be self indulgent if it doesn’t work, but when it does, it’s incredibly special. With this movie alone, Fosse proved that he’s not only a game changing choreographer, he’s one of the best directors to ever work in movies.

Twin Peaks: The Return (Part 1-3)

Of all the pop culture revivals of the past few years, none is more shocking in its mere existence than Twin Peaks. Not only has David Lynch barely directed anything this century, he seems uniquely opposed to the kind of pandering to nostalgia that a revival almost inherently requires. I say almost because after watching the first three episodes of the new series, he's managed to create something that refuses to engage in any sort of nostalgia for the parts of the show that remain most culturally iconic, and instead has turned it into an opportunity to merge the narrative of Twin Peaks with the experimental style of INLAND EMPIRE and the out there surrealism of Eraserhead. Shrewdly, he used the strength of the Twin Peaks brand as a way to get a blank check to create a totally out there experimental film.

It's a work that is at times as riveting and frightening as anything ever produced for TV or film, but also one that is at times frustrating. First off, I'm very happy to see the show feel dangerous and experimental. So many revivals labor to bring everything back to an old status quo, and find a way to wedge characters who have no purpose in a narrative into a story just to ensure that the fans feel happy. Or, as in The Force Awakens, they'll basically remake the original with some new faces mixed in.

The new Twin Peaks abandons most of the characters, and even the town itself, to focus almost exclusively on the battle between good and evil that bubbled under the surface of the original series. In retrospect, it's an obvious choice, but focusing the story on the battle between the evil Cooper doppleganger and the “good Dale” from the lodge was a real surprise to me, and a perfect conceit for the new series.

It gives us a new incarnation of Bob to replace Frank Silva, and ups the stakes of the entire series. It's odd in certain respects, since the original series always walked the line between soap opera and supernatural. Here, we're diving hard into the conflict between good and evil that came to the fore after the resolution of the Laura Palmer story. I'm shocked to see such a heavy reliance on the lodge mythology as developed in the series finale and Fire Walk With Me, particularly considering nearly everything else from the series is ignored.

I have a number of issues with the series, most of which seem on their way to resolution by the end of episode three. 'Part 1' definitely strains patience, with its lengthy search for the key sequence, and focus on the action in South Dakota without a clear sense of what the overall conflict of the series is. There's sometimes a sense of the scenes being assembled together in random order, particularly early on. Much as I respect Lynch refusing to pander to the audience, you could shuffle some stuff around between Part 1 and Part 2 and make for a much smoother viewing experience.

The biggest issue with the show so far is the way that horror/suspense is the almost exclusive focus, at the expense of emotion and connection. The series, and Lynch's work in general, features a lot of disturbing stuff, but also moments of light that make us remember what they're all fighting for. Blue Velvet might dive into the dirt and worms, but it also has the robin. Maybe we're heading there, but so far, there have only been a few moments of strong emotion.

The closing sequence of 'Part 2,' with Shelly seeing James at the Road House stands out because it's focused on a character going through something relatable, and uses the nostalgia of the series as potent emotion, the passage of time lending a gravity to the appearance of even a divisive character like James.

Fire Walk With Me is a brutal, strange film, but it lets us in and makes us feel what Laura is feeling. The series so far has more of the tone of the Deer Meadow sequence, full of curious happenings and odd, intriguing characters, but we're watching it, not totally feeling it. We knew Laura, and we know Cooper in the original series, but it's hard to understand where he's at emotionally in the new series, at least so far.

That said, I think this might just be a case of the series being paced as one eighteen hour unit. The FBI sequence that closes out 'Part 3' packs a lot of feeling into Gordon Cole and Albert realizing their friend is back, and I suspect the more that good Dale remembers, the more moments of emotion and feeling we'll have.

I'm also curious to see how all the town characters, and the countless new cast members yet to appear, play into all this. Will the Horne brothers new weed business play a part in an ongoing narrative, or is this the last we'll see of Ben and Jerry in the whole series? It could go either way. In FWWM, Lynch shot material with almost the whole cast and cut it. It never made any sense to include them in the narrative, but he wanted to see them again. That could be the case here, only time will tell.

And, I'm hoping that as Cooper returns, we'll get more Badalamenti music. I love the soundscapes, and it feels more alien than if the classic music was playing all the time, but the music is as important to the series' heart as any of the actors, and I'd like to see it featured more prominently, if only to create a contrast to the more ambient soundscape.

Ultimately, it might be getting a bit greedy to expect the new series to hit as hard as FWWM did on an emotional level right out. To be able to watch an hour of TV and see a sequence as crazy as Cooper in the disintegrating red room in 'Part 2,' or the Eraserhead-esque floating house sequence in 'Part 3' is a real privilege. It's watching a master of horror and surrealism craft scene after scene that's confounding and exhilarating to watch.

But, having watched his recent work, like INLAND EMPIRE, I also know that his work is most potent when it does have that strong heart, as opposed to being focused on just building a series of great, but disconnected scenes. It's early to see where it's all going, but each part has been better than the last, and it's wild to imagine we'll have a new hour of something this beautiful and strange every week this summer.

So, the ultimate takeaway of Part 1-3? It's not perfect, but I think it's the right, bold direction to go with the series, the central conflict is perfect for Lynch to riff on his themes and visual motifs, and I can't wait to see more.

Twin Peaks is Back

Twin Peaks is almost back! In three days, we'll be watching the first new material in twenty-five years, and I still find it hard to believe. After watching the series for the first time in 2003, I hoped to one day see the deleted scenes from Fire Walk With Me, but never imagined the series actually returning. So, I'm very curious and eager to see what happens in this new batch of episodes.

But, with this renewed chatter, it feels like the perfect time to address something that's always bothered me in the media narrative about the show. The general consensus about the show is that it had an amazing first season, then quickly burned out when David Lynch went to work on other projects, and was forced by ABC to reveal the answer to the mystery of who killed Laura Palmer too soon.

First off, Lynch was most involved with the show during the first part of the second season, where he directed the two hour premiere, and also episodes two and seven. Episode seven of the second season, in which Laura's killer is revealed, is a masterpiece of an episode, and these episodes contain many of the most famous sequences from the show.

He actually was missing for most of the first season, having gone off to shoot Wild at Heart. The show didn't suffer too much for his absence, but I think there's a difference between the slightly lighter, more soapy tone of those first season episodes, with the Invitation to Love cutaways, and the more haunting first run of season two, which carry more Lynch hallmarks.

But, my biggest media gripe is how people constantly blame ABC forcing Lynch and Frost to reveal the killer for the show's decline. I'm not denying the show went downhill after, but I think if anything, the Laura Palmer murder felt exhausted by the end of season one, and carrying it another seven episodes was a strain.

That's largely due to the fact that we learn so much about the night Laura died early on in the show, and fewer and fewer suspects become plausible. There wasn't room for seasons and seasons of additional twists and turns in a fairly fixed timeline of events. How many more secret diaries or new acquaintances could they encounter?

And, as long as the Laura Palmer murder mystery is out there, the 'side quests' into things like rescuing Audrey from One Eyed Jack's or the various cocaine deals on the Canadian border always felt like a distraction from the real story. It creates a paradox, where you have to focus on Laura's murder, but also can't focus too much or the story there will be exhausted.

Ultimately, I think the pacing worked, and the whole arc plays out wonderfully. To try to carry that investigation through even five more episodes, let alone the rest of the season would have strained the audience too far, and would not have been creatively fulfilling. People were already angry that Laura's murder wasn't solved at the end of season one, I don't think drawing it out more was the answer.

Most of the narratives surrounding the show's decline seem designed to insulate David Lynch from blame for the show's failings. If he is the genius artistic mind from which all good about the show flows, it makes sense to frame the network as a callous corporate villain responsible for the show's decline. But, if you actually look at the material, it's not accurate.

Laura Palmer's murder was the spine on which the story rested. You could have goofy stuff like Andy and Lucy, because it was a break from the serious material at the center of the story. Without that spine, the goofy stuff just seems dumb, and there's no sense of momentum for the series as a whole.

Lynch and the team did eventually find that path forward, and you can see it in the last few episodes and Fire Walk With Me. Laura's murder becomes a window into this eternal struggle of good and evil with strange otherworldly characters floating around. It's the core conflict at the heart of all of Lynch's work, made manifest in the story of the Black and White Lodge, and it works as a pretty awesome conceit for a show. This small town is the battleground between these forces, and Cooper is squaring off against an otherworldly evil spirit Bob.

The actual Lynch directed material after the murder revelation focuses largely on this, with the finale being a battle for Cooper's soul, and Fire Walk With Me chronicling the battle for Laura's soul, and alluding to the larger struggle of those who seek the world's garmonbozia.

Perhaps all that Lynch needed was time after wrapping up the Laura Palmer murder to hone in on this new direction. But, with the grueling schedule of producing 22 episodes a year, he didn't have that time, and by the time he figured out where to go, it was too late.

Or perhaps the tone of Twin Peaks was impossible to sustain past a short run of episodes. Quirky, particularly Lynch's brand of it, is not easy to replicate, and what seems fresh and original can quickly feel stale and derivative. But, keeping Laura Palmer's murder unsolved would not have fixed those problems.

For me, Twin Peaks remains an absolute pantheon TV show. Shows that have come since, like The Sopranos or The Wire, have more control of tone and consistency across the entire body of work, but no show hits the unique heights of Twin Peaks. Those first sixteen episodes are full of perfect moments, and the bonkers last episode is still the most surreal thing ever to air on TV.

And for me, Fire Walk With Me is the crowning achievement of the whole venture. It's a film that delves deeply into the series' twisted mythology, and manages to turn a ghost from the series into one of the most viscerally alive and fiery characters ever realized on screen. Amidst moments of unparalleled surrealism is the most intense immersions in a character's subjectivity in cinema history.

I watched the film again last night to refresh myself for the new series, and was again blown away by the craft on an individual scene level. The pink room nightclub sequence is an assault of sound and visual that tells you so much about Laura's character, and functions as a self contained thematic encapsulation of the entire film.

So many people consider the film an unnecessary footnote, or a cinematic indulgence, but to me, it's the thematic and emotional core of the entire Twin Peaks story, and for a long time, was a wonderful conclusion to the story. Now, the show's coming back, and who knows how we'll perceive 'Judy' or the formica table or the other moments in the film that now feel like glimpses into a vast mythology we would never fully understand.

Either way, it's been ten years since I saw INLAND EMPIRE, and I'm ready to finally watch some new David Lynch.

Malick Exhaustion

Up until about five years ago, if you asked me my favorite film director, I’d usually say either Terrence Malick or Wong Kar-Wai. Malick’s style was so different and purely cinematic, it made films like Days of Heaven or The New World amazing, and hugely influential cinematic experiences. Couple that with the intense mystique surrounding him and his working habits and it made for a perfect filmography to get lost in.

Every so often, a work comes along that not only is bad on its own terms, but makes you wonder what you ever saw in the work in the first place. And Malick’s three recent films fit that bill for me. To The Wonder, Knight of Cups and Song to Song beat the same exact style to death, and have left me feeling like Malick desperately needs an editor or producer who will question him rather than people who just bow down to his genius. 

To some degree, these films are the Malick equivalent of the Star Wars prequels, where sparks of the original genius show through, but you’re left feeling like letting a creator run unchecked is often the worst thing for his creativity. 

A lot of people criticize these films for being indulgent and meandering, foregoing narrative in favor of random twirling. That’s not what bothers me about them. I went down the rabbit hole with David Lynch on INLAND EMPIRE, a similarly experimental digital fueled outing that left a script behind instead of hours of improvisation that were shaped into a rambling final cut. Narrative is not the only purpose of cinema, and you could just as easily criticize the brilliant New World or Tree of Life for many of the sins these films suffer from. 

What bothers me about them isn’t that Malick is trying something experimental or working in a different way, it’s that he’s doing it poorly. These movies have the feeling of a film student who decided that scripts are “for the man,” and decided to just go out and interact with the world, let the movie come to us. There are moments that pop and are fun, but what’s lost in this style is the ability for the actors to create a coherent character. Watching Song to Song, you don’t feel like a character is there, you feel like, “Hey, Ryan Gosling’s at a music festival,” or “Wow, I wish I could go on a beach vacation with Gosling, Fassbender and Rooney Mara. Seems fun.” 

You never think of these people as complex characters, or the world of the film as anything close to reality. By eschewing both narrative and character, you wind up with what look like home movies of these stars wandering around making jokes and touching each other in weird ways for the camera. It’s the kind of stuff that would work great for a three minute montage in a larger film, but as the entire film winds up exhausting.

When done right, as in a movie like Fallen Angels or In the Mood for Love, working in a freeform, experimental style can lead to a spontaneity and freedom that a script can’t have. Filming a movie from a script is like trying to make a song from sheet music without ever hearing it, you don’t know what you have until it’s playing out in front of you. So, I understand the appeal of what Malick was after, and why he’d work this way. He wanted to go in the studio and jam with his band and see what happened.

But, at some point jamming just feels indulgent. You need a melody of some kind to keep everyone on the same page, or else it’s just noodling. And that’s what these movies feel like: rambling noodling without either characters or narrative to ground them in something more than a bunch of random stuff. 

Well, you might say, he’s a visual director and these movies are beautiful. At times they are, there’s striking moments and beautiful images in all three of these recent films. But,  I actually don’t think they’re shot very well because every shot feels the same. Every shot is a steadicam shot moving around the actor in closeup. It’s responding to a moment, but it feels pointlessly repetitive. When you’re not actually composing shots, you wind up responding to the action, but it lacks variety.

 The shots don’t say anything, they just capture what’s going, but when what’s going on is always the same (i.e. actors touching in weird ways, jumping around, twirling), the shots are always the same. The construction of all three movies is such that you feel like you could intercut them at random and have the same effect. There’s no visual identity to the movies, it’s the same stuff until you’re just bored of it.

So, it ultimately feels like a student film. I’ve shot similar stuff, where you let actors wander around and improv, and it feels great and is fun to do, but when you look at it back, you realize it’s not as good as you thought. I think it’s a great idea to use improv to build characters or seek out honest moments, but then go back and do the work to wrap those in a film that says something and has meaningful emotion. 

Ultimately, I’m not criticizing Malick for making these movies. I’m criticizing him for doing them badly, and being undisciplined and indulgent. 

I think the problem comes when an artist gets intense acclaim for doing unconventional things that everyone was skeptical about. It makes you think that anyone criticizing you was wrong then, so they must be wrong now. But, to see the response and result of these two previous films and go down the same path seems like insanity. 

That said, there are people out there who criticized The New World for the same indulgences, while I think it’s a profound and incredibly moving film. So who knows, maybe these new projects hit somebody somewhere in the same way. 

Buffy at 20

The past twenty years have seen a succession of amazing TV shows, with the biggest and most acclaimed actors in the world starring in series with effects more dazzling than anything you can see at the movies. But, despite all of that, there’s no show in that time that’s quite matched what Buffy the Vampire Slayer did.  There’s been all kinds of retrospectives on the show for its twentieth anniversary, and it’s great to see that the show continues to draw acclaim in spite of questionable fashions, dated effects and varying quality during the series’ run. 

I’ve seen a lot of people say that the show would be better if it was made today with a 13 episode per season format that trims out the “filler,” and keeps us focused on the big stories. No one’s going to deny that Buffy lacks the consistency of a show like Game of Thrones or The Wire, where you know every episode’s going to be good. 

But, I think so much of the show’s charm lies in the fact that the seasons are so long, and that there’s ups and downs in episode quality along the way. The thing that makes Buffy special is that you love the characters and enjoy spending time with them no matter what. So, I’d rather watch even the worst episode of Buffy (”Beer Bad” if you’re wondering) than the best episode of most shows.

TV has moved towards more of a “ten hour movie” format, a way to view that is reinforced by binge watching and dropping a whole season at once. That fits for shows that are ultimately telling one story. But, Buffy was not about story as much as it was about the characters’ lives. Watching a 22 episode season you get the sense of time passing, and feel like these characters have lives outside of just what we see on screen, and you form a bond with them.

Buffy took chances. The cast changed, and the later seasons took Buffy and the other characters down a dark and winding path. I like the early high school seasons of the show quite a bit, but it’s season 5 and 6 that stick in my mind. Six in particular was an incredible deconstruction of the concept of hero and villain, and consistently shocking throughout.

So, if you haven’t ever watched Buffy, it might look a bit dated on the surface, but it’s still one of the absolute best shows of all time, and twenty years later, feels as relevant and urgent as ever.

Pink Floyd - The Final Cut

Ever since seeing Roger Waters’ absolutely amazing show at Desert Trip back in October, I’ve been diving back into his catalogue. I’ve listened to all the classic 70s Pink Floyd albums many, many times, but I had always been iffy on The Final Cut.

It’s generally known as a Roger Waters solo album, and an inferior reiteration of The Wall, which isn’t entirely accurate. But, in the strange political climate we find ourselves in, the references to pseudo fascist 80s conservative governments feel more relevant than they’ve been in years.

It’s a strange album since you’ll mix these very heavy monologues about dictators and specific 80s political developments with some of the most arena ready, and even fun tracks Pink Floyd ever did. David Gilmour might have been on the way out, but he still delivers a lot of fantastic guitar work on tracks like “Not Now John” and “The Final Cut.” I understand why “The Final Cut” was cut from The Wall, since it’s very similar tonally to “Hey You” or “Comfortably Numb,” but it’s still a great song.

The weirdest thing about Roger Waters’ career for me is that every Pink Floyd album up to The Wall is very spacey, very jam based and largely instrumental. With The Wall, he switches to an almost broadway style rock opera approach that’s super political and has more of an arena rock sound. To go from Animals with its three super jammy, epic mostly instrumental tracks to the dense 26 track long The Wall is quite a jump.

And it’s odd to me that everything he’s done since has been basically in that broadway concept album style. Maybe Gilmour was the one pushing the more instrumental direction? I’m not sure, and certainly he had diminishing returns with The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking. That said, I’m eager to see what new material he comes up with in the Trump age, and if you get a chance to see him live, don’t miss it. And, maybe give The Final Cut a listen. It’s a lot better than its reputation, and while not at the level of Pink Floyd’s best, it has a lot to offer.

Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons

Last night, I rewatched Citizen Kane, and tonight I followed it up with Orson Welles’s second feature, The Magnificent Ambersons. Kane is blessed and cursed with its reputation as the greatest film ever made, which probably makes every new viewer say “It was alright, but it wasn’t the greatest.”

It’s hard to appreciate the film for just how groundbreaking it was when so much of what it did that was unique has been absorbed into our cultural storytelling language. The time hopping structure, subjective flashbacks and integration on diegetic news reports was very uncommon at the time, and it gives the film an incredibly modern feel. 

On top of that, the film has the most amazing effects and makeup work of any film made before 2001: A Space Odyssey. We’re used to Welles looking like an old man, so it doesn’t seem jarring when he shows up in makeup, but just a few minutes earlier, we saw him at the height of his youth. It is crazy! The sheer amount of makeup work and subtle cinematography effects is astounding, and it all has stood the test of time.

The cinematography of the film is still unparalleled, and its sheer inventiveness and creativity is a joy to watch. 

That said, I do think the film’s greatest strengths are in those achievements rather than the story, which plays so heavily on William Randolph Hearst, it can be hard to appreciate today when you don’t get the cultural references of the time. So, I understand why new audiences might not be as into it, but I think it well deserves that status as the default best movie of all time.

The Magnificent Ambersons is a bit trickier to relate to. The film is probably best known for what it doesn’t have, namely anywhere between 20 minutes and 50 minutes of footage that Welles intended to include. The loss of that footage gives everybody the opportunity to imagine an idealized version of the film that exists in their own mind. And, I’m sure I’m not alone in being fascinated by lost footage. It’s that mystery of what’s out there that’s often more compelling than what it’s like to actually see the material.

But, I do think the surviving Ambersons has a lot to offer, and does feel like a complete, if patchy, statement. As in Kane, the cinematography is dazzling. Here, it’s less about super complex effects shots, and more about enveloping long takes and dolly moves that show off the incredible set they produced for the film. It really makes you feel immersed in the world.

The story of Ambersons is an odd one, but watching it with Kane, I can see the appeal for Welles. Both films have a nostalgia for an era that feels ancient to us now, but was just out of reach to Welles and audiences of the time. The story of a rich family losing their wealth thanks to a stubborn refusal to acclimate to modern times doesn’t offer us a real sympathetic hook to latch on to, and I imagine audiences facing an oncoming war were more interested in the passionate emotion of a film like Casablanca than a backwards looking tale of a dying aristocracy.

That said, watching the film today, I think it has a timelessness that you couldn’t have anticipated back then. The era depicted in the film was one of massive societal change. The rise of the automobile, and apparently the idea that you need to have a job, created a more interconnected, fast paced city life. The opening sequence is an elegy for an era when a trolley would wait for you. But, the automobile waits for no one.

There’s a lot of resonance to me in looking at the way that technology alters our way of life, for good and bad. In the past twenty years, our entire society has undergone a change in the way of life just as fundamental as the one in the film, and one need only look at Buzzfeed “30 Things 90s Kids Will Remember” article to see that nostalgia for a bygone “simpler” time is alive and well.

In the film, we can see that George is on the wrong side of history. But the most resonant moment for me is Morgan’s speech at the dinner table, where he says that he’s not sure the automobile is good for society, but it’s happening and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. Technology brings progress, and in the process destroys the world that was.

George sees his entire way of life rendered obsolete by the end of the film. The house he loved, the lavish events he threw, they’re gone and he’s left with only the ghosts of what once was. 

The film is filled with haunting moments, capturing that sense of loss and the passing of what once was into dust. At the time this film was made, 75 years ago, the rise of the automobile wasn’t that long in the past, people were still alive who had been slaves, and no one could imagine that in thirty years, man would walk on the moon.

Ultimately, both films are fantastic achievements, and leave you wondering what Orson Welles could have done had things not gone south after this.

My Spoiler Rules

Spoilers have become a very contentious topic out there, and I’m definitely sensitive about them, but I also think there’s a time when stuff is out there in the ether and it’s your responsibility to avoid them. 

I completely disagree with the notion that spoilers don’t affect your enjoyment of a given show or movie. Some people will argue that a story is about more than plot twists, and that you can enjoy Romeo and Juliet knowing they die, or even get more out of it since you know where it’s going.

I completely disagree with this notion for one reason. You can always rewatch a film or show knowing the story and get more out of it. But you can never replicate the experience of watching something not knowing what’s going to happen. So, I like to know as little as possible. 

Lately I’ve started avoiding watching any trailers or reading too much about movies that I know I’m going to see. With The Force Awakens, I watched the first teaser, but nothing else, didn’t read any reviews and had a fantastic experience. With Rogue One, I went even further, didn’t watch a single trailer and had a great time.

My problem with trailers is not just plot reveals, though it’s very frustrating to watch a trailer that shows the first two acts of a movie. I can only imagine how cool it would have been to watch The Sixth Sense cold, and not even know that the kid sees dead people.

But, beyond plot, I don’t like to know the atmosphere of the film. I don't like to know what the shots look like, I want that to be a surprise. It was so exciting to watch La La Land or Mad Max: Fury Road without having seen anything but a couple of stills and be blown away by the world that was created.

That said, in terms of straight plot reveals, I think each work has its own timetable for when spoilers are acceptable, and at a certain point, it’s on you to avoid them. I know by now that people are going to be talking about Game of Thrones at 10:01 PM EST, so if I haven’t seen the episode by then, I go dark. No e-mail, no Facebook, nothing. I was scared to go to the grocery store while an episode was airing on the East Coast last year just in case someone mentioned a spoiler.

Similarly, with these Star Wars movies, I’m there at the first showing since I know people will want to talk about it and start discussing right after. The world will not conform to your time table, so if you haven’t seen the film and want to avoid spoilers, don’t go on social media.

But, generally it’s a good idea to respect your fellow viewers. If you have to say “This isn’t really a spoiler,” and you know the person is spoiler sensitive, don’t say it. 

Here’s one of my favorite shots from my upcoming horror film Trip House. When you’re dealing with a low budget, it’s tricky to do wide shots, particularly at night, when there’s a lot of lighting elements in play. 

But, in this case, we took the time to light multiple planes and set up some weird colored lights within the house. I’m very happy with the way the shot turned out, and am hoping to do some more big shots like this in the next film.

Wizard and Glass

Stephen King is simultaneously one of the most beloved authors in the world, and one of the most underrated. Before actually reading his stuff, I only knew him through the schlocky film adaptations, which might have the same plots as his books, but don’t capture what they’re really about.

Having read a lot of his stuff now, I think he’s one of the best writers out there, and a great example of someone who uses genre as a way to heighten the emotional experience of a given story. It is such a memorable book not because of a freaky clown, but because of the way it explores the gulf between the people we were as children and the people we become as adults, recognizing the way that no matter how much you change, the scars and triumphs of childhood linger on, and you’ll always feel a unique bond with the people you grew up with.

Having read more of his stuff, I do see some flaws. Even his best books struggle with endings. The Stand ends in a deus ex machina, and even beyond the infamously controversial wrap up of the childhood part of It, the overall ending doesn’t quite match the grandeur of the work as a whole. And, books like Firestarter or ‘Salem’s Lot are enjoyable enough, but feel a bit dated and lacking the potency of his greatest work.

But, The Dark Tower is different, particularly in its two greatest volumes, The Gunslinger and Wizard and Glass. The Gunslinger is my favorite book of his, probably my favorite book of all time, and a foundational influence for my own writing. He builds a fantasy world that’s grounded and unique, with writing that feels nothing like his other stories.

The second and third volumes of the series have more common King types. The pop culture references and real world settings are less unique than the more exclusively fantasy driven Gunslinger, which is why it’s a relief that Wizard and Glass spends so much time on an extended flashback to Roland’s youth.

Of all his works, I think Wizard and Glass is the best testament to King’s ability as a writer. It’s hopeful, full of youth and romance, while building an entire community in a grand fusion of fantasy and Western. 

At the heart of the story is the romance between Roland and Susan, and he does an amazing job of bringing both characters and their young love to life. Our knowledge that things will end badly for them gives the entire story a poignant melancholy. This is a world that’s passed, and an incarnation of Roland himself that’s gone. But, he still remembers the optimistic person he once was, and the knowledge of the person he was informs everything we see in the rest of the series.

When writing is going well, stories feel like they’re writing themselves, and you don’t look at them nitpicking the plot, you’re just caught up in the ride. And this is a case where that definitely happens. It feels like this story really happened and King is channeling it into the world. 

The rest of the series is great, and I even appreciate the very controversial ending. But, Wizard and Glass is the emotional highpoint, and the best evidence for King’s remarkable abilities as a writer.

Search Party

I just finished watching Search Party, a very impressive new spin on the slice of life millennial Girls style dramedy. This form has become so prevalent recently, and produced some fantastic shows, like You’re the Worst, but it definitely feels like we’ve seen enough of people dealing with ennui in Brooklyn or Silverlake.

The smart thing that this show does is fuse the story of a young woman struggling to make it as an adult with a compelling murder mystery conspiracy plot. At its best, genre elements can be used as a way to reflect and heighten our real experiences. In this case, the raw anger and discontent that Dory feels with her place in the world is channeled into her obsession with Chantal’s mystery and the web of intrigue surrounding it.

By the way that she behaves, we understand her emotional state and frustration, but the fact that it exists in the context of a larger narrative means that it doesn’t feel whiny or self indulgent, it’s compelling, and gives the show a cliffhanger propulsivity that is missing from other, similar shows.

It actually reminds me a bit of The Sopranos, a show that was at its heart about the baby boomer generation struggling to find meaning in the material success, but purposeless existence. If the dilemma for them was living up to the ‘greatest generation,’ the dilemma for their children is struggling to find a stable job, and wondering if the kind of life style they took for granted is even possible.

In the case of The Sopranos, the mob storylines keep the narrative propulsive and ensure that you’re always entertained, even though they weren’t really what the show was about. In Search Party, Chantal’s disappearance functions as a mirror for all the characters, forcing them to examine their own situation. For some of them, it’s meaningless, but for Dory, it holds special resonance. 

Awards Season

I’m in the WGA, thanks to the web series that I made years back called The Third Age, and the most exciting part of being in the WGA is getting to be a part of awards season, the time before the Oscars when movies compete to win the Oscar.

I used to think that the Oscars were pretty straightforward. People watched movies and voted what they liked, then the stars turned up and awards were handed out. Maybe it used to be like that, but today the Oscar season is more like a political campaign.

There are all kinds of events, where the stars and directors do Q&As with the audience, you get to check out advance screenings of the movies that studios are pushing, and you get DVD screeners in the mail. 

It’s always super exciting for me when “the season” starts because it means I get to see a ton of great movies for free in very quick succession. It’s a bit frustrating that these movies aren’t paced throughout the year, but it’s great to go to three or four movies a week for a couple of months and see a lot of really great stuff.

Unfortunately, this sort of campaigning means that studios are basically picking in advance which films will be up for awards. So, a movie like 10 Cloverfield Lane, which I thought was great and featured some of the best performances of the year, is very unlikely to win anything because it’s not being positioned in an Oscar context. The talent isn’t out on the Q&A trail, and no one’s being reminded of the movie’s existence.

I vote for the movies I think are best, regardless of whether they’re campaigned or not. And, I do think that quite often the movies that are up for awards are among the best of the year. But I also think that these campaigns and the perception of what an Oscar movie should be can be a self fulfilling prophecy. 

Brie Larson can win an Oscar for playing a woman held prisoner in a room because Room was a non-genre, serious film where the appeal was its prestige. Mary Elizabeth Winstead won’t be considered for an Oscar for playing a woman held prisoner in a room because 10 Cloverfield Lane was a genre film that didn’t play at prestige. 

And, Brie Larson did all the right things to campaign for the Oscar. I saw a Q&A with her when the film opened, she was out on the trail winning over people. The Oscars are just like a political campaign, you want to shape your narrative and win people over with it.

So, for Brie Larson, it’s following in the path of Ann Hathaway or Jennifer Lawrence: a great young actress in her breakout role deserves to be recognized. Last year also saw Sylvester Stallone campaign with a comeback narrative, which got a nomination, but not a win.

Sometimes I wonder how influenced Academy members are by these campaigns. It certainly seems like they stick to the predictions people make and trends from earlier in the year. But, do they legitimately think those are the best films, or do they conform their votes to what seems like the prestige films of the year are? Is it a weird echo chamber? 

People always complain about the Oscars, for creative reasons, for political reasons, or maybe they don’t think that art is a competition. These are all valid comments, but the reality is, these movies would not exist without the Oscars. Having months of discussion, speculation and award shows makes La La Land or Moonlight into part of the cultural dialogue, and being part of that dialogue is what sells tickets.

So, it is a campaign. It is a strange circuit and a lot more than quality comes into play. But I still love the season and getting to watch so many great movies in such a short time. 

Singin’ in the Rain and The Nature of Film Spectacle

I rewatched Singin’ in the Rain yesterday, and one of the things that struck me most was how different the nature of spectacle in the film was from what we’re used to today. Today, the most successful films almost all involve huge amounts of computer generated special effects, and a lot of action. The assumption, supported by box office returns, is that’s what people want to see.

But, in Singin’ in the Rain, the spectacle was dancing and performance. It was the actor as entertainer. In numbers like “Make ‘Em Laugh” or “Moses Supposes,” there’s a thin narrative pretense to explain why this is happening, but it’s really about letting us watch these performers do amazing things. The scenes are shot in long, wide takes to reinforce that what we’re seeing is really happening. Donald O’Connor is flipping off of walls, it’s not a stuntman or cutaways doing the work.

In that sense, the film and its performers are a throwback to the stage, when you had to demand an audience’s attention and do whatever you could to get the most applause. There’s a meta level of the actors leaving character and performing directly for the audience. Never is this more apparent than in the lengthy “Gotta’ Dance” sequence at the end of the film, that makes no sense in the film’s narrative, and is stylistically incompatible with the 1920s setting.

But, it’s cool, and is entertaining on its own merits, so it works. It’s like if Michael Bay had Shia Leboeuf dream of a bunch of Transformers exploding for ten minutes, then cut back to the plot. It’s maximizing the pleasure of the film, at the expense of the narrative.

On the one hand, today’s CG driven blockbusters aren’t so far off from a movie like this, where the narrative is often subsumed to the pleasure of watching the actors perform. The telling difference for me is that watching CG effects has become tiresome. It used to be that effects could be interesting on their own terms, like a magic trick, you wonder “How’d they do that?” 

Now, we know, it’s CG. So, it becomes more challenging. I was blown away by the effects in Enter the Void, but just seeing a city explode is not exciting anymore. 

But, the musical performances in this film are still thoroughly entertaining, connected to the narrative or not. One very talented performer in an empty room can be more entertaining than any effects sequence. 

The movie is not always an integrated musical, where the songs advance the plot and reveal character details. It’s more of a very funny comedy, with amazing dance sequences wrapped in it. Sometimes, as in the title track, they collide, and sometimes, as in the odd “Beautiful Girls” sequence or the “Gotta’ Dance” part, they really don’t. But, the individual parts are strong enough, that coherence is not necessary for the movie to be a classic. 

My 2016 Work

2016 was in some respects a very productive year for me. I completed two films, the documentary Neil Gaiman: Dream Dangerously and my first narrative project, Trip House. I’m very happy with the way both films turned out, particularly Trip House, which was a very challenging and ambitious project that turned out about as well as I could have hoped for. 

I also worked on several new scripts, and currently have two complete, and a couple more developing in the idea stage. It can sometimes feel futile to work on a script because I don’t have a clear path to selling a project, and it was such an undertaking to get Trip House made, it can be hard to jump in with optimism and the hope that one day what you’re writing will actually turn into a finished film.

So, I’ll get very excited about working on a project, and make it as good as it can be, but I want to know that it won’t just sit on a hard drive somewhere, that it will be made. I suppose every writer, no matter how successful, faces that same conundrum. I know that I’m lucky in the case of Trip House that I was able to make even one script and do it my way, without interference or artistic compromise.

I’m very restless as a creator and like to make a lot. So, it’s been a bit frustrating for the past three or four months, not having a clear new project to work on, but instead be waiting and in development on several things. I’m always torn between trying to be patient and wait for things to happen, and fearing that waiting and being patient is actually just wasting time where nothing is going on. 

So, in 2017, I’m going to try to pursue two paths: work on setting up bigger projects with other people, and also make more stuff quickly and independently. I was able to do Trip House with very few resources, and think I can do more projects like that. Though it can be frustrating to pour so much effort into a project and not have it reach as wide an audience as you like, it’s a real long game and I will keep at it.

I’m also going to be doing a blog every day of the year, either an update about projects, thoughts on what’s going on in the world or quick notes about what I’m watching, reading and listening to. It’s a way to get my thoughts out there and process them, and also hopefully build a bigger community and engagement. 

So, keep an eye out here, and on social media. It’s going to be a really crazy year, so I’m sure there will be plenty to talk about. 

Best of 2016

It wasn’t a great year for the world as a whole, but there was a lot of great pop culture to check out. Here’s some of my favorites.

Film:

1. 20th Century Women

2. La La Land

3. Moonlight

4. 10 Cloverfield Lane

5. The Neon Demon

6. The Love Witch

7. Star Wars: Rogue One

8. The Nice Guys

9. Pete’s Dragon

10. American Honey

TV

1. Game of Thrones

2. Silicon Valley

3. American Crime Story: OJ Simpson

4. Veep

5. Mr. Robot

6. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

7. You’re the Worst

8. The Flash

9. Gilmore Girls

10. Girls

Music:

1. Kanye West - The Life of Pablo

2. Beyonce - Lemonade

3. M83 - Junk

4. Bon Iver - 22 a Million

5. Childish Gambino - “Awaken My Love”

6. Anderson Paak - Malibu

7. Roosevelt - Roosevelt

8. David Bowie - Blbackstar

9. Niki and the Dove - Everybody’s Heart is Broken Now

10. The Weeknd - Starboy

Batman v Superman

The response to Batman v Superman has been fascinating in its incredible divisiveness. The movie on some level seems to be offensive in its very existence. In a world where Ant Man gets 80% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, it's a bit surprising to me that the film has been so critically savaged, and that vast negative response I think actually speaks to the film's strength. After watching countless superhero movies over the past five years, this is the first since The Dark Knight Rises that genuinely surprised me and made me feel excited. It's a bold, at times foolish, but generally fascinating and mythic story that features the strongest filmmaking of any superhero film that wasn't made by Christopher Nolan or Tim Burton.

That doesn't make the film a masterpiece by any means. There's plenty of areas that don't work, and the character design and effects on Doomsday would be hard to make worse if you tried. It's like they copy and pasted a cave troll from the Hobbit with the instructions to make him look as boring as possible. The very end takes a bit long to wrap up when we all know that Superman will be making a return anyway, and Lex Luthor's fun and intriguing character gets hung up on a plot that requires him to turn from a fascinating and believable character into a nonsensical villain to get through the plot.

But, I still thoroughly enjoyed the film, and at times was genuinely blown away by what was happening. And this is coming from someone who thought Man of Steel was absolutely terrible, a muddled, plotless visual effects reel with no soul whatsoever.

What made the film so compelling for me was that it was very tight and focused in its storytelling for the majority of the run. We have two central characters, both sympathetic and relatable, in conflict. Ben Affleck's character is a fascinating take on Batman because he eschews the hyper-competence that can make the character boring. I think it's foolish to overpower your hero characters because it removes the drama. Look at a movie like the original Die Hard, where a bunch of glass on the floor seems like an insurmountable obstacle, versus the very lame single take fight scene in Daredevil episode two where, despite being near death earlier that night, he can defeat a double digit amount of gun toting Russian mobsters with no weapon whatsoever. Where do you take a character from there? If they can defeat any obstacle, what's the point of watching more stories with them? Where's the tension?

So, seeing a Batman struggling to get things done, who seems a bit more unhinged and reckless is refreshing, and makes for great drama. And though it's only given a little screentime, Superman and Lois Lane have great chemistry and ground his struggle in a meaningful way. Though the movie has taken a lot of heat for its darkness, I don't think Superman as a character is dark, and just look around at the world today to see that it's not unrealistic to imagine people being so skeptical and negative about someone like Superman. The other is always a convenient scapegoat for societal problems and it's hard to imagine someone more other than an alien.

So, perhaps the darkness is a reflection of our times in a way that resonates more than characters quipping after New York is destroyed in The Avengers. You could argue that these characters don't need to reflect the world around them, or should serve as aspirational figures, and that's valid. But, in the same way that Grant Morrison talked about his optimism being dragged through the mud after 9/11, it's hard for Superman to be that beacon of light in a world so skeptical of him.

But, what ultimately made the film satisfying to me was all in the experience of watching it, both the visuals and the unique construction of sequences. Visually, it's a rich film full of striking shots and moments that exist in a quasi magical realist realm. Though I never needed to see Bruce Wayne's parents killed again, the image of Bruce being lifted up in a circle of swirling bats is striking and a kind of manifesto for the film. This is going to be a weird, mythic film where the normal rules of realism don't quite apply.

The bizarre future desert dream sequence is another example of a scene that had me pondering what was happening in the best way. Full of religious imagery and crazy stuff happening, it was a highlight of the film. Other scenes were edited in an offbeat way that created a kind of subconscious flow of information and images that felt fresh and exciting.

And though the climax of the movie featured the lamest CG beast seen on screen to date, the over the top entry of Wonder Woman, with her own awesome guitar riff, and the swirling bolts of energy overwhelming everything made it work. It was a big movie, full of disjointed ideas, and crazy images, and I love that swing.

So many of today's blockbusters aim to hit a nostalgic, wink to the audience easy listening kind of style. Nothing in Jurassic World or Ant-Man surprises you. It's an enjoyable enough, utterly forgettable experience. But, this film is doing something stranger and more powerful. By keeping the focus on a small group of characters in conflict with each other across the globe, it feels simultaneously more intimate, and grander than yet another airship destroying a city. It felt fresh and exciting to me.

Ultimately, I see the flaws in the movie. It's by no means perfect, but it tries for something big. And I'd much rather see a movie that aims big, and is a striking example of directorial craft than a movie that achieves what it tries to do, but aims low. This didn't feel like an episode of a TV show, it felt like a huge, messy movie.