THE FLASH SEASON 1 - IS IT FALL YET?

SEASON ONE SPOILERS FOR THE FLASH FOLLOW


Prior to last year, I had only a vague knowledge of the DC superhero called The Flash.  I'm sure I saw him on cartoons when I was a kid and I did watch the 1990 live-action TV series when it was on.  So, I went into the CW TV show with a fresh perspective, having never even seen Arrow, the show from which it is spun off.  I starting watching with the premiere last fall and it has quick become one of my must-watch shows.

Despite the veneer of CW-ness (a lot of blandly attractive young people in the cast) and occasional lapses into stupidity, the Flash has been a consistently solid show and just concluded its first season with a jaw-dropping finale.  That is quite a feat considering how long it takes most shows to find their footing (I'm looking at you Agents of SHIELD).  In it's first season The Flash has been apologetically fun, warm, and has embraced it bonkers comic book source material enthusiastically.  I like to describe it as having some of the feel of the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies with it's young dorky hero and its not-too-serious tone.

Perhaps what has really elevated the show has been its gradually pulling the curtain back on a deep mythology both with its overarching season one antagonist, the temporally-displaced Reverse Flash and its hints at a larger universe of "Speed Force" using heroes and villains and the promise of a larger multiverse with potentially interesting spins on existing characters.  What I never knew about the Flash as a hero was his penchant for time-travel universe hopping which gives the show a really fun sci-fi angle that other superhero shows don't have.  Time travel and superheroes?  Yes, please.

The whole Reverse Flash storyline has been masterfully plotted and teased from the pilot on.  Even the handful of mediocre episodes have been saved by some tantalizing beat of this larger story. Kudos to Tom Cavanagh for his excellent portrayal of Dr. Harrison Wells/Eobard Thawne who is at once nurturing and malicious.  Despite his apparent villainy and his hatred of future Barry, Wells has a clear affection and pride for his team.  The show has done something really interesting with this character and made him much more than the one-dimensional villain he could have been.

In the second half of the season and the finale, time travel and alternate realities have played a big part of The Flash and the first season has ended on kind of an uncertain cliffhanger with a couple of main characters apparently dead, Central City about to be destroyed by a wormhole possibly due to a nasty temporal paradox.  Barry Allen seems to be on his way into this wormhole and who knows where he will end up?

The good thing is that The Flash seems to be hinting at a bigger multiverse with alternate versions of existing characters. In the finale Barry uses the speed force to travel back in time and sees some intriguing visions of familiar characters in unfamiliar circumstances.  Perhaps most interesting is that a costume piece from another version of The Flash-the original Jay Garrick 1940's incarnation of the character-comes flying out of the initial wormhole which indicates that there are other versions of The Flash out there.

Another interesting thing is the show's relationship to the 1990 Flash show.  This modern series has gone out of its way to refer back to its predecessor despite the fact that the original show was only on for a season and has largely been forgotten. This is primarily done by casting the actor who played the 1990 flash as Barry Allen's imprisoned father, Henry Allen.  More interestingly both Amanda Pays and Mark Hamil reprise their same roles from the previous show, making that show almost an alternate universe to the new show.  The show even utilized photos and costumes from Mark Hamil's Trickster character directly from the 1990 show.  It would be very interesting to see this explored in a future episode.

There's another major character to have assumed the role of The Flash and his name is Wally West. Many people noted that in the new show Barry's foster father and foster sister have the surname West in the new show.  It makes me wonder if we will see an alternate timeline where maybe Joe West is the one imprisoned and his child-in this continuity a boy named Wally-becomes the Flash.

With a show like the Flash, the possibilities are endless.  I mean, this show literally has a psychic gorilla in it.  I'm looking forward to seeing where things go in the new season.

A Star Wars Retrospective: Revenge of the Sith

There's a lot of excitement in the air about the upcoming Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens.  Hopefully the movie can live up to the insane expectations and nerd rage in a way that the prequel movies did not.  Although seeing early reactions to the trailer does not not give me hope  ("What's up with that lightsaber?  It's DIFFERENT?!") Ten years ago this month, the final George Lucas Star Wars movie, Revenge of the Sith, was released and while it is widely considered the best of the prequels, I would make the unpopular argument that it is in fact the best of all six original Star Wars movies.

People often say that director George Lucas is a genius at visual storytelling.  Usually this is stated in the context of his pioneering use of visual effects but he doesn't always get the credit he deserves for his wider use of visual film language-his composition, his use of intricate repeating visual motifs, his masterful pairing of imagery and music to evoke mood and story.  As a writer, he is also great at telling a macro story.  In their broad strokes, the movies in the prequel trilogy tell a complex and compelling tragedy of personal and organizational corruption that is far beyond anything in the original trilogy.  However, in some of the specifics of cinematic storytelling-writing dialogue and directing actors-Lucas' flaws as a director and storyteller are well documented.

Honestly, I think Lucas' mind is so visually-oriented that he really doesn't give much consideration to the finer points of acting and dialogue.  He probably considers them a necessary evil of narrative film making.  I think that if he could have gotten away with making his movies as purely visual and musical experiences he would have.

By the time George Lucas turned his attention to Revenge of the Sith, he had already delivered the first two movies of his trilogy.  People like to forget that The Phantom Menace was critically acclaimed and enjoyed upon its release but "fans" quickly turned on it (Again, "DIFFERENT!")  It is a movie that despite it's frequent childish detours is complex and plot-driven.  Attack of the Clones is a wildly uneven movie, featuring some of the best and very worst Star Wars sequences and burdened with the weight of a misdirected and badly-written love story. 

I imagine after the mixed reception to the prior two movies, the fact that this would likely be his last Star Wars movie, and the fact that Sith would contain some of the most dramatic and important story elements of the whole saga-the fall of the Republic, Anakin's turn to the dark side and subsequent duel with Obi-Wan, the destruction of the Jedi Order, the birth of Luke and Leia, etc-Lucas felt a responsibility to deliver the what would literally be his ultimate Star Wars movie.  And he largely succeeds.  Not only does Revenge of the Sith contain some of the saga's best sequences but it also among the least flawed and most satisfying movies of the series-along with the universally beloved The Empire Strikes Back. In Sith, there is evidence that Lucas actually listened to some of the complaints people had about the prior two movies.  You find less painful dialogue, almost no Jar-Jar, fewer distractingly-accented aliens,  and only one Anakin and Padme "romance" scene.

Where I think that Revenge of the Sith beats out everyone's favorite Star Wars movie is in the fact that it not only is the culmination of an epic and deeply tragic story but also in the fact that it exceeded and expanded the parameters of what a Star Wars movie could be.  Certainly it expanded the tonal and emotional palette of the Star Wars series.  There are a number of sequences in the movie that are emotionally powerful and resonant, which are not qualities normally associated with Star Wars or George Lucas..

Consider the beautiful scene in which Anakin and Padme gaze out in each other's direction over the Coruscant cityscape as Anakin wrestles with whether or not to follow the Jedi to Palapaine's office. At this point Anakin has discovered that one of his mentors and closest friends is the Sith Lord that for whom the Jedi have been searching for ten years.  And also the man who claims to have the power to save his wife whom Anakin fears will die in childbirth.  Meanwhile Padme stares out at the Jedi Temple worried about her secret husband who has been acting edgy fearful under the stress of his responsibilities and difficult position that the Jedi have put him in. The two are looking in each other's direction but are disconnected as haunting vocal music plays in the background.  This short dialogue-free scene says more about their relationship than all of their other "romantic" scenes put together.  Can you imagine anything this sophisticated in any of the original trilogy movies?

Later on in the movie is a scene of Leia and Luke's birth brilliantly intercut with Anakin's tortuous transformation in Darth Vader.  The Anakin sequence is powerfully composed with some unforgettable shots like the final partial glimpse of his terrified and scarred face as he is encased in the iconic mask or the chilling shot of Vader's first breath.  There's nothing as powerful as this in any of the other Star Wars movies.

There are many other amazing scenes like this such as the tragic Order 66 sequence-which I believe is the first and only montage in a Star Wars movie.  There's also the long-awaited battle between Anakin and Obi-Wan on the Hellish world of Mustafar which is tragic and thrilling (although marred by some dumb dialogue in typical Lucas fashion).  Who can forget Palpatine's chilling speech on the Senate floor marking the foundation of the Galactic Empire.

Despite many people's dislike of the prequels, most will agree that Ian McDiarmid was amazing as Palpatine and in Sith he really gets to move to the forefront of the movie.  From his Return of the Jedi-esque goading of Anakin to kill Dooku, to his mesmerizing scene telling the tale of Darth Plagueis, McDiarmid makes Palapatine a dangerous and slippery villain.  I especially enjoyed his duel with Yoda in the Senate Dome, which amounts to an epic political battle for the fate of the Galaxy.

McDiarmid is good that he even makes the problematic Anakin character work better.  I don't think Hayden Christiansen is a bad actor at all.  I think that the writing and direction of this character really hurt his performance in Attack of the Clones, especially because so much of that movie was mired in some truly awful scenes with Natalie Portman.  Anakin works a lot better in Sith because he is paired with McDiarmid for so much of the movie.  While Anakin's arc is missing a few beats in my opinion, it is dramatically sound and it works if you accept that he is kind of a dumb, arrogant, psychologically damaged twenty-year old who has fallen under the spell of a master manipulator.  I mean, we've all been there, right?

Where I think people really misunderstand these movies is the fact that they are essentially a three part tragedy with science fiction window dressing.  Tragedy is a genre that had never really caught on in the movies but one which has a strong theatrical and literary tradition. Oedipus, MacBeth, Faust-these are all men of noble character who are betrayed by fatal character flaw often exploited by a scheming antagonist.  The consequences of these heroes falls are always big and lead to some great emotional catharsis for the audience.  The Star Wars prequels are clearly part of that tradition with Anakin Skywalker being an almost prototypical tragic protagonist down to his being brought down by an insurmountable character flaw.  Part of the criticism of the prequels being melodramatic and overblown are due to an unfamiliarity with tragedy genre.  Today's audiences are used to smaller characters making mundane discoveries in a domestic setting.

The Empire Strikes Back was the first Star Wars movie I ever saw and it is a big part of my childhood.  To this day I love it and think that it is a great movie but I believe that after the dust has settled and we movie farther away from people's knee-jerk reactions to the prequel trilogy,  Revenge of the Sith will be remembered as the greatest of the original six Star Wars movies.  It has an epic scope, an almost Shakespearean level of tragedy, and an emotional richness that is not only rare in the series but in the sci-fi genre as a whole.  Hopefully future directors of Star Wars movies will take note of how Revenge of the Sith took Star Wars on its first steps into a larger world.


Patrick Garone
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My First Trip Out

NOTE:  This blog entry was actually written many many years ago.

When I was twenty-four, I got this idea in my head that I would leave the country. I was working in the call center at Apple Vacations at the time and I was very unhappy with my life. I spent thirty-five hours a week sitting in a cubicle like a veal calf, I was making very little money, I had left school the year before, I was in a relationship for which I was not emotionally prepared.  Also, I wasn’t doing theater at the time, which prior to that had been a big part of my life and identity. Also, the year 2000 was approaching and there was a weird mood in the air. People were seriously talking about all of the computers crashing due to the Y2K glitch. Our high-tech existence was looking decidedly unglamorous, even dangerous. I was genuinely worried about it. The idea of going somewhere less developed was appealing.

Now, I get a lot of weird impulses but this one was sticking. Between calls at work, I was reading Gary Jennings novel Aztec, a novel steeped in wanderlust. I read Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat in much the same spirit. I read Che Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries, which detailed the young revolutionary’s trip around South America. They made me burn to get away. After all, the most exotic place I had visited was San Diego, where I got my picture taken in a sombrero. My boyfriend at the time was from Peru. He would always tell me about his country: Machu Picchu, The Nazca Lines, Lake Titicaca, The Amazon, and The Andes. All in one country. Peru was exotic, far-away, and affordable. The more I read about it the more I wanted to go.

So one day I decided I would go to Peru. I don’t know exactly how it happened but it was though a switch had been flipped. I would start my South American Grand Tour in Peru. I had these very ambitious plans to go to Brazil and Argentina, and up north. So I sold what little I owned and bought my ticket to Lima. On $500, I was going to see South America.

My ticket came in an exciting flat FedEx envelope. I had never received anything in an envelope like this before. It made me feel important. I opened it and pulled out my ticket. Holding it in my hand was exiting and scary. Understand, I talk about a lot of stuff that I don’t actually do. There was the robot I was going to build; the theater company I was going to start; the novel I was going to write. I’m a very ambitious person who also happens to be very lazy. But now, I had this ticket and I actually had to go through with it. I felt like I was holding the end of a giant rubber band that was going to snap me over the equator.

BE CAREFUL IN LIMA

Because I was going to Lima, my boyfriend's family here in Chicago wanted to use me as a courier to bring some stuff to the family members in Peru, so, they sent with me a huge suitcase full of clothes and other items. My boyfriend's father even dropped me off at the airport. And he felt the need to apologize in advance for all the bad things that would happen to me:

"Lima," he paused thinking of the best was to put it, "Lima is a very poor city. People are very poor there. Just be careful."

At the airport, I wrote my father a long letter that explained that I was leaving the country for an indefinite amount of time because I was fundamentally unhappy with my life. He kept the letter for many years, referring to it as a “suicide note,” the final and incontrovertible proof that I am in fact mentally unstable. I wrote that I would call him when I got settled and for him not to worry too much about me.

I arrived in Lima late at night. I showed the officials my virginal passport and walked out into the night, into Peru. There was an absolutely huge crowd of people behind a series of metal and concrete partitions. There was a riot of noise. It actually reminded me of old footage of the Beatles when they came to America in 64. I was to meet my then-boyfriend’s uncle and cousins. But I couldn’t pick them out of the crowd. All I had to identify them with was an old picture. I waited and waited. I finally saw someone holding a sign that said Gennaro. I walked up to them and tried to communicate in my broken Spanish. We managed to work out that I was in fact Gennaro, although technically I am not Gennaro. The family consisted of a married couple and their two unmarried young adult children, male and female.

We drove to their home in a rickety van. The area surrounding the airport was scary and depressing at night. Was the whole city like this? We arrived at the family’s home and they served me crackers and Gatorade in a hasty late night reception. Why do people in foreign countries like crackers so much?

When I woke up the first morning after my late night arrival I felt what I can only describe as glorious dislocation. It’s the intoxicating feeling of being far from your home and everything you know. It was the opposite of homesickness. I seriously couldn’t believe I had gone through with it.

I spent a lot of time in Lima. About two months, actually. During the first month I stayed with my host family, who took very good care of me. In the second month, I rented a room at a nearby boarding house filled with strange characters. The building was owned by an old couple who lived in the shadowy and baroque first floor filled with mahogany furniture and fine china. In the afternoons they would take tea. I felt like I was trapped in an Isabelle Allende novel.

I took my time exploring the city. Or just talking to people for hours after meals. That’s how I learned Spanish: From talking to people. I was fascinated by things that were both extraordinary and totally mundane. I would spend an enormous amount of time just walking around the grocery store. I was fascinated by all the little ways it was different from a grocery store in the U.S. Or the fact that nowhere in Lima was there a laundromat in the sense that I am used to. They have places where you can drop your clothes off to be washed but nowhere where you can wash your own clothes. It’s the little differences that fascinated me. I call it the Royale with Cheese Effect.

It wasn’t all so mundane. Around the city are ancient step pyramids, or huacas, just sitting there in the middle of high-rise hotels and residential towers. The modern and the ancient side-by-side. In the city are archeological sites that are often little more than extensive fields of rubble, reminding me of the opening sequence of The Exorcist and it’s blasted Mesopotamian landscape.

Lima is also known for the glory of its colonial architecture as it was once the capital of all of the Spanish colonies in the Americas. There are many building in the Arab-inspired mudejar style. And also some lovely gothic touches like the system of creepy catacombs under the cathedral of San Francisco filled with rows of skulls and bones. Apparently there is a whole system of colonial era tunnels running beneath El Centro.

I got pretty good at navigating the city by way of buses and combis. For those of you who may not be familiar with Latin American city life a combi is a very old bus, possibly a decommissioned school bus that races around the city at breakneck speeds usually with a guy hanging off the side barking out the stops. Although the combis and microbuses have their routes, it is not an official service. Again, theres no bus system in the sense that we are used to. And a taxi is any car with a sign in the window that says Taxi. Crossing the street was like an extreme adventure sport.

Foods and services are cheap. Haircuts, meals, lodging, taxis, are all available for ridiculously cheap prices. Electronics and high end products are actually more expensive than their counterparts in the U.S. Internet access was readily available and very cheap. While there is much poverty in Lima parts of the city are chic and well off, city blocks seemingly airlifted from Miami. And, of course, well-tended suburbs which are about the same all over the world.

One day I took a bus too far. I was trying to reach the ruins of Pachacamac outside of the city (It struck me later that this is Lima’s analogue to Mexico City’s Teotihuacan ruins.) I was supposed to transfer but I ended up taking the Arequipa bus to the end of the line, or in this case, the end of civilization. We left the city behind and were soon winding through the hilly dunes that surround Lima, at times coming dangerously close to going over the edge. The surprising thing was that there were people living here. Not just people but a whole community. I say community because this was no shantytown. This was the embryo of a village. People were living in this dusty, dry, inhospitable place. A place where water had to be imported in huge trucks. They might as well have been living on Mars. This place, and I don’t even know the name of it, has stayed with me for years. The dust, the skanky dogs, the homemade intruder deterrents by way of shards of broken bottles and glass cemented on top of walls. I have never seen people have to struggle so much just for the basic necessities of survival. I am forever regretful that I did not have a camera with me. But then again I don’t know how photography would have gone over there. I think my very alien presence was pushing it enough.

VENTURING OUT

By this time I had already been in Lima for about two months and was getting comfortable in a way that made me feel embarrassed as a backpacker so I decided I had better get busy seeing some more of the country so I left, by myself for Cusco via bus. This was incredibly stupid for several reasons. Primarily, in order to get to Cusco from Lima by way of land you have to go halfway down the Pacific coast and go back inland through the Andes and back up north. This was a long trip and I was probably the loneliest I have ever been in my life.

I took a bus to Pisco where I thought I would hook up with some fellow travelers. I didn’t meet anybody there. It was mostly locals with a hawkish attitude towards tourists.

“Hey, buddy, Senor Americano You want a tour? We take you to Paracas reserve. C’mon?”

“Wanna buy some Pisco?”

“You looking for a room, joven?”

“You looking for a girl, meester?”

Mass tourism is prostitution of the land and culture. This dusty little town was nothing more than a place for people setting off from Lima down the coast. It was a place to arrange tours to the nearby nature reserve or to the famous Nasca Lines. It was a desperate low rent tourist town. I immediately missed Lima which has a bad enough reputation to scare away all the tourists and consequently you can spend time there and have a real cultural experience. You can talk to people who are not trying to hustle you at every turn. You can make friends in Lima.

I went and got the cheapest room I could find in Pisco. Actually to call it a room gives it too much credit. It was more of a cell with a mattress. Because it was in Latin America it was painted in a bold primary color yet it put its own depressing spin on it as it was a dark dingy red, the color of an old scab. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I had to walk through the continuously leaky washrooms to get to this room.

I moved on by bus through a series of coastal towns. Going south on the Pan American highway, through Ica and Nasca and the vast coastal desert that runs the length of Peru and actually the whole continent. During the day, it resembles the coast of California. By night, the landscape is eerie and lunar.

I arrived in the large city of Arequipa early in the morning. Arequipa is called the white city because it is made from the local white colored volcanic rock. The city lies at the foot of Misti, a giant dormant volcano. Here we leave the flat desert behind and get into the dry foothills of the Andes mountain range. I spent my afternoon exploring the city’s most famous attraction, the town-sized monastery of Santa Catalina with its beautiful European styled cobblestone streets and vividly colored walls. Most of the monastery is now open to the public but about of quarter of it is still closed and houses its nuns.

I met some people further down past Arequipa, around Juliaca but made no real connections with them. I merely tagged along, a nervous not entirely accepted herd animal. I wasn’t able to insinuate myself into the teeming backpacker culture the way I had hoped. My traveling companions and I-I no longer remember their names or anything about them-rented a microbus and made our way through the Andes to Cusco. We drove through the storybook landscape of mountains and terraced hills and grazing Llamas and Alpacas. It reminded me of pictures I had seen of the British highlands. Later when I saw the Lord of the Rings movies I immediately thought of Peru. 

We arrived in Cusco during the Easter week and the city (which I later learned to love) was overcrowded and filthy. I became ill from the high altitude and the hilly cobblestone streets. Cusco is very hilly and going anywhere involves lost of climbing and descending its winding streets. I was getting sick of traveling but I had come this far and had to see the sights of the Sacred Valley of the Incas, at the end of which was the great prize of Machu Picchu. I broke with my companions and made for Pisac, the first town on the way to Machu Picchu. Alone, I hitched a ride up to the ruins that overlook the town. This was the highlight of my trip. The ruins are vast and spread out through a path that cuts through the mountains and looks down on the small valley town below. I felt like Indiana Jones for about an hour.

I stopped at a down father down the valley where one of my books staid that there were ruins high up in the mountains along a hidden path. Getting there involved constant hiking and consultation of my map and compass. I tried to scale the gravelly mountain side but only succeeded in getting myself lost. I gave up after a couple of hours and made my way back down the mountain and back to the main drag.

I caught a bus to Ollantaytambo, the last town before heading to Machu Picchu. This was the most alien place that I had ever been. The town is one of the few that kept the original pre-Spanish layout and many of the buildings date back to Inca times. A series of Inca viaducts still bring water down from the snowy mountain tops, so there are many little stone channels running mountain water throughout the town. Ollantaytambo was cold and gloomy but attractive in its own strange way. Looming above the town are the ruins of a colossal fort but I was too tired to explore them and my feet were killing me from my ill-fitting hiking boots (they at least looked good.)

The next morning I made my way to the entrance to the Machu Picchu trail and I basically gave up. I couldn’t go on. My feet hurt and most of all I couldn’t face doing the three day hike on my own. I was terribly lonely and homesick. I headed back to Cusco, humbled. I hung out there for a few days to recuperate and bought my ticket to Lima.

This time the grueling overland trip was made worse by an earthquake outside of Arequipa. My bus was stranded for fifteen hours on the side of the road waiting for boulders to be removed so that we could proceed. By the time I arrived back in Lima, I was filthy and smelled worse than I think I ever had in my life.

I called and got my ticket changed so that I could leave early. Again, it arrived in a flat envelope. Again, I would be slung shot out over the equator. This time, back to my home, where I could reset my life. So, that’s the story of my first trip to Peru, during which I spent a lot of time in Lima and did not see Machu Picchu.

I guess I’m thinking about this because of some of the books I have been reading lately. Most recently read a book called Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer that detailed the short and idealistic life of a young man named Chris McCandless who ventured out on an epic trip across the country and ended up starving to death in an old school bus in the Alaskan taiga. I read The Beach about Gen X Western backpackers who go to Thailand and set up a community on a hidden beach. I also read The Mosquito Coast about a man who takes his whole family to the jungles of Belize because of his disgust of what America has become.

They are all, one way or the other about malcontents who seek to escape the developed world and its problems and I see a little of myself in all three protagonists. The fact is that if I didn’t have my theatrical work here to anchor me, I probably wouldn’t be living here in the States. One day I may decide that I would rather spend my time writing and the nice thing about that is that I can do THAT anywhere.

I often imagine what it would be like to be an expatriate. Living in some village or another, being El Yanqui. But I wonder if those people really fit in anywhere. Can you ever really be accepted into another country, especially if you carry all of the baggage that comes with being from the United States? One of the reasons I have so much respect for immigrants is that it takes real courage to leave your country and live somewhere else. I don’t know if I have that kind of strength. So for the time being I stay in the land of Freedom and Cheeseburgers.

The High Cost of Righteousness

This blog post is based on a Lay Speaker talk given at The Buddhist Temple of Chicago in March 2015.


Recently, I was working on a comedy project that featured a Buddhist character.  When I write comedy, I’m always very interested in exploring flaws in my characters as a way to make them interesting and realistic. So this project got me to thinking: what are the flaws associated with Buddhists?  Because there are a lot of stereotypes floating out there about other religions but not so many about us.  We have, I think, a pretty good rep in the world.  

Thinking about this question, it reminded me of that topic that always comes up in a job interview where the interviewer invites the candidate to describe their weaknesses.  Usually people say stuff like “Well, sometimes I care too much” or “Maybe I work too hard.”  Those are the kinds of nonanswers that I was thinking for Buddhists:  Maybe we're too serene?  Too nice?  After a while of pondering this question I realized that there is a perception out there that we think we are very enlightened and have it all figured out.  Obviously, that’s untrue.  If we were all enlightened we probably wouldn’t need to be Buddhists.

I think a good personal example of this flaw in action is that sometimes my partner-who is not a Buddhist-will be bothered by something, maybe he has spent a long time on the phone fighting with Comcast about our cable bill.  He’ll be there visibly aggravated and I will breeze into the room calmly and say something like, “You know, you really shouldn’t let it bother you so much.  It’s really not that important in the grand scheme of things. Just breathe.” This usually earns me at least a dirty look.  While I was technically right, the last thing you want when you are all worked up about something is some smug bastard coming along and telling you what you should be feeling.  Or when I feel like we are heading into an argument I’ll say things like, “You know, I really don’t like pointless conflict.” Again, while correct, not a super welcome statement in that context. It’s a fine line that we walk between Right Living and being really annoying and insufferable

Prior to settling at the Buddhist Temple of Chicago in my explorations of Buddhism, I’ve met what to me were a shocking number of Buddhists who were arrogant know-it-alls.  To an extent this is understandable when you have a population with so many converts.  I’m a convert myself and I know that impulse to want to impress with a lot of facts and scriptural familiarity.  As someone who is not practicing his legacy religion, often times I feel like I have to defend myself from people’s skepticism.  It’s understandable that people would sometimes feel the need to overcompensate.

That need to be the smartest person in the room has to be recognized for what it is.  And I know that that impulse comes from a deep insecurity because, while I have tried to maintain a healthy ignorance about Buddhism, I have years of experience being a know-it-all about many many other subjects. Sometimes, I will listen to myself and I will be like, “Why are you talking?”

I know from personal experience that being a know-it-all is a very selfish proposition although it’s easy to convince yourself that that is not the case when you are in the middle of it. It may seem like you are focused on something external but really it’s all about the Self because it feels gratifying to acquire and master information.  Especially now, it is customary to greedily consume knowledge.  And we often use that knowledge to bolster our Selves.  The Self will arm itself information in order to fight and argue to prove that it is right.  Because being right is a justification for the Self's very existence.    But being right all the time is a very expensive proposition in what it costs to our interpersonal relationships.

As I said, when I write comedy, I love to explore character flaws and I think this exploration is in line with what Buddhist practice requires.  We are just as flawed as anyone else but our practice requires honest, self-reflection and mindfulness.  I'm working on that first big step to enlightenment when you realize when you are being a smug know-it-all and you are able to take a step back and say, "Dude, what's wrong with you?"

Alien (Plastic) Resurrection

So, the toy company Funko has released a series of action figures based on Ridley Scott's Alien.  This in itself is not anything special.  Alien is a classic and there are now many collectibles based on it and the other movies in the series.  What's awesome about the Funko line is that it is based on the cancelled Kenner action figure line from the late 1970's.

When Alien was released, the toy company Kenner briefly entertained the idea of creating an figure line to accompany it. After all, Star Wars  had just been released and the toy makers at Kenner were making a fortune on the 3 3/4" line of action figures and vehicles.  So they designed some action figures based on Ridley Scott's space movie as well but the problem was the R-Rated Alien was not as toyetic as Star Wars and the action figure line never got past the prototype stage.  There was only only one Alien toy released and it was the rather...imposing 18" Alien action figure.

Now, Funko has released a small line of action figures based on what the Kenner line would have been.  These are simple 1970's style action figures that would look right at home with your vintage Star Wars collection complete with five points of articulation, soft sculpts, and vague likeness to the characters on which they are based.  They are packaged in old-school blister cards which (mostly) feature illustrations of the characters on which they are based.

Normally, I don't go in for toys which rely so heavily on nostalgia appeal but there is something clever and witty about the intense R-Rated body horror of  Ridley Scott's movie being distilled into these simple 1970's-styled child's playthings.  Take for example the multiple figures of Kane, who not only comes in the toy-friendly astronaut version but the facehugger and bloody chestburster versions, complete with placid "closed eyes" like he's taking a nap.  I am an opener but with these, I feel a lot of the appeal in in the very spot-on 70's packaging.  And, to be honest, the action figures themselves are pretty simple and are not necessarily great in and of themselves.

So far the line has included two waves of Alien  figures (although the entire ReAction line has encompassed a lot of other retro properties) including a couple of versions of the Alien and Ripley as well as Dallas and Ash.  I hope for another couple of waives with versions of Lambert and Parker. Maybe a Brett figure with a gaping headwound.  It would also be great to get a dedicated egg and version of Jones the cat.

The idea that people actually considered a children's toy line based on Alien  is hilarious.  I mean, I would have gone crazy for them but these toys might have traumatized a generation of kids.  Now, they serve as a neat and clever throwback to a classic movie and a series of unique and fun collectibles.

How to Un-Reboot Spider-Man

As I've written before, Sony's handling of Spider-Man is a colossal mess.  They made three successful films with director Sam Raimi, two of which are beloved by fans and all of which made a lot of money.  After the creatively-fatigued and poorly-received Spider-Man 3, Sony quickly rebooted the series so as to retain the rights to the character.  Although the two Amazing Spider-Man movies were well-acted, they are generally considered less-satisfying and certainly less financially successful than the Raimi movies.  They were bogged down in rehashing the Spider-Man origin, adding a lot of complicated backstory, and featured uninspired villains.  Sony was clearly intending to produce a lot of spin-offs from their franchise but with the box office underperformance of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Sony panicked and now will be c- producing a new series of Spider-Man movies with Marvel.

While this will be good from a creative perspective-Marvel certainly knows how to make superhero movies and Spider-Man will now join the Marvel Cinematic Universe-it also means that we are in for yet another reboot of Spider-Man.  This will be the third movie incarnation of the characters in fifteen years.  One of the failures of The Amazing Spider-Man was that it felt too soon and too samey.  This will be an even bigger problem with this new Spider-Man.

Certainly, this version of the character will have to start as an existing hero already active as Spider-Man.  There is no way audiences are going to want to sit through another origin story for Peter Parker, especially after it was such an inordinately large part of the last two movies.  But really, the new Spider-Man needs to boldly differentiate itself from previous versions of the character.  The way to do this is to move away from Peter Parker.

Like most superheroes, there have been a few different characters to call himself Spider Man over the years (or Spider-Woman for that matter).  Peter Parker is certainly the most iconic and we can say that he has been well-represented on screen at this point.  Recently, the character Miles Morales was created, in part as a response to African American actor Donald Glover's social media lobbying for the role.  Miles Morales is a black/Latino teen who took over the mantle of Spider-Man after the death of Peter Parker in the comics.  He's become a popular version of the character (he's even been voiced by Glover on one of the animated shows).

If Marvel and Sony are smart (and we know Marvel is) then this is the version of the Spider-Man they will put up on the screen.   With Mile Morales, you avoid a lot of the samey-ness that you get by having another Peter Parker onscreen with one of the predictable wan white kids playing him.  Miles Morales is Spider-Man but he's a different character and differentiates himself from previous versions of the character.  

I think that the best way to do this also involves a role for Peter Parker.  In a nod to the comics, the new Spider-Man movie should feature a torch-passing cameo from Peter Parker.  As good as Andrew Garfield was, I would love to see Toby Maguire reprise his role one last time as an middle aged Spider-Man. This would be a great nod to Sam Raimi's movies with which a whole generation of movie goers grew up.  It also un-reboots Spider-Man, acknowledging the fundamental mistake of the Amazing Spider-Man movies.  Again, having Toby Maguire return to pass the torch would build excitement for the movie and make this a true event.

More importantly, the world of superhero movies is notoriously lily-white and this is a real opportunity to put a major hero onscreen who also speaks to a more diverse generation of Americans. It would be a bold and remarkable choice that, most importantly, would build interest and excitement around the character which is something that Spider-Man has been sorely lacking for a long time and ultimately what doomed the most recent movies.

The End of An Era

Pluto coming into view as New Horizons approaches.

In early 2015, the world will achieve a major milestone but it will be one which will fall under the radar for most people.  By July of this year, mankind will have completed its initial reconnaissance of the major worlds of our Solar System.  Let that sink in for a moment.  In the last fifty years or so, we have flown-by, orbited, landed-on, and roved seven planets and scores of moons, asteroids, and comets.  Our robotic envoys have traveled billions of miles on our behalf exploring this collection of exotic alien worlds we call the Sol System.

Next month, NASA's remarkable DAWN probe will orbit Ceres, the largest and most massive asteroid and one of the few relatively large Solar System objects yet unexplored.  This is after the intrepid robot had already orbited Vesta, another large body in the asteroid belt.  In July, the New Horizons craft will fly-by Pluto, formerly our ninth planet and a representative of possibly hundreds of similar icy bodies on outskirts of our Solar System.

I grew up in the 1980's and while it was a time in which space exploration had stalled a bit, there was a wealth of information from the amazing missions of the 1970's.  I devoured anything I could read about the historic missions to our family of worlds.  I poured over space probe photographs published in magazines like National Geographic, Astronomy, Sky & Telescope, and the wonderful children's astronomy magazine Odyssey.   In these magazines I saw the desolate beauty of Mars, the glorious churning clouds of Jupiter, and the majestic rings of Saturn.  These images captured my imagination and started a life-long obsession with space exploration.  In the 1990's and 2000's the pace picked up with a number of ambitious missions that deepened our understanding of this wonderful Solar System of ours.

It's fitting that our initial survey of the Solar System ends with Pluto, which at the time the New Horizons probe was launched was considered the ninth and final planet of the Sol System.  After this Pluto encounter, missions will focus on deepening our understanding rather than revealing unseen worlds and while it will always provide exciting discoveries, the reconnaissance of Pluto offers the last chance to reveal a back a well-known but unexplored Solar System body.

To celebrate this milestone, let's look back at what I consider the ten of the most significant missions in the unmanned exploration of our Solar System.

10. NEAR (l. 1996)

NEAR was a true trailblazer.  It was the first spacecraft to orbit and provide an extended look at an asteroid.  In this case, the Near Earth orbiting  and potato-shaped Eros.  Not only did it orbit Eros but it successfully touched down on the surface of the asteroid despite not being designed as a lander. NEAR paved the way to the subsequent missions to asteroids and other small Solar System bodies which will no doubt continue in the the coming decades as we try to better understand these objects and their dangers and benefits to mankind.  I wouldn't be entirely surprised if Eros is visited by astronauts in the not-too-distant future.  Perhaps they can pick up NEAR and bring it back home.

9. Magellan  (l. 1989)

Magellan was important for many reasons, perhaps most importantly because it signaled the return of the U.S. to space exploration.  Launched from the Space Shuttle, it had been the first interplanetary mission launched in eleven years.  A mission to Venus, Magellan not only successfully tested aero-braking techniques but used radar to peer below the Venusian clouds in unprecedented detail increasing our understanding of our closest planetary neighbor and the bizarre features that lie beneath its brutal atmosphere.

8. Mariner 2 (l. 1962)

Another Venusian mission, Mariner 2 was the first successful mission to another planet.  Mariner 2 flew-by Venus in 1962 and effective kicked off our survey of the Solar System.  Mariner 2 proved the techniques on which the entire Mariner and Voyager programs relied.

7. Mariner 9 (l. 1971)

The culmination of the fantastic Mariner program, Mariner 9 was the first spacecraft to orbit another planet, arriving at Mars in 1971.  While previous missions had provided glimpses of Martian regions, Mariner 9 gave us our first global picture of the planet in all its bleak beauty and complexity.  In fact, arguably the most dramatic geological feature on Mars, Mariner Valley, is named for this remarkable robot explorer.




6. Curiosity (l. 2012)

While not the first rover on Mars, Curiosity was larger and better equipped  than  its predecessors to explore the Maritan surface.  Not only was it more independent and mobile thanks to its nuclear power source, Curiosity captured the attention of the entire world in a way that even the adorable Sojourner rover did not thanks to it's dramatic sky-crane assisted descent on to Mars-all of which was captured in Internet-friendly video.  This technology alone will pay dividends in how we deliver payloads onto the surface of other planets in the future.

5. Viking (l. 1975)

While there had been a briefly successful Soviet attempts to land a spacecraft on Mars, the Viking program included the first Mars lander that was an unequivocal success.  And they did it twice.  Man has always imagined the surface of Mars and for the first time we could actually see it  for ourselves. In what would become a common occurrence for American space probes, the Viking probes vastly outlived their projected life-spans and returned data for years to come.

4. Pioneer 11 (l. 1973)

Is there a more aptly named spacecraft?  By the 1970's America had completed its survey of the worlds of the inner Solar System.  Pioneer 10 and 11 began our survey of the outer Solar System both taking advantage of trajectories that would allow fly-bys of Jupiter and Saturn.  Pioneer 11 flew by Jupiter and was the first probe to explore Saturn and exponentially increased our understanding of these worlds and laid the groundwork for Voyager, Galileo, Cassini, and New Horizons.

3. Cassini & Galileo (l. 1989, 1997)

While these are two distinct probes, sent to two distinct planets Galileo and Cassini both followed up on the discoveries of the Pioneer and Voyager probes.  Galileo was the first probe to orbit an outer planet and spent years exploring Jupiter and it's moons and delivered the first atmosphere probe to any of the outer gas giant planets.  Cassini continues its wildly successful mission to Saturn and deployed the first successful lander on a satellite of another world, Saturn's mysterious and cloud covered moon, Titan.

2. Venera 9 (1975)

Despite their many achievements in human spaceflight, the Russians and Soviets have have terrible luck with their interplanetary missions.  While their Mars campaign, in particular, was unsuccessful, they had better luck with their Venus probes. With the Venera lander they achieved the first successful landing on another planet.  What's even more impressive is that it was on the hellish surface of Venus.  The probe sent data for about forty minutes before literally melting under the heat and pressure of Venus's runaway greenhouse effect.

1. Voyager 2 (l. 1977)

In the 1960's, NASA envisioned a "Grand Tour" of the solar system.  The planets had literally aligned so that one could sent four probes on trajectories that would allow them to visit all five of the (then) outer planets.  While the project was scaled back to only two probes, with Voyager 1 sacrificing a Pluto fly-by to get a better look at Saturn's moon Titan, Voyager 2's journey took it to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and finally Neptune.  Not only did Voyager expand our understanding of Jupiter and Saturn but pulled back the curtain on two remote worlds about which we knew little.  Voyager 2 is now technically in interstellar space and still sending back data after thirty years in deep space.  The Voyager mission is without exaggeration, one of the greatest achievements in human history.

Alien Isolation Review

Anyone who reads my inaccurately-named Monster Movie of the Week feature on this blog knows that I am a lifelong fan of the Alien franchise.  So, I had been eyeing SEGA's Alien Isolation  for a while, impressed with its take on the material and its inspiration from Ridley Scott's 1979 horror movie rather than James Cameron's 1986 action film, which video games have been relentlessly ripping off since it was released.  Instead of being a shooter, like most games adapted from the series, Isolation  is an intense survival horror experience and seemingly a spiritual successor to the old Commodore 64 Alien game.  I also liked what I heard from its developers Creative Assembly, who in a series of videos prior to the release described the game's horrors in a hilariously quiet and deadpan manner.

Alien Isolation is a direct sequel to Alien and features Ellen Ripley's daughter, Amanda who was introduced in the extended cut of Aliens.  Amanda has gone to work for the Weyland Yutani company but has an agenda to find out the fate of her mother, missing since the "loss" of the Nostromo many years earlier.  At the start of the game, the Nostromo's flight recorder has been located and taken to Sevastapol, a station managed by the hapless Seegson company, known for making creepy chokebots.  The station is in the process of being decommissioned but has also become home to some aliens, when Amanda arrives to retrieve the Nostormo's black box and get some closure about her mother's disappearance.

Isolation was released in October to some of the most schizophrenic video game reviews I have ever read.  While most independent reviewers praised it-some effusively hailing it a "game changer"-other high-profile reviewers with outlets-such as IGN, Gamespot, and Polygon-were less impressed with it, citing the game's punishing difficulty, manual save system, length, and pacing.  Strangely, many of the positive reviews seemed to hold up the difficulty and "pacing" as strengths of the game.

Having now finished Alien Isolation and contemplating the game's reviews, I wonder if it's time to stop thinking of "video games" as cookie cutter experiences that should all be played and approached the same way.  Isolation is not your typical video game and I have been thinking about how it is best to be played.  It took me about two months to finish Alien Isolation partially because I don't have unlimited time but also because this is an intense and harrowing game and I found myself needing to take frequent breaks from it. I played it mostly in the mornings because I didn't really like playing it at night (They mostly come out at night.  Mostly.).  The truth is, it's a demanding game and I wasn't always in the mood for it.

I don't know how most reviews happen at the big websites but I can't imagine anyone "cramming" this game and playing it in a week or two and having a good experience with it.   I'm wondering if all of the griping about the difficulty and the save points is a function of people trying to blow through Alien Isolation as thought it were your typical shooter.  This is a game that punishes cockiness.  I took my time with Alien Isolation and thoroughly enjoyed it.   I didn't pick it up necessarily expecting to finish a whole mission in one sitting.  Instead, I was happy to play from save point to save point and consider myself lucky for not getting my face chewed off.  As far as the difficulty, I rarely had to play any sections over and over again.  Nor, did I ever lose a significant amount of progress for lack of a save point.

I come down on the side of thinking that the pacing is actually quite good.  The game takes about an hour to really get moving but the setting, graphics, and art direction are so good that I didn't mind. This is also in keeping with the spirit of Ridley Scott's movie, which featured a similar slow-burn. The game also smartly alternates between sections in which the Alien actively hunts you and other stretches during which the beast is out of commission and your main antagonists are groups of human survivors or rogue androids called Working Joes which are a bit easier to deal with.  This gives the player both a nice break from the intense Alien gameplay and also a good opportunity to explore and enjoy the setting,  a compelling retrofuturistic environment.  When the Alien is about, you really don't get a lot of opportunities to enjoy the scenery.  There are a couple of sections that involve space walks and even a flashback to a stroll on LV-426 which also offer a respite from the intense Alien action and some beautiful space porn.

One of the things that I love about Alien Isolation is that it is more experiential than "gamey."    Also, it doesn't feed into the typical video game male power fantasy.  Most often in games you are cast as some over-powered gun-toting badass.  That's certainly been a problem in Alien  games which demote H.R. Giger's fantastic creature to cannon fodder.  One could even make the case that this goes back to Cameron's sequel.  But it is certainly not the case in Alien Isolation.  As Amanda Ripley, the odds are stacked against you and the only real ability you have is to build some devices to fend off or distract your opponents.  The game even teases you with an assortment of guns only to have you learn that you really are better off not using them at all.  Your only real weapons against the Alien are Molotov Cocktails and the flamethrower and both of those will only drive the monster off for a second.  As in Scott's original movie, the Alien is relentless and indestructible in Alien Isolation.

The Alien itself is a terrific adversary in the game and it has been said that it has advanced AI which actively learns from how you play.  I did find this to be the case.  I had gotten too comfortable hiding in the many lockers found in the Sevastapol station and I found that the Alien did get wise to me before long and it would invariably find me in these lockers and violently rip the doors off.

Most of your encounters with the Alien are unscripted and will change depending on your actions. Even late in the game I observed behavior that I hadn't seen in my early encounters, such as when I thought I was safe in one of the many small iris vents on the station and I turned around to discover the monster slowly crawling towards me.  I didn't even think the damn thing could get in those vents and I might have gone the whole game without seeing that bit of behavior.  Who knows what else the Alien is doing when you are not watching it?  Maybe it does the dance number from Spaceballs.

It also is revealed that there is not one but multiple aliens on the station when a nest is encountered well into the game.  I had mixed feelings about this as I was attached to that very Alien experience of surviving a singular creature.  It was also frustrating from a gameplay perspective because I felt like I was being dropped into an Aliens game without Aliens  weapons.  Luckily these nest sections are fairly short.  From a story perspective, I was confused by where these Aliens came from since there was no evidence of a Queen Alien on the station.  Were the people on the station being transformed into eggs as in the famous Alien deleted scene?  I would have been fine if this had been the case.  In fact it would have fit right in with the game's wonderful devotion to Scott's movie-but it is never addressed in the game.  There are just a bunch of eggs and facehuggers running around without explanation.  And strangely, for all of the Aliens that are running around in the cutscenes, I rarely encountered more than one of them in the game at the same time (thankfully.)


The story is decent but a bit skeletal and there are some plot holes that are not really addressed.  The characters are also a bit skimpy and underdeveloped.  While Amanda is given a bit of personality and a compelling personal mission, no one else seems to have been given much development.  The Weyand android who accompanies Amanda was potentially an interesting character but I felt like his nature was kept ambiguous and then awkwardly revealed.  When he ended up being a compassionate ally to Amanda, I was interested to learn more but was confused by his character arc.  I do agree with the game's critics regarding the sudden and anticlimactic ending but I feel this is symptomatic with larger problems with the writing.

The station is probably the most vividly fleshed out character in Alien Isolation and in many ways it is an extrapolation of the design aesthetic of the Nostromo ship from Alien.   It is similarly lived-in and grimy and feels like it has a real history and context.  It expands on the vaguely dystopian capitalist future hinted at in Scott's movie, full of sociopathic corporations and their exploited employees.  You learn a lot about Seegson Corporation and the Sevastapol station by reading terminals throughout the station.  The creepy Working Joe androids also inhabit this junky station.  Unlike the lifelike Weyland Yutani synthetics, the Working Joes are not meant to pass for human but instead feature rubbery skin and raspy electronic voices.  In the larger economy, they are probably meant to be cheap, entry-level androids.

The Sevastapol and its synthetic inhabitants are probably the most original and interesting concepts that Alien Isolation introduces to the Alien universe.  Otherwise, you could make the argument that Alien Isolation is a bit too derivative of Ridley Scott's Alien.  It would have been interesting for the game to have stepped out of the shadow a bit and not been quite so beholden to its source material.  I mean, the ship in which Amanda Ripley arrives to Sevastapol is literally the same model of ship as the Nostromo.  And the station itself is inexplicably identical to the large cargo section to which the Nostromo was attached.

Despite a few story flaws Alien Isolation is a fantastic game and a wonderful Alien experience.  I can't remember another game that made me feel such genuine fear and anxiety.  The gameplay is compelling and when I wasn't playing Alien Isolation, I was thinking about it.  For fans of the Alien  series or old-school survival horror games it is a no-brainer.


MISCELLANEOUS TIPS

Use Active Stealth:  Don't be afraid to sneak around in the Alien's presence.  As long as you stay behind cover, you should be fine.  What you shouldn't do is spend all your time stationary and hiding. There are times when the Alien will be on alert and looking for you and will not just go away if you hide.  As scary as it is, you need to move around.  Use flares and other items to distract enemies.

The Vents Are Not Safe:  It may seem like the iris vents are too small for the Alien to use but guess what, he can get in there!  Unfortunately, some time you have to use them.

Lockers Are A Last Resort:  The ubiquitous lockers on the Sevastapol may seem like good hiding places but they are noisy to get in and out and once you are in there you are kind of stuck.  As I said above, it won't be long before the Alien catches on.  Whenever possible, find yourself a nice table to hide under.  As long as you are not in direct view and are not making noise, they are reliable hiding places.

Your Motion Tracker Tells You Exactly Where to Go:  In addition to, you know, tracking motion, your Motion Tracker has a sliding bar along the screen's perimeter which tells you exactly where you need to go next.

Turn Off Your Mic Xbox One and Playstation 4 both feature a mode in which you can use the consoles' mics to pick up sound from your environment.  So if your cat is meowing in your living room the Alien will hear it and kill you.  And possibly your cat.  Turn it off.


Patrick Garone
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GETTING TO WERK-The Read Through

Beginning are always exciting! Last night a talented group of actors joined together Voltron-style to hold the first every read through for the upcoming independent gay comedy pilot, WERK.  I've been working on this piece for many years, from when it was an orphaned sketch from a few different Wig Bullies shows to now when it is an about-to-be-produced sitcom pilot detailing the misadventures of a group of coworkers at a gay business who have been ensnared into a Bravo reality show.

Witness actors sitting around reading lines!

Like any first read through, there were surprises.  Some things worked better than I imagined.  Some fell flat.

Behold, a biological woman!

Getting choked up thinking about those chimpanzees.

On to revisions!

WERK Auditions

Chicago actor people, I'm holding auditions for my independent gay-themed comedy pilot, WERK on September 13 and 20th. WERK is a blackly comic mock reality show sort of a cross between Looking and The Office, with a dash of Archer  and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. WERK follows a group of friends and co-workers in a gay business who's exploits are made into a sensational Bravo-style reality show. 

Seeking for actors for the following parts:

Sascha - Late 20's early 30's. Former "award-winning twink." Self-involved, willfully ignorant and youth obsessed.

Louis - Possibly very old but has had excellent work done and looks much younger than he really is. Very "A-Gay." A bit stuffy and snobbish.

Tim - Quick-witted trashy sexpot. 30's or 40's. Classic sitcom nympho, imagine the bastard love child of John Larroquette's character in Night Court and Rue McClanahan's character from Golden Girls.

Jayden- Power hungry business twink. Elven. Possibly squeaky.

Benjamin - Touchy-feely manager. Thinks "outside the box" and has never actually been in the box. Vaguely hippyish and loves to spend time exploring feelings and relationships.

Carlo - Mellow, laid-back, tolerant, modern straight guy.

This is being produced as a student film with the hope of shopping it around and getting interest and funds to shoot more episodes.  There is no pay but the potential to do more with it later on, a fun script, and minimal time commitment.

Email patrickgarone at gmail dot com for more info or to reserve a slot.

Robin Williams: A Retrospective, Part 2 1988-1997

Check out Part1 here.


After Good Morning Vietnam Robin Williams was a full-fledged movie star and the period of 1988-1997 saw him at his most prolific and featured many of his best movies and performances.  This period of his career was notable for its incredible variety of  genres, quality, and even screentime. Throughout his career, Robin Williams was not shy about taking meaty cameos, voice-over parts, and juicy supporting roles.  

One such memorable supporting role was that of an unconventional English teacher who inspires a group of students at a '50's prep school in Dead Poets Society.   This movie is the WASP version of the Inspiring Educator genre that was very popular in the '80's and '90's, that included everything from Stand and Deliver, to Lean on Me, and even more recently School of Rock and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.   Dead Poets Society was released in 1989 to much acclaim and Williams received his second Oscar nomination for this performance. Those of us who were teenagers when this movie was released will always have a special affection for Robin Williams.  He was the teacher we all wanted and few had. This role is so iconic that it has reverberated throughout popular culture and his performance has become shorthand for any inspirational teacher and has been parodied in everything from The Simpsons to Community.  Williams gives a mostly restrained and credible supporting performance and leaves most of the heavy lifting to the young cast.

1990 saw a pair of great performances in Cadillac Man and Awakenings.  Cadillac Man is one of Williams underrated and mostly-forgotten performances.  He plays a sleazy car salesman who's philandering finally catches up to him when his dealership is taken over by an armed gunman.  Here, Williams experiments with playing a unlikable character as he would in some of his later movies.  In Awakenings he plays Dr. Oliver Sachs who's treatments allow a comatose patient played by Robert DeNiro to temporarily regain consciousness.  Williams gives another and quiet and restrained performance in the less flashy of the two parts.

In the following year, Williams starred in Steven Spielberg's bloated Peter Pan sequel,  Hook, a movie that manages to showcase the worst qualities of everyone involved. He also had a small but pivotal role in Kenneth Branaugh's terrific thriller Dead Again.  His third movie that year was Terry Gilliam's The Fisher King, featuring what is probably Williams' finest performance for which he received his third Oscar nomination.  Williams plays Parry, a homeless man with a traumatic past and medieval delusions of knights and quests.  It is Williams at his most genuinely sweet and sympathetic without ever becoming saccharine. It doesn't hurt that he is surrounded by amazing performances by Jeff Bridges, Amanda Plummer and Mercedes Ruel, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for this movie.  This is another one of his movies that a lot of people haven't seen and which seems to have been forgotten among all of his big hits.



Perhaps Williams' most iconic performance is one in which he cannot be seen at all.  In 1992, Williams delivered a show-stopping voice-over performance as the Genie of the Lamp in Disney's Aladdin.  While Williams had seemingly been working hard to get away from his stand-up style wild free-associations in his movie roles this was a part actually built around his wacky improvisations, voices, and impressions. The animated shape-shifting genie could keep up with Williams' mouth in way that even his body couldn't.  Robin Williams' work in Aladdin  elevates the movie from a good Disney movie from their 1990's renaissance to a spectacularly entertaining classic.



We take it for granted now but prior to Aladdin, it wasn't common for movie stars to lend their voices to animated movies.   Voice over work in animated movies (which were almost all annually-released Disney movies at the time) we done by character or voice-over actors.  After Aladdin, a lot of a-list actors and movie stars began loaning their voices to animated movies.    Because of Williams' stature and the phenomenal quality of his work in the movie, the industry began talking about how to honor the work of voice-over actors and the nature of a "virtual performance."  There was even a campaign to have him nominated for an Academy Award for his work.  This conversation is still happening to this day thanks to the amazing work being done by performance capture actors like Andy Sirkis but its genesis was with Robin Williams in Aladdin.

In 1993, Robin Williams released his biggest live-action hit and turned in another iconic performance in Mrs. Doubtfire.  This movie is pretty much the definition of a movie star vehicle.  Williams' manages to save a tired premise (straight guy in drag), a bad script, and generic direction through one of his funniest performances and great character work as the titular elderly Scottish nanny.  For better or worse, it remains the movie with which he is most associated.



Over the next few years Williams worked in a number of movies in both starring and supporting roles.  1995's Jumanji, a family special effects adventure, was a popular movie for Williams.  He also appeared in movies such as Nine Months,   To Wong Fu Thanks For Everything Julie Newmar and Kenneth Branaugh's Hamlet.

In 1996, Williams reprised his role as the Genie in the second direct-to-video sequel to Aladdin after a contract dispute kept him out of the first one.  The same year Williams starred in Jack directed by Francis Ford Coppola, the story of a boy with an advanced aging syndrome. This movie marks the beginning of a trend in Williams' career towards high concept, sentimental movies.

His other major movie in 1996 was one of his best: The Birdcage adapted from the 1970's French comedy La Cage Aux Folles about a gay couple forced to pretend to be straight for a dinner with their future in-laws.  Birdcage has all the hallmarks of a great Robin Williams movie.  First, the movie teams him up with comedy legends and director/writer team Mike Nichols and Elaine May who infuse the movie with a sharp satirical edge.  It also gives him a talented cast witch which to play, including Nathan Lane, Diane Weist, and Gene Hackman who all turn in hilarious performances.  While technically his cameo in To Wong Fu was his first gay movie character, his role in Birdcage was pretty fearless for a high-profile heterosexual actor, during a time when there was still a heavy stigma attached to homosexuality. While actors like Tom Hanks and William Hurt had done these sort of roles in the past, it was in movies that were marketed as "serious" Oscar contenders.

For his reputation as a free wheeling motormouth wild man, Williams was an excellent straight man and was often at his best simply listening and reacting to the characters and situations around him.    In some of his best performances, he is far from the most outrageous character in the movie and that is certainly the case in The Birdcage, where he is often paired with Nathan Lane, who plays his flamboyant partner.  Williams is great as his character struggles to keep together this dinner party which is constantly veering out of control.



In 1997 Williams appeared in a number of movies such as a memorable part as an actor who was literally out-of-focus  in Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry.  He also starred in the remake of Flubber, another one of his high concept family comedies as well as the critically panned Father's Day with Billy Crystal.  He was nominated for his forth Oscar and won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for Good Will Hunting,  a breakout drama for both Matt Damon and Ben Affleck for which they both won Best Screenplay Oscars.  Williams achieved what had to have been long-held goal and finally got the recognition and respect he deserved.



Patrick Garone
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