The 46x60 or So Project, Pt. 4: Getting A Party Started Which Has Already Begun...

I have called it quits. The building of The 46x60 or So Project: Roughly 5000 Films from 1964-Present is over. Well, at least, 99% of it is...

As of today, not counting 2009, which will not be finished until after the awards get announced early next year, from 1964 through 2008, these are the stats:

• Total Films on List: 4966
• Total Films Not on DVD: 1372 (27.62%)
• Total Films on List Seen Since April 2005: 725 (14.59%)
• Total Films Left to See: 2869 (57.77%) 
• Average Films Per Year: 110.35 
• Biggest Year 1964-1969: 1964 - 101 films 
• Biggest Year 1970-1979: 1973 & 1974 - 108 films each 
• Biggest Year 1980-1989: 1987 - 127 films 
• Biggest Year 1990-1999: 1996 - 139 films 
• Biggest Year 2000-2009: 2006 & 2007 - 144 films each

It seems like an awful lot of movies to watch, and it is. But, it is not so out of bounds as you might think.

Here's one way to think about it: Say you are an average person, and that you rent five movies a week from your local Blockhead-Buster. You watch maybe one a night here and there, maybe skipping a night or three, and cramming a couple of films into one night. The renting of the film and the watching of it are a casual habit, something you do to cool off or something you and the wife or the kids do before bed. You don't really notice the pattern you have created; you just do it, almost by rote, sometimes with a yawn. Likewise, you never really think about how these films accumulate. You don't keep lists, and you are on what you believe is an erratic schedule, but the truth is you are averaging just over 250 films a year. 

And, in four years time, without your realizing it, you have watched over 1000 films.

Everyone has seen far more films than they think they have during their lifetime, in the same way that someone (and nearly everyone does) who insists they watch very little television is most likely lying straight through their McDonald's-fattened, hypocritical ass.

Those statistics of mine listed above, and the accomplishment of this seemingly ceaseless climb, are not so impossible. Since I tend to average over 1.5 films a day throughout the year, balancing out my low periods with massive marathons, it will probably take me a lot less time than you would surmise. After all, going by my rule of counting films I have seen up to four years ago (and this rule is basically so I can count more recent films that I have little interest in seeing this soon again), I am nearly at 15% seen already. As of this evening, since September 30th, I have watched 84 films over the past 52 days, just over the average I stated, and most of these films are on my list. Since I started four months ago, I have watched over 50 of the films in each of the years 1964, 1965 and 1966 already (less than 20 to watch in each year too), and I am well on my way there for 1967 as well. Once you get going, and just watch the films, things really get swingin'...

The worrying part of the list is the massive amount of films not on DVD at all. Where they are available online, such as on Crackle, Amazon Video on Demand (where there is nominal rental fee) or IMDb, I will take pains to watch them there. It just amazes me, since many of these are fairly acclaimed and even award-winning or at least nominated films, that they would be so absent from current view. I know it is all about commerce and what will sell, but in this day and age, where Warner Archives has started up what seems like such a noteworthy achievement in locating audiences for more obscure films (where they only commit the film to disc upon your purchase, allowing them to release many films that would normally languish in the vaults), you would think every studio would pick up on this and realize there is some solid money to be made on any film ever released.

Perhaps that is the wave of the near future, but for now, I have Turner Classic Movies at my rescue for many of them. Just tonight, I am being afforded the opportunity to see two of the films on my Not on DVD list within the project, 1964's One Potato, Two Potato and 1970's The Landlord, on TCM. This is where the importance of creating this list truly comes together for me. For many years now, I have led a fairly organic movie existence, doing what I call "The Bounce." Apart from small obsessions with certain lists of films I needed to see, for the most part, I have just let myself be led my own instincts into watching what crossed my path. It could be an article on a historical event that leads me to a filmic portrayal of the situation that leads me to another movie by the same director or star, and then when I am searching for one title I happen upon another that seems interesting, going through TV listings straight down and recording any film that might be worthwhile... etc., etc. Fairly nomadic. No real direction except in seeking out interesting films. It is "The Bounce" though, that partially got me to the point of building this Tower of Film, a need to focus on something that could potentially teach me more than the way I had been proceeding. And yet, I can still use the form of "The Bounce" to aid me in seeking out the films missing on disc. Which is how I noticed One Potato, Two Potato, which led me next to The Landlord tonight. 

The ultimate point is that I now that focus. I have, in the course of the past four months of intimacy with the list, so memorized its contents that I can see any list of films and tell you with about 80% certainty whether I need to see the film or not. And the list will not end. For as long as I am working on going through it, I am going to add to it. As I said much earlier in this ongoing piece, I might decide to add films from other festivals to it at some point. I might find another book or list with some other interesting films that I will wish to attach to the project. And, of course, as I am progressing, each new year will have to be appended. 2009 will add another 120 films or so to the project alone, and it is not out of sight to believe it could approach 6000 films before I am done.

You see, that is where I am now, deep in the throes of movie ecstasy, seeing every film released throughout my lifetime that I have ignored, not heard of, or just mocked without ever having any real knowledge about it. I will see The Last Detail at last, and I will be able to converse freely and truthfully about it. I am absolutely committed to seeing myself reach the summit of this Tower of Film ultimately.

If I stay alive, that is...

-FIN-

The 46x60 or So Project, Pt. 3: Things Start to Get a Little Wonky...

With my Tower of Film already swaying haphazardly in the skies above me, I was beginning to consider whether it was simply time to concentrate on watching the movies and writing about the experience of doing so.

But, there were still three crucial elements missing...

First, there were my DVDs. The thrust for the notion of adding my own collection from 1964 forward to the list was that, while a certain portion of films already entered into the 46x60 or So Project were also sitting on my shelves, there were a great many discs that I had purchased over the last couple of years of which I had yet to pause for a viewing. Since watching every available film in the project would allow me little time (or much in the way of interest) for watching films outside of it, the solution was to add every single film in my personal catalogue. Not only did this increase each year, on the average, by eight to twelve more films, cushioning the Project a tad more, but it would essentially force me to finally catch up on watching everything I owned.

It also led to the addition of the second crucial, missing element -- horror and science-fiction films -- to the list. Since I tend to purchase most of the films which I adore (or at least halfway like) in those genres, and since horror and science-fiction is largely ignored by the Academy except in the makeup and effects categories, this allowed me to "slum up" the list a little bit. I have to admit, it was looking awfully prestigious in there. I know the original point was to actually watch all of these films of presumed prestige which I had ignored much of my life. But, after the first couple of months of plowing through endless dramas from 1964 through 1966, one after the other, with very few comedies to break up the bluster and whining, adding my own personal faves, no matter the genre, threw a bit of a fun factor into the mix.

And this led to the purpose of the third crucial, missing element: slumming it up even more. Any overview of a cinematic yearbook is not complete without also seeing the nadir of cinematic "achievement" throughout those twelve months. Sure, the Academy is pretty good at allowing some truly egregious films get nominated, but not really as much as you would think (or snarkily wish). That's where the Golden Turkey Awards, and its one-time competitor and now leader in the field of film insult, the Golden Raspberries come into the picture. As much as I despise Michael Medved's politics and cultural whining, and as much as I don't agree with the purposes behind why he and his brother Harry included certain films within the pages of their series of books in the late '70s and early '80s about epically bad movies, I will admit that I return to them time and again to catch up on the wacky antics of directors gone loco. And overall, since they saw fit to have their readers also vote on the worst films in history, this provided a pretty solid base of rottenness on which to build.

Pretty much where the Golden Turkeys and the Medveds left off (they do overlap a few years) is where the Golden Raspberries began embracing movie horridness and took it to an even more thorough finger-pointing level, handing out their annual awards to major time- and brain-wasters to this day. (Myself, I am about one month away from joining their society myself, so I too can vote on the awards, something the Oscars don't allow. Their loss. Oh yeah, and I could attend the ceremony, as well.)

Thus, I took to the task of adding all of the nominated films for both awful movie award programs to my Tower of Film. (Granted, most of the films will be kept in the basement of the Tower, but this is pending further review. After all, I can't criticize a film without seeing it first.) It only took a couple of nights to add every single allegedly terrible movie to my list (after all, I have not seen all of them, just many of them). When completed, unloading a couple barrels of genuine trash balanced out the 46x60 or So Project so nicely, that I was finally ready to allow the contractors building the Tower of Film to go home and see their families after a long four months of construction.

And since I am actually each and every one of those "contractors," it's sad I didn't work out a decent overtime plan.

[To be concluded in Pt. 4 tomorrow...]

The 46x60 or So Project, Pt. 2: It's a Tower Built to the Heavens. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

The foundation was built, and it seemed like a decent enough place already to just skip building the new couple of floors, planting an aerial, and calling it a home. The list had already taken me about a month to create, and in my excitement, I had already started watching films in earnest. The first film I watched under the sway of this fresh delirium was 1965's Sean Connery army prison flick, The Hill, directed in truly brutal fashion by Sidney Lumet. If I had started going through the multitude of films on my list by encountering a true dud (and not one where I went in expecting vileness), I may have given up the entire project then and there. But The Hill so captured my attention that I knew straight off I had made the right choice.

But, the list itself did not seem robust enough to me. There were still films that I loved missing from the list, and films I had always wanted to see which were not appearing yet. I began to think about what was influential in the mid-60s. in the dawning of my youth, and it didn't take me long to figure out where to find a major dose of relief: the Cannes Film Festival. Yeah, yeah, ugly Americans, hate the French all you want. Myself, I don't hate them, not even for easy comedic stereotyping. I love watching their films (equally as much as I love watching films from all over the world), and I love how purely they (as a nation) used to commit themselves to cinema. And yes, there are other major film festivals out there from which I could have chosen to cull more choices for my Tower of Film, but how many are as famous or as influential for such a long time as Cannes? Unlike most other festivals, except perhaps Sundance, Cannes still makes the news every single year, perhaps more now for the antics that take place there more and more than for actual film presentation. But, Cannes still looms large in the international cultural atmosphere. And, speaking solely of a certain period in time, how can one such as I deny its mix of foreign releases from nearly every corner of the world?

It was a natural for me, and so I started adding Cannes years to the list. This took far longer than I had anticipated, considering that I tend to format as I go along and I wanted things to be as perfect as possible. (Again, that possible OCD kicking in...) Cannes added a huge amount to each year, sometimes 30-40 more films, sometimes even more. I didn't take just "in competition" films, but outside award winners, "out of competition" films, and all of the films in the multitude of Cannes' special categories of which they seem to be so fond. The list truly began to bulge to elephantine proportions, and I actually did start to worry about whether I would be able to see even half of these films in my lifetime. (More on that later...)

While I was zipping through each year of Cannes, I started another side project: queuing all of the available films up on Netflix, or marking whether I owned the films or had already seen them. Because I wanted the list to remain fresh, I had to decide on a cut-off date for where I would consider my current critical decree valid to the purposes of the list. I decided to choose the moment of my arrival from Alaska into California, which was when I started writing, reconsidering my film philosophy, and critiquing full-time: April 2005.

Any film that I had seen since that date and of which I still had decent recall could be marked as "SEEN" on the list, unless I truly wished to watch it again even in the midst of thousands of other films. (Surprisingly, in many cases, I chose to go this route, if only because it would probably be a while until I encountered them as I went through the list.) This enabled me to check off many of the films I had seen in the past four years, even in the last six months. (I chose to make the current year more of a checklist of everything I had seen within 2009, to keep it fresh and because we won't know the Oscar nominees for a couple of months yet.)

However, as I went through Netflix, looking up every single film, I ran into far more films turning out to be unavailable than I thought. Some of the missing films weren't just relative obscurities either, but Oscar nominees, and occasionally, an actual Oscar winner. And by adding the Cannes lists, largely composed of films of foreign extract (most, but not all, more popular Hollywood films tend to get shown out of competition, if they showed up at all), the problem got even worse, with each year's list (now grown to around 60-75 films per year) ending up with a range between 20-25 films per year unavailable. Not just unavailable on Netflix (which is actually surprisingly robust in its catalogue), but not even for purchase on Amazon. With so many of the foreign films not even available in their home countries, I realized that I needed to rethink my goals in this endeavor, as it was becoming very clear that a solid quarter of my ultimate list would be unattainable towards the completion of my new project.

[To be continued in The 46x60 or So Project, Pt. 3: Things Start to Get a Little Wonky...]

The 46x60 or So Project, Pt. 1: Building a Tower of Film...

I wanted focus, but the question was, "Focus on what?" I began to try and work out exactly where to begin reeducating myself in the film history of my lifetime. Do I start with a certain director and watch all of his available films straight through? It sounded good, but then I was likely to lapse into a state of cinematic paralyzation if I restricted myself to just one style without interruption, and how would I determine the best place to force an interruption if needed? How would I fit those moments into the plan? The same went for choosing one genre outside of my normal path and focusing on the landmark films within that genre. Except who was to establish what I should see within that genre? I considered focusing on stars, cinematographers with whom I have grown enamored and wished to see more of their work, even something as goofy as choosing a random key grip and then watching any film in which they were involved.

But, then it struck me... Considering my concerns regarding The Last Detail and its until-thus-far unseen ilk, it dawned on me that most of the films of which I claimed knowledge (when in fact I didn't beyond what I had read fleetingly) were released within the span of years in which I have been alive, from 1964 to the present. (Yes, I have established my age, but then that has never been a problem with me, as I always feel as if I am 22. Only an increasingly creakier 22...) What if I were to focus on watching the major films, foreign and domestic, that have been released within my lifetime? 

The reasons are three-fold. One, most of the films on which people would confront me would be of more recent vintage, so this would be a great way to capture that knowledge and be ahead of the game, or point me towards films to include in my "to-see" list when I ran into someone who mentioned something I hadn't watched. Two, it would allow me to flit about through most of the major directors and styles throughout my lifetime, without allowing myself to fall into a state of that dreaded boredom, for too long at least. Thirdly, and I was hoping most interestingly, it would allow to actually gain a large dose of cultural and political knowledge by watching films through the '60s, '70s and '80s, and perhaps increase my understanding of the shifting tides of both the American and world consciousness through these decades. (There was also a fourth, smaller reason, that didn't strike me until much later. This was seeing the evolution of the movies themselves through five decades of development, turmoil, and changing technology.)

So, I knew why, but now: what? How to determine which films to watch. The first step was easy: the Oscars. I do not believe that there is ever actually a "Best Picture" in any given year. Styles are so diverse, as are intents, and who is to ever say that a supposedly moving drama about love and loss during wartime is any more meaningful than a mere comedy that seeks to bring nothing but laughter and smiles to people's faces? That's right: simple escape is just as important. I often deride it, or at least those who only go that route, but the use of the movies as mere escape is actually quite important. It is a release for emotions and pent-up frustrations that can prove very necessary to society. Thus, I needed to build a list that gave me a fairly accurate picture of each movie year. The Academy Awards are critiqued by the masses as being not populist enough, and on the other hand, by much of the film community, as being too populist. The Oscars really cannot win in the long run. They just have to endure, and prove themselves enough of a mark of excellence to thrive.

I may not agree most of the time with the Oscar choices, but I do know that it would prove enough of a mix of the high and low to begin building my list using all of the nominees and winners for all categories from films released in 1964 forward. I created an Excel database and begin to construct my Tower of Film. At first, each year ended up working out to about 25-35 films or so, which is what I began calling the project, added a 44 at the front, representing the number of full years of my lifetime to that point. (I changed it to 46 for now, for while I have just turned the corner on 45, I am actually in my 46th year of existence. The title will remain so for a good while though. I am reluctant to change it past this point of establishment, if only out of exhaustion.)

Completing the Oscar list left me delighted with the structure of the thing -- each year neatly blocked off, films alphabetized within each year, and columns for each category, the winners in yellow -- but desperately seeking major films which I had known to have come out in a particular year, but were not to be found within their block. What to do? How to add films without making this list more personally oriented, and not neutrally enriching?

The trick was to turn it personally towards someone else: Danny Peary. Mr. Peary had written a volume in the early '90s (on which I have written before) called Alternate Oscars, which is basically his version of how each Best Picture, Actor and Actress award should have been handled from the beginning of the awards in 1927 through the year of the book's devising, 1992. Peary makes numerous interesting and brave choices, such as the great Karloff getting a Best Actor achievement for his astounding role in Val Lewton's production of The Body Snatcher in 1945. (It is a favorite of mine as well, and I agree, Karloff is exceptional in the film.) Like the Oscars, no one will ever agree with all of Peary's choices (even I don't), and many of them are based on whether he had already rewarded a certain party with an award either farther up and down the line, so it plays heavily on second and even third sight. Alternate Oscars is armchair critiquing at its top-notch best.

And so I went through his book beginning in 1964 and adding in any films not touched or dismissed by the Academy the first time around. This began to flesh out the list a tad more, but it really only added, at most, three or four films per year, if any at all. Scanning my own collection, I began to realize that what the Oscar (and Peary's list) was missing was a foreign influence. Apart from the Best Foreign Film category and the odd stray nomination elsewhere, foreign films were barely represented, with many prominent directors of my lifetime missing wholesale from the list. Since it was a few Criterion Collection discs that caused me to muse on this aspect, I decided to grab the entire Criterion list of releases, queue it up by year, and then add all of those releases from 1964 on up. This made the list bulge out a bit more, sometimes as many as seven, eight or ten films per year, though there was naturally a major drop-off from the mid-'80s to now, seeing as the company really concentrates on older films, with only a few more modern releases in the mix. I was also aware of the European version of Criterion, Masters of Cinema, and though some films were matched on both lists, it did a handful more films of great interest to me, some not released on Region 1 discs at all. (I would eventually purchase a couple of Masters of Cinema discs at Scarecrow Video in Seattle in late July. Region 2, yes, but they will play on my laptop.)

So, I now had a good fifty or so movies per year on my list, and it was looking like it might top out at around 2000 films. But it wasn't enough for me...

(To be continued in The 46x60 or So Project, Pt. 2: It's a Tower Built to the Heavens. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?)

A Preparatory Indulgence, Pt. 4: The Facts, Ma'am... (Maybe the Facts)

On the Internet Movie Database, which most of us simply refer to as IMDb (small "b", thank you) and which has largely taken on a generally accepted position as the main online resource for instant movie information, I have (to this date) rated around 5,000 movies.

Let's get this straight from this point on: I know that I am not a complete poser. Despite what happened with The Last Detail and those other films, I am very certain of my love for the movies. It's like asking if I wish to continue breathing. And I have actually seen all of the films that I have rated on IMDb. I may not have seen some of those films for over twenty years or more, but I have seen them. The difference, though, is that I actually care and consider what I am rating on the site. 

Fully aware that the way I felt about certain films in my teens, twenties and even early thirties may not be the way I feel about those films now (and even considering the fact that I might have nothing left of the memory of the seeing of a certain film except for my love, hate or boredom with it at the time), I have taken great pains in recent months to amend these ratings to fit my current state, but only by freshly viewing the films in question. While it is not of any importance to any other person but myself, it is the way that I have to tackle things to keep my sense of critical opinion as pure as I can, given the fact that I am as deficient and as prone to posturing and wrongheadedness as anybody else.

The one constant in my life of misspent youth, careless education, menial employment, and suffocated relationships has been my love of movies. The movie theatre has always proven to be the only acceptable form of a "church" to me. I don't require religion in my life, but it doesn't mean that I didn't spend a certain portion of my teens trying to figure out where I fit into the system in which everyone else was so willing to switch to lock-step every Sunday to enter. Combine my youthful wandering with my early love for movies, and is it any wonder that the only times that any socially accepted church really reached me in any way was when I took in various viewings of The Cross and the Switchblade and The Greatest Story Ever Told inside churches? (OK, it was also to make out with girls in the church pews. Hardly watched the films in two instances...)

And so it has gone. It doesn't really matter where the experience takes place, though I prefer a legitimate theatre. The flicker of the movie image, the darkness of the room, the comfort (or charming discomfort) of the seats, the smell of popcorn, the shared community... all of the standard cliches of why one loves going to movies also apply to me -- call it my one true moment of conformity -- and there is nothing for me to trade for the experience. I long to see movies everywhere, in any setting. Anywhere Sam-I-Am would not eat green eggs and ham is where I would watch a movie. Even on a vacation that has been solely designed for me to partake of an area's distinct pleasures, my first thought is of seeing a movie at some point while I am there. The movie theatre is where I always long to be, and for this statement, there can be no pose. It is where I meditate. It is where I can truly think through problems. It is where I need to be. It is where I am truly me.

Perhaps you see my movie adoration as too romantic. Well, if I must prove romantic in some small measure, then this is it. Personally, I view this stance as more theological, maybe even personally political. Regardless, what I know is that I am a movie fan. Of that, I can be certain, and my motto of "Any film, any time" is also a true statement, at least to the degree that I can follow through on it by financial means and via my ability to reach the location in question at the proposed time.

But, if I know who I am, why did I get all flustered over my reaction to not having seen The Last Detail (and those other films)? If I just kept to my occasional pose in those situations, aren't I the only one to know of my infrequent deception?

That is precisely the problem: for most of my life, I have simply been deceiving myself. Maybe even all the time.

Worse, to a large degree, I have drowned myself in sewage, and never really taken advantage of the full breadth that the cinematic world can offer me. I have resigned myself to the film ghettoes for so long, that I have forgotten how wide-ranging and interesting the total film experience can be. See only wide-release films, and you will only have a wide-release history and knowledge of movies. Keep to watching only slasher movies, and your ability to dissect films of deeper intent with the same casual ease of a killer's butcher knife through a victim's flesh will be met only with struggle and the eventual rending of true understanding. It's the equivalent of only keeping to beach reading, but never approaching the literary canon. While I have made exposed myself to and studied films throughout my life, it has only been through the keeping of company with very particular directors: Hitchcock, Lang, Kurosawa, Powell and Pressburger, Welles... But there are so many more worthy of deeper study and appreciation, beyond seeing one of their films and calling myself done. There is a broader, film education waiting out there for me, of which I thus far largely chosen to neglect myself. The first step is to watch the films. The second is to understand them.

I have friends who only go to the movies to do what they term as "escape," an overused term, to be sure, but it is the way I have heard it phrased. Get off work, "need to not think for a while," go to any stupid film that weekend... that is the relationship that the bulk of people have with the movies. It is a night out with friends, a wife, a date, a lover... nothing more. Dinner, a movie, and then... come what may... return again next weekend unblinkingly and machine-like to the next wide-release movie...

I, too, have walked the path of shared ritual as regards the movie experience. I love going to new movies, too, but I never call it escape. Never. I cannot shut off the brain, even when watching Friday the 13th, Part Eleventy-Thousand: Jason Gets A Hysterectomy. (Believe me, they will find a way...) My need to not simply watch, but to ascertain and critique, extends to my home movie ritual, where the DVD player almost never seems to stop whirring. And lately, whirring non-stop without any true focus.

And it this inability to simply watch a bunch of dopey After Dark horror films (in the same manner that I just fervently watched thirteen dopey horror films over the Halloween weekend) and discovering nothing but ennui over the idea of continuing through the series, combined with my anger over the collected lies of my reactions to simple conversational movie repartee, which led me to moment a few months ago for which metaphors concerning holes and digging were created. This point in time saw me finally get a grip on all of these issues, and brought about the establishment of "The 46x60 or So" project, involving the creation of a massive (and ever-growing) list, and a new sense of purpose guiding me through the movie landscape.

[To be continued in The 46x60 or So Project, Pt. 1: Building a Tower of Film...]

A Brief Interlude Concerning the Most Recent Halloween

Sure, a couple of days ago, I wrote about the theory that I might not actually be a horror fan anymore. For those watching me struggle with self-doubt here this week, please remember that this is all building to something. A point, if you must have a more definite term. It is really about a refocusing of purpose on my part, on shifting my attentions to a larger, more educational goal for myself regarding film.

It has never really been about whether or not I actually like horror films anymore, because I do. It is hard to enter the Halloween weekend and not watch monster movies when one has the collection of films that I do. In fact, this weekend, I ended up zipping through thirteen of the little buggers, mainly because I purposefully kept Halloween small, private and at home this year.

Not that I didn't make an attempt to make it broader and more public. I bought a pumpkin well over four weeks ago, but as of tonight, it is still sitting in the center of our dining table, uncarved and merely autumnal. (Pumpkins will last for a good while when not laid into and gutted with a knife.) Jen and I tried to hit the Disney Halloween fireworks on Wednesday (our only night to afford this opportunity to the both of us this week), but they were cancelled due to the winds. Likewise, our attempt to hit the Haunted Mansion was blocked by a two-hour waiting line. (I had tried to ride the Halloween refit of Space Mountain a few weeks back, but the ride kept breaking down, thus forcing Jen's brother Ben and myself out of line until we got sick of waiting. We did hit the Mansion then, though.)

I bought candy, but for the first time since I moved here, there were no trick-and-treaters mucking about last night. Not a single knock on either our door or any doors adjacent to us. Not a single bark out of our girls, who usually go crazy during Halloween (and love greeting the various monsters, superheroes and princesses that arrive at our door). And without any parties to attend, it is a perfectly quiet and DVD-laden weekend for me. I dug in early on Saturday (I wake up at 5 a.m., regardless of the day), and started in on the stack of films I had put together for the event.

For those who care about such things (like myself), this is the list of nine films I went through on Saturday. You might notice that there are numerous films from 1964 and 1965 on the full list of films from this weekend, over half of them in fact. The reasons for this will become obvious in a few days as I elaborate more on my current theme:

1. Zaat (1975/1972) Dir.: Don Barton // Cinema 4 rating: 3 // TCM Underground
2. Swamp Thing (1982) Dir.: Wes Craven // Cinema 4 rating: 4 // TCM Underground
3. The Last Man on Earth (1964) Dir.: Sidney Salkow // Cinema 4 rating: 5 // DVD
4. Planet of the Vampires [Terrore nello spazio] (1965) Dir.: Mario Bava // Cinema 4 rating: 7 // DVD
5. Die, Monster, Die! (1965) Dir.: Daniel Haller // Cinema 4 rating: 4 // DVD
6. Nightmare (1964) Dir.: Freddie Francis // Cinema 4 rating: 6 // DVD
7. The Tomb of Ligeia (1965) Dir.: Roger Corman // Cinema 4 rating: 7 // DVD
8. Murders in the Zoo (1933) Dir.: A. Edward Sutherland // Cinema 4 rating: 6 // TCM
9. Circus of Horrors (1960) Dir.: Sidney Hayers // Cinema 4 rating: 6 // TCM

And here are the films I watched today on this "hair of the dog" post-Halloween, "extra hour of sleep" Sunday:

10. Midnight Movie (2008) Dir.: Jack Messitt // Cinema 4 rating: 4 // Showtime
11. Killer Movie (2008) Dir: Jeff Fisher // Cinema 4 rating: 5 // Showtime
12. The Skull (1965) Dir.: Freddie Francis // Cinema 4 rating: 6 // DVD
13. War Gods of the Deep (aka City Under the Sea) (1965) Dir.: Jacques Tourneur // Cinema 4 rating: 4 // DVD

Sheesh! All this, and I also managed to watch two World Series games, the first game of the MLS Playoff pairing between the Los Angeles Galaxy and CD Chivas USA (the second game of which I will be attending live next Sunday), keep half an eye on the Vikings-Packers game, watched the new episodes of Dexter and Californication (Jen doesn't watch these shows, so I was able to rip through them tonight -- Mad Men, however, will have to wait until Tuesday), reread half of David Skal's horror cultural history "The Monster Show," and wrote just under 5,000 words.

And yet, I still couldn't find time to carve that pumpkin. Must be slacking off in my halfway-to-dotage.

Hope you all had a monstrous Halloween as well.

A Preparatory Indulgence, Pt. 3: Oh yeah, that's a really good one...

I was lost in a cinematic un-wilderness of my own creation, so I threw myself into senseless social networking in order to run away from the painful notion that I was not really a horror fan anymore.

And then someone brought about the added notion that perhaps I wasn't even a movie fan at all.

It wasn't intentional on the other person's part. It was merely a simple question that led me to this state: "Surely, you've seen The Last Detail?"

For those out there who have never seen The Last Detail, it is an Oscar-nominated 1973 film directed by Hal Ashby and starring Jack Nicholson and Randy Quaid, in which two MPs show a naval prisoner one last good time before they escort him to prison for what they consider to be an unfair sentence.

And no, I have never actually seen it. Never more than twenty minutes or so of it, and actually, what I had seen was the ending of the film when I ran into on cable by mistake. "What's this? Oh, it's Jack Nicholson with a properly folded Gilligan hat. Must be The Last Detail." I knew of the film. I just had not seen it all the way through.

But what I said to this person was, "Oh, yeah, that's a really good one. Nicholson... Quaid... Great film!"

What I was not prepared for was their followup, which began, "Well, you know that scene where they...," at which point I blanked out, because I knew then I had committed myself to a series of nods, grunts, more mutterings of "oh yeah," and the eventual admittance that "it had really been a long time since I had seen it, so I really don't remember the details of The Last Detail that well." I then sell the wimpy pun on the title with a self-amused chuckle, and then we start to riff on further puns on the word "detail" or of a naval variety, and the moment gets lost in the haze of mid-afternoon buffoonery. I crawled out of the wreckage of poor conversation once more, but this time, there was scarring. Luckily, though, there was also a form of resolution at hand.

We have all performed this little act -- pretending to have seen something we haven't -- whether you wish to admit it or not. Ofttimes it is used to keep the conversation moving, such as when one does not wish to keep talking to that person any longer than one has to, or especially in party situations when someone has just been introduced to you, and you'd much rather move on to the cute girl over there rather than keep speaking to the boring movie ponce directly in front of you. (And, ofttimes, I am that boring movie ponce... but we all reside on both sides of this fence.) And many times, it is just used to keep the peace: "Sure, I've seen that!" Assimilation, conformity, or just getting through another spirit-crushing workday... call if what you will. But we all have done it at some time or another. No harm, no foul. Little white lies to keep the small talk small.

And experience in this area should have better prepared me for the follow-up that seems to arrive about six times out of ten, that bit with the scene in question. Despite knowing this query will arrive at some point more often than not, you think I could have a better answer in reserve than, "Oh, yeah, well, er, um, yeah... isn't that the bit where they... (throw in whatever scene you might happen to know is in the film)?"

The actual bit with The Last Detail wouldn't have bothered me so much if it hadn't come so quickly on the heels of three other inquiries (from at least two other sources in addition to the fellow above) as to whether I had seen a particular film or not. Save the Tiger, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and A Guide for the Married Man had all whacked me full in the face in the months previous to this question, and I was already smarting pretty badly. I've never gotten near seeing Save the Tiger, despite the fact that I love Jack Lemmon and it is one of his pair of Oscar-winning performances. For years, I saw a copy of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz sitting on the shelf at Video City, and just couldn't get past what I perceived to be an annoyingly pretentious title. I just passed by the cover time and again, thinking about renting it because back then Richard Dreyfuss was still interesting to watch, and then choosing something more along the lines of Hell Night or Graduation Day instead, solely because they were horror movies and there might be a good chance that I could see tits in one of those.

And A Guide for the Married Man? I ran into it on cable all the time, and I had considered watching it because of Walter Matthau, but seeing just a couple of minutes triggers my "Sixties Defense": an automatically triggered, impenetrable shield that drops down about me anytime I am confronted by what appears to be cheesiness from the '60s and early '70s. Beehive hairdos, too much fringe, gorillas on motorcycles, a preponderance of non-ironic hippie behavior, extended go-go or cocktail party sequences, pornstar-style mustaches, shag carpeting, lapels that are far too wide, Ali McGraw... these are all triggers for my Sixties Defense, though there are many more items that can do it. (I suppose it needs a better name, since that same mood -- and Ali McGraw -- also spills over the '70s.)

It's odd that this arose in me, especially given that I was born in 1964, and the last time I checked, I lived through both of those decades. Clearly, this defense mode developed out of a need to blind myself to the times in which I was raised. Perhaps it was also a side effect extending from my parents' divorce and my general unhappiness. And such a defense mode really doesn't make sense when you consider that there are so many films from those decades that I love very much. But, when you examine the films, it becomes obvious. Most of the ones I do love from that time don't take place in those times. Westerns, science fiction, historical epics; if any details from the times in which they were created slipped in, I seem to have been able to chalk it up to casual sloppiness. Hardly any films from that era outside of the aforementioned genres, though, that took place at the time of their making, show up on my "love" list, except maybe Dog Day Afternoon and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

There are always exceptions to any self-imposed rule. We are all hypocrites on some level here and there. Horror movies, though, were different. I loved so many of the '70s horror films, and yes, they tended to be more modern, but the beauty was that the defense was built right into them. It didn't matter what people wore or how they did their hair or how their apartments were decorated or how many hippies showed up... they would all most likely die within the framework of the film. Perfect. Even though my love for horror began with Hammer, Universal and AIP, once I began to grow up a bit and was able to watch them, the '70s suddenly became a more interesting decade to me, but only through the horror lens.

Then again, personal evolution has always been what I am about, and it has been my major theme since I moved to California. It had been dawning on me for a while that perhaps it was time to put away some of the pastimes of childhood -- the monsters, the aliens, the gore -- for a little while, at least, and evolve just a tad more in the cinema department. And the negative obsessions as well. It was time to put away the "Sixties Defense" and finally confront all of the films from my youth that I have spent most of my life avoiding, which has only resulted in creating ego-shattering moments like the one involving The Last Detail.

My life has been filled with small attempts at expanding my horizons. Why not make a major one, and finally research all of these filmmakers from the '60s and '70s, people within the framework of my lifetime, that I have largely dismissed? Sure, I have never shied away from a Truffaut, Godard or Kurosawa film -- I have always quite liked foreign films of any type, just to make myself believe even for a moment that I was more cultured than I actually am. It's for the same reason you occasionally hit a museum and stare at paintings that you have no hope of ever understanding, at least not without a little research and practice. Despite being fully aware of your intellectual limitations, you still convince yourself of your artistic sensitivity.

As an example, I own and have read an entire biography on Rainier Werner Fassbinder, the German director who fiercely burned through the '70s like no other (or so I read), and yet I have only seen one of his films. Why have I not followed up on this? If I found his life interesting enough to read about for a whole week, why would I not seek out his films, even though they are all so readily available for rental? Why have I always had this block on pursuing avenues where I could actually learn something about quality filmmaking, and instead crawl back into my comfortable hole full of familiar demons, killers and monsters? As I said, I make small attempts at breaking out and expanding my view. Why can't I make the transition stick?

People tend to think of me as a bona fide movie nut, but sometimes, I am more sure of the nutty part and not so much on the supposed realm of my expertise. So, am I a poser?

It is a daunting question, and a hard one for people to actually ask of themselves. Who wants to expose themselves to ridicule purposefully? Isn't life hard enough to get through? Isn't dealing with other people, even your friends, family and neighbors, already enough of a mindfuck than to openly invite everyone to see that you might not be what you have served yourself up to be all along?

And isn't this what we all do on the internet now anyway?

(To be continued in A Preparatory Indulgence, Pt. 4...)

A Preparatory Indulgence, Pt. 2: When 8 Films Turn Out to Actually Make You Die of Boredom

Earlier this year, while already consumed with crawling along on the paths of numerous subsets of film obsession -- such as watching every movie in The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film (still ongoing throughout my life) -- I took it upon myself to start watching all of the films released in the annual 8 Films to Die For festival, three years worth up to then and all of them easily obtainable on DVD. I had lined up all 24 DVDs in my Netflix queue, and the future held the promise of a few solid, blood-bedecked weeks of what seemed at first glance like good, gory bloodletting. 

Somewhere about seven films into the list, I realized that there was little here for which "to die," unless it was out of sheer ennui. You see, I entered into this latest round of compulsion still believing that I was a horror fan.

Let me qualify that statement. While my motto throughout my life has been "any film, any time," the twin poles of my movie obsession have been horror and science-fiction, even better when the twain did meet, as in The Thing (either version). Sure, I liked films in all genres, but it didn't take much more than the swiftest glance at my personal collection and the preponderance of horror and sci-fi titles within it to know where my heart truly lies. I will not use the past tense here, as the proposal is still largely true: my heart still lies with those monsters and aliens and the glory of nature gone amok, and I freely admit that I always, without exception, root against mankind (the center of all actual villainy) in all films of this stripe. These feelings have held unswervingly true throughout my life.

I will lay to rest here the recent revisiting of the rumors (from a pair of those old "acquaintances" I mentioned in Part 1) that I was anyway involved in the creation of the notorious "gore" tapes that flitted about our high school in the early 1980s, causing people to dash the eyes from out of their faces, sending innocent children to the sanitarium for the remainder of their youth, and bringing peace without honor. I would love to admit that I was involved in compiling those crudely transferred collections of graphic horror movie scenes (and I wish I still had a copy), but our family didn't even own a second VCR (ask your parents) until deep into my senior year of school. The closest I got was hanging out with the real culprits from time to time, once even popping by when they were finishing a tape. It was certainly true that I had seen all of the same films from which they had culled their teenaged notoriety, but, it wasn't me acting in that particular capacity as a horror propagandist, though I wish I could take credit for upsetting the (meager) masses in said manner.

However, I was around for this, and it is not for nothing that my friends bestowed upon me the nickname of "The Boogieman." I was, then as now, an obsessive sort, and I was clearly possessed of something which caused me to forge an alliance with films of a more disturbed nature. Truthfully, though, I always leaned towards the more surreal and political of these films, and less towards the merely violent, and once I discovered Lynch and Cronenberg (who are actually filmmakers working at cross measures much of the time, but somehow occupying enough similar territory to make me pair them in my mind)... well, once I met them, my interest in the more generic realm of undying serial killers and their pathetic ilk pretty much waned forever.

And this is how I have spent the last 25 years of horror fandom. I buy the toys, put up the posters, and consider myself a devotee, but the pickings have been truly slim, if not almost entirely devoid of quality of late, despite the fact that there are more horror films available now than ever before. With the flood of releases comes even more dross washing up on a shore already shockingly polluted with the corpses of unimpressive, would-be franchises. I have always considered myself happy if I find at least three or four films per year that I even halfway like, and the fact that I have stuck around this long into the "aughts" still maintaining this posture proves my resistance to change (though massive change is exactly what I have attempted to enact in my personal life since I left my home four-plus years ago).

For me, a form of the proof lies in my fairly vast DVD collection, numbering just over 1500 titles at the present moment. I can't wait to leap at films that I even slightly liked in some measure and add them to my library. So, if you want proof of my wearying of the recent history of the horror genre, what doesn't make it onto my shelves at home is a fairly good measure of my displeasure. Look for horror films in this decade alone, and you will find relatively few: The Descent, Let the Right One In, High Tension, Cabin Fever, Ginger Snaps, about a half dozen J-horror titles... and that's it. (And the pickings are actually even worse for the '90s in my collection.) This might point to a resurgence in quality in the last few years, but that is a debate for another time and place.

In fact, this really does not prove anything about the quality available in any decade, since it really comes down to personal taste and opinion. What it actually does prove is that, when compared with the large amounts of horror films I have considered worthwhile and accumulated from the 1920s forward in my collection, it is clear that my interest in the genre has truly waned by this point. Even a series that was considered as groundbreaking as Saw (a ridiculous notion at this point in the already worn-out series) left me cold from the start. I began to appreciate the effort more on a second viewing, and I have always understood the mechanism behind it, but my lack of a need to see people tortured mercilessly (or at least without a real fighting chance) left that new sub-genre in the dust for me from point one. It is not surprising to me that our country is so willing to entertain at least the discussion of what actually constitutes torture, when we are so willing to accept it as entertainment at a level even farther below the normal gladiatorial means by which many in our society mentally masturbate.

So, clearly, given the current choices and atmosphere, I have become largely immune to the current "charms" of a genre which I once purported to love. Bringing us back to the recent past of just about six months ago, where I was musing on whether to continue renting the films in the 8 Films to Die For series. I had bolted through about a half dozen in a week, during which I only discovered one, Mulberry St., which proved even halfway interesting to me. Worst of all was receiving a major dose of the generic quality that has overtaken supposedly "edgy" filmmaking. When everything takes on the pose of being "edgy" or "extreme," without any discernible variation from product to product, then it merely begins to look like everything else. It loses its edge, and becomes the mainstream. And so it can go with any movie genre in which one immerses oneself: there is the chance that repeated overexposure dulls ones reactions to it. Much like porn, where some practitioners have to seek ever more bizarre or socially unacceptable avenues to maintain that "edge."

I yelled out, "Why do I keep renting these boring pieces of shit?!" This frightened my dogs far more than even a split second of any six of these films had, and out of a knee-jerk reaction, I deleted about fifty horror and science-fiction films of recent vintage I had lined up on my Netflix queue. I knew I was bound to add them back in eventually, but it seemed like a strong stance at the moment. I was caped in anger and proud of myself for finally shaking off this compulsion, even as I was wrestling with every atom of my being out of a sense of betrayal to my lifelong standards.

And then I ended up not watching a single film for about two weeks, exactly the point in time when I began to immerse myself in Twitter and Facebook again.

And then my mood got even worse...

(To be continued in A Preparatory Indulgence, Pt. 3...)

A Preparatory Indulgence, Pt. 1: I've Been Here, I've Been Working on Something, and There Is No Problem

The title above holds the answers to the questions most often asked of me over the past couple of months, during which time it seems I have taken some form of hiatus, purposeful or otherwise, from the Cinema 4 Pylon: "Where have you been?" "What the hell are you up to? You haven't been writing lately." "What's the problem now? Are you in another one of your funks?" Emails, phone calls, up close and personal... this is what I have heard, and not just from the usual suspects.

It's funny how you can write and write and write your ass off, and only a couple of committed, caring friends (and the odd stranger or two) will comment here and there, and you will begin to feel as if you were just another voice lost in the uncaring wilderness of the internet.

But, take an uncharacteristic amount of time away from something that people have locked you into their minds as being the sum of your being, and they begin to notice. Lately, I have received batches of concerned emails relating to this topic, along with a few comments on old posts to which I didn't bother to respond, and even Twitter messages from people with whom I am only lightly acquainted who have at least wondered where all the movie review tweets have gone.

This is all very nice, and I appreciate that some people have noticed my disappearance from the online world. But, here's what I thought was the truth: as of early September, I had grown sick of the internet.

After a few short months of testing, I came to believe that Twitter was essentially useless as a real communication tool, and rather just the latest and possibly worst form of networking pollution -- chiefly mindless blather trying to out-shriek the rest of the chiefly mindless blather, much of it scrubbed of context and therefore lacking any real impact. Facebook had become unmanageable to me once I reconnected with dozens of people from the past that I never really knew anyway. A precious few are grand old friends with whom I am glad to refresh our acquaintance, but then they throw their friends from the old days at you, and they don't realize (and often get hurt when they find out) that you really have no wish to know those other "old friends" anymore. Largely, this is because you never liked them in the first place (and most likely, they never liked you either). Worst of all, for weeks I dreaded opening my email accounts for fear of actually having to communicate with anyone. And when I did answer, I found, because I had not been paying very close attention to the run of things on the internet, that it would most likely would have been better had I not ever replied to anything at all. I had taken myself out of the loop, and even considering playing the slightest bit of catch-up had become both loathsome and monumentally difficult for me.

And so, for the most part, I disappeared online. A couple of email replies here and there kept the dread going; a mere handful of tweets throughout September and October showed that I was fighting whatever this creeping malaise happened to be. There were even brief moments where I tried to push back at it, and announced boldly m return to online life. (Well, if you can call saying anything in the cavernous depths of either Twitter or Facebook saying being truly bold -- which neither action is.) And while it is fun to think that perhaps this mood is merely just another syndrome amongst the thousands either identified or created to help us inch our way through the modern world -- let's throw a charming acronym or a smartly dressed abbreviation at it! -- the fact is that my attention has been diverted, and interacting online with the electronic world of faceless others has simply not been shown to be important enough to wash away the impression that I have disappeared.

But I have been around, and I have been busy, quite busy. Indeed, I have been quite deeply engaged for two to three months now. While I have been writing to some small degree, that activity has not been on anything to which this website directly relates, and it has not been the center of my attention. Writing is still the most important thing to me, and will prove to be the ultimate beneficiary of what I have been up to over the last two months. In fact, you could call my efforts "research" to the largest degree, or rather, a preparatory indulgence. What I have been doing will likely seem idiotic to some and markedly obsessive to all, but those who have similar addictions to the world of the cinema, those who feel lost within their own personal realms, and even anyone even the tiniest bit OCD will fully understand. (Yea, modern syndromes!)

To fully impart the madness into which I locked myself through the lateness of summer, though, I should divulge what led me to this point...

(To be continued in A Preparatory Indulgence, Pt. 2...)

Where could Rik Tod be? Why isn't he at the Cinema 4 Pylon?

Hmmm... sorry I can't be here at the Pylon on my birthday, or even at my normally scheduled appointment with corporate slavery.

I have a date with a certain exposition called D23 at the Anaheim Convention Center. Might even be seeing an exclusive preview of the new Tron movie, along with watching the original film. Might even get to see a screening of the new Walt and El Grupo documentary, or sift through 85-plus years of Disney-related ephemera and original drawings and the like.

Or I might be banging Daisy Duck. She does have that tail action going...

Happy Birthday to Me!

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 11 of 11: "Exquisite Corpse" Drawings 3 & 4

Here's the final post of this series, featuring the other pair of "Exquisite Corpse" drawings done by my brothers Mark and Chris:


I remember my brother Chris was quite amused by the fact that with the Monster Dance Party he had drawn his image going off the page rather than into it. As a result, the drawings are going in opposite directions. Usually the practice is to carry the action towards the next possible drawing.

You will note that this final picture is different from the rest in that, instead of the paper being halved and then drawn on each opposite side, this time it was folded twice, so that there are four separate drawings, two each by my brothers:


Again, I will leave it to Br'er Mark to add his notes in the comment section. All I know is that I love these.

Thanks for the very few comments we have received on these. I hope that while most of you were not reading these posts you were out having a shitty time. We had a ball playing these games, and we were only hoping to share in the experience, and perhaps even get a couple of people to pass the game on or play with us. At least a couple of you got it.

The Cinema 4 Pylon now returns to its regularly scheduled programming...

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 10 of 11: "Exquisite Corpse" Drawings 1 & 2

For the last two posts of this series, I am going to say very little, and let these combined drawings by my brothers Mark and Chris do most of the talking:

Pretty sweet. I love the randomness of their imagery, and how the two separate pieces play off each other in unexpected ways. I am uncertain of the order in which my brothers created all four of these pieces, so please check the comments below. I am fairly certain Mark will provide some notes on their process, and his continued memories of the experience.

Also, if you want to do your own experimenting, please see my first post in this series for instructions on how to do it, or look up "Exquisite Corpse" on Wikipedia. (You can even learn why the game is called by that name, or even how there is a reference to the game in Hedwig and the Angry Inch...)

[The final post will appear in a couple of days, and then the Cinema 4 Pylon will close the art gallery and begin its regularly scheduled movie griping again...]

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 9 of 11: "Bugs" Gone Awry, or References Only Brandon Lawrence Would Appreciate...

I suppose that having eight out of the nine comic pages we created in our road trip drawing experiment come out even halfway readable/enjoyable should be enough. That's a pretty good batting average (for the record, .889 rounded up, baseball card-style). This one, which I shall not even finish giving a complete (or even pun-filled) title out of my exhaustion and frustration with the page, just simply did not work.

Here's the strip, and then we shall discuss:


See? It's sad it didn't work out, because this was the other strip in which we involved my nephew Aerin at the beginning (see the last post). His drawings adorn the first couple of panels, and it starts off with a decent enough premise. But, things went awry with "Bugs" quickly. It just never gets any of that "oomph" going... and then I made the fatal mistake.

I slipped in one of my left-field references -- not so much arcane, but merely aged in variety -- this time to an old vaudeville routine that was popularized in different incarnations by The Three Stooges, Abbott and Costello and many others, often called "Niagara Falls" or "Slowly I Turned, Inch by Inch" or other titles. Personally, I know it as "The Susquehanna Hat Company," being more up on one Bud & Lou movie version than Larry, Moe and Curly's famous one. (Bud and Lou did it several times, including a "Niagara Falls" version on TV.)

So, I worked the reference in, but there were no takers. My brother didn't pick up on it, and I couldn't help him with it, or really elaborate on it until he was done with the panels. Thus, the doom of the strip had been spelled out. I closed it desperately with another reference to the skit, and this was after about an hour or so of staring blankly at the final drawing in the last panel, longing for inspiration. But, none ever came. I resorted to a fall-back plan of little distinction, and so we had the first abject failure of our experiment.

And, since I cannot stop with the references sometimes, somewhere Chico Marx is saying "I abject!" Or, at least I wish he would...

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 8 of 11: Puppet Snarkiness

There was a certain inevitability to my nephew Aerin getting involved with our surrealist comic experiments. The kid may only be eight, but he draws up a storm. There are even times when it seems like he never stops drawing. Well, when he's not reading or playing with toys or building with Legos or all the other things that kids do. (These are also all things that, admittedly, his dad and uncles also continue to do despite, or because of, their ever-increasing dotage.)

We didn't even really need to persuade him much. All you have to do, in most cases, is draw anything, and Aerin will want to draw along with you. He was more than a little distracted, though, on our road trip with his own drawings to really get involved until we had already started over a half-dozen strips. But, soon enough, there was a lull in the overall activity, and so he and I were soon starting a strip. I took what he was probably thinking as a couple of mice atop a fence to be a pair of puppets and leaped off from there. However, the dear boy lost interest in the process soon enough, and the rest of the drawings past the first three panels were completed by his dad Mark and his Uncle Chris.

I think this one actually worked out rather well, and didn't go too far astride of what was set up in the beginning. This is not necessarily a good thing when the original point is for things to get as wacky as possible. But, sometimes I like it when things work out logically despite the scenario or the looming possibility of a complete trainwreck. (You will see an example of this form of failure when I post, in a couple of days, the final strip we completed on our trip.)

Personally, I love the stances of the mice in the fourth panel, but I truly adore the way the second mouse flashes the chocolate starfish at the puppeteer in Panel #7. I wasn't expecting it at all, and I laughed like mad. And I have, as a notoriously evil puppeteer myself, always enjoyed the notion of puppets rising up to critique their own "master." This might even reflect my overall views towards authority in general, perhaps even the way that I also have to keep myself riled, even just a bit, at whatever management holds the keys to my own employ, even if I actually like most of them and have respect for their overall practices.

While I don't wish to always be the puppet that I fully recognize that I am, I at least, while filling that role, wish to be the puppet that has just enough rebellion in him to poke his oppressors in the eye when they don't expect it, and to be able to summon up just enough voice of my own to tell them they suck. And they stink. And it is very likely that I will always remain just that...

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 7 of 11: The Legion of Something-Heroes

[Edited 8/28/09, 10:00 pm]

Here we have yet another comic where things just went gonzo from panel one onward... what else will happen when you are confronted with a supposed superhero (or villain) wearing what appear to be oven mitts on his hands?

From brother Mark's opening panel, I went with the idea that this Hungryman guy (notice the trademarks on each hero name throughout) was sort of the spiritual counterpart to the real Legion of Super-Heroes' ridiculous but lovable Matter-Eater Lad. The idea is that he cooks constantly for the Legion rather eats everything in sight. I'm glad we didn't go with any true Legion members here, creating what could be another chapter of their Substitute Heroes wing (also a ridiculous concept -- why segregate potential, helpful heroes into a lesser subdivision? Seems like a breeding ground for villainy). We never learn the names of a couple of them... the crab guy -- who seems like a stand-in for Chameleon Boy -- and the weasel thing that constantly drools over Twin Zeppelins' breasts. I told my brothers that the weasel thing reminded me of the one that hounded Foghorn Leghorn ("Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah...!" SLURP!) My favorite memory of doing this one was hearing brother Chris bust up over the names "Pail Rider" and "Twin Zeppelins." That truly warmed my heart.

Yes, you can perhaps parse from the above paragraph that I did some time as a Legion of Super-Heroes fan in the past. In fact, I still consider myself a fan, though I haven't read them since the mid-Keith Giffen days. My main experience, as it is with my brothers, is from the early, early Legion stories from Superboy, reprints of which we had around the house as kids. The Dave Cockrum run was where I learned to love them (I was chiefly in love with Shadow Lass and Princess Projectra, or rather, their lack of costumes). The cleavage that ran rampant in the more revealing costumes in Cockrum's run was perhaps why I took to naming our Twin Zeppelins heroine as if she were a new version of Duo Damsel, who also became hotter in the '70s than she had been previously (even as Triplicate Girl, a male fantasy run amok right there). However, how we got her boobs to talk, I don't know...

Here is comic #7, titled "Legion of Something-Heroes." Sequel?