TIRED OF THE DISCOURSE: WONDER WOMAN 1984 EDITION

Everyone is annoyed right now (at least - though not only - in America). I was standing in a long line to get groceries today, which shows how inconvenient the world is right now, and there was a guy standing outside with no mask on. And it was making me furious how long he was standing in line at distances six feet apart without putting one on. I don't know this guy, and we can stand six feet apart and if we aren't talking or breathing too hard maybe it's not a risk, but we're all tired and cranky. And it took a lot for me not to scold a guy I don't know who may have lost a mask and needed to buy one. I don't know. But I feel like this whole event makes us all feel like everyone else is an asshole.

For smart people who've spent the last nine months sheltering in place it's because we recognize this could have been over if people weren't being so selfish and short sighted. For less smart people it's because they feel limited by people telling them what to do. Everyone is upset.Gal Gadot first stepped in this with the now infamous "Imagine" video, which saw her and a number of visibly unsure celebrity friends sheltering at home in their lovely houses singing the Lennon song. What was likely the effort of a bunch of theater kids to brighten the mood went over horribly, partly because for a certain section of the population class politics are more important than ever, especially when there is so much income disparity and a bunch of rich doofuses telling the world to cheer up Charlie just doesn't play. But, it was also easy to clown because it was earnest. And earnest requires leaving yourself open to be mocked. The question is how much is that just the world basically listening to the mulletted smoker in the fleece jacket mocking Boy George and Whitney Houston? It is the easiest thing in the world to be cynical, but what and who are we picking on and why?

One of the disappointing side effects of the Trump presidency is then the coarsening of our culture. People who might think of themselves as pacifists - when pressed - might be up for bad things happening to the president and his cronies. It falls somewhere between justice and eyes for eyes. And their intentional disinterest in managing a natural disaster, and the fact that the entire Republican party is now a clown show filled with grievances for nonsense reasons is going to be something that will either be put down, or eventually ruin the country. Yes, 81 Million people voted for one guy. 74 Million voted for the other. DURING THIS. They wanted the guy running things now to run them more. 

The unfortunate problem is that releasing WONDER WOMAN 1984 right now is like releasing a feature length version of that Imagine video. Not that it's a shitty DIY bunch of celebs looking like idiots for even trying/caring, but it is a film meant to be a salve against the Trump era. It's an earnest film.

I say this having seen the film a couple of times now. The first time I saw it my reaction was "this is not going to go over well." I couldn't totally articulate why I didn't think it was going to work, but I could tell this was not going to play with some audiences. Maybe because it's bright, maybe because it isn't very Marvel, maybe because the trailer suggested a film more driven by the 1984 setting, which is mostly kept to a clothing montage and opening sequence. I didn't have a bead on it until I watched it again, and then I saw what the film was trying to do.

Wonder Woman never throws a punch. In the entire movie. Once you understand that, the whole film opens up. You may not like it, but there is a design to it. 

In the mall fight scene, everything is about defense and keeping the bad guys tied down. Having a fight scene where the main character is acting defensively plays weird. She is never the aggressor, but will leave the bad guys incapacitated. This fight is capped by the most violent Diana moment in the whole thing, where the bad guys are dropped on the roof of a car, but it's played for laughs. And if you have already decided this movie sucks you can be like "that would kill them." And if you say that to me, buddy, have you watched an action movie? When Diana protects Barbara from pushy street guy, we just see that he's been knocked away, not the act itself - we only see that Diana caught her. But when Barbara defends herself it's an act of horror because she is partly the aggressor. In the Middle East chase, Diana rips out a steering wheel and tells the driver the brakes still work. The reason why the car she's under flips is because it's falling apart and she grabs a pipe that causes it to go airborne, and then uses a missile to save children. The White House fight shows Diana at her most aggressive (she kicks), but it's always a defensive maneuver. This then is contrasted when Barbara gains her strength and beats the crap out of the secret service that then Wonder Woman has to also save from Barbara, while also protecting herself from them. I don't know shit about martial arts, but I assume WW's technique is all water based, using people's energies to defeat them etc., but that's not my area of expertise.

In the end Wonder Woman kills no one, not even Barbara. The only purely bad guys are the criminals at the beginning (and maybe the creepy street guy), but the film ends with redemption for everyone else. Because the story is about how cheating is bad. Which is why the film opens with WW losing because she cheated, it's why she can't have Steve, and why we can't trust magical BS artists who say they can give you everything. The film is about the redemptive possibilities of empathy, and the desire to fight bad with good. But not good that's accepts the only response to violence is violence.

And I can see audiences - many people isolating by themselves during the hardest time of the year to be alone, or even people who visit family members or flew and knowingly put themselves in danger because it's been a rough year - watching this movie and being annoyed with it's perkiness. This is a film that is trying to show a world without Trump, that doesn't appeal to base instincts of violence and revenge. And right now that's super easy to say to that "fuck you." Because the difference between "Imagine" and "Many things" is not that far.

DISCLAIMER: I can also tell you things that don't work about this film. I mean, I don't think the Cheetah design works at all, but a dodgy five minute CGI sequence in a superhero movie is not a deal breaker because if it was I could never watch them. Ultimately I think this is a pretty good studio movie.

George Lucas Doesn't Get Yoda

The Mandalorian  seems to play well for some. That "some" seems to like the prequels and hates THE LAST JEDI. Even if they know that THE RISE OF SKYWALKER is infinitely worse, they fucking hate THE LAST JEDI so they will beat up on it using Mando as a gotcha. I had to stop watching it because I didn't see a point in hatewatching nostalgia nothings. And that's what it is. But you know, if you enjoy it, go for it. I'm tired. There's a pandemic. 

But I think part of the divide is that there's some of us who have known George Lucas is full of shit and he doesn't totally get STAR WARS, which is why the prequels don't work, and those who think the prequels are as intended, and do so much heavy lifting to make them a coherent whole thatthey want to claim it's a master's thesis. But Lucas just doesn't get Yoda. At all. 

But, you say, didn't Lucas create Yoda? Yes and no. In a script credited to Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan and a story by George Lucas, there is room to suggest that Lucas had nothing to do with how Yoda turned out. But then you counter that Brackett died in 1978 - her credit is part courtesy - so there is always this thought that there are unknown knowns, or known unknowns. But here's the thing, George Lucas is credited as the writer of the STAR WARS novelization that has Luke as a twenty year old and Leia as 18. Either Lucas didn't actually write it (Alan Dean Foster is also credited, IIRC), or Lucas didn't actually know they would be brother and sister until RETURN OF THE JEDI, when they felt they needed another big twist like in EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (also one that could justify why the lead didn't get the girl). Regardless, the emperor has no clothes/master plan. Lucas never had a fleshed out nine film cycle, he lied. If you can't sense his change in attitude from THE PHANTOM MENACE to ATTACK OF THE CLONES to respond to criticisms, I hope that Kool Aid tastes delicious.

The other big thing is this, EMPIRE director Irvin Kershner was Lucas's film professor in college. Think about that. What a flex to hire your teacher to make a film about your cinematic avatar (and Lucas put a lot of himself into Luke) to then make a film about teaching that avatar how to be an adult. 

And then think about how much of a flex it is to make that movie, and then have it be as good if not better than STAR WARS. To then create an indelible figure like Yoda who basically tells the main character that he's a chump, and then when that main character ignores the teacher's advice, shows that he's a failure. And it works as a middle chapter narrative, so you can't even say Kersh was being a dick to do it. That's some fraught melodrama behind the scenes. But he did establish Yoda, what he is and what he's about. And Lucas doesn't understand Yoda at all. 

How can I say that? It's simple really. When Yoda says "Too old to begin the training" in EMPIRE he's negging Luke. It's not a Jedi rule in the universe at that time. How do I know? BECAUSE YODA FUCKING TRAINS LUKE. Not because he's their last hope, but because Yoda did it because needed Luke to know he ain't shit. Luke at that moment thought he knew everything, and Yoda needed to make him a pupil. That's not one plus fourteen times x to the fourth, that's what's on screen. Yoda pretends to be a weird old creature because he needs to teach Luke that he is looking at the world wrong. Which is why the most important line in the entirety of STAR WARS is "judge me by my size do you? Where you should not."

When Yoda says Anakin is too old to begin the training in TPM, it's a callback, but one that doesn't make any god damned sense. Why? Because it was never about age. But to make it about age makes it a thing. "Oh, that's how they do it." But if you recognize all those moments in the prequel that recall Luke's training are basically fan service (the blaster helmets) it's not a coherent ideology, but Lucas not really engaged, throwing out these moments to make fans happy. And any attempts to spin "How can the Jedi be such idiots?" into a coherent narrative betrays the fact that Lucas had no interest in doing any heavy lifting so he creates obstacles that are non-obstacles to keep them from being all powerful. I cannot watch the PT films (which I have recently) and say that Lucas had any plan so much as that any time he felt like "I should address why this is" his best response was "reasons" that now people try to map out into a coherent thing. And I'm not attacking this because I think I know Jedis better than George Lucas, it's because it's lazy. It's giving R2 the ability to fly after four movies because you can't write yourself out of a scene lazy.

How can I say that he doesn't get Yoda? Because it's a different character, and a much less interesting one (which is endemic of Lucas's PT films). Where's Yoda's sense of humor? Did he turn into a goofball magically twenty years later? I mean, it's possible being isolated on a swamp planet gets you goofy, but I don't think Yoda was bored. But as damning as TPM is in showing Lucas just not caring to engage with the ideas of the original trilogy, the moment that proves Lucas doesn't get Yoda is the minute Yoda fights with a light saber. Not because he turns into a whirling dervish, but because as a master he should never have to. It's a complete lack of imagination to have Yoda get into a fight and then lose because he's overwhelmed because it's judging him by his size. If you don't understand that Yoda is the moral heart of this universe, you don't get that universe. 

And this is something Rian Johnson understands to his core, and something Mandalorian does not, because it allows Baby Yoda to be a cute murderer. If you don't understand why I don't find that appealing, I don't understand why you like things. 

I think part of the reason why this is vexing to me is that the Lucas mythos is sort of like Trump. You're buying into this package that ignores the human element that suggests something completely different than what is being projected. And to find coherent ideology of the Jedi's actions (even if you can) in the prequels is to ignore the bigger picture for the service of something else. Like what you like. Enjoy the prequels if you do. But don't pretend it's something that it's not.

The Underrated Insanity Of Tsui Hark And Jean-Claude Van Damme’s KNOCK OFF

Tsui Hark’s Knock Off has fallen by the wayside, like much of America’s brief fascination with Hong Kong cinema. Which is unfortunate as the film deserves to be canonized for its commitment to insanity. It also features Jean Claude Van Damme’s best performance outside of JCVD… not that he’d recall as he’s suggested he was so coked out at the time he doesn’t remember filming it. Like I said, it’s a special movie.

Let me start with a little bit of history. Before the handoff in 1997, there was a concern (made explicit in films like Hard Boiled) that Hong Kong and its film community would be destroyed by the change of rule from England to China. This led many artists like John Woo to make films that seemed to also serve as audition reels. Hollywood -- wowed by the impressive stunts and action sequences in those movies -- were quick to work with these directors and stars in a move that draws parallels to the importing of German filmmakers in the 1930s and 40s. Actors like Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Chow Yun Fat dabbled with making films in America, while directors like John Woo, Ringo Lam and Tsui Hark also tried their hand stateside. The directors were often handed low budget action movies, and all three mentioned made their first English language films with Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Van Damme’s appeal, like Chuck Norris before him and like contemporary Steven Seagal, is that he’s a white martial artist, which meant that many films were built around his ability to punch, kick and do the splits (seriously, he did the splits a lot) while speaking a form of English. Of the action guys, he’s easily one of the best actors: Seagal’s range seem to go from squinty to ticked off, while Van Damme can actually emote (perhaps like a caveman, but still). And unlike Seagal and Norris, he can be both convincing and appealing in a love scene, or if nothing else it never seemed cruel to the actress. During the 90s one could expect a Van Damme film or two a year, with Timecop his biggest hit, and Street Fighter his biggest fiasco.
 
Hard Target imported John Woo, and there Woo showed America he could handle our industry, while Maximum Risk got Ringo Lam to make a film about Van Damme playing twins (which he’s done a couple times) in a global thriller that was a swing and a miss, though it’s a film I find very watchable despite its flaws. By the time Tsui Hark got to Van Damme in 1997, they made a buddy picture with Dennis Rodman. Double Team came at the end of America’s fascination with Hong Kong cinema as Hollywood began to absorb their techniques, so there’s a sense with it that they threw a bunch of things in the film to make people excited. Not only do you have Hark, Van Damme and Rodman, you also get Mickey Rourke, a riff on the British TV series The Prisoner, and some very nutty action sequences, with the capper involving the heroes being saved from a gigantic fireball by a Coke machine. Double Team is pretty bonkers, and it’s well worth checking out. But it can’t compare to the gleeful insanity of Knock Off.

By 1998, when Van Damme and Hark reteamed for Knock Off, it was like the world wasn’t paying attention. For the most part, they weren’t. Though John Woo showed he could direct big blockbusters like Face/Off and Mission: Impossible 2, Van Damme’s career (much like Seagal’s) was pretty much over, and films like Double Team and Knock Off grossed about ten million each. His next movie went straight to video (which was shocking then), and the film after that was Universal Soldier: The Return. It was a sequel to one of his biggest hits and when that tanked it spelled the end.
 
Knock Off began with a script by Steven E. de Souza, the action writer of the 1980’s. Commando. 48 Hrs., Die Hard. The Running Man. Hudson Hawk. The Flinstones. He did it all. And by the 90s, he wanted to make fun of the films he made popular. Knock Off (as made explicit by the title), was meant to be a joke on all these same-y action movies, which may have been why Francis Ford Coppola briefly flirted with making the movie (though it’s hard to imagine his version being made with JCVD). According to de Souza, much of the film is as written. Perhaps it would have been funnier had an American directed it, but in Hark’s hands it becomes a borderline surreal concoction.
The film follows Van Damme’s Marcus Ray, a former denim knockoff artist who has moved on to work for V-6 Jeans. But as the film starts, the movie is more concerned with Russians in Hong Kong, who are not only dealing in knockoff jeans, but ones that have little explosives in them that are as powerful as a stick of dynamite, and emit green flames (yes, green flames). The movie starts in the middle of a sting operation where the Russians are trying to get their latest shipment, but something goes wrong and the cops move in. The film briefly sets up some of the Russian antagonists, mostly by giving them colorful looks, or in one case a cough. But when the cops arrive (led by Michael Wong), everything goes nuts.

And from this opening action sequence, it seems that Hark -- who directed such classically constructed films like Once Upon a Time in China and has been referred to as the Asian Spielberg -- decided he didn’t want a single shot in the movie to be boring and so every place he puts the camera is interesting and surprising. In the opening chase sequence, Michael Wong is in a boat chasing the Russians, and one of the Russians has a sniper rifle. He shoots one of Wong’s men, but to show that death, Hark cuts to blood bursting in air. It’s impressionistic, and the film borders on chaos, incoherence even, but every decision is bold and crazy. Right away he sets the tone, as the film stock seems to change in moments, and he’ll use a fisheye lens for the hell of it.

After this opening set piece we’re introduced to Marcus’ partner Tommy Hendricks (played by Rob Schneider) as the camera decides to go through an earring, because why the fuck not? He’s surrounded by models, and Schneider attempts to make jokes and points out that Marcus isn’t around. So Ray gives Marcus a call. And what does the camera do? It decides to follow the phone call through the universe. We then see Van Damme driving a nice car and singing along to a Cantonese pop song. At this point you are either with the film, or it’s just going to turn you off. Marcus checks in on some former employees, and their shoddy knockoff products (which involves Hark having a picture in picture just because), and there we meet Skinny (Glen Chin), who seems to have become the top dog in the knockoff market. He also introduces the idea that Marcus is about to be in a big race.

So the race involves rickshaws, with Marcus carrying Tommy through crowded Hong Kong streets. It seems to be a big deal because there’s Americans and Australians who are also competing. Also in the race: Eddie Wang (Wyman Wong), who’s like a brother to Marcus, and also deals in knockoffs. For the competition Marcus needs sports shoes so Tommy bought him Pumas, but it turns out the shoes are knockoffs (the name has two M’s), and the film shows Marcus putting on the shoes from his foot’s POV.

Let me say that again, Knock Off features a foot’s point of view.

So Marcus, Eddie and Tommy start the race, and it involves running through Hong Kong markets at breakneck speeds, while Marcus’ knockoff shoes start falling apart (we can tell because the camera goes inside the shoe as the glue unsticks). And by going through the marketplace, it gives Schneider a chance to grab an eel. Why? So he can whip Van Damme’s ass, which he does twice (it makes Van Damme whinny). Eddie is cheating and has a double run in his place, but that double is grabbed by Russians. Since Marcus is friends with Eddy and thinks his friend has been kidnapped, he chases the car with his rickshaw, and gets it to crash into a supermarket. Van Damme, unarmed, must take on the Russians with their guns, which leads to a bullet POV shot that goes through a can of soup. The action becomes partly impressionistic as Van Damme must sense where to move to avoid being shot.

The sequence ends with Marcus and Tommy being taken in by the cops, and introduces Karen Lee (Lela Rochon), an executive from V-6 Jeans who informs them that their last shipment was stocked with knockoffs. After this terrible day, they get dinner, where Tommy is taken in by some tough looking guys. It turns out (after a fight scene) that Tommy’s CIA, and he partnered with Marcus for cover, which leads to some of the best acting in both Van Damme and Schneider’s filmography. His boss, Hendricks (Paul Sorvino), is monitoring the knockoff artists and the Russians, who it turns out are in bed with Skinny and want to kill Eddy because he sent the shipment from the beginning into the ocean. Crosses and double crosses ensue.

The first time I saw this film in theaters was probably mid-week with a friend, and we weren’t expecting much nor likely were the three other audience members, but there came a moment at the end of one of the fight sequences where there were subtitles on screen, and I was incapable of processing the words. The film offers so much unique visual information that it’s overwhelming. Which is probably why I went back and saw it again the next day, and made a point to see it five times in the theaters. The film spoke to me, and it continues to, I’ve probably watched it at least once every year, and love showing it to people who have no idea what they’re in for.

Film Crit Hulk asked me to write this piece, so allow me some Hulk level discursions. Let’s talk about filmmaking for a second. There is a language to cinema in which every shot can enhance and/or advance the storytelling. This is best shown in horror movies. Why are you tense? It’s because of what you can and can’t see, and the length of the shot(s). This is all basic 101 filmmaking stuff, so I won’t dwell on it too long, but the sad truth is the language of cinema has been degraded. This is part and parcel with so much of cinema being about making days, and the devaluing of visual storytellers. It’s the old joke of shot/reverse shot in which so much of what happens is basic information that has no flair. It used to be that TV directors were waved off as middlebrow hacks, nowadays television has become one of the best places for adult drama, the lines are blurred, and a television director helmed the most successful film of the last three years.

Let me give an example of the good and the bad of this. There is a shot in The Avengers where the camera goes up and over the bickering Avengers to look at Loki’s staff. This shot sticks out in the movie for a couple of reasons. One is that Joss Whedon, to that point, hadn’t really done anything like that in the movie before. Like inserting iambic pentameter in the midst of a rap verse, it’s jarring. To a certain extent it should be, it’s meant to be, because it’s drawing focus to the staff. The problem is that Whedon’s visual language isn’t precise, and the fact that Loki’s staff is a corrupting agent is spelled out in the dialogue. You can see exactly what he’s trying to do, but it doesn’t quite work. To research this moment, I put the film on again, and watched the scene and then watched the movie to the end. It’s funny how Whedon isn’t a great visual storyteller (his visual sense, when not guided by special effects, is meat and potatoes), but the film is totally compelling regardless.

Whereas a brilliant example of the shorthand of cinema can be found in Fargo. There’s a moment that’s stayed with me since first seeing the film (not that I haven’t seen it a number of times since), when William H. Macy’s Jerry Lundegaard finds the body of his father-in-law. The film doesn’t use dialogue to convey how he feels in that moment. All we get is the shot of his trunk being popped, and we the audience know everything. That’s brilliant visual storytelling. And using the language of cinema, using the distance characters exist from the camera to suggest where they are in the world, to present POVs for a specific reason, cutting between images to create tension or parallels are why film fans may adore a film like Stoker even if the narrative isn’t all that great, or why so many of us love filmmakers like Brian De Palma and Edgar Wright. You would think a filmmaker would make every frame count for something, but that’s just not the case most of the time.

Now, I’m not about to make the argument that Tsui Hark is working on that level of mastery or perfectionism with Knock Off. No, there’s something more punk rock about the film, and what’s apparent is that there’s at least one eye-catching shot in the film every minute of screen time. And because Hark obviously knows what he’s doing behind the camera, this must be read as intentional.
And it’s the thing that keeps me coming back: Hark’s fascinating choices in terms of staging are consistently of the “what the fuck” variety. I don’t know what the boring way to film a rickshaw race is, but here there’s a shot where the camera starts from a rooftop, descends and swoops into the action. A possibly boring sequence where Lela Rochon chews out Van Damme and Schneider is staged so when Rochon stands up to talk we see it from her point of view and makes the men look smaller. They’re also put in frame with toys on a desk, which makes them seem clownish by nature. In a sequence where a bunch of faceless goons are mowed down, one is shot through the head and a white cloud of brain mist rises from his head. There are at least a hundred indelible moments in the movie, and perhaps it is sensory overload. But… that’s why I love it.

Not to mention the weirdness, cause this is a weird fucking movie (in the best possible way). Marcus has to confront Eddy about the nanobombs in the knockoff product, and it gives Van Damme his finest acting moment to date, where he tells his semi-brother that he made a deal for him with the feds as he’s threatened with a gun. Sure, you could compare it to the “pull the strings” speech in Ed Wood, but Van Damme is fully committed. That scene then ends with Eddy being targeted by a missile which sends him flying outside, to die in a green flame explosion. It’s followed by an action scene starts where Van Damme and Schneider must escape from a fruit warehouse, which is a stunning set piece of claustrophobia as most of the fruit workers have long but dull knives, and the fruit around appears to be spiky pineapples (it doesn’t have the stems so I’ve never been sure) which makes even the fruit hreatening. The sequence ends with Schneider and Van Damme escaping and mumbling “Hoola, hoola hoola. Hoola hoola hoola.”  This is then followed by a scene where Van Damme chases down Skinny, and to knock out Skinny’s bodyguards he climbs the beams in the warehouse, and uses them to jump down on his opponents.

Sometimes great directors will pull out all the stops visually, but often they end up like Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Awesome in theory, but sort of torturous in its entirety. And this is similarly a kitchen sink film, but it’s as if Hark was using the film not as an audition piece, but as a chance to try everything he ever wanted to do with a camera. It’s not so much an action movie (though the action sequences are well staged, exciting and bonkers) as an experimental film that just happens to star Jean-Claude Van Damme and Rob Schneider. There may be no point to it, but in this package, as a Van Damme vehicle, it’s fascinating as it tells a coherent story that the filmmaker has little interest in. It’s more about the end fight sequence, where everyone’s on a boat that’s wet, and the motion of the water makes it easy for Van Damme to slide around (literally, like he’s on a slip and slide) and kill people. That end sequence is like nothing you would ever see in American action movie, and maybe in the context of a subtitled Hong Kong film it would seem of place, but here, with all these American actors, it achieves a sublime strangeness.

Francois Truffaut talked about a scene in Howard Hawks’ Scarface. To quote the master directly: “The most striking scene in the movie is unquestionably Boris Karloff's death. He squats down to throw a ball in a game of ninepins and doesn't get up; a rifle shot prostrates him. The camera follows the ball he's thrown as it knocks down all the pins except one that keeps spinning until it finally falls over, the exact symbol of Karloff himself, the last survivor of a rival gang that's been wiped out by Muni. This isn't literature. It may be dance or poetry. It is certainly cinema.” When I think about Knock Off, I think of this quote. For better or worse.

Things of note:

The film cuts from a fat man smiling to a gigantic fish. Then has Van Damme and Schneider talk while showing two men’s asses. Symbolism!

Lela Rochon gives one of the worst line readings ever in a major motion picture: “You were pretty eager to five minutes ago,” is the worst.

The theme song for the film is amazing. “I’m convinced that this is really not my song, I bought it in Hong Kong, it’s a knockoff. I’m convinced that we were really holding hands, sorry that’s no hand, it’s a knockoff. So close to real, the look, the feel, so close and yet, the paint’s still wet.” It’s one of the best novelty tie-in songs.

The film’s last line of dialogue is Rob Schneider saying “No action movie is complete without sweat.”

It’s worth nothing there’s a kind of terrible section of the movie where – towards the end – our heroes and villains are all in a boat as the handoff is taking place. The boat begins to drift out into international waters and the ship is targeted by a British officer who notes that if the boat crosses a line, he’ll have to blow it up. Conceptually, the idea that most of the heroes have no idea they’re in jeopardy from this attack, and the relief that comes for those that do know when it’s narrowly avoided is very theoretically cool, but the fact that the footage of the helicopters who are sent in to destroy the boat looks like stock footage (with some who are arming missiles shown to be unarmed) meant to pad out the film to a ninety minute run time (the film runs 91).

I once went to a screening of Goodfellas where Paul Sorvino did a Q&A beforehand. Afterwards I rushed out after him with a copy of Goodfellas and Knock Off. Point one: I was way more excited about him signing my copy of Knock Off than Goodfellas. Point two: I wasn’t sure if he’d get mad at me for even asking him to sign it, so I started by saying what a huge fan I was of the movie. Thankfully he enjoyed making it and was pleasantly shocked when I showed it to him. I was worried he might punch me.

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: BONG JOON-HO (THE HOST)

The more cineastes get to know Bong Joon-Ho and Park Chan-Wook, the more likely it is they’ll be known as the Spielberg and Lucas of Korea. They’ve already redefined Korean cinema, and made huge blockbusters that have outgrossed each other (Oldboy was a huge hit, but The Host‘s gross was so high that 25% of the population has theoretically seen it). But who’s whom, or – more to the point – who wants to end up as George Lucas? Both are supremely gifted, and have shown their talents through a couple of films that could be called masterpieces. You could nerd out and tap Bong as the Lucas figure, partly because he gave Park a copy of the Manga of Oldboy. But to flip that script, more damning evidence comes this Friday, as Park has already made a (Vengeance) trilogy, while Bong has made his monster movie with the masterful The Host, which can easily be called the best monster movie since Jaws.

And the big screen high of The Host is one of my favorite movie going experiences in recent memory. I already had tickets to see the film Friday night as part of a festival screening when I got an invite to interview director Bong. As such I was offered a complimentary ticket to see the film Saturday afternoon, and loving the film as I did, decided to watch it twice in a day. Shortly after my second screening, I sat down with Bong and an interpreter. Bong speaks some English, and would sometimes respond in my native tongue, while other times he let the translator do her job. The film opens Friday, and should be sought out.

I was wondering are there any of the Free Park Kang-du shirts , did you make any extras, are they for sale?

As you can see there were many T-shirts, and everyone was wearing them, so myself and the crew thought "Hey, we’ll get one afterwards," but, due to budget constraints they were made in China, so after a couple days of shooting and poor storage, they were too smelly, rotten, and impossible to wear. But we have the design still so maybe we should make it as a souvenir.

I’d buy one! (Bong laughs) I have to tell you I thought the film was amazing, I absolutely loved it. You’ve said that the scene where the daughter shows up and starts eating (which is revealed to be a dream) is the heart of the film. It seems the sort of thing you can’t get away with in America. Do you face any pressures to make it more linear?

That was in the script from the beginning, and even when people were reading the script they were like "what happened?" "Why is she here?" "Is this a typo?" (laughs) But for me it was the most important scene, it’s an objective illusion. To me there was never any confusion, but the people around me were not as sure. Something I found out after the final cut of the film was that at the time, the investors and distributors didn’t like the scene and there was some talk. "We should take that out, normal audiences won’t understand it." But the production company took care of it, so it never reached my ears.

With the last two films (this and Memories of Murder) you’ve been writing genre pictures, but what makes them some of the best films of recent memory is how you interlace these human moments into the story. So, when you’re writing it, you seem to embrace the framework of genre… one of my favorite scenes in Memories is when the main character is having sex but then his penis falls out, and moments later his girlfriend’s cleaning the blackheads out of his ear… so when you’re writing how do you weave those in? How do you balance it out?

Honestly, I don’t know what to say, it’s just how I work. My starting point is from an American genre type film, but I’m never trapped by it. Although I may start with the idea that Memories of Murder is a thriller, or The Host a monster movie – and I do – but from that point on I get further and further away from the genre. Find those, you know, cracks in the genre is where I add my detail, or my Korean details or Korean emotions. Also, all my characters are very normal or very weak, so it’s very natural, it’s fundamental that audiences will be drawn to the more normal person. All my characters have faults and defects.

What was the genesis of The Host? What made you want to make a monster movie?

Well, I’m not one of those big or manic fans of the monster movie genre, it’s not that or that it’s my slogan "I have to make one of these films!" It came from the location, the Han River, When I was younger I lived in an apartment by it, and watching the water flow back and forth I thought "what if the Loch Ness monster had popped out, what would happen and what a mess that would be?" So it might have been juvenile, but it stayed in my head, and eventually turned into a film.

So when you get ready to write something like this, do you go out and rent the Orcas and King Kongs and the Godzilla vs. Megalons and all the genre pictures? I ask because one of the things that I find so great about The Host (and Memories of Murder, for that matter), is how it understands the constructs of the genre, but also plays with them. Do you sit down and watch King Kong Lives?

For reference or inspiration? In this case, not this kind of typical monster movie, I was inspired by M Night Shymalyan’s Signs and Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. For instance in the movie Signs it deals with an alien invasion, but it’s hugely different from other alien invasion films like Independence Day, the reason being it focuses on the family, and isn’t a film of spectacle. It’s about the family, and the minute details of the family. That’s a film that inspired me.

Recently it was announced that Universal bought the right to a remake of The Host. Are you involved at all?

I’m already in the process of preparing two new projects, so I don’t like rehashing old stories, I like doing new stories. I have no interest in doing the remake, and I don’t think Universal has any interest in me doing the remake, so I think we’re both happy where we are right now. I’m just curious about it, it would great to have a director like John Carpenter or M Night Shymalyan do it.

I would like to see that too. I understand that you passed Oldboy on to Park Chan-Wook.

I’m a big Japanese Manga comic book fan. I always read them, they’re always in my bag and in my head. The original Oldboy wasn’t that famous or popular in either Japan or Korea, but sometime in 2000 or 2001 I found it in a very old bookstore, the story fascinated me, and I recommended it Park Chan-wook, he’s a close cinema friend of mine. "Read this, very funny" but his adaptation is amazing. You know the original story?

No, I just know the film.

The beginning part, the first half is almost the same, but the other half is a complete creation. The story of incest wasn’t in the novel. The story of him being in prison for 15 years is the same, but from the prison to incest and on is a complete creation and is shocking and powerful. It disturbs you.

From what I understand he’s producing your next movie. Le Transperceneige, or Snow Train?

Maybe my next next one, yeah, yeah.

I understand that’s going to be in English.

Not exactly. The story is about the train. There are many survivors there, from many other countries, so mixed dialogue, but 30-40% may be in English. The others Korean and Japanese, all mixed.

Is there a role for Song Kang-ho (star of The Host and Memories)?

I can’t speculate.

So, you’re a huge comic book fan?

Yes, I like graphic novel comic books from Korea, Japan, Europe, it’s my hobby. There was a point where I wanted to be a graphic novelist, but though that didn’t come to fruition, I draw the storyboards for my films, so that’s when I pretend I’m a graphic novelist.

In the film "seori" gets mentioned a couple of times. Was that a phenomenon in Korea?

It’s not a phenomenon – it’s actually just children’s play. It does have traditional history. When you go into a field and steal a fruit or two, if you get caught they do give you a pound on the head, but it’s not serious enough to go to the cops. It’s like a traditional things that kids could do when playing. When we were doing the subtitles, we couldn’t find an equivalent word in English, so after we went through an extended thought process, we though oh well we’ll write "seori" and explain it in the dialogue next.

On last quick question, what was the last movie you loved?

The Science of Sleep.

Oh, did you love Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?


Of course, that was very good. But I loved The Science of Sleep more.

Horror Stories: Liz Phair's autobiography and my Liz Phair

When I was 17, Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville came out. At the time I had a subscription to Rolling Stone. I think I mostly got it for the movie stuff. Weirdly, I didn't have a subscription to a magazine like Premiere. I had a take it or leave it attitude towards the mag; I don't remember if my dad got it for me, or I got a subscription because of some school promo or what. As I get older I try not to make up lies for myself about what I do and don't remember, and as I get older, there is just more that gets lost in time to the fact that who fucking cares (but I do I know I had the Twin Peaks cover issue, that much is certain). I don't know if that's how I heard about Liz Phair, but it seems likely. I was watching MTV's 120 Minutes around that time also, but I remember 120 more from College, as the University of Oregon provided its students with free cable, and I don't know if one of her videos - which were never all that amazing - hooked me. I doubt it. But at that time, it was for sure not radio play (outside of College radio, I don't think I've ever heard Phair on the radio). 

The reason I would love to have an origin story is because there are few acts of art that have reverberated through me like Exile in Guyville. It was like reading Plato's Symposium or the cave metaphor for the first time, or films like Jaws, Five Easy Pieces, Nashville, Rules of the Game, Happy Together.... these pieces of art are touchstones of my being. And as such, Liz Phair became my everything. (Side note: because of the nature of rock and roll, I never considered getting a boner from the until I heard her. Though Rock is usually sexual, I don't think I would have considered masturbating to an album before Guyville. Every woman reading this is probably rolling their eyes.) As much to that point as I loved Davids Byrne and Bowie, or Prince, they never opened up worlds for me like Liz. Much of the art I was most invested in to that point came from men. I wouldn't say I lived a double life, but as I entered my senior year in High School, as my disconnection from schoolmates went into overdrive, she was my Northern Star.

I've probably written about this before, but my mom got my brother and I into the rich kid's public schools while we were lower middle class, so I always felt a out of place from my surroundings. I would hang out with kids who kept their G.I. Joe toys in boxes, maybe never to be opened, while I would do chores for days and weeks on end to get to go to the store that had piles upon piles of the Gonk and medical repair droids STAR WARS toys. We grew up in a neighborhood that was twenty years away from gentrification, and had more minorities than the rest of Portland, so I felt both out of place in my neighborhood and my school. They wanted me to skip fifth grade at one point, but I believe I was held back mostly because it was readily apparent I wasn't socialized. But that was a problem long past high school for me. Maybe most of us try to patch up those holes our entire lives. Some never succeed. And in some ways I feel like I've been getting better and better about being aware and connected for the last thirty years of my life, but also that I'm still learning. The other weekend someone commented on my posture. I slouch because I'm six four. I slouch to make myself less physically intimidating. I see myself as inherently threatening so I try to reduce that threat by wearing glasses and making myself as small as I can. But I don't slouch consciously, at least I didn't until then... The glasses I knew.

But back to Liz Phair: From the get, from track one Six Foot One, I was fucking in. There was something urgent to the music, but also the album is all over the place emotionally in such a way that that becomes the through line. A contained narrative and something more. An essay, a memoir, a confessional. Exile - to me - showed every facet of being a woman in the nineties, the highs and the lows, and the peaceful, somewhat stoned, happy place of someone believing in something that lies between religion and mysticism. But maybe I loved the naked honesty most. Though during high school and much of college my best friends and closest confidantes were women - those friendships weren't sexual, they were born of being in school together - Phair's dialogue wasn't something those friends could or would share with me. I remember an Arsenio Hall interview where an actor said because of an IN LIVING COLOR sketch where an Asian man said he was super horny, he hadn't thought about Asian men as being interested in sex. That is fucking stupid, but also - culturally - this is understandable as we're growing to see how important representation is to show the humanity and interests of other cultures. Because when you see them you can see that you're like them. When the white male gaze is the dominant one in television and cinema, if you are a straight white male, you don't think about how other people see things because you're afforded the luxury of not having to.

So listening to Phair sing about fucking blew my god damned mind. As much as a song like Flower may have turned me on, it was Fuck and Run and The Divorce Song that made me love her. The sense of repetition, that these were things that even if you knew were coming would still be unavoidable, the Raymond Carver-esque detail for humanity, I was in. Phair was every girl I had a crush on. But she was also me. She struck me as smart enough to observe the mistakes she was making while she made them. The patterns we fall into, but are unable to avoid.

And not to besmisrch artists like Alanis Morrisette or Sheryl Crow, one got that Phair was the author and creator of her material in a way that made it all personal. Honest. Not... presentational? I'm not saying they're phonies, that's not it, but their art seems more commercial and by that nature more opportunistic, whether talking about having fun or blowing someone in a theater. Phair also has a swagger, which I think is why I gravitated to her and PJ Harvey over artists like Tori Amos, who was more sad angry than aggressive angry. I mean, seriously, PJ Harvey's Dry is one of the most badass songs ever written, and I love her too, but maybe because Phair is an American there's a bit of a difference. But also Phair was obviously a white upper-middle class woman who liked smoking pot and having sex and playing music and there's less of a confrontational vulnerability to her. And perhaps - like Catherine Bigelow - there's an element of her borrowing from men to make herself better understood, I mean Exile was scene as a response to The Rolling Stone's album.

I have listened to Guyville more than any other album (the only competition is Broken Social Scene's You Forgot it in People), and still it's an album that's evergreen for me.  I followed Liz's career intently for the next decade. Her follow up, Whip-Smart, is solid but is also very much a sophomore effort. It's a little more aimless, but it's mostly great. The only problem is you can just feel how some songs have been kicking around for a while, and some are new and the structure isn't as perfect because you feel her trying to replicate what worked about the first album with the same narrative hook. Guyville was conceived as a song by song response to Exile on Main Street, and that gave it a structure that (even if the original concept was abandoned) gives a greater focus than anything else she's done before or since. That said, I think her second best is Whitechocolatespaceegg, because it seemed to accept that Phair had grown older, and though she was wrestling with success and trying to find new ways of talking about the same things, and motherhood and adulthood, songs like Polyester Bride and Go On Ahead are still brutally honest, while also rocking. Though there is an obvious push in these songs towards a more commercial approach (they're much cleaner sounding, etc.), that's not a bad thing and it doesn't feel overproduced like her next album "Liz Phair."

Let me be clear: I don't hate the self titled album.  And I understand why it broke some fans, but also, they were attacking for the wrong reasons. Phair was obviously trying to do something more commercial, and that turned her into a pariah for a number of fans and websites that saw her as one of the great indie rock icons of the '90s, and when she tried to cash in, they resented her attempt. And if you can look back now with 20/20 vision, she was persecuted, railroaded and the worst part is that this seemed to shake her confidence. I don't want to say she never recovered, but her next two albums are hurt by an artist trying to second guess themselves.

That said, it's got obvious issues. The problem is that pop culture took a lot from Guyville, and you could see that Phair - who by then was divorced single mother - had different things to talk about and some landed better than others. People talk about HWC as a low point, but my big problem with the album is that she worked with two sets of superstar producers and you can feel their fingerprints on the sound, which makes it one of her least coherent albums. There's some stuff that feels like it's too much of Michael Penn's production, and other stuff that feels like Phair gunning for radio play at the detriment of what makes her great. Perhaps as a single mom she wanted more out of her career, but by the time of Somebody's Miracle, she started sounded a little bland.

But maybe I'm wrong. This weekend after finishing her book I revisited Whip-Smart, the self-titled album - and thought Little Digger is maybe her greatest accomplishment - and finally listened to Funstyle and I found things to like. I don't know if I've popped on Somebody's Miracle in over ten years, so there was a definitely a cultural movement against Liz Phair The Sellout that changed how I listened, and that noise might have driven me away. But also... with musicians, sometimes they have a period you really respond to, and though I think it's sad that when people see Paul McCartney in concert they treat new music as the time to check their phones between Beatles songs (where they Instagram five seconds of Hey Jude to show that they've seen Macca), but also I put on his new album and got bored at a certain point, so I get it. Maybe I didn't try hard enough, or maybe Maybe I'm Amazed is a better song than anything on it, and I'm missing nothing.

But this last year, Phair won me back and then some with the release of her memoir "Horror Stories." It is seventeen chapters on different moments of her life. No, she doesn't walk through Girly Sounds or the inspiration for much of her music (though she does note that "Fuck and Run" is meant to talk about how sometimes relationships fall apart quickly, that we often have these relationships that explode in and out of our lives, which is what it always seemed like, and does point out that when she was twelve, it wasn't actual sex, as she says she was a virgin until college). One story is about running into someone she knew in school who achieved a level of fame that was totally different than hers. Another is about giving birth while - to use her words - high as fuck. Another is about Ryan Adams and all of the sexual harassment she's experienced over her life.

On some level, Elizabeth Phair, of what I know, was never going to be a normal soccer mom. But to appreciate her art, you can tell that she was drawn to the suburban life she grew up around, and wanted that, but going by her music that was never going to satisfy. And so you get the stories you expected about shitty relationships, bad behavior on everyone's part, and some wild ass anecdotes about infidelities. But also portraits. She talks about a Trader Joes cashier who she flirted with that goes in wild directions, and points out something I have noticed about myself, which is that sometimes when you are trying to take care of someone else, you're just trying to take care of yourself in the least selfish way possible. Or the relationship she had with a guy who got someone else pregnant while they were dating and how hard she fought to stay in it, and how she felt bound to him partly because of the relationship/sex, but also because of her connection to his kids. I think like a lot of people around my generation, she realized she was doomed to repeat a previous generation's mistakes. And did. Because the tools weren't there to fully reject some of the worst rules of the game.

Her chapter on #MeToo made me weep, because she's got a laundry list of people who have creeped on her. And for me at first I was like "I would never, I have never" but then also, I had to admit to myself I've never been in a position of power that would let me take advantage of others. And I don't know, I can't honestly say that if I achieved great success at the age of 25 or 30, I might have become gross because I could. I don't know. But I know enough about myself to know that I could have gone down terrible paths, simply because I felt disconnected for much of my life that I could get sucked into bad shit. And so as much as I want to believe I'm decent person, there are some tests I've never taken. And hopefully I would or will pass them, but just the same, knowing that is something.

But more than that, her memoir is like MAD MAX FURY ROAD for all of us who love Liz Phair (I would like to say I love Elizabeth Phair, but I'm not going to pretend to know her). It's everything you've ever loved about her in it's purest, most perfect distillation, because she has always been a master storyteller. She was always a ray gun, shooting lasers of truth, and she rocked while doing it. Horror Stories doesn't have a beat to dance to but it reveals more but also everything you always suspected. The world is a better place with Liz Phair in it, and as I understand, she signed a two book deal. I would read her until the end of days. Bring it.