Special Agent Dale Cooper

I’ve never said this before, and I expect to never say it again, but: I can’t wait to see this goddamn awesome-looking stoner movie.  (Yeah I know this “news” is old as dirt.  fuckit.)

Diane,

Yep, it’s crucify Will Smith time.  (We love that time almost as much as we love Thursday night spaghetti madness.)

Will Smith has a lot going for him.  He’s charismatic, he can act (”Ali” proved it, if it accomplished little else), he’s not an awful musician, and he’s preternaturally good-looking.  Not only that, but he’s an old-fasioned Entertainer of the most noble kind.  Every time you see Will Smith doing anything, it seems designed to make you at least a little bit happier.  Will Smith pushed “Independence Day” from intolerable hokum to mildly amusing pap, and pushed a sitcom into endless syndication through sheer force of personality (because trust me, nothing else in “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” was going to do it).  And on top of that, he seems to have an actual artistic inclination.  How else to explain his recent string of movie choices: “Ali,” “The Pursuit of Happyness,” “I Am Legend,” and now “Hancock”?

The trouble is, the people he’s working with keep missing the mark.  Wildly.

“Hancock” follows in the footsteps of “I Am Legend” by giving us a different Will Smith, a guy digging in and finding a performance other than the semi-iconic one from “Men in Black” that he could profitably repeat for the next 30 years if he wanted.  “I Am Legend” gave us a soulful, mournful Will Smith with almost no jokes and a lot of “last of my kind” angst.  “Hancock” gives us a kind of darkly comedic twist on the same thing; Smith’s Hancock* drinks and possibly snorts coke and causes huge whirlwinds of catastrophe wherever he goes, but he’s also rogueishly charming and gets off a few good wisecracks, like this one:

Random woman at the scene of a Hancock-caused train wreck: You smell like liquor!

Hancock: Bitch, I’ve been drinking!

It’s so anti-clever that it’s almost clever.  And Smith delivers the line with exactly the right go-fuck-yourself insouciance. 

But just like “I Am Legend,” “Hancock” lets Smith down.  It takes a bold creative choice - a demythologizing approach to the hero pic that we might have been comparing to what “Unforgiven” did to the Western, or what Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight” did to, er, heroes - and swiftly discards it in favor of what the creative team clearly saw as a crowd-pleasing, blockbuster ending.  The second half is nothing but convoluted backstory mixed with bad plotting and the sacrifice of everything interesting about the main character.  By the time Hancock is predictably surviving the attack that should have killed him and (sort of) sacrificing himself to save the woman he (sort of) loves, the surly drunk of the opening scenes is long gone - and it turns out he took everything interesting about the movie with him.  It reminds me of the disappointment I felt when “I Am Legend” funneled into a predictable action/horror showdown at the end, except that lasted just a few minutes; “Hancock” goes off the rails halfway through.

What Smith needs is to follow his instincts the rest of the way.  He’s clearly drawn to interesting material and potentially career-altering concepts, and doesn’t want to keep recycling the lighter-than-air parts that made him such a bankable movie star.  But he also just as clearly is working with people that don’t share his goals, and that want to ensure that their $100 million investments are recouped with interest at the box office.  The solution?  Dump the star salary, dump the grossly over-sized budgets and nail-chewing producers (”Do we put Hancock on a McDonald’s cup, or Burger King?  Which one plays better?”), and team up with a true maverick.  How about an ”I Am Legend” made for half the budget, with no CGI, and directed by George Romero?  How about a “Hancock” that follows through on its darkest instincts and doesn’t track the theme from “Sanford & Son” over a scene of Hancock literally shoving someone’s head up someone else’s ass**?  Or how about Will Smith in a Werner Herzog or PT Anderson movie? 

He’s standing on the threshold of something interesting.  Let’s give him a push one way or the other.  ‘Cause right now, he’s just blocking the door.

–

In other news… the trailer for “The Day The Earth Stood Still” (the remake starring Keanu Reeves) played in front of “Hancock” last night.  I’d like to ask the producers of this movie a question, and here it is: why “The Day The Earth Stood Still”?  I would have gone with “Star Wars” or “Aliens” or maybe “Caddyshack.”  Really you could have chosen almost any title, and there would have been just as much resemblance between this movie and the one it is allegedly remaking.

Unless the next trailer for this movie includes a giant fuckin’ robot named Gort, count me out.

Strangely, the remake virus has also infected Werner Herzog, of all people.  But in his predictably unpredictable fashion, he’s decided to remake - get this - “Bad Lieutenant.”  (wha?)  With Nicholas Cage and Val Kilmer.  Which means this will either be the best or the worst movie ever made.  So thumbs up, Werner!

–

* Not a penis joke.

** Really.  P.S. Sorry for the many, many spoilers in this post, but if I have discouraged you from seeing this movie, I feel I’ve done my job.

Diane,

It’s godawful weird that one of the biggest crises facing modern man (and wo-man) is the war on spoilers.  We talk about this as much as we talk about:

- the upcoming presidental campaign
- gas prices
- global warming

And more than we talk about:

- terrorism
- how out of shape we all are
- everything else

It can’t just be me that finds this disconcerting.  On the one hand, it greatly increases my chances of somehow parlaying this blog into a sweet gig where I write for one hour a day and spend the rest of my time seeing movies, watching TV, listening to music, and indulging my many vices.*  On the other hand, uh, what the fuck?  Don’t we have anything better to do?  Shouldn’t this conversation have been over after about thirty seconds?  Here is everything there is to be said about spoilers as far as I’m concerned:

Person 1: I hate spoilers!  Don’t tell me how it ends, I don’t want to know.

Person 2: He kills that guy and then commits suicide from the guilt.  Powerful stuff.

Person 1: *punch*

Person 2: *fall, cry*

~ The End ~

Let’s face it: the spoiler debate is no debate, because there is no depth to either position.  Side 1 wants to be surprised by all art and entertainment, and believes therefore that you should never give away the plot to anything.  Side 2 thinks Side 1 cares way too much about something that is pretty trivial.  …And I guess there’s also this namby-pamby Side 3, that wants to establish middle ground and put some sort of statute of limitations on spoilers, where anything past a certain age in general release can no longer be spoiled - barring extraordinary circumstances like “the movie was only copied to two videos, both of which were owned by isolationist Eskimoes who never discussed the ending with anyone except each other.”  Ultimately there is no winning this war, because all sides consider their positions essentially axiomatic, and also because Side 1 is so damn annoying that everybody else (Sides 2 and 3, and all the people who initially refused to get involved) feel like screaming “VERBAL IS KEYSER SOZE” at them until they cry.

But then again -

But then again, I have been waging my own little war on spoilers lately, and I can feel the dark pull of the anti-spoiler crowd on my soul.  I have friends watching all four seasons of “Lost,” and every time I see them lately, there’s a sort of stalemate between my mouth and my brain.  My mouth wants to blab about all the interesting revelations of the episodes they haven’t seen yet.  My brain is more considerate and thinks my friends would rather be surprised to learn that ________.**  And unfortunately for me, and my friends, the stalemate is broken every time by my girlfriend, who can’t seem to describe anything without inserting rather-too-descriptive adjectives that give the game away.  e.g. When they were only halfway through season 1:

Friend: The monster is really cool.

Girlfriend: You mean the smoke monster?

Friend: Wha?

Or when they were only a few episodes into season 2:

Friend: The plot has been pretty complicated lately.

Girlfriend: You mean because of how the Others have been kidnapping pregnant women because they all die on the Island, and Michael shot Ana Lucia and Libby, and then Henry Gale turned out to be Ben, the leader of the Others, and then during the finale…+

Me: Good god, woman, what are you doing?

I don’t want to wreck what were all great, jaw-dropping moments for me as I originally watched the show.  So I try to keep my (and my girlfriend’s) mouth shut.  And I forewarn them regularly: stay off the internet until you’ve seen all the episodes - that place is not your friend right now.  I’m trying, Ringo; I’m trying real hard to be the shepherd.

But sometimes I just wanna be the tyranny of evil men.

–

* Snorting enormous piles of hot ash, fucking my neighbor’s dog, rotoscoping commercials and movies that really don’t need it, etc.

** Ben’s a bad robot!

+ This did not happen.  The previous example did, though.

Aw, c’mon.

Flora,

You are a persistent thing, aren’t you?  This is what you said to me:

“Hi, I saw you on classmates.com, how have you been?”

You said it every day, or every other day, for a long stretch of weeks.  For a while you pretended not to be you - sometimes you were Myra, or Jennifer, or Paul (Paul?) - but I always knew it was you, Flora.  I was just waiting for the mask to come off.  Finally you admitted it.  My heart leaped into my throat like a BK Texas Double Whopper fired out of an air cannon.

“Hi, I saw you on classmates.com, how have you been?”

I’ve been fine, Flora.  And getting better all the time.

But how have YOU been?  Or more importantly… WHO have you been?  For you see, Flora, we do not know each other.  I didn’t attend high school with anyone named Flora.  A quick mental flip through the Smalltown, Indiana phone book (yes, I attained a photographic memory in junior high - the result of being bitten by a radioactive elephant!  A lesson I swiftly learned from my sweetly lecherous Uncle Karl was this: “with great power comes great winnings on ‘Jeopardy!’”) reveals that no one was listed in town under the name of Flora, either.  Although I suppose there were a good many F. _____s at that time, and also, you would have been a teenager.  But no matter, Flora.  The lie has been exposed.  You don’t need to go on pretending.  You haven’t been thinking of me or looking for me all these years.  You didn’t just run into a familiar old face on classmates.com.  The truth, darling, is much more complicated - and sexy! - than that.

This is the truth:

I have no face… at all!

That’s right, Flora: my face was decimated in a horrific Whopper-firing incident.  Lo these many years I have been afraid to venture back to classmates.com - afraid to seek out my once-peers and nether-friends.  No reunionist I, Flora.  Nevermore shall I seek the gilded solace of companionship from people I never really liked when I knew them, and now barely remember.  I massage salve into my exposed facial tissues and pick at my two remaining teeth with my forked tongue (it was split by an improbably sharp sandwich pickle) and hurl epithets at their happiness, at their manufactured joy.  They think they’re so clever, don’t they, these classmates of mine?!?  They think being alive and having a face is somehow a grand triumph over life’s design!!!

But now, dearest one - I share the truth with you.  My anger calms, my schlong unfurls.  I have no need of hatred.  And you have no need of clever deceptions. 

I draw you closer, and I whisper in your ear:

“Bring to me something that will enlarge my penis.”

And god love ya, Flora, you do.  You do every time.

Diane,

I’m probably a day or two or a week or two or fuckit maybe a year late on this, but I just found the red band (naughty language!) trailer for the new Coen Bros. movie, “Burn After Reading.”  Here tis.  I’m very optimistic - a lot of the trailer is really funny even as a dead body makes an appearance, and nobody does pitch black humor better than those guys.  And the cast is outstanding: awesome bit players like Tilda Swinton and J.K. Simmons, Coen regular Francis McDormand, John Malkovich, George Clooney doing something even farther afield from whatever his usual role used to be… and Brad Pitt.  Brad Pitt is one of those guys who often fearlessly plays with his pretty boy image, but his performance here - judging from the trailer alone, of course - looks to be a special thing indeed. 

Diane and fellow Indianapolis residents,

I was more than a little disgruntled when the Landmark chain swung into town and knocked the well-loved Castleton Arts theater out of business.  Castleton Arts was something of a northside treasure.  They showed the usual assortment of documentaries and indie flicks, but they also sprinkled in some fun older movies like “Friday the 13th Part 3″ (WITH the 3-D glasses), the “Mystery Science Theater” movie, and week-long festivals devoted to Scorsese and Sergio Leone.  One of my fondest memories of the place was catching all three of the “Dollars” trilogy movies in one day.  I definitely didn’t want to see it go, replaced by an impersonal chain that seemed to just be running art movies as another way of sucking dollars out of the pockets of a niche customer base.

When Landmark opened up, though, I didn’t hate the place.  They have nice seats, they let you bring in alcohol from the bar next door or chocolates from the Godiva store down the way, and except for the fun stuff I mentioned before, their schedule wasn’t all that different from that of Castleton Arts.  The main thing that sucked about the place was its popcorn, which has yet to improve - how do they sell that stuff?  Ye gods.

But I haven’t been to Landmark in a couple months.  (Come to think of it, maybe that’s part of the problem that I am about to eviscerate the place over.)  Today I was reading about Werner Herzog’s new documentary, and since I love Herzog like my annoying cat loves biting me at six a.m., I thought I’d go see if it was playing here yet.  (Fat chance, but you gotta try.)  Of course, it turns out that Landmark isn’t showing it.  Here’s what they ARE showing:

- Get Smart (starts Friday)
- In Bruges
- Mongol (starts Friday)
- The Visitor
- The Fall
- The Happening
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
- Sex and the City
- You Don’t Mess With the Zohan

Yeah, uh, Landmark?  On what planet do many of these qualify as art movies?  “Indiana Jones”?  “Get Smart”?  “You Don’t Mess With the Goddamn Motherfuckin’ Zohan”?

I want my Castleton Arts back.  They probably wouldn’t be running the new Herzog doc yet either, but at least there wouldn’t be a 3000 screen blockbuster in its place.

Diane,

Since Sunday morning I’ve been mired in a nasty bout of stomach flu.  This has involved chills, fever, many wretched trips to the bathroom, and not eating.  Today I am boldly venturing back to the office, and contemplating what food I might be able to stomach - right now I’m thinking plain white rice and maybe some egg drop soup will do.  Wish me luck.  My complete inventory of food eaten over the last two days is as follows:

- half a turkey sandwich (11:00 Sunday morning - this is when I noticed something was up)
- half an apple (mid-Sunday afternoon)
- half of a vanilla pudding cup (Sunday evening)
- a handful of dried cereal (Monday morning - made me throw up)
- 3/4 of a banana (Monday afternoon)
- a piece of dry toast (Monday afternoon)
- two saltines (Monday evening)
- another half of a different vanilla pudding cup (Monday evening)

That’s a pretty pathetic list for this field agent, who can usually put all that away in a sitting and pack in some cherry pie and coffee afterward.

What’s been interesting about this illness is how it has amped up my sensitivity to any kind of experience.  At the same time that the thought of most food has made me queasy, I’ve also been mostly unable to watch TV, listen to music, or do anything else in the way of entertainment.  I have found that more than about half an hour of any meaningful sensory input makes me feel pretty awful.  (Thankfully I had finished re-watching season 3 of “Lost” Sunday just about when this kicked in, so I didn’t have to put that on pause.)  I’ve fired up a “Seinfeld” re-run a few times, but twice I ended up just shutting it off; and I actually felt nauseous when I put serious thought into listening to my iPod.  For a person with my proclivities, this state of affairs was even less tolerable than not being able to eat - hell, at least not eating has been helpful to my diet.  But not engaging with pop culture in any way has been a completely negative experience.  This morning I managed to listen to half of a reggae album; this, for me, was a greater triumph than the bottle of apple juice I drank most of.

I’m sure I’ll be returning to normal in a day or two.  Er, I HOPE I will be, anyway.

Spoiler alert: the big twist ending is that they are both M. Night Shyamalan.

Diane,

It’s become fashionable (well, internet-fashionable) of late to bash M. Night Shyamalan.  Actually I don’t think “bash” is a strong enough word for what the online community is doing to Night.  This is more like we all showed up at his house like those creepy masked fuckers in the trailer for “The Strangers” and announced that we were going to torture him to death, just because he was home.  (Note to self: do not go see “The Strangers.”)  This is an epic gang-rape like that disturbing scene with Jennifer Jason Leigh in “Last Exit to Brooklyn.”  This is the end of “Requiem For a Dream” plus the beginning of “Irreversible” times any random “Bum Fights” DVD.  This is “Free Willy”’s alternate ending, where Willy leaps into a colossal meatgrinder and the closing shots show a chain of Willyburger franchises filled with happy, bloody-faced customers chowing down.*

What I’m trying to say is, we are fucking M. Night, and we are fucking him hard and against his will.  And I feel really, really bad for the guy.  But not so bad that it’s going to stop me from being honest.

Shyamalan had the misfortune of bursting on to the scene with a confident, well-realized smash hit with one of those great word-of-mouth-building twists at the end.  “The Sixth Sense” was a good picture, not really a great one; but “Bruce is actually a ghost!” was better for business than both the revelation of Keyser Soze’s identity and the free-swinging penis in “The Crying Game.”  It was eloquent and logical in that “Twilight Zone” way, and the movie leading up to the twist was somber, creepy, and effective.  It did huge numbers without alienating the geek community and it gave them A New Hope (the great brown hope?) to cling to.  He was, in many quarters, The Next Spielberg.

Er… yeah.  That didn’t work out, so much.

“Unbreakable” was - for me at least - the point where it became clear that something was up, that the man didn’t quite have it.  Considered in isolation, it’s a bold idea: a superhero movie with nothing exploding and no brightly-colored tights; a comic book flick that is actually a drama and a mystery thriller.  Interesting, right?  And it sort of was, but it also sort of felt like Night was trying to clone the DNA from his successful first model, and just graft some other parts on so we’d think it was a different animal.  But a mouse with an ear on its back is still a mouse.  (Or maybe it’s a mouseketear.  Ba-dump, kssshhh!)  The strain didn’t really show until the ending, when Night tried to wrap things up in basically the “Sixth Sense” fashion - big twist, quick cut to black.  Only in the context of a superhero story, that felt completely unsatisfying.  Walking out of the theater, I felt like they had cancelled the movie after it was 90% done and made do with a freeze frame and explanatory title card in the editing room.  “Samuel L. Jackson is the villain, aren’t you surprised?  And uh - he goes to jail!  The End!”  Shyamalan was quick to announce that this was the first installment in a planned trilogy, which sort of alleviated the dismay but begged another question - namely, should this young pup really be planning to leap straight from his first surprise hit into a trilogy based on a sorta-cool idea and the goodwill of geekdom?  “Unbreakable” didn’t do “trilogy” business though, so those plans were scrapped, and we were left with a curio piece that a few people swear by, but most of us find to be a noble failure.

And then… and then.  Hoo boy.  “Signs” is a divisive movie; I felt divided even as I was watching it.  The direction was very sure-handed (probably his best effort) and certain scenes really pulled you in, in that “next Spielberg” way.  My favorite was probably the scene with them listening to the alien sounds coming from the baby monitor - it’s simple, yet spellbinding; the kind of thing Spielberg is so great at and so few others can do at all.  “Signs” was loaded with such suspense.  It was the missteps in the plot that let it down: the cornball obviousness of the Joaquin Phoenix sub-plot, and the much-whined-about “water kills them, surprise!” twist at the end.  When you both rip off the ending of “War of the Worlds” and also dumb it down about 5000 times, you may need a script doctor.

The less said about “The Village,” the better.  For many this was the first “bad” Shyamalan movie, the one where the bloom was truly off the rose.  For me it was merely more disappointing by a factor of two or three than its predecessors.  The performances were worse and more wooden (in most cases) or just worse in general (in the case of Adrien Brody, who I usually like), and the twist was both obvious and stupid - not a good combination when the twist is what you built your reputation on.  “The Village” felt like Shyamalan running in place and tripping over his own feet at the same time.  “Lady in the Water,” which I did not see, was by all accounts a bigger failure - an epic mistake from a guy flailing around for some cred.  An embarrassment, it was generally held.  It was so hard to find a good review of that movie that I lost any desire to see it.

Now Shyalaman has “The Happening” coming out, and the knives are rasping against each other all ’round the internet.  Rotten Tomatoes has it at 22%, an atrocious rating for a generally critically-acclaimed director (it even beats “Lady in the Water”’s low mark by two points).  This review posted on Ain’t It Cool News today is the kind of blood-spraying, entrails-hanging evisceration that Shyamalan just can’t afford.  His career and his reputation as an artist are on life support; he needs people to keep the machines plugged in, soothe his fevered brow, maybe drive him to physical therapy once a week.  Instead they’re sitting at his bedside and murmuring about what might be in the will.  Not a good situation.

It’s hard not to notice the disturbing aspects of what is happening to Shyamalan.  Every internet forum has fifty mouthbreathers on it who insist on calling the man “Shyamalamadingdong.”  It’s a racist and xenophobic joke, and it’s also tired as hell - can we at least come up with another way to say “I have no idea how to pronounce the names of people from other countries or ethnic backgrounds”?  The persistence of this bacteria of a joke carries with it a shadowy reflection of Stormfront.org.  We don’t necessarily want to kill the darkies, but if the most arrogant ones can be publicly pilloried, that would be A-OK, wouldn’t it?  I shudder a little every time it pops up (which means my visits to Fark.com involve me vibrating like an epileptic about half the time).  And from another angle, it looks an awful lot like our general fixation on success stories that turn into hymns of failure.  We love our celebs, and we love it even more when they trip over a heroin syringe and fall face-first into a vat of child porn and homemade sex tapes.  We love to see these people get their comeuppance for being better and more ambitious than us.  It’s completely fucked up.

So maybe we’re crucifying Shyamalan for some really sick and wrong reasons.  But then again, maybe we’re crucifying him because his movies have started sucking out loud.  It would sure be nice if Shyamalan would make something halfway decent and clear the picture up for me.

–

* Not an actual alternate ending to “Free Willy.”  In my happiest dreams, however, this is the alternate ending to any movie starring Bill Pullman.  Pullmanburger - service with a sneer!

Diane,

I’m going to skip the usual rambling preamble and get right to it.  This is a short list of established artists stepping away from their own style and copping moves from other established artists.  Feel free to throw some others into the comments, if you have any. 

~ David Bowie, “The Heart’s Filthy Lesson”  Bowie has always been a slithery chameleon, but rarely has he so blatantly appropriated a single artist’s whole aesthetic.  In this would-be late career rejuventation, he and longtime collaborator Eno stole Trent Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails schtick lock, stock, and barrel.  It’s a little weird hearing the pasty one croon over this music, and ultimately the song is a bit of a mismatch because Bowie just isn’t immature or one-dimensional enough to do the seething angst thing Reznor made his trademark.  I’m not much of a NIN fan (in case you can’t tell), but there’s no denying that “Closer” is the song that “Filthy Lesson” wants to be.

~ The Rolling Stones, “Their Satanic Majesties Request”  This was before the Stones really became THE STONES, and certainly their early works were, shall we say, a little more obviously derivative than the mid-period classics.  But this album earns a special place on this list by basically announcing itself as a Sgt. Pepper’s wannabe.  It’s one of the most infamous examples of a big band following another band’s lead, and it gives ammo to the Beatleistas out there who think the Stones were merely the top of the second tier.  On the plus side, this album does include the great “She’s A Rainbow.”

~ Madonna, “Bedtime Story”  Our list’s second slithery chameleon was never shy about borrowing ideas from anyone and everyone, but this is one of the only times I can think of that she flat-out sounded like someone else.  Bjork gave Madonna a demo of this song, which her team of writers spruced up and prepped for her to take a run at.  The effect is a bit bewildering - it pretty much sounds like Madonna covering a lower-rung Bjork song - and ultimately one feels like Madonna is a little girl tottering in her mommy’s heels.  It’s made even more delectable when you hear the story that Bjork intended the lyrics as an indictment of Madonna’s shallow aesthetic.

~ MC Hammer, “The Funky Headhunter”  Hammer wasn’t the only guy who heard “Fuck Wit Dre Day” and “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang” and decided that his career too could be revitalized by whiny synths, P Funk rhythm sections, and a Cali gangsta delivery.  (Ice Cube was another prominent example, dropping “Lethal Injection” - a decent slice of derivative g-funk but ultimately the beginning of the man’s long tailspin.)  But what elevates Hammer above the others is how ri-goddamn-diculous he sounds doing it.  “Oaktown” has a signature Dre synth and burbling bass track, and Hammer intoning beauties like, “Do you know about my city?  The city of Oak!”  “Gapped teeth in yo mouth, so my dick’s gotsta fit” it ain’t.  The highlight is the semi-hit single “Pumps and a Bump,” which I have long resisted analyzing, because the title and chorus are so idiotic that it is truly one of life’s purest pleasures to listen to.  Please, Hammer, don’t hurt ‘em.

~ Modest Mouse, “The Devil’s Workday”  Even for the Mouse this is an aberration.  It’s plop in the middle of their commercial breakthrough album, “Good News for People Who Love Bad News,” and yet it diverges as far as possible from both the buoyant sound of the first few tracks (including “Float On”) and also the standard, spiky Modest Mouse approach.  Instead, it sounds exactly like Tom Waits: 50% “Bone Machine,” 50% all of his other (post-balladeer) albums.  It’s not bad, but I feel like they could have comfortably left this one for the inevitable rarities compilation.  (Probably spent some label dollars on that horn section though, and thus were forced to include it.)

~ The Eagles, “One of These Nights”  This is a strange entry for this list because the artist it so clearly resembles - disco-era Bee Gees - didn’t really come into being until the same year this song/album came out.  It seems unlikely that the Eagles went forward in time a couple years and decided to go back and make a “Saturday Night Fever”-style hit; more likely, the Beegs and the Eags were listening to the same shit (r&b, early 70s soft rock) and came up with the same conclusion.  It’s just that the Eagles did it once, and the Bee Gees turned it into a modus operandi.  Still, it’s weird to hear this on the radio and think to myself, every single time, “This is a Bee Gees song, right?  Oh wait…”

~ Dave Barry, “Big Trouble”/”Tricky Business” (token book entry)  Dave Barry does basically one thing, which is a genial, goofball humor column with nothing offensive about it, bejewelled with a handful of stylistic tics that were initially funny and have since been run into the ground.  But what happened when Dave wanted to do a second thing?  It ended up being a couple of Elmore Leonard-lite novels.  Reviewers were obliged to describe them as a hybrid of Leonard and Barry’s own sense of humor, but in truth these books are only about 20% more comedic than their inspirations, and in most other respects are pretty much Xerox copies, right down to the Miami setting.  Even the “Big Trouble” movie looked a lot like an adult contempo version of “Get Shorty.”

~ Steven Spielberg, “AI” (token film entry)  Spielberg famously took Stanley Kubrick’s long-fussed-over script for “AI” and wanted to carry on the master’s last project as a sort of tribute to him.  It sometimes works, and sometimes doesn’t.  Spielberg uses a lot of Kubrickisms throughout, subverting his own natural tendencies, until the awful ending that feels a lot like the director just couldn’t take it any more and was forced to compromise his own material, lest his soul be swallowed into the same black nether-pit that Kubrick’s had gone down.  Interestingly, I feel like Kubrick could have filmed the exact same ending and made it seem much more dark and pessimistic (see: the soldiers singing the Mickey Mouse song at the end of “Full Metal Jacket”).  In Spielberg’s hands, though, it feels like an essentially optimistic man searching for any ray of light he can allow into the pervasive darkness.  (He did a much better job letting the material resolve itself with “Munich.”)